This morning I was trying to perform a PCMark2002 benchmark on the TUV4X (Pentium III) and at the end of the benchmark it gave me CPU Score: N/A
this never happened before, so I can't post the benchmark comparison between the Duron and the Pentium III PCs.

I also found this weird thing on the TUV4X board, what is this for ?

Elia1995 wrote:

This morning I was trying to perform a PCMark2002 benchmark on the TUV4X (Pentium III) and at the end of the benchmark it gave m […]
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This morning I was trying to perform a PCMark2002 benchmark on the TUV4X (Pentium III) and at the end of the benchmark it gave me CPU Score: N/A
this never happened before, so I can't post the benchmark comparison between the Duron and the Pentium III PCs.

I also found this weird thing on the TUV4X board, what is this for ?

It is a block of DIP switches. On the TUV4X it can be used to set the CPU parameters, but since it is also configurable via BIOS you don really need the DIP switches.

Read the manual: http://oldschooldaw.com/asus/2001/tuv4x-101.pdf , page 17 and further.

Since I completed the work on the P3, I moved on to the I think most interesting computer, the AST 486/25.
On first turn on it told me the battery was low or dead, I set the boot priorities so the hardisk would boot, but it never did, always telling me the disk wasn't bootable, I inserted my Win 95 boot floppy and the hardisk actually was readable, it has Windows 95 installed but it doesn't boot, so I replaced the hardisk and I put in the hardisk from my Olivetti M434S, which we all know currently isn't usable because it needs a VLB GPU which I can't find anywhere.
I also removed the battery since it was dead, but I dunno if I can replace it, it isn't ordinary lithium stuff... anyway now it boots into my DR DOS 7.03 which was already installed there.
Only problem is RAM: it has very low ram, probably 4 MB and I can't fit any DIMM I have !!! It has shorter DIMMs than my Olivetti and my Epson, I'll post some photos as I get to my PC.

Elia1995 wrote:

Ok guys, just took these photos, I show you every connector of that AT PSU and all the sides of it aswell. I also took some phot […]
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Ok guys, just took these photos, I show you every connector of that AT PSU and all the sides of it aswell.
I also took some photos of both Socket 7 AT boards from top and from bottom, I noticed a few stickers, let's see...

Another floppy connector probably for the 5" drives

Cyrix200+ wrote:

EDIT #2: The PSU seems to be from a IBM PS/2 Model 2168. There is some information on powering it on on this page: http://oldcomputer.info/pc/ps1_2168/index.htm it mentions:

Power Supply Unit

Power supply unit for this IBM is quite non-standard. The pinout is exactly like AT, but the unit has additional 3-pin connector. This connector is used as a power switch, making the power supply unit run when pins are shorted.

I don't know what pins to short in the connector, be careful!

I guess the 3-pin connector is the P7 connector in OP's earlier post. P7 is definitely not for 5 inch dirves, at least not for common ones.

Regarding the AST I'm now working on, I got so addicted with DOS games that I totally forgot to post the pictures of the RAM and battery...

So these are the DIMMs of that 486/25 Bravo AST

As you can clearly see, they are smaller than normal 72-pin DIMMs, which are the ones I use in my Olivetti M4 434S and in my Epson El Plus (386)

They aren't even 32-pin DIMMs because the 32-pin DIMMs I have, which fit in my AWE32 Sound Blaster don't have the space in the middle of the pins and they are smaller than those with a bit larger-looking pins.

So currenly I'm stuck with this RAM and I can't run some games like Jazz Jackrabbit or ROTT due to lack of memory, even as much as I can save on memory on DOS, I can't reach even 4 MB, so I guess that ram is either 2MB or 4MB, which is pretty bad and needs to be upgraded somehow.

Now for the battery.

This is the battery, sorry for the focus, but for some reason my phone decided to focus on the cable, anyway it's still readable, it is a 4.5 volts alkaline "computer clock battery".
I'm not sure if I'll be able to find a substitute, as I've never seen one of these before, so far the different one than coin batteries that I saw was in my Epson El Plus 386 which is a Lithium battery with 2 cables soldered in it (pretty much like this one) to plug it in the motherboard.

