Ugh, almost as annoying as the AOpen AX59Pro 😁

Almoststew1990 wrote:

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Is that the FDD connector all the way down there? That's a little inconvenient I think?

Yes, yes it is.

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Ugh, almost as annoying as the AOpen AX59Pro :D […]
Show full quote

Ugh, almost as annoying as the AOpen AX59Pro 😁

That's a whole new level of impractical.. Wow.

I am trying to resurrect an old PowerMAC G3 to use it with a Villagetronic Voodoo 3 or a Voodoo 5 5500 MAC
But first there will be lots of cleaning and a memory upgrade.

PowerPC G3 750 233MHz
256K volume cache
160MB RAM
Onboard VGA
HDD of unknown size
MAC OS 8.0.1

The case can't be fully closed for some reason. It seems to get stuck somehow...

@artic

look at the top case. often the metal shell gets bent and needs to be adjusted.

In the middle of liquid cooling my dual Xeon setup.
I tried to keep it as old school as possible, but most older liquid cooling parts are hard to find.

Arctic wrote:

I am trying to resurrect an old PowerMAC G3 to use it with a Villagetronic Voodoo 3 or a Voodoo 5 5500 MAC
But first there will be lots of cleaning and a memory upgrade.

I've built a similar system some time ago. I used a PM 7500 however, as that one still has SCSI instead of IDE.

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?519 … intosh-7500-100

Unless you upgrade the CPU, everything beyond a Voodoo 2 is wasted.

Jade Falcon wrote:

In the middle of liquid cooling my dual Xeon setup.
I tried to keep it as old school as possible, but most older liquid cooling parts are hard to find.

What CPU blocks are those?

kithylin wrote:

Jade Falcon wrote:

In the middle of liquid cooling my dual Xeon setup.
I tried to keep it as old school as possible, but most older liquid cooling parts are hard to find.

What CPU blocks are those?

Swiftech Apogee LP.

Can't say I like the idea of useing hydroX coolant but I was trying to make the system look like is was built in 2006-8. Should turnout to be good.
Only real problem is the radiators or lack there of.

@luckybob
Thanks! That is a good idea 😀

derSammler wrote:

I've built a similar system some time ago. I used a PM 7500 however, as that one still has SCSI instead of IDE. […]
Show full quote

Arctic wrote:

I am trying to resurrect an old PowerMAC G3 to use it with a Villagetronic Voodoo 3 or a Voodoo 5 5500 MAC
But first there will be lots of cleaning and a memory upgrade.

I've built a similar system some time ago. I used a PM 7500 however, as that one still has SCSI instead of IDE.

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?519 … intosh-7500-100
[...]

Cool! I will check it out 😎

derSammler wrote:

Arctic wrote:

I am trying to resurrect an old PowerMAC G3 to use it with a Villagetronic Voodoo 3 or a Voodoo 5 5500 MAC
But first there will be lots of cleaning and a memory upgrade.

[...]
Unless you upgrade the CPU, everything beyond a Voodoo 2 is wasted.

It makes sense if you want to enjoy your games in 4x RGSSAA 😉

I started on a Windows-port of my DOS MIDI player. The idea being that I can feed captured MIDI data from DOS to MIDI emulation modules for testing.
More specifically, a MIDI emulation module for the Yamaha FB-01 (which is the MIDI module embedded on an IBM Music Feature Card, which needs DOSBox support).

krivulak wrote:

Anyway, I reseated every socketed chip I saw, assembled it back and yeah, it is up and running now. But what is WAY more surprising, now when I learned more about sound cards I tried to set up my Yamaha OPL3-SAx card for maybe 50th time now, and what blew my mind, it worked for the first try after the bath, got sound and music in Wolfenstein 3D, Doom 1 and Commander Keen!

Arrr, she's a beauty!

This is why I never throw anything away unless it's actually destroyed by fire.

Not much of a retro activity, but I'm working on setting up my home server and the first share created is the one I plan to put my retro drivers and such into - named it RetroShare 😜

Arctic wrote:

I am trying to resurrect an old PowerMAC G3 to use it with a Villagetronic Voodoo 3 or a Voodoo 5 5500 MAC But first there will […]
Show full quote

I am trying to resurrect an old PowerMAC G3 to use it with a Villagetronic Voodoo 3 or a Voodoo 5 5500 MAC
But first there will be lots of cleaning and a memory upgrade.

PowerPC G3 750 233MHz
256K volume cache
160MB RAM
Onboard VGA
HDD of unknown size
MAC OS 8.0.1

The case can't be fully closed for some reason. It seems to get stuck somehow...

You may also want to upgrade the OS, unless you intend to run anything specific that may not work on Mac OS 8.6 or above. Like many others, I found 8.6 to be about the most stable of the OS 8 line.

If you feel adventurous, you could also try overclocking it. I have a 300MHz Beige G3 and I bumped it up slightly to 333MHz, with just the stock heatsink.

I originally had a Voodoo 3 in mine also (I flashed a PC card with a Mac ROM). Worked great while I had Mac OS 8/9 installed, but I eventually installed Mac OS X and as the Voodoo card wasn't supported in OS X, had to put in a spare Rage 128 instead.

