HELP! Noob Building a Parallel Port ROM HackStation . . .

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

AHA! So the upper limit of OS support for the Burner makes sense. I wonder what the difference was between that aweful Win'95 release and the '98 bugfix for that earlier POS-OS to create the lower end OS support cutoff?

I'm leaning more toward trying to run '98 on the BEAST from Tekelec than XP on the board that's up and running now. Does '98 run on ATX/USB/FireWire/AGP/SATA/Gigabit architecture X86?

 

[CelGen]

98 runs on anything that drivers were developed for.

98se did however have support for 1394 right out of the box and I've used video cards up to the Radeon 9600XT.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Thanks, CelGen.

Well, I've narrowed the alternate board down to two possibilities, first here it is . . .



. . . and the possibilities, this . . . A7V8X-LA (Kelut)

. . . and this . . . A7V8X-LA (Kamet 2)

. . . and here's one on eBay, sans proc: COMPAQ HP PAVILION A7V8X-LA 5187-4913 MOTHERBOARD + I/O Shield

It's not a big surprise that the "Pavilion Drive" worked on this one at all! :lol:

I found another drive in the alternate case for the re-installation, here's hoping it's the functioning, password free Win95 drive! :approve:

It looks like '98 is out for this one, but XP is doable, if a stretch.

Install an operating systemThe A7V8X-X motherboard supports Windows ME/NT/2000/XP operating systems

I sure hope this is the right Manual: http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socka/kt400/a7v8x-x/e1198_a7v8x-x.pdf

It sounds to me like this board is pretty much the dim-witted, evil X86 cousin of my dearly departed QS'02.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/asusa7v8x/

How well can XP run on a machine of this vintage?

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Maybe not too badly, it appears to have an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ on a 400MHz front side bus . . .

. . . and the RAM appears to have been maxed out at 2GB. ;D

There's no Win'95 install on this HDD, there's apparently a kubuntu install askin' for a password . . .

. . . to the desktop of someone named Trash80! 8-o

I have not one single clue as to how that might have gotten onto this machine. :?:

 

[IPalindromeI]

After years, XP does not run well on the systems it was made to run on: XP SP0 might run on a Pentium with 64 MB RAM, but XP SP3 will be extremely unpleasant.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Crapdoodle! I've got more MoBos I can try setting up for Win'98 in that case. But this only has to run XP just well enough to run the ROM Burner. I've no intention to use a Windows Box for anything by that.

I emphatically refuse to deal with anything between '98 and XP. I've left 7 on HP_Maxi only because it's too much trouble to get ubuntu set up to run the 3g modem. It's a dedicated Browser/PDF machine, I use OpenOffice only rarely for simple spreadsheets an Notepad for the occasional .TXT assembly for import into to my very happy little OS9 world.

I've got three more PC-133 boards for taking a run at Win'98 if the (Lunchbox) BEAST from Tekelec isn't up to it:

My last resort is a cute cute little board: AGP, four PCI, three ISA slots and a PII CPU Card. It says 650B REV 1.2

Second choice is an ABIT-KT7: AGP, six PCI, one ISA and a CPO socket with which I'm unfamiliar.

The next one to go into testing seems to be a winner, Intel Desktop Board D815EEA2 / D815EPEA2

The specs I found has a Win98/WinME boot time performance chart: intel/tualatin/mobo.shtml

I think I have time to try this one before work, update soon . . .

. . . comments/suggestions will be much appreciated. :approve:

 

[Gorgonops]

Second choice is an ABIT-KT7: AGP, six PCI, one ISA and a CPO socket with which I'm unfamiliar.

That sounds really familiar. I think my last Windows gaming rig may have been this exact board. Had it fitted with a 1.33Ghz Tbird and used the ISA slot for my scanner. (Until I ended up with a free Adaptec 2940, that is.) It'll run Windows 98, but it'll be sort of a bear to get going. (You'll need the chipset drivers from VIA/ABIT, and be *very careful* to install them in the right order.)

(Edit: Yeah, looked it up, that's it exactly. It's a good board... but I would recommend Windows XP for it. 98 was pain and a half. I mostly ran Windows 2000 on mine. Also, if yours has the "RAID" feature with the HPT370 chip I recommend *not* using it, either use the native IDE ports or use the HPT ports in just "plain disk" mode.)

The next one to go into testing seems to be a winner, Intel Desktop Board D815EEA2 / D815EPEA2

I would probably pick this over the ABIT, only because the drivers for an Intel 815 will probably be easier to find and better written than the ones for the ABIT board.

You know, Trash, if you get *really* desperate I have a couple VIA C3 mini-ITX motherboards in (beat-up) micro cases. (They use a 12V wall wart for power.) I'm planning to set up one, coincidentally enough, to drive my new EPROM burner which requires *DOS*, but maybe I could part with one. I don't know if Windows 98 drivers for those exist, however.

