Pulled 1 of my iMac DV (Summer 2000) systems out of storage. It wouldn't boot at first and I couldn't understand why, until I opened the back and noticed it was missing the RAM. I don't even remember removing it, so had to scramble through my spares and dig out 2x 64MB sticks for now.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger was working fine (albeit slowly with only 128MB), but Mac OS 9 was freezing on boot due to 1 of the extensions (and probably a variety of other issues). As there was nothing valuable on the OS 9 install, I simply trashed the System Folder and installed a clean copy of Mac OS 9.1. It's working great now. Need to do more testing and try out some games etc though.

I also pulled out of storage my Blue & White PowerMac G3, but haven't gotten around to testing it yet.

My other iMac DV (Summer 2000) is in a sorry state, it was damaged in transit when I received it years ago (inside plastic broken in several places and the front outer plastic loose and coming away) and time in storage hasn't been kind. Will probably have to be a 2-man job to lift that down from my loft as I fear if I try to lift it by the handle, the whole thing will break into pieces in my hands. 😢

bjwil1991 wrote:

Replaced the rest of the old jacks with new ones on my Aztech WaveRider 32-3D, and my Sound card still has low volume on the left speaker.

https://youtu.be/_kVLadphOzE

AND it emits a pitched whine.

Sounds like it is screaming for a re-cap (literally). I imagine your power filtering is not too great and the support/output caps for your amp IC are crusty.

CkRtech wrote:

bjwil1991 wrote:

Replaced the rest of the old jacks with new ones on my Aztech WaveRider 32-3D, and my Sound card still has low volume on the left speaker.

https://youtu.be/_kVLadphOzE

AND it emits a pitched whine.

Sounds like it is screaming for a re-cap (literally). I imagine your power filtering is not too great and the support/output caps for your amp IC are crusty.

Do I recap the whole sound card, or just only the two main ones by the jacks? And the IC is the three legged object held in with a screw and nut?

Looked at my card. One cap is loose and it's about to break free.

I just did a quick image search for it. Forgive me if my result was not a match.

The TDA1517P amp was the main IC I was thinking about. You could recap just the large caps at the output as well as the two near the amp if you want to do the bare minimum. That may solve your left channel issue but potentially may or may not solve your whine problem. It is a simple starting point. If you are going to have to order caps, you could go ahead and buy a full recaps worth and do the ones I mentioned first. I mean the chances are that if you have a cap problem, and they are all from the same manufacturer and time period...it might be worth doing them all. ISA isn't exactly hi-fi, but some can certainly be better than others.

Your system's power supply and the power provided and output from the card (like from the voltage regulator) are important components for sound as well.

All of this assumes you are using a software mixer without any bugs, the proper one for your sound card, your speakers are fine, etc.

PTherapist wrote:

Pulled 1 of my iMac DV (Summer 2000) systems out of storage. It wouldn't boot at first and I couldn't understand why, until I o […]
Show full quote

Pulled 1 of my iMac DV (Summer 2000) systems out of storage. It wouldn't boot at first and I couldn't understand why, until I opened the back and noticed it was missing the RAM. I don't even remember removing it, so had to scramble through my spares and dig out 2x 64MB sticks for now.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger was working fine (albeit slowly with only 128MB), but Mac OS 9 was freezing on boot due to 1 of the extensions (and probably a variety of other issues). As there was nothing valuable on the OS 9 install, I simply trashed the System Folder and installed a clean copy of Mac OS 9.1. It's working great now. Need to do more testing and try out some games etc though.

I also pulled out of storage my Blue & White PowerMac G3, but haven't gotten around to testing it yet.

My other iMac DV (Summer 2000) is in a sorry state, it was damaged in transit when I received it years ago (inside plastic broken in several places and the front outer plastic loose and coming away) and time in storage hasn't been kind. Will probably have to be a 2-man job to lift that down from my loft as I fear if I try to lift it by the handle, the whole thing will break into pieces in my hands. 😢

AFAIK that handle is attached directly to the frame. Unless the handle itself breaks you should be good. My Bondi Blue has taken a beating and it's handle serves it's purpose fine still. With an abused machine I'd be more worried about the infamous power flyback issue

Finished up a retro build so I can sell it off to pay for my last pickup. What do you guys think? Good combo? I was considering going with an athlon 1000, but the MB has swollen caps and looks very cheap and crappy

K6-2 500
VooDoo3 3000 AGP
Sound Blaster 16 PnP

CkRtech wrote:

I just did a quick image search for it. Forgive me if my result was not a match. […]
Show full quote

I just did a quick image search for it. Forgive me if my result was not a match.