Photoshop is wonderful

Finally got my XPS Gen2 fully working. After nearly cooking the P4EE at 80C+ and replacing the motherboard and fans it's running stable. All because the original owner decided the inside needed to be carpeted with dust and fedex dropped it. Still looking for a new cover for the power supply but they are nearly impossible to find and i'd rather not buy a gen3 power supply just for the plastic cover. Still looks good and stays on as long as I don't bump it. Honestly I don't know if I prefer looking at it or gaming on it.

Scali wrote:

I started on a Windows-port of my DOS MIDI player.

MIDI player works (also found a bug in my DOS player, teehee). Next step is to try and get the FB-01 code as far as at least playing a single MIDI note.
Once that works, I can try to feed it entire MIDI files, and see what state it is in.

I decided to install Windows XP with SP3 (both Home Edition and Professional) 32-bit on 3 different computers:

IBM ThinkPad R40 2682
- Intel Pentium 4-M 2GHz
- 256MB DDR-266 (not enough)
- ATI Radeon Mobility 7500
- TrackPoint, TrackPad, and ThinkLight
- 20GB Hitachi IDE HDD
- 14" XGA TFT display
- Mitsumi DVD ROM
- IBM 802.11abg Wireless card (detects my 5GHz wireless network)
- Intel Pro/100 VE
- Agers AC97 Modem
- Windows XP Pro with SP3

Dell Dimension 4550
- Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz (planning on getting the Pentium 4 HT 3.06GHz) Socket 478
- 1536MB (1.5GB) DDR-333
- NVidia GeForce 6200 AGP 8x (in place of the GeForce4 card)
- 200GB Maxtor IDE HDD
- Lite-On DVD Burner
- CD-RW of some sort
- Dell keyboard with extra USB ports and mouse
- TrendNet TEW-424UB Wireless G
- Intel Pro 100 VE
- VIA USB and FireWire PCI card
- Teac 3.5" 1.44MB FDD

Custom AMD Athlon 64
- AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 2GHz
- 768MB DDR-333
- VIA VT6421a SATA (AHCI) controller card
- 320GB 2.5" Laptop HDD
- NVidia GeForce 6200 PCI (planning on upgrading to the AGP version)
- LG CD Burner
- Teac 3.5" 1.44MB FDD
- 520W Corsair PSU
- PCChips M871G Socket 754 mATX
- DiabloTek case (had my 6-core guts inside, but installing RAM was a pain in the ass).

This story will get it's own thread with pictures and stuff.

I bought a cheap 40 euro Dell Precision 530 MT (dual Xeon, Intel 860 rambus system released spring 2001) on Ebay a week ago paying through the nose for shipping this 23kg beast. The seller had pictures of the system working.

I got the system today, of course the package was beat up, the clam shell had slid open and there were slot covers all over. No physical damage to anything but plastic as far as I could tell so I cleaned up the mess and tested the system. All I got was the power indicator blinking yellow, power supply failure or system board failure said the manual. I disconnected everything except for memory, CPUs, the "control panel" and the "I/O-panel", the last two because I have no idea how to jump start this system and the power button is connected to the "control panel" that connects to the "I/O-panel" that in turn connects to the motherboard. Removing all the unnecessary hardware did not help.

Next I checked that the CPU heatsinks were well secured and that the memory sticks and VRM modules were pushed all the way into their slots, I found no issues. Then I decided to open the power supply, it would have been odd if it had died during transport but you never know and I wanted to clean it anyhow.

It turned out Dell do not want people getting into this power supply. Not even the full service manual tells you how to take it apart, it just tells you how to replace it with a new one. There are alot of plastic that is very hard to remove, and when I had removed some and saw how it was secured I still did not manage to remove the rest without damaging pretty much every plastic clip securing the plastic to the outside of the PSU. I guess I will fix that with hot glue...

The PSU looked pristine inside except for loads of dust, no issues here I concluded and went back to messing with the motherboard and CPUs. I removed one of the CPUs (god I hate these s603 mounting clips), no isses found but when I removed the second heat sink the CPU came out with it. After I reinstalled the CPUs the system suddenly could power on so I guess some CPU pins had lost contact during shipping even though the heatsinks were well secured.

I have still not tested the system with a video card but I expect smooth sailing from here on. I will continue tomorrow, just seeing all the parts spread all over the floor makes me tired.

Edit

I just did a quick test with a video card and so far so good.

/Edit

Will these work in my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus?

I'm planning on upgrading the VRAM from 1MB to 2MB for certain games and applications in WFW 3.11, and install L2 cache since the system didn't come with it, and it might help if I install it for games and programs to run faster. And I don't know if I should go with 128KB or 512KB L2 cache... decisions, decisions... Good thing I upgraded the CPU from the SX2-50 to a DX2-66 (major improvement for games and programs, but I use cache control programs in MS-DOS to slow down the computer by disabling the cache on both the board and inside the CPU for speed sensitive games and MT-32 related games as well).

Cleaned the battery compartment of the Psion Series 5 handheld computer I picked up yesterday, popped in some batteries, and got it started up. Screen works flawlessly (had to crank up the contrast a bit), backlight works (noisy), all programs work, stylus works, keyboard works (quite pleasantly), so I played a game of Minesweeper on it, tried out the drawing program, had a look at all programs and wrote something about it in the Word processor.

I think I will be making a thread about it in the System Specs forum, it's really pretty cool and better than some current smartphones...