BitWrangler wrote on 2024-01-16, 14:38:

Something you sometimes see in older ones is the bottom bay, is actually the bottom half of a full height bay, so doesn't have the screw holes.

I've kinda "collected the set" of similar design ones, mini, mid and full towers.

Though there are at least three variations on that [ IIII ] style front.

I remember buying a case in the 2000s that had more internal 3.5" bays than there were screw holes on the sides for them. So I just went and drilled some of my own.

Yah was a bit nasty if they were the cheapy of cheapies and had the drive cages and the motherboard tray welded in and you couldn't get at the back.

CrFr wrote on 2024-01-28, 13:22:

Salvaged this little monitor from recycling bin at work. Dell 2007FP 20", with LG IPS panel. 4:3, 1600x1200, DVI, VGA, composite, S-video, 4-port USB hub. Height ajustable stand with pivot. Not very retro itself, but very usable with lot different of retro hardware, thanks to the aspect ratio, high resolution and wide range of connectors. Almost perfect cosmetic condition and not a single scratch on the screen.

This is probably the dream monitor for not just retro computing but vintage TV programs as well. Hard to believe one in working order got recycled.

CrFr wrote on 2024-01-28, 13:22:

Salvaged this little monitor from recycling bin at work. Dell 2007FP 20", with LG IPS panel. 4:3, 1600x1200, DVI, VGA, composite, S-video, 4-port USB hub. Height ajustable stand with pivot. Not very retro itself, but very usable with lot different of retro hardware, thanks to the aspect ratio, high resolution and wide range of connectors. Almost perfect cosmetic condition and not a single scratch on the screen.

IMGP2335_.jpg

Wow, that is a great catch! I'm also on the lookout for a 1600x1200 4:3 LCD..

Last week I went to a different section of my workplace and in front of a storage room I've seen an old beige desktop. Didn't really look that hard, seen the Windows 95 ans Pentium stickers on the front, a specific promising looking expansion card on the back and put in some word with the lead engineer that if it's already off the books, and only in the way about to be thrown out, I'd be selfless enough to sacrifice myself and take on their burden. Today I could finally pick it up.

It's an Olivetti M4 P100. While at work investigated a little bit, the closest thing I could find was the M24 P133. Which is about the same, but to my dread, it supposed to have a soldered Dallas IC.

It's a little bit dirty, but over all in decent condition.

Opening up, my suspicions are confirmed. The promising looking card is a Sound Blaster 16. One of the earlier variants, CT1790. Now I have a third potential sound card for the 486DX4 build I've been planning to do for a good while now, but never seem to find a motherboard that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Anyway, the inside isn't much cleaner than the outside, and luckily it has a coin cell battery. Unluckily it's still soldered. I didn't see anything catastrophic aside of some dust. It's clear the PC was upgraded at some point. I don't know if it came with the optical drive, the color doesn't match, but the manufacturing date isn't all that far off, November 1996. It's a Sony CDU311 8x speed drive. The RAM is also more than expected. It has 2×32MB and 2×something. I assume the 2×something is what it was shipped with. The heatsink is also a little bit big for what I'd expect for a Pentium 100 and glued on, I thought it was also upgraded, but no.

Since everything looked OK, I took a leap of faith and turned it on. Indeed, 80MB RAM and Windows 95 boots from the 800MB Quantum hard drive. The drive didn't have too much data. It was used by someone tasked with training... and DVD bootlegging. There was an extensive list of movies in a Word document. Also an Excel spreadsheet called "The world's most important spreadsheet"... it calculates the time you have to wait before you drive based on the amount of alcohol you drank. Based on the file modification dates, it was in active service up until about Q1 2006 which is surprisingly late for a P100.

Now I have to think about what to do with it. I'll definitely keep the SB16, and shouldn't keep the rest. But it ticks all the boxes I want from the 486DX2 PC I'm planning to build, except that it's not a 486. The On-Board Trident 9680 is a graphics chip I have no experience with, but I know it was sold as a PCI card as well. The only thing I really don't like about it is the proprietary motherboard. It's very similar in specs to my second PC, except with 2.5× as much RAM. And that I don't remember what graphics card did I have back then.

It's not exactly what I want, but I also don't want to regret selling it. It's nostalgic to have a P100 system again after nearly 25 years, but I was much more attached the one I had before and the one after.

