That is wicked cool. 1920x1080? How high does it go?

The manual doesn't specify limits. I really can't say. You just have to build a format form the included templates and hope the hardware works with it.

Nice shag rug! My house here used to have it in every room but we ripped it all out. 🤣 I still think they look cool though. 😁

dogchainx wrote:

Today I played the hell out of Wing Commander with my two-year-old son on my lap going "pew pew!" He LOVES Wing Commander. I teach him well....

Haha, been playing Descent with my three-year-old lately 🤣 He shoots, I fly. Mom was a bit concerned that the game is too violent for him. Nonsense! We're only shooting at robots 🤣

Seeing as people keep posting stuff from the 775 era, I'll ambiguously post this;

And not tell you what's wrong with it outside of an enthusiastic clock generator.

Interesting FSB ya got there, must be the Intel SEE version of the Pentium D. The Slightly Extreme Edition.

popper wrote:

I have no idea what this graphics card (256 KB, 16 Bit ISA, ACER labeled) is about...

It clearly states that it's an Acer M3125. There is not much information about that one, seems to be the last video chip Acer made. (It's not relabelled from another manufacturer.) It is unsure if it is even SVGA or only plain VGA. (Original IBM VGA also had a maximum of 256kB.)
I wouldn't expect much of it.

That's really cool. You must be really chuffed to have fixed it.

idspispopd wrote:

popper wrote:

I have no idea what this graphics card (256 KB, 16 Bit ISA, ACER labeled) is about...

It clearly states that it's an Acer M3125. There is not much information about that one, seems to be the last video chip Acer made. (It's not relabelled from another manufacturer.) It is unsure if it is even SVGA or only plain VGA. (Original IBM VGA also had a maximum of 256kB.)
I wouldn't expect much of it.

...me neither.
I wasn't aware of any vga chip built by acer. And i think (don't know why) this card has logic developed from paradise inside (though i can not find any hint for that at the moment); probably it is some kind of a clone.

Maybe i should replace it with an ET4000?

HighTreason wrote:

Seeing as people keep posting stuff from the 775 era, I'll ambiguously post this;
And not tell you what's wrong with it outside of an enthusiastic clock generator.

What's wrong?

HighTreason wrote:

Seeing as people keep posting stuff from the 775 era, I'll ambiguously post this; http://s26.postimg.org/x1h0kl6ex/PHTO00086.png […]
Show full quote

Seeing as people keep posting stuff from the 775 era, I'll ambiguously post this;

And not tell you what's wrong with it outside of an enthusiastic clock generator.

Well if that isnt a downclocked Pentium D 965 then its a very confused CPU 😁

That Acer card is indeed weird. Maybe drop it into a Windows 95 / Windows 98 machine and see if it detects it as something, as that would probably tell you if it was just relabeled. For all you know, it might actually be a good card.
-----
As for my BIOS screen, look at the option I have highlighted. This is an oddity which is seemingly unique to that particular CPU, the top of the chip read; Intel Confidential, QKDH ES MALAY... At least before I de-valued it considerably a few years back when I polished the IHS to improve cooling efficiency (it can still be made out faintly however).

Enabling the Hyper Threading option causes the system to become unstable however, so I never use it, it does grant two more logical cores though for the thirty seconds you get to use Windows XP before it locks up. It has an incomplete SSE3 implementation, performs slightly faster than a regular 920 in most benchmarks (at an equal clock in the same board) and is generally a bit weird.

Somewhat irrelevant now though, as my friend managed to grab a 950 which I installed in its place. I will have to heatsink the VRMs though as they get rather toasty when the CPU is under load - well, ok, about 50 Celsius, but anything above 35-40 is more than I am prepared to tolerate in my computer.

I hope what I am trying to do here works, because the Core 2 is in a whole world of shit by now;

Edit: Point of interest; I have just discovered that I actually gain around 25 points if I set threads to 1 instead of 4 in the preferences... Not sure if it's the CPU or the Northbridge as the other Core 2 box I have behaves in much the same fashion, I don't care anymore to be honest. Most of the time the Core 2 machines fail to complete the test anyway as they are not stable.

