Off Topic Ramblings

Hello Aleatorylamp,

We shall see how much I can accomplish today.
There are some holes in the case for various things like DB25 serial and parallel ports, DB15, and DB9 ports which I need to close up for good airflow but don't have the right size plates to cover them. I guess it is time to make a few.

Attempting to update Internet Explorer (which was necessary to install MS Visual Studio) was actually the most likely cause for the general system unreliability and crashes (besides disk and video weirdness).
The occasional missing volumes issue started a few years ago but was generally manageable with a reboot.
I don't know the cause, but perhaps it was the motherboard hinting that it was having problems.
We shall see if the new motherboard fixes those issues.
The odd program crashes pretty much started with the attempt to update Internet Explorer.
I hope that those issues were fixed with replacing files as recommended by the SFC utility.
The video problems probably started a few months ago and ended a couple weeks back.

I actually don't mind having extra muffin fans in the case and possibly even extra fans mounted on the case surface, but to have a fan mounted externally is really asking for trouble. My Desk is usually quite cluttered and the Computer needs to be as snag free as possible.
At this point, I want to just get it put back together to see how well it performs and then consider improvements.
There are also the possibility of getting a couple more machines in place and then maybe I will go back to the replacement Development Machine.

- Ivan.
- Ivan.
 
Hello Ivan,
An outside-portruding fan would have its drawbacks and be a bit make-****f too!

I hope you get it all sorted out. With Pentium I and Pentium II computers,
software and hardware compatibility was quite an issue. You couldn´t get away with generic drivers like on Win-XP. The worst were the video-card drivers, as clashes here could seriously crash the system and corrupt it on the HDD so much that you had to re-install Windows!

The "new" computer innards I got today are actually the CPU and Motherboard and other bits from an AMD K8: Sempron 3000+ at 1.8 Ghz, the equivalent of a 3 Ghz Pentium-4. These were just prior to the dual Core CPU´s. At that time AMD were getting higher efficiency per clock-cycle, so they labelled their CPU´s with the Pentium-equivalent frequency.

This "new" one will probably become my fall-back computer - it´s faster, better at multitasking and stabler than the Pentium-4 at 2.66 Ghz I have here - which has also developed a strange lagging, though it isn´t connected to the internet. I suspect it´s the hard disk.

Never a dull moment!
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
Hello Aleatorylamp,

Aleatorylamp said:
An outside-portruding fan would have its drawbacks and be a bit make-****f too!

I actually have no idea what you mean.

It is interesting that you are getting discards that are faster than any of the Desktop machines I have in the house.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I finished putting the "New" Development Computer together last night.
There were no real problems but it took a while because of all the things I had to move and connect.
I ran it for a few hours with the case off before concluding that it probably would not overheat.
There is actually another muffin fan in the case that is really serving no useful purpose
There isn't that much air being moved by any of the fans, but nothing seemed to get more than just a bit warm.
Even the heat sink on the Voodoo 3 barely got warm.
After that, it was a matter of tying down the wires inside the case so that they would not foul the fans or bounce around.
I have plenty of small zip ties, but prefer to do it with plastic twist ties because they are easier to adjust and remove.

After I had everything installed and running, I noticed that the Power LED was not coming on.
Normally with a less cramped work area, I would probably take it apart to look but at 2 AM, I just wanted to test things out.
The Speakers seem to have an issue and the narrowing display turns out not to be the monitor rather than the Graphics Card. CRTs are a little hard to come by these days, but that is my preference if I need a replacement.

Things are hardly perfect, but they are quite useable at this point.

I also found out that the latest ZIP Drive I had sitting by the computer was actually a USB device and not a SCSI or Parallel Port device which makes things easier.

As for making computer case modifications, I actually have a pretty heavy duty sheet metal nibbler. I have used it before to get pieces of sheet metal from old computer cases, so I know it will cut through the stuff pretty easily. Besides that, there are Dremel Tools and a Bench Grinder for the heavy stuff.

While discussing case modifications, I have always wanted to rebuild a reasonably modern CPU into an old IBM PC/AT case.

- Ivan.
 
Hello Ivan,
I had added the beginning of my previous post just before posting, and it got garbled at the end. I had to go before I noticed it had gone wrong. It was meant to read "makeshift", referring to the muffin fan mounted outside the case.

