PD2JK wrote on 2024-05-22, 16:42:

Unfortunately that is unknown. The machine the disk was in was from some shed/storage, so I guess it wasn't powered on for ages. […]
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ChrisK wrote on 2024-05-22, 14:26:

PD2JK wrote on 2024-05-21, 13:03:

Alright, so I simply bridged the soldering pads, but the drive won't spin. Then I soldered a 4.7uF cap in its place and the driv […]
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Alright, so I simply bridged the soldering pads, but the drive won't spin. Then I soldered a 4.7uF cap in its place and the drive slowly spins up.
After a few seconds you'd expect a moving actuator for initialization of the heads and so on, but the drive spins down a bit and tries two more times. Maybe the heads/actuator is stuck in its position.
Not sure if the drive motor reaches full speed either.
I looked up some YouTube videos of the WDAC280 drive, and those are spinning up a quite faster.

And a picture of the burned component: (now replaced with a 4.7uF capacitor)
DSC_9143.JPG

OK, had a more detailed look into the datasheet and it seems you are right. The damaged part really could've been a cap (cap C3 in the datasheet p.7 Fig. 3, to be exact). The remains of the part in your newer picture also seems to confirm that. I previously identified the big yellow one as the bulk cap of the charge pump (Cp as shown in the datasheet's block diagramm).
So it seems there's more than just that blown cap. Did the drive work properly just before?

Unfortunately that is unknown. The machine the disk was in was from some shed/storage, so I guess it wasn't powered on for ages.
Guess I'll have to power it on and off quite a few times and maybe then I'm lucky and gets unstuck.
Would the freezer help or is that an urban legend.

The freezer thing was always a last resort thing, to get a drive going one last time and hope you can get some data back. But remember that you can have all sorts of issues with condensation if it spins up, and it will probably rust after that.
Maybe tap it lightly in the center with a rubber mallet?

Today I have been researching what CPU to pair with a hypothetical socket 478 build.

I noticed this Pentium III on eBay that is claimed to be PGA 478 but taken from a laptop.

I’ve never come across a PGA 478 Pentium III, does anybody have any information as to whether or not it is likely to work with any of the desktop chipsets?

Obviously it wouldn’t be as good as a P4 but would certainly make for a unique desktop build.

Unfortunately not. It's basically a Tualatin core in 478 package, and I'm not even sure if:

- the pinout is the same as a P4
- it's unknown if any of the chipsets released for P4 (including the RDRAM i850) can handle a Tualatin core.

As for their source - DELL and HP (not sure if Toshiba did too) used these alongside Intel's i830 chipset. The 830 was the successor to the mobile 440BX variant (440MX? I recall seeing MX listed besides BX,LX,EX,ZX and GX somewhere.) and its desktop equivalent is basically the 815EP.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-05-22, 18:39:

Unfortunately not. It's basically a Tualatin core in 478 package, and I'm not even sure if: […]
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Unfortunately not. It's basically a Tualatin core in 478 package, and I'm not even sure if:

- the pinout is the same as a P4
- it's unknown if any of the chipsets released for P4 (including the RDRAM i850) can handle a Tualatin core.

As for their source - DELL and HP (not sure if Toshiba did too) used these alongside Intel's i830 chipset. The 830 was the successor to the mobile 440BX variant (440MX? I recall seeing MX listed besides BX,LX,EX,ZX and GX somewhere.) and its desktop equivalent is basically the 815EP.

Much appreciated 😀 that's a shame.

Indeed, I'm not convinced about the pinout either but thank you for confirming about the chipsets. I have a 478 XPC Shuttle with SiS651+SiS962L, a Tualatin in there would have been very spicy indeed!

RetroLizard wrote on 2024-05-22, 16:08:

Been getting my gaming pc up, and I have to wonder if there's a way to increase the volume levels on old speakers. How would I go about doing this?

After some testing, I've isolated the problem to the sound card being problematic. Gonna try a replacement out.

In the last couple of days I configured my Slot A machine. It's based on a Gigabyte GA-7IXE and an Athlon 750 Thunderbird.

At first I wanted to use a Matrox Parhelia but the fan was too loud to my taste, so a Radeon 9200 (with 128-bit bus) replaced it instead. The rest of the system consists of a 3Com 3C905 NIC, an SB Live, a Promise SATA300 SATA controller, a 120GB SSD and a NEC-based USB card.