For reference sake, my 950 gets me over 1200 points! The only negative is that the PLL goes even further out of whack and operates closer to 820MHz with that chip in. I may have fixed most of the motherboard defects, but that one is beyond me. Still, a few extra megahertz never hurt anyone and my cooling is more than adequate.

HighTreason : Would you mind sharing the model #'s of your core2 boards please? I'm just kinda curious what folks are using and wanted to look up yours and see what they're about.

Sure, but they are two of the worst boards I've ever had to use.

The Core 2 Queef is installed in an MSI P35 Neo2-FR which is slow and unstable. It's rubbish, which sucks because it matches the graphics card - something I found funny when I bought it, given I had owned the GPU for years. Edit; Better picture of the motherboard because MSI don't give a damn about their products apparently. I never got that one blue SATA port to work properly btw, so I don't know what is meant to be special about it. I have the manual but can't be bothered to read the Chinglish to try and figure out what it is or where it goes. I know it was useless anyway as the last two ports of the ICH9's RAID controller go out to eSATA on the backplane which meant I had to loop wires back into the machine. Also note how the heatpipe assembly (which doesn't do more than spread heat to components you would rather keep it away from) gets in the way of everything, not least, the damn power connector - no joke, I had to take the heatpipe off and remodel it slightly to get a power cable in there.

The Core 2 Doodoo is installed in what is by far the worst 775 motherboard ever devised. An Intel DQ35JO which generally doesn't allow you to install graphics cards, hates most RAM, cripples performance somehow, has the worst RAID controller ever (Even by ICH9R standards) and runs extremely hot.

The Pentium D board is the underdog here, the one I have isn't retail but is basically a version of the ECS PF5 Extreme which is a very ugly looking board, it doesn't support the Core 2 processor as it came out too early and it's a stupid color, even more stupid than the MSI one is. On the other hand, it's stable, fairly quick (For being limited to DDR2-666) and generally gets shit done.

HighTreason wrote:

Sure, but they are two of the worst boards I've ever had to use. […]
Show full quote

Sure, but they are two of the worst boards I've ever had to use.

The Core 2 Queef is installed in an MSI P35 Neo2-FR which is slow and unstable. It's rubbish, which sucks because it matches the graphics card - something I found funny when I bought it, given I had owned the GPU for years. Edit; Better picture of the motherboard because MSI don't give a damn about their products apparently. I never got that one blue SATA port to work properly btw, so I don't know what is meant to be special about it. I have the manual but can't be bothered to read the Chinglish to try and figure out what it is or where it goes. I know it was useless anyway as the last two ports of the ICH9's RAID controller go out to eSATA on the backplane which meant I had to loop wires back into the machine. Also note how the heatpipe assembly (which doesn't do more than spread heat to components you would rather keep it away from) gets in the way of everything, not least, the damn power connector - no joke, I had to take the heatpipe off and remodel it slightly to get a power cable in there.

The Core 2 Doodoo is installed in what is by far the worst 775 motherboard ever devised. An Intel DQ35JO which generally doesn't allow you to install graphics cards, hates most RAM, cripples performance somehow, has the worst RAID controller ever (Even by ICH9R standards) and runs extremely hot.

The Pentium D board is the underdog here, the one I have isn't retail but is basically a version of the ECS PF5 Extreme which is a very ugly looking board, it doesn't support the Core 2 processor as it came out too early and it's a stupid color, even more stupid than the MSI one is. On the other hand, it's stable, fairly quick (For being limited to DDR2-666) and generally gets shit done.

I must hand it to you. Some how you managed to gather a collection of the shittiest of the shitty 775 boards. 🤣

I have a similar Intel 775 motherboard, and it doesn't accept video cards either. Wait, I mean, it does.. it has a 16x pci-express 2.0 port, but it runs video cards connected to it at 1x 1.1 if installed. These intel boards are pseudo server type boards. You're supposed to use the onboard video for video, and that "pci-express port" is generally used for raid cards and network cards. My same intel board for example will run a pci-e 2.0 8x raid card at full speed 2.0 8x in that port, but gpu's get 1.1 1x, so weird. 😕 😕 So I'm not surprised your intel board (which looks like a cut-down version of the one I have) doesn't even allow video cards at all in that slot.

