By the way, I'm pretty sure that the BP6 shipped with a heat sink on the BX Northbridge ...? Pretty sure the green one here on my picture was mounted on my NOS one ...

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-12-28, 14:57:

By the way, I'm pretty sure that the BP6 shipped with a heat sink on the BX Northbridge ...? Pretty sure the green one here on my picture was mounted on my NOS one ...

Worth putting one back on there too, especially if trying to run at 133Mhz.

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-12-28, 14:58:

Worth putting one back on there too, especially if trying to run at 133Mhz.

I'm not sure it has the 1/4 divider for PCI, so 133 will probably push the envelope a bit ...

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-12-28, 15:03:

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-12-28, 14:58:

Worth putting one back on there too, especially if trying to run at 133Mhz.

I'm not sure it has the 1/4 divider for PCI, so 133 will probably push the envelope a bit ...

I was wrong, 124 and 133 fsb uses 1/4 according to the manual ...

While i still have a huge pile of hardware to sort and test, i haven't bought anything in a while.

I just found this Radeon HD2900XT stalker edition for 20€.
I will pair it with another one i already have for a Crossfire setup.
I think i still have a spare reference design cooler in case i want the pair to match.

Not really hardware, but bougth the same day :
The book "Half Life 2 : Raising the bar" for an unreasonable 3-digit price. But it was the cheapest i've seen in a while and i always wanted this book.

kixs wrote on 2023-12-28, 12:32:

Isn't that what he said? […]
Show full quote

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-12-28, 12:12:

Isnt the BP6 the board that can run dual Celerons?

Isn't that what he said?

I guess the coolers are a bit too much. Celerons don't heat that much, even top of the line @533Mhz.

I have several dual cpu old boards... no idea what to do with them now 🤣

@PcBytes: what is your plan for it?

No it isnt.
Read what he actually said.

PcBytes wrote on 2023-12-28, 13:01:

Experimenting with SMP and maybe a cool dual CPU build in the future. I plan on modding it for Coppermines.

As for the coolers... overkill for the Celerons, handy if I can strike 2x 1GHz Coppermines and a nice GPU (not sure if the GF4 Ti4200 is a good match for them?)

Yeah you just need a PGA to FC-PGA adapter for that. They were all the rage back in the day because we all wanted new CPUs on old boards.

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-12-28, 13:59:

PcBytes wrote on 2023-12-28, 13:57:

NT exclusively - so anything ranging between NT4, 2k, XP/2003. Vista or even 7 if I feel adventurous enough to max the GPU and RAM enough.

Since its a Celeron build on a BX board and is very unlikely to support more than 768Mb of memory, I wouldn't suggest anything over XP unless you enjoy seeing Vista/7 have kittens with the HDD.

Looking at CPU support for the BP6 it looks like its limited to Mendicino which means a top of 533Mhz, perhaps you could get CU Mine working with a BIOS mod and some voltage mods but that's only if you are adventurous enough.

Was the 440BX chipset generally limited to 768Mb?
I have a 440 board thats running 2Gb.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-12-28, 23:35:

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-12-28, 13:59:

PcBytes wrote on 2023-12-28, 13:57:

NT exclusively - so anything ranging between NT4, 2k, XP/2003. Vista or even 7 if I feel adventurous enough to max the GPU and RAM enough.

Since its a Celeron build on a BX board and is very unlikely to support more than 768Mb of memory, I wouldn't suggest anything over XP unless you enjoy seeing Vista/7 have kittens with the HDD.

Looking at CPU support for the BP6 it looks like its limited to Mendicino which means a top of 533Mhz, perhaps you could get CU Mine working with a BIOS mod and some voltage mods but that's only if you are adventurous enough.

Was the 440BX chipset generally limited to 768Mb?
I have a 440 board thats running 2Gb.

Are you sure its a 440BX ? BX is limited to 1Gb in the best case scenario using 4 slots and ECC memory @ PC 100. Is it possible its a 440GX? that chipset could handle 2Gb of memory and is pretty much a turbo charged 440BX.

I had to google that one, yes its a 440GX.
What is the difference between the two?

GX was aimed towards servers as far as I know, while BX was the consumer version. (with ZX being the budget line)
Not sure if LX had the same thing done, aside from having a budget version which is EX.

I can definately recommend reading this about 440BX and memory. https://web.archive.org/web/20180103032407/ht … ram_bx_faq.html

And yes, 1 GiB is maximum, there's lines for 4 memory slots, maxing out at 256 MiB each.

