Intel486dx33 wrote on 2024-02-26, 13:46:

I built one of these computers back around 1998-99 I used the Intel Motherboard and Pentium-ll@333mhs Dual CPUs 64mb SDRAM and D […]
Show full quote

I built one of these computers back around 1998-99
I used the Intel Motherboard and Pentium-ll@333mhs Dual CPUs
64mb SDRAM and Dual Fast SCSI hard drives. ( 4gb each )
I remember it was a little loud because of the SCSI hard drives.

I had installed Sun Solaris but the Motherboard also supports Linux, Win-NT 4.0, and Win-2000

I used the ATI Play98 Fury AGP Video card and Sound Blaster 16 for Easy Setup.
Plug-N-Play.

It cost allot of Money back in 1998 because the Pentium ll CPU and hard drives was still expensive.

I bet it was sweet having such a machine back in the day 😀

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-02-26, 17:32:

Yes, they're hexagonal. I twisted an allen key 180 degrees removing sinks from some of my Pentium IIs 🤣

😁

ChrisK wrote on 2024-02-27, 10:25:

That should be a 693ZZ type. They are easy to find and that's also the exact type I've used on a FX5700 card making it silent again.
I'm a bit astonished that there are two of them per fan. I've only seen one beeing used until now.

Thanks! Thatt's exactly what I ordered, they should arrive sometime next week.

bofh.fromhell wrote on 2024-02-28, 04:17:

Do I spy a very, very neat Dallas conversion?

Yes 😀
I wanted to test the motherboard, and it wouldn't even retain settings when rebooting. I couldn't wait for a replacement so I quickly modded it with what I had at hand.

In the meantime, the PSU arrived, a Seasonic FOCUS GX-1000 White.

I didn't want to have the case fans running at full blast all the time, so I got this PWM+ARGB hub:

And a Noctua NA-FC1 fan controller:

I should have first checked the case fans. They were all 3 pin, and weren't compatible either with the Noctua controller or with the hub thing. So instead of ordering and waiting for something else to arrive, I modified the hub:

Cutting the power trace that goes to the 4 pin connectors and adding a high side switch was easier than switching the low side. I don't really use P channel mosfets, and that was the only one I had, way too big but it works fine.
1 P channel, 1 N channel, a couple of resistors and wires, a few cut traces, and now it receives the PWM from the Noctua controller and can control 3 pin fans:

Now I need to find a suitable ATX cable extender, as currently the cable can barely be plugged in.
I found quite a few fixed 24PIN extenders, which would require cutting the extra 4 pins, but all of them are 0.5 meters long. I don't need that much.

What OS are you planning on running?

I have a Micronics Dual Fortress board that I was hoping to run dual Celerons on and then Win2k but back years ago I did not know it would not boot with any Celeron and slotket combo I wanted to use, that kinda limits me to my Dual 333s or 300s PIIs and they dont feel that snappy under Win2k.

My board can be seen pictured on The Retro Web, I dont have as fancy of setup up as I only have a Banshee for it and still undecided as of sound card or the onboard OPL3 & OPL4. I did get the board NIB back when I found it.

Nice motherboard!
I plan to dual boot Windows 98SE and NT 4.0.
The Banshee is a great card!

i like your chose in case, it looks so nice in a white case.

The case I picked up for my build back just before they discontinued it was a Phanteks Enthoo Pro M Tempered Glass because it was a more modern case but still had one 5 1/4 bay but I like the white of your case much better.

New bearings arrived today, and now the fans work properly and aren't that noisy anymore. This is what I got:

For an USB card I got this:

The case has two top USB ports, and I wanted to be able to use them, so I removed two of the USB connectors on the card (and the "extra" one that is internal but it's in parallel with the 4th port), directly soldered wires on it as I couldn't find any connectors at hand that will allow the card next to it to be plugged, and at the end I soldered a standard USB3.0 header. The two missing ports on the PCI bracket were covered with metal tape.

The two cables were routed under all the other cards beneath the USB card. This is how it looks:

geeze. with a 1000w power supply you could run 4 of these systems at one. Was it on sale?

It is a 1000W power supply, but it only provides up to 125W on the 5V rail. It was not on sale..

Problem with USB 2.0 card is it negatively affects performance (link). Internal hub on piix would serve the front ports better driver-wise.
1kW modern PSU protection/efficiency features would likely be pointless here, they won’t trigger on modest loads and you cross-load 5V / 12V.

cross load isnt a thing anymore. I think anything made since the C2D era (atx 2.1) use the same design. The power supply generates a massive, 12v rail. it then uses a couple DC/DC converters to generate the 5 & 3.3v. its FAR more efficient to generate power in this way.

it does make using new power supplies for retro machines a bit ham-fisted.

Wow! What an epic build! Love the 440FX chipset. And really awesome on the thorough repasting and rebuilding of the OEM fans. Great hardware all around. Why so little memory though?

@Bruno128

Thanks for that! I wasn't aware of the performance impact of USB2.0 cards.

