Evie's Conquests

[EvieSigma]

If it comes to that, this thing is going away...I got it for free and I'd have to buy a soldering iron and caps to recap it. This thing isn't worth that investment to me.

 

[EvieSigma]

I fiddled with the 3 pots given to me on the analog board and switched the input from direct RF to an RF modulator and I got this as a result. No amount of adjustment cured the prominent "fold" in the picture but at least the black bar on top shrank.

 

[CC_333]

Hmm, I've noticed that when something similar happens on a compact (or other contemporary external monitor, such as the HiRes 13" RGB), it is caused by some combination of burnt resistor(s) or dried out capacitor(s).

Or, at least so says Larry Pina's books

c

 

[EvieSigma]

I'm probably just going to leave this one as-is and keep looking for a nicer set (like a Sony or Mitsubishi). I don't have recapping equipment and a Taiwanese mono RF-only TV set isn't really worth all that work.

 

[EvieSigma]

Well this was a lucky find. A sweet 80s Sanyo boombox with surprisingly loud output for its size. It's one of those where you can separate the speakers too and rearrange them.

 

[Unknown_K]

I had a boombox that looked like that in the 80's. The late 80's there were real ghetto blasters that were 3 times as tall as that( and used a ton of batteries). In the 90's people switched to shelf units.

 

[EvieSigma]

I haven't seen one of those giant ghetto blasters that take 10 D cells and somehow I doubt I ever will...

 

[Unknown_K]

Well I don't think you would want one these days anyway. The normal sized boom boxes were great for taking music on the road back when cassette tapes were a thing and people actually hung out outside.

 

[EvieSigma]

Yeah, I like having a boombox to play music while cleaning house or whatever, and I've started collecting cassettes.

 

[Unknown_K]

I like music when I am working on things. I have an Aiwa shelf system in the basement for tunes. Have not purchased any tapes in 20 years (was a member of a tape club back in the 80's and still have them). Tapes don't age that well unless they were on metal tapes and you didn't leave them in the car.

 

[EvieSigma]

I've noticed that, but honestly I kinda like the imperfect nature of tapes. Granted, you're also talking to someone who thinks MiniDiscs sound just fine despite their sub-CD quality.

 

[Unknown_K]

Compressed audio can sound decent depending on the compression used and also the speakers you are using to listen to them (and how old you are). Tapes have a very bad low and high end even on good metal tapes, chrome and iron tapes are even worse compared to mini disc or CD. If you are middle aged you might even have a hard time telling a CD from a tape apart if played on a boombox (shitty speakers and you high end hearing is shot too so you would not hear the noise). MP3's caught on because early players had small drives for storage and the headphones sucked so you could not tell the difference (and to be honest there is a point where compressed audio is good enough).

 

[EvieSigma]

I guess I haven't really noticed the issues with tapes because 80s boomboxes that were name brand but not exactly top end don't have the best sound quality anyways.

 

[CC_333]

Ahh, the venerable audio cassette!

I used to really like them (still do, but I've gotten lazy; all our cars (except the newest) have working players for when I'm ready, though), but they do definitely have their flaws.

One thing I hate is when the little pressure pad falls off (the little felt pad on a leaf spring that pushes the tape into the head). The tape doesn't sound great anyway, but when that pad falls off, the tape ends up sounding horrible. CDs don't do this []

I actually got into collecting 8-Tracks awhile back (if anyone here knows what those are, good for you!). I even have an 8-track recorder (it's an odd beast, too; it looks kinda like a very early cassette deck as far as looks go). Not sure it works though, as I've never had an opportunity to test it.

c

 

[EvieSigma]

Today was a day of rare finds!

First, I drove about an hour south of here to get this, a Pioneer LaserActive! This was, like the Commodore CDTV, a failed home video/game console device. This particular one has the Sega Genesis "PAC" for compatibility with Genesis and Sega CD games, and while the machine had a Turbo Duo CD inside it there wasn't any sign of the TurboGrafx PAC...

Then my former coworker sent me pics of this funky Compaq all-in-one and asked me if I wanted it, and of course I said yes! It's a Compaq Presario 4402, manufactured in July 1996. It...partially works, I can't seem to get into the BIOS and the hard drive (a Maxtor) was dead so I had to replace it. And the damned CMOS battery is soldered too...

 

[EvilCapitalist]

Wow, that's quite a conquest!  Congrats!

The LaserActive with the Genesis/SegaCD units I've seen on eBay tend to go for quite a pretty penny and it is interesting seeing just how many non-Sega devices had a Genesis crammed into them. 

I had forgotten that Compaq kept making their crazy Presario All-in-ones after the 386/486 versions.  Doubly weird that from the front it looks like an actual all-in-one but from the back it's clear that they literally just took a desktop, glued a CRT to it, and called it a day.  You even have to plug in the "built in" monitor with a VGA cable no less!  Given the build date of July '96 I'm guessing it's a Pentium 166 at best.  Still, a cool machine nonetheless.  If you still haven't been able to get into the BIOS something I had luck with on my Presario 4840 was to "force" it to give me the option of entering the BIOS by just holding down a bunch of keys on the keyboard at power on so it threw a keyboard error and gave me the prompt to enter the BIOS or continue booting.

 

[EvieSigma]

Yeah, so far every single stereotypical BIOS key (F1, F8, F10, Esc, Del) just gives a random keyboard error, and then I get the choice of pressing F1 to save a list of random BIOS changes (and pressing F1 traps you in a loop forever) or press F2 to ignore the changes and boot.

Not only that, but something is terribly wrong and the machine has rejected every hard drive I put in it, except for the original drive which is probably dead. When I run fdisk via a boot floppy there's no C drive.

This is gonna be fun, I can tell...

 

[EvilCapitalist]

I seem to recall maybe F4 or F12 getting you into the BIOS.  It's been a while since I've mucked with my Presario as it's stored away in another city.

Are the drives you're trying set up jumpered as Master/Slave or Cable Select?  I know many of the PCs I had of that vintage needed to have drives jumpered specifically as Master or Slave and putting them on Cable Select would have the machine either refuse to boot (hanging on detecting the drives) or would boot with no drives found.

 

[Unknown_K]

If the BIOS battery is dead replaces that first before doing anything else.

 

[EvieSigma]

If the BIOS battery is dead replaces that first before doing anything else.

Problem with that is the battery is soldered, as the picture further up shows...and I haven't gotten around to buying a soldering iron.

Hard drive and CD are on separate IDE buses and the hard drive is Master so that shouldn't be an issue.