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-=The Adventures with an Old PC=-

TandyMan100

Veteran Member
Joined
Jan 7, 2009
Messages
632
Location
At my computer
--=The Adventures with an Old PC=--

++Introduction++
This story chronicles the tale of one old computer: a 90MHz Pentium-class with an A-Open case. Made approximately 1994, this computer was pretty state-of-the-art, but now, it is (to most people) a piece of worthless trash.
++Chapter 1++

I bought this computer in mid-2009 at a local garage sale along with two other computers. Being a computeritarian, I just couldn't stand to see three perfectly fine computers go to the dump. I bought them for five dollars. There was two first-gen Pentiums, and a Pentium III. I brought them home and promptly dismantled all three, then threw the cases into the trash.
I had an unexplainable draw to one of the computers. It was an AOpen case. Clean lines. Not to busy. Not too extravagent or overdone. And it had a cool LED readout/information panel. I jumped into our (rather stinky) trash to fish it back out, and set out to re-building the computer.

++Chapter 2++
After putting in the power supply and motherboard, I realised that the switch supplied with the case was crap. This being an AT-style computer, I needed an AT-style rocker switch. There was none, so I took a bushbutton switch, and glued (and glued, and some more glue) it into the space the rocker switch should've gone. I then took a couple of layers of balsa wood (not sure of the thickness) and dremeled out a button, and glued that on.
Finally, I installed the drives. The original cd drive went in, a new 3.5" floppy drive, a Colorado 350MB tape drive, and a 2.5 Gigabyte hard drive ended up inside. Put in a video card and fired it up: nothing.
++Chapter 3++
Fast foward a month: I dug out the computer, as I wanted to work on a computer, and my main PC needed a new mobo. I powered it on, and decided to see if I could get it working. Put in two video cards ('cause one of them had to work), an ISA Soundblaster 16 (that thing is over a foot long), network card, and a modem. I spent about 2 hours just figuring out how to wire the information panel up (I ripped it apart thinking it would be easy. Nope.) because I had no instructions/manual. Then I rotated and switched IDE cables until the drive lights would flicker and the HDD light would flicker, that left the tape drive and floppy drive. What could be wrong with them?
++Chapter 4++
Have a caffine-infused drink. Switch around power cables, rotate the floppy cables on the drives. Scratch head. Repeat about 10 times. Two hours later, realize that the !@$#^%$ thing was never plugged into the mobo. Scream. Now that I had all of the drives working, it was time to plug in a monit and keyboard. But wait. It uses an AT-style DIN plug for the keyboard. I have no AT keyboards. Crud. Look up manual, read manual, skip all of the BIOS bruhaha (might need it later, though), find out that a PS/2 port is optional, but not included. Notice that the mobo has internal USB connectors, "borrow" USB doohickey from main PC, plug in. Finally ready to test.
 
find out that a PS/2 port is optional, but not included. Notice that the mobo has internal USB connectors, "borrow" USB doohickey from main PC, plug in. Finally ready to test.

Did you know that there is cheap adapters you can use to connect a PS/2 Keyboard into an old AT-style keyboard port?
 
Yeah, but I couldn't find one. I hope this works...

I doubt it. Old PC's like that where made before USB keyboards. It won't be able to recognize it.

Those adapters can be gotten from places like Jameco, or some other computer store. I don't really think they are difficult to obtain.
 
USB keyboard wasn't recognized, but computer powered on OK. CMOS battery is dead, and I have NO idea where it is. Lessee if I can find the manual...
 
USB keyboard wasn't recognized, but computer powered on OK. CMOS battery is dead, and I have NO idea where it is. Lessee if I can find the manual...

Look for either a round flat battery connected to the motherboard, or a black box connected to the motherboard through two power cables.
 
Look for either a round flat battery connected to the motherboard, or a black box connected to the motherboard through two power cables.
There is neither on the motherboard that I can see. The battery looks like it's built in to the clock, which is soldered onto the mobo. What are the odds of a noob soldering on a new one? The most risky soldering I've done was replacing the NiCD on a TRS-80 Model 100 mainboard.
 