And of course here's the connector.

Now replying to lazibayer, that P7 connector on this AT PSU is indeed supposed to plug into a powe switch, but I can't find a way to do so, as I'm completely unskilled in soldering-level electronics.
We need to find a scheme for that PSU to find out, first of all in P1 and P2 which goes in which part of the AT connectors on the motherboard, since they can both be plugged in A or B (for example)

And then we also need a scheme for the P7 connector to know which pins to short with a paper clip or something.

Elia1995 wrote:

Regarding the AST I'm now working on, I got so addicted with DOS games that I totally forgot to post the pictures of the RAM and […]
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Regarding the AST I'm now working on, I got so addicted with DOS games that I totally forgot to post the pictures of the RAM and battery...

So these are the DIMMs of that 486/25 Bravo AST

As you can clearly see, they are smaller than normal 72-pin DIMMs, which are the ones I use in my Olivetti M4 434S and in my Epson El Plus (386)

Gotta love that proprietary stuff! 😁

And just fyi, those are SIMMs, not DIMMs.

My guess is your chances to find any of this locally are pretty slim. I'd suggest you try sites like Ebay or Amibay and look there or ask for 64p SIMMs for that particular motherboard.

Elia1995 wrote:

They aren't even 32-pin DIMMs because the 32-pin DIMMs I have, which fit in my AWE32 Sound Blaster don't have the space in the middle of the pins and they are smaller than those with a bit larger-looking pins.

So currenly I'm stuck with this RAM and I can't run some games like Jazz Jackrabbit or ROTT due to lack of memory, even as much as I can save on memory on DOS, I can't reach even 4 MB, so I guess that ram is either 2MB or 4MB, which is pretty bad and needs to be upgraded somehow.

I suppose you meant 30p SIMMs?

Elia1995 wrote:

Now for the battery. […]
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Now for the battery.

This is the battery, sorry for the focus, but for some reason my phone decided to focus on the cable, anyway it's still readable, it is a 4.5 volts alkaline "computer clock battery".
I'm not sure if I'll be able to find a substitute, as I've never seen one of these before, so far the different one than coin batteries that I saw was in my Epson El Plus 386 which is a Lithium battery with 2 cables soldered in it (pretty much like this one) to plug it in the motherboard.

And of course here's the connector.

Now replying to lazibayer, that P7 connector on this AT PSU is indeed supposed to plug into a powe switch, but I can't find a way to do so, as I'm completely unskilled in soldering-level electronics.
We need to find a scheme for that PSU to find out, first of all in P1 and P2 which goes in which part of the AT connectors on the motherboard, since they can both be plugged in A or B (for example)

And then we also need a scheme for the P7 connector to know which pins to short with a paper clip or something.

I'm not sure (and I don't remember if you mentioned anywhere that you got that PSU working), but do you know which pins of that weird power plug of the PSU you have to short to switch it on? If not, why not simply short 2 of the "pins" using a bent paper clip or something and see if it will power on?
Don't forget to give it a load before trying to switch it on. I used to attach a couple fans or drives or something (provided the parts were expendable), just to give it a load.

The AT PSU plugs...it should say so in the manual that the black wires should go in the middle. It's stupid these connectors got made the way they did, but it's easily preventable if you keep your head on whenever working with these rigs 😜
You wouldn't want to fry your stuff (and possibly put yourself into danger) just because of some stupid mistake that was warned about in the actual manual 😵 and google is your friend 😀

Elia1995 wrote:

Interesting, I just brought that AMD Duron PC in my room to finally start the recording session and now it's giving me nightmare […]
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Interesting, I just brought that AMD Duron PC in my room to finally start the recording session and now it's giving me nightmares.

