I always wondered why there would be there a thermal pad, but no heatsink on top... It seemed counterproductive. But it makes sense now, it was to protect the chip. Very bad idea. They should have put a heatspreader, like on any modern CPU.

tehsiggi wrote on 2025-07-27, 07:53:

Well.. I wonder why that card isn't working properly? (apart from the missing caps here and there on the PCB) […]
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tehsiggi wrote on 2025-07-20, 09:11:

A dead Radeon x1600Pro AGP from ebay. For science!

Well.. I wonder why that card isn't working properly?
(apart from the missing caps here and there on the PCB)

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MMM! Chippies!

Crunch crunch!

marxveix wrote on 2025-07-24, 13:06:

Sapphire AMD HD7970 Dual-X 3GB […]
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Sapphire AMD HD7970 Dual-X 3GB

Fastest Radeon with XP support. I was lucky enough to find a working ghz edition.

Socket3 wrote on 2025-07-28, 14:02:

marxveix wrote on 2025-07-24, 13:06:

Sapphire AMD HD7970 Dual-X 3GB […]
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Sapphire AMD HD7970 Dual-X 3GB

Fastest Radeon with XP support. I was lucky enough to find a working ghz edition.

Fastest radeon HD series and maybe fastest radeon overall, but R9 2xx and 3xx also can be used i think. It has 2x8pin, not 1x8pin + 1x6pin. I am gona use it with AM3+ motherboard, that also has XP support. I hope PCI-E 2.0 will not hold it back with Phenom II X2/X4 or some latest FX CPU-s, it will be dualboot with XP and Windows 10 i think.

RaverX wrote on 2025-07-28, 10:49:

I always wondered why there would be there a thermal pad, but no heatsink on top... It seemed counterproductive. But it makes sense now, it was to protect the chip. Very bad idea. They should have put a heatspreader, like on any modern CPU.

Or they could have done what nvidia did and put it on the other side of the PCB, either cooled(and protected) by the main heatsink or by separate one.

But apparently it works well enough without cooling...

It is interesting that they added the pad later though, probably means there were plenty of cases of damage to the bridge, which is not surprising given they left bare die and those tiny caps exposed like that...

Bought a new round floppy drive cable.

CrFr wrote on 2025-07-28, 16:27:

Bought a new round floppy drive cable.

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nice. those make things so much more simple even if you can sometimes get a cleaner setup with flat cables. like who wants to fiddle with a IDE/FDD cables to get it right wen you can just toss in a round cable.

Nothing special, just bought a Matrox G450 PCI from eBay. A Vogons thread in the video section mentioned that the Windows 3.x drivers recognize the G450 as a G400. I'll test this myself, but I'm hoping that the NT 3.51 drivers would likewise ID the card as a G400. That would give me a bit of a boost in OpenGL (such that it is) over my G200.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:08:

Or they could have done what nvidia did and put it on the other side of the PCB, either cooled(and protected) by the main heatsi […]
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RaverX wrote on 2025-07-28, 10:49:

I always wondered why there would be there a thermal pad, but no heatsink on top... It seemed counterproductive. But it makes sense now, it was to protect the chip. Very bad idea. They should have put a heatspreader, like on any modern CPU.

Or they could have done what nvidia did and put it on the other side of the PCB, either cooled(and protected) by the main heatsink or by separate one.

But apparently it works well enough without cooling...

It is interesting that they added the pad later though, probably means there were plenty of cases of damage to the bridge, which is not surprising given they left bare die and those tiny caps exposed like that...

Has nothing to do if it is an earlier or later card. My x700s all had the pad.

vutt wrote on 2025-07-25, 16:07:

Managed to score locally this beauty (TC430HX). Looks like solid DOS machine with S3 graphics and Yamaha OPL+MIDI.

Dang, those were probably the best combination for a late DOS / early Win9x build, not to mention in such a great condition. 🤤 I wondered why Intel or other MB manufacturers didn't make more models with integrated graphic and sound chips before the Pentium 4 era.

dormcat wrote on 2025-07-29, 00:22:

vutt wrote on 2025-07-25, 16:07:

Managed to score locally this beauty (TC430HX). Looks like solid DOS machine with S3 graphics and Yamaha OPL+MIDI.

Dang, those were probably the best combination for a late DOS / early Win9x build, not to mention in such a great condition. 🤤 I wondered why Intel or other MB manufacturers didn't make more models with integrated graphic and sound chips before the Pentium 4 era.

Kind of a time thing, they were changing platforms more often than some folks change underwear during that period. For 6 months the HX with S3 was high/midrange, and then quickly was low end, and competition arrived with cheaper integrated into SOC graphics, that were a bit better than S3 original architecture. Then onboard graphics tended to seem low end, despite the existence of onboard Voodoo3... though I think that just had 6 months in the sun too.

Grabbed this tonight for 2oo bucks.
I had an agp version before but sold it. Couldnt resist having one in box and for near what I sold my non boxed one for.

Some more rialto gore:

Got this ones for free with another card i was buying, at least now i have a donor for this specific tiny caps and x1650pro is looking relatively promising. Just need to sit down and do some soldering...

Neither had protective pad too, i wonder if it was newer there or if it was removed... honestly - such a bad design placing unprotected chip with exposed die and tiny caps on the backside of the card...

That's how 90% of my dud X1950s look 🤣

If you're lucky enough, the pads on the rialto are still in place.
On my x1600, they aren't 😁

tehsiggi wrote on 2025-07-29, 12:10:

If you're lucky enough, the pads on the rialto are still in place.
On my x1600, they aren't 😁

They mostly are but soldering them is way off my scope. I've soldered stuff just as small but those are specifically hard to do.

I do have two Rialto-equipped cards waiting to arrive today so yeah, gonna see whether I can get 'em running. One is a Sapphire, the other is a Powercolor, both X1950 Pro.

I bought 25 DIP 20 RAM chips from China off ebay. Allegedly Siemens HYB514256B-60

Holy remarks! 23 out of 25 seem to work at the expected speed, but I wish I knew what the original markings were.

Sorry about the AI wiggles in the picture. Can't quite figure out how to turn that off.

Still, at $0.75 a chip including tax and shipping and failures, it's hard to complain when it works.

Aand it's alive:

Still need to clean the flux, but wanted to test it first...

This felt like brain surgery, waaaay out of my comfort zone, but doable now that i have proper size caps.

Cooler is kind of junk, stays at 100%, noisy and still 60C in single 3dmark run on open stand...

Also knowing which driver is actually functional helps a lot to not waste time with that at least....

douglar wrote on 2025-07-29, 14:15:

I bought 25 DIP 20 RAM chips from China off ebay. Allegedly Siemens HYB514256B-60 […]
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I bought 25 DIP 20 RAM chips from China off ebay. Allegedly Siemens HYB514256B-60

Holy remarks! 23 out of 25 seem to work at the expected speed, but I wish I knew what the original markings were.

Sorry about the AI wiggles in the picture. Can't quite figure out how to turn that off.

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Still, at $0.75 a chip including tax and shipping and failures, it's hard to complain when it works.

Nice! But I wonder why they always remove the original markings even when the chips fullfill the speed rating they print on them? It's the same with Is61C1024 chips from China, at least the -15 and -20 marked ones, they work fine (just sometimes, some few chips will be dead on arrival) but always have that shady scratchy surface with obviosly not original markings...

Just picked up this ISA SVGA card, Octek PVGA1D using WD90C30-LR chip.

It is not the world's fastest ISA card out there, but it is not too shabby either. It is close perfect match to my Octek Jaguar 386 mobo and 386DX-33, a system I've been lately setting up. I do have faster option, Mach64 ISA, but somehow it just would feel so out of place in a 386 and this is much better 🤣