Everything works flawlessly under Windows XP, it's the first time I used "Legacy Update" to update the system completely and activate it, which took about 4h of Windows Updates...thanks all the .net frameworks. the system is remarkably fast and snappy and every game I threw at it just works.

One quirk of this system is that the mainboard doesn't support ACPI even with the latest FAa BIOS, which is very surprising given ma K6-based GA-5AX supports it. So one has to press "F7" during the Windows 2000/XP setup otherwise the installer crashed with a BSOD.

The CPU has also 2 modern silent fans, and the whole system is remarkably quiet!

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2024-05-23, 06:15:

In the last couple of days I configured my Slot A machine. It's based on a Gigabyte GA-7IXE and an Athlon 750 Thunderbird. […]
Show full quote

In the last couple of days I configured my Slot A machine. It's based on a Gigabyte GA-7IXE and an Athlon 750 Thunderbird.

At first I wanted to use a Matrox Parhelia but the fan was too loud to my taste, so a Radeon 9200 (with 128-bit bus) replaced it instead. The rest of the system consists of a 3Com 3C905 NIC, an SB Live, a Promise SATA300 SATA controller, a 120GB SSD and a NEC-based USB card.

Everything works flawlessly under Windows XP, it's the first time I used "Legacy Update" to update the system completely and activate it, which took about 4h of Windows Updates...thanks all the .net frameworks. the system is remarkably fast and snappy and every game I threw at it just works.

One quirk of this system is that the mainboard doesn't support ACPI even with the latest FAa BIOS, which is very surprising given ma K6-based GA-5AX supports it. So one has to press "F7" during the Windows 2000/XP setup otherwise the installer crashed with a BSOD.

The CPU has also 2 modern silent fans, and the whole system is remarkably quiet!

I like it, slot A is often overlooked - I wonder how this compares to an 800MHz Pentium III.

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2024-05-23, 06:15:

In the last couple of days I configured my Slot A machine. It's based on a Gigabyte GA-7IXE and an Athlon 750 Thunderbird. […]
Show full quote

In the last couple of days I configured my Slot A machine. It's based on a Gigabyte GA-7IXE and an Athlon 750 Thunderbird.

At first I wanted to use a Matrox Parhelia but the fan was too loud to my taste, so a Radeon 9200 (with 128-bit bus) replaced it instead. The rest of the system consists of a 3Com 3C905 NIC, an SB Live, a Promise SATA300 SATA controller, a 120GB SSD and a NEC-based USB card.

Everything works flawlessly under Windows XP, it's the first time I used "Legacy Update" to update the system completely and activate it, which took about 4h of Windows Updates...thanks all the .net frameworks. the system is remarkably fast and snappy and every game I threw at it just works.

One quirk of this system is that the mainboard doesn't support ACPI even with the latest FAa BIOS, which is very surprising given ma K6-based GA-5AX supports it. So one has to press "F7" during the Windows 2000/XP setup otherwise the installer crashed with a BSOD.

The CPU has also 2 modern silent fans, and the whole system is remarkably quiet!

I like it. I do have a question: is the printer port disabled in the CMOS settings? I recently had an issue installing Windows 2000 on a board with a BIOS from 2002 and it blue screened because the BIOS wasn't ACPI compliant. I did a search, and it turned out that disabling the printer port caused this error during setup, and enabling it solved the problem.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-05-23, 18:59:

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2024-05-23, 06:15:

In the last couple of days I configured my Slot A machine. It's based on a Gigabyte GA-7IXE and an Athlon 750 Thunderbird. […]
Show full quote

In the last couple of days I configured my Slot A machine. It's based on a Gigabyte GA-7IXE and an Athlon 750 Thunderbird.

At first I wanted to use a Matrox Parhelia but the fan was too loud to my taste, so a Radeon 9200 (with 128-bit bus) replaced it instead. The rest of the system consists of a 3Com 3C905 NIC, an SB Live, a Promise SATA300 SATA controller, a 120GB SSD and a NEC-based USB card.

Everything works flawlessly under Windows XP, it's the first time I used "Legacy Update" to update the system completely and activate it, which took about 4h of Windows Updates...thanks all the .net frameworks. the system is remarkably fast and snappy and every game I threw at it just works.

