bjwil1991 wrote on 2022-04-05, 20:09:

Bought this beast. […]
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Bought this beast.

A PCS 286 computer.

Unknown specs at the moment and if the board is long gone, I have a spare that's ready to be installed.

Pictures:

712989c2-c03c-4cbe-b45c-b532f0d06fd6wvsb_03271.jpg

ef2fe979-2279-445c-afd2-b7d22e621e7bwvsb_03273.jpg

lots of dip switches on that video card. Maybe that's an interesting one?

Took delivery of this Packard Bell Legend 1 computer today. Already had the monitor, so it seemed like a good system to pair it with.

It looks to be in really great shape, almost no wear on the case except for the obvious yellowing. Inside is extremely clean. Came with what appears to be an ATI Small Wonder Graphics Solution Version 3, which I imagine is original to the computer.

I'll probably give it some retrobrighting once the weather warms up and then maybe look at some upgrades (VGA card, Adlib sound, CF drive).

Some nice early systems there @bjwil1991 and @Shponglefan

The terminology they used in early PCs makes me cringe sometimes; "Strike F1 to...", as if you're supposed to hit it with a baseball bat or nuke the shit out of it... 😀

Wish it had the specs on the listing. The card with the DIP switches might be an EGA+VGA, MDA+CGA, or vice versa.

I've wanted one of these for some time (I'd really like a couple more), but the Ebay prices have been too high for me. This one was on my "local" Craigslist for $20.00, but it would have meant a drive to S.F. - not something I'd ever want to do, plus the gas, bridge toll, (Golden Gate is nearly $10.00 now) and maybe parking as well, would have more than doubled what I paid for it.

So I contacted him and asked if he would be willing to ship it, and he agreed to for an additional $10.00. Of course it was a risk on my part since I'd have had little recourse if it never showed up. But it did, and it works.

RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2022-04-05, 20:14:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-04, 16:18:

First board will be the Asrock 4core board I got recently .. I doubt itll hit 1200 but only one way to find out 😁

Are you talking about the ASRock 4CoreDual? Socket 775 with AGP slot?

Yup, got a Asrock 4Coredual-sata2 Rev 2.0 off ebay recently with CPU ram and 6800 thrown in by the seller.

Was a good deal really as the rev 2 version of that board seems to be rather hard to get at a reasonable price, Im going to use it to test the high end AGP cards I have as the P3 just doesnt have the grunt to push enough pixels to them, even a Ti4800 is CPU bound by it.

I bought one of these some time ago and was disappointed at how slow the ATA interface was compared to the older Promise Ultra133 TX2. I thought that it would be equivalent with the added bonus of SATA, but this was not the case. The IDE interface is better suited to a CD drive, unless the IDE interface itself is already faster than what is available onboard. I didn't do any testing on the SATA ports at the time and can't provide an opinion of these.

I don't know if this is true, but given the presence on the Marvell logo on the FastTrak S150, it seems like Promise simply rebranded some other controller and it does not inherit the DNA from their original chips.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-06, 00:49:

Yup, got a Asrock 4Coredual-sata2 Rev 2.0 off ebay recently with CPU ram and 6800 thrown in by the seller.

Was a good deal really as the rev 2 version of that board seems to be rather hard to get at a reasonable price, Im going to use it to test the high end AGP cards I have as the P3 just doesnt have the grunt to push enough pixels to them, even a Ti4800 is CPU bound by it.

Wow, congratulations.
I would like to own one of these myself for my collection. I have its sister board, the ALiveDual-eSata2 (AM2, eats AM3 quad cores after BIOS update). These two boards are the fastest AGP boards. They're both highly sought after.
Hope you plug the cards into a cheap board first, so you don't fry this rare board.

RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2022-04-06, 01:39:

Wow, congratulations. I would like to own one of these myself for my collection. I have its sister board, the ALiveDual-eSata2 ( […]
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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-06, 00:49:

Yup, got a Asrock 4Coredual-sata2 Rev 2.0 off ebay recently with CPU ram and 6800 thrown in by the seller.