It has arrived!

The good: it POSTs, with the original caps no less. That's impressive, given the bad rep Tayeh and Jackcon have.

The bad: front power switch doesn't work, requiring me to power on the board through shorting PS_ON and GND on the main ATX plug (hence why you're seeing the tweezers in the pic)

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-12-29, 10:00:

I can definately recommend reading this about 440BX and memory. https://web.archive.org/web/20180103032407/ht … ram_bx_faq.html

And yes, 1 GiB is maximum, there's lines for 4 memory slots, maxing out at 256 MiB each.

I learnt nothing new there... Its pretty much the standard for RAM since SDRAM

PcBytes wrote on 2023-12-29, 10:45:

It has arrived! […]
Show full quote

It has arrived!

The good: it POSTs, with the original caps no less. That's impressive, given the bad rep Tayeh and Jackcon have.

The bad: front power switch doesn't work, requiring me to power on the board through shorting PS_ON and GND on the main ATX plug (hence why you're seeing the tweezers in the pic)

I reaeaeaeahlly like those coolers!

I didn't notice the tweezers before searching for them after reading your text 🤣 But it's weird that the front connector pins doesn't work. Could it be the button you're using, that's oxidated or something? I have experienced that sorts of stuff.

Oh, and somebody inadvertently clocked those CPUs at 333 🤣

Nah, I tried the bare pins alone and it wouldn't budge. I sw a little bit of corrosion in that zone which has so far cleaned rather okay, but to be sure I'l try and touch up the traces with a bit of solder to be sure.

That being said, I did find a rather nasty chipped p04 SMD transistor on the edge of the board, and I'll try replacing that too. I have a defunct Jetway J-7BXAN to harvest SMDs from and a bunch of dead Xbox 360 mainboards to harvest polymers from, as well as a few AM2/AM3 junk boards to get more polys from. The coolers be chonkers tho!

PcBytes wrote on 2023-12-29, 11:17:

Nah, I tried the bare pins alone and it wouldn't budge. I sw a little bit of corrosion in that zone which has so far cleaned rather okay, but to be sure I'l try and touch up the traces with a bit of solder to be sure.

That being said, I did find a rather nasty chipped p04 SMD transistor on the edge of the board, and I'll try replacing that too. I have a defunct Jetway J-7BXAN to harvest SMDs from and a bunch of dead Xbox 360 mainboards to harvest polymers from, as well as a few AM2/AM3 junk boards to get more polys from. The coolers be chonkers tho!

Those capacitors next to those coolers sure do seem to be at an odd angle.

weedeewee wrote on 2023-12-29, 11:46:

Those capacitors next to those coolers sure do seem to be at an odd angle.

Yeah, that's because of the coolers. Once I get some polys there it's not gonna be an issue anymore.

I grabbed these recently
A pentium 2 Dell Dimension. Has a built in ati 3d something or other. its 350 mhz
The other computer is a pentium 4 2.4 ghz . It had an ati powered radeon VL 64 mb card, but I pulled it out and put in a beefier ati x1600 with 256 mb

I also found those two hard drives. Maxtors one is 30 GB and the other is 10. both work well.

The last thrift shop visit of the year did not disappoint!

Between the rubbishy Pentium 4 laptops, one lonely 1998 Toshiba Satellite Pro with its charger sat on the shelve for 15 euros, marked as tested and working.
It's a 470CDT, with a Pentium 200MMX, 32MB of RAM and a 2.1GB hard drive. It's quite a nice unit for DOS gaming, as lower resolutions are displayed without stretching on the active matrix display, and the audio being handled by a Yamaha OPL3-SAx chip. For that price, I couldn't say no.

The CD-ROM drive ended up being broken, but I swapped the ATAPI drive with a similar age Toshiba 24X drive from a Dell Latitude CPi laptop, which worked fine after performing a small solder bridge mod on the ATAPI connector board, as described here in a different VOGONS thread.

What's crazy is that the battery still holds a decent charge, and it's not the first Toshiba Satellite of this age I've had that still does (another thrift shop Toshiba CDT from the 300 series).
I'm used to lithium ions dying completely within the decade, this battery was presumably made when I was still in the womb and it just works!

Then, browsing the CDs, I found some nice classic PC CD-ROM games, at 50 cents per disc (two disc games thus costing 1 euro).
Pretty satisfied with the haul 😁