All hail the mighty Barracuda!

looking4awayout wrote:

I was outbid in the Kingston 512MB auction, so I resorted to a less expensive alternative: an Empaq 512MB PC133 module "VIA Chipsatz". I know very little about this brand and the reviews about their modules are very discordant. I'll have to keep my fingers crossed, I suppose

Never heard about "Empaq" either, but the relevant question is more which chips are used on the module. There are only a small set of actual chip manufacturers, and as a rule, all make quality products. However if you have a DIMM where the chips are unlabeled or have been relabeled, expect rubbish - chips by the regular manufacturers that did not pass quality control, or low-specced chips being sold as high-spec.

As for the "Via Chipsatz" - that's an odd one. That usually refers to an x4 chip architecture, so logically single-sided DIMMs with 16 chips (usualy physically on both sides). Intel memory controllers don't support those on unbuffered DIMMs, so because everyone knows that there are only two chipset vendors out there ( 😵 ) they were commonly labeled "Via only" etc. But I've never seen them on 512MB DIMMs, only as 16x 16Mx4 128MB DIMMs and 16x 32Mx4 256MB DIMMs. I've never heard of 64Mx4 PC133 DIMMs. I'd rather expect these to be plain old 16 chip double-sided 32Mx8 DIMMs, with 256Mb density, which is not supported by Intel P3 chipsets. It would run them though, but you could only address half the capacity. And the Intel P4 SDRAM chipsets (i845-series) could handle them fine.

I have a friend who has some of them, both single and double sided, 512MB modules. He tested them and they are detected properly, but he hasn't tested them past the POST stage. He got them locally though.

Pictures of the stick in question:

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/BAAAAOSw4V9a5Gu-/s-l1600.jpg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/H1wAAOSwi4pa5Gu9/s-l1600.jpg

I don't expect anything from it anyway, if it runs at CAS2 Fast error free it's a miracle, not expecting to run it at Turbo, but at least to run the machine at 1,5GB instead of 1,2GB. The more memory the better can be, otherwise it'll be another faulty 512MB stick thrown in the bin. Had bad luck with Samsung, Kingston and Mosel Vitelic chips in past too, later I found out that they are the same sticks sold brand new by some Chinese sellers on Ebay. Darn. 😵

Summer is coming!

I'm messing with my main system(s), they are perhaps not retro but old.

My dual Socket 1366 Xeon X5690 @4600MHz rig (almost retro) with an Asus (DirectCU 2) GTX 780ti @1250Mhz actually manages to max out retail WoW at 4K with good frame rates (no AA). The only drawback with this system is the heat it produces, not an issue in winter but the summer comes almost every year so it's best to be prepared.

I do have a low(er) power "summer system", a Gigabyte Z68 board with an i7 3770 (non K) clocked to 4100 MHz at stock voltage (max multiplier is 41x). Last time I actually bothered to assamble this system must have been back in 2015, 2015 was also the last time I played retail WoW...

I think I used a MSI GTX 770 in the "summer system" back in 2015. The GTX 770 won't cut it any more so I was planning to use my EVGA GTX 780ti that has been gathering dust on a shelf (I diddn't like the extra noise from running SLI in my main rig). The issue was that it diddn't work with the Sniper 2 motherboard...

My Gigabyte Sniper 2 Z68 motherboard has some alfa AMI UEFI kludge Gigabyte failed to get working properly (on their Z68 motherboards). The alternative is the for Sandy Bridge CPUs great old fashioned AWARD BIOS but it dosn't work correctly with Ivy Bridge CPUs. In any case the UEFI kludge wouldn't work with the EVGA GTX 780ti, it froze at POST or sometimes just sat there waiting for ever and ever...