Was a good deal really as the rev 2 version of that board seems to be rather hard to get at a reasonable price, Im going to use it to test the high end AGP cards I have as the P3 just doesnt have the grunt to push enough pixels to them, even a Ti4800 is CPU bound by it.

Wow, congratulations.
I would like to own one of these myself for my collection. I have its sister board, the ALiveDual-eSata2 (AM2, eats AM3 quad cores after BIOS update). These two boards are the fastest AGP boards. They're both highly sought after.
Hope you plug the cards into a cheap board first, so you don't fry this rare board.

Already ran them once on the P3 just to test working status, P3 board seems to be unkillable at this point, its had so many cards tested on it of late to check if they are still working 🤣

RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2022-04-06, 01:39:

AM2, eats AM3 quad cores after BIOS update

What's this about?

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-04-06, 01:52:

RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2022-04-06, 01:39:

AM2, eats AM3 quad cores after BIOS update

What's this about?

I don't understand the question.

Does it mean it runs them, or does it means it chews them up and spits out the pieces.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-04-06, 02:14:

Does it mean it runs them, or does it means it chews them up and spits out the pieces.

Runs.
So it's an AGP mainboard which supports Phenom II quad cores.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-04-06, 00:55:

I bought one of these some time ago and was disappointed at how slow the ATA interface was compared to the older Promise Ultra133 TX2. I thought that it would be equivalent with the added bonus of SATA, but this was not the case. The IDE interface is better suited to a CD drive, unless the IDE interface itself is already faster than what is available onboard. I didn't do any testing on the SATA ports at the time and can't provide an opinion of these.

I don't know if this is true, but given the presence on the Marvell logo on the FastTrak S150, it seems like Promise simply rebranded some other controller and it does not inherit the DNA from their original chips.

The most convenient board for me to test and make sure this card worked was my Soyo 5EMA+ which has an old WD ATA100 drive (WD400), so I haven't yet tested the SATA port. The speed improvement of the SATA 150 card over the ATA 33 port wasn't that much, but I assumed that was because I went from a slow hard drive on a slow port to a slow hard drive on a fast port. With this hard drive, it's too close to call when comparing the IDE port on the SATA 150 to the Ultra 100 TX2 IDE port. But I'm really only concerned about the speed of the SATA port.

For comparison, I use only CompactFlash cards as hard disks on IDE channels. So in my tests it was not limited by a spinning disk. However, if you are using a spinning disk then the disparity between the Ultra133 and S150 may be insignificant.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-04-06, 05:06:

For comparison, I use only CompactFlash cards as hard disks on IDE channels. So in my tests it was not limited by a spinning disk. However, if you are using a spinning disk then the disparity between the Ultra133 and S150 may be insignificant.

That hard drive is definitely a choke point, so in this case both cards can exceed what the drive can deliver.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-04, 16:37:

Nvidia was always good with DDR2 speeds ...DDR3 was a different story and the 790i boards were a bit picky about which DDR3 they […]
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chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-04, 16:33:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-04, 16:18:

Nothing much but today I managed to get my hands on 4gb of OCZ Reaper PC2-9600 DDR2 1200 memory, not sure how many of my DDR2 boards could actually hit 1200mhz with DDR2 but it'll be interesting to find out, I have a nice collection of 775 and a few AM2 boards to play with.

Might post some data here, I have two boards I can recall that will do 1200 DDR2 but I have never tested all of them.

First board will be the Asrock 4core board I got recently .. I doubt itll hit 1200 but only one way to find out 😁

I have had no issues with 1200mhz ddr2 in Nforce 680i boards. I have to Evga 680i boards and both with do 1200mhz I've seen the 680a boards also have no issues hitting those speeds. The Nforce 780i and 780a boards are reported to have no issues with 1200mhz.