I've seen 200MMXs in service as late as early 2014. One of the VX machines I used to have for a time before scrapping the case (it couldn't be screwed in properly anymore by the time I threw it away. I did save the front sliding bezels!!) had dates as late as October 2014.
It was technically sort of a trashpick as the chap I bought it from was one of those homeless people, looking to make a buck. I
t surprisingly even came with the original drives - IIRC a 2.3GB Maxtor as boot drive and a 4.3GB IBM Deskstar DCAA-34330.
Not sure if I still have the Maxtor (it seems to have gone missing alongside a Caviar 2850 I definitely remember owning, and in working shape no less - it had an Ontrack enabled Win95+DOS6.22 dualboot when I got it.) but the IBM is in my lap as I write this post.

Man, I have a whole load of retro drives 🤣

You could have epoxied nuts to take the screws that no longer fit. Tiny welds would be better. Years ago, maybe they still do, they'd sell these resistance soldering stations for assembling brass models and whatnot. Like a miniature spot welder. Those were the days when you could salvage the needed carbon rods (what provides le resistance) from spent C, D, ... batteries. They don't use them anymore. Maybe harfware stores, welding supply houses. You can build your own cheaply. I think I even have a set of plans somewhere.

Nah, that one was terminally ill case-wise. The screw holes that were holding it were mangled enough that I couldn't do anything.
I did get a similar framed case (with just a different front bezel) that is currently waiting for an build.
(that one originally was a Celeron 433 + PCChips M726MRT machine, then a K6-II Plus 500MHz + LuckyTech P5MVP3 + V3 3000 build before I dismantled it and left it empty at the moment.)

AT case by the way, that was sliding up.

I threw away a clone AT case because it had some rust. But I've been coping well ...

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-01-29, 17:49:

Now I have to think about what to do with it. I'll definitely keep the SB16, and shouldn't keep the rest. But it ticks all the boxes I want from the 486DX2 PC I'm planning to build, except that it's not a 486. The On-Board Trident 9680 is a graphics chip I have no experience with, but I know it was sold as a PCI card as well. The only thing I really don't like about it is the proprietary motherboard. It's very similar in specs to my second PC, except with 2.5× as much RAM. And that I don't remember what graphics card did I have back then.

It's not exactly what I want, but I also don't want to regret selling it. It's nostalgic to have a P100 system again after nearly 25 years, but I was much more attached the one I had before and the one after.

Have it fill in for the 486 until you do have all the parts, at which point you can decide which parts for which build and if you want to keep this or not.

I have another socket7 board with a K5-PR133 which is about the same performance level as a late 486 so I'm not low on options. And I can use the rest of the parts I got for the 486 build with both.

As for the Olivetti, the optical drive seems to be a factory option: https://mastodonpc.tripod.com/personal/m4-p100.html

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-01-30, 06:00:

I have another socket7 board with a K5-PR133 which is about the same performance level as a late 486 so I'm not low on options. And I can use the rest of the parts I got for the 486 build with both.

As for the Olivetti, the optical drive seems to be a factory option: https://mastodonpc.tripod.com/personal/m4-p100.html

K5-PR133, particularly for ALU tasks, is out of the performance range of a late 486 by quite a large margin..

Sure, it was meant to be an alternative to the Pentium, but since my other currently available option is this P100 Olivetti, the K5 is closer to a late 486 than a P100.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-01-30, 09:02:

Sure, it was meant to be an alternative to the Pentium, but since my other currently available option is this P100 Olivetti, the K5 is closer to a late 486 than a P100.

Actually, the K5 has really nothing to do with a 486 (you may be mixing it up with the 5k86) and the PR133 is faster than the Pentium 100..

appiah4 wrote on 2024-01-30, 10:07:

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-01-30, 09:02:

Sure, it was meant to be an alternative to the Pentium, but since my other currently available option is this P100 Olivetti, the K5 is closer to a late 486 than a P100.

Actually, the K5 has really nothing to do with a 486 (you may be mixing it up with the 5k86) and the PR133 is faster than the Pentium 100..

Again, ALU wise, FPU is hopeless ...

dormcat wrote on 2024-01-29, 01:56:

CrFr wrote on 2024-01-28, 13:22:

Salvaged this little monitor from recycling bin at work. Dell 2007FP 20", with LG IPS panel. 4:3, 1600x1200, DVI, VGA, composite, S-video, 4-port USB hub. Height ajustable stand with pivot. Not very retro itself, but very usable with lot different of retro hardware, thanks to the aspect ratio, high resolution and wide range of connectors. Almost perfect cosmetic condition and not a single scratch on the screen.

This is probably the dream monitor for not just retro computing but vintage TV programs as well. Hard to believe one in working order got recycled.

