Mix of Pentium 2, 3, 4 and Panasonic deck - (DIY)

Mix of Pentium 2, 3, 4 and Panasonic deck

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This blog entry is actually text of an old email of mine, I sent on 2015 Oct 08 Thu to my contacts.

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2015 October 06 Tuesday

Today I mixed Pentium 2, Pentium 3, Pentium 4 and Panasonic deck together and got excellent results. Pentium 2 belonged to Faraz, Pentium 3 belonged to Mani and Pentium 4 belonged to Omer. Panasonic deck also belonged to Omer.

As all these were not working properly and were very old so we were about to get rid of them. Therefor I decided/planed to experiment with them. :D. In Pentium 2 monitor was not working. In Pentium 4 motherboard was not working. In Panasonic deck CD drive and Tape drive were not working. Only Pentium 3 was in some what working condition. So I made it base for my experiment.

Actually I took HHD (20GB) from Pentium 2 and data cable from Pentium 4 and installed it in Pentium 3. At first HDD was not installing. After many attempts I reverced data cable and it worked. :D. I also took data cable for Floppy disk from Pentium 4 as that was missing from Pentium 3.

So far somehow OS selection menu (Multi/Dual boot menu)is not showing. :(. Onlly xp from original HDD (40GB) of Pentium 3 is booting and Windows XP and Windows 78 from HDD of Pentium 2 is not booting. :(. May be some time else it will also work.

After this success I got confident enough to attempt some thing more. Some thing that was in my mind for long time, may be around 10 years, but I was not attempting. So I went to markit and bought cable for connecting Pentium 3 and Panasonic deck for using deck's amplifier. :D. First attempt was a failure (normal ;D ). There was no sound. I removed cable and used it in reverce. One of two pins, red one, in PC’s audio out and single pin (black one) in deck’s mic port. Immediately there was sound, although not good, but some thig was there to encourage me. After some time I removed connecting cabloe and inserted it again in corret ports again. This time there was sound and the sound was very good. :D. So I enjoyed a lot of audios and videos very much. :D.

I enjoyed todays work. As I was alone at home so I enjoyed it more.

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2015 October 07 Wednesday

And today I installed HDD (40GB) of Pentium 4 into Pentium 3 also. But as there were 4 devices 3 HDD and 1 CD/Writer and only 3 power plugs available for them in Pentium 3, 4th plug was smaller for floppy, I sacrificed CD/Writer for the time being. Some time else I will search for two way plug and that will solve the problem. :D.

Physically arranging 3 HDD's in PC was tricky and there was very tight space. But after a few attempts and re-attempts I was able to install them all.

XP from HDD of Pentium 4 is also booting but as all it's softwar's were installed for Pentium 4 they ran a little slowly.

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Panasonic Deck's amplifier is working fine. :D.

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To know which drive (partition) belong to which physical HDD I labeled them accordingly. For example D1P1 for HDD 1 and partition 1 etc.

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Bottom line: I harvested some great benefits from this recycle.

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[Update: 2016Nov06Sun]

During last night's electricity fluctuation my Old Pentium 3 stopped and is still not starting. I will try to make it work again.

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[Update: 2016Nov29Tue]

I do not think I will try to make Pentium 3 work again. It is a sad end of a great companionship. I learned a lot on these Pentiums and enjoyed surfing net, listening/watching songs and watching movies. I do not play games on PC. Plus html, vbscript, jscript, asp, php, java, visual studio 'c#', my sql, microsoft sql, microsoft ofice with frontpage (I really like frontpage), adobe 'photoshop 7' (I got this on recommendation of local photography shop owner), flash 5 & 8, microsoft movie maker, autocad etc all I learned on these Computers. I also enjoyed listening songs on Panasonic deck, it's sound quality was, and still is, very good.

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-*- Departing words -*-

So

Good bye to all of you companions.

Hopefully

Memory of good times we spent together

will remain with me for ever.

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