PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

And I took a long time as I was simply unable to conclusively identify any of these 2 cards.

You can use Ultimate Boot CD, it has some tools that can tell you what card you have. I think it reads the card's BIOS information.

I'd rather just be able to identify them visually, though I never even thought of using a boot CD for this, will need to download and burn one then, cheers! 😀
I'm basically after the GPU and amount and type of memory.

Testing with a boot CD will have to wait though, I'm basically sitting next to the boxes, working my way through them as I surf and eat 😁

I keep finding things due to me having to pack for the move. But I generally remember everything I own, looking forward to the loft because my Dad's old PC stuff is up there.

Anyway, figured I would post this because seeing the monitor alone doesn't really show how small it is;

HighTreason wrote:

I keep finding things due to me having to pack for the move. But I generally remember everything I own, looking forward to the loft because my Dad's old PC stuff is up there.

Anyway, figured I would post this because seeing the monitor alone doesn't really show how small it is;

vlcsnap-2015-12-25-03h24m42s377.jpg

Wow, that would make for an amazing testbench monitor! 😁

Smallest I have is a 14 inch or 15 inch I think? Their small size I find handy as 2 of them can fit on my testbench next to each other without taking up too much space so I can work on 2 systems simultaneously 😁

Got a new Canopus Pure3D II card!

So finally I could test the witchdoctor functionality with my Spectra 2500. It works! The good news is also that the Pure3D II can run on FastVoodoo drivers, meaning you can run it in SLI with another mismatched card. This saves you from getting two Pure3D II cards for witchdoctor functionality.

Finally started reviewing this SD to IDE adapter from eBay. I'll test it with two systems, a newer Core 2 Duo E7200 system, Intel Desktop Board DQ35JO with 4 GB RAM and Windows 10, just to find the limits of the adapter.

And then test it with a Slot 1 Pentium 3 1 GHz and Windows 98 SE to see if it works well. I see this probably used mostly with MS-DOS / Windows 98 SE machines.

Performance does depend on the SD card, so I will try a few that I purchased from the local supermarket.

Can you try to boot from it as part of your tests? I just got one very similar (sitting on an expansion slot backplate so you can change the card without opening the machine's case) and it's the only thing that works in my 286 with an ISA IDE controller, apart from a real IDE disk. However I can't boot from it! I have to boot from a floppy, then I can access the SD card as C: fine.

Evidently something different happens when booting from the device, so it would be interesting to know whether that also works on your more modern systems.

Oh, and it'd be interesting to know whether you can hotswap SD cards. In mine, perhaps because of the XTIDE BIOS, once the card is removed the system has to be power-cycled before the card works again (even if the original card is reinserted with no disk access in between.)

IDE was never meant to be hot swapped, so I'd think this issue would not be limited to XTIDE Universal BIOS. Also, did you remember to "FDISK /MBR" before formatting it?

Malvineous wrote:

Can you try to boot from it as part of your tests? I just got one very similar (sitting on an expansion slot backplate so you can change the card without opening the machine's case) and it's the only thing that works in my 286 with an ISA IDE controller, apart from a real IDE disk. However I can't boot from it! I have to boot from a floppy, then I can access the SD card as C: fine.

Evidently something different happens when booting from the device, so it would be interesting to know whether that also works on your more modern systems.

Oh, and it'd be interesting to know whether you can hotswap SD cards. In mine, perhaps because of the XTIDE BIOS, once the card is removed the system has to be power-cycled before the card works again (even if the original card is reinserted with no disk access in between.)

Of course! It wouldn't be a good product if it couldn't boot 😀

I've got that rear slot version as well. The marking on the chip are hard to make out, but it's likely the same chip.

Remember, on new CF or SD cards, I always have to type this command once.

FDISK /MBR

from a boot disk. Only then will it boot from it.

I'm not going to try hot swapping it 😊

Went through 5 more boxes of graphics cards, really picking up the pace now.
Lots of cards I had forgotten I actually had 🤣 and theres quite a lot of cards that still need to be tested (and probably also cleaned).

@alexanrs/Phil: Oh wow now I feel silly. When I deleted all the partitions and created a new one, I said yes to FDISK's question about "do you want to make one partition the largest possible" because it wanted to reboot as soon as it was done - no chance to do anything further. So I just assumed it wrote the MBR as well, but apparently not! Running FDISK /MBR did the trick. I thought it was very weird that it would work fine but not boot - never occurred to me to investigate the MBR! Thanks for your help getting that working - boots fine now.

