Next onto some IO and storage. So nice, there is also this green FireWire and USB2.0 controller card! Even has internal header! I just knew it would come in handy!

As for storage, I have saved a real gem. A WD 150GB 15k RPM Sata drive which has a cute little window to see the platter and the needle! Also, it is pretty quiet, but somewhat inefficient and prone to overheating. Will see, maybe it'll work.

Last, but not least, the Power Supply. Managed to find an OK unit, which still has -5Volt rail and features a 12cm FAN. This -5Volt rail might prove nice or it might not. Currently I do not have any ISA cards that would make use of it, but you newer know. It does feel quite a bit more substantial than many a lot more modern supplies though.

Now, where to put all this? I kind of wanted to use a modern case and even found two candidates, but neither really kicked off the wallet for me. So, I've noticed an old dusty case and tried to modernize it. I'm no handy man, but I bet, just by doing few simple things it might prove to be quite nice. Also, if it would turn right, then there would be hard to buy anything more warm. Unfortunately, due being clumsy, I totally forgot to take a before picture 🤦 And no, I'm not just gonna wrap it. This time there shall be some cutting, some painting and a little bit of wrapping too. So after disassembly of it's face plate, I have prepared it's accent parts for paint, and then screw it all up...

And yes, somehow my wife did not killed me for painting in the living room 😸 But that was part of the problem, to be able to paint at home, I bought some fancy water paint, which does not stink. But it is quite a bit harder to work with properly. It sprays unevenly, it's a bit hard to see when it's going to run, etch. Thus the first try went horribly wrong, there was no single part that would come out alright! Yeah, back to sanding then. And after some workout, the second try proved to be much better. While paint dried up, I went to cut a side panel from a plexiglass, then used some black Woodgrain wrap for the case top and the frame.

Looks like new eh? 😄

Finally, it is time to put it all together. It all went straightforward enough and it was a real pleasure to assemble. I have even managed to find a dark purple NEC IDE DVD-RW drive and a USB Card Reader!

Now it's in the process of installing Windows 98SE, darn, it feels nice. If only I had a PC like this back in the day... I am still to do some gaming and to setup it properly, but for the most part, it is done. I think it has potential to become my main Retro Rig fro quite a while. It feels really flexible. Great to mess with various Operating Systems, great to play those older games on. And also pleasure to use and look at it. Now that is something nice! Is it cool? For me it is 😉

There is still some room for improvement, it would be so nice to find a black 5.25" Floppy drive! And it still has some expansion slots free, so it will probably get a LAN card, maybe an UDMA133 controller card and it would be great to give it some ISA card, so it would be full of cards 😄 I was thinking, maybe to put an ISA Vibra16C, just in case for DOS. As it is green and still offers heaps better compatibility than this PCI Yamaha (even with SB-Link). Will see.

After giving this PC real use, I've noticed a few interesting things.

First overheating. As soon as I have installed and played some games, the motherboard alarm went on beeping due to CPU overheating. That is very strange, as I have been using this very CPU inside HP Brio without any issues and Brio case was a lot smaller and quite a bit worse for air flow. While here I have 12cm PSU fan pulling air to the top and out of the case. Yet I had to install a case fan in the back to solve the issue. Now it's cool and happy. I guess it may depend on actual design of the cooling fins on the heat-sink. As soon as I pull some air over the top of the CPU, all issues are gone. If I try to pull from the side, then it still heats up quite fast.

Another issue is an SSD related. This motherboard seems to hate it when partitions (on SSD or on HDD) are aligned to the Megabyte and not to the cluster. I've discovered this when I've tried to install modern Slackware Linux 15 onto this thing and modern cfdisk aligns partition to the megabyte mark by default. And this rendered system unbootable. Whole PC just hangs right after post screen. After some experimentation with both SSD's, HDD's and CF cards, I could not resolve this. The only way to get it to boot is to align partitions to the cluster mark (to do a classic alignment). Well, good thing I'm using a spinning disk in this build, so I'm not overly concerned, but it does make it more troublesome to install newer stuff on it.

Anyway, got a few more cards for this thing. These will help to fill it's IO Slots to the full capacity and also I kind of like to use my retro PC builds to store parts, just so they are not laying around collecting damage. 😄

There is a Creative Vibra SB16C just in case I'll want to use a pure DOS (or DOS mode of Windows98 for that matter). Otherwise it'll just sit there while being disabled. There is also a LAN card, which I'll probably won't be using also, but it is pretty compatible and works with most if not all OS'es right out of the box. So that's nice. And lastly a WiFi card, which also has drivers and software for wide selection of OS'es, so it could be used anywhere from Windows 98 to Windows 7 (and maybe even 10, but who cares about Windwos 10 anyway).

