xplus93 wrote:

Having fun with my first (and last) 3dfx card. Got a couple V5500s in a CL pickup. Apparently my Dell XPS B1000r has a wimpy power supply and can't handle it. So I had to dig out my S370 rig and put it in there which was going to be it's new home anyways. I'd rather keep my systems as intel/nvidia as possible.

Dell PSUs are hit or miss. The quality is all over the place. I've seen ones that can barely handle there stock configuration... And then I've seen ones that can handle high end GPUs like an FX5950 or a X1950 like the PSU in my Dimension 4600..

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Dell PSUs are hit or miss. The quality is all over the place. I've seen ones that can barely handle there stock configuration... And then I've seen ones that can handle high end GPUs like an FX5950 or a X1950 like the PSU in my Dimension 4600..

The even better part is that early manufacture 4600's suffered from a faulty PSU known to blow up within the first year of purchase 🤣

ODwilly wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Dell PSUs are hit or miss. The quality is all over the place. I've seen ones that can barely handle there stock configuration... And then I've seen ones that can handle high end GPUs like an FX5950 or a X1950 like the PSU in my Dimension 4600..

The even better part is that early manufacture 4600's suffered from a faulty PSU known to blow up within the first year of purchase 🤣

In my area at least they also had the issue where the CPU exhaust fan was installed backwards (blowing the hot air from the heatsink directly over the RAM instead of exhausting the hot air out the back of the case). This lead to overheating and fried components. Pretty much every single one I had to work on under warranty had this problem. Some of them were fixed simply by turning the fan around the correct way.

Working on organizing my computer parts. Got a couple free 4-drawer file cabinets and it is helping a ton. Maybe I'll be able to find stuff when I need to after I am done.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

xplus93 wrote:

Having fun with my first (and last) 3dfx card. Got a couple V5500s in a CL pickup. Apparently my Dell XPS B1000r has a wimpy power supply and can't handle it. So I had to dig out my S370 rig and put it in there which was going to be it's new home anyways. I'd rather keep my systems as intel/nvidia as possible.

Dell PSUs are hit or miss. The quality is all over the place. I've seen ones that can barely handle there stock configuration... And then I've seen ones that can handle high end GPUs like an FX5950 or a X1950 like the PSU in my Dimension 4600..

The high end ones are pretty good. I had a precision 670 that handled dual CPUs at max TDP as well as a whole bunch of 10k drives and a beefy GPU. Although in a system like that it would be considered normal.

Setting up a machine to test a whole bunch of random parts I'd picked up over the last bit.

I've got a cheap ATX case with an admittedly sketchy PSU, that contained a very dusty ECS K8M800-M2 Rev 1.0A motherboard, a Sempron 2600+ that was newer than the BIOS on the board, and 1 GB of RAM.

I reduced it to 512MB of RAM and then added:

A Geforce FX 5700 LE that I had picked up without a heatsink, that I added new paste and a spare heatsink and fan to, and a Turtle Beach Aureal Vortex 1.

Installed all of the hardware and installed Windows ME.

Looks like the Geforce FX works wonderfully. The Vortex has proven a bit unreliable - at times it causes the machine to slow to an absolute crawl, this is usually fixed by switching what PCI slot it's in and letting ME re-install the driver. I'll keep testing, but from what I understand this might not be a great card for this machine anyways - the drivers are VXD driver and could be making ME unstable.

xplus93 wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

xplus93 wrote:

Having fun with my first (and last) 3dfx card. Got a couple V5500s in a CL pickup. Apparently my Dell XPS B1000r has a wimpy power supply and can't handle it. So I had to dig out my S370 rig and put it in there which was going to be it's new home anyways. I'd rather keep my systems as intel/nvidia as possible.

Dell PSUs are hit or miss. The quality is all over the place. I've seen ones that can barely handle there stock configuration... And then I've seen ones that can handle high end GPUs like an FX5950 or a X1950 like the PSU in my Dimension 4600..

The high end ones are pretty good. I had a precision 670 that handled dual CPUs at max TDP as well as a whole bunch of 10k drives and a beefy GPU. Although in a system like that it would be considered normal.

My 4600 I call the Athlon-killer for a reason.