Nvidia was always good with DDR2 speeds ...DDR3 was a different story and the 790i boards were a bit picky about which DDR3 they would work well with, I only have 790i based boards so nVidia wont be in this race. The other question I have is how much better is DDR2 1200 over say 1066 or 800, was it worth it back in the day to invest in 1200 over the cheaper modules, back when 775 and DDR2 was the thing I didnt have the cash to buy anything amazing so I was never involved in the enthusiast side of it.

I guess I could go look up reviews ..but I do have a good selection of DDR2 to play with so I may as well just run the tests my self.

@Chrismeyer6 - Since I dont have any nforce DDR2 boards which one would you say gives the best compatibility/stability ?, I know the 700 series had its issues and even the 790i Ultra boards I have can be a bit flaky at times but I know little about the 600 boards, would a 680i be a good pick or are the 650i boards more stable? I guess the 780i boards are an option too if they are solid.

Dont even bother with the nForce boards. Something on them hasn't aged well. Caps I suspect. I've owned 2 680I SLIs from EVGA and a 780i from MSI and all 3 died. Only the 750i from ASUS that is all solid state caps still works and even it is finicky.

Unless your willing to do a full work up on them, its a waste of time.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-04-06, 06:51:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-04, 16:37:

Nvidia was always good with DDR2 speeds ...DDR3 was a different story and the 790i boards were a bit picky about which DDR3 they […]
Show full quote

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-04, 16:33:

I have had no issues with 1200mhz ddr2 in Nforce 680i boards. I have to Evga 680i boards and both with do 1200mhz I've seen the 680a boards also have no issues hitting those speeds. The Nforce 780i and 780a boards are reported to have no issues with 1200mhz.

Nvidia was always good with DDR2 speeds ...DDR3 was a different story and the 790i boards were a bit picky about which DDR3 they would work well with, I only have 790i based boards so nVidia wont be in this race. The other question I have is how much better is DDR2 1200 over say 1066 or 800, was it worth it back in the day to invest in 1200 over the cheaper modules, back when 775 and DDR2 was the thing I didnt have the cash to buy anything amazing so I was never involved in the enthusiast side of it.

I guess I could go look up reviews ..but I do have a good selection of DDR2 to play with so I may as well just run the tests my self.

@Chrismeyer6 - Since I dont have any nforce DDR2 boards which one would you say gives the best compatibility/stability ?, I know the 700 series had its issues and even the 790i Ultra boards I have can be a bit flaky at times but I know little about the 600 boards, would a 680i be a good pick or are the 650i boards more stable? I guess the 780i boards are an option too if they are solid.

Dont even bother with the nForce boards. Something on them hasn't aged well. Caps I suspect. I've owned 2 680I SLIs from EVGA and a 780i from MSI and all 3 died. Only the 750i from ASUS that is all solid state caps still works and even it is finicky.

Unless your willing to do a full work up on them, its a waste of time.

The 790i ultras I have seem to be holding up well so far I guess the older boards may have used lower quality caps.

A working Diamond Monster 3D II for 23€. With passthrough cable and original drivers CD. (edit: got confused, there is no sli cable)
It's the 8MB version but at that price I couldn't pass on it and I always wanted a Voodoo card.

Seller photo.

It will go in this motherboard I also just bought.

An ABIT VH6T with a Celeron 1300 Mhz for 50€. Seller says it was used until recently.

Seller photos. Missing IO shield but with original manual.
Caps seems good-ish. Of course I will know for sure when I will have it on my hands.

P.S.: I know that the Voodoo with faster CPUs can have temperature issues. I will address that with heatsinks and fans.

Didn't buy these but found them in a stash of my old mans PC gear, 35x1mb 30 pin sims and 6x4mb 30 pin sims, no idea what to do with them as I dont have any board setup to test them in right now. I have an SB32 that does take them but no idea if they are FPM or something else.

Not even sure if using the SB32 would be a good idea even if its to test if the sticks actually work or not.

Guess its time to grab a 486 board off eBay that is in working order, then test these sims and sell them off, no idea why my old man was collecting them, not like he actually needed them as he was not into retro anything.