And so it is full now.

Codegen PSUs used to be well known for being bottom of the barrel garbage. I wouldn't trust it too much.

totoro wrote on 2022-10-20, 13:10:

Anyway, got a few more cards for this thing. These will help to fill it's IO Slots to the full capacity and also I kind of like to use my retro PC builds to store parts, just so they are not laying around collecting damage. 😄

That's not a bad idea, actually 😀

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-10-20, 13:58:

Codegen PSUs used to be well known for being bottom of the barrel garbage. I wouldn't trust it too much.

Certainly they are not something to write home about mate. Then again, bottom of the barrel then is still heaps better than pretty much any cheap PSU available today new. Also, it has lasted all this time, it will most likely be fine for a while longer. Lastly, not all Codegens are equal, talking from experience, some are better than others and really, I have seen far, far worse. So I won't trash it just because it's Codegen. I'll often prefer cheap, but honest PSU over fancy, expensive, but really a crappy one. Better realistic expectations than false sense of security 😄

Then again, talking from experience, even the worst power supplies rarely fail due to their poor quality (that happens, of course), far more often they fail due to poor operation, i.e. dusty and/or damp environment, cheap molex to Sata adapters (which tend to open up from age and cause a short or two), or vice-versa, sometimes those sata power plugs available on cheap power supply can cause big fires and if there is noticeable gap or bulging out, it is better to use some quality molex to sata power adapter (this issue is quite common even on some very expensive PSU's!). Operating them close to the rated max power level and/or plain overloading of 5 or 12Volt rails (which usually do not offer any protection on a cheap power supply). Connecting untested hardware. Lastly, not ever monitoring the Voltages (or not ever dusting it off and consequentially not checking on it visually). Usually, due to capacitor failure, the voltage would drop by a Volt or two and further operation in such condition will lead into catastrophic failure (either PSU itself or of the parts connected to it) as it will actually operate in voltage much higher, but it shall drop due to PSU struggling to deliver necessary power. It is always good idea to occasionally glance over PSU voltages reported in BIOS.

The point is, there is virtually no PSU (best or worse) that would be 100% reliable without any maintenance or at least minimal due diligence.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2022-10-20, 17:06:

That's not a bad idea, actually 😀

Thanks! There is also a bonus, that I'll know the card was tested and working fine. Plus I'll find a driver right at hand.

totoro wrote on 2022-10-20, 19:23:

Certainly they are not something to write home about mate. Then again, bottom of the barrel then is still heaps better than pret […]
Show full quote

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-10-20, 13:58:

Codegen PSUs used to be well known for being bottom of the barrel garbage. I wouldn't trust it too much.

Certainly they are not something to write home about mate. Then again, bottom of the barrel then is still heaps better than pretty much any cheap PSU available today new. Also, it has lasted all this time, it will most likely be fine for a while longer. Lastly, not all Codegens are equal, talking from experience, some are better than others and really, I have seen far, far worse. So I won't trash it just because it's Codegen. I'll often prefer cheap, but honest PSU over fancy, expensive, but really a crappy one. Better realistic expectations than false sense of security 😄

Then again, talking from experience, even the worst power supplies rarely fail due to their poor quality (that happens, of course), far more often they fail due to poor operation, i.e. dusty and/or damp environment, cheap molex to Sata adapters (which tend to open up from age and cause a short or two), or vice-versa, sometimes those sata power plugs available on cheap power supply can cause big fires and if there is noticeable gap or bulging out, it is better to use some quality molex to sata power adapter (this issue is quite common even on some very expensive PSU's!). Operating them close to the rated max power level and/or plain overloading of 5 or 12Volt rails (which usually do not offer any protection on a cheap power supply). Connecting untested hardware. Lastly, not ever monitoring the Voltages (or not ever dusting it off and consequentially not checking on it visually). Usually, due to capacitor failure, the voltage would drop by a Volt or two and further operation in such condition will lead into catastrophic failure (either PSU itself or of the parts connected to it) as it will actually operate in voltage much higher, but it shall drop due to PSU struggling to deliver necessary power. It is always good idea to occasionally glance over PSU voltages reported in BIOS.

The point is, there is virtually no PSU (best or worse) that would be 100% reliable without any maintenance or at least minimal due diligence.