Your workshop sounds very well equipped. I´m having great trouble under the stairs, and expanding onto the dining-room table, with the cats jumping everywhere and my wife complaining about so much old stuff strewn about.

The discards I usually get are always about 10 years old. I used to be much more into re-building old computers, and in about 2005 most of what I would get were Pentium II or III types, and before that, around 1998, it was Pentium I`s.
Nowadays, I can only come by only Pentium 4´s or early Dual Cores, and normally I don´t go for this "hobby" any longer for reasons of space, but yesterday was an exception - I quite fancied re-building something!

I recognize several of the little issues during such a job, that you mention!
Now it needs a new O.S. installation, and hopefully then I´ll be able to clear the dining-room table!

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp.
 
Hello Aleatorylamp,

Even 10 years old would be pretty good.
If you think about it, what I just put together out of old computers is essentially a very fast Pentium I or a very slow Pentium II. You certainly newer and more spares than I do.

I ran into yet another twist last night.
I was noticing that the supercharger on the old P-39D AIR file was not working.
This is easy to see because power is highest at Sea Level on the Take-Off fun and starts to drop even 1000 feet up.
At 8000 to 10000 feet, power has dropped to less than half the Sea Level value.
This is not a Gauge problem. It is obvious that speed cannot be maintained.

The interesting thing is that this is happening with OTHER AIR files as well and those were working earlier.
In other aspects, besides the wacky video and noise, the computer is behaving well, but this one factor is a serious show stopper.
It also seems to be putting out quite a bit of heat: much more than the old Pentium 233 MMX.

I also see that the Joystick problems I had experienced earlier seem to have gone away. Perhaps those too were a part of the old motherboard behaving badly.

I just did a quick check on the Game Machine that I set up a week or two ago and it seems to be having the same problem..... I wonder where the problem might actually be.

- Ivan.
 
Last edited:
I think it's because you have Adobe PDF reader installed, and the file extension of the Air file is set to that.
Check your file extentions settings in Windows and delete that entry, or in install Adobe as a test.
 
Hello zswobbie1,
Welcome to the conversation about old hardware. It is certainly a pleasant surprise to see that there´s more than just 2 of us interested!

Hello Ivan,
Even though the K6 is quite heat resistant, I´d put on an extra extractor fan. I remember the heat-sink disengaging slightly due to a knock (while turned off) on my K6-II in 1999, and it sat badly on the CPU for some weeks before I noticed... It never complained, even though the aluminium chip surface went slightly grey... brave Chip!

As soon as I get to investigating the .air file, I´ll see. I suppose you are using a CFS1 .air file, as you expect a supercharger to work, and it doesn´t. I´m still a bit busy re-doing the stretching and the CoG positioning on the model, but I´ll see about the .air file after that! I also put a CFS1 one in a while back, although the FS98 one flies really well. Christoph Ruhrtenberg had a knack to get the flying feeling nicely done, and flyable.

Regarding old, old hardware, here it seems impossible to get hold of anything older than 10-15 years. No Pentium 1, 2 or 3 machines around anymore! Those most probably get thown out, and the people left who still have them, keep them!

Bad news on the motherboard with the CPU named after Gaius SEMPRONius Gracchus: It has defective sound, and LAN only works with the Win7 demo on it, not with my WinXP (but that´s probably only the configuration).
I could put in my Win7, but without the sound...


I could also put on Win98, as I have some Win98 sound cards... but too complicated, because I was given a second discard computer at the same time:

A machine with a Pentium 4 at 2.8 Ghz ...which started, and stopped!
It was only the power supply though, so I put in the one from my fall-back 2.6 Ghz Pentium 4, and now it works! Now I´m downloading the drivers to see if all else also works.


It´a Prescott Pentium 4, so it can even take a 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4 CPU I rescued from an old machine they didn´t put in a case fan for, killing the Mobo. How exciting, after the disappointment with the Sempronius machine.

