Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-03-10, 13:26:

Heh I was gonna congratulate you on that in the other thread. How can you tell it's a 5x86? Apart from it being an AMD part it l […]
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PcBytes wrote on 2024-03-10, 11:36:

Tested an very cute SBC - Advantech PCM-4823. POSTs fine, someone ripped the 3.6v battery tho and I have to figure out what kind of IDE it uses.

Guess I got myself a (very smol) 5x86 machine in my hands 🤣

Heh I was gonna congratulate you on that in the other thread. How can you tell it's a 5x86? Apart from it being an AMD part it looks like the lettering isn't visible?

I've got a PCM-4825 which I'm pretty fond of, I even made an LCD adapter for it 😀 It gets quite hot so you'll really need to add some cooling, I still haven't really sorted that out for mine so I just put a fan over it when I use it.
I soldered a coin cell holder in where the original soldered battery was, mine was missing or dead too.
For the IDE I use a 44-pin IDE cable with a CF to IDE adapter that has both 44-pin and 40-pin headers, I'm guessing it's designed for a 44-pin disk-on-module. Hmm, I should really get some CF adapters that have a female 44-pin header for this instead since they're very cheap.
Just needs a PC104 soundcard and some kind of housing and this would be one fantastic little retro PC. Now that I look at it, it might be cool to squeeze it into a laptop chassis which could use the LCD. Probably not so easy though since the laptop membrane keyboard would need a controller made up.

------------
The other day I got hold of a Tecra 8100 for cheap because I wanted to see what it was about. These are now very rare and the ones I do see available are broken. It was sold for parts and the faulty video memory was visible in the listing but I thought it was a faulty screen - it was not, the VRAM is bad *and* the screen's polariser is breaking down. This is the 3rd worst corroded laptop I've ever worked on, but the most corroded one that still works. Even had to drill out a screw and the rear parallel port shield has a hole rusted in it:
Tecra8100 (1) (Custom).JPGTecra8100 (2) (Custom).JPGTecra8100 (3) (Custom).JPG
It works for now, but the fan is busted, the PCMCIA ports are gone, the screen is un-usable and there's more corrosion on the PCB so it might not last for long. But it did install Windows 98 okay! Doing that with stripes on the screen and selecting all my usual options is an experience.

OH YES - the floppy drive stopped working because the corrosion messed up the disk-detect / density-detect microswitches and then the battery pack started making strange cracking / something expanding noises when I put it on charge so that's now gonna live out in the garden in a covered pot to discharge.

Found out from the POST screen. Also CHIPS graphics chip resolution be funky stuff.

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2024-03-10, 15:20:

Performance in 3DMark 2000 is of course terrible, as a GeForce 2 MX 400 is 4x faster, which is normal. Some graphic glitches can also be observed on lighting effects.

For 3€ I'm happy to have an S3 Savage of any kind in my small collection but I can only imagine the disappointment of people getting this card at the time...

Yes, S3 3D graphics hardware was extremely disappointing. That's what the HP laptop I've been messing with uses (the integrated ProSavage/Twister version). At least they're consistent.

My Windows reinstall solved nothing. Everything that I thought was broken due to corrupt Windows files (the previous install was cloned off a failing hard drive, and System File Checker gave me the longest list of corrupt files I've ever seen) is still broken in exactly the same way. On top of that, the one game I have that's known to not run properly on Windows XP crashes to the desktop in 98. I had another Windows 98 install on a different hard drive (also failing - I had to partition around a spot where the heads stuck to the platter) using exactly the same drivers, and that game ran on it (in software rendering mode because the Windows 98 graphics driver is broken in a way that makes it lock up randomly when displaying 3D).

I still don't know why SSE is not detected under Windows on this Athlon XP. At one point, it would be detected on a fresh Windows install and then disappear a couple weeks later. Now it isn't detected at all unless I boot Linux.

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2024-03-10, 15:20:

I have finally tested my 3€ mystery graphic card I thought was a TNT2 but finally it's an S3 Savage 4 Pro as someone pointed out […]
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I have finally tested my 3€ mystery graphic card I thought was a TNT2 but finally it's an S3 Savage 4 Pro as someone pointed out. The card seems to work flawlessly under Windows 2000 with the latest driver I could find:

Performance in 3DMark 2000 is of course terrible, as a GeForce 2 MX 400 is 4x faster, which is normal. Some graphic glitches can also be observed on lighting effects.

For 3€ I'm happy to have an S3 Savage of any kind in my small collection but I can only imagine the disappointment of people getting this card at the time...

Yay, savage bros, I just got one for about the same price, see "bought" thread.