I disagree, it was just as bad back then as bad PSUs today, but today that Codegen is not just bad, it's old and bad. Thinking that if it lasted this long then it'll last forever can cost you. It's components already have years of wear and tear in them. Some people here don't even recommend old PSUs that were actually good back then because of this. And the main problem is not only the PSU itself dying, the main issue is what it does regardless if it dies or not. I had a Codegen PSU frying a mainboard without the PSU itself dying. Whatever you do, a bottom of the barrel PSU is Russian roulette. It works fine until it doesn't and when you run out of luck your retro pc is dead.

Fine, if my retro PC is dead, I'll have less junk, win/win. Joking aside, I find this kind of recommendation a bit of a BS, since even new PSU's are really the same Russian roulette, especially today. It sounds like snake oil advice, generally it won't hurt, yes, but in practice, it's kind of pointless. If It is fine to mess with an old hardware, It should be fine to mess with old PSU's also. On a flip side, they are free and plentiful 😄

I honestly am slightly with totoro on this one, albeit I would recap the mainboard and the PSU he currently uses.

I would rather do extensive maintenance on a older 2000s Codegen unit than trying to run some expensive Corsair/EVGA/ThingaMajig unit that's severely lacking on the 3.3 and 5v rails.

Why? A bunch of japanese caps cost way less than getting a new 2010s or newer unit that's not only 12v heavy but also looks horribly out of place on a old 440BX unit.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-10-21, 12:12:

I would rather do extensive maintenance on a older 2000s Codegen unit than trying to run some expensive Corsair/EVGA/ThingaMajig unit that's severely lacking on the 3.3 and 5v rails.

For a 440BX based build, does running a modern PSU have any consequential effects? I was under the impression that this platform did not have power draw requirements on the 3.3/5v rails that would preclude one from using a modern PSU.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-10-21, 12:12:

I would rather do extensive maintenance on a older 2000s Codegen unit than trying to run some expensive Corsair/EVGA/ThingaMajig unit that's severely lacking on the 3.3 and 5v rails.

I'd rather buy something like an FSP400-60GLC or even something from Seasonic or Delta and do maintenance on that. These old PSUs are generally cost the same whether you buy better or worse brands so why not go with the better ones?

Well this build pulls over 80W from the wall, so yes, modern PSU's would still handle it, but in my actual experience, systems like this one tend to get close enough to the maximum 3.3/5V rail power (it's around 100Wats on better PSU's) and thus transistors then heat well enough to trigger high fan rpm, which in turn makes the experience a bit too noisy for my liking. While this Codegen handles the system without breaking a sweat with it's powerful 150W 5Volt rail. I'll probably do some re-capping eventually, if I like the PC well enough to use it more or I'll notice any bulging on the current capacitors that is.

mrzmaster wrote on 2022-10-21, 15:14:

PcBytes wrote on 2022-10-21, 12:12:

I would rather do extensive maintenance on a older 2000s Codegen unit than trying to run some expensive Corsair/EVGA/ThingaMajig unit that's severely lacking on the 3.3 and 5v rails.

For a 440BX based build, does running a modern PSU have any consequential effects? I was under the impression that this platform did not have power draw requirements on the 3.3/5v rails that would preclude one from using a modern PSU.

I've noticed that most of the old machines pull A LOT of juice from the 5v and 3.3v lines. That's why modern PSUs have issues with them - most of those newer units are designed with late P4 in mind, when everything had finally shifted to 12v for good (CPU VRM wise).

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-10-21, 15:26:

PcBytes wrote on 2022-10-21, 12:12:

I would rather do extensive maintenance on a older 2000s Codegen unit than trying to run some expensive Corsair/EVGA/ThingaMajig unit that's severely lacking on the 3.3 and 5v rails.

I'd rather buy something like an FSP400-60GLC or even something from Seasonic or Delta and do maintenance on that. These old PSUs are generally cost the same whether you buy better or worse brands so why not go with the better ones?

Yeah...no. I'd avoid anything from FSP at the very least - they've done less-than-ideal design screwups that have made me steer clear away from them.

A few of them, just to point out:

-almost anything FSP that has juicy 3.3 and 5v rails is a near guarantee to have cap-cooking resistors in the secondary, wrapped in heatshrink no less (which at least IMO is a stupid approach - that thing is big enough to NEED AIR to breathe! You're heatshrinking it for WHAT REASON?)
-their GLN series are known to kill themselves (no, this isn't a joke. The very Bluestorm II 500 I run in my main i5 3470 machine was pretty close to killing itself if I didn't get to fully recap it in time - this included the mains APFC capacitor as well.) and I have reasons to suspect GLC being the same.
-some of their lower wattage units are severely underpowered (e.g 250W units have parts that wouldn't even get to 180W before they go kaboom) and FSP never acknowledged this.