Sexy Blue Case Mode done using blue painters tape
Windows XP Professional SP3
2.8GHZ Pentium 4 Prescott Core
ASUS NVIDIA GeForceFX 5950 with Arctic NVSilencer4 and copper RAM Sinks
Creative Soundblaster Audigy Platinum EX
2GB (4x512MB) DDR-533 from Samsung
Twin CD Drives (1 48x CD-ROM Reader, and one DVD-RW SuperMulti)
Twin HDD Drives (1 IDE Maxtor 80GB for OS, 1 SATA Seagate Barracuda for Games)

My math says I'm right up against the wall with the stock 250w PSU. These things aren't as bad as there made out to be honestly.

gdjacobs wrote:

bjwil1991 wrote:

Question though, what do the jumpers behind every input/output on the sound card do? […]
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Question though, what do the jumpers behind every input/output on the sound card do?

SPK1
LIN1
LOUT1
MIC1

Do they increase/decrease the amount of sound going in or out via amplification?

I suspect they're internal connectors for the back plate I/O connectors. There are additional pins which might be for spacing or perhaps for connecting filtration. A little testing with a DMM would reveal that for sure.

Huh. Interesting, eh. I wonder if hooking up an internal PC Speaker would work or not? I wouldn't be amazed if it did.

Guessing the wiring diagram for that would be:
1---2-----3----4
L Gnd Gnd R

Edit: my speakers are making a high pitching noise for some odd reason, and cleaning the ports didn't help one bit... Maybe replacing the audio ports would help?

Parted out an old HP Pavilion ZD7000 Pentium 4 laptop I've had for months without an AC adapter. It POSTed with a random AC adapter rated for half its amperage (draws 6.5 amps, brick was 3.16) for about 2 seconds, so it was useless.

Got a P4 3.0 ghz (suprisingly, desktop Socket 478), some kingston RAM, 802.11g wifi card and 120 gig WD Scorpio IDE HDD out of it.

cj_reha wrote:

Parted out an old HP Pavilion ZD7000 Pentium 4 laptop I've had for months without an AC adapter. It POSTed with a random AC adapter rated for half its amperage (draws 6.5 amps, brick was 3.16) for about 2 seconds, so it was useless.

Got a P4 3.0 ghz (suprisingly, desktop Socket 478), some kingston RAM, 802.11g wifi card and 120 gig WD Scorpio IDE HDD out of it.

It didn't post (most likely) due to an inadequate power supply. It may very well have worked fine with a $20 dollar power supply off eBay. IMO it would have been worth the work since it has a Go FX5200 which is good enough for most early (2000-2003) titles. Would have made such a nice XP laptop.

Desktop P4 laptops weren't uncommon. If I recall correctly there were some LGA775 laptops too.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

cj_reha wrote:

Parted out an old HP Pavilion ZD7000 Pentium 4 laptop I've had for months without an AC adapter. It POSTed with a random AC adapter rated for half its amperage (draws 6.5 amps, brick was 3.16) for about 2 seconds, so it was useless.

Got a P4 3.0 ghz (suprisingly, desktop Socket 478), some kingston RAM, 802.11g wifi card and 120 gig WD Scorpio IDE HDD out of it.

It didn't post (most likely) due to an inadequate power supply. It may very well have worked fine with a $20 dollar power supply off eBay. IMO it would have been worth the work since it has a Go FX5200 which is good enough for most early (2000-2003) titles. Would have made such a nice XP laptop.

Desktop P4 laptops weren't uncommon. If I recall correctly there were some LGA775 laptops too.

Yeah, it's definitely because of a too weak power supply.

Damn, I wish I knew it had such a good graphics chop before tossing the shell. 😵

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

cj_reha wrote:

Parted out an old HP Pavilion ZD7000 Pentium 4 laptop I've had for months without an AC adapter. It POSTed with a random AC adapter rated for half its amperage (draws 6.5 amps, brick was 3.16) for about 2 seconds, so it was useless.

Got a P4 3.0 ghz (suprisingly, desktop Socket 478), some kingston RAM, 802.11g wifi card and 120 gig WD Scorpio IDE HDD out of it.

It didn't post (most likely) due to an inadequate power supply. It may very well have worked fine with a $20 dollar power supply off eBay. IMO it would have been worth the work since it has a Go FX5200 which is good enough for most early (2000-2003) titles. Would have made such a nice XP laptop.

Desktop P4 laptops weren't uncommon. If I recall correctly there were some LGA775 laptops too.

I think some newer laptops will display a message onscreen using the integrated GPU, but those older ones would just sit and do nothing or beep like something majot is wrong. I have a feeling that's how I got my XPS gen1. Tested "bad" and listed as not working.

P4 was a crazy time for laptops.

