PcBytes wrote on 2023-08-27, 18:40:

I have a Slot 1 440LX mobo as well (and Socket3 also has the same board as me, except it's marked EX), and it's the Zida-Tomato LX98-AT.

There was also very cheap and rock solid Zida ZX98. I modded a couple to Tualatin back in the day, 366@550 with good cpu no problem.

dormcat wrote on 2023-08-27, 18:05:

PcBytes wrote on 2023-08-27, 07:52:

No pics because it needs surgery first, but got a LuckyTech P6VBX7. If the TRW wants hi-res photos of it as is, let me know and I'll take some as soon as I get home.

Socket 370 on Baby-AT form factor? Wow, I haven't seen one in my lifetime. 😃 Learning new stuff everyday.

There's even Socket A and Socket 478 Baby AT boards on theretroweb.

Some even with AT power supply connectors 😯

dormcat wrote on 2023-08-27, 18:05:

PcBytes wrote on 2023-08-27, 07:52:

No pics because it needs surgery first, but got a LuckyTech P6VBX7. If the TRW wants hi-res photos of it as is, let me know and I'll take some as soon as I get home.

Socket 370 on Baby-AT form factor? Wow, I haven't seen one in my lifetime. 😃 Learning new stuff everyday.

I had a couple of these boards years ago. I used a Lin Lin Tualatin adapter (still cheap and available at the time) and a 1.2 Ghz Tualeron with one of them. It was the fastest AT computer I ever had.
http://www.motherboard.cz/mb/epox/EP-V370B.htm

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-08-27, 19:36:

dormcat wrote on 2023-08-27, 18:05:

PcBytes wrote on 2023-08-27, 07:52:

No pics because it needs surgery first, but got a LuckyTech P6VBX7. If the TRW wants hi-res photos of it as is, let me know and I'll take some as soon as I get home.

Socket 370 on Baby-AT form factor? Wow, I haven't seen one in my lifetime. 😃 Learning new stuff everyday.

I had a couple of these boards years ago. I used a Lin Lin Tualatin adapter (still cheap and available at the time) and a 1.2 Ghz Tualeron with one of them. It was the fastest AT computer I ever had.
http://www.motherboard.cz/mb/epox/EP-V370B.htm

I'm running a 733MHz Celeron in my Zida LX98 on an MSI MS-6905 slotket. Surprisingly fast and stable board. It's also jumperless, and uses the BIOS to configure CPU speed and voltage similar to Abit SoftMenu.
This little board surprised me so much that I'm actively looking for i440ZX versions - Zida ZX98-AT or ZX98-CT as they support FSB100 but keep all the same features as the ZX (jumperless softmenu, AT form factor).

I also have a couple of Acorp socket 370 AT boards that work pretty well, but they lack in features compared to the Zida.

PcBytes wrote on 2023-08-27, 18:40:

I have a Slot 1 440LX mobo as well (and Socket3 also has the same board as me, except it's marked EX), and it's the Zida-Tomato LX98-AT.

We've been using this board, the whole system in fact, restored it, backed up the hard disk drives and replaced them with a single 20GB seagate, then upgraded the CPU to the aforementioned 733MHz Celeron and the video card to a Voodoo 3 3000. It's gone trough several 6-9 hour long lan parties so far with no issues whatsoever. We lost one of our socket A builds during a Quake 2 session (blown mosfet) and the backup Tualeron build decided it doesn't want to play nice with the Aureal Vortex 2 I had installed in it (despite the fact it worked fine a couple of months ago) so I decided to try this PC instead of the backup. Didn't think it was going to be that stable. It's still in the gaming room setup on the lan party desks. My brother in law now prefers this build since his dad apparently had a PC with the exact same AT case back in the day, also an AT Pentium II - possibly put together by the same company (sprint computers).

I picked up a couple of 5900XTs. I like the blue and gold, and one of them has already been installed into a matching motherboard for a Pentium 4 build. The other has been testing 'The Wheel of Time' against a Voodoo5 in a Tualatin Pentium III-S build.

dormcat wrote on 2023-08-27, 18:05:

PcBytes wrote on 2023-08-27, 07:52:

No pics because it needs surgery first, but got a LuckyTech P6VBX7. If the TRW wants hi-res photos of it as is, let me know and I'll take some as soon as I get home.

Socket 370 on Baby-AT form factor? Wow, I haven't seen one in my lifetime. 😃 Learning new stuff everyday.

