bjwil1991 wrote:

Purchased another desktop, a Dell Dimension E510 at a thrift store for $25, and the keyboard for $5 with an Intel Pentium 4 HT, […]
Show full quote

Purchased another desktop, a Dell Dimension E510 at a thrift store for $25, and the keyboard for $5 with an Intel Pentium 4 HT, about 1GB DDR2 RAM, ATI PCI-E card, Fax modem, integrated HD audio with different outputs (front speakers, back speakers, sub, etc.), integrated ethernet, 8x USB 2.0 ports, Intel graphics (on-board), Serial, Parallel, CD+/-RW DVD ROM combo, Floppy drive, 80GB HDD, and possibly Windows XP MCE 2005 installed on it, or maybe it's formatted. Going to either install Linux on it, or as a pfSense firewall since it has enough power under the hood, and I have memory for the system as well (upgradable to 4GB). Could use some cleaning inside and out, but the condition is phenomenal (I didn't see any scuffs, scrapes, dings, or scratches on the casing itself, and the inside looked rather dusty since 2 of the slot blanks went AWOL (or didn't get put on there, such as add-on cards were installed in one point in time), but I have slot blanks from a Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus that has 3 sound cards (Lo-Tech Tandy Compatible Sound Card, Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro (OPL3, Covox Sound Things, Disney Sound Source, SB Pro, CD ROM controller, and parallel port expansion), and a Music Quest MPU401 Clone card), and a 3Com EtherLink III 10BaseT Ethernet card.

Also bidded on an HP Pavilion N3350 on the shopgoodwill.com website for $23 ($10 + S&H and taxes) that has an AMD K6-2+ 550 Mobile, Trident video card, 64MB RAM, 4GB HDD (no OS and formatted), DVD drive, FDD, ESS Maestro 3 sound and modem, no PSU, but I have one that would work with it that's for a Compaq Presario C700 notebook. Can't wait to get the HP notebook, and it'll be my portable MS-DOS and Windows gaming machine.

Edit:

Not retro activity related, but, I made some animated GIF images via GIMP 2.8 on my Dimension 4550 running Windows XP Home Edition with SP3:

DOS2.gif

givedamn.gif

/Edit

Haha, nice!

I did experiment once with making some new icons for the sole purpose of being able to find certain text files faster (by just giving standard text files a new extension and assigning a self-made icon (which was basically a very tiny .bmp) in the shape of a white+red exclamation mark. Brings back memories 🤣

Not much to report lately, but I did some borderline retro (circa 2008) hardware work this weekend. My home firewall runs on an Intel D945GCLF2/Atom 330. This motherboard uses passive cooling on the cpu, but the chipset heatsink has a super noisy fan that's been getting even noisier over the years. And because it is hidden on a lower shelf in the main hallway, I hear it whenever I walk through the house, especially first thing in the morning when I'm the only one awake. So I did a couple of minor mods that made a huge difference:

1) replaced that noisy chipset fan with a Noctua equivalent
2) added a Noctua low noise adapter cable to the case exhaust fan

Now the system is completely silent unless I crouch down and put my ear to it. And temps are about the same, maybe 1C or so higher. So win-win.

Update on the Dimension E510: I turned it on, and a few seconds later, it shuts off. Even the capacitors weren't bloated, spewed, or what have you; I just cleaned the inside of the system.

Edit: found the issue. Would've helped if the idiot that put the system back together put the heatsink in the right spot. Crisis averted.
/Edit

Standard Def Steve wrote:

I had my 920 running at 4GHz with some nice, toight CL6 DDR3-1600 RAM today. Man did that take a lot of voltage. Good thing I do […]
Show full quote

Skyscraper wrote:

The Socket 1366 platform needs memory speed (over latency but latency also matters) and IMC speed to really perform well in 3dmark 2001 and the like.

I had my 920 running at 4GHz with some nice, toight CL6 DDR3-1600 RAM today. Man did that take a lot of voltage. Good thing I don't really give a damn about this CPU (if I do decide to build a proper system around this board, I'll use a more "glamorous" CPU like the i7-975). Performance in 3DMark01 is much better now, but still behind the Core 2 and Phenom II. I also overclocked my E8600 to 4GHz to use as an additional reference point:

i7-920 @ 4GHz (triple DDR3-1600):
Win7: 56,320
WinXP: 72,299

C2Q Q6700 @ 4GHz (Dual DDR3-1600):
Win7: 57,170
WinXP: 74,592

Phenom II-X6 1090T @ 4.07GHz (dual DDR3-1760)
Win7: 58,807
WinXP: Haven't tested

C2D E8600 @ 4GHz (Dual DDR3-1600):
Win7: 60,106
WinXP: 78,361

Not that it really matters. 3DMark01 is the only benchmark where the Nehalem i7 curiously lags behind. At 4GHz with fast RAM, it easily outperforms the other chips in every other benchmark I've run. But it makes me wonder: Since the i7 is weak in 3DMark01, would it also fall behind in old games like Quake III? I may have to find out soon. 🙄

This is the upper end of s1366 performance! I have not tried 3dmark 2001 though and I probably never will! 😁

That's awesome man. One of these days I'm going to have to run that on my main system just to see how it compares. Based on the 3930K @ 3.3GHz, I'm gonna guess that a 4930K @ 4.6GHz would be as fast as a 12c/24T X5650 @ 2.67GHz...?