I've inserted and installed the drivers of my nVidia GeForce FX 5500, which is the only AGP graphics card I have with DVI (which I can easily convert to HDMI for my Avermedia live gamer HD lite), everything's fine on my second monitor plugged in via VGA, but the drama is all on the capture card (which would be like a "monitor" for the computers, no ?!) first of all, it glitches like hell in the BIOS and the boot, until I reach the "Add New Hardware Wizard" screen for Plug and Play monitor stuff

after I hit next and let it use Windows' plug and play drivers, which ALWAYS worked fine, even with that 32" TV I was using until less than an hour ago, it asks for the plug and play drivers for the Syncmaster, which is my second monitor, after I let him use the plug and play drivers for that as well, I got this BSOD:

I then restarted in safe mode with only the DOS prompt and I went to C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND
did scanreg /restore
and restored the only registry I had, which was probably the first ever boot, in fact when I restarted it restarted without any drivers loaded, lucky thing I still had my nusb36e.exe on the desktop (desktop was intact, every file was still there, it just reloaded like the first ever boot without any drivers), so I installed it, inserted my flashdrive and reinstalled the nVidia drivers.
I rebooted and did again the plug and play monitor thing (from which that screenshot was from) and now apparently is working again, on both monitors (my second monitor and capture card).

BUT... for some reason I don't even understand how the heck it happened, THIS happened:

WTF ?! Why does it show up as "Windows ME" in the system properties, but it's 100% Windows 98SE ?!

Here's a video of how the BIOS and all the boot thing looks like on the capture card: https://youtu.be/xSQfiHH1BB8

After roughly 3 months, I finally figured out what caused this glitch.
It's the USB driver I used: yesterday when I formatted, I installed the nusb31i usb driver and it kept the Windows 98 Second Edition name in there, but I understood that it was caused by that because, when I formatted again and installed the nusb36e driver, after I rebooted, it changed into "Windows ME", so now I tracked down this glitch.
Apparently both drivers work just fine and nothing really causes problems, apart that "Windows ME" in the system info which annoys me a lot.

The more you know

Elia1995 wrote:

After roughly 3 months, I finally figured out what caused this glitch. It's the USB driver I used: yesterday when I formatted, I […]
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After roughly 3 months, I finally figured out what caused this glitch.
It's the USB driver I used: yesterday when I formatted, I installed the nusb31i usb driver and it kept the Windows 98 Second Edition name in there, but I understood that it was caused by that because, when I formatted again and installed the nusb36e driver, after I rebooted, it changed into "Windows ME", so now I tracked down this glitch.
Apparently both drivers work just fine and nothing really causes problems, apart that "Windows ME" in the system info which annoys me a lot.

The more you know

These are the sort of weird ass problems that I come across now and then and of course no info on the web because they are so obscure. Glad you worked it out. It is very gratifying when bizarre problems like this get solved through blood, sweat and tears. Not necessarily in that order. Thanks for posting the solution.

Although now, using the nusb31i driver, it doesn't rename the system to "Windows ME", no, absolutely... but the system becomes half Italian and half English 🤣

Elia1995 wrote:

Although now, using the nusb31i driver, it doesn't rename the system to "Windows ME", no, absolutely... but the system becomes half Italian and half English 🤣

Sounds like your system needs an exorcism. 🤣

Currently, it needs some working AGP drivers... 🤣
AGP graphics card not detected by games after drivers installed

Tetrium wrote:

Gotta love that proprietary stuff! :D […]
Show full quote

Elia1995 wrote:

Regarding the AST I'm now working on, I got so addicted with DOS games that I totally forgot to post the pictures of the RAM and […]
Show full quote

Regarding the AST I'm now working on, I got so addicted with DOS games that I totally forgot to post the pictures of the RAM and battery...

So these are the DIMMs of that 486/25 Bravo AST

As you can clearly see, they are smaller than normal 72-pin DIMMs, which are the ones I use in my Olivetti M4 434S and in my Epson El Plus (386)

Gotta love that proprietary stuff! 😁

And just fyi, those are SIMMs, not DIMMs.