One quirk of this system is that the mainboard doesn't support ACPI even with the latest FAa BIOS, which is very surprising given ma K6-based GA-5AX supports it. So one has to press "F7" during the Windows 2000/XP setup otherwise the installer crashed with a BSOD.

The CPU has also 2 modern silent fans, and the whole system is remarkably quiet!

I like it. I do have a question: is the printer port disabled in the CMOS settings? I recently had an issue installing Windows 2000 on a board with a BIOS from 2002 and it blue screened because the BIOS wasn't ACPI compliant. I did a search, and it turned out that disabling the printer port caused this error during setup, and enabling it solved the problem.

Ah yes, I disabled printer and serial port in the BIOS! I will try to re-enable it. Now the BIOS only reports "APM" support, and not ACPI.

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2024-05-23, 19:24:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-05-23, 18:59:

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2024-05-23, 06:15:

In the last couple of days I configured my Slot A machine. It's based on a Gigabyte GA-7IXE and an Athlon 750 Thunderbird. […]
Show full quote

In the last couple of days I configured my Slot A machine. It's based on a Gigabyte GA-7IXE and an Athlon 750 Thunderbird.

At first I wanted to use a Matrox Parhelia but the fan was too loud to my taste, so a Radeon 9200 (with 128-bit bus) replaced it instead. The rest of the system consists of a 3Com 3C905 NIC, an SB Live, a Promise SATA300 SATA controller, a 120GB SSD and a NEC-based USB card.

Everything works flawlessly under Windows XP, it's the first time I used "Legacy Update" to update the system completely and activate it, which took about 4h of Windows Updates...thanks all the .net frameworks. the system is remarkably fast and snappy and every game I threw at it just works.

One quirk of this system is that the mainboard doesn't support ACPI even with the latest FAa BIOS, which is very surprising given ma K6-based GA-5AX supports it. So one has to press "F7" during the Windows 2000/XP setup otherwise the installer crashed with a BSOD.

The CPU has also 2 modern silent fans, and the whole system is remarkably quiet!

I like it. I do have a question: is the printer port disabled in the CMOS settings? I recently had an issue installing Windows 2000 on a board with a BIOS from 2002 and it blue screened because the BIOS wasn't ACPI compliant. I did a search, and it turned out that disabling the printer port caused this error during setup, and enabling it solved the problem.

Ah yes, I disabled printer and serial port in the BIOS! I will try to re-enable it. Now the BIOS only reports "APM" support, and not ACPI.

I had never heard of this issue until a little over a week ago.

Modded an OGXbox... with as much as a Raspberry Pi Pico, some Kynar wire, and 4x SMD 100 ohm resistors. Oh, and couch do be strikin' back 🤣

Just wanted to put some record of this online since it took me a bit of messing around to figure out what was going on...

I was testing a Creative Graphics Blaster Exxtreme CT6610 with 4MB onboard and a 4MB memory expansion installed but Windows 98SE would only see 4MB and would not acknowledge the 4MB memory addon. This is a 3DLabs Permedia 2 based card, so I was using the latest Permedia 2 drivers that were already available on my tester PC. As it turns out, you need to install the Creative drivers to see the additional memory! I have no idea why, other than the fact that it seems like the vast majority of Permedia 2 cards have 4MB and no way to add more, so perhaps the implementation of more than 4MB was supported but left up to the card maker.

Anyway, the card works great now! Always nice to not have to put a card in the parts\repair bin. 😀

EDIT: Well... now I wonder if there is a way to make the 3Dlabs drivers utilize the extra memory, because the Creative drivers are older and I see they are actually a bit more glitchy in games. The other drivers were basically flawless.

Side point: This wasn't intended as a high end gaming card by any means, but it's amazing how much better this Permedia 2 runs games at 800x600 than an S3 Virge DX runs games at 400x300. 🤣

EDIT2: Okay, apparently Creative actually still had newer drivers available on their website (scroll down to the relevant driver, labeled as Revision 5). I'm not entirely sure if these are more up to date than the generic 3DLabs ones, but they fixed the problems I had in games and still show all 8MB of memory. Also, these do something I've never seen before: In device manager if you access the "Properties" of the Graphics Blaster Exxtreme there is a "Performance" tab to configure the hardware acceleration level and several other features of the card. Crazy!