Thats more like it.

3dmark 2001 isnt really Nehalems strong point. 😀

And yes, to reach 4+ GHz withn Nehalem alot of voltage is often required, especially with the C0 stepping. The core can handle 1.45V without any issues and 1.5V with very good air cooling or water. The power draw at those voltages are worse than with an overclocked Prescott. The memory controllers life can be shortend to only months with VTT (It's called QPI voltage on some boards) voltages over 1.45V, heat probably makes the issue worse. 1.4V VTT is considered safe for Nehalem and 1.35V for Westmere but an extra 0.05V over that is probably fine long term.

A CPU like the Xeon E5640 can be had for like $10 and is a good choice for a cheap gaming rig. It's a Westmare CPU with 4 cores, HT, 12MB cache, capable of ~4.2 GHz at ~1.35V and it will do that speed while using alot less power than the i7 920 @4GHz.

I'm installing Linux on my Dell Dimension E510 right now, and here are some pics of the system:

Using my IBM 15" CRT as a temporary screen and this system would be used for sharing printers for various devices (Google Cloud Print, AirPrint, local, and automatic driver installation for Windows PCs) and on 4 networks as soon as I get a firewall (pfSense) going on another computer with 4 VLANs: home router (Internet), main PCs, Retro PCs, and infected systems.

Today I imaged my small but growing collection of floppys. Sadly a whole bunch of them can't be completely read anymore. Civilization 1, Lands of Lore 1, Sim City 2000 and my Windows 98 Boot Floppy are all incomplete. Kinda aggravating having a game on 4 to 6 floppys and than just one bad one ruinning the whole game... Btw anybody can recommend a program for checking empty floppies health/ for bad sectors ?

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

My copy of WoW has an advertising insert for the 6800 series (which doubled as a rather decent coupon at the time). It also has an insert for the Pentium 4 processors of the same time frame. I need to get a scanner and scan those at some point.

I've never been terribly fond of Vanilla-only WoW for me, I liked the expansions, and specifically only up to WOTLK. I'm not fond of most of the "unofficial" wotlk servers.. almost all of them have some sort of "Gimmick" in them out there. Main one being they add a lot of "custom" stuff. Like customized npc's where you can buy things.. making you "vote" for them to get in-game tokens you trade for exotic items or something. So.. I set about learning how to do it and now have my own wotlk server running dedicated on my big dual-1366 server computer in the other room that runs 24-7. I've been playing it mostly solo but it is public.. I don't know if this qualifies as retro activity but I like playing it. I see it as a large single player RPG game. Not unlike many of the other single player RPG games that are out there. Yes.. I know it's designed for multi-player and all of that but it's still fun to me. And I get to relive my old "WOTLK Itch" I used to have.. I played WoW retail for 6 years of my life from original closed beta up to WOTLK and quit after cataclysm.. and the stupid changes.

Anyway that's my own rant.... I shouldn't discuss it too much on vogons due to legalities.. I guess if anyone wanted to play on it you could PM me and I could discuss it in private with you. I'm not terribly active on it myself.. trying to get caught up on TV shows then I'll get back into it in a few days.

Anyway, kinda sorta retro.. WOTLK (Wrath Of The Lich King) was 2008'ish I think WoW.

Also the server I have has 100% fully scripted dungeon bosses and dungeon events just as they should of been originally.

someone ofered me this board for 5 dollars
and i dont know if i will buy it
there seems to be no brand at all

I would buy it for $5, but stuff like that isn't seen a lot here. Perhaps the seller could provide you with some more pictures of the board and manual?

I have a pleasant issue. 😀

I'm comparing the best AMD and Intel had to offer year 2000. It's the AMD 760 chipset with an Athlon 1200 and the Intel 850 chipset with an P4 1.5.

I do not own a Thunderbird 1200 with a year 2000 manufacturing date but I know that a really good 1200MHz rated chip from November 2000 tops out at around 1466 MHz with very good air cooling and at 1333 - 1400 Mhz with a typical Socket A heatsink. The golden 1600 MHz capable AXIA chips were from January 2001 and later (at least I can't find one with a year 2000 manufacturing date posted at CPU-World) so it would not be fair for me to compare an Athlon clocked at those speeds to a first stepping Pentium 4 from year 2000.

My Pentium 4 1.5 on the other hand is the very first production stepping (B2) and also has the very first Part Number (SL4SH) so it's fully representative of the CPUs used for the reviews back in November 2000. My issue is that the damned CPU overclocks all too good. I'm using Intels crappy stock s423 heatsink and stock voltage (1.7V) and the little fucker still overclocks good enough to skew the results, I want my money back! Oh wait the CPU came with a 5 euro i850 motherboard with memory and heatsink so perhaps not...

