Evert wrote:

Have you ordered yourself a Rosewill RCX-Z100 yet? I can confirm that GOG.com installers work on 3DNOW! and SSE Athlon XP processors. So you can always revert back to that if all else fails. What GPU are you going to pair with the Athlon XP? It would be nice to see you going with something like a Radeon 9700/9800, but you don't like ATI cards so I doubt we'll see that.

Not yet. Want to see how the Arctic Cooling does first. Graphics card will be a 6600GT AGP. I do have a 9800XXL (Medion version from Europe). Wouldn't mind using that one, but I feel the 6600GT is a bit faster, what do you think?

I got FEAR from GOG, but Doom 3 on Steam. At least I can run all the 3D Marks though 😀

I reckon the 9800XXL is a bit faster than the 6600GT, but I do have a shameless AMD/ATI bias. The Socket 462 platform is very finicky but rewarding to build. Right now I'm busy getting my ass handed to me by the Socket 370 platform thanks to EPoX and their insistence on using the worst capacitors and parts on the market.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Evert wrote:

Have you ordered yourself a Rosewill RCX-Z100 yet? I can confirm that GOG.com installers work on 3DNOW! and SSE Athlon XP processors. So you can always revert back to that if all else fails. What GPU are you going to pair with the Athlon XP? It would be nice to see you going with something like a Radeon 9700/9800, but you don't like ATI cards so I doubt we'll see that.

Not yet. Want to see how the Arctic Cooling does first. Graphics card will be a 6600GT AGP. I do have a 9800XXL (Medion version from Europe). Wouldn't mind using that one, but I feel the 6600GT is a bit faster, what do you think?

I got FEAR from GOG, but Doom 3 on Steam. At least I can run all the 3D Marks though 😀

Here you go. This site doesn't have the 9800 XXL, but the 9800 pro is really close, so picked that one: http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=31&card2=190

I just dusted off an old Asus P4B533-E i845 DDR motherboard to see if the Willamette performs as badly with DDR memory as with PC133 memory. My expectation is that the performance will be better but still worse than with RDRAM, thats at least what i see when reading old reviews.

The system is still period correct for year 2001, sort of. The i845 chipset always had support for DDR memory Intel just wouldnt let the board makers release DDR boards until late 2001. The P4B533-E is from 2002 but the P4B266 is from late 2001 and the only relevant difference is official support for 133/533 MHz FSB. All P4B boards can handle FSB up to at least 175 MHz and all boards can run the Northwoods with 133/533 MHz FSB so I will pretend my board is a P4B266 😜.

Here is a picture of my Asus P4B533-E

Skyscraper wrote:

I just dusted off an old Asus P4B533-E i845 DDR motherboard to see if the Willamette performs as badly with DDR memory as with P […]
Show full quote

I just dusted off an old Asus P4B533-E i845 DDR motherboard to see if the Willamette performs as badly with DDR memory as with PC133 memory. My expectation is that the performance will be better but still worse than with RDRAM, that at least what i see when reading old reviews.

The system is still period correct for year 2001, sort of. The i845 chipset always had support for DDR memory Intel just wouldnt let the board makers release DDR boards until late 2001. The P4B533-E is from 2002 but the P4B266 is from late 2001 and the only relevant difference is official support for 133/533 MHz FSB. All P4B boards can handle FSB up to at least 175 MHz and all boards can run the Northwoods with 133/533 MHz FSB so I will pretend my board is a P4B266 😜.

Here is a picture of my Asus P4B533-E
<image>

Trying to catch up to my ddr AMD system? 😉

kithylin wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

I just dusted off an old Asus P4B533-E i845 DDR motherboard to see if the Willamette performs as badly with DDR memory as with P […]
Show full quote

I just dusted off an old Asus P4B533-E i845 DDR motherboard to see if the Willamette performs as badly with DDR memory as with PC133 memory. My expectation is that the performance will be better but still worse than with RDRAM, that at least what i see when reading old reviews.

The system is still period correct for year 2001, sort of. The i845 chipset always had support for DDR memory Intel just wouldnt let the board makers release DDR boards until late 2001. The P4B533-E is from 2002 but the P4B266 is from late 2001 and the only relevant difference is official support for 133/533 MHz FSB. All P4B boards can handle FSB up to at least 175 MHz and all boards can run the Northwoods with 133/533 MHz FSB so I will pretend my board is a P4B266 😜.

