Mister Xiado wrote:

Got an AMD K6-2 400 in the mail, and when I took the heat sink off of my 300 to replace it, what did I see, but 500 engraved on it. Money wasted, as I only have one Socket 7 board, my first computer. The board (Biostar M5ATB) seems to only support up to 450 without causing chaos on the PCI bus, so this is borderline Gift of the Magi. Ordered some more RAM for it, but I have no idea what else to do with it, since I don't really play games anymore, and I've already made icons that will work in Win9X and 2K+, although that was over a decade ago.

Those cpus should be unlocked. Just stick the 500 in and set the jumpers to 400 or 450 and you should be good to go.

Finished putting together my Pentium 133 system with a Taken PCI-597 motherboard. FSB and multiplier settings are undocumented, so I just slapped on a P 133 chip and set the only jumper I know for sure, the Vcore, to the appropriate voltage. And to my amazement it booted up as a Pentium 133.

It does not detect the HDD and gives errors on Floppy detection though, so I need to check the ribbon cables.

I have 2 16MB EDO 72pin installed for a total of 32MB but it only detects 8MB so I have to look into that as well.

So yeah, it POSTed but not as well as I hoped.

Also, I have an S3 Trio64V2/DX in the system, and on my LCD the blacks look basically grey. I know this is an issue with some S3 cards, but is there a way I can fix this? A firmware update for the card maybe?

...and now I find that my board maxes out at 300MHz (manual took a decade to find, and even then, only the manuals for the A and C variants), so if nothing else, I have a K6-2 500 running at 60% speed, which means it may never die. As that's the case, it's time to put it away for another fifteen years, because I am not building another Socket 7 system. Time to wait for my Atari XEGS keyboard and power supply to arrive, so I can do nothing with it, as I have zero games, and no disk drive.

Set it like a Pentium 133, that should be 2x66, which later K6-2 interpret as 6x66

edit: Though if 300Mhz was the fastest K6 it knew about it may display that on the POST screen despite the CPU actually running at 400, or 450 if you find the 75mhz bus setting (Don't bother with 83 unless you want to test every card you own for stability at 41.5Mhz PCI.)

Been testing tons of old hard drives.

I always check what's on them first, as I have used a lot of drives over the years or they could be from family members who gave me a system before backing up data. Found one with some guy's stuff on it, no idea where it came from or how I got it. Lots of home recordings of music, poetry, family pictures, etc. from 2001. I found a name, looked him up and decided to contact him to see if he wants any of this data as I have never met him before and he used to live in my area. I just couldn't get myself to wipe stuff like this, since its the kind of data that can't be replaced, and lots of times people don't think to back things up before a computer dies and gets sent to the curb when they move away... especially way back in 2001. I have no idea where the drive came from. I'll keep you guys posted if he replies. 😀

Noted; when I feel like fiddling with it, I'll give it a try. Thanks for the information. Alas, CPUz doesn't play nice with the system, or I'd have not wasted the time and money buying a 400MHz processor to replace a 500.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Been testing tons of old hard drives.

I always check what's on them first, as I have used a lot of drives over the years or they could be from family members who gave me a system before backing up data. Found one with some guy's stuff on it, no idea where it came from or how I got it. Lots of home recordings of music, poetry, family pictures, etc. from 2001. I found a name, looked him up and decided to contact him to see if he wants any of this data as I have never met him before and he used to live in my area. I just couldn't get myself to wipe stuff like this, since its the kind of data that can't be replaced, and lots of times people don't think to back things up before a computer dies and gets sent to the curb when they move away... especially way back in 2001. I have no idea where the drive came from. I'll keep you guys posted if he replies. 😀

Crazy... the guy replied to me and is so happy to be able to get this stuff back. I'm going to zip it and send it to him. 😀

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Been testing tons of old hard drives.