As for Delta and Seasonic - I really don't see their usage on anything that, with exageration, consumes at best 280W. At this point, even a fully recapped Codegen or Deer (yes, I have several enhanced Deers in my home that are actually reliable.) would cut it just as fine.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-10-21, 15:26:

I'd rather buy something like an FSP400-60GLC or even something from Seasonic or Delta and do maintenance on that.

I actually tend to like FSP and had very pleasant experience with APN series and their very good reliability (sold quite a lot of these to many clients without a single failure), they look dated and engineering does not seem to be anything special, but they work alright. These are newer, however, and tend to have weak 5Volt rails. As for GLC, well... I agree with PcBytes and would rather go with Codegen. I do not have any experience with Seasonic as this brand was rarely, if ever, sold in my region. And Delta's I hate with passion, really bad luck with these... for some reason they always reach me while having some weird issues and they are very troublesome to fix... Don't know, they seem to be good quality stuff, but appear as overly engineered and troublesome to me. Then again, standalone/retail Delta's are seldom sold here, usually I find these in OEM PC's and maybe that is part of the problematic experience... Anyway, I am rarely buying old parts, so it's not that I have much choice, usually I'll go with whatever I can find at hand or pull from some PC that is destined for scraps. If I'll get something better - great, if not, Codegen will do 😄 I've saved this one because of -5Volt rail which is rare thing to see in PSU of this style, so among the Codegens, this one is tiny bit special!

PcBytes wrote on 2022-10-21, 16:46:

I've noticed that most of the old machines pull A LOT of juice from the 5v and 3.3v lines. That's why modern PSUs have issues wi […]
Show full quote

mrzmaster wrote on 2022-10-21, 15:14:

PcBytes wrote on 2022-10-21, 12:12:

I would rather do extensive maintenance on a older 2000s Codegen unit than trying to run some expensive Corsair/EVGA/ThingaMajig unit that's severely lacking on the 3.3 and 5v rails.

For a 440BX based build, does running a modern PSU have any consequential effects? I was under the impression that this platform did not have power draw requirements on the 3.3/5v rails that would preclude one from using a modern PSU.

I've noticed that most of the old machines pull A LOT of juice from the 5v and 3.3v lines. That's why modern PSUs have issues with them - most of those newer units are designed with late P4 in mind, when everything had finally shifted to 12v for good (CPU VRM wise).

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-10-21, 15:26:

PcBytes wrote on 2022-10-21, 12:12:

I would rather do extensive maintenance on a older 2000s Codegen unit than trying to run some expensive Corsair/EVGA/ThingaMajig unit that's severely lacking on the 3.3 and 5v rails.

I'd rather buy something like an FSP400-60GLC or even something from Seasonic or Delta and do maintenance on that. These old PSUs are generally cost the same whether you buy better or worse brands so why not go with the better ones?

Yeah...no. I'd avoid anything from FSP at the very least - they've done less-than-ideal design screwups that have made me steer clear away from them.

A few of them, just to point out:

-almost anything FSP that has juicy 3.3 and 5v rails is a near guarantee to have cap-cooking resistors in the secondary, wrapped in heatshrink no less (which at least IMO is a stupid approach - that thing is big enough to NEED AIR to breathe! You're heatshrinking it for WHAT REASON?)
-their GLN series are known to kill themselves (no, this isn't a joke. The very Bluestorm II 500 I run in my main i5 3470 machine was pretty close to killing itself if I didn't get to fully recap it in time - this included the mains APFC capacitor as well.) and I have reasons to suspect GLC being the same.
-some of their lower wattage units are severely underpowered (e.g 250W units have parts that wouldn't even get to 180W before they go kaboom) and FSP never acknowledged this.

As for Delta and Seasonic - I really don't see their usage on anything that, with exageration, consumes at best 280W. At this point, even a fully recapped Codegen or Deer (yes, I have several enhanced Deers in my home that are actually reliable.) would cut it just as fine.

That's really interesting to hear about FSP. My first two retro builds in a while were baby AT so I selected the FSP Dagger Pro 550W for them. They are mini ITX PSUs which I thought would help with the limited space. It worked out well because I can loop the AT to ATX cable over the top of the PSU and keep it out of the way. They're modular, quiet, and while all-black isn't period correct, I figured a modern PSU was better than gambling on the AT PSUs I had.

