Still tinkering away with my Socket AM2 Hackintosh. I had a couple of apps that would not run, so decided to experiment with an alternative boot Kernel. On the new kernel those apps sprung to life nicely, but then Firefox & Final Cut Pro both stopped working. 😠 Will have to do some further research & experiment more with other available kernels for OS X 10.6.8.

Those non-working apps aren't particularly crucial anyway, just crappy Epson Scanner software that isn't really needed. Everything else seems to run fine.

I'd have probably done more today, but then I also installed Doom 3 on this Hackintosh. Cranked the settings up to Ultra and ended up playing that instead. 🤣

Fixed the hole in the Amiga case, using cut out pieces of plastic and super glue. Finished it off, by painting it with paint, made from original Amiga500 case and acetone. Covers it well, and later I need to smooth it out using sandpaper. Case fixed.... 😜

Then I installed a kickstart switcher, that has 1.3 and 3.1 in one chip. Drilled a hole for the contact in the side of the bottom part of the case. That is below the eject button, and placed a bit fúrther back towards the end of the case. Used an original 2-way contact from the 80's. Much more durable than modern flimsy ones. This baby need a 6mm hole and not a 4mm hole.

Now it is ready for installation of the Terrible Fire TF-530 accelerator card. And a harddrive. I will still be able to run old games, that require kickstart 1.3 and I will have access to a harddrive internally.

tried and failed to install windows 98 on this dell I picked up.

optical drive is toast or something I gotta try to take a look inside or find a replacement IDE locally 🤣.....

Neco wrote:

tried and failed to install windows 98 on this dell I picked up.

optical drive is toast or something I gotta try to take a look inside or find a replacement IDE locally 🤣.....

Same issue I had with my Dell Deskpro EN; the original drive was simply dead and my replacement drive just dies in mid use (keeps spinning with no activity light) and the bios cant detect it until the ide cable is unplugged and replugged.. Thinking it may be the cable since the original drive was also intermittently not detected (among other more fatal issues) so I am going back with another drive and a cable tonight..

stamasd wrote:

Trying to figure out how the hell the Wyse 286 AT clone I've been working on keeps time. There is no battery anywhere on the board. When the computer is off, there is no voltage coming from the power supply through any of the leads. There is no battery and nothing remotely related to timekeeping inside the special power supply - opened it recently, looks in very good condition with no capacitors bulging etc but nothing out of the ordinary either. And yet with the system turned off, it keeps time and date for days in a row. And this system was made in the 1980s. Scratching my head.

Wild guess something analogous to but not branded as a Dallas integrated clock and battery?

Supercapacitors strike me as unlikely because their claim to fame is higher output than batteries, but longer life than caps. Would seem a very bad fit for a clock battery. On the other hand, it is *possible*.

Well, I did get part of a computer today, and tested a couple of video cards;

Well, that's not so exciting, it's just a TNT2.

That's a little better, it's a Visiontek Geforce3. But wait, what's that at the top?

Why, it's RDRAM!

Unfortunately I can't test it. The new board is my only RDRAM board, and the mount for the cooler is broken. Also, they stole the ATX power supply, which had the P6 3.3/5V connector, and I Don't Have One Of Those.

I may think about trying to build a P6 connector into an ATX PSU, or, less fun, find an older ATX supply with the extra connector.

ew RDRAM

oeuvre wrote:

ew it's Pentium 4.

Fixed that for you.

xjas wrote:

Vegge wrote:

Just finished cleaning this up: Thinking of putting it in my latest build: […]
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Just finished cleaning this up:
Thinking of putting it in my latest build:

The attachment IMG_0966s.jpg is no longer available

But I'm not sure, might end up in one of my other machines. 😕

What is that black thing covering the AGP slot? GPU holder? Almost looks like a hard card.

Yeah, part of the GPU to hold it up.

I had some free time last night, so I spent some time poking around in the dead 286 I picked up last week.