My guess is your chances to find any of this locally are pretty slim. I'd suggest you try sites like Ebay or Amibay and look there or ask for 64p SIMMs for that particular motherboard.

Elia1995 wrote:

They aren't even 32-pin DIMMs because the 32-pin DIMMs I have, which fit in my AWE32 Sound Blaster don't have the space in the middle of the pins and they are smaller than those with a bit larger-looking pins.

So currenly I'm stuck with this RAM and I can't run some games like Jazz Jackrabbit or ROTT due to lack of memory, even as much as I can save on memory on DOS, I can't reach even 4 MB, so I guess that ram is either 2MB or 4MB, which is pretty bad and needs to be upgraded somehow.

I suppose you meant 30p SIMMs?

Elia1995 wrote:

Now for the battery. […]
Show full quote

Now for the battery.

This is the battery, sorry for the focus, but for some reason my phone decided to focus on the cable, anyway it's still readable, it is a 4.5 volts alkaline "computer clock battery".
I'm not sure if I'll be able to find a substitute, as I've never seen one of these before, so far the different one than coin batteries that I saw was in my Epson El Plus 386 which is a Lithium battery with 2 cables soldered in it (pretty much like this one) to plug it in the motherboard.

And of course here's the connector.

Now replying to lazibayer, that P7 connector on this AT PSU is indeed supposed to plug into a powe switch, but I can't find a way to do so, as I'm completely unskilled in soldering-level electronics.
We need to find a scheme for that PSU to find out, first of all in P1 and P2 which goes in which part of the AT connectors on the motherboard, since they can both be plugged in A or B (for example)

And then we also need a scheme for the P7 connector to know which pins to short with a paper clip or something.

I'm not sure (and I don't remember if you mentioned anywhere that you got that PSU working), but do you know which pins of that weird power plug of the PSU you have to short to switch it on? If not, why not simply short 2 of the "pins" using a bent paper clip or something and see if it will power on?
Don't forget to give it a load before trying to switch it on. I used to attach a couple fans or drives or something (provided the parts were expendable), just to give it a load.

The AT PSU plugs...it should say so in the manual that the black wires should go in the middle. It's stupid these connectors got made the way they did, but it's easily preventable if you keep your head on whenever working with these rigs 😜
You wouldn't want to fry your stuff (and possibly put yourself into danger) just because of some stupid mistake that was warned about in the actual manual 😵 and google is your friend 😀

Yesterday I got that AT PSU running, I plugged that black connector in a 3-pin fan connector on a motherboard and the PSU started going 🤣.

Now I can't find where to plug the CPU cooler fans on those 2 AT mobos...

I just got the 5DVX motherboard (this one: http://i.imgur.com/ZFYPql2.jpg) running.
I exchanged the fan of the CPU cooler with another one which has big MOLEX connectors, but the fan is overall smaller than the original one of that cooler, thus I don't know if it will be just fine anyway for a Pentium-S 120MHz (more on that soon).

This was the original fan, as you can see, it comes with a standard 3-pin molex connector:

I found out that this and other fans have the bigger 4-pin molex connector, so I screwed out (lol that verb) the original fan and screwed in this one on top of the heatsink:

As you can see, there's quite some size difference between the two fans, and there's a whole lot of empty space on top of the heatsink:

BUT since I don't know how much an Intel Pentium-S 120MHz does heat, if that small fan is safe enough, I can keep it like that, I just don't want that Pentium to die, now that I finally got one working !!!!!

I added an S3 Trio Virge PCI graphics card and the system boots up just fine.
Here's the boot info:

As you can see, the BIOS is Award Modular version 4.51PG, the motherboard is 5DVX version 1.0 from 1st July 1996, the CPU is detected as a Pentium-S at 120MHz (I adjusted the jumpers using a manual I found on Google in PDF format, here: http://www.elhvb.com/mboards/zida/manuals/5DVX0130.ZIP) and obviously I haven't added any CMOS battery yet and there isn't anything (floppy, keyboard, hard disk, cd-rom, etc...) connected, so it hangs there, it's normal.

