georg

So many projects, so little time. :-)

Drugwash - the mod is not as difficult as it looks in the photos. I used a fine tooth Xacto saw instead of a Dremel and cut either side of the pins, 3/16 inch or so into the epoxy, then scraped the material away with a small screwdriver. The heat from soldering is confined. You can get lithium AA or AAA cells.

Interesting indeed. AT&T 2500MMGB-87215 Single Line Telephone $44.10 http://www.recycledgoods.com/at-t-single-line-telephone-2500mmgb-87215.html They are in Ventura, CA, about 70 mi north of Los Angeles. I would love to see the monthly report of what sold, and who bought it.

Yes. Good working complete systems from each example, and from other places not mentioned due to the growing length of the post. Seek and ye shall find.

(quoting Hoko) "Also going to check goodwill and craigslist" This is a social engineering task. Tell absolutely everybody about your interesting hobby and get them involved in making you happy. Goodwill is not very good. They often have a contract with the recycling center and just act as a collection point. Church sponsored thrift stores are better. Find out when new donations normally arrive. People donate everything together but much is lost when it is put on the shelf. They tend to put the monitor in one section, the printer in another, etc. Try to be the first to see it. Use craigslist to identify persons who regularly sell computers. Look for people who bid on estates and lots at auction. Try to establish a friendly relationship that results in a call when what you want shows up in a new lot. They need to quickly sort through what they've bought and get rid of most of it right away. They know exactly what they can get on craigslist or eBay. You have to pay their net expected profit while saving them the trouble of photos, listing, shipping, etc. Google retirement community computer club for your area. Visit them and listen to their stories. Describe what you are looking for and what you are willing to pay or trade. Put it in writing and include your contact information so it can be pinned to the bulletin board. The system you really want is in the attic, basement or storage locker of someone's grandparent. They don't want the trouble of selling it, or packing it up to donate, and don't think it is worth anything. If you are introduced by someone they trust, offer a minimal payment and will do all the work of packing it up and hauling it away they will be glad to get rid of it.

Personally, I would find something like this more interesting: http://www.ebay.com/itm/1995-486-PC-Clone-Computer-486DX4-100MHz-NO-HD-/311211542386?pt=US_Vintage_Computers_Mainframes&hash=item4875a74772 With effort you can find one in the world outside of eBay with a hard drive and manuals.

"Battery module is not installed" is a red flag. I think you may find that the module is a Dallas DS12887 real time clock, a DIP with an IC, crystal and battery inside potted in epoxy. Without it, you will only be able to boot from floppy and some of your BIOS settings, especially those for the hard drive, will be lost every time you shut down. With no part in the board to copy, you can't be certain what to buy. Have been thru this. Was able to find replacement modules but three different tries all had dead batteries in them also. There is a hack to cut into the chip and solder wires from an external battery to the IC inside: http://www.rotteneggs.com/site/stories/7c4efb20-9ca7-11e0-8585-cda61f05aee7/dallas_chip_battery_hack/ Google ds12887 for more information if you can confirm that is the right part.

Internet Options - Connections - select "Never dial a connection"

This page should give you a working list of compatible cards: http://www.win31.de/edrivers.htm Scroll down to the section on Graphics/Video With Nvidia RIVA 128 you can still get driver from Nvidia http://www.nvidia.com/object/riva_drivers Drivers still available from Matrox http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/support/drivers/latest/ Scroll way down to Previously Released Drivers for Older Matrox products

You might try IE 3.01 http://www.oldapps.com/internet_explorer.php?supported_systems=true or try running Arachne under DOS http://www.glennmcc.org/

PC Health includes Help files, the troubleshooting tutorials, system file protection, system restore and auto update. statemgr.exe is a component of the system restore feature. It checks on boot-up how much time has elapsed since the last restore point and, if necessary, creates a new restore point. Once the boot process is complete, its sfp alter ego stmgr.exe then checks whether protected Windows system files were overwritten by older files during a recent installation of 3rd party software, and restores them to their previous level. If the system is kept running for a number of days, or if a program being installed requests a restore point to be created prior to the installation, then stmgr.exe is invoked and creates a restore point. stmgr.exe also monitors other aspects of your system as you are running it. This is a memory resident feature which consumes system resources, while statemgr.exe runs only at boot. To disable system restore, double-click the System icon in Control Panel and choose the Performance tab. Click File System. Choose the Troubleshooting tab. Turn on the Disable System Restore option. To see what System File Protection is guarding, navigate to the folder C:\Windows\System\sfp Open the file sfpdb.sfp with Notepad or Wordpad. This is the list of files being protected Open the file sfplog.txt in the same folder to see what actions were taken You can disable System File Protection, but you will have to edit the registry, and the process also disables System Restore and the Help feature in the Start Menu. It is a one way street. To get the PC Health features back, you have to reinstall Windows ME.

There is another way to skin this cat. Google external portable cd-rom drive parallel port or backpack cdrom drive parallel port http://reviews.cnet.com/cd-drives/24x-cdrom-reader-parallel/4505-3207_7-5084670.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/12757/article.html There were a number of vendors with creative ways to add a CD ROM. http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue147/102_CDROM_to_go.php I have a Sun Moon Star 31-144 that uses a Matsus***a CR583J CD ROM drive. (forum software deleted what it sees as a dirty word from middle of brand name.) The date on the DOS install disk files is 17 Sep 1996. Drivers for DOS/ Win 3.1/ Win95. This drive was used to install software on laptops that lacked both CD ROM and USB, when programs got big, and were no longer sold on floppy disks.

There is a reference manual, dated Oct 2001, here: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/lpi05595.pdf It shows the following chipsets: CPU: Intel Mobile Pentium III or Celeron processor. North Bridge: VIA Pro Savage Pn 133T South Bridge: VIA VT8231 Display controller: S3 Savage 4 in North Bridge. Audio controller: VIA/Realtek ALC201 AC97 Codec. CD player controller: O2 OZ-163. LAN: Realtek RTL8100L. CardBus controller: ENE 1410 Keyboard/embedded controller: National NS87591. Super I/O: in South Bridge.

JorgeA - A wise decision. Good luck to you. Have fun. Enjoy life. - georg

JorgeA - Ouch. Your screen name should be tenacity. It will be interesting to see if you still get all those advcheck.dll first exceptions. You might also try Process Explorer ChalotteTheHarlot says version 11.11 is the last version that runs on Win9x You can download it from filehippo (1.57MB) Freeware http://www.filehippo.com/download_process_explorer/3854/ Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded. The Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you'll see the handles that the process selected in the top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you'll see the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded. Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that will quickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded. The unique capabilities of Process Explorer make it useful for tracking down DLL-version problems or handle leaks, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work.