First post, by oh2ftu
When we got our family computer in 1999, it wasn't available to take to lan-parties.
My friend had recently gotten CIH on his P200mmx (iirc) and got a completely new computer.
I bought the remains for 300FIM (about 50e on straight conversion). Little did I know about flashing the BIOS. Only thing I knew about CIH was that the motherboard was toast.
What was available, was an Octek Rhino 9 for ~150FIM (25e on straight conversion). And there I had it. My first computer.
That computer had a lot of upgrades. Case, motherboard etc. The next mobo was an Asus TX97 or similar, and I loaded it with more ram (over 64MB) and wondered why it was so slow ... Little did I know back then.
After being bitten by the retro-bug about a year ago, I've gathered this and that. Oldest (atm) being a working 486 and the newest was some AM3 platform that I gave away.
I'm planning on making this about as I would have had it in 1999-2000. Not exactly period correct either, something along those lines.
Anyway.
Again I went to TRW to find that the pictures and manuals are for an older revision and it gets quite hard to set the jumpers without any decent silkscreens or manuals.
My board revision is ver 1.4.
Does anyone have this manual? https://gordogato.com/oscommerce/catalog/prod … products_id=461 or https://woo.gordogato.com/?product=octek-rhin … entium-mmx-1996
The first link luckily had the needed jumper-settings; https://gordogato.com/oscommerce/catalog/imag … o9_manual_2.JPG
Also, as I'm using a 233MMX, and the jumpers are only for 200MHz, setting the multiplier to 1,5x made the CPU take it as 3,5x. Job done!
I'm planning on upgrading the cache (onboard 256kB) with a Coast.
This is what I think I know about the COAST;
- 256K module without TAG ram.
- 3,3V I/O
- Speed 7ns
Maybe COAST 3.0+?
From what I know, this is a deep rabbit hole.
Are there any OSHW coast modules being designed?
Other than that, what are my plans for this?
- Floppy (not gotek, no)
- 10/100M ethernet, if needed with XT-IDE
- An optical drive (maybe DVD?)
- CT3670 (iirc - can't recall the exact model but it DOES have addon memory) OR CT4810? I think I had an SB 64 pci or similar. My memory is a bit vague 😀
- The HDD is still debatable. SSD with an Startech adapter or spinning rust. I do have both "in stock"
- RAM, 128MB, maybe more
- Will have to look what 2D cards I will pair with a Voodoo1. A Voodoo is what I had, but it might have been a Voodoo2. Anyway, it got upgraded to an Banshee at some point so I will be on the lookout for any more powerful PCI GPU's.
- OS Win98 and/or DOS