Here is a picture of my Asus P4B533-E
<image>

Trying to catch up to my ddr AMD system? 😉

Perhaps 😉. The Asus P4B533-E dosnt use dual channel or PC3200 memory but with a Northwood CPU this board can at least come closer.

Soldered together a wire that adapts from a common DC barrel connector to a 3pin fan connector (I guess it's called TX3). Now I can plug 3pin fans into a power brick.
Soldered a 3pin fan connector on an old metal framed 24V Nidec fan that I picked up at goodwill 6 months ago.
Realized the fan doesn't sound quite right and probably needs to be lubed.

Yesterday I received a newly bought Soldapullt in the mail. That word is unspellable and unpronouncable. It might be the stupidest word anybody ever came up with for anything.
Practiced using the "solda"thingy to desolder some parts from a junk motherboard (literally a corner of the board is broken off, so it's really junk). The suction is impressive. It's certainly more effective than that silly thing from Radio Shack. But then I realized I was burning the PCB next to every hole, because the suction tip presses the iron into the board.
I tried to learn to get suction without pressing down. Limited success, but couldn't cleanly open solder holes much of the time. Some I couldn't open at all, even after losing any regard about burning the PCB. Used quite a bit of solder adding it to holes I was trying to clear.
Undecided whether I will get anywhere with this tool. I'm certainly not ready to use it on anything I care about. Maybe the problem is my iron. This was it's retirement party, it's replacement has already been in the mail for several days.

Connected a 250GB WD external HD with Firewire. Used Norton Ghost 2003 to save a backup image on it.

Benchmarked my AthlonXP 3200+ Barton-400 CPU a lot today for the folks over in the 3dmark 2001 super-thread, still might do yet another run on it.

The thread and the page with my most recent posts is over here, for those that don't know: My 3DMark01 Mega Thread

I just replaced the Asus P4B motherboard in my 2000 - 2002 Netburst testing rig with a P4B533-E.

Saying that a Willamette P4 runs better with DDR memory than it does with SDR memory is an understatement of the same magnitude as saying that a car handles better without a flat tyre. The Willamette is still slow in 3dmark 2000 even with DDR memory though.

Discovered that the heatsink in my K5 has somehow, given I used the same tube of Arctic Silver for everything, glued itself to the heatsink.

The whole machine has a few problems to be honest and my money is currently directed at the Xeon build. I like the motherboard (Even if it was made by PCChips) and intend to repair it later as well as replacing other components that are a bit shaky. I have decided to get my K6, Cyrix MX and the remains of the P66 together so I can nab the best parts they have and just make one good system in the meantime until repairs to all three are a possibility. The Chaintech 5AGM2 is easy to configure, so I will be able to swap out the CPU quickly if I feel like going faster/slower. I guess even if it never gets repaired, completing Atlantis was an epic final outing for Katyusha MK-II... Maybe MK-III will make replaying it even better, the M520 is a little anemic on the HDD controller and it can't run a P200 at all due to a faulty voltage regulator meaning the K5 was left to do all the work and the audio went a little out of sync in cutscenes.

I've been adding a 2nd internal hard drive to my retro builds for 1:1 backing up data and OS images. 3 down 1 to go. Data transfer will still be by FDD/CD/USB/external HD but now I'll be a able to quickly make and maintain complete copies of everything without resorting to these slow alternatives.

Not strict retro but I just replaced the mATX motherboard on my XP/Superfast W98 build from a decent S775 Biostar to a somewhat faster and more versatile ECS P4M890T-M which uses the same VIA chipset. So far so go. The switch alone increased Doom3 timedemo 20%, and I haven't even installed dual-channel ram yet, which should increase it even more.

I just found out something I diddnt expect...

The i845E chipset dosnt officially support FSB over 133 MHz and I always thought that the upper overclock limit was somewhere between 175 and 200 MHz with the best boards... that is not the case.