Update:
The drivers went fine, and the Prescott 2.8 CPU it came with did too, at 7900 MIPS. Then I put in the 3.0 CPU and it´s even better, at 9200 MIPS! The sound is also fine, and I´ve just put in WinXP SP3. It looks like it´s a good machine. Let´s see if it doesn´t cave in in a while... I can´t get the Ethernet configured though, but it´s just as well - it won´t be connected to Internet anyway - better without the anti-virus.

Now I have to find a new home for the 2.6 Ghz Pentium 4... It´s difficult, as nobody here really wants them anymore.

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp.
 
Last edited:
I think it's because you have Adobe PDF reader installed, and the file extension of the Air file is set to that.
Check your file extentions settings in Windows and delete that entry, or in install Adobe as a test.

Hello zswobbie1,

Welcome to the discussion.
I am pretty certain it isn't a file association problem with the .AIR extension.
The reason why is because I have the association set for FDEditor.
That lets me double-click on an AIR file and it comes up in the Flight Dynamics Editor.
Also, the Game Computer in my Living Room does not actually have Adobe Reader or Adobe anything installed that I know of.

Also the problem is not that my tools can't read or edit AIR files.
CFS also has no trouble reading the AIR file well enough to show the changes that I am making, except for the Supercharger. It is acting as if none of the aircraft have Superchargers.
Next step is to check with absolutely stock AIR files instead of lightly modified ones.


Hello Aleatorylamp,

You know of course that the Gracchi had rather violent deaths. I believe both were killed in the Senate but many years apart.
A Pentium 4 discard would be good right about now.

Next step is probably to uninstall and reinstall Combat Flight Simulator on the Game Machine.

- Ivan.
 
I finally figured out what was wrong.
The Auto Mixture was not enabled.
This got to be pretty obvious when I tested with one of the older aeroplanes at about 15,000 feet.
The Engine stalled and I have never seen that happen at practical altitudes because of a Supercharger.
The power was dropping with altitude but the manifold pressure was not which was the second hint as to what was actually happening.

Most of the more modern military types of this era had automatic mixture settings.
Typically the setting would be Auto-Lean for cruise and Auto-Rich for maximum power.
I wonder if this can be simulated with a custom Gauge?

- Ivan.
 
Computer Performance Differences

Hello All,

After using the replacement Development Computer for a few days, a few observations can be made:
1. The computer is about as loud as the old one. This seems to be the Slot Fan and CPU Fan and of course the Barracuda HDD.
2. The Video and Speakers are still weird but that isn't really a CPU problem.
3. The system clock is inconsistent. I believe the battery is dead which is pretty reasonable considering the age.
4. The LED for Power is not working. I never checked it but presumed that it was properly connected before.
5. The Hard Drive LED on the case is not working except at boot time. Hopefully it is just connected to the wrong leads.
6. One LED from the CDROM drive is always on. There aren't many connections to mess up, so I might replace the CDROM Drive.
7. I have run into ONE AF99 Build problem and have not seen it happen again. A restart of AF99 seemed to cure the problem.

The performance of the computer thus far has been pretty reliable with the exception of the issues described.
Frame rates in Combat Flight Simulator are noticeably higher as mentioned earlier.
Compilation and parsing speeds with Aircraft Factory 99 and Aircraft Animator are at least twice as fast and probably closer to three times as fast as before. I no longer have enough of a wait time during a build to leave the computer and get something else I might need.

- Ivan.
 
Hello Ivan,
I´m glad things slowly seem to be falling into place, like they do on a slow Tetris game...
The older the hardware, the longer it takes. The fact that compilation and FS frame
rates on the "new"
machine are twice or three times faster is a plus-point in itself.
Good stuff!
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
Hello Aleatorylamp,

Frame Rates are actually only about 25-50% higher.
General Processing Speed appears to be at least twice as fast.

One of the problems I have been having is that the picture on the screen seems to narrow down quite a bit sometimes to the point where it is difficult to read.
I decided to try looking through the Video options in CFS to see if other video resolutions would work better.
What I found was surprising.
I am still using an old Dell - Sony 17 inch CRT monitor.
The original resolution I had set was 1024 x 768 which was a pretty good balance between frame rates and image quality with Pentium 233 MMX.
With the new CPU, I found that it didn't seem to make a difference even when I changed to 1280 x 960,
I didn't have much on the screen, but the frame rate stayed around 21-22 which isn't great but is still playable.