Some of the reviews mention you'd probably be better off with TNT2 or Voodoo budget models vs buying it at release price. It didn't take very long for street price to halve though, so there could have been ppl delighted to have this at $50 vs nothing. Also bargain bin games remained a thing until late noughts, so you could grab an armful of 5 year old stuff from the bargain/budget releases and expect to be able to play them.

That was more or less my thinking in grabbing mine "I'm happy to have an S3 Savage of any kind in my small collection"

Replacing a blown VIA VT6103 10/100 network controller chip on this EPIA motherboard.

Well over the past several months I've sold almost my entire GPU collection, my entire retro laptop collection, most of my actual software (after making ISO images of everything to put on my NAS), and I'm currently selling off/disposing of alot of loose misc hardware (random low-end junk tier motherboards, broken motherboards, random BS decoder and networking cards). I'm probably going to purge my stockpile of spare optical drives, keeping a handful of spares (probably 5-6 across the IDE/SATA and Beige/Black spectrum). I'm planning to sell or likely give away the dozens of random useless CPUs I've hoarded. I've still got around 50 desktops in my garage, partly because I don't want to scrap them until I'm out of options but they are also all too low value (various Pentium III/Socket A/Socket 478 OEM systems) to ship and finding local buyers, or even people to give them away to for free, is difficult.

Quite frankly, I'm recognizing that this was straight up hoarding. I was saving any random BS hardware for no other reason that it MIGHT be useful in some extremely niche build I would invariably spending 2 days putting together, play around with for 10 minutes, then never touch again. I remember long ago I complained that I would never have a massive hardware collection like some other users here.... well be careful what you wish for because you might just get it. Currently I am focusing on dwindling my collection down to the smallest number of builds that give me the most capabilities in terms of running software natively.

So far what I know for sure I'm keeping is:

* Gateway 486DX2-66LP1: Intel 486DX2-66/16MB RAM/Trident ProVidia 9685/Soundblaster 16 Vibra PNP (the nice OPL3 variant)/500MB HDD/52X CD-ROM /Windows 95
* Dell Optiplex GX1: Intel Pentium III 500/192MB RAM/NVIDIA TNT2 M64 PCI + 3DFX Voodoo2 12MB/Soundblaster AWE64 Value + SB Live! Gold/120GB HDD/DVD + CD ROMS/Windows98
* "Early" XP Build: ABIT VT7 S478 Motherboard/Intel Pentium IV 2.8GHZ/1GB DDR-400/ASUS NVIDIA GeForce FX5950 Ultra 256MB/Soundblaster Audigy2ZS/80+500GB HDDs SATA/DVD-RW SATA/Windows XP
* "Late" XP Build: Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI/AMD Athlon 3500+/2GB DDR2-400/EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 7900GTO 512MB/Soundblaster X-Fi/250GB HDD SATA/DVD-RW SATA/Windows XP
* XP/7 Dual Booter: ASUS P5N-D SLI nForce 750/Intel Core2Extreme QX9650/4GB DDR2-1066/Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 2GB/Soundblaster X-Fi/Dual 500GB HDD/WinXP + 7 Dual Boot
* iMac G3 Bondi Blue: It covers my Macintosh needs.

The Dell Optiplex GX1 and the XP/7 Dual Boot machines both have permanent setups inside my house, the rest lives in the garage or the closet until I need them. Between those two systems I can run a RIDICULOUS amount of games released from the early 1990s to the early 2010s natively with all features available.

I'm debating which of my Pentium w/ MMX systems I want to keep. I def want something faster than a 486 but slower than a 500MHZ Pentium III. There is also the dilemma of SB16 with the Creative CQM chip versus a True OPL3. One of my systems has an 1st Gen non-PNP SB16 with real OPL3 with a 133MHZ Pentium. The other is a 3rd gen PNP Soundblaster 16 with CQM synth on a 233MHZ Pentium. There is also a 3rd system with a 200MHZ Pentium and a Yamaha Dual OPL2 clone (one of the very few Soundblaster Pro 2 clones that properly implements stereo sound).

I've been archiving and testing old versions of the Eclipse SDK development environment this past week. I discovered that Eclipse 3.5.2 is the very last version that will run on Windows 98. Unfortunately, it's too old to support null analysis. And as much as I love Java, I really love my null annotations. So, I spent the last two days backporting it from 4.2.1.

Null annotations, static analysis, grammar lines, and error logging all work. I only merged it into the compiler, which means there is no IDE options panel to enable or configure it. So I hard-coded it as enabled for testing. So far so good.