So, now... first of all, I need to find a proper way to turn on that AT PSU, I just can't keep plugging that P7 "power switch" 3-pin molex in the 3-pin fan of that broken ASRock motherboard for the eternity, so I must find a guide or something to build a power switch to attach to that P7 3-pin thing it has.
And then, I have to figure out a way to install everything in an ATX chassis, since I don't have any AT chassis currently (all 3 AT ones I have are all my pre-built Olivetti M4 434S, Epson El Plus and the AST Bravo 486/25), I guess it wouldn't be a problem to screw that board in there, the main issue will be to get a proper location for the custom homemade power switch (or if I get another AT PSU with a proper power switch, for its one).

But the most immediate thing I must know is if I'll be safe to keep that Pentium-S 120MHz under that cooler with that fan, or if I need to find or hack a 4-pin molex adapter for the bigger fan, how much do these Pentium-S CPUs heat at all ? I'll be running just DOS and perhaps Windows 3.11/95 MAXIMUM, I think, Windows 98 without an AGP slot is pointless.

Elia1995 wrote:

Although now, using the nusb31i driver, it doesn't rename the system to "Windows ME", no, absolutely... but the system becomes half Italian and half English 🤣

I had the same thing happen years ago when I ended up with a half English half Dutch FrankenOS 🤣
I think I had applied some unofficial SP to 9x of another language. But it did still work 🤣

And concerning your CPU fan swap...unless the new fan spins a LOT slower then your old CPU fan, there shouldn't be any troubles coming your way. P1 120 doesn't use a lot of power.

You can search for something like "CPU electrical specifications" and it will come up with a site like this one http://pclinks.xtreemhost.com/elec_pentium.htm?i=1
I find this site very usefull, especially if you don't have any basic idea about how much heat a certain CPU may produce. It's always a good idea to get a cooler that can cool the maximum dissipation of the CPU 😀

It's much smaller than the previous CPU fan, thus it should spin much faster and be more noisy.
I found a 120mm fan with 4-pin molex connectors in one of my older cases, although it might be just exaggerated to use that one 🤣

Elia1995 wrote:

It's much smaller than the previous CPU fan, thus it should spin much faster and be more noisy.
I found a 120mm fan with 4-pin molex connectors in one of my older cases, although it might be just exaggerated to use that one 🤣

You can always mount a larger HSF that's a bit overkill, just to be sure 😜
A beefier heatsink has the added bonus that it may help the CPU survive longer when the CPU fan fails for whatever reason.
I think Pentium 1 is actually quite good at surviving for a while without a working CPU cooler fan, especially when comparing with some of the later CPUs.

I've often used s370 HSFs for s7 builds as when it comes to cooling (especially the slimmer Celeron ones), better a bit too much cooling then to little 😜

This is the heatsink I've put on there (with silver based thermal paste)

I just further tested this 5DVX with the Pentium-S 120MHz.
I plugged in one of my AT keyboards and the usual 500MB IDE hardisk I had first in the Olivetti M4 434S and then I put in the AST Bravo 486/25, so it was kinda "plug and play" and I didn't have to install DOS.
I launched Doom and it was working just fine, very smooth and mesmerizing, I noticed some graphical artifacts, but when I launched Jazz Jackrabbit 1 (CD version), those artifacts were completely gone, the game ran perfectly fine, at 60+ FPS without problems, I didn't see even a single frame skip, only when I manually ended the demo, probably to load the main menu.
Both Doom and Jazz Jackrabbit had extremely fast loading times, it almost felt like an SSD, I never saw these games load that fast from this IDE hardisk before, so far I'm happy with how this build is coming together, I'm recording my "adventures" with it and I'll edit and publish these videos as a miniseries on my YouTube channel after I'm done (I'm recording them in Italian just because it's quicker for me, but I'll add English subtitles once I upload the videos, so you all can enjoy them).