 

[IPalindromeI]

I'd also note that there's much more reasonable options: You could get a USB Parallel doohickey and run 98/XP in a VM on your netbook. If you're persistent about building you can get a 2006-2009 era Core 2 mobo with a Parallel port, or just get any modern motherboard and slap a PCI Parallel car in.

Point being, you're making this more problematic and complex than needed.

 

[Gorgonops]

I'd also note that there's much more reasonable options: You could get a USB Parallel doohickey and run 98/XP in a VM on your netbook.

For the record, USB->Parallel doohickies rarely if ever work for driving things like EPROM burners. They do *not* support the sort of manual bit-flipping on the port that those things require. (They're hardwired to drive *printers* and make a parallel printer look like a USB interfaced one. The EPROM burner software expects the parallel port to be an 8 bit hardware port at address 0x378/0x3BC/0x278 to which it can directly shove and read bits.)

Of course, there *are* those "straight from China" EPROM burners that sell for only $50 or so and *do* work with USB, so the point is still somewhat valid. (The only reason I'm bothering futzing with my old DOS driven one is it supports a few obscure old-style EPROMs that newer ones often don't, like the 2532, which happens to be useful for what I want an EPROM burner for.)

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

@ IPalindromeI: Thanks, those are great suggestions, but like I've said, I've got some boxes of neat junk saved up from cool PC case acquisitions and random curbside recycling projects. Lack of money and the experience necessary to do any kind of VM setup for this project preclude your far more sensible approach to the objective.

I've also got a couple of sensible approaches up my sleeve, but they cost money and this is a freebie campaign. Besides, Digital Junkyard Wars is way more my style! [}] ]'> I'm having a blast doing this that way as well. Putting Macs into quirky old PC boxen I've done already. Finding and populating PC Boxes that match my stack of Radius Clone front plates is an ongoing campaign and this little skirmish fits right in with the overall war plan. [] ]'>

@ g: I'm pretty sure that's the kind of burner that's headed my way, but HP_Maxi is out of spec being Win 7 and there's just no freakin' way XP will ever again touch HP_Mini. I've already done the repetitive head-desk thing for a full week trying to do that re-install and ubuntu rocks on that cute little sucker, thank you very much!

From the suggestions/information I've gotten so far for going the used XP Box approach, that's out of the question from a monetary standpoint.

I really need to get some PCB pattern digiflage fatigues for Digital Junkyard Wars, but austerity budget it is for a bit . . .

. . . I can't even afford that uber-cool Radius Color work smock oP found for me ATM. :-/

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Yippee!!!!! [] ]'>

The Taulatin(?) D815EE2U is booted up to SETUP and running with a Pentium III/1GHz . . . time to go to work.

 

[jruschme]

XP SP0 might run on a Pentium with 64 MB RAM, but XP SP3 will be extremely unpleasant.

XP SP0 required a minimum of a PII/233. IIRC, SP3 severely raised the bar.

I emphatically refuse to deal with anything between '98 and XP.

Okay, ME was a bust, but 2000 Professional was pretty good.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Maybe, but I think I'll just stick with what I know(knew) and for which I just happen to have a 5lb. QUE Book sitting on the shelf! Windows 98 here we come! [)] ]'>

It's just too bad that the $60 support manual has gone down the whirlpool of time.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

"Honey, I blew up the DIMMs."

In this latest event in the saga of the elusive Parallel Port ROM HackStation i've managed to pull off a real boob noob event. I grabbed a couple of sticks that looked right to me in my befuddled stupor and they seemed to click into place correctly . . . but they were missing that extra divot on the PC-133 I should have been using. When I didn't here the usual two beeps and it didn't boot to setup as usual and didn't power back down from the front panel switch I flipped the switch on the PSU and removed a pair of very hot 1GB DDR sticks. OOPSIE!!!!!

When I pulled them out I also noticed that the taller of the PC-133 DIMMs wasn't completely seated completely, dunno if I knocked it loose installing or removing the (very likely ruined) 1GB DDR DIMMS or if it had been that way since I pulled the MoBo out of the anti-static bag.

I now get a near boot without the intervening beeps or winding up in the CMOS Setup.

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable error

PXE-MOF: Exiting Intel PXE ROM

Boot Failure: System Halted

IIRC, beeps in POST are usually bad, so am I better or worse off than before that BIG@$$ boo-boo?

Time to crack Upgrading and Repairing PCs 13th EDITION . . .

. . . and/or can somebody give me an answer to that offhand? :?:

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

HRMMM...the Black 5.5 pounder says two beeps from the AMI BIOS means Parity Error, so maybe I'm better off? :?:

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Apparently I'm better off, this thing is diggin' the Kubuntu 11.04 drive but just floats there in the "media failure, check cable" error like a dead fish with the Presario_XP drive attached. [] ]'>

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Well, it's time to head for work again, but the "change but one thing at a time" theory has been paying off thus far. CD's up and running, Zip100 is second on the hardware install/test checklist, maxed 512MB PC-133 DIMM from the QS'02 is next. Most recently, the Ultra SCSI Controller, high quality terminated cable, Cheap@$$ Chinese SCA Adapter and one of my hoard of 2.5" U160 SCA drives is purring along happily, but unformatted.

