Just got my windows ME computer setup perfectly it even has wifi. Im kinda digging winME more then 98SE to be honest its faster and more stable to me.

I'm just playing with my old Pentium 200mmx box. A bit of IRCing and what not. I have a custonised Xandros 2.5 running on it, which runs quite well.

Well....
Yesterday I played with my OrangePI (model Plus 2), to see how it can be set up as a retro gaming device.
Shure I have had the same setup running as Phil, and I thought why not take it a bit further.
The PI has eMMC and SATA after all. (SATA is connected over the USB bridge, making it a USB drive).
Installing both Armbian and Retro OrangePI on the eMMC works. Sata harddrive not that much.
Shure I can install on both storage units by running "sudo nand-sata-install" though the PI only boot eMMC.
Going to experiment a bit today, to see if Retro OrangePI can see and use a EXT4 formatted harddrive.
If it can, and I can set it up as a container for the rom files, then I have a 120 and a 160gb HDD.
The best part is, that I can then run the OS from the eMMC and free up the SD-Card for other uses.

Upgrading the Dual Pentium 3 with 4 additional hard drives.
None of them are being recognized so far...

It's so hot in here -_- I will continue later...

Finally started my Dual Tualatin Build, I have had parts for a while but never got around to building it 🙁

The base: A Tyan Tiger S2507T:

CPU's, two of these:

Now, on both sockets some of the the attachement hooks for the heatsink are broken/sheared off, so I had to go looking in the collection for heatsinks that also use the other hooks:

I found these two nearly identical Spire heatsinks (it just the fans that are a bit different), and two other, lower ones. I decided to go with the Spire for now, bigger fan might mean less noise...

It POSTs! Yay! Now running memtest.

Next steps: decide on the case I will be using, the GPU and Sound card. OS will be Windows 2000 and/or Windows XP.

Sold pretty much all of my remaining retro PC parts on vcfed... here are some pictures for you guys to ogle at. http://imgur.com/a/IquJI

Arctic wrote:

Upgrading the Dual Pentium 3 with 4 additional hard drives.
None of them are being recognized so far...

It's so hot in here -_- I will continue later...

This is far from done!
The final version will use no scotch tape 😁

@Cyrix200+
Wow nice Tualatin Board!
It will make a great system, I hope you will introduce it in a seperate thread 😎

Dual Tualatin and 4GB RAM would be the crown of Dual 370 😁
That' will be the final upgrade on my system 😎

Not really that much lately.... I do more reading about old hardware than I tinker with it.
Today I changed the cooler on my 486dx2-80 VLB system.
First pic is the old cooler, and second is the new cooler. The new one is more quiet.

Then I took it for a spin, gaming an hour, because the new cooler had never been used.
It was manufactured around the mid-90's, and I had to make shure it was still flawless.
Strange that a cooler that old, never used, still work as if it was 2 months old.

The old cooler was working without any issue, and it was brand new too (a couple of months ago)
I only changed it, because this new cooler, is the exact same model as I had on my DX2-66 in 1995.
This new machine are build just like that, only a bit faster than the one I had.
Basically... I have build that machine I wish I had, back when I had the machine I now miss.

The future of PCIe is coming... presenting ISAe!

Nice job with the photoshop, I had to stare at this for a good two or three minutes to figure out wtf I was looking at.

Oh wait, is that Microchannel?

Got around to trying to fix some of the many failed GPUs I've received over the last week. So far:

XFX 7800GS AGP: Dead
EVGA 9400GT 1GB: Dead, VGA failure post code. Overheats. Not worth any further effort.
MSI 8600GT: POSTs, running stable. Had to rebuild the entire cooler which was bent which took nearly an hour.
PNY Quadro FX4500 512MB: DVI-1 is dead. As for DVI-2...

At least as far as artifacts go those aren't terrible. I'm not sure if the board is faulty or if it's just so filthy as to block a connection. If it's filthy a quick rinse in the sink (and like 24 hours to dry...) should do it at the expense of possible corrosion down the road (if anyone knows a better way to clean a GPU tell me...) but if the boards bad im screwed as the memory is BGA. I wasn't able to test further than post as I disassembled the cooler to get this far and I don't have the thermal adhesive pads or thermal paste to re-attach it atm.