Yaay

Now I just have to find a BIOS disk 😵

Try Gsetup.exe http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/5170/setup/5170_gsetup.htm

Upgraded my Pentium 3 machine from my Asus P3B-F Slot 1 motherboard with an 800MHz Slot 1 P3 to an Asus TUSL2-C Tualatin-compatible Socket 370 motherboard with the 1.4GHz S370 PIII-S.

I used a different hard drive for the new Windows 98SE installation, just in case I wanted to put the old setup back together or needed to pull data I had forgotten to pull off from the old one (which I in fact had to do). This meant that I went from my 120GB WD SATA HDD to a very similarly specced 80GB Seagate SATA HDD. The upgrade also meant a decrease in RAM, down from 512MB, since the largest, nicest stick of PC133 SDRAM I had was a Kingston 256MB stick, so until I get more money to buy either a duplicate stick or just buy a bigger capacity version of the same stick, this system will run with 256MB (although I know that's still plenty in such a system).

The rest, however, remained the same. Same expansion cards (minus the Sound Blaster AWE64, since this motherboard doesn't have an ISA slot, so no perfect DOS compatibility here), same optical and Gotek floppy drive, and same PSU. Essentially all I did was swap the motherboard + CPU, RAM, and HDD.

I will say, games such as NFS3 and NFS4, even with maybe slightly higher detail settings, felt smoother overall. Maybe it's just me. But I no doubt know that that 600MHz increase from the 800MHz S1 P3 to this Tualatin king of a CPU, in addition to the faster RAM (and maybe faster storage I/0? Don't know off the top of my head), has to be making some difference.

Oh, and I haven't yet bothered to overclock the Voodoo3 back to 180MHz yet. Bet I'll definitely feel something more then. 😀

I was telling my wife that I found this little soldering iron in the local ads that I was going to pick up. So I go, "guess what I'm getting?". She replies "It's another old laptop, isn't it!"

So I told her it was a soldering iron I was potentially gonna use ON some of my old laptops. She then informed me she was unsurprised, because I "always get that look" when it's about old computers 😁

the_ultra_code wrote:

Upgraded my Pentium 3 machine from my Asus P3B-F Slot 1 motherboard with an 800MHz Slot 1 P3 to an Asus TUSL2-C Tualatin-compatible Socket 370 motherboard with the 1.4GHz S370 PIII-S.

I read the entire thing with interest.. I'm in the process of converting my Slot 1 P3-700 system into a Socket 370 Celeron 1000A@1330 so I found it really fascinating. I have a GeForce 2 GTS in my Slot 1 build right now, I will upgrade to a GF3 Ti200 for the Tualatin build. Don't you find the Voodoo 3 restrictively slow for such a build? I feel it really shines in slower (300-450 Mhz) Slot-1 builds, but gets seriously outclassed beyond that..

appiah4 wrote:

the_ultra_code wrote:

Upgraded my Pentium 3 machine from my Asus P3B-F Slot 1 motherboard with an 800MHz Slot 1 P3 to an Asus TUSL2-C Tualatin-compatible Socket 370 motherboard with the 1.4GHz S370 PIII-S.

I read the entire thing with interest.. I'm in the process of converting my Slot 1 P3-700 system into a Socket 370 Celeron 1000A@1330 so I found it really fascinating. I have a GeForce 2 GTS in my Slot 1 build right now, I will upgrade to a GF3 Ti200 for the Tualatin build. Don't you find the Voodoo 3 restrictively slow for such a build? I feel it really shines in slower (300-450 Mhz) Slot-1 builds, but gets seriously outclassed beyond that..

Oh, yeah, it's "slow" alright. 🤣

I got the Voodoo3 back when they were cheap a year ago on Philscomputerlab's recommendation for being an all-around AGP GPU for both DOS and well into the Win9X era, and since the focus of the PC was an all-around DOS/Win9X first-retro-build of a PC, it fit the bill. Of course. by the time you reach NFS3 at 1280x1024, you start to notice its limitations, and that sucks, since I mostly played Win9x games on the PC, with the occasional DOOM or Tomb Raider session.