The TDA1517P amp was the main IC I was thinking about. You could recap just the large caps at the output as well as the two near the amp if you want to do the bare minimum. That may solve your left channel issue but potentially may or may not solve your whine problem. It is a simple starting point. If you are going to have to order caps, you could go ahead and buy a full recaps worth and do the ones I mentioned first. I mean the chances are that if you have a cap problem, and they are all from the same manufacturer and time period...it might be worth doing them all. ISA isn't exactly hi-fi, but some can certainly be better than others.

Your system's power supply and the power provided and output from the card (like from the voltage regulator) are important components for sound as well.

All of this assumes you are using a software mixer without any bugs, the proper one for your sound card, your speakers are fine, etc.

Ah. Found the issue: there's some rust on the IC chip itself, luckily not at the bottom, just the top.

Is it a good idea to remove the bad IC, get a replacement one, and install a Socket for the new chip to be installed?

Started repairing eaten tracs on the tiny 486 motherboard I got few days ago. In the end 5 traces were eaten and 3 of them are not used, but I replaced them anyway, just because I was already doing it.


The only problem is that few legs of the chip socket was so corroded that it snapped right off. So I have to search for socket right now, but that's not big deal I think.
What is concerning me is that I don't have a manual and somebody took all the jumpers and I have no idea how should I set it up for test...

Was playing around with my iMac DV (Summer 2000) today, was working great. Decided to test out the speakers, playing back some music in iTunes and they still sounded as good as they did when I last used this system.... for about half an hour at least, then they both decided to unceremoniously die, producing nothing but distorted output and the cones vibrating like crazy - the dreaded foam rot strikes again!

Tested my Blue & White Power Mac G3 and it needs a new Hard Drive, but otherwise appears to be ok. Luckily I have a spare drive that should fit this nicely. 😎

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

AFAIK that handle is attached directly to the frame. Unless the handle itself breaks you should be good. My Bondi Blue has taken a beating and it's handle serves it's purpose fine still. With an abused machine I'd be more worried about the infamous power flyback issue

I'll give it a go this weekend, with somebody on standby to help just in case. 🤣

Yeah I was worried about that issue on both of them, it's exactly the reason I planned to pull them out of storage, just to ensure they're still working.

krivulak wrote:

Started repairing eaten tracs on the tiny 486 motherboard I got few days ago. In the end 5 traces were eaten and 3 of them are n […]
Show full quote

Started repairing eaten tracs on the tiny 486 motherboard I got few days ago. In the end 5 traces were eaten and 3 of them are not used, but I replaced them anyway, just because I was already doing it.


The only problem is that few legs of the chip socket was so corroded that it snapped right off. So I have to search for socket right now, but that's not big deal I think.
What is concerning me is that I don't have a manual and somebody took all the jumpers and I have no idea how should I set it up for test...

I see some mention online of it maybe being a Powertech MB459, but no luck seeing any manuals so far.

I dont know it can be called retro.

Some time ago I built a year 2006 "summer system" that dosn't produce much heat during the summer compared to my main system.

The original spec was an E6700 (Conroe retail) clocked at 3.33 @1.2V running on an Asus Commando P965 motherboard and a Geforce 7900 GTX. The power consumtion while gaming was 180W - 200W from the wall.

The people I game with wanted me to run Discord so I had to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7. I upgraded to a Geforce 8800GTX and switched to my Asus P5W DH Deluxe i975X motherboard at the same time as this was the motherboard I bought back in August 2006.

The 8800 GTX was whisper quit and using V-sync the power consumtion was only a little bit higher than with the 7900 GTX, 190W - 210W. Not good enough I thought, how can I keep the performance and compatibility with an unnamed quirky DX9 online game while reducing the power consumtion?

I turned my attention to a Geforce "9800 GTX+" = "GTS 250" (same card), the last of the first generation "Tesla" video cards the original 8800 GTX belongs to. The second generation Tesla cards such as the GTX 285 would also have worked compatibility wise but now the idea was to reduce power draw.

The 9800 GTX+ / GTS 250 reduced the power draw to ~175W while gaming with V-sync enabled at 75hz but the cooler sucks/blows and if I wanted to keep the card under 75C I had to endure alot of noise. Cleaning the cooler and replacing the paste did not help much, I turned my attention to the video cards BIOS.

The card used to run 1.0V in 2D mode and 1.3V in 3D mode. As adding custom voltage settings is not trival if even possible I simply edited the BIOS to use the 1.0V 2D voltage in 3D mode aswell with the help of NVbitor. I also reduced the 3D clocks to 600 MHz core 1500 MHz shader and 1800 MHz memory as I doubt the card can handle its stock clocks when running at 1.0V.

