Re: Phil's Ultimate VGA Benchmark Database Project

Posted on 2019-02-25, 01:13

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for the results. It seems the 16-bit bus of the SLC2 is simply to limiting to compete with an 486. I'm curious how the VLB bus works with the 16-bit bus of the SLC2. They put two PAL16L8 and one PAL16R4 logic chip to glue 32-bit VLB and 16-bit system bus. The memory controller supports fast …

---

Re: Phil's Ultimate VGA Benchmark Database Project

Posted on 2019-02-23, 18:08

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

https://i.imgur.com/YlWvpoo.jpg The IBM Opal and Opal LX mainboards with IBM 486SLC2 AMI BIOS 06-Jun-1992, MS-DOS 6.22 with HIMEM IBM Opal with 80MHz CPU / 40MHz system and VL buses / 13MHz ISA bus, OPTI 82C295 + 82C206 chipset, 16Kb WB L1 cache, 128Kb WB L2 cache, 16Mb FPM RAM, IIT 3C87SX math …

---

Re: The great Pentium Pro haul of 2018

Posted on 2019-02-18, 21:45

by

by ph4nt0m

in Milliways

in Milliways

Nice board, but man, that needs a bath. That was how it looked like at the time of purchase. It's much cleaner now :) BTW the barrel battery was replaced with two aerogel supercaps for 1 farad capacitance. A single charge lasts for a few days and they will never leak. https://i.imgur.com/lSwfBuB. …

---

Re: Blown Fuse In New AT Power Supply

Posted on 2019-02-18, 16:42

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@phantom Sure it is only a half bridge rectifier? To me the part right of C2 looks like a full bridge. And I saw very very few power supplies back then that had filters at all... It isn't about a rectifier. That's a regular diode bridge to the right of C2. It's about topology. There are two 200V …

---

Re: Do you think this PC will be a Slot A or Socket A?

Posted on 2019-02-18, 16:15

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, there are actually some Win9x compatible games that can make use even of a faster hardware, though these run on 2k/XP as well. The good thing of these VIA KT133A based boards is that they can accommodate a CPU up to 2GHz, registered SDRAM up to 3Gb in size, a universal 2x/4x AGP slot and …

---

Re: The great Pentium Pro haul of 2018

Posted on 2019-02-18, 15:55

by

by ph4nt0m

in Milliways

in Milliways

I have saved a few Pentium Pro based mainboards from their ultimate destruction the last year. The most interesting one was this Supermicro P6DNF. https://i.imgur.com/9462F3T.jpg November, 1996. Full size AT. Two 180MHz/256k SL23L CPUs with the original Supermicro branded VRMs using DIP switches to …

---

Re: Do you think this PC will be a Slot A or Socket A?

Posted on 2019-02-18, 15:30

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's year 2001, so you're about to get a 1GHz Socket A Thunderbird most likely.

---

Re: Blown Fuse In New AT Power Supply

Posted on 2019-02-18, 15:23

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This one looks like a poor noname 200W AT power supply. Half bridge with a manual 230V/115V switch. Mising some input filters, varistors for surge protection and the caps don't look great either. A blown fuse means there is a blown bipolar transistor or dual diode most likely. Sure thing it can be …

---

Re: Abit BH6, could I run it with the FSB over clocked to 133?

Posted on 2019-02-14, 23:48

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

440BX supports 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4 dividers for the PCI bus, though it only supports 1 and 2/3 for the AGP bus. So, you end up running the AGP at 89MHz instead of 66MHz with the 133MHz system bus. Most video cards didn't like it even in 1x mode. Matrox cards like G200 and G400 could tolerate it usually …

---

Re: Capacitor with exotic rating

Posted on 2019-02-14, 23:36

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

These are Sanyo SEP solid polymer caps. You can replace them with anything low ESR of the same or higher capacitance and 16V, SMD or through hole mounted, though it's better to get solid polymers. Sanyo and Nippon Chemi-Con 330uF/16V were popular in the past.

---

Re: Windows 95 or 98 for 66mhz 486?

Posted on 2019-02-07, 21:11

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think the main reason of Win 9x of sluggishness on 486s is I/O speed, not CPU itself. Can be compensated with flash HDD and/or good PCI IDE card. It's rather memory and cache bandwidth: 32-bit 33MHz vs. 64-bit 66MHz. A good PCI IDE card isn't of much use if actual memory read speed is about 30MB …

---

Re: Great Accessories for building Retro PCs

Posted on 2019-01-31, 23:29

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yep, a temperature controlled heat gun is much better than those desoldering pumps. Although if I replace a damaged memory or expansion slot, I break it into pieces and pull pins one by one with a soldering iron.

---

Re: Windows 95 or 98 for 66mhz 486?

Posted on 2019-01-31, 09:20

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've run Win98SE on a DX2-66 in the past. It was miserable!!! 95 was much better, but (as already mentioned) I would recommend the OSR2.x updated versions over the original release. Win98 on a Ti486SXL-40/Cx387DX-40 with 16MB is truly miserable. I can't expect that even with the DX2-66 it was that …

---

Re: Old hardware giveaway thread.

Posted on 2019-01-30, 17:58

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For those receiving the Evergreen 586 Upgrade boxes I went ahead and imaged the utility disk that comes in the box just in case yours has any issues from age. Evergreen Technologies ETDIAG Disk.jpg Evergreen Technologies ETDIAG Disk.zip I still have one more of the boxes left. PM me if interested. …

---

Re: Great Accessories for building Retro PCs

Posted on 2019-01-30, 09:59

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

ISA POST cards work everywhere with ISA slots present. PCI POST cards are a different matter. If a mainboard has an ISA slot, I don't bother myself with a selection of a compatible PCI POST card.

---

Re: Great Accessories for building Retro PCs

Posted on 2019-01-30, 09:15

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

9) AGP to PCI adapter Do these things even work? Yep, but it depends. Many video cards can POST with these just fine, but it's up to their drivers if they can do Direct3D and OpenGL in Windows. Linux is easier in this regard. I have a bunch of such adaptors for sale on the CPU-World forums. PM me …

---

Re: Windows 95 or 98 for 66mhz 486?

Posted on 2019-01-30, 09:00

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Windows 98SE will run just as good as Windows 95 if you remove the Internet Explorer. Either with 98lite or manually by replacing a few files with those from Windows 95. 32Mb of RAM is fine with some swapping. People used to have 16Mb on average in the mid-1990's.

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-12-28, 21:19

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It has apparently suffered a broken cap (that apparently also tore out the solder pad) at some point, and someone fixed it like this: https://i.postimg.cc/rzxjwLnK/Sapphire-Radeon-X800-XT-PE-Repair.jpg Not pretty but seller assures me it works, and if it really does I'm OK with it. I will go ahead …

---

Re: Riva 128 PCI - Flashing tool + BIOS

Posted on 2018-12-24, 16:07

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

PCI video cards for Mac G3 machines usually come with two monitor connectors: industry standard D-Sub (DB15HD) and Apple DB15. Matrox Millennium I and II also have both no matter whether PC or Mac flashed.

---

Re: Overclocking with a TI486 SXL-40 to a TI486 SXL2-50

Posted on 2018-12-18, 12:32

by

by ph4nt0m

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The TI486SXL2 is a 3.3V part actually. TI offered it as 3.3V only, 3.3V with 5V tolerant I/O and 5V only. Clock speeds were the same and the manufacturing process was also the same, so it was down to their marketing dept what label to put on. Although 5V made for the power consumption almost 3 …

---