I ran some benchmarks, and got the following results:
3DMark 99 MAX

1. No USB 2.0 card plugged in
2323 3DMarks
2738 CPU 3DMarks

2. USB 2.0 card plugged in, nothing plugged in it
2291 3DMarks
2714 CPU 3DMarks

3. USB 2.0 card plugged in, USB mouse plugged in
2291 3DMarks
2614 CPU 3DMarks

4. USB2.0 card plugged in, USB mouse and USB memory stick plugged in
1613 3DMarks
2116 CPU 3DMarks

Also ran the benchmark with or without the other cards (SCSI controller & Ethernet card), and it doesn't make a difference. And out of curiosity I ran the benchmark with the left CPU installed, the right CPU installed and both CPUs installed, same result.

I enabled the USB1.1 controller on the motherboard and made another cable for it, so now the case USB ports are connected to that, and it doesn't impact performance at all.
As for the USB2.0 card, I removed the cable and added back the two USB connectors, and left it in the system for now. It doesn't seem to affect performance that much if nothing is connected to it.

As for the power supply, yes, the protections won't likely work properly (unless there's a dead short on the 12V rail), but this isn't a system that will be left on and unsupervised.
And I trust more a modern power supply than an old one.

@boggsman Thanks!
Regarding the memory, I think 128MB is plenty, but I also don't have any other matching modules, and counting the memory during POST will take longer if I add more.

Beautiful build. Very nice and clean.

sdz wrote on 2024-03-08, 17:06:

@Bruno128 […]
Show full quote

@Bruno128

Thanks for that! I wasn't aware of the performance impact of USB2.0 cards.

I ran some benchmarks, and got the following results:
3DMark 99 MAX

1. No USB 2.0 card plugged in
2323 3DMarks
2738 CPU 3DMarks

2. USB 2.0 card plugged in, nothing plugged in it
2291 3DMarks
2714 CPU 3DMarks

3. USB 2.0 card plugged in, USB mouse plugged in
2291 3DMarks
2614 CPU 3DMarks

4. USB2.0 card plugged in, USB mouse and USB memory stick plugged in
1613 3DMarks
2116 CPU 3DMarks

Also ran the benchmark with or without the other cards (SCSI controller & Ethernet card), and it doesn't make a difference. And out of curiosity I ran the benchmark with the left CPU installed, the right CPU installed and both CPUs installed, same result.

I enabled the USB1.1 controller on the motherboard and made another cable for it, so now the case USB ports are connected to that, and it doesn't impact performance at all.
As for the USB2.0 card, I removed the cable and added back the two USB connectors, and left it in the system for now. It doesn't seem to affect performance that much if nothing is connected to it.

As for the power supply, yes, the protections won't likely work properly (unless there's a dead short on the 12V rail), but this isn't a system that will be left on and unsupervised.
And I trust more a modern power supply than an old one.

@boggsman Thanks!
Regarding the memory, I think 128MB is plenty, but I also don't have any other matching modules, and counting the memory during POST will take longer if I add more.

I think the Via based usb cards give more of a performance hit then the Nec ones, was the 1st thing I thought about when you showed a pic of the usb card with the Via chip.

I understand the amount of memory as I have 512 in my system and it takes forever to count. When I'm testing I limit it to just one stick of 128.

Wow, great looking system! Def my kind of build. 😎 I really like all the little extra things you've done to make it just right.

Also, I had no idea Slot 1 440FX boards were a thing - neat!

@allesclar @ubiq Thanks!

@Grem Five I will try a NEC one if I find one. For the moment it doesn't bother me that much, I'll just use it for transferring data, and the USB1.1 ports for input devices.

The system got a nice sound upgrade, I'd like to thank hard1k for advising me to get this combo (I have never used or experienced a proper sound card before (for that era), my first PC had some integrated VIA thing), and the developers of the Oprheus II and the Dreamblaster X16GS 😀

Now I need to decide if to keep this case, or move everything in the H5 FLOW.
This is how the sytem currently looks (H7 FLOW):

And here it is next to the H5 case:

The H5 is smaller, weighs less, and also doesn't have that perforated area above the PSU, which looks a bit nasty on the H7 as you can see all the cables that are shoved in there.

After I'll need to figure out some kind of support as the S3 and Q3D cards sag quite a bit, and add some cooling for the Q3D card, as the original fan assembly doesn't fit in the case (probably doesn't fit in the H5 as well).

I don't know how much better the NEC usb card is I'm just going off this stickied thread in general. Which USB 2.0 cards for old motherboards

System is looking very awesome.

sdz wrote on 2024-03-18, 09:42:

Now I need to decide if to keep this case, or move everything in the H5 FLOW. This is how the sytem currently looks (H7 FLOW): […]
Show full quote

Now I need to decide if to keep this case, or move everything in the H5 FLOW.
This is how the sytem currently looks (H7 FLOW):

S35.jpg

And here it is next to the H5 case:

S36.jpg

S37.jpg

The H5 is smaller, weighs less, and also doesn't have that perforated area above the PSU, which looks a bit nasty on the H7 as you can see all the cables that are shoved in there.

After I'll need to figure out some kind of support as the S3 and Q3D cards sag quite a bit, and add some cooling for the Q3D card, as the original fan assembly doesn't fit in the case (probably doesn't fit in the H5 as well).

Ok, I'll bite - what's that huge 3Dfx card in the H5 that's hooked up like a mining rig? 🥴

No real opinion between the two cases - they're booth great looking! I have a system in a 510 Elite which also has the same perforated area, but mine's black so it's less noticeable. For my white case, I went with a Fractal Design Pop Air: