AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-10-01, 03:18:

Picked up this very nice boxed FX5500 in pristine condition from Ebay for 35$ + shipping. Looks almost like new! […]
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Picked up this very nice boxed FX5500 in pristine condition from Ebay for 35$ + shipping.
Looks almost like new!

The attachment PXL_20241001_000934799.jpg is no longer available

Except.... It's not a FX5500 inside 🤣...!

It's a full 64MB GeForce 256 DDR with DVI! 🤣 Wow!

I think someone upgraded their dell and put the old GeForce 256 card back in the FX box. New seller had no idea and sold it off for 35$! Works perfectly and looks almost new . A steal of a deal!

Those type of deals make the dozens of hours on second hand websites all worth while. Very cool find! Card looks mint.

So I go to the Olidata tab, I looked for the 2Mbit BIOS chip, I found one with 1Mbit, and I would say that in this MB it is not good, so after some research, I read that the original one is a Winbond 29C020, and after a short search, I found a couple, for sale at a great price, which I ordered immediately, unfortunately it will take some time ⏱, before they arrive, and that I can use one, the other will be a spare chip, which I think I use on an MSI MB, after doing some work, like replacing the capacitors, I'll have to rummage a bit, to find where I put it.

Today I picked up four, technically five cards.

First was a nice looking "Dual Fan" AGP 6800. I can't complain too much about it.

Next is a single slot AGP 7800 OC. Again, can't complain about having this as an option for a build.

Third one is the immortal 9800 GT, and it even comes with 1GB. As you can probably see, I have a recent trend of finding Nvidia x800 cards. Naturally, I broke the combo with the next card.

Last card is a oddly specific model of ATI All in Wonder Pro. It has the expanded memory installed, is AGP 2x, and has a part number that I can't find anyone else on here having: 109-44600-10. I'm sure I'll find something to throw it in to.

As for why I said technically five cards, it's because I also got a 604e card for my Macintosh Clone.

It's not the 225 card that my Power Computing Power Tower shipped with, but the 15MHz difference is more than made up for by it being a 60MHz bus speed card instead of the 225's 45MHz.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-10-01, 09:06:

I see 486, I can't help myself..

For me, this VLB only board is the most beautiful one.
PCI is kind-of out of place for 486 personally.
At the same time, this board can probably do 1MB of L2 cache! I have a very similar board with same chipset in my 486 running at 3x50MHz. Beautiful machine.

486 is a VLB affair for me as well but weirdly enough I come across more PCI or Hybrid boards than pure VLB herearounds. They were probably a good cheap alternative to early Socket 5/7 stuff in the second half of the 90s, and I should know - I was on a DX4-100 and stuck to it until I saw Quake running on a friend's Pentium 90.. Anyway, I love VLB stuff as well. I have a Chicony CH471 in my own 486 VLB build, same chipset as this board, but I use it with a U5S-40 which is plenty fast enough for everything I want from a 486 😀

Wes1262 wrote on 2024-09-22, 09:14:

Just bought a replacement cooler for a GPU that has never actually existed.

Now you just need the rest of the card to go with it!! Time to buy!!

On the "Bay"

ATI RADEON HD 2900 XTX Unreleased ES Video Card 102-B00101-00 Vintage Working**

Bruh. 2000$

The artifacts on the 2900xt. Substrate/balls issue or dying memories? I know some folks can recognize what the issue might be just by the artifact pattern, so here's the pics in case someone knows what it might be!

Underclock both to minimum.
See if it resolves.
If not, post high res pics of both sides of the board.

Personally I suspect memory or a memory related cap/resistor.

Can't underclock, it blue screens before I can do anything. I will send pics, thanks! Are you myne from ebay? If yes, I've bought a couple of cards from you a few years ago 😁

Already begun troubleshooting the board...

Can't wait to play around with the Parhelia. 🙂

GigAHerZ wrote on 2024-10-02, 07:15:

For me, this VLB only board is the most beautiful one. PCI is kind-of out of place for 486 personally. At the same time, this bo […]
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appiah4 wrote on 2024-10-01, 09:06:

I see 486, I can't help myself..

For me, this VLB only board is the most beautiful one.
PCI is kind-of out of place for 486 personally.
At the same time, this board can probably do 1MB of L2 cache! I have a very similar board with same chipset in my 486 running at 3x50MHz. Beautiful machine.

I agree but only partly, PCI is hardly out of place on a DX4, DX5, Overdrive or 5x86 classs machine, these systems being the crossover between the 486 and Pentium eras I would expect them to have adopted the early version of PCI.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-10-03, 08:05:

GigAHerZ wrote on 2024-10-02, 07:15:

For me, this VLB only board is the most beautiful one. PCI is kind-of out of place for 486 personally. At the same time, this bo […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote on 2024-10-01, 09:06:

I see 486, I can't help myself..

For me, this VLB only board is the most beautiful one.
PCI is kind-of out of place for 486 personally.
At the same time, this board can probably do 1MB of L2 cache! I have a very similar board with same chipset in my 486 running at 3x50MHz. Beautiful machine.

I agree but only partly, PCI is hardly out of place on a DX4, DX5, Overdrive or 5x86 classs machine, these systems being the crossover between the 486 and Pentium eras I would expect them to have adopted the early version of PCI.

A while ago a found a DX33 PCI system with Win95 on it. With 8MB or ram it wasn't that bad and didn't feel sluggish. Even had an adult game on it 😁

Like with dual-core Celeron LGA1200 systems today, it's not uncommon for people to just need a cheap spreadsheet machine and a low-end 486 system with a basic PCI video card was perfectly fine for that throughout the 90s. I'm pretty sure that's what my schools computer class had during that time.

Wes1262 wrote on 2024-10-03, 07:38:

Can't underclock, it blue screens before I can do anything. I will send pics, thanks! Are you myne from ebay? If yes, I've bought a couple of cards from you a few years ago 😁

Nope, sorry.
Bios flash underclock?
https://www.nexthardware.com/forum/schede-vid … ios-editor.html

Kinda scary! I need to try to load windows in 800x600 with another similar card. Hopefully when I restart with the 2900xt I will get the same low resolution, which is perhaps stable enough to underclock it in windows?

I know, I know, y'all gonna be like "What has this idiot got himself into now?..." ... Seems like I bought some junk off eBay.

So, I guess several things collided to make this thing come out like it did, One: I am kinda curious about 486SLC. Two: I love love love the tiny boards in this footprint Three: I was idly browsing eBay for something totally unrelated, and saw this listing by accident. Four: It happened to be ending in a few hours. Five: I got the impulse to throw on the minimum bid, fairly sure that some other bidding would ensue and it would get $15 or so higher, or that I would get sniped by a buck in the last minutes.

Thus, now I am the owner of two scruffy examples of this little bugger https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/pine-t … hnology-pt-319a though shipping might take a month plus.

They do not look all that bad actually, one had a Varta grenade on it, but it's grenaded rather than nuked, so doesn't look too hard to save. The other looks like it maybe only has minor problems. I think I can get my money's worth out of them one way or another, fixing up or pulling chips and sockets. I do have another similar board somewhere with an SX25 on, I would not mind if that got involved somehow, either upgraded with parts, or donating it's KBC or whatever. I have what I feel like is too many machines around the SX25 area, which need either perking up or liquidated. Another candidate is the janky AST Powerexec notebook that has too many flaws to be restored easily or cheaply to original appearance so might get a restomod with a color screen and a 486SLC.

Of course, just to get 486SLC chips, there was a seller Rose Electronics with them listed for under $10 NOS, but given that they appear to be located right where Helene made landfall, one might want to give it a couple of weeks to find out if they are alive, or to take a shrimping net down there and see if you can fish them out of the Gulf.

Edit: Just finding out that the highly similar but not identical PCChips M396F is a "no battery no POST" board, so that will be something to try.

EditII: Holy guacamole, there's a repro M396F board I could use all the chips on if the varta did it's worst. Re: PC CHIPS/FOXCON M396F ver. 2.6

Manage to get this Soltek SL-65KV2-CT. For $17 "Untested". It was advertised as a "Vintage Computer Motherboard, Celeron SL5ZJ , INTEL 01 , 1300/256/100/1.5" so I don't think anyone noticed it. It's a Pentium III board with native Tualatin support PLUS ISA. Not sure if it's any different to the -T version (https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/6636). I wonder if this board would be considered better than a ASUS TUSL2-C?

I gave her a good clean. She's in perfect condition. I cannot find a single scratch. A lot of the caps are bulging though so I'll replace them all.

I did notice 2 of the CPU pins have a small capacitor between them (top left corner). I'm think it's a 0.1uF. I'm guessing this is from the factory?

I didn't think the board would work considering it was listed For Parts / Untested. I checked for shorts then plugged in my 1400 Tualatin and to my surprise she booted up first time. Very very happy. Sometimes you do get lucky.

Good score, any tually board for $17 is not to be sneezed at, though I think those soltek got a bit of a following back then.

I wanna say they're almost as rare as KT133A with ISA, but then I remember that most early KT133 boards and even a few KT133A boards had ISA slots so they weren't really that rare/uncommon, as opposed to Tualatin + ISA.
At least VIA had a bonus of native ISA, unlike Intel who needed a separate chip to handle ISA on chipsets past 440BX.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-10-04, 01:06:

I wanna say they're almost as rare as KT133A with ISA, but then I remember that most early KT133 boards and even a few KT133A boards had ISA slots so they weren't really that rare/uncommon, as opposed to Tualatin + ISA.
At least VIA had a bonus of native ISA, unlike Intel who needed a separate chip to handle ISA on chipsets past 440BX.

If you had the choice, would you prefer to use the Soltek SL-65KV2-CT (ignoring the ISA slot) or the ASUS TUSL2-C in a build?