However, with the introduction of my Pentium 1 rig (which, sadly, the 2D PCI card has now been severely hurt by either a non-spec passthrough cable, the Voodoo1 I got for the system, or both, so it is out-of-order for now), DOS gaming didn't have to be done on this machine anymore, and if I felt the desire for utmost convenience, I could always just use DOSBox or source ports (which I am planning to do with some games such as DOOM). So, I felt like the best thing to do for this system is to specialize it further: make it the best early-mid Win9x PC I could with Glide support. I was planning to just upgrade the CPU using a slocket, but since it became a pain and I already had the Asus TUSL2-C motherboard and 1.4GHz PIII-S, I thought I would just go full-in, ditching all "native" DOS compatibility for best near-late Win9x performance.

The Voodoo3 at this point is just a stop-gap. I want to go ahead and upgrade it to either a working Voodoo5 or, if it's a better deal, a Voodoo4 (if I can find one), to really make this build what it should be. The first Voodoo5 I got my hands on, well, it didn't make it (whether it was my fault or not, it's debatable). I could go ahead and throw in a Nvidia GeForce FX 5900XT I have lying around and do Glide emulation, but, well, A) the CPU isn't the best for that (a Pentium 4 would be better, I think), B) it would kinda be a bit of a pain to get the Glide emulation to work on a game-by-game basis, IMO (I'm already tired of troubleshooting retro PCs - just want to make things as plug-'n-play as possible), and C) from what I heard, the emulated Glide graphics just doesn't look "the same" as natively-rendered Glide graphics. Now I could just run all of the Glide games I want to run on my Pentium 4 machine which has an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and a 3.4GHz Prescott P4 in it (it'll have a Nvidia GeForce 6800GS shortly 😀 ), but, well, IDK, would kind of reduce the point of the P3 system a bit, no? 😀

Actually, I would like to make an edit: regarding my point B), I know that Philscomputerlab did a video on using nGlide, but does nGlide work system wide without the need to have to individually patch every single game with some nGlide wrapper file, or will some games need an additional file to work with nGlide?

the_ultra_code, this is really similar to what I'm doing! I have a Pentium build for DOS and Voodoo 1 games and a Pentium 3 build for Windows 98 with Voodoo 5. The two are united by a cheap KVM switch that works really well and saves me the hassle of constantly changing cables.

I believe Voodoo 5 is definitely a must have for a build like this — you basically get a machine that can run most Glide games at high resolutions natively. Sure, a lot of games from early 00s could benefit from a faster GeForce card, but I feel like most of those games can be usually be run on modern systems with better results. But that's just me — there are certainly people who believe that even Windows XP games need a period correct system.

jheronimus wrote:

the_ultra_code, this is really similar to what I'm doing! I have a Pentium build for DOS and Voodoo 1 games and a Pentium 3 build for Windows 98 with Voodoo 5. The two are united by a cheap KVM switch that works really well and saves me the hassle of constantly changing cables.

I believe Voodoo 5 is definitely a must have for a build like this — you basically get a machine that can run most Glide games at high resolutions natively. Sure, a lot of games from early 00s could benefit from a faster GeForce card, but I feel like most of those games can be usually be run on modern systems with better results. But that's just me — there are certainly people who believe that even Windows XP games need a period correct system.

Cool! Yeah, same thoughts exactly.

When it comes to XP, though, I semi-agree. While I try to run some very early XP games on my Pentium 4 system, the rest I'll run on my new OP XP machine (now an i7-3770k system that's still a work in progress) just for convenience and raw, insane performance. Imagine Halo: CE or F.E.A.R. at max settings at 1440p. I could easily get over 400 fps in NFS Hot Pursuit 2 under the XP install on my current i7-870 machine with a 780 ti. 😜

the_ultra_code wrote:

Received a XpertVision Nvidia GeForce 6800 GS (says in the V-BIOS that it's a "GTS" `\_ :-| _/` ) from Hungary, shipped in one […]
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Received a XpertVision Nvidia GeForce 6800 GS (says in the V-BIOS that it's a "GTS" `\_ 😐 _/` ) from Hungary, shipped in one of the most ghetto put-together boxes I have seen with a dozen+ variously-sized foam blocks; thankfully, though, the seller put the GPU in an anti-static bag - good on him (must have it rough over there, but hey, it worked 🤣 ). Was filthy AF, so spent an hour or two carefully taking it completely apart and cleaning it, you know the drill. Also added some thermal tape between the memory heatsinks and the memory chips, because there wasn't any there beforehand, and I feel that bare contact isn't the most efficient means of heat transfer.

