However, this computer seems to have 32mb of RAM onboard dedicated to the graphics

Nope. It's 4MB onboard, plus it can be set for another 8MB shared.

I've played around with those things quite a bit. They'll work with Tualatins, provided you have a compatible slot adapter, and flash it to the A05 BIOS revision... no earlier, no later. With a Tually upgrade, 512MB RAM and a PCI video card, they actually make quite nice little machines.

I must have read information wrong then but Windows recognizes the graphics as having 32mb ram, the system recognizes the entire 256 of system RAM and there's no option in BIOS to have video memory use system RAM. The motherboard has two of these chips on it:
http://www.digchip.com/datasheets/parts/datas … 6S1120DT-G7.php

I'd like to find another 256mb SDRAM chip and a bigger hard drive. I'm not sure if I'll go out of my way to replace CPU or get a good PCI graphics card for it as I already have that PIII Dimension which is more expandable. I'll find some use for this machine though. It seems nice enough and, despite being proprietary, I really like the case design. I just need to find a replacement optical drive now since the one in there at the moment doesn't look right with the front panel in place thanks to the shape of it's bezel.

Anyways, I took a few pics:

Do you reckon the SB Live is one of those Dell OEM ones with the custom drivers and the audio-out pinouts all messed around?

I have an Audigy 2ZS that came from a Dell box, it doesn't work properly with normal speakers or Creative's drivers. What a lemon...

The GX110 certainly has a really nice case, it's a shame the motherboard mounts and stuff are all proprietary, or I'd be kitting it out with a nice Tualatin 1.4GHz + Voodoo 3/4/5 getup.

Despite the fact the motherboard doesn't have any integrated audio, I honestly don't think the sound card is stock. Aside from there being no D/PN labels, the Creative drivers along with Creative's Soundfont manager work just fine. I haven't had any issues with any of the two different pairs of speakers I've plugged into the card. The model number is SB0100.

That's fantastic then, good score.

Yeah, seems like I've been winding up with a lot of Creative cards lately. In the past two months, I wound up with a SoundBlaster 16 SCSI, an AWE32 upgrade card, an Audigy 2ZS and this Live! card. I could have also had an AWE32 Value today but that card's metal plate was rusted and judging from the looks of the PCB, the computer it was in was owned by a heavy smoker. God that annoys me! I enjoy smoking but I at least make sure to step outside; it's not just computers that go to hell when you smoke indoors but just about everything inside.

Anyways, Creative or not, I have a nice box just filled with various ISA and PCI sound cards. I wonder if I should try selling them or wait for a few more to pile up and start a museum, 🤣.

I have a box full of various Creative Sound Blaster 16's/vibras, and no idea what to do with them - apart from throwing them at people I don't like

With the wave table header on top of jumpers and IDE and all the other excuses Creative found to put pins on those cards, they'd be great for that! Just hope they aren't conscious enough to throw them back.

Iiuc the early Dell ATX boards all used proprietary power supplies.

And about the Dell Live!, I may have 1 or 2 of them laying around here also. They seem to be really hard to get working as none of the usual drivers would work.

DonutKing wrote:

I have a box full of various Creative Sound Blaster 16's/vibras, and no idea what to do with them - apart from throwing them at people I don't like

Sell them on Ebay for $$$++ 😁

I had a Dell OEM Live! card once. It was the cheapened up model which didn't use the standard Live drivers and unlike the normal Live, this one wasn't hardware accelerated but instead, used software. In fact, the chip on the board wasn't even the same as on a normal Live card. It didn't work with Creative's drivers but after some time spent on Google, I found drivers for it (this was model SB0200). The drivers were pretty lightweight and simple; no software; just some inf files and such. After that, the card functioned alright but couldn't work with Creative's software and, really, I could rate it in different ways. In a computer from around the time the card was made: rubbish! In a computer new enough that the cpu, even with some load already on it, can handle EAX and DirectSound better than the EMU10k1: pretty nice for most use.

As for the Dell branded 5.1 cards, I've never had any trouble with those. Never owned one but I've had to set up a few computers with that card. They have the actual EMU10k1 chip and seem to work just fine with the WinXP built in drivers as well as Creative's drivers.

A question to anyone here familiar with the i810 and i815 integrated graphics: is there a way to get widescreen resolutions on this?

I must have read information wrong then but Windows recognizes the graphics as having 32mb ram, the system recognizes the entire 256 of system RAM and there's no option in BIOS to have video memory use system RAM. The motherboard has two of these chips on it:

Hm, maybe it was earlier driver versions that could only do 8MB. Anyhow, due to the way the dynamic memory works, it won't appear subtracted from your main memory. As far as the onboard video memory, those are 16Mbit chips... 2x16Mbit is 32Mbit, divide by 8 to convert to bytes, is 4MB.