Anyway, I will attach the driver to this post. To complete the install I did need a couple files from the CD image available on the Vogons driver archive. I'll put those in a zip with the installer. 😀

Started stripping down my old DOS Mame cabinet I built back in 2003, to salvage all the vintage PC parts. Still all worked fine, even the old 4.3gb HDD, but the cabinet suffered damage.
So this morning dismantled the CPU, and cleaned up the motherboard. For anyone interested it's an A-Trend 6220 motherboard with the Intel 440BX 'Seattle' chipset

And a 333MHz Pentium II with 512kb cache, and attached H/S fan, which looks more like a fancy Sega Mega drive cartridge.

Sad to think, but used to build / convert arcade cabinets back then, and got the PC hardware from a warehouse that processed / data wiped ex NHS, School etc computers. Around 2005, I used to get complete P2 systems, stuck with Dell or RM machines, all Intel 440BX based, usually ATi AGP, ISA Vibra 16, so easy DOS setup, including 15" Grade A CRT monitor with cables, Keyboard/Mouse for £40-£45. The worst thing was though, looking back, is that any system that had an hardware faults would just be shipped by the 40' container load out to Africa as E-Waste, as they said it wasn't worth their time, and no value! ....How things have changed since.
Africa got tons of what was considered then, horrible E-Waste, but now, great vintage PC hardware. I wonder what happened to it all?

BigDave wrote on 2024-05-24, 08:18:

Started stripping down my old DOS Mame cabinet I built back in 2003, to salvage all the vintage PC parts. Still all worked fine, […]
Show full quote

Started stripping down my old DOS Mame cabinet I built back in 2003, to salvage all the vintage PC parts. Still all worked fine, even the old 4.3gb HDD, but the cabinet suffered damage.
So this morning dismantled the CPU, and cleaned up the motherboard. For anyone interested it's an A-Trend 6220 motherboard with the Intel 440BX 'Seattle' chipset

IMG_20240524_075856.jpg

IMG_20240524_081042~2.jpg

And a 333MHz Pentium II with 512kb cache, and attached H/S fan, which looks more like a fancy Sega Mega drive cartridge.

IMG_20240524_082519~2.jpg

Sad to think, but used to build / convert arcade cabinets back then, and got the PC hardware from a warehouse that processed / data wiped ex NHS, School etc computers. Around 2005, I used to get complete P2 systems, stuck with Dell or RM machines, all Intel 440BX based, usually ATi AGP, ISA Vibra 16, so easy DOS setup, including 15" Grade A CRT monitor with cables, Keyboard/Mouse for £40-£45. The worst thing was though, looking back, is that any system that had an hardware faults would just be shipped by the 40' container load out to Africa as E-Waste, as they said it wasn't worth their time, and no value! ....How things have changed since.
Africa got tons of what was considered then, horrible E-Waste, but now, great vintage PC hardware. I wonder what happened to it all?

are you building or have already a new mame cabinet? a mame cabinet was the cool pc project of the 2000's, just dont see as much about them now

all that stuff shipped to africa as e waste, such a shame - unlikely to be around now.

gerry wrote on 2024-05-24, 10:04:

BigDave wrote on 2024-05-24, 08:18:

Started stripping down my old DOS Mame cabinet I built back in 2003, to salvage all the vintage PC parts. Still all worked fine, […]
Show full quote

Started stripping down my old DOS Mame cabinet I built back in 2003, to salvage all the vintage PC parts. Still all worked fine, even the old 4.3gb HDD, but the cabinet suffered damage.
So this morning dismantled the CPU, and cleaned up the motherboard. For anyone interested it's an A-Trend 6220 motherboard with the Intel 440BX 'Seattle' chipset

IMG_20240524_075856.jpg

IMG_20240524_081042~2.jpg

And a 333MHz Pentium II with 512kb cache, and attached H/S fan, which looks more like a fancy Sega Mega drive cartridge.

IMG_20240524_082519~2.jpg

Sad to think, but used to build / convert arcade cabinets back then, and got the PC hardware from a warehouse that processed / data wiped ex NHS, School etc computers. Around 2005, I used to get complete P2 systems, stuck with Dell or RM machines, all Intel 440BX based, usually ATi AGP, ISA Vibra 16, so easy DOS setup, including 15" Grade A CRT monitor with cables, Keyboard/Mouse for £40-£45. The worst thing was though, looking back, is that any system that had an hardware faults would just be shipped by the 40' container load out to Africa as E-Waste, as they said it wasn't worth their time, and no value! ....How things have changed since.
Africa got tons of what was considered then, horrible E-Waste, but now, great vintage PC hardware. I wonder what happened to it all?

are you building or have already a new mame cabinet? a mame cabinet was the cool pc project of the 2000's, just dont see as much about them now

all that stuff shipped to africa as e waste, such a shame - unlikely to be around now.

