I'm so happy, yesterday I recapped the NVATI video card that had suspicious bulging caps in the place where I study PC Repair and it works great :3

To make the card work I did bring from home my old MSI K7N2G paired with an Athlon 2600+ and 256 MB of RAM just for testing purposes

Also, what kind of drivers should I use?? The normal ATI ones or the Omega ones?? owo

wiretap wrote:

Took the monitor out of my Dash OPS-1000 for those interested.. It's an Omnivision LP05: http://www.omnivisionusa.com/Industrial-LCD-C … ofile-kit-.html
Graphics card is a Tamarack TD3088A5 Hercules clone. But the monitor appears to be in great shape. 😀

So f***g jealous you have no idea.

the_ultra_code wrote:

So, I just contacted Microsoft support, and was able to get in contact with a human representative, and asked him what is the current status of Microsoft's self-reactivation services for XP, and it turns out that Microsoft just recently killed that whole avenue of reactivation, so now the only way to reactivate Windows is to reinstall the OS. AYFKM!

*sigh* Welp, I have my work cut-out for me, since this machine dual-boots Win98SE and XP. It would be easier to reinstall both OSes than to just try to reinstall XP. Besides, I'd rather have a working 6000 series Nvidia GPU ready and installed in the system before I reinstall XP, so this sh*t doesn't happen again.

A warning for all.

So, something interesting happened. I'm trying to return that 6800GS that I spoke about, and the seller wanted me to run 3DMark03 and report back, so I went ahead and threw the card back it and booted up XP.

XP said that I had to re-activate Windows in order to log in, so I tried again for the millionth time. This time, however, the PC wasn't connected to the Internet, because I had not plugged the Ethernet cable back into the PC, so it brought me to a network configuration screen. I plugged back in the Ethernet cable, select "auto-detect settings" (paraphrasing here), hit "Next" and... it activated just fine. 😐

I was both happy and confused. If Microsoft said that they stopped supporting reactivation, then how did XP reactivate itself?

Tested some BIOS files on two of my boards:

Soyo SY-5VA on Biostar MB-8500TVX-A Rev2.3
Amptron PM9900D (PCCHIPS M577) w/ 128GB patch on LuckyStar 5MVP3 Rev2.1

Results were both POST'd successfully!! The Amptron BIOS did complain about "Unknown Flash Chip" but otherwise POST'd just fine. The Soyo BIOS did POST fine and just complained of a CMOS checksum error. (of course, since the CMOS saved was for the original AMI BIOS the Biostar board had)

By the way, anybody with a PCCHIPS M577, can you please either peel the stickers and tell me what flash chip it uses? Or alternatively run Uniflash 1.40 and report back what flash chip it finds. This would help in tracking down what flash chips the BIOS supports and upload it here for L.S 5MVP3 Rev2.1 users.

Had some parts lying around so I cobbled together this.

Antec P100 ATX case
Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D 380W ATX power supply
Dell Inspiron 530 mATX motherboard
Intel 2.4GHz Q6600 Quad Core processor
4GB DDR2 RAM (4x1GB)
AMD FirePro V3900 1GB PCIe video card
5.25" DVD/RW drive
Samsung PM851 128GB SSD
Hitachi 320GB 7200RPM hard drive
Windows XP

dat ass

Guts

Other side of case

Motherboard view

PCIe + PCI slots

Samsung SSD

AMD FirePro

Other side of video card

BIOS screen

Windows XP desktop

Programs & specs

Fancy theme you got there. Almost looks like the XP Media Center 2005 edition theme. Did XP activate without issues?

reading "PCI System Architecture" which I received today. No missing pages. 3rd edition.

now the only missing pieces for next project are

* "Writing DOS device drivers" (from any author)
* Karen Hazzah "Writing Windows VxDs and Device Drivers".

Interesting. I need to find a copy of Writing Windows VxDs and Device Drivers so I can make a SoftMPU driver for Windows 9x.

oeuvre wrote:

Had some parts lying around so I cobbled together this. ... https://i.imgur.com/45PMRZ0t.jpg […]
Show full quote

Had some parts lying around so I cobbled together this.
...

Windows XP desktop

Excellent choice on the wallpaper and Windows visual style. My Dell Dimension 4600 (running Windows XP) has the exact same theme as your rig. I actually use this wallpaper on the majority of my Dell computers.