Also my intel board I have only runs ddr2 667 or 800 mhz ram, and only double-sided ram, for normal unbuffered ram, but it will run any kind of ecc-registered ddr2 ram, 400 mhz, 533, 667 and 800. It even supports the full range of core2 chips, duals and quads up to 1600 mhz FSB.

EDIT: In general MSI motherboards seem to be "The bottom of the barrel" in terms of quality, design, and just.. everything. They're cheap and most of the time they don't even work at their rated specs, let alone anything else. And most of their onboard components either fail or don't work out of the box. I had a friend of mine buying a msi am3 board.. first one was DOA, second one worked but onboard sound didn't work, then the onboard lan died a week later then the onboard sata ports died a month later, RMA'd it again and the one they sent him back was DOA again, he's been through 7 RMA's with them and still doesn't have a fully functional board.. and just gave up and threw it in the trash and bought a gigabyte.

It's funny, because whilst I was reading that I was thinking "True, MSI sucks balls, but I'd rather be stuck with an MSI than a Gigabyte." - I never had a Gigabyte board that worked, nor have I ever known anyone own one that did.

ECS were usually shitty, it was just this weird fad they went through around 2005-2006 where some of their more expensive motherboards for Intel processors were actually really good and very well made - they were usually this lighter purple color with very neat component layouts such as mine - I have no idea what got into them and it didn't last long.

The Intel board is from an RM One (Caution, product page has obnoxious audio), so I never expected much of it. It served a purpose and it did it as well as it needed to. That purpose was streaming to Twitch.TV before my ISP and Twitch's policies about minimum throughput put a stop to that;

Before you ask about changing ISP.

I learned my lesson anyway, SuperMicro all the way from now on. Never had problems with those.

HighTreason wrote:

It's funny, because whilst I was reading that I was thinking "True, MSI sucks balls, but I'd rather be stuck with an MSI than a […]
Show full quote

It's funny, because whilst I was reading that I was thinking "True, MSI sucks balls, but I'd rather be stuck with an MSI than a Gigabyte." - I never had a Gigabyte board that worked, nor have I ever known anyone own one that did.

ECS were usually shitty, it was just this weird fad they went through around 2005-2006 where some of their more expensive motherboards for Intel processors were actually really good and very well made - they were usually this lighter purple color with very neat component layouts such as mine - I have no idea what got into them and it didn't last long.

The Intel board is from an RM One (Caution, product page has obnoxious audio), so I never expected much of it. It served a purpose and it did it as well as it needed to. That purpose was streaming to Twitch.TV before my ISP and Twitch's policies about minimum throughput put a stop to that;

Before you ask about changing ISP.

I learned my lesson anyway, SuperMicro all the way from now on. Never had problems with those.

My main 775 board is a Gigabyte, GA-EP45-UD3P v1.6, it's the longest-running most solid board I've ever owned. And it overclocks like a beast and now that I've recently figured out how to, it even runs SLI too!

Never had a single issue with it from day one. Well.. except the onboard lan ports died a few years ago, but that's solved with a pci-e intel gigabit card, which is superior to the onboard ones anyway. The rest of it works fine. 🤣 Using it to type on right now and played games for a few hours on it last night too.

Back in my 775 days, I used a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R mobo. That thing ran my Q6600 @ 3.06GHz without breaking a sweat, and was flawless right up until I decided to upgrade to a Sandy Bridge setup (specifically, a GA-Z68XP-UD3H-B3 with i5-2500).

The only bad MSI boards I've seen were a pair of 939 boards that came out of eMachines computers. One had some very interesting quirks, the other flat out didn't work period. The rest of their boards that I've seen, save for a 370 board that had capacitor issues, have usually worked fine.

