VOGONS


Reply 120 of 269, by doogie

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Shoot - looks like I have an earlier board that will not support 512MB RIMMs. I wonder what the change was?
Kind of puts a hole in my plans, but I suppose Lubuntu should still work with 1GB RAM. Windows 2000 will have no issue of course.

Anyway, thanks for posting all of these materials! Very helpful. I'll study up while I wait for some 128MB RIMMs.

Reply 121 of 269, by slivercr

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doogie wrote:

Shoot - looks like I have an earlier board that will not support 512MB RIMMs. I wonder what the change was?
Kind of puts a hole in my plans, but I suppose Lubuntu should still work with 1GB RAM. Windows 2000 will have no issue of course.

Anyway, thanks for posting all of these materials! Very helpful. I'll study up while I wait for some 128MB RIMMs.

I don't know what the actual change was, to be honest. You can still flash the new BIOS and try the 512MB RIMMs, they may even work. I mean, we got Tualatins to run in this board after all 😉

As encouragement: 1 GB is PLENTY for this system, there are very few scenarios in which you'll need more RAM with this machine. It even makes it easier to set up Windows 98, if you are interested in that. The only advantage of 2 GB is bragging rights 😁

I still havent dug up all the materials I have for the board. I have a copy of the driver CD somewhere, Ill be sure to upload it and link it soon. I'm afraid as I grow older I loose track of time more easily, and when I say "later today" it usually takes a few days to get done 😵

Outrigger: an ongoing adventure with the OR840
QuForce FX 5800: turn your Quadro into a GeForce

Reply 122 of 269, by slivercr

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Here are the latest BIOS images for the stock intel board as well as the IBM board, manuals, and drivers. If people have other BIOS versions, please send them to me and I'll include them in the "repo".

https://mega.nz/#F!1koRyIqI!tTw97tV8mZynflvq_a9RGQ

Outrigger: an ongoing adventure with the OR840
QuForce FX 5800: turn your Quadro into a GeForce

Reply 123 of 269, by doogie

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Thanks again for the software/BIOS/docs repo!

The struggle with Rambus is very real..however my OR840 finally sprang to life with four Elpida PC800-45 128MB sticks installed.

It is currently on BIOS 0219.P03. Going to try to get that updated and then see if I can lay down my Windows 2000 RIS image on it..very exciting to get something out of it besides beeps!

Reply 124 of 269, by slivercr

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doogie wrote:

Thanks again for the software/BIOS/docs repo!

The struggle with Rambus is very real..however my OR840 finally sprang to life with four Elpida PC800-45 128MB sticks installed.

It is currently on BIOS 0219.P03. Going to try to get that updated and then see if I can lay down my Windows 2000 RIS image on it..very exciting to get something out of it besides beeps!

Glad to hear progress is being made. Also, if you could backup the bios it would be awesome!

Outrigger: an ongoing adventure with the OR840
QuForce FX 5800: turn your Quadro into a GeForce

Reply 125 of 269, by doogie

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Got the BIOS updated without incident.

Interestingly: I figured, well, the board boots with 128MB sticks - what about all the other RIMMs I now have on hand 🤣

  • 2x 256MB Samsung PC800-40 non-ECC, 2x CRIMM - boot
  • 2x 512MB Samsung PC800-40 ECC, 2x CRIMM - boot!!
  • can we go 4x 512MB Samsung PC800-40 ECC? - SORT OF..the board POSTs and announces that it has 2GB RAM to play with, however memtest86 fails early.

Using two of the 512MB ECC sticks, memtest86 is now running and I'll let it go a few passes. If that looks stable - well, no need to buy additional 256MB sticks!

Reply 126 of 269, by luckybob

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If 2 sticks work, but not 4, test both sets separately. It's likely a power issue then.

Time to recap the board.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 127 of 269, by slivercr

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luckybob wrote:

If 2 sticks work, but not 4, test both sets separately. It's likely a power issue then.

Time to recap the board.

I'm with luckybob on testing the sets separately, while you're at it try 1.5 GB of RAM to see if it also crashes.

I had similar RAM issues, solved after recapping and cleaning (important!) the board, but I do have a compatible serial number.

Outrigger: an ongoing adventure with the OR840
QuForce FX 5800: turn your Quadro into a GeForce

Reply 128 of 269, by doogie

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"compatible serial number" is key here too I think - I did not expect my OR840 to support 512MB RIMMs at all.
Fair points, though, and worth a try. I will swap sets and run memtest86 again after I'm confident in the first round of testing.

Edit: the system so far seems stable with 1GB installed. It’s in RIS right now installing Windows 2000, where I plan to do some validation against the graphics card, and add things like the U160 SCSI controller, MPEG-2 decoder card and some other stuff that went in the Dream Machine build. Hopefully continued progress from here on!

Reply 129 of 269, by slivercr

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doogie wrote:

the system so far seems stable with 1GB installed. It’s in RIS right now installing Windows 2000, where I plan to do some validation against the graphics card, and add things like the U160 SCSI controller, MPEG-2 decoder card and some other stuff that went in the Dream Machine build. Hopefully continued progress from here on!

