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Not a question specific to vintage computers, but since it's in the world of electricity and power supplies I thought it might be worth posting here. On unplugging a faulty model railway controller, I found that the 13A fuse in its mains plug looked blackened, and the interior of the plug was...

I only became aware of this networking system recently, when I saw an adapter for it on eBay. Google turned up a few more leads, and I was able to create a web page gathering together just about everything that the Internet seems to know about it. If anyone's got any more information relating...

As I'm going through my collection winnowing out those items that I don't know to be useful or believe to be beautiful, I've come upon a couple of vintage hard drives that don't spin up (a TM-262 with its matching ISA controller, and a Conner CP3024). I'm in two minds about what to do with them...

Just an idle thought... Has anyone got a PC1512 to output video using an MCE2VGA rather than its original monitor? (You'd have to provide an alternative source of power too, of course). The PC1512 video pinout is here - 8-pin DIN socket and (unlike CGA) uses composite sync rather than separate...

I've got a couple of motherboards from Toshiba laptops. Some of the chips on these are surface mounted -- the font ROM (TC53257) and the keyboard controller (80C49 / 80C50). I'd like, if possible, to dump the contents of these chips, but I don't have the skill or equipment. Is there anyone who...

My Toshiba T1000 no longer powers up (when switched on, power light goes red -> green -> off; nothing else happens). Googling suggests that this is a fairly common problem, most likely one or more blown capacitors, but is less reassuring about there being a common solution. Since none of the...

Powered up an IBM 5150 (the power supply is 240v, 130W) for the first time in years this evening. Shortly after I'd shut it down again, the power supply started fizzing and smoking. Once I'd yanked the power lead out and dismantled the PC and PSU, I found the blown component. Judging by the...

I'm still learning more about these things. It amazes me how little documentation there is about them online. For example, I had no idea until this week that the Programmed Symbols board could be coaxed into doing something like this.

I've got a TMC MET48PX EISA motherboard (for some reason, TH99 documents it under TMC MAT48PX). However, I don't have an EISA utility to go with it. The board originally came out of an Elonex computer. Google turned up an old listing of the Elonex FTP site, which suggests that the utility I...

I've been meaning to get round to this for the last three years or so. The drivers that come with Windows 1.x only go up to EGA resolution, 640x350. But by patching them, it's possible to make them display in 640x480 VGA and 800x600 VESA modes. I've written a utility to do this, which you can...

No matter how I try, my Willem programmer doesn't seem inclined to program D8749H microcontrollers (oddly, it managed a D8748H just fine). Is there anyone in the UK who can reliably program these? (I can provide the two chips I tried with; they've had 20 minutes under the UV lamp, so should be...

The PL/M parts of CP/M 3 are compiled, as a rule, by an ISIS-hosted compiler. Currently this means they can only be built under CP/M 2 (with ISX.COM) or DOS (with ISIS.EXE; see cpm3src.zip at <http://www.cpm.z80.de/source.html> ). I've now written an emulator, thames, which emulates enough of...

I've had (what's left of) this for a while now, and I've finally got round to writing it up for my site. Everything I've managed to write about the hardware is based on the physical boards and the contents of the boot ROM, but if anyone knows where I could find a copy of CCP/M or CDOS for this...

I've got an IBM PC manual that's just the pages -- no binder. Does anyone know a UK source for 3 ring binders with the correct hole spacing? Everything over here has 2 or 4 rings.

Does anyone have the original system software for a Compaq Portable III? In particular, I'm interested in what support, if any, there was for the LCD and its redefinable font. If you use PCDOS, codepage support almost works using DISPLAY.SYS and LCD.CPI: DEVICE=A:\DOS\DISPLAY.SYS...

I've heard tell that the :YES could boot DOS Plus from ROM. I'm looking for an image of that ROM; does anyone have one? (strictly speaking, perhaps, the :YES isn't a PC. But it should be close enough for this subforum).