There is neither on the motherboard that I can see. The battery looks like it's built in to the clock, which is soldered onto the mobo. What are the odds of a noob soldering on a new one? The most risky soldering I've done was replacing the NiCD on a TRS-80 Model 100 mainboard.

Aww, then you problably just has to live with it. By replacing the clock chip, there is big posibilities that the new one has a dead battery too.
 
Okay, I guess I'll just have to press F1 to continue and live without having changeable BIOS settings :-(

I have another mobo that I could replace it with. But I do like this one.
 
Got a keyboard, plugged it in, and booted up, BIOS battery dead, so no changing settings :-(, got MS-DOS 5.0 install disk and put it in the floppy drive, turned on computer, Cd drive is.... there, HD drive is.... there, floppy drive seeks, then.... "PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT"*. Goddangit. Any idea why it's doing this? I've used the disk before in recent history, and it's fine.




*"where's the ANY key?!?!?" --- some guy
 
Hm.. it could be I'm losing my dos memories but I don't recall a "PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT" response even if there wasn't a disk in there it should say no bootable media found and ask you to try again, or if it does find media but it's incorrect it would give a different error too.

So, I would check the BIOS again.. I'm pretty sure the battery won't prevent you from getting in there, it would just keep it from remembering the current date/time. Check your boot options, it may not be set to boot from floppy before trying to harddrive or could just be set to boot off one device only. It's kind of a security setting as well as a way to keep users from infecting their machines with a floppy they leave in there if it was a corporate system.

Are you sure the floppy is connected properly (cable is the right way on the drive and motherboard)? Have you tried a bootable CD (although some early systems again didn't support booting from CD but I think most Pentium class systems were there).
 
It was the cable :-?. Had it incorrectly connected.

Got MS-DOS 5.0 set up and running.

@linuxlove: I believe you once said something like "What are these 'graphical drop-down menus' in MS-DOS 5.0? Windows 1.0?" Nope. It's like an early file manager called "dosshell" located at "x:\dos\dosshell.exe"

Now installing Windows 3.1.
 
Just got my video card drivers installed! Now has 256 colors! Yay! Soundblaster AWE64 installed as well. Just need to get a compatible network card...
 
I found that Intel EtherExpress 10/100 card works nicely in Windows 3.1. However, (and i'm quoting from a long-time IT guy) you'll need Winsock to get it on the internet. Or, you could buy a copy of Windows For Workgroups 3.11 :rolleyes:
 
I found that Intel EtherExpress 10/100 card works nicely in Windows 3.1. However, (and i'm quoting from a long-time IT guy) you'll need Winsock to get it on the internet. Or, you could buy a copy of Windows For Workgroups 3.11 :rolleyes:
Okay, I'll see if I can find one of those cards... Isn't WFW availiable as a 3.1 upgrade?


http://genericnet.ath.cx/favorite.htm epic WIN!!
 
i could be wrong. i think WFW would upgrade Win 3.1 or you could do a clean install of it.
ww0981ud.exe was the name of the Windows 3.1 to Windows 3.11 upgrade. All it really did was add some networking stuff and change the boot screen (lol)

I got my video drivers installed, and now the boot screen is all jacked up (driver install program changed it to show off the high-color cababilities). How do I change it back?
 
if you have of copy of the file "logo.rle" (i think that's what it was), you can copy the old bootlogo over the new one. if you want later today i could put a WFW 3.11 bootlogo up for download if you want.
 
if you have of copy of the file "logo.rle" (i think that's what it was), you can copy the old bootlogo over the new one. if you want later today i could put a WFW 3.11 bootlogo up for download if you want.
Make a backup copy of WIN.COM (from the Windows directory) and of VGALOGO.RLE
(from the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. Exit Windows.
Copy the new logo as VGALOGO.RLE to a temporary directory, together with WIN.CNF and VGALOGO.LGO from the WINDOWS & WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. From the DOS prompt change to this directory and execute the following command:

COPY /B WIN.CNF+VGALOGO.LGO+VGALOGO.RLE WIN.COM

Copy the "new" WIN.COM to the WINDOWS directory and the new VGALOGO.RLE to the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory.
If any problems occur, just write back your backup copies of WIN.COM and VGALOGO.RLE
Found this on the internet. *sigh* nothing is ever easy...
 
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