The B2 stepping of the P4 Willamette is supposed to top out at ~1600 MHz at stock voltage with stock cooling and a good chip should do 1700 MHz with some extra juice. This is why the P4 1.6 and faster used the later C1 stepping.

Why do I never have this kind of luck in the silicon lottery when it actually matters...

Decided on a little retro today so pulled out one of my builds that I haven't used for ages, Cyrix MII 333, Matrox Mystique 220, ECS SiS 5591 motherboard, 128 MB ram, Samsung 32x CD-ROM, ISA network card,Windows ME.
The ancient Western Digital 4.3 Gb hard disk is making some pretty tired and worrying noises these days but the old beast is still running.
Playing some Mechwarrior mystique style 😀

I tried to repair a Sound Blaster 16 card that had low volume on the line inputs that has the wavetable header (bug) with new jacks, and unfortunately, the board got scratched and there are busted parts on the card. My Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro has a bad potentiometer (volume knob) as the speakers would male a scratching noise and whining pitch, but the card still works, and it has a genuine OPL3 chipset

I dug out my Amiga from the attic recently (Amiga's are close enough right?) and after having the PSU repaired got stuck into some old games. Sad thing was a ton of my old floppies were completely broken, so I had to order a lot of blank floppies. This is were my dear Win98 PC came into use as it's serial ports are perfect for transferring content to the Amiga, and you can even write to blank floppies in the Amiga drive via your PC. A nice bit of retro goodness.

Floppy disk restoration...

Yes, I can now tell the number of bad sectors on a disk and where they are by the sound of a floppy being formatted. 😵

Yes indeed, the sound of a bad floppy is a unique one! I was able to resurrect a couple of discs enough with isopropyl that I could read them enough to copy them, to my PC, so that was good enough. Anyone who cares about their floppies should move them out of the basement/attic etc now though.

BLockOUT wrote:

someone ofered me this board for 5 dollars and i dont know if i will buy it there seems to be no brand at all […]
Show full quote

someone ofered me this board for 5 dollars
and i dont know if i will buy it
there seems to be no brand at all

I did research online, and I found something close to the board you posted:

TK8498F VESA Motherboard

However, the picture on that site is blurry when zooming in and comparing the boards side by side.

BLockOUT wrote:

someone ofered me this board for 5 dollars
and i dont know if i will buy it
there seems to be no brand at all

The vast majority of 486 motherboards produced during this era were either made by chinese clone companies or random taiwanese companies no one's ever heard of before and there is no "branded" models for any of em and you probably won't find documentation for most of em. That's just the nature of computers during this time. It looks completely clean with no issues. If you want a 486-era system, $5 for a board seems like a great deal. Most of em go for $60+ today.

kithylin wrote:

The vast majority of 486 motherboards produced during this era were either made by chinese clone companies or random taiwanese companies no one's ever heard of before and there is no "branded" models for any of em and you probably won't find documentation for most of em. That's just the nature of computers during this time. It looks completely clean with no issues. If you want a 486-era system, $5 for a board seems like a great deal. Most of em go for $60+ today.

I agree. If the board works, $5 is great given the current prices for this stuff (it even has support for 3V processors). If it's dead, no big loss. Also, if you're worried about not having any documentation, take a look at the board and you'll notice that the settings are silkscreened in the PCB. Also, in your picture, there seems to be a manual/reference in the left side (though I don't know if it belongs to this motherboard). In any case, go for it.

EDIT: another thing on the plus side, looks like the barrel battery was removed even before it had a chance to leak.

Bought an HP PS/2 keyboard and an oldish PC on a whim.. The case looked interesting, it's an ARC branded PC with a weird PSU orientation. The case is a tower but the PSU is mounted horizontally, not vertically, so it rests parallel with the motherboard which is located all the way at the top. Hard to explain. It came with a rather crappy OEM build, though, a Procomp BST1M-E Socket 370 mATX board without an AGP slot, a Celeron 700 CPU and 2x128MB PC100 SDRAM. CUriously enough, the case also has a PCI NIC even though it has onboard ethernet. Anyway, the board and CPU will go into my collection, I may even end up selling or donating them. I'm planning on building a Slot 1 PC in this, either a PII-350 or a PIII-450, to go with a Voodoo 3 3000 (by the way, do share your ideas on what I should go with..) but I'm not sure the height clearance between the PSU and the motherboard is enough for it. I'll have to try and see once I'm done playing with my MMX/Voodoo2 build..

In my attempt to build a secondary/XP computer, found an oldish socket 1366 motherboard with i7 Processor. To my horror, the socket was full of thermal paste and the pins were mashed. I spent an hour or two trying to rebend the pins back into place. Here's what it looked like after I removed the paste, but hadn't touched the pins:
http://i.imgur.com/LC0RlKY.jpg
Anyway, I've done my best, and am waiting on a cooler tomorrow to see if there' any life in the thing at all.