vswitchzero

Love that album. Dwr Budr still one of my favorite tracks to this day 🙂

Oh hey! Looks like Hackaday covered PicoGUS adding CD-ROM emulation. One minor issue in the article - sound cards having CD-ROM drive interfaces was extremely common in the days before ATAPI took over.

YouTube video by vswitchzero CD-ROM Drive Emulation on the PicoGUS!

With @polpo.org 's latest 3.x firmware, the PicoGUS is able to emulate a CD-ROM drive! Using ISO and BIN/CUE images on a USB stick, it eliminates yet another unreliable component with moving parts in a retro PC. Join me today as I take this new feature for a spin!

youtu.be/08IPnmvuatw

A photo of a monitor showing a PC BIOS screen from a system with a Pentium III CPU. In the area where it detects drives, it shows: "Primary Master : NoneIDE CD-ROM 52x Desk Shaker v0.0.1"

After being extremely cryptic about the new hardware project I'm working on in my last "photo of my monitor" post, here's a hopefully less cryptic one. Now that more things are working, here's a clue that is hopefully a little more obvious about what it is:

Can we get the PicoGUS working in my custom wood / glass single board 486 system on the external ISA YouTube video by BigBadBench

The PicoGUS is such an amazing piece of technology that @polpo.org has developed. I want to get one working in my custom wood/glass SBC 486 with external enameled wire ISA bus. Let's poke it with the oscilloscope Saturday at noon eastern to figure out what the problem is. youtube.com/live/q7gv79i...

Release v3.1.0 · polpo/picogus Fixes CD-ROM emulation Many fixes/improvements to CD image handling: Add ability to load image by name Fix memory leak when changing images (file handle not freed, causing crash after switching im...

#PicoGUS firmware v3.1.0 is released. It adds the ability to load a CD image by name and has *many* fixes for cd image listing and loading. github.com/polpo/picogu...

🤩

Super excited to give this a try! Awesome work @polpo.org 🍻

This is wonderful insanity...

When your ARM powered Acorn RISC PC can have a second 486 DX4 100MHz CPU and run Windows 95 in its own window.

Retro computing is so exciting dabbling with these things it truly is!

YouTube video by vswitchzero MK1869 ISA Sound Card Review

It's been ages but I finally posted a new YouTube video. Join me as I take an in-depth look at Edro and Leo's brand new MK1869 ISA sound card! This thing ticks off all the right boxes ✅

youtu.be/9bYEq0KIykg

I was traveling for a week and intended to work on CDROM support for #PicoGUS while on the road but forgot the charger for my Pocket386, whoops. Now I'm home. Back in the day I liked how the opening FMV in Return to Zork called back to the original text adventures while saying LOOK AT OUR CD POWER

I seem to recall an option in the drive settings for many SCSI and SATA devices for cache behavior. It defaulted to a safer write-through mode that hurt write performance. I don't remember the details. There may have also been an option for "safe removal".

Say hi to weirdly long capacitor.

Windows 98, browsing the contents of a virtual CD-ROM and playing audio tracks from it

This weekend I’m polishing up CDROM emulation on PicoGUS and verified that it works in Windows 98. Once I figure out a nice way to switch disc images and make a utility for it I will release a new firmware version.

Cool! Never saw this mod before. Wish I had more time for this kind of thing. Would love to do the Quadro FX 1000/2000 to FX 5800 Ultra mod one of these days since I'm sure I'll never own a 5800 Ultra at this point. 🙂

I love it 😂

Burns through ammo really quickly I'm sure!

Working on trying to fix a Voodoo3 3000 PCI I got in a lot.
Only visible damage was a missing 10uf cap, but even replaced, still does this.
Verticle bars, either black or RGB colors.
3.3v and 5v rails seem to be going where they should. No idea what to try next.
Maybe @vswitchzero.com might know?

Definitely memory related. Could be a severed data line trace to one of the chips or one of the chips is bad. As @s0n1c.bsky.social suggested, give each chip a squeeze and see if the artifacting changes. Also try to put pressure on the core. Best of luck! 👍

This is something I'd be really excited to try out! This project keeps getting better and better 😁

Awesome! Got my new printer up and running and looking forward to giving it a try 🙂

Bracket for STB System 3dfx Voodoo 3 by Jeff Chen | Download free STL model | Printables.com A 3D printed replacement bracket for the STB System series of 3dfx Voodoo 3/Velocity cards. | Download free 3D printable STL models

[Bracket for STB System 3dfx Voodoo 3]

A simple 3D-printed bracket with a twist.👀

Hope you find it fascinating bending the printed piece into place. It's a small price to pay for the ultimate strength from a thin piece of plastic.🤪

Printables Link:
printables.com/model/1289312

#moodboard

Happy birthday to Wolfenstein 3D, released on this day, 33 years ago on 5th May 1992!

Got this for-parts 3dfx Velocity with heavy corrosion everywhere. Card heats up but no boot no detect. Turns out many traces got severed right at the AGP edge, possibly due to corrosion. A lot of fine soldering job to painstakingly restore every one of them🫠

Two PCBs, one larger and red, and one smaller and green. The red one is a regular PicoGUS board and the green one is the Femto version.

My final JLCPCB order before de minimis doomsday arrived today with a few days to spare. Both cards are new minor hardware revisions!

I vote ES1868F 👍

I should just introduce every new piece of gear I buy like this

FPGA, Spectrum Next Development, Retro 90s PCs & More... - Game & Gadget Podcast #41 - Pixel Refresh James & Tony explore FPGA retro gaming, Tony’s upcoming game UrbX Warriors and James' adventures with Windows 98 PCs and CRT monitors.

FPGA, Spectrum Next Development, Retro 90s PCs & More… – Game & Gadget Podcast #41

@tonywarriner.bsky.social & I explore FPGA retro gaming, Tony’s upcoming game UrbX Warriors and my adventures with Windows 98 PCs and CRT monitors.

www.pixelrefresh.com/fpga-spectru...

#podcast #retrogaming #fpga

For the past four months I have been restoring an IBM PS/1 2168. With the Checkmate monitor, I think I am done. Let's FDOOM.EXE and DUKE3D.EXE, here I come!

Will the mouse toilet Commodore PC 20-III boot? YouTube video by BigBadBiologist's BigBadBench

I can't stream Saturday, so let's do a quick early Friday morning (9AM eastern) stream to test out the cleaned-up, previously really nasty Commodore PC 20-III from last weekend's stream. You won't lose your breakfast like you lost your lunch last weekend! #vintagepc youtube.com/live/CEgB9h6...