Baird 240 line Operation

[Murphyv310]

Hi Peter.
I have been studying this in depth.
Now I know Kat did this on Linux but I have an old Acer Aspire 1 notebook. The screen expired many moons ago and i wonder if there would be any way to try this. It obviously doesn't have a separate graphics card but it does have a VGA socket. I can obviously rig up a monitor but I wonder if I could mess it all up if i have a go.
It's running XP and has no internet connectivity so although I do use it with a monitor on occasions It is not a main PC so wouldn't mind having a go.
Any suggestions?

I also could install virtual box on the PC here in the shed ( its a Dell base unit running Mint 32bit)

[peter scott]

Hi Trevor,

The Modeline Editor written by Jeroni Paul doesn't work with all combinations of graphics card and Windows revision. The problem with only having one display and that being experimental, is that you may find it difficult to mess with if your settings don't give you an intelligible screen.

Two port graphics cards are dirt cheap so I would advise going down that route. If your PC has a PCIe x16 motherboard slot and you are using XP then I can probably give you a card that is no use to me. It's an Nvidia NVS290


The only thing you will need to buy is a splitter cable taking you from the DMS-59 connector to two normal VGA connectors.



Peter

[Murphyv310]

Thanks Peter.
I'll give it some thought.
Possibly the main PC in the shed would be the best bet with dual booting one on Linux and the other XP or Win7 to do the conversion. I'll let you know what I come up with.
Many thanks

[peter scott]

The key prerequisite is the PCIe x16 slot.
I have an old XP machine that doesn't have the above.
I also have a Win 7 machine that does but I didn't realise that the NVS290 will run Modeline Editor with XP but not Win7.

Because of the above I then bought an ATI HD2400XT which does run Modeline Editor with Win7 so the NVS290 is your's if have a slot for it in your XP machine.

Peter

[peter scott]

Hi Trevor,

I tried to see if I could get the Modeline Editor to set my old XP PC. It only has the one standard graphics port. The editor reports "Unsupported Mode". I think this is because I needed to have a normal monitor connected so that I could drive the PC but the PC knows that the monitor doesn't support the 405 line mode. It might be possible if you had a primitive monitor that doesn't report its characteristics or possibly by disconnecting the VGA pins 4,11,12 and 15.

Peter

[ppppenguin]

I've no experience of this but can you run the PC "headless"? In other words under remote control via network and without monitor, keyboard or mouse. I've heard this is easier in Linux than Windows but again I have no real knowledge. Headless operation must be the norm for many PCs that are used as servers.

BIOS tweaks may be needed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headless_computer

[peter scott]

I have no experience of headless operation but if my "Unsupported Mode" was due to my monitor this might be a solution.

Peter

[peter scott]

I've been trying to use Remote Desktop to control my old XP machine from my Win 7 laptop.
They are on the same network and share files. I've enabled remote desktop on both machines but I keep getting the message that the Remote Desktop Gateway server address is unreachable or incorrect but it's the very same Default Gateway that is shown for ipcofig on the remote machine.

Peter

[peter scott]

I discovered that you can't run remote desktop from Win7 to XP if the XP is Home edition which was my problem.

However, a clever fellow has written how to convince XP Home to play ball:
http://www.avoiderrors.net/enable-remote...s-xp-home/

I got the remote desktop working (and it's very good) but the Modeline Editor still comes back with "Unsupported Mode".

This might be because the editor doesn't support my built-in graphics gubbins or may be for some other reason that I don't understand.

There is another approach to this and that is DTD Calculator.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Science-CAD...ator.shtml

It translates modelines into registry changes but I haven't plucked up the courage to do this.

Peter

[ppppenguin]

Well done for running XP home headless.

Clone the hard drive (I use Aomei backupper, free, fast and effective) before you do anything hazardous. Then it's easy to revert if you foul up.