I have one that's been sitting in a box untouched for about 8 years since I moved... maybe I should sell it if there's that much demand, or maybe take it back out for my retro projects (which are mostly using a 15.6" 1920x1080 LCD right now... but that's partly because they're not actually doing anything)

Yet another example of a perfectly ordinary item whose retro significance is largely overlooked. These things were relatively affordable for like, a year, and then enthusiastland moved to the 1920x1200 Dells, the 2407FPWs and 2408WFPs, U2410s, etc, and then from there I think to 2560x1440 27"s.

dormcat wrote on 2024-01-29, 01:56:

CrFr wrote on 2024-01-28, 13:22:

Salvaged this little monitor from recycling bin at work. Dell 2007FP 20", with LG IPS panel. 4:3, 1600x1200, DVI, VGA, composite, S-video, 4-port USB hub. Height ajustable stand with pivot. Not very retro itself, but very usable with lot different of retro hardware, thanks to the aspect ratio, high resolution and wide range of connectors. Almost perfect cosmetic condition and not a single scratch on the screen.

This is probably the dream monitor for not just retro computing but vintage TV programs as well. Hard to believe one in working order got recycled.

According to this the monitor drops frames on anything over 60 Hz:
https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=23561& … 3a4ae73f#p23561

This doesn't look like a dream monitor, at least not for DOS games.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-01-30, 17:00:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-01-30, 10:07:

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-01-30, 09:02:

Sure, it was meant to be an alternative to the Pentium, but since my other currently available option is this P100 Olivetti, the K5 is closer to a late 486 than a P100.

Actually, the K5 has really nothing to do with a 486 (you may be mixing it up with the 5k86) and the PR133 is faster than the Pentium 100..

Again, ALU wise, FPU is hopeless ...

Umm, no?

https://thandor.net/benchmark/33

PR133 is about Pentium 90 levels of performance in Quake (which is more than twice as fast as an Intel 486DX4-100), quite possibly the most FPU intensive application you will ever run on it.. So no, it is not hopeless and CERTAINLY NOT a 486 CPU.

I have a K5 PR133 in my 586 build, and I can tell you first hand that its FPU is decent, if you would believe me. There is this weird belief in the retro community that anything non-Intel on the Socket 7 has a terrible FPU. Probably has to do with Cyrix having a particularly weak FPU. Regardless, the K5 has a pretty good FPU and the K6 FPU is nearly on par with Intel..

appiah4 wrote on 2024-01-30, 21:24:

Umm, no? […]
Show full quote

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-01-30, 17:00:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-01-30, 10:07:

Actually, the K5 has really nothing to do with a 486 (you may be mixing it up with the 5k86) and the PR133 is faster than the Pentium 100..

Again, ALU wise, FPU is hopeless ...

Umm, no?

https://thandor.net/benchmark/33

PR133 is about Pentium 90 levels of performance in Quake (which is more than twice as fast as an Intel 486DX4-100), quite possibly the most FPU intensive application you will ever run on it.. So no, it is not hopeless and CERTAINLY NOT a 486 CPU.

I have a K5 PR133 in my 586 build, and I can tell you first hand that its FPU is decent, if you would believe me. There is this weird belief in the retro community that anything non-Intel on the Socket 7 has a terrible FPU. Probably has to do with Cyrix having a particularly weak FPU. Regardless, the K5 has a pretty good FPU and the K6 FPU is nearly on par with Intel..

The Ultimate 686 Benchmark Comparison

Always worth a look.

Here:
download/file.php?id=11657

K5 133 is like 10-15% behind a P133 (ok, my math sucks but you get it).

Just reporting, no opinion given.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-01-30, 21:24:

Umm, no? […]
Show full quote

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-01-30, 17:00:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-01-30, 10:07:

Actually, the K5 has really nothing to do with a 486 (you may be mixing it up with the 5k86) and the PR133 is faster than the Pentium 100..

Again, ALU wise, FPU is hopeless ...

Umm, no?

https://thandor.net/benchmark/33

PR133 is about Pentium 90 levels of performance in Quake (which is more than twice as fast as an Intel 486DX4-100), quite possibly the most FPU intensive application you will ever run on it.. So no, it is not hopeless and CERTAINLY NOT a 486 CPU.

I have a K5 PR133 in my 586 build, and I can tell you first hand that its FPU is decent, if you would believe me. There is this weird belief in the retro community that anything non-Intel on the Socket 7 has a terrible FPU. Probably has to do with Cyrix having a particularly weak FPU. Regardless, the K5 has a pretty good FPU and the K6 FPU is nearly on par with Intel..

OK, I accept that it's not 486-class performance-wise, but it is terribly slow on FPU compared to P54C - but; that's the PR marking scam messing it up ... The K5-PR133 runs at 22.9 fps according to the link, you provided, where as the P54C 133 runs at 32.7 - that's close to 50% faster - but then again, some of it comes from a 33% higher clock. They should've just called the 100 MHz a 100 - that would probably have given a better reputation ... 😀