Also has a strange retention clip mechanism for the GPU cooler that I have never seen before - completely screwless.

Good news is, though, it works! It's nice for a change to receive a GPU that works. 😀

So, I just went ahead and threw my 6800 GS (or GTS as mentioned in the GPU's BIOS) into my Pentium 4 system, and tried to install Nvidia's official 81.98, 77.72, and the unofficial 82.69, and every single time I get this message:

I want to die at this point. 😜

I'm guessing that the right string ID isn't included in any of the drivers, no? If I go ahead and add the string "6800 GTS" into the graphic driver's .inf file, would that work?

the_ultra_code wrote:

So, I just went ahead and threw my 6800 GS (or GTS as mentioned in the GPU's BIOS) into my Pentium 4 system, and tried to instal […]
Show full quote

So, I just went ahead and threw my 6800 GS (or GTS as mentioned in the GPU's BIOS) into my Pentium 4 system, and tried to install Nvidia's official 81.98, 77.72, and the unofficial 82.69, and every single time I get this message:

I want to die at this point. 😜

I'm guessing that the right string ID isn't included in any of the drivers, no? If I go ahead and add the string "6800 GTS" into the graphic driver's .inf file, would that work?

I remember having problems with the 6800 AGP in Win98 in the past and had to use a modded driver. I did a quick search and found this: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/6800gs-81-9 … drivers.276813/ and then this: http://www.mdgx.com/files/nv8269.php which IIRC is the driver I used and worked.

But you say that won't work either? Bizarre. can you post the PCI ID of the device as it appears in device manager?

the_ultra_code wrote:

So, I just went ahead and threw my 6800 GS (or GTS as mentioned in the GPU's BIOS) into my Pentium 4 system, and tried to instal […]
Show full quote

So, I just went ahead and threw my 6800 GS (or GTS as mentioned in the GPU's BIOS) into my Pentium 4 system, and tried to install Nvidia's official 81.98, 77.72, and the unofficial 82.69, and every single time I get this message:

I want to die at this point. 😜

I'm guessing that the right string ID isn't included in any of the drivers, no? If I go ahead and add the string "6800 GTS" into the graphic driver's .inf file, would that work?

My GeForce 6200 PCI card does the same thing in my AMD Sempron system, except it works in my Windows XP machine without issues.

stamasd wrote:

the_ultra_code wrote:

So, I just went ahead and threw my 6800 GS (or GTS as mentioned in the GPU's BIOS) into my Pentium 4 system, and tried to instal […]
Show full quote

So, I just went ahead and threw my 6800 GS (or GTS as mentioned in the GPU's BIOS) into my Pentium 4 system, and tried to install Nvidia's official 81.98, 77.72, and the unofficial 82.69, and every single time I get this message:

I want to die at this point. 😜

I'm guessing that the right string ID isn't included in any of the drivers, no? If I go ahead and add the string "6800 GTS" into the graphic driver's .inf file, would that work?

I remember having problems with the 6800 AGP in Win98 in the past and had to use a modded driver. I did a quick search and found this: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/6800gs-81-9 … drivers.276813/ and then this: http://www.mdgx.com/files/nv8269.php which IIRC is the driver I used and worked.

But you say that won't work either? Bizarre. can you post the PCI ID of the device as it appears in device manager?

I'm not sure I can provide that. All I have for the GPU in the Device Manager is a driver titled "Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA)", and in there is nothing at all mentioned in any of the driver details regarding a "PCI ID".

It's funny - hwinfo32 "detects" the GPU, calling it a "Nvidia GeForce 6800 GS AGP; BRO2; AGP 8x".

Also, I don't know if this piece of information is important, but when I took apart the GPU, I noticed what looked like a bridge-chip between the GPU die and the AGP interface on the card.