Unfortunately, I can only build individual plugins and not the complete platform SDK. The build tools and instructions for this version appear to be broken, and I don't know what's wrong with it. I welcome anyone who would like to try and figure it out how to get it working.

https://archive.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads … 2-201002111343/
https://web.archive.org/web/20110915013425/ht … orted_Platforms
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=319460

Trying to come up with a slightly uncommon P4 based 98 build.

Any suggestions for what GPU should I go with? Quite literally ANYTHING goes - AGP or PCI-E.

So far, these are the parts I've come up with, short of a GPU:

- ASRock P4Dual-915GL
- P4 2.8GHz (Northwood)
-2x256MB DDR400
-120GB SATA HDD (set to compatibility mode)
-Aureal Vortex 2

PcBytes wrote on 2024-03-11, 11:39:

Any suggestions for what GPU should I go with? Quite literally ANYTHING goes - AGP or PCI-E.

So, not direct relevance to me but I'm actually really curious what the answer to this is. GeForce 3 or 4? Early Radeon? I assume the important criteria is driver quality over specific performance - I think I had an MX400 around this time which was fine for anything I wanted to play.

Not really. The only criteria is that it has to work under 98SE.

Be creative and go for a Matrox Parhelia or a 3Dlabs Wildcat VP. It's unconventional, which seems to be what you're looking for.

Yeah... unfortunately neither seems to be available locally, save for some M9140 PCI-E cards that don't have support for anything lower than XP for Matrox - the 3Dlabs is out of my league price-wise. ($330... even the mobo I plan to use wasn't that expensive 🤣)

PcBytes wrote on 2024-03-10, 11:36:

Tested an very cute SBC - Advantech PCM-4823. POSTs fine, someone ripped the 3.6v battery tho and I have to figure out what kind of IDE it uses.

Guess I got myself a (very smol) 5x86 machine in my hands 🤣

Nice smol toys!

Is that PC-104 form factor? Got any ideas what kind of case you might use?

douglar wrote on 2024-03-10, 01:03:

I replaced 13 capacitors on this board […]
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I replaced 13 capacitors on this board

Photo Mar 09 2024, 6 58 17 PM.jpg

Tried to power it up and got a high speed fan, no beeps, no post codes, no nothing. I stared at it for 10 minutes and started to think about what components I wanted to salvage before sending it to e-waste I saw that that I forgot to hook up the 4 pin CPU power cable. I'm used to benching 486 computers, so this made me laugh

Photo Mar 09 2024, 6 56 58 PM.jpg

Ah, an ECS MCP61PM-GM - decent motherboard overall, but it's got a shitty nVidia GeForce 6150 chipset. Make sure to put a 40 mm fan on it... or in a case with a fan that blows a good amount of air directly over the chipset heatsink. Otherwise, that will be the next thing to die on this motherboard. Mine's been acting up for a while now. When I got it, the motherboard used to not detect the LAN on a cold boot if the room temperatures were low. It still does this... though lately, it would sometimes make the PC crash and not boot anymore. I really should reflow it... but I've been lazy and just pushing hard down on the chipset heatsink, which usually fixes the issue for a while.

PC@LIVE wrote on 2024-03-10, 16:22:

Examined the three ATX power supplies, apart from one, the other two are in excellent (visual) condition, one seems practically never used, however overall they are all powerful enough to power an old PC, I also think quite recent PCs, as long as they use integrated VGA and CPU with a wattage less than 65W, the first visual test, was passed by two out of three, one of the two needs a clean internal (there is a bit of dust), the other is like new.

Those are all excellent PSUs!
The 1st and 3rd are Delta -made ones and really can do their stated ratings all day long.
You can actually power a lot more than just a 65W CPU with integrated GPU. All of these can do about 18-20 Amps on the 12V rail... so realistically, you can do a mid-range CPU (50-70W TDP) and a mid/high-end GPU up to about 80-100 Watts. As one example, I have an OC'ed Athlon 64 3200+ (s939) @ 2.5 Ghz (at stock voltage) and I use this system to test various GPUs. The PSU I am using is also rated for 18 Amps on the 12V rail (it's a Thermatake TR2 430W) and will happily power a Radeon HD3870 or 4850 or GeForce 9600 GT or 9800 GT PE/EE (power efficient / energy efficient edition). I even tried an HD4870 in that system (a 150W TDP video card), but the TR2 430W was starting to run a bit warm after a while, so not great for long-term use.

PC@LIVE wrote on 2024-03-10, 16:22:

The one that has not passed the visual examination (the one with ASUS adhesive), is because it has at least three capacitors to replace, they are swollen, and I assume they create voltage problems, assuming it still works ️, the good thing is that it is very similar to another one that I have in repair, maybe I could be able to fix the other one too, making a parallel between the two.