I gathered every spare part I had to try and assemble an emergency main system. My aunt's house was robbed and they took a buch of notebooks and the desktop, so I wanted to assemble a quick system to lend her for a while.
I had this Bribane Athlon X2 5600+ I friend of mine found on the street a while ago. Back then we couldn't solve its overheating issues (randomly turning off because of that), so this time I bought an aftermarket cooler (Hyper Evo TX3) and attached it to that PC. So far so good, and as soon as I get that PC I might use that cooler for my main system (which is currently using the stock Intel cooler and no overclock, despite being an unlocked Haswell refresh). I tried some live Linux flash drive to run mprime before formatting it, and it ran for almost an hour (while I was on a meeting), but I'm not sure that thing was using its full clock, despite me setting it manually on the BIOS (some Linux utility reported it being a 1000GHz processor). We'll see.... With my spare GTS 440 this thing should, AT LEAST, run The Sims 4, which my younger cousin lives for.

Today i tried to do some CPU Inventory. Last weekend i cleaned, stacked and packed all my Socket 478 and 775 CPUs. Had about 70+ of them with almost 50 beeing the bastard stepchild named Northwood 😊
Anyway todays inventory check and count was a diverse bunch of socket reps. Many 486sx20,25,33 and dx33,50,60. Also some socket 5/7 such as
P75, 120, 133, 150, 166, 166mmx, 200mmx and K6-2 350.
Socket 370 is mostly 733 and 933, also single ones of 800, 800EB, 1000 and 1200. The AMDs are D900, A1700, A2200 and A64 3500. I have not listed them in order as pictured.
Have some more unknown CPUs in old AT systems that i maybe open later today.

Successfully tested someone's BBS from across Canada. No number yet and he's currently on a single modem until he gets his VoIP lines and he can activate all eight modems in the bank.

I got two 386/486 motherboards in yesterday, and this morning I hooked them up. They were sold "AS IS", untested. Both are the FX-3000. One works just fine, the other the post diag card shows "13"...as far as I can tell it means something with the RAM or chipset.

AMI post codes prior to 1990: System-interrupt vectors initialized

Post Codes from post diag card: (13)DMA controller#1,#2,interrupt controller#1,#2disa- bled. About to disable
Video display and initialize port-B. Chipset initialize/auto memory detection about
to begin. Replace first memory SIMM.(13)Chipset initialize/auto memory detection
about to begin. Check first SIMM.(13) Interrupt vectors initialized.

I changed out the ram with known working RAM, however...same issue. Not sure if a SIMM socket is dead or not. Later tonight I'll see if there's anything else I can do, but I really don't know if there's anything else I can do with this ERROR CODE 13.

Oh well....they were sold together for dirt cheap.

I tinkered some more with my Asus P4B533-E i845E system 😀

I had no problems running a Northwood 3GHz CPU with 200(800)MHz FSB with this board although it only supports CPUs with 100/133MHz FSB so I thought hey, a Gallatin is a Northwood with some L3 cache, its worth a try. I can report that my Asus P4B533-E has no issues running a P4 EE Gallatin 3.4 at its rated speed altough the newest beta BIOS is dated 3 months before the Gallatin for socket 478 was released. The board dosnt autodetect the FSB for any 200(800)MHz CPUs but that isnt strage as there isnt any official support.

Not sure if listening to XG MIDI files on my recently acquired Yamaha MU15 can be considered retro activity but since i'm doing it on my Socket 7 machine oh well...

I'm impressed with the quality of XG MIDI's. The fidelity in some songs is just amazing, it sucks that Yamaha stuff wasn't used natively for gaming. Got an XG MIDIs of Fields of Gold by Sting, Final Countdown by Europe and Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits and these sound absolutely awesome!!

Also some files MIDI files that come with the AudioTrix CD use XG, like a rendition of Jurassic Park main theme, Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix or even True by Spandau Bullet. Amazing renditions. Gotta find more XG stuff.

tincup wrote:

I've been adding a 2nd internal hard drive to my retro builds for 1:1 backing up data and OS images. 3 down 1 to go. Data transfer will still be by FDD/CD/USB/external HD but now I'll be a able to quickly make and maintain complete copies of everything without resorting to these slow alternatives.

What software do you use and could you please briefly outline the steps you take to image a disk?