Basically what I'm gonna do with this build is to mount this motherboard on an ATX case because I don't have any AT case to mount it to, if I can, I'll try to extract and use the AT PSU of the AST Bravo 486/25, I noticed that it has every molex and floppy power cables I need, it has regular AT P1 and P2 connectors (black wires always go in the middle, I know how to mount them properly now, it's only a struggle everytime to get those damn connectors in the AT pins, I'm glad both that these weren't part of my childhood and were replaced by much easier ATX connectors which we still use nowadays), AND IT HAS THE POWER SWITCH !!!! Which is the thing that the AT PSU I'm testing this stuff with doesn't have and I'm basically powering it on by plugging the 3-pin connector which should be the power switch in some pins of a 60-pin SCSI controller in a PCI card I don't even use because I don't have anything to connect there.

I checked the heatsink heat with my hand, it was at a low temperature, enough to touch by hand, I must say I didn't feel any warmth almost at all in the heatsink (NOT SURE IF IT'S A GOOD OR BAD THING !!!), but I felt some warmth near the socket and on the sides of the heatsink (not hot, just warm, warm enough to be touched with my fingers and don't burn myself, I have very sensitive fingers towards temperatures, so if I say that I could touch that without feeling almost anything, it was really cool).

I must buy one of those wireless infrared thermal thermometer things like I see on some YouTube videos:

So, yeah, so far everything's good, except that I don't have any ISA or PCI cards with PS/2 and 39-pin IDE controllers: the onboard IDE controllers are 40-pin each, luckily I found some 40-pin IDE cables, but that's it, if these cables will ever go bad or fail, I won't be able to replace them without a 39-pin IDE controller, because my 39-pin IDE cables don't have 40 holes and won't just fit there.

[EDIT] I ran the build with Dr. Dos 7.03 without problems, I also executed Windows 3.11 (but did nothing in it since I had no mouse) and it worked fine, in the end before shutting everything off it froze, after I used the "mem" command to see how much memory was available, but it was probably an occasional freeze, because it was stable and perfect the whole 15-20 minutes I used it, I'll turn it on this evening after I go back home from University (just a quick turn on - see bios - turn off, just to check if the Pentium hasn't fried yet, I won't do anything with it).

Still not sure why the EDIT button is gone, but whatever, updates on the topic are mandatory.

I made further tests this evening after I came back home from University, turned it back on and it indeed still works fine, I tracked the freeze issue, it apparently freezes when I try to CTRL-ALT-DELETE to reset it (I'm using an AT keyboard, no PS/2 keyboard with PS/2 to AT adaptors), not sure why it freezes, but it's not important at the moment, it never freezes on its own, I ran Doom 2, ROTT and some other games just fine, I don't think I used it for more than 20-30 minutes.
I also swapped the sound card, I replaced the Avance Logic ISA sound card I put in it yesterday with the Sound Blaster 16 ISA sound card I was using in the Olivetti M4 434S and afterwards in the AST Bravo 486/25 (I'll put in it my Sound Blaster AWE32 ISA PnP sound card once I assemble it in the case and becomes an actual computer).
This time I didn't feel any warmth at all on and near the socket, the heatsink was cold the whole time, even while I was running Rise of the Triad (which is possibly the heaviest game I currently have on that hardisk), I only felt a little warmth on top of the tiny fan, probably made by the fan's motion itself.
I don't know if it's a good thing or not that the heatsink is completely cold, if it means that the Pentium isn't making a lot of heat and thus this heatsink is big enough to dissipate the whole heat the CPU is making, or if the thermal paste is blocking the heatsink out (but in that case, I think the CPU would've fried already... since the Pentium does require an heatsink and it always uses 100% usage on DOS, plus these old CPUs don't have thermal throttling and they'd run until they fry).

Elia1995 wrote:

Still not sure why the EDIT button is gone

Due to vandalism over the last 24 hours, it will most likely return, it was just the quickest thing we could do to stem the tide.
Suddenly can't edit posts anymore?