Should be working fine after a recap. I haven't had a Delta PSU not come back after a recap so far.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-03-11, 12:24:

Not really. The only criteria is that it has to work under 98SE.

Find a PCI-E version of the GeForce FX5200? 😉
Hey, it's Windows 98-compatible as far as I know. Quirky as heck (I mean, who takes an FX5200 when they have a PCI-E bus available?!)

PcBytes wrote on 2024-03-11, 11:39:

Trying to come up with a slightly uncommon P4 based 98 build.

Any suggestions for what GPU should I go with? Quite literally ANYTHING goes - AGP or PCI-E.

For a couple other less common suggestions, maybe a Savage4 Pro (e.g. Diamond Stealth III 540) or Kyro II?

PcBytes wrote on 2024-03-11, 11:39:

Trying to come up with a slightly uncommon P4 based 98 build. […]
Show full quote

Trying to come up with a slightly uncommon P4 based 98 build.

Any suggestions for what GPU should I go with? Quite literally ANYTHING goes - AGP or PCI-E.

So far, these are the parts I've come up with, short of a GPU:

- ASRock P4Dual-915GL
- P4 2.8GHz (Northwood)
-2x256MB DDR400
-120GB SATA HDD (set to compatibility mode)
-Aureal Vortex 2

Xabre or Volari for the AGP? ... then there's tons of PCIe Radeon Xyyy cards where yyy is a number from 300 to 800 which are 9600 to highest end 9800 type of performance. Just get one with RAM onboard and not a hyperram version or whatever they called it.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-03-11, 15:20:

PcBytes wrote on 2024-03-11, 11:39:

Trying to come up with a slightly uncommon P4 based 98 build. […]
Show full quote

Trying to come up with a slightly uncommon P4 based 98 build.

Any suggestions for what GPU should I go with? Quite literally ANYTHING goes - AGP or PCI-E.

So far, these are the parts I've come up with, short of a GPU:

- ASRock P4Dual-915GL
- P4 2.8GHz (Northwood)
-2x256MB DDR400
-120GB SATA HDD (set to compatibility mode)
-Aureal Vortex 2

Xabre or Volari for the AGP? ... then there's tons of PCIe Radeon Xyyy cards where yyy is a number from 300 to 800 which are 9600 to highest end 9800 type of performance. Just get one with RAM onboard and not a hyperram version or whatever they called it.

Uhm geforce 4 4000 series or series 6, for ati i would with X800 pro or 9800 XT

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-11, 14:56:

PcBytes wrote on 2024-03-11, 11:39:

Trying to come up with a slightly uncommon P4 based 98 build.

Any suggestions for what GPU should I go with? Quite literally ANYTHING goes - AGP or PCI-E.

For a couple other less common suggestions, maybe a Savage4 Pro (e.g. Diamond Stealth III 540) or Kyro II?

While it's a little bit out of place, I suppose I can stick the Savage 4 Pro in a SDR based P4 - a Chaintech 9BJA0. I've been meaning to yank that out for a spin someday, especially since the BIOS looks all sorts of funky.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-03-11, 15:20:

Xabre or Volari for the AGP? ... then there's tons of PCIe Radeon Xyyy cards where yyy is a number from 300 to 800 which are 9600 to highest end 9800 type of performance. Just get one with RAM onboard and not a hyperram version or whatever they called it.

IIRC the lowest I have from the X series would be a 1550 that is artefact free, and a HIS X600 that I suspect has bad RAM. I did search up for Xabre or Volari but none that I can afford (I am seriously wondering if I'm looking in the wrong place, because the prices are stupidly high.) I do have a bunch of Geforce 7 series PCI-E cards but not sure if those would be suitable.

How about a Savage IX instead? That's rather uncommon.

momaka wrote on 2024-03-11, 14:39:

Ah, an ECS MCP61PM-GM - decent motherboard overall, but it's got a shitty nVidia GeForce 6150 chipset. Make sure to put a 40 mm […]
Show full quote

douglar wrote on 2024-03-10, 01:03:

I replaced 13 capacitors on this board […]
Show full quote

I replaced 13 capacitors on this board

Photo Mar 09 2024, 6 58 17 PM.jpg

Tried to power it up and got a high speed fan, no beeps, no post codes, no nothing. I stared at it for 10 minutes and started to think about what components I wanted to salvage before sending it to e-waste I saw that that I forgot to hook up the 4 pin CPU power cable. I'm used to benching 486 computers, so this made me laugh

Photo Mar 09 2024, 6 56 58 PM.jpg

Ah, an ECS MCP61PM-GM - decent motherboard overall, but it's got a shitty nVidia GeForce 6150 chipset. Make sure to put a 40 mm fan on it... or in a case with a fan that blows a good amount of air directly over the chipset heatsink. Otherwise, that will be the next thing to die on this motherboard. Mine's been acting up for a while now. When I got it, the motherboard used to not detect the LAN on a cold boot if the room temperatures were low. It still does this... though lately, it would sometimes make the PC crash and not boot anymore. I really should reflow it... but I've been lazy and just pushing hard down on the chipset heatsink, which usually fixes the issue for a while.