There are many:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/?showIma … 5&cpuSocket1=10

lawyerpepper wrote on 2023-08-24, 20:19:

IMG_1227.jpgNew Dell QuietKey PS/2 keyboard - as far as I can tell, it's never been plugged in to anything:

I have one of these on the computer I built for my parents, and in retrospect, it's a pretty nice keyboard.

And, as promised, some photos for the TRW, of the recent LuckyTech P6VBX7.

appiah4 wrote on 2023-08-24, 11:50:

I don't buy much anymore, and in particular I try not to buy motherboards because they take up so much space. But then, these p […]
Show full quote

I don't buy much anymore, and in particular I try not to buy motherboards because they take up so much space. But then, these popped up:

ASUS PI-XP6NP5.jpg

MSI 694D Pro.jpg

And I had to grab them both for 20 bucks each, including the CPUs.

Intel Pentium Pro 200.jpg

Intel Pentium III 866 (B).jpg

I have another Pentium III 866 but it is not an SL4MD (866/256/133/1.7V), but rather an SL43J (866/256/133/1.65V - would they work as a pair on this board and do I need to modify it in any way (remove a terminator resistor from the socket etc?) to do that?

The Socket 8 board has a curious brown stain on the chipset and I hope it is not a burn mark, but we will see..

Both boards work just fine, tested to POST. I was particularly scared about the Socket 8 board due to the weird stain on the northbridge but apparently it's not a burn mark..

I still don't know anything about running the 694D Pro with dual P3s. I'd be happy if anyone with experience lets me know whether:

a) I need exact matching (same SL code) Pentium IIIs or same FSBxMultipler will be fine
b) I need to do anything (ie. add/remove a terminator resistor?) before I install the second CPU

appiah4 wrote on 2023-08-29, 07:03:

I still don't know anything about running the 694D Pro with dual P3s. I'd be happy if anyone with experience lets me know whether:

a) I need exact matching (same SL code) Pentium IIIs or same FSBxMultipler will be fine
b) I need to do anything (ie. add/remove a terminator resistor?) before I install the second CPU

a) I think there was some compatibility matrix in a datasheet from Intel regarding what revision works with what revision in multiprocessor mode. Would have to dig a bit to find it again. As far as I remember matching speed/FSB will mostly be sufficient.

b) For single CPU operation there would be a "terminator PCB" needed in the second socket "simulating" the other CPU (a.k.a. terminating all the bus signals to avoid signal reflections). Since there's non in the second socket placing another CPU in it should be all that's needed.

Reminder: all above is theoretical knowledge since I do not own/have never used a dual socket board. Others here may confirm (or not).

Got a Precision T7500 with dual X5670 and a whopping 96 GB of DDR3. I always wanted a Skulltrail set, and this is even better, with cooler DDR3 and fully stacked. The case weighs about half an Asian elephant but that'll keep the house together in case of WW3. At 75 euro, I couldn't resist. It'll have XP, 7 and a Manjaro Installation on seperate SSD's using the extra SAS/SATA3 controller I got with it.

Just got this bundle for 20€.

Gigabyte 7VT600P-RZ VIA KT600 Socket A motherboard. Not the most exiting Socket A mb ever released, but it is one of the last boards, at least from Gigabyte, for Socket A platform. It boasts Rubycon caps all over and seller from local retrocomputing FB group said that it seems to be fully working.

It has beefy Akasa cooler with large copper plate and under it 2400+ Sempron. There is a mix of 2x512MB RAM sticks installed, other is TwinMOS, other I couldn't figure out immediately.

Graphics card is Gainward Geforece TI4800SE, which means that it is practically TI4400 with 128MB and quite useless AGP 8X.

I think overall a pretty nice deal for the money.

Edit: about caps, I meant VRM caps, which are all Rubycon. Rest is OST.

Um... only the VRM caps would be Rubycon on those. Expect the rest to be OST RLX or RLS in black/gold sleeving.

PcBytes wrote on 2023-08-29, 16:17:

Um... only the VRM caps would be Rubycon on those. Expect the rest to be OST RLX or RLS in black/gold sleeving.

Yeah, I meant for VRM caps, should’ve been more specific. Other stuff is indeed different OST stuff. It is still a step up from my EpoX which had few Sanyos, but rest of the VRM were GSC LE and RE.