It turns out I had to set PCI ROM Priority to "Legacy ROM" for some reason (using another video card). You can probably guess how long it took to figure that out... great times...

reassembled my Athlon XP, i really need to take pictures, but the case isn't finished 100% yet, gotta replace some missing bits

looking4awayout wrote:

I have a friend who has some of them, both single and double sided, 512MB modules. He tested them and they are detected properly […]
Show full quote

I have a friend who has some of them, both single and double sided, 512MB modules. He tested them and they are detected properly, but he hasn't tested them past the POST stage. He got them locally though.

Pictures of the stick in question:

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/BAAAAOSw4V9a5Gu-/s-l1600.jpg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/H1wAAOSwi4pa5Gu9/s-l1600.jpg

I don't expect anything from it anyway, if it runs at CAS2 Fast error free it's a miracle, not expecting to run it at Turbo, but at least to run the machine at 1,5GB instead of 1,2GB. The more memory the better can be, otherwise it'll be another faulty 512MB stick thrown in the bin. Had bad luck with Samsung, Kingston and Mosel Vitelic chips in past too, later I found out that they are the same sticks sold brand new by some Chinese sellers on Ebay. Darn. 😵

Kingston is just a DIMM vendor, they don't make their own chips, if you see "Kingston" chips someone is being misleading (although Kingston themselves occasionally also relabeled the chips). Samsung and Mosel are bona-fide, if they're real at least...

Those DIMMs have patently obviously relabeled chips, so no idea what you are getting. "Fingers crossed" is the best I can say.

Not retro but a rant...

Thanks Toshiba for having such great support for older (pre purchase) OCZ SSDs... NOT

The only drivers I could find for my OCZ REVO 3 X2 240 PCI-E SSD were from 2014... The 32bit Windows 7 installer used on older Win-7 SP1 dual X86/X64 install media will not install the needed X64 raid driver what ever you do... I can partition the Revo 3 X2 using the 32bit driver and then install Windows but Windows will never boot after reset as the installer failed to install the "unsigned" x64 driver (that is signed).

It turns out you need X64 only install media with the 64bit installer otherwise the installer can't identify the signature for signed X64 raid drivers (or so says the Internet)... I have an original retail Win 7 disc with Ultimate that I think is x64 only but that one isn't even SP1...

Well a newer X64 image from Microsoft seems to be the answer... but it seemes that they somehow changed the installer to some newer Windows 8 like installer... of course 32bit even for the 64bit only image... Well with this image I could first load the 32bit driver the installer likes, partition the Revo drive and then try to install the X64 driver just like with the older X86/X64 image. I even got the same error message about about the driver beeing unsigned and the driver installation failing eventhough I from the get go made sure that the BIOS/UEFI date was set to the short span of time (mid 2014 to early 2015) the driver is valid for.

The difference is that the newer installer seems to have installed the x64 driver anyhow... It works...

I like jumping through burning rings... blindfolded...

Well, this replacement keyboard membrane finally arrived from the UK:

(blue one's the replacement, green one's the original, complete with scraped-off traces where I was trying to just get the top green insulating layer off for a cheap fix)

And with that, I now have a fully functional Amiga 500! Just need a new case (yes, I backed that A1200.net Indiegogo campaign and have my eyes on the upcoming Checkmate A1500+), some replacement keycaps slated for a future production run (QWERTZ doesn't befit the fact that I'm using it with a US keymap), and perhaps an external floppy drive adapter so I can use my Gotek and physical floppy drives together.

That last point is something I would normally do in an Amiga 2000, except that machine's still out of commission for the time being. It's proving difficult to repair with my lack of tools right now (boy, do I wish I could afford a desoldering gun!), but I'm currently awaiting delivery of some things like a PLCC extractor for the Agnus and a DiagROM chip that can help me pinpoint the problem and fix it properly - and if nothing else, the A500 and A2000 share the same custom chips, so swapping them out with known good pulls from the A500 as a reference is a trivial affair.