Meanwhile, on the OS front, I tried the ubuntu NetBook 9.10 Remix CD and it popped right up ready to rock. So I tried the 10.10 Desktop CD that HP_Mini loved so much while XP was down and out for the count. As halfway expected, it took so long to come up that I just killed the power.

After the aforementioned hardware evolutions and probably installing a Floppy as well, it's OS playtime again. It's probably not gonna work and even if it does it'll likely be dog slow, but I'll give the Remix a shot at that cute little SCA drive . . .

. . . while I stand by with a fire extinguisher. :O

 

[trag]

jt, I've been down this road already....

I have an old Needham EMP-30 chip programmer with parallel port and software which will run on, at the latest, Win XP -- maybe Win 7, XP mode.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NE-Needham-Electornics-EMP-30-Device-Programmer-Flash-ROM-Writer-with-Module-/400530945439?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5d4181359f



Did you ever buy one of those Dell D430s?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LOT-OF-10-DELL-LATITUDE-D430-LAPTOP-CORE-2-DUO-1-33GHz-2GB-WIRELESS-/221312861917?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item33874646dd



They have a docking station available:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/350664716706?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649



which includes a parallel port.

It works great with my old programmer. Probably works fine with others. And for a bonus, OSX can be nicely hacked onto this model of laptop.

That way you can have a nice compact laptop to drive your chip programmer, which doesn't take up much space and when it's not booted into Windows, it's about like a Macbook Air 13".

My chip programmer is the whole reason I bought a Dell Latitude D430 in the first place.

The only bad thing about it is the 1.8" ZIF IDE hard drive. If you buy one without a drive, have the hard drive solution figured out first. The 240GB Toshiba MK2431 has pretty well dried up. It got down to about $70 and then seems to have been discontinued. Sigh. Now it's up around $250. It's cheaper to get a 1.8" IDE to MSATA adapter and a 240 GB MSATA SSD now. Much better performance too, I imagine, but putting $200 into these old laptops seems kind of silly.

Incidentally, the parallel port on the docking station for the Latitude E4300 will also work, but the E4300 doesn't take OSX, so it is purely a Windows machine if you go that route. Almost twice as fast in the CPU though.

I think all those images will expire in 6 months. Is there a way to capture them to the forum space?

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Yep, if an image on eBay doesn't say all rights reserved, it's pretty much fair game for fair use. Folks watermark their auction shots and use hosting services (that don't really protect the images very well anyway) so lazy/less reputable sellers won't misuse their shots in any way. Just right-click & save image as to local disk and then upload it as any other attachment. If it's for documentation/educational use, not commercial use, that'd be fair use.

You're outside your edit window so I've done it for you. :beige:

. . . and nope, I never got one, I was going to let the grlf try OSX out on one, but she just went ahead and bought herself the bigger Air. After working in the industry at IBM and then Lenovo on ThinkPads and this last piece of Lenovo schlock for over 25 years, she's kissed off Windows for good and EVAH!!!! She L_O_V_E_S her Air and I think it's pretty cool too. That TrackPad is no rodent, but for using a laptop where it warms you lap, it seems more than just workable and certainly not dreadful.

My Digital Junkyard War is taking a very small toll on me, but I'm making steady progress and learning a bunch of new crap I'll likely not need to employ again, but learning is its own reward in my surreal little world. It's FUN!!!!! [] ]'> Everyone needs to remember that this is a zero sum campaign. All hardware must be built up from what I have on hand and be able to run whatever ROM Burner is sent my way. I can probably afford to buy '98, but not XP and there's no way in hades that I'm gonna fiddle-whatever with yet another version of Redmond schiznit in between, it just ain't gonna happen.

This P-III Intel board is looking better and better. At lunch I hooked up a 1.44MB FDD and nothing croaked, but it wasn't happy with the Zip100 I tried next, so I'm swapping that out tonight and will hopefully be maxing out the RAM as well.

Once more into the breach! :rambo:

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

New (just out of the bag anyway) Iomega Zip100 replacement for the original NEC and the TEAC FDD installed where there wasn't one both seem to be getting along fine with the rest of the hardware. The 9.10 Remix CD is testing the (maxed out) 512MB PC-133 DIMM from the comatose QS'02. Memtest86 v.2.11 is 31% complete with no errors so far.

I'm off for a couple of days, so I might just let 'er rip in the AM. Watching the Remix CD try to install itself on that cute lil' Ultra160 while I drink my morning coffee is sounding good!

Feels good! ;D