The only experience I have with Gigabyte boards are with a Gigabyte B75-based board at the university. I've had to open it up and short pins on the main bios TWICE to get the whole Dual-bios thing kick in correctly and make the system bootable again. The worst part is that the second time I wasn't even messing with bios updates (gave up on updating that BIOS after the first time), it just decided to corrupt itself all of a sudden. The "Crash-Free Dual Bios" thingy is more trouble than it is worth: both times without shorting the pins all it did was to cause an infinite boot loop.

I also had an Intel DH61CR that became unbootable after a BIOS update, even though it wasn't corrupt. It was a weird process that required me to update to intermediate versions before being able to flash the last one, and this happened at the last intermediate BIOS. Apparently the BIOS version had compatibility issues with my board (it detected it as a different H61 intel board), and simply froze when trying to boot (could still get to the BIOS Setup). Using the recovery flash features of the board I finally solved it by just flasing the latest version on top, and it worked well ever since.

ASUS boards, on the other hand, have been rock solid for me, but I'm also not an overclocker. Of all PCs I had since 2004/5 only one of them did not use an ASUS board (it used the intel I just mentioned). My older VIA-based boards still work despite the crappy chipset (both a Socket 754 A64 and a Socket 775 C2D), and my Z77-A and Z97-A I currently use on my main PCs have not let me down. I just have to remember to not install 90% of the bundled software. Most of those programs will only let you access options that you can manipulate from the BIOS setup anyway.

CelGen wrote:

It's really just a specialty ISA card plugged into a 486 board but that was exactly the reason why it was free. It had one of those blasted drum batteries and it had leaked out.

Heya J. you might want to neutralize some of the corrosion (I can't remember if vartas are nicad or alkaline. Probably nicad (which I guess would mean it's an acid and not a base).

kithylin wrote:

I once took an older Compaq Armada laptop (that works fine on battery for an hour!) to the IRS office while my mother was sitting in wait for several hours in queue, and some funny things happened. First, because it was old, the security officer running the x-ray thing thought it had explosives inside and wanted me to turn it on and show it booting before he would let me through.

Then I got in to the waiting area and sat down and opened it, booted MS-DOS and started playing DOOM II and even though I had earbuds in one ear (so the sound didn't annoy anyone) this one lady sitting beside me looked down and saw my screen and leaned in and whispered to me "You do know you are going to hell for playing satanic games like that, right?" And I looked at her like "It's just a video game, I don't like.. worship satan or anything like that". And she responded with "You enjoy those sorts of games?" and I was like "Well yeah, Doom was the the best of the first person shooter games in the `90's", and she looked at me with these big eyes and got up and spoke up "You.. SINNER! YOU'RE GOING TO HELL!" and moved to the other side of the waiting area and put a newspaper up in front of her face. But every so often she would lower it just to look over at me and see if I'm still playing on the laptop.

Where do these people come from? "Oh you're going to hell because of *insert random variable here*". So you have to restrict what you to do some biased viewpoint that's hypocritical in and of itself? According to that standard then EVERYONE is going to hell because of the hypocrisy element (which is so outrageous that people who enforce these statements cannot precalculate what they're saying doesn't make sense).
I like how that lady's eyes grow wide and her limited comprehension of a "video game" with autonomous association to it being 'evil'. So so so... primitive of a mind.

I've had a similar experience playing this game many years ago as a kid:

Some extraordinarily religious fellow thought it was very 'evil' with those skeletons and had to speak up about it that I shouldn't play that. WHAT?!
Not all Christians are frothing lunatics, but I'd like to say the majority are and lack the ability to parse basic logic. I understand that may be offensive, but I am sick of being told I'm going to hell because of ARBITRARY reasons. What's the point of even saying that to people, what does it accomplish? Well (I suppose) it means the person saying it is devoid of a personality and formatted all of their interests to waste their life with rituals...

As a Christian with some relatives that have fit the over zealous Christian stereotype I can honestly say that not EVERY Christian is like that, most good Christians tend to not be judgmental. The problem is that the minority that are tend to be the most vocal and ridicules. Like any group unfortunately 😒