Yeah, miss those hobbyist days, it's all commercial or CNC MDF cabinets now, 60 in 1's, Pandora Boxes or Pi's. People like easy, ready made solutions these days. I had built quite a few back in the 90s & 00s , but not since. The last one was for a previous buyer in 2015, who wanted me to upgrade his cabinet I'd built in 2006, but started from scratch as they all used DOS, with my custom frontend & multi emulator setup, but wasn't an option on the Dell system I used. I had separate menu's based on screen orientation, which could be changed depending on which of the 3 control panels was used. Added a custom jukebox design too, all according to the buyer's requests, took a year to complete in my spare time, but was pretty cool. I'll have to find a picture.

I just have a couple of A1UPs nowadays, 1 vertical I converted to a pi, and am just about to convert a horizontal cabinet to a Mame PC system using an old thin client, so it'll be just like the old days, except I'll be using Tiny XP probably. I like messing with old tech, it's more of a challenge, and keeps my 50 something year old brain active 😉 I'm not very clued up on new PC/Mame stuff.

Re: E-Waste , probably buried or incinerated I guess. Maybe someday, someone will do an exploratory dig and unearth loads of old Soundblaster cards, like they did with the VCS E.T cartridges in New Mexico.

BigDave wrote on 2024-05-24, 08:18:

Sad to think, but used to build / convert arcade cabinets back then, and got the PC hardware from a warehouse that processed / data wiped ex NHS, School etc computers. Around 2005, I used to get complete P2 systems, stuck with Dell or RM machines, all Intel 440BX based, usually ATi AGP, ISA Vibra 16, so easy DOS setup, including 15" Grade A CRT monitor with cables, Keyboard/Mouse for £40-£45. The worst thing was though, looking back, is that any system that had an hardware faults would just be shipped by the 40' container load out to Africa as E-Waste, as they said it wasn't worth their time, and no value! ....How things have changed since.
Africa got tons of what was considered then, horrible E-Waste, but now, great vintage PC hardware. I wonder what happened to it all?

I remember my school disposing of dozens of RM Nimbus 286 and 386 systems circa 1998 and replacing them with machines that were more up to the task of internet browsing; more RMs, we finally got Pentiums. At the time the outgoing 386 machines were utterly ‘ten a penny’

Would love to have saved some now.

Dan386DX wrote on 2024-05-24, 14:54:

BigDave wrote on 2024-05-24, 08:18:

Sad to think, but used to build / convert arcade cabinets back then, and got the PC hardware from a warehouse that processed / data wiped ex NHS, School etc computers. Around 2005, I used to get complete P2 systems, stuck with Dell or RM machines, all Intel 440BX based, usually ATi AGP, ISA Vibra 16, so easy DOS setup, including 15" Grade A CRT monitor with cables, Keyboard/Mouse for £40-£45. The worst thing was though, looking back, is that any system that had an hardware faults would just be shipped by the 40' container load out to Africa as E-Waste, as they said it wasn't worth their time, and no value! ....How things have changed since.
Africa got tons of what was considered then, horrible E-Waste, but now, great vintage PC hardware. I wonder what happened to it all?

I remember my school disposing of dozens of RM Nimbus 286 and 386 systems circa 1998 and replacing them with machines that were more up to the task of internet browsing; more RMs, we finally got Pentiums. At the time the outgoing 386 machines were utterly ‘ten a penny’

Would love to have saved some now.

Me too. The benefit of hindsight, but who could've guessed then, they'd be so many of us desparately trying to buy back all those old machines. The RM desktop machines were really well put together systems, never gave any issues.
As you say, ten a penny back then, so they didn't have much value. The first time I stepped into that warehouse (it was in Watford) I was just overwhelmed, never seen so many, I was like a kid in a candy store.

gerry wrote on 2024-05-24, 10:04:

all that stuff shipped to africa as e waste, such a shame - unlikely to be around now.