I always check what's on them first, as I have used a lot of drives over the years or they could be from family members who gave me a system before backing up data. Found one with some guy's stuff on it, no idea where it came from or how I got it. Lots of home recordings of music, poetry, family pictures, etc. from 2001. I found a name, looked him up and decided to contact him to see if he wants any of this data as I have never met him before and he used to live in my area. I just couldn't get myself to wipe stuff like this, since its the kind of data that can't be replaced, and lots of times people don't think to back things up before a computer dies and gets sent to the curb when they move away... especially way back in 2001. I have no idea where the drive came from. I'll keep you guys posted if he replies. 😀

Crazy... the guy replied to me and is so happy to be able to get this stuff back. I'm going to zip it and send it to him. 😀

That is good karma man, good on you.

Definitely good on you for returning the data!

Retro activities recently have been re-arranging my small study to fit all the computers in. Tomorrow morning I'll be buying some PS/2 and VGA extension cables to extend the already reasonably long KVM cables to computers I'm hiding behind a filing cabinet.

Not exactly retro, but resurrected my old high end 775 system, worked out that only the rear USB ports have failed. Also pondering chucking out a Quadro FX3800 - for some reason the DVI output does not work in VGA mode, and unless it's the primary card in the system it doesn't work with open source drivers, and runs the fan at full speed (until the primary card, or if closed source drivers are used) - so appealing..

Speaking of personal data, my plans on the Pavilion 7955 that I acquired a week ago for $10 (great price, and the CMOS battery still has juice left surprisingly) would be to copy every single data onto either blank CDs or onto a clean flash drive, try to find the original owner (name not listed in anything), and give them their data since they might not have backups of said data: Pictures, documents, etc.

The original owner(s) did a great job at keeping the computer at a good state (hard drive has less than 50% free, which is a good sign, no errors either), and I might use my Live USB of Linux to check the SMART status of the drive. Also, the only way I could tell that there was cat hair in the system was the picture of cats that was on the system.

Was adjusting the sound setup in my 486 last night. I have a SB Pro 2 and a Gravis Ultrasound Classic and didn't really ever get around to doing a "proper" setup so I could use both simultaneously since I got the GUS... just tested it out to verify it worked when it arrived originally and then decided I would "get back to it later."

When I first got the card, I remember running CARDCHK which found the card fine, and then running CONSCAN from the installer files and finding that port 210, 250 and 260 were all clear for use according to the scan results. I set it for 210 and did the install. All worked fine, games sounded great. Woot.

Anyway, last night I decided I would finally properly connect the SB Pro 2 to the GUS via the GUS's line in and then connect my speakers to the GUS so that I could use both cards if needed. Eventually I intend to get an external mixer, but for now figured this would be fine. Wired everything up, and tried it out. No sound from anything when set to use the Sound Blaster, but setting things to use the GUS still sounded fine. Ok, I guess the line in must be muted. Run ULTRAMIX and notice it by default set all the different volume settings to 0. Bah! What kind of terrible default behaviour is that!? Read the help screen in ULTRAMIX and eventually set everything up to make sound again... or so I thought. Tried once again to test the GUS sound and now that wasn't even making any sound. Argh! Futzed about with ULTRAMIX, configs and stuff for the next 20-30 minutes and getting increasingly annoyed and started thinking that maybe I somehow killed the GUS? Seemed unlikely, but I was at the point where nothing seemed to make sense with what was happening. Decided that maybe I would try reinstalling the GUS files. Run the installer and it now says it cannot find the card! What!? Run CARDCHK separately and sure enough it says it cannot find the card. Running CONSCAN though says it found the card configured on port 210.

Spent the next while Googling around and not finding much. I did find some post eventually from someone who mentioned after running ULTRAMIX that they had to add "-eo" to the ULTRINIT in their autoexec.bat to get it making sounds again. Weird, but sure I'll try it. And yep, that seemed to do the trick. Though CARDCHK still says it could not find the card! But everything else worked. I didn't like that CARDCHK was having problems finding the GUS, so I decided I would try changing the port to one of the other options that CONSCAN said was available (260). Once I made the change, that seemed to do the trick! *Phew!* CARDCHK once again detects the card, CONSCAN reports no issues either, and routing the SB through the GUS via it's line in allowed me to hear audio from both cards simultaneously if I so desired.