Cleaned up my messy living room and got rid of a three bags full of old computer parts, mostly common stuff like IDE cables and power cables, but also countless old semi-broken CD/DVD players...

cyclone3d wrote:

Those little scuffs/scrapes should have 0 effect on the functionality. As long as there are no components missing or traces brok […]
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bjwil1991 wrote:

Having technical difficulties with my Aztech WaveRider 32-2D card (AZT2316R) with the sound output. Apparently, my left speaker […]
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Having technical difficulties with my Aztech WaveRider 32-2D card (AZT2316R) with the sound output. Apparently, my left speaker is quieter than the right speaker, and I believe the jacks are jacked up since cleaning them didn't help at all. Luckily, I have a bag of 100 or less now jacks for the cards I have, or speakers with headphone jacks:

Aztech AZT2316R card
Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro
Sound Blaster 16 WavEffects CT4170
JBL Platinum Series speakers from Compaq

However, I don't have solder wick or a desoldering iron to remove the jacks at all.

Question though, what do the jumpers behind every input/output on the sound card do?

SPK1
LIN1
LOUT1
MIC1

Do they increase/decrease the amount of sound going in or out via amplification?

Edit: found something on the card.

20170617_150614.jpg

Not good.

Those little scuffs/scrapes should have 0 effect on the functionality. As long as there are no components missing or traces broken you should be fine. Good luck finding old hardware without some sort of scuffs/scrapes unless the owner(s) were OCD about keeping everything in the original boxes in anti-static bags as soon as it was removed from the system it was in.

The first Aztech card I got actually had a broken trace that somebody tried to repair but did a horrible job. The posting said that the one channel didn't work. Before even trying it out I replaced the glob of solder with an actual wire... which should not have affected anything from what I could tell because all the trace went to was the virtual parallel port jumper.

Put the card in a computer to test it out and it worked just fine.

Would soaking the card in soapy water or isopropyl alcohol be a good idea, or just replace the jacks? The line in and Mic ports work without issues, and I did a test using the Mic and stereo splitter I got for my headphones at Radio Shack to be hooked up to my JBL speakers with a headphone splitter to output audio in both channels, which, in theory, did work somewhat, just only played through the right speaker for both channels ironically.

bjwil1991 wrote:

Huh. Interesting, eh. I wonder if hooking up an internal PC Speaker would work or not? I wouldn't be amazed if it did. […]
Show full quote

Huh. Interesting, eh. I wonder if hooking up an internal PC Speaker would work or not? I wouldn't be amazed if it did.

Guessing the wiring diagram for that would be:
1---2-----3----4
L Gnd Gnd R

Edit: my speakers are making a high pitching noise for some odd reason, and cleaning the ports didn't help one bit... Maybe replacing the audio ports would help?

Don't take it as gospel. It's a theory, but you can check it out easily with a DMM on continuity. The high pitched noise could be something simple like old caps on the card's DC filter.

Let me first say soldering isn't my strong point, but a work in progress. I'm putting in new jacks on my Aztech Sound Galaxy WaveRider Pro 32-3D, well, only one so far and there was gunk over the traces where the jacks go, so after removing the jack with my soldering iron (no desoldering iron or wick), I sprayed a hint of electrical cleaner and lubricate on the traces and contact points, scrubbed the dirt off carefully, waited 4 minutes, and soldered on the new jack with success.

Edit: still no go with the sound card. Well, time to take it in for repairs.

Found a home for my new voodoo card. Realistically speaking, is the upgrade to tualatin worth it? TBH, i'd like a dual 1.4 setup, but I really can't justify the costs since most of the time i'll use my dell 1GHz with a GF2 GTS.

I've been really sick lately. Stuck inside and not working so I decided to test my CPU collection. Found two dead CPUs, so I made these out of them:

One was a P4 3.0GHz, one was a Pentium D 820. May one live on in my drawer in peace, and the other on my keychain in eternal agony. 😵

Been doing some more sorting, mostly of "newer" stuff (like s478/s775 etc) and also doing some cleaning. It's been good weather to clean computer cases outside, gets rid of all the dust fast 😀
But mostly just that, sorting and cleaning and tidying.

DeafPK wrote:

Well, it didn't happen today, but I had this Athlon 1000 cpu dusting down, so I put it in a frame and gave it to a friend of mine who has always been a little far out on the red side...

This looks pretty much awesome! 😁

And nice touch on the "1GHz" bit 😜

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.