For widescreen resolutions, it looks like you may be able to add custom resolutions directly to the driver inf file. Hopefully that's all it takes... the drivers seem much simpler than the ones for the later chipsets. (The later ones, i.e., 845g, 865g, 855GME, etc., require that you use a special integration utility to build a custom embedded version of the drivers in order to add extra resolutions... it's quite a PITA to do and isn't easy to track down the program necessary to do it.)

GXL750 wrote:

A question to anyone here familiar with the i810 and i815 integrated graphics: is there a way to get widescreen resolutions on this?

Why not use a dedicated graphics card? i815 has the AGP 4x slot, making any graphics card fit, and the i810 is not really worth it upgrading for use on a widescreen display...unless widescreen is all you got. In that case, I really don't know. I've never bothered with i810 before.

Considering the CPUs an 810 mobo can be used with, the lack of AGP isn't a major problem in retrospect. There are a number of good PCI options for hardware like that.

The IGP is actually sort of interesting. If you get one of the boards with the onboard RAM, that it uses as a z-buffer or some such, it's somewhat fast. I think it might be competitive with Voodoo2 in some cases.

swaaye wrote:

Considering the CPUs an 810 mobo can be used with, the lack of AGP isn't a major problem in retrospect. There are a number of good PCI options for hardware like that.

I've heard mixed things about i810. One source claims the IGP can't be upgraded while others state a PCI graphics card will work (IF PCI graphics card works, this imo fixes about half the crappyness of the i810, the other being i810's lousy PCI performance and BIOS options cuz it's basically a budget chip).

Frankly, as long as dedicated PCI graphics cards work in an i810 board, they are quite usable actually 😉

You can definitely put a PCI video card in. The IGP might not disable properly though, if I remember right. You may need to disable it in Windows.

My sis had a Celeron i810 box way back and I put a PCI Radeon in for her. She actually played Morrowind on that.

The best PCI graphics cards I have are able to display 32 bit color unlike the i810 graphics but otherwise, neither are any better. However, I decided to try them to see if it works.

The 4mb Matrox Millenium does not work in the computer. The 4mb Diamond DM975 card (Trident 9750 chipset) works fine with the i810 graphics disabled in XP.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

I must have read information wrong then but Windows recognizes the graphics as having 32mb ram, the system recognizes the entire 256 of system RAM and there's no option in BIOS to have video memory use system RAM. The motherboard has two of these chips on it:

Hm, maybe it was earlier driver versions that could only do 8MB. Anyhow, due to the way the dynamic memory works, it won't appear subtracted from your main memory. As far as the onboard video memory, those are 16Mbit chips... 2x16Mbit is 32Mbit, divide by 8 to convert to bytes, is 4MB.

For widescreen resolutions, it looks like you may be able to add custom resolutions directly to the driver inf file. Hopefully that's all it takes... the drivers seem much simpler than the ones for the later chipsets. (The later ones, i.e., 845g, 865g, 855GME, etc., require that you use a special integration utility to build a custom embedded version of the drivers in order to add extra resolutions... it's quite a PITA to do and isn't easy to track down the program necessary to do it.)

If his video is the same as the video in my Dell GX1 machines, then it should be some variant of ATi Rage with it's own dedicated memory. My GX1's have 4mb on the motherboards next to the Rage chip and a slot for another 4mb. The memory upgrade boards are hard to find loose. I had to buy a box full of GX1 parts someone was selling on ebay to get one. Usually you have to buy a whole computer, motherboard or video card with one installed to get one.

If his video is the same as the video in my Dell GX1 machines, then it should be some variant of ATi Rage with it's own dedicated memory.

But it is not at all the same as a GX1. Completely different machine.

The variations of the PII/PIII-era Optiplexes I've worked on are roughly as follows... there are some others, but these are the most common:
GXa - 440LX, Rage Pro 2MB/4MB, Slot1, PII only
NX - same as a GXa, but with no externally accessible drive bays
G1 - 440BX, Rage IIc 2MB/4MB, Slot1, no audio
GX1 - 440BX, Rage Pro 4MB/8MB, Slot1, Crystal audio optional
NX1 - same as a GX1, but with no externally accessible drive bays
GX1p - seems to just be a GX1 with ECC memory installed?
GX100 - i810, Intel graphics, S370, no audio, mostly limited to Mendocino Celerons, though some later revisions can be coaxed into taking a PIII, and I've run across a couple that had the same 133fsb-capable board as the GX110
GX110 - i810e, Intel graphics, 133fsb support, Slot1 or S370, ADI audio optional
GX115 - i815e, Intel graphics, 133fsb support, S370, ADI audio