unfortunately, that e-waste probably wasn't handled well. I recall seeing a depressing picture of "e-waste recyclers" in southeast asia, where they'd pile stuff up, and burn it to get rid of plastics, then pick through to get the metals. When I say 'pick through' I mean by hand.
The World Health Organization still doesn't have a high opinion of how it's handled today. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/det … e-%28e-waste%29

Found time to try out one of the weirdest bits in my parts bin:

The Asus DIMM Riser II

Its purpose? To allow you to use cheap SDRAM on new fancy i820 RDRAM boards, using Intel's (very justifiably) reviled Memory Translator Hub or MTH. There were motherboards with MTH onboard and no RIMM slots (like Intel's CC820 and Asus's charmingly named CUC2000), but performance using MTH was terrible (combining the lower bandwidth of 100MHz SDRAM with the higher latencies of RDRAM) and stability so high-end boards were RIMM only. However RDRAM was still very expensive so Asus came up with this kludge for people who wanted a high-end i820 board but didn't want to pay the premium.

I found this device with an Asus P3C-E, a relatively late i820 design with only two RIMM slots - and an ISA slot, via an ITE bridge. This would have been a great Win98/DOS system. Unfortunately the board was completely dead. No visible damage, but no life at all - also not after trying a newly flashed BIOS. So it went on the 'maybe I can fix this in the future' pile. And there it stayed...

...until I got my hands on a working P3C-D dual slot 1 board. That's a separate story (I literally had 5 dead ones before I found one that worked). It's a slightly older i820 board that still has 3 RIMM slots (google 'Caminogate' for why that was an issue and how it dates the board). I hadn't done much with it due to lack of time and other priorities. But recently I gave it a fresh Windows 2000 install and upgraded the Matrox G450 to a Parhelia 128, and then while reading the manual I saw that it also supported the DIMM Riser II. So...

It boots!

Note the 100MHz 512MB (it's PC133, but MTH doesn't support over 100MHz)

Now, the MTH is notoriously unstable and putting it on a riser doesn't exactly seem to help and the system crashed half way through loading Windows, but on second attempt I was at least able to get to the desktop. Wow. For now though I've put the 2x 512MB RIMMs and 1x CT-RIMM back and this curiosity goes into my known-good memory box.

dionb wrote on 2024-05-24, 21:45:

Found time to try out one of the weirdest bits in my parts bin: https://tweakers.net/i/YYa5h4MiPkZBGf1xh_fle--QcwA=/800x/filters […]
Show full quote

Found time to try out one of the weirdest bits in my parts bin:

The Asus DIMM Riser II

Its purpose? To allow you to use cheap SDRAM on new fancy i820 RDRAM boards, using Intel's (very justifiably) reviled Memory Translator Hub or MTH. There were motherboards with MTH onboard and no RIMM slots (like Intel's CC820 and Asus's charmingly named CUC2000), but performance using MTH was terrible (combining the lower bandwidth of 100MHz SDRAM with the higher latencies of RDRAM) and stability so high-end boards were RIMM only. However RDRAM was still very expensive so Asus came up with this kludge for people who wanted a high-end i820 board but didn't want to pay the premium.

I found this device with an Asus P3C-E, a relatively late i820 design with only two RIMM slots - and an ISA slot, via an ITE bridge. This would have been a great Win98/DOS system. Unfortunately the board was completely dead. No visible damage, but no life at all - also not after trying a newly flashed BIOS. So it went on the 'maybe I can fix this in the future' pile. And there it stayed...

...until I got my hands on a working P3C-D dual slot 1 board. That's a separate story (I literally had 5 dead ones before I found one that worked). It's a slightly older i820 board that still has 3 RIMM slots (google 'Caminogate' for why that was an issue and how it dates the board). I hadn't done much with it due to lack of time and other priorities. But recently I gave it a fresh Windows 2000 install and upgraded the Matrox G450 to a Parhelia 128, and then while reading the manual I saw that it also supported the DIMM Riser II. So...

It boots!

Note the 100MHz 512MB (it's PC133, but MTH doesn't support over 100MHz)

Now, the MTH is notoriously unstable and putting it on a riser doesn't exactly seem to help and the system crashed half way through loading Windows, but on second attempt I was at least able to get to the desktop. Wow. For now though I've put the 2x 512MB RIMMs and 1x CT-RIMM back and this curiosity goes into my known-good memory box.

That is an usual bit of kit! Pretty cool looking though, especially with the dual CPU motherboard. Too bad about the stability issues though. One wonders what Intel was thinking...