With regard to the hotswap, IDE may not have been meant to be hot swapped, but technically it's not as the SD card adapter stays connected to the IDE bus all the time. If you quickly remove the SD card and then reinsert it, you'd think the host wouldn't notice (as the data on the SD card is the same), but sure enough the next disk access seems to lock up. I just wonder whether the SD card adapter is reporting itself as a removable IDE disk (which I've seen do exist) and that's confusing the XTIDE BIOS, and indeed any other BIOS not designed for handling removable disks? There aren't any XTIDE configuration options for removable disks, maybe they aren't supported.

I tried 3 machines so far, working well. One more machine to test will be a 386. That's as old as I go. I don't have any XT/AT/286 stuff 😀

i have a similar SD to IDE adapter and i can boot fine from the ones i have..

Tetrium wrote:

I'd rather just be able to identify them visually, though I never even thought of using a boot CD for this, will need to downloa […]
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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

You can use Ultimate Boot CD, it has some tools that can tell you what card you have. I think it reads the card's BIOS information.

I'd rather just be able to identify them visually, though I never even thought of using a boot CD for this, will need to download and burn one then, cheers! 😀
I'm basically after the GPU and amount and type of memory.

Testing with a boot CD will have to wait though, I'm basically sitting next to the boxes, working my way through them as I surf and eat 😁

Didn't see this one earlier...

I put my graphics cards in anti-static or sand-which bags, depending on the value / size / how much they mean to me. Most cards are indeed easily identifiable because they are labelled from the manufacturer, but I have quite a few cards with no markings, like tons of GeForce4 MX / SE / LE whatnot OEM versions. These I write the model number onto a sticker on the card for future identification.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Got some storage boxes from woolworths that are ideal for holding CDs 😀

I haven't seen a Woolworth's here in the states since the late 1970's! Miss 'em. I didn't even see one in Aus a few years ago - but I was only in Melbourne for a month or so. Is the Australian Woolworth's related to the (long defunct) F. W. Woolworth's in the states?

OregonJim wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Got some storage boxes from woolworths that are ideal for holding CDs 😀

I haven't seen a Woolworth's here in the states since the late 1970's! Miss 'em. I didn't even see one in Aus a few years ago - but I was only in Melbourne for a month or so. Is the Australian Woolworth's related to the (long defunct) F. W. Woolworth's in the states?

Not sure. This is our woolies: https://www.woolworths.com.au/

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

OregonJim wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Got some storage boxes from woolworths that are ideal for holding CDs 😀

I haven't seen a Woolworth's here in the states since the late 1970's! Miss 'em. I didn't even see one in Aus a few years ago - but I was only in Melbourne for a month or so. Is the Australian Woolworth's related to the (long defunct) F. W. Woolworth's in the states?

Not sure. This is our woolies: https://www.woolworths.com.au/

Thanks for the link. Looks like your woolies was named after ours, but the similarity ends there. According to Wikipedia:

"Woolworths Limited, the largest retail company in Australia and New Zealand; named after the F.W. Woolworth brand, but unrelated"

Cheers.

Got my 3.2GHz/800MHz Northwood chip in from China today, my interim main runs cooler and faster to boot. I have working Hyperthreading now which is nice, and now my RAM... still runs at 333MHz? Hmm. Maybe one set of modules is only rated for 333MHz operation.

Got my money back from a botched eBay purchase and used it to buy a GeForce 7600GS 512MB AGP card for this machine. As far as I can tell, it's the newest AGP card available that uses an nVidia chip. Could have also bought a Radeon HD 4670 1GB AGP... for about three times the price, no thanks. I've heard that sometimes people have issues with the PCIe-AGP bridged cards but I don't think I will have any problems. Will certainly update you all when it comes in. I'm actually expecting this card to run Skyrim, though not necessarily well. I'm expecting 20-40 FPS at low at 800x600 but that's fine by me, still perfectly playable considering the rest of my machine is so far below spec.

There is also 7950GT AGP.

Installed whatsap on my Nokia 5800. 🤣

Went through another 5 or 6 boxes of graphics cards, checking each card and listing it so I know what I have in my collection, I see light at the end of the tunnel, nearly there 🤣!