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General Computer Thread

^^ Nice job. :mallory::techman:
And yeah.. it is using a LOT of power to get near the 5800X, kinda like the Pentium 4 days where their top P4 extreme drew like 130+ watts and still was a lot slower than the Athlon64 X2 CPU's.
 
Finally got around to boot up the Compaq Deskpro 2000
It's a Pentium 200MMX machine with 98.304MB RAM, 2019MB HDD, of course a 3.5" 1.44MB FDD, S3 Graphics card, not a Virge, the OEM driver doesn't really say what it is exactly, and of course it has a CD-ROM drive, it also has a 3COM Etherlink 10 LAN adaptor and a Miro Sound PCM1 Pro soundcard, thing booted without problems and even the BIOS battery is still working after 23 years. :mallory:
 
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Finally got around to boot up the Compaq Deskpro 2000
It's a Pentium 200MMX machine with 98.304MB RAM, 2019MB HDD, of course a 3.5" 1.44MB FDD, S3 Graphics card, not a Virge, the OEM driver doesn't really say what it is exactly, and of course it has a CD-ROM drive, it also has a 3COM Etherlink 10 LAN adaptor and a Miro Sound PCM1 Pro soundcard, thing booted without problems and even the BIOS battery is still working after 23 years. :mallory:

Is it one of those Dallas ones in the hard plastic case?
 
It's a bit different variation on that. The original battery was on the board and a replacement could be plugged into a socket and sticky-taped to the system.

It wasn't long before Compaq went to the ol' CR2032 solution instead.
 
No it is luckily not a Dallas clock, it is a HUGE battery that's indeed soldered to the mainboard and there's, like @StarCruiser, said a possibility to plug in a replacement.
 
No it is luckily not a Dallas clock, it is a HUGE battery that's indeed soldered to the mainboard and there's, like @StarCruiser, said a possibility to plug in a replacement.

Dallas clocks are actually a fairly easy replacement (some else makes them these days) but the soldered batteries are truly bad mojo and some are worse than others. The batteries in the Lisas and early Macs would destroy the motherboard when they leaked.
 
Yep - I've been "in the industry" for over 30 years and remember the original Compaq "Deskpro" Dallas clock batteries. Those weren't that hard to replace and actually were usually pretty reliable.

The Deskpro 2000 generation had some serious steps back to less practical solutions and then they finally jumped forward to the simple socketed CR2032 battery we all know and love (we do love them...right?).
 
It is not that dallas clocks were bad but you can't get them anymore.. I've got a few mainboards lying around that have them and I can't find any replacements for them, some other boards have similar "Odin" RTC clocks which seem to be similar.
You can actually open them up carefully and thenget rid of the old batteries inside and solder a socket for a CR 2032 onto them
As for the Deskpro, it is an interesting machine, and durable on any case although not IBM PS/2 durable ;)
 
IBM PS/2 durable? That depends on what PS/2 model you are talking about...

The dealer I worked for back in '89-'90 got some of the first PS/2 Model 80 tower systems in. Absolute junk... Half of them were DOA. The case was metal plated plastic and twisted too easily. Then, they shipped them in boxes that had no resistance to flexing. Cracked traces all over the motherboards. Shortly later, we received more of them in slightly better boxes, all with blue wire fixes... I wonder why...

Not saying that all IBM systems of that era were crap but, they had some real junkers in the PS/2 era. The old PC, PC/XT and PC/AT stuff - pretty much bullet proof.
 
It is not that dallas clocks were bad but you can't get them anymore.. I've got a few mainboards lying around that have them and I can't find any replacements for them, some other boards have similar "Odin" RTC clocks which seem to be similar.
You can actually open them up carefully and thenget rid of the old batteries inside and solder a socket for a CR 2032 onto them
As for the Deskpro, it is an interesting machine, and durable on any case although not IBM PS/2 durable ;)

There are plug-n-replace options for the Dallas RTC. Look at the at Maxim Industries DS12887+. Mentioned in the following video where some-one was trying to restore to live an Intel 486 EISA workstation.

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There was a second video where he got it up and running with the maxim unit and restored the EISA settings but I can't it the moment.

The video also mentions a second approach - dremel the chip and solder on connections for replacement battery.
 
^^ Yeah, I saw someone do the hack and dremel thing, and then solder a CR2032 socket to it.:mallory:

I will look at those Maxim Industries DS12887+ replacements. :techman:

IBM PS/2 durable? That depends on what PS/2 model you are talking about...

I've got three PS/2 Model 30 machines which are all working, a 386 machine, can't remember what model and a desktop model 66 I think, 486 DX2 66 Mhz and still working, would need to dig them out again to see, I also have a IBM XT and a IBM AT which had no casing so it now rests inside a Aopen HX 45 miditower, the AT's mainboard is almost as large as the entire mainboard tray of the casing, pretty tight fit.
 
The PS/2 Model 30's (and the little all-in-one 25's) were pretty solid systems.

The Model 50 was okay, the model 55 and 50Z (I think) were iffy. The Model 70 (but, not the P70 - always buggy) was okay unless you dropped it too hard (brittle plastic base pan).
 
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remember how it was in the 90's being on the phone with the internet and no one can use the phone for hours till you get the files downloaded? just pictures usually or something like that for me it was the uploading of images and stuff taking 10 minutes per image at least--- :)
 
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remember how it was in the 90's being on the phone with the internet and no one can use the phone for hours till you get the files downloaded? just pictures usually or something like that for me it was the uploading of images and stuff taking 10 minutes per image at least--- :)

Yep, then we got 512k and everything seemed to load so quickly (at least at the time) :)
 
56K modem.. still have a few of them around and one machine has one installed, yeah.. your mom picking up the phone while you were downloading something was annoying.. *click* carrier lost, and no download manager in the old days.. yeah, I remember that.
 
56K modem.. still have a few of them around and one machine has one installed, yeah.. your mom picking up the phone while you were downloading something was annoying.. *click* carrier lost, and no download manager in the old days.. yeah, I remember that.

They've just been clearing out one of the cupboards at work recenly and one of the things they've pulled out is an unopened US Robotics 56k modem:)

One of the services we tried used to automatically cut off every two hours so big downloads were troublesome with them. The others I used I think have long since gone out of business (or been bought out)
 
I've got several modems lying around, quite a few 2400 BAUD ISA cards and I think three PCI 56K modems and one external 56K modem.:biggrin:
 
They've just been clearing out one of the cupboards at work recenly and one of the things they've pulled out is an unopened US Robotics 56k modem:)

One of the services we tried used to automatically cut off every two hours so big downloads were troublesome with them. The others I used I think have long since gone out of business (or been bought out)

My very first ISP had a 2 hour cutoff so as to provide "fair use" to other clients who were also using the same provider.
 
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