I've had good luck with them so far *knocks on wood*. One is in a K6-3+ 600MHz system with almost every slot populated, and the other is in a 440BX system which will hopefully run a GeForce4 Ti in it eventually. If I ever have issues with them I'll be sure to comment about it.

Here's a photo of the guts. I'm not experienced with electronics enough to know if anything looks badly designed unfortunately.

Cosmic wrote on 2022-10-21, 18:46:

Here's a photo of the guts. I'm not experienced with electronics enough to know if anything looks badly designed unfortunately.

Wow this thing is packed! Seems to be quality unit (at least capacitors are of high quality). But it is a single rail design type, so most of it's efficiency and power delivery abilities are focused on that single 12Volt rail. It probably won't be as efficient as declared to be when drawing power from 5Volt, as it'll convert mains to 12Volt, and then step it down/reduce to 5/3.3 (as it won't have a direct 5Volt rail). So if you use 12Volts you will be able to have all the rated power, but if you use 5Volts, then only a fraction of it. Taken from the manual:

It is only able to deliver up to 110Watts on 5Volt rail (and that is if you do not pull any power from 3.3Volts), it should be plenty for most old systems, but I don't know about that GeForce4 Ti and the 440BX. Plain systems on a 440BX typically burn about 60W, and a bit more if loaded with a lot of cards, plus GF4 Ti is a power hungry card, so you'll most likely be asking for trouble before long.

Probably fine with the Dagger, as long as you don't plan on using anything hungrier than a Ti4200. That's about the only Ti I'd see running fine, since it doesn't seem to draw too much. Ti4400 or higher and you're definitely asking for trouble.

totoro wrote on 2022-10-14, 16:38:

Here I am again, building yet another rig. Well, this one won't be a series, just wanted to present it and also log a thought or […]
Show full quote

Here I am again, building yet another rig. Well, this one won't be a series, just wanted to present it and also log a thought or two for some good pleasure. Although it might take a few posts. I have to say, this hobby can be real addictive! Already my room looks like a computer warehouse 😄 Combine that with that depressive mood from recent dealings with the likes of Compaq, Hp and some DEC's and an itch to build something nice shall soon arise. What though?

Something with green PCB, something silent, something good with Windows 98SE, but also good with many different systems (WinNT, 2k, XP, Linux, OS/2 and maybe Haiku), something musical, something capable, something interesting and something cool! That's some list to cover!

First, I'll need a very good base and, I thought, what better than tried and true Intel 440BX? There is a reason why it still lives on as virtual machine, who knows, maybe good part of current internet is hosted on a 440BX so to speak 😄 And it so happened, that lady luck smiled and while strolling along the local flea market, I found this:

P1030663.jpeg

An NMC/Epox motherboard, which has green PCB and features a 440BX Chipset and SB-Link (or PC-PCI) heder. While it's nothing fancy in an on itself, there were certainly far better 440BX motherboards out there, yet I found this one quite appealing. While doing some cleaning and maintenance, I have dumped the BIOS for safe keeping, also patched it to better support of bigger hard drives and it came out fine. It's not as great as the legendary Asus P2B, but it does the job and it is green!

The late HP Brio has kindly donated it's CPU (Pentium3 500Mhz Katmai) to this project and then I've found four sticks of 128MB SD-RAM and here it is, purple and ready for the build.

P1030868.jpeg

Then, some parts. I tend to like Matrox video cards, especially when compatible is the theme, there simply is no better than a Matrox G550! Yes, the one that killed the company 😄 While it may not be the greatest choice for games, it may just be the best for retro business! I just love how nice and sharp is image is, no matter the monitor, old, new, big, small, crt, lcd they all look fantastic when hooked to this card. Also, drivers, real king of kings here, it works on anything. Dos to Window 10, and exotic OS'es also tend to like it.

P1030856.jpeg

Then some multimedia. I like to listen to the radio, so a good TV Tuner is a must for me. Avermedia is green and works alright.

P1030865.jpeg

Then some music. In this case, there really is no other choice, than to go Yamaha. So I've took out a dusty YMF724, this card is pretty useless everywhere, but shines real nice on 440BX! That Sondius Midi synth, then also genuine OPL3 and plus a legacy interface. When being run from MS-DOS prompt, all of my DOS games sound excellent! And it's nice for Windows too.

P1030859.jpeg

Fantastic! Wicked even! Where did you managed to find that cooling block for Slot 1?