I have been e-mailing back and forth with an employee at Fractal Design, inquiring about the possibility of shoehorning AT motherboards inside of their cases. What started as a mere inquiry now has one of their managers giving me advice, as he's also in the process of working on 2-3 legacy systems inside some of their cases. Pretty awesome, and he's super enthusiastic! It's great to work with someone so clearly excited about projects like this. 😀

Next thing is to bundle up a couple of my old AT motherboards and take them to the local computer store I deal with the most, to see if I can do a couple test fits. 😀

That sounds awesome, good luck! 😀

Thallanor wrote:

I have been e-mailing back and forth with an employee at Fractal Design, inquiring about the possibility of shoehorning AT motherboards inside of their cases. What started as a mere inquiry now has one of their managers giving me advice, as he's also in the process of working on 2-3 legacy systems inside some of their cases. Pretty awesome, and he's super enthusiastic! It's great to work with someone so clearly excited about projects like this. 😀

Next thing is to bundle up a couple of my old AT motherboards and take them to the local computer store I deal with the most, to see if I can do a couple test fits. 😀

Now that sounds neat!

Thanks to IKEA, I organised my retrocave. No more PC's on the floor except 5 :p

Murugan wrote:

Now that sounds neat! […]
Show full quote

Thallanor wrote:

I have been e-mailing back and forth with an employee at Fractal Design, inquiring about the possibility of shoehorning AT motherboards inside of their cases. What started as a mere inquiry now has one of their managers giving me advice, as he's also in the process of working on 2-3 legacy systems inside some of their cases. Pretty awesome, and he's super enthusiastic! It's great to work with someone so clearly excited about projects like this. 😀

Next thing is to bundle up a couple of my old AT motherboards and take them to the local computer store I deal with the most, to see if I can do a couple test fits. 😀

Now that sounds neat!

Thanks to IKEA, I organised my retrocave. No more PC's on the floor except 5 :p

Holy mother of Joseph! That's a sh*t-ton of PCs!

Must've been a nightmare to organize. Hats off to you.

I really have too much 🙁
And still a few on my to do list pfffff.
Yeah it was a pain to make it all fit.
It will be a bigger pain when I buy a house and will need to move it all :p

Murugan wrote:

I really have too much :( And still a few on my to do list pfffff. Yeah it was a pain to make it all fit. It will be a bigger pa […]
Show full quote

I really have too much 🙁
And still a few on my to do list pfffff.
Yeah it was a pain to make it all fit.
It will be a bigger pain when I buy a house and will need to move it all :p

Yikes. 🤣

Murugan wrote:

Now that sounds neat! […]
Show full quote

Thallanor wrote:

I have been e-mailing back and forth with an employee at Fractal Design, inquiring about the possibility of shoehorning AT motherboards inside of their cases. What started as a mere inquiry now has one of their managers giving me advice, as he's also in the process of working on 2-3 legacy systems inside some of their cases. Pretty awesome, and he's super enthusiastic! It's great to work with someone so clearly excited about projects like this. 😀

Next thing is to bundle up a couple of my old AT motherboards and take them to the local computer store I deal with the most, to see if I can do a couple test fits. 😀

Now that sounds neat!

Thanks to IKEA, I organised my retrocave. No more PC's on the floor except 5 :p

I hope you have a shade for that window. Otherwise, I see those cases yellowing in a few years....

Not yet. Need to fix that but i am not planning on staying here for years.

Murugan wrote:

Now that sounds neat!

Thanks to IKEA, I organised my retrocave. No more PC's on the floor except 5 :p

Very nice; it looks great! 😀

tegrady wrote:

I hope you have a shade for that window. Otherwise, I see those cases yellowing in a few years....

I remember The 8-Bit Guy putting a UV-filter on the window of his museum room with pretty good results in the following video https://youtu.be/5Qmn7w3Nc68 😀

Not exactly today but yesterday: that trick to install a clean installation of Windows Vista from an upgrade disc still works! I'm using it for my dream childhood rig with Portal, Supreme Commander, Oblivion, and some other late 2000's PC games.

Finally got around to messing with a potentially fantastic retro laptop. Weighing in at a whopping 8.8 pounds, with a new sticker price of $3,000! May I introduce the Dell Inspiron 7000. This machine rocks a truly stunning P2 300mhz, a BX based motherboard, and 64mb 66mhz EDO onboard. Got that up to 256mb by filling in the empty slots with a 64mb and 128. The video chip is a Rage 3D LT and the audio is a ESS Maestro 2.

Scrounged around and found a Dell 98se disc in my friend's basement + keycode and spent a couple hours setting it up, just need to go online and download the video and audio drivers from Dell.