That whole exercise did leave me wondering if my GUS card is on it's way out... unsure really. It's possible I made some other change somewhere in there that affected things and just am not remembering correctly, but I'm 95% certain that's not the case. *shrug* It works now again so I'm happy! 😀

I started to mod my 4890 blocks for better cooling.
I added a sick on heatsinks to the VRM plate, scuffed up the inside of the block to add a small amount of surface area and put a 1.5mm pad on the chokes. Wile the chokes don't need cooled, they don't get any airflow with the block and alot of heat is dumped into the PCB,other parts heat up as a result, cooling the chokes will help alot. I also used cool labs ultra on the core to help cool it even better.

Tested a Riva128 under Win98 with Fitzquake - never thought I would see GLQuake with this card on a 486. More of a novelty than usable but I really do like this early card from NVidia.
I also have the suspicion that CF adapters are not really reliable(maybe only the card itself?) and cause all sorts of weird errors. They work flawlessly and out of the blue something is not right and if it wasn't for a lucky circumstance one would never think that a drive could cause such rare errors.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Been testing tons of old hard drives.

I always check what's on them first, as I have used a lot of drives over the years or they could be from family members who gave me a system before backing up data. Found one with some guy's stuff on it, no idea where it came from or how I got it. Lots of home recordings of music, poetry, family pictures, etc. from 2001. I found a name, looked him up and decided to contact him to see if he wants any of this data as I have never met him before and he used to live in my area. I just couldn't get myself to wipe stuff like this, since its the kind of data that can't be replaced, and lots of times people don't think to back things up before a computer dies and gets sent to the curb when they move away... especially way back in 2001. I have no idea where the drive came from. I'll keep you guys posted if he replies. 😀

Crazy... the guy replied to me and is so happy to be able to get this stuff back. I'm going to zip it and send it to him. 😀

Last time quoting myself, I swear...

After getting the data back, he replied to me, mentioned that he was in a recording studio working on his new album when he got my email, and was really surprised. He thanked me and had this to say:
"A lot of that stuff I never thought I would hear or see again, so again, thank you so much for reuniting me with my past."

And isn't that what retro computing is really about? 😀

Also, this is how albums end up with bonus tracks... 😉

ynari wrote:

Definitely good on you for returning the data!

Retro activities recently have been re-arranging my small study to fit all the computers in. Tomorrow morning I'll be buying some PS/2 and VGA extension cables to extend the already reasonably long KVM cables to computers I'm hiding behind a filing cabinet.

Not exactly retro, but resurrected my old high end 775 system, worked out that only the rear USB ports have failed. Also pondering chucking out a Quadro FX3800 - for some reason the DVI output does not work in VGA mode, and unless it's the primary card in the system it doesn't work with open source drivers, and runs the fan at full speed (until the primary card, or if closed source drivers are used) - so appealing..

Interesting card IMO. Its a small card so you probably should keep it. You never know when it might be fun to fool around with.

Gered wrote:

Was adjusting the sound setup in my 486 last night. I have a SB Pro 2 and a Gravis Ultrasound Classic and didn't really ever get around to doing a "proper" setup...

I recall I needed to put some tape over certain IRQ line on ISA connector of my GUS to make both cards work together. It was something like GUS SB emulation messing up the real SB or something around those lines. However, it's like 20 years ago and I don't recall what GUS and what SB it was 😀

Alright guys, if you want a laugh here's my story.

I've been desperately trying to get Fate of Atlantis to work. I could get it to work with music, or no music but never with voices and sound effects. I've even reinstalled windows, since I thought maybe the SB emulation was messing something up.

Turns out I'm just an idiot. I forgot to connect the cd audio cables up.

🙁

🤣

Happens to all of us.

Moved 28 banker boxes full of DOS games, hardware cards, misc vintage computer crap into the basement for storage until my house is finished. Next year I'll have my house finished, and then the slow gathering of LOTS...LOTS of parts. I might have to blog about all the crap I've accumulated since getting into vintage computers.

I think I have a problem....

Finally successfully installed Windows 98 on my first "retro" PC! That system (at least on my configuration) really hates SATA drives (SATA DVD-ROM was unable to boot Windows 98 installer, and once I got PATA DVD-ROM, during final moments of installation on SATA drive, it just hangs).