Suggestions/Opinions?

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Got around to trying to fix some of the many failed GPUs I've received over the last week. So far: […]
Show full quote

Got around to trying to fix some of the many failed GPUs I've received over the last week. So far:

XFX 7800GS AGP: Dead
EVGA 9400GT 1GB: Dead, VGA failure post code. Overheats. Not worth any further effort.
MSI 8600GT: POSTs, running stable. Had to rebuild the entire cooler which was bent which took nearly an hour.
PNY Quadro FX4500 512MB: DVI-1 is dead. As for DVI-2...

At least as far as artifacts go those aren't terrible. I'm not sure if the board is faulty or if it's just so filthy as to block a connection. If it's filthy a quick rinse in the sink (and like 24 hours to dry...) should do it at the expense of possible corrosion down the road (if anyone knows a better way to clean a GPU tell me...) but if the boards bad im screwed as the memory is BGA. I wasn't able to test further than post as I disassembled the cooler to get this far and I don't have the thermal adhesive pads or thermal paste to re-attach it atm.

Suggestions/Opinions?

Hopefully a few member will get really good rework stations and fix up all of these dying boards before they get sent to the scrap heap.

keenerb wrote:

Nice job with the photoshop, I had to stare at this for a good two or three minutes to figure out wtf I was looking at.

Oh wait, is that Microchannel?

ISA but I shopped the connectors

xplus93 wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Got around to trying to fix some of the many failed GPUs I've received over the last week. So far: […]
Show full quote

Got around to trying to fix some of the many failed GPUs I've received over the last week. So far:

XFX 7800GS AGP: Dead
EVGA 9400GT 1GB: Dead, VGA failure post code. Overheats. Not worth any further effort.
MSI 8600GT: POSTs, running stable. Had to rebuild the entire cooler which was bent which took nearly an hour.
PNY Quadro FX4500 512MB: DVI-1 is dead. As for DVI-2...

At least as far as artifacts go those aren't terrible. I'm not sure if the board is faulty or if it's just so filthy as to block a connection. If it's filthy a quick rinse in the sink (and like 24 hours to dry...) should do it at the expense of possible corrosion down the road (if anyone knows a better way to clean a GPU tell me...) but if the boards bad im screwed as the memory is BGA. I wasn't able to test further than post as I disassembled the cooler to get this far and I don't have the thermal adhesive pads or thermal paste to re-attach it atm.

Suggestions/Opinions?

Hopefully a few member will get really good rework stations and fix up all of these dying boards before they get sent to the scrap heap.

I'm really hoping I don't end up having to bake the damn thing.

Tested my new graphics cards and got a bit disappointed. I was pretty excited to get my first 3dfx card until it wouldn't post. Looks like it got attacked by the full force of the swiss army.

xplus93 wrote:

Tested my new graphics cards and got a bit disappointed. I was pretty excited to get my first 3dfx card until it wouldn't post. Looks like it got attacked by the full force of the swiss army.

Ouch. I count 17 traces cut in that picture. That card is gone.

Received a Teac 2012 BEIGE sata drive to replace the black one currently in my main pc. Im loving the "sleeper" vibe. Playing BF1 on a beige box is hilarious, all Im missing is a nice beige CRT.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

xplus93 wrote:

Tested my new graphics cards and got a bit disappointed. I was pretty excited to get my first 3dfx card until it wouldn't post. Looks like it got attacked by the full force of the swiss army.

Ouch. I count 17 traces cut in that picture. That card is gone.

Well, i'm still going to try to fix it eventually. I just need to get a roll of fine wire

I was planning on working on my Dual Tualatin build, but I really really wanted to check and see if my Pentium Pro setup works now that I have a heatsink/fan for it. And yes, it works!

I found that a Geforce 6800 GT@Ultra AGP is faster than an overclocked Geforce 7600 GT (DDR3) AGP in World of Warcraft vanilla. The difference is not huge but it seems World of Warcraft benefits from the Geforce 6800s higher video memory bandwidth when running at 1280*1024 with maxed out settings.