Try ECS, where every single cap is a G-Luxon 🤣

I bought this card as a repair project. The seller described a garbled video issue and showed pictures of it.
I was struck by how discrete everything is. Everything should be open to probing and troubleshooting, and any soldering shouldn't be too difficult. A lot of the parts are socketed. The only surface mounted part is the GPU, and even that has real pins on it, so even if there was a problem with that chip at least it would be easy to reflow the pins.
From some quick research the WD90C30 appears to be a good chip, and I just like how old fashioned this particular card is. It's from an age when things were repairable.

Well damnit, it's not broken. I was all geared up to troubleshoot it but it just works fine for me. Buzzkill.

Only thing wrong is it has a strong case of the vertical "jailbars" effect in 320x200 VGA mode on my LCD, where the luminance seems to fade up and down in columns as you move across the screen. That's a common problem with using LCD monitors on an old card like this. The typical explanation is the monitor not sampling the video signal at the correct rate, so in theory it's not a problem with the card. For some reason some cards don't have this problem, though. I have a CL-GD5426 that displays a great picture without this issue on the same monitor.

I love that the tantalum 10uF capacitors are blood red, like a warning of their violent nature. I might try replacing those with bigger electrolytics, just in case there's some sort of power sag issue involved. Not sure how big they should be though. I guess the cap(s) near the RAMDAC are worth looking at anyway.

appiah4 wrote on 2023-08-29, 07:03:

Both boards work just fine, tested to POST. I was particularly scared about the Socket 8 board due to the weird stain on the no […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote on 2023-08-24, 11:50:

I don't buy much anymore, and in particular I try not to buy motherboards because they take up so much space. But then, these p […]
Show full quote

I don't buy much anymore, and in particular I try not to buy motherboards because they take up so much space. But then, these popped up:

ASUS PI-XP6NP5.jpg

MSI 694D Pro.jpg

And I had to grab them both for 20 bucks each, including the CPUs.

Intel Pentium Pro 200.jpg

Intel Pentium III 866 (B).jpg

I have another Pentium III 866 but it is not an SL4MD (866/256/133/1.7V), but rather an SL43J (866/256/133/1.65V - would they work as a pair on this board and do I need to modify it in any way (remove a terminator resistor from the socket etc?) to do that?

The Socket 8 board has a curious brown stain on the chipset and I hope it is not a burn mark, but we will see..

Both boards work just fine, tested to POST. I was particularly scared about the Socket 8 board due to the weird stain on the northbridge but apparently it's not a burn mark..

ASUS PI-XP6NP5 POST.jpg

I still don't know anything about running the 694D Pro with dual P3s. I'd be happy if anyone with experience lets me know whether:

a) I need exact matching (same SL code) Pentium IIIs or same FSBxMultipler will be fine
b) I need to do anything (ie. add/remove a terminator resistor?) before I install the second CPU

Yes their S-Spec codes do need to match for it to be stable. It might or might not work with a mismatch. It depends on the CPUs and how much their are mismatched compared to each other.
Leave the socket terminator in there until you get a matching CPU... It will run the Coppermine core but doesnt have the VRMs to run the Tualatin core CPUs. But a paif 1GHz PIIIs can be quite nice with OS and software of the time.
Its a good board, its one of the few that combines features with stable preformance...
I mean the Acorp 6A815EPD was a dual CPU that I had but it could only use 512Mb of RAM which wasnt enough. Then there is my Supermicro Super P3TDE6 which is an amazingly stable board but its AGP support isnt great. But as I use it as a server it doesnt really matter, where are the lack of RAM in the 6A815EPD was a problem.
The 684D Pro has stable AGP with enough RAM supported to make it decent. Not great but decent because it only has 32bit PCI slots, and most server grade PCI devices of the time were 64bit and PCI-X cards.

I was in the neighborhood of my local computer store and today's find was a five dollar, 512 megabyte AGP 7600 GS. So far it is working perfectly, and slightly outscored my slightly overclocked Ti 4600 in 3D 2001 in my Soyo Dragon system. This was after I cleaned it, replaced the thermal paste, and lubricated the fan's bearing.

Edit: I spoke too soon, after some benchmarking and game play, it died. The last one of these I ended up with did exactly the same, I guess it's typical for video cards from around this time. Easy come, easy go.

I believe the 7000 series was around the time that NVIDIA was switching to ROHS solder. All of the 8000 series laptop chips are affected by a severe failure rate as a result.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-08-30, 07:35:

I believe the 7000 series was around the time that NVIDIA was switching to ROHS solder. All of the 8000 series laptop chips are affected by a severe failure rate as a result.

Some 7000 GPUs suffer from bump gate too, mostly the later model ones.