The performance should still be close to the 8800 GTX even if the memory bandwidth is lower. The system now only draws 140W from the wall while gaming and the video card stays cool and quiet. Not bad for an overclocked year 2006 system with a video card that at least uses 2006 tech even if it's a die shrink.

xplus93 wrote:

Finished up a retro build so I can sell it off to pay for my last pickup. What do you guys think? Good combo? I was considering […]
Show full quote

Finished up a retro build so I can sell it off to pay for my last pickup. What do you guys think? Good combo? I was considering going with an athlon 1000, but the MB has swollen caps and looks very cheap and crappy

K6-2 500
VooDoo3 3000 AGP
Sound Blaster 16 PnP

I have a rather similar system (Katmai 450MHz, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP) and I use an SB Live! with it and I found that I get a lot more mileage out of that card than I can get out of an SB16 or SBAWE card.. Soundfonts can really make those old DOS games shine if you don't have a MIDI module.

That said, I am considering adding an SB16 to it as well, just to get some decent FM Synthesis for DOS mode.

Skyscraper wrote:

Not good enough I thought, how can I keep the performance and compatibility with an unnamed quirky DX9 online game while reducing the power consumtion?

I've checked this myself, and it's sort of undocumented but I've confirmed it with my own testing. nVidia maintained compatibility with old DirectX 8, and even odd quirky directX-9 games all the way until the tail end of the Fermi cards with GTX-500. The new GTX-600 and beyond cards is where it dropped. After GTX-600, there's issues with older games and the actual speed and performance for older DX-9 and DX-8 games are actually slower on newer cards than if you run it on older cards. This is why I invested in a very special EVGA GTX-580 Classified Ultra Double-Vram edition card on ebay earlier this year. The last card that did good with DX-8 and DX-9 from nvidia, and I got a really high end factory overclocked edition.

That said, if you want compatibility but better performance and lower power, maybe consider something from the GTX-400 line like a GTX-470 or GTX-460 maybe. I'd have to look up the power and get an actual figure for you vs your older cards and see where power aligns.

EDIT: There's one card I found for you.. the 7900 GTX is rated @ 84 watts power, and the one card that's faster but also lower power is up as the GT-440, faster than those 8800 GTX and 9800 cards, and 56 watts. But there's two versions on wikipedia, a 96-shader one and a 144-shader one, for some reason the 96-shader one is listed as 65 watts and the 144-shader one (quite a lot faster in performance too) is listed as 56 watts. That's probably what you should aim at for that system for the future. It should maintain compatibility with all of your older games. The 144-shader one was apparently an OEM version, may be hard to track down one used.

kithylin wrote:

I've checked this myself, and it's sort of undocumented but I've confirmed it with my own testing. nVidia maintained compatibili […]
Show full quote

Skyscraper wrote:

Not good enough I thought, how can I keep the performance and compatibility with an unnamed quirky DX9 online game while reducing the power consumtion?

I've checked this myself, and it's sort of undocumented but I've confirmed it with my own testing. nVidia maintained compatibility with old DirectX 8, and even odd quirky directX-9 games all the way until the tail end of the Fermi cards with GTX-500. The new GTX-600 and beyond cards is where it dropped. After GTX-600, there's issues with older games and the actual speed and performance for older DX-9 and DX-8 games are actually slower on newer cards than if you run it on older cards. This is why I invested in a very special EVGA GTX-580 Classified Ultra Double-Vram edition card on ebay earlier this year. The last card that did good with DX-8 and DX-9 from nvidia, and I got a really high end factory overclocked edition.

That said, if you want compatibility but better performance and lower power, maybe consider something from the GTX-400 line like a GTX-470 or GTX-460 maybe. I'd have to look up the power and get an actual figure for you vs your older cards and see where power aligns.

EDIT: There's one card I found for you.. the 7900 GTX is rated @ 84 watts power, and the one card that's faster but also lower power is up as the GT-440, faster than those 8800 GTX and 9800 cards, and 56 watts. But there's two versions on wikipedia, a 96-shader one and a 144-shader one, for some reason the 96-shader one is listed as 65 watts and the 144-shader one (quite a lot faster in performance too) is listed as 56 watts. That's probably what you should aim at for that system for the future. It should maintain compatibility with all of your older games. The 144-shader one was apparently an OEM version, may be hard to track down one used.

There is abolutrly 0 retro feeling with Fermi cards, with G80/G92 there is at least some. I own pretty much every GTX 4 series and 5 series model released so if I wanted one in this system I would have installed one.