Not vintage computers related, but always related to vintage equipment anyway: I have resurrected a very old Ruhla Quarz 32768, the first quartz watch ever made in the GDR, a quite fascinating looking contraption, if you see the movement. I thought it was dead two years ago, when it suddenly stopped working and would tick briefly for a couple of seconds with other batteries. Turns out the watch works after putting a new fresh battery, and it was just a bad battery issue. Very happy to wear this old product of a country that no longer exists, once again.

Going back to computer related stuff, the Genius mouse is working without issues as well.

looking4awayout wrote:

Not vintage computers related, but always related to vintage equipment anyway: I have resurrected a very old Ruhla Quarz 32768, the first quartz watch ever made in the GDR, a quite fascinating looking contraption, if you see the movement. I thought it was dead two years ago, when it suddenly stopped working and would tick briefly for a couple of seconds with other batteries. Turns out the watch works after putting a new fresh battery, and it was just a bad battery issue. Very happy to wear this old product of a country that no longer exists, once again.

Going back to computer related stuff, the Genius mouse is working without issues as well.

Ooh, very nice bit of Ostalgie there 😀

I have something of a weak spot for Praktica cameras, having learnt to photograph on them back in the late '80s and early '90's, when they were dirt cheap and my dad didn't let me play with his Nikon F. Still feel sad for the day I dropped my STL2 into the river Ourthe while kayakking in the Belgian Ardennes...

dionb wrote:

cut

Nice to see someone who enjoys analogue photography... 😎 Collecting vintage watches is one of my hobbies besides RDD'ing old computers. My biggest dream? Finding a Soviet-era Microsoft compatible serial mouse to use on my Pentium III, as well as an 84 keys AT compatible keyboard made in the USSR or another Eastern Bloc country...

Made this 1440p energy star wallpaper.

Recent pickups include small things like a Compaq Presario 5000, with Duron 700 and 256 mb RAM.

cj_reha wrote:

Recent pickups include small things like a Compaq Presario 5000, with Duron 700 and 256 mb RAM.

hey i ordered the same thing! pics!

oeuvre wrote:

cj_reha wrote:

Recent pickups include small things like a Compaq Presario 5000, with Duron 700 and 256 mb RAM.

hey i ordered the same thing! pics!

$10 at the thrift store. Missing the top optical drive which is gonna be annoying to replace, because drive rails.

Has 2 hard drives, 3 ish gig WD Caviar and I think a 120 GB caviar as well. Boots into either Windows ME or Windows XP setup, oddly.

For $10, that's not a bad price, and the system looks great, though. Forgot Compaq/HP made two different versions of the PCs: ones that have Intel processors and chipsets, and ones that have AMD processors and some other chipset.

I have an Athlon XP 3000+ motherboard combo that I pulled out of the Pavilion A706N case (seen better days) as well as the other internals (USB Card reader, CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, 160GB HDD, case fan, ribbon cables, front I/O, the I/O shield, and the expansion cards).

Invested in a cheap Chinese wireless bridge, and now all of my retro boxes can enjoy Wireless-G and transfer software and game images from the NAS when I need it. Much recommended.

Worked some more on my G3 iMac. Updated Mac OS 9 to 9.2.2 and installed some essential software for Mac OS 9: DAVE, iTunes, Virtual CD/DVD-Rom Utility, Stuffit Expander & Classilla.

Played a few demos from a Macworld CD-ROM, including Duke Nukem 3D. Also installed Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation and had a quick play with it.

Happily the speakers on this thing appear to be holding up well, still no signs of any degradation yet. Crazy really, as my other identical iMac was stored in the same place and it's speakers rotted and fell apart after only 30 minutes of use.

Gave up on a build after 1,5 weeks. That Chaintec mobo is a real stinker :@ Placed it on the bottom of the boards pile and I am now trying to finish the build with an 5x86-P75 + other board

i'm reorganizing my collection due to several motherboards stopping working
also i'm fighting against my mind, 'cause i wanna get an Atari ST but i'm facing financial troubles