PC@LIVE wrote on 2024-03-10, 16:22:

Examined the three ATX power supplies, apart from one, the other two are in excellent (visual) condition, one seems practically never used, however overall they are all powerful enough to power an old PC, I also think quite recent PCs, as long as they use integrated VGA and CPU with a wattage less than 65W, the first visual test, was passed by two out of three, one of the two needs a clean internal (there is a bit of dust), the other is like new.

Those are all excellent PSUs!
The 1st and 3rd are Delta -made ones and really can do their stated ratings all day long.
You can actually power a lot more than just a 65W CPU with integrated GPU. All of these can do about 18-20 Amps on the 12V rail... so realistically, you can do a mid-range CPU (50-70W TDP) and a mid/high-end GPU up to about 80-100 Watts. As one example, I have an OC'ed Athlon 64 3200+ (s939) @ 2.5 Ghz (at stock voltage) and I use this system to test various GPUs. The PSU I am using is also rated for 18 Amps on the 12V rail (it's a Thermatake TR2 430W) and will happily power a Radeon HD3870 or 4850 or GeForce 9600 GT or 9800 GT PE/EE (power efficient / energy efficient edition). I even tried an HD4870 in that system (a 150W TDP video card), but the TR2 430W was starting to run a bit warm after a while, so not great for long-term use.

PC@LIVE wrote on 2024-03-10, 16:22:

The one that has not passed the visual examination (the one with ASUS adhesive), is because it has at least three capacitors to replace, they are swollen, and I assume they create voltage problems, assuming it still works ️, the good thing is that it is very similar to another one that I have in repair, maybe I could be able to fix the other one too, making a parallel between the two.

Should be working fine after a recap. I haven't had a Delta PSU not come back after a recap so far.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-03-11, 12:24:

Not really. The only criteria is that it has to work under 98SE.

Find a PCI-E version of the GeForce FX5200? 😉
Hey, it's Windows 98-compatible as far as I know. Quirky as heck (I mean, who takes an FX5200 when they have a PCI-E bus available?!)

Thanks a lot friend, I recognized you because I also wrote on the B.Caps Forum, now I mostly write here, going back to the Delta power supplies, I already have some in the various PCs I have in my collection, ditto for FSP, I think I have about eight, initially I only did repairs of power supplies, then over time I moved on to MB, but I still have some power supplies under repair, the one I would like to fix is ​​the Corsair HX 750W, it's like new, but it has a fault in the additional board, a mosfet definitely ko and a second probably faulty, as a power supply once repaired it could power a nice motherboard, I have one that has some crooked pins, 1156 and i7 CPU at around 3GHz, ASUS P7P55D-LE, but these are just some of the many, if you are interested in seeing various MBs that I text or repair, you can find them here:
Re: Test and troubleshoot PC@LIVE motherboards

PcBytes wrote on 2024-03-11, 16:51:

I did search up for Xabre or Volari but none that I can afford (I am seriously wondering if I'm looking in the wrong place, because the prices are stupidly high.) I do have a bunch of Geforce 7 series PCI-E cards but not sure if those would be suitable.

The xabres and volaris would be turning up scrapped in the same kind of systems that had MX420s, FX5200s etc, they were low priced cards and got sold off by discounters and liquidators very cheap in 2nd half of noughts... but fleabay prices are a bit stupid... there's some variant of "not worth anything so throw them out", hence no price history, early 10s, to a lot of them actually being thrown out and not many people noticing they were different from other low end cards, then sudden "discovery" for being a bit quirky and lack of price history making ppl think they are super rare vs not worth selling as they were 10 years before.... anyway... they should be around in the untouched and ignored junk still. I think we're getting to the point of "high prices going to make more people notice they have any value, and a bunch get pulled out of closets and basements flooding the market and bringing price somewhere near reasonable" which the market might take a couple of years to soak up completely and then they'll be on the slow ramp upwards of everything else.

Kinda similar story with the Savage cards, have been pretty much worthless, some chancers listing them in the $100-300 range, but really you can pick them up for $5-$20.

Some of the Geforce 7k series have win98 driver hacks I think, you'd have to look by model.