I was hoping for frame rates of at least 30-35.
I am wondering now if perhaps a more modern Graphics Card might improve things or whether the problem is really a limitation of CPU speed.

- Ivan.
 
Hello Ivan,
I remember running a 16Mb Matrox Millenium for a while on the K6-II at 333 Mhz, and frame rates were fine. Even the usual 4mb 2D-3D AGP card I had did 30 or 32 frames per second, but I never used the high resolution you mention. Even now I only use 1024x768, otherwise I can´t read what I type.

Now I remember something: When this 16 Mb card broke (it came from a smoking computer), a computer technician friend of mine gave me another Matrox Millenium card, but this time a good, 32 Mb one, but we couldn´t get it to work.

I remember him saying that the new card was banging its head against the slow AGP port on the motherboard and couldn´t get through. Curiously enough, the K6-II at 333 Mhz was the fastest CPU that this motherboard could take, so he deduced it was the motherboard´s fault, not the CPU´s!

As your K6-II is a 500 Mhz one, there must be a faster AGP port on the motherboard, otherwise it wouldn´t make sense, so it should be able to handle a reasonably good graphics card.

I wonder if this is of any use...
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
Hello Aleatorylamp,

A description of your experiences is helpful.
I did not actually change the Desktop resolution so it is still 1024 x 768.
Only the CFS Game resolution was changed. - 1280 x 960.
Now that I know this old setup will take the 5:4 aspect ratio, I should look into getting bigger and newer Flat Screen monitor.
4:3 is hard to find, but 5:4 is not.

I did a little checking. I believe the AGP slot is only a 2X.
The Fire GL card I tested was only a 1X.
The Motherboard actually can handle up to a 550 MHz CPU.

We shall see how things go.

- Ivan.
 
Hello Ivan,

I´d forgotten the details of the early AGP slot. My K6-II machine´s AGP was also x1-x2, but contrary to what was expected, its x2 AGP capacity was poor. It couldn´t handle any cards above 16 Mb, and turned out to be quite a low-end machine, especially taking into account that AGP had already been on the market for well over a year.

If your motherboard can take a 550 Mhz K6 CPU, it looks like a higher category one than mine was, so I would expect your 500 Mhz K6-II with the x1-x2 AGP to be able to cope splendidly with a decent 16Mb or 32Mb x2 AGP video card!

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
Hello Aleatorylamp,

The actual motherboard is a Acorp / Aladdin 5ALI61 Rev. D.
(I think it was a Rev. D but would need to open up the case again to confirm.)
The deceased motherboard was a M-Tech Mustang R-534F I believe. It gave good service for a very long time.
So far, the specs don't look too bad with the exception that its memory bus only goes to 100 MHz and I believe the AGP slot is only 2X.

- Ivan.
 
Hello Ivan,
The name Aladdin rings a bell. I think I had one of those for my K6-II, but an earlier Rev.
probably an A or maybe a B, and not Acorp. On mine, the Bus was I seem to remember
only 66 Mhz, and that was part of the problem. Good luck! I hope you find a nice
graphics card!
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
Hello Aleatorylamp,

Do a search for images of the 5ALI61 motherboard. It may bring back memories.
There were a few other versions, but I don't think the revision number was all that significant.
Maybe mine will have a AGP limitation as well.
I just know that for now, it seems to work well enough and is much superior to the old Pentium 233 MMX which was in turn slightly superior to the Cyrix 686 150 MHz.

- Ivan.
 
Hello Ivan,
I´m glad your machine is going well.
I had done the image search, and yes... it did bring back memories!
It was the first machine I´d bought all new parts for to build up into a desktop case. Given adequate graphics hardware, it was one of the most stable and robust machines I´ve ever had. It never gave heating problems either - probably because it was 333 Mhz - only needing fans on CPU and Power supply. Compared to the 233 MMX running the old green-light B/W scanner, it was in general over twice as fast.
Glad it´s going well.
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp
 
Hello Aleatorylamp,

I was in the basement a couple days ago and came across a bag with some computer equipment in it.
There was a Zip Drive and.... a 9 GB 68 pin SCSI drive in a anti-static bag. If it works, it would be enough of a disk subsystem to build another machine.

- Ivan.
 
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