The 55nm G92 card is back more or less at stock clocks although is still running at 1.0V! So far I have tested stability up to 712/1780/2200 or something like that, rock stable at 1.0V running Furmark. The power consumtion for the whole system at the wall goes from 112-114W idle to 195-200W when running Furmark so the power comsumtion of the undervolted 55nm G92 die shrink seems really good as some of that power draw is the CPU. I don't need more performance and I'm not that sure this card would get schooled by a GTS-440 when running DX9. The Fermis DX9 compatibility may be decent but in this case from what I have heard it isn't flawless and I will not fix what isn't broken. 😀

Skyscraper wrote:

There is abolutrly 0 retro feeling with Fermi cards, with G80/G92 there is at least some. I own pretty much every GTX 4 series and 5 series model released so if I wanted one in this system I would have installed one.

My mistake.. I thought you were genuinely looking for performance, power usage, and compatibility.

kithylin wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

There is abolutrly 0 retro feeling with Fermi cards, with G80/G92 there is at least some. I own pretty much every GTX 4 series and 5 series model released so if I wanted one in this system I would have installed one.

My mistake.. I thought you were genuinely looking for performance, power usage, and compatibility.

If you had read what I wrote you would have perhaps snipped up that a part of the goal was to keep the performance and the card it self as close to the 8800 GTX as possible. 😀

If that wasn't clear enough I will try to make my mission statements even more to the point in the future. As soon as the summer is over the G92 card will get replaced with the G80 8800 GTX again as it's supposed to be a year 2006 build.

If I only wanted low power consumtion I could use my i5 laptop with GT 540M and connect a keyboard, mouse and the larger screen.

Skyscraper wrote:

If you had read what I wrote you would have perhaps snipped up that a part of the goal was to keep the performance and the card it self as close to the 8800 GTX as possible. 😀

If that wasn't clear enough I will try to make my mission statements even more to the point in the future.

If I only wanted low power consumtion I could use my i5 laptop with GT 540M and connect a keyboard, mouse and the larger screen.

I read your post.. I didn't see anything about trying to "be near" older tech for "retro feeling" maybe I read wrong.. sorry about all that.

Sort of on this subject. I recently bought a nvidia GT-720 to put in my file server to replace the 9800GT I had in it, significant power savings. Even though the 9800GT was idle most of the time and never reached gaming clocks.. it still dropped server power usage -75 watts @ the wall. And no the onboard video on that cheapie supermicro board isn't good enough for hosting windows, has no 2D capabilities.. makes clicking between programs via remote view in windows so damn slow to draw windows it's worse than windows XP without video drivers loaded. Has to have some sort of video card.

But I had a GT-720 in my mini-itx-cube computer for about a week and a half before putting it in the server, and to my surprise the GT-720 overclocked all the way to 1386 Mhz core speed and was showing around 45 GTexel/s while still only using around 30 watts even with the overclock. Something some folks may consider for older computers if they're not interested in "retro feeling", actually a decent Dx9 card (don't know about compatibility), and I got mine for $18 shipped off ebay. Ran half-life 2 @ 1080p @ max settings (including max AA), locked 60 FPS everywhere.

I installed Windows 7 on an old Compaq SR2032X that I have cross flashed with a modded and updated bios for a similar board because I plan on upgrading to a brisbane CPU and using more than 2gb of ram in the long run, I installed Win7 (AMD64 version) with the stock 512 megs after getting tired of it being about a slow as Windows 95 when I installed it on my 386sx box with 4MB of ram I swapped over 2x2gb modules out of my mom's old dell system that was just sitting around which not only octupled the ram but also boosted the ram speed to 800mhz(well ~733mhz, because of the odd multiplier and the AM2 IMC derives memory clock by using an integer devider from the CPU clock) the stock ram was only 533mhz(would have ran at ~490mhz although I didn't bother to confirm that with CPU-Z).

Started working on a Pentium 166 MMX build. For some reason I though I had bought a 233MMX chip but I was wrong. If I remember correctly I bought the 166 so I could use the 1.5x multiplier instead of it being detected as 3.5x like on the 233.

Motherboard: MSI Premio TX5. The manual lists some jumpers that are not on my board so I am guessing I have an earlier revision. And the tach reading for the CPU fan header doesn't work so I had to disable it so it wouldn't throw an error on every boot. I instead hooked up the CPU fan to the power supply fan header and enabled the reading on it.

Not sure how retro it is, but I recapped an old PC Chips M810LR boards since it would not boot and 10 of the 6.3v 2200 caps were bulging. Has a Duron 1100 (my only Duron Socket A system). AI also had a Geforce one but I forget where I put it (basement lab is a mess) so it has an 8MB ATI Rage 3D for now.