Good news!
I attach an IRQ table to help you distribute the expansion cards and avoid troubles. Ideally you should be able to place whichever card in whichever slot and forget about it, but this board is so temperamental that I've found it better to distribute the devices and have as few as possible per IRQ.

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Just for the sake of being complete in case someone stumbles upon this and doesn't know how to use it: depending on which expansion slot you use, the devices on a an expansion card will populate different IRQs. For each slot I write the starting IRQ in brackets, and then they are filled up from 1 to 4. USB1 and LAN are the included devices already on the motherboard. The table corresponds to the physical location of the slots on the OR840, and is only valid for the OR840!

Examples: my AGP card has 1 device which uses IRQ 16. An Audigy2 ZS has 2 devices, if I place it in the lowest PCI slot then the sound device will use IRQ 16 and the FireWire device will use IRQ 17. My USB2 card has 3 devices, if I place it in the 2nd PCI slot it will populate IRQs 19, 16, and 17.

---

I've added a bunch of intel datasheets to the repo.

EDIT: I've also added MaximumPC's September of 2000 issue with the Dream Machine build.

Last edited by slivercr on 2018-12-17, 10:39. Edited 1 time in total.

Outrigger: an ongoing adventure with the OR840
QuForce FX 5800: turn your Quadro into a GeForce

Reply 130 of 269, by doogie

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On the bench doing some basic functional verification of the expansion cards:

  • Quadro 2 Pro - this card technically became available a month after the Dream Machine 2000 issue, but I figure this is a workstation and therefore deserving of a workstation GPU. Performance should be somewhere between the GeForce 2 Ti and Ultra cards, based on clocks.
  • Adaptec 39160 Ultra160 SCSI controller
  • REALMagic Hollywood Plus MPEG-2 decoder
  • Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 SB0100 - I'm looking for a different Live! variant now; this one is my favorite for "daily driver" retro gaming builds, but it isn't the same card the Maximum PC used; it looks more like the CT4760.
  • Intel PRO/1000 GT (temporary I'm thinking - was mainly used to PXE boot the machine and get an OS on it.)

voZI6HS.jpg

And the 5.25" drive stack so far:

IvFQUMN.jpg

You can see that there are a couple of RetroBrite candidates here. The Plextor 40x CD-ROM and Zip drives were by all appearances never used.

I've tracked down the Seagate 18GB Cheetahs, and I've been using the IBM 75GXP (not pictured) to do my initial tests.
My thought is to add an additional SCSI drive or two, as a more modern OS (Lubuntu 16.04 is the plan) will eat 18GB rather quickly.
The Plextor burners are incredibly expensive (PX-W124TSi, best I can figure) and hard to find. That portion may have to wait a bit.

The last detail is the case and it's a real tough one. So unless a PC Power and Cooling full tower magically appears, I think I'm going to go with an ever-so-slightly newer, but still early 00's, chassis.

In the meantime, I'm trying to see if one of my coworkers has some time to do a recap on the motherboard - I love hardware, but my soldering skills are terrible.

Reply 131 of 269, by doogie

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An interesting finding as I'm going through the OSCON + electrolytic capacitors on the board..

OSCONs:
At grid position H8 on my OR840, there are 4, 8mm diameter Sanyo OSCONs here (marked C8H1, C8G6, C8H3, and C8H2). These are, best I can tell, Sanyo 10SP270M's, rated at 10V, 270uF.
The larger 10mm diameter OSCONs are rated at 4V/820uF.

I've studied all of the pictures in this thread and I only see capacitors rated at 470uF installed there. There are some other more subtle differences in components, namely that the tantalum capacitors on my board seem to be a mish-mash of Vishay, AVX and Kemet, whereas the other boards I see in the thread are a little more consistent.
There is also a slight difference in board layout between the processor slots; the same 10 capacitors are installed, however there is no silkscreen for an additional 2 caps.

Electrolytics:
In the corner at J9 there is a 25V, 22uF cap, and between the power connectors at H6, 25V 100uF.

According to what I believe is a date code sticker on the chip located on the voltage regulator "mezzanine", this board was manufactured around the 44th week of 1999.

I'm attaching the spec sheet for the Sanyo OSCON SP series, since this took a while to dig up.

Big question: what if I installed 470uF capacitors in place of the 270uF ones?

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Reply 132 of 269, by slivercr

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doogie wrote:

Big question: what if I installed 470uF capacitors in place of the 270uF ones?

Nothing bad will happen. If memory serves me right, these are decoupling caps for the RAM (cant check right now since I am on holidays like 10000 km away from the machine). As long as they have similar ESR it should be fine.

Outrigger: an ongoing adventure with the OR840
QuForce FX 5800: turn your Quadro into a GeForce

Reply 133 of 269, by doogie

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Many thanks for the reply while away on holiday!

Plans for surgery are underway. I'm very grateful - a coworker has agreed to take the board and verify/replace the caps..he's done more than a few of these types of projects, so it's in quite good hands. I'll be cleaning the remainder of the parts, and retrobright-ing bezels, in the meantime.

One CD-RW arrived, along with one 15K Cheetah (the other hard disk was tested faulty by the seller, unfortunately). Good time to test the SCSI components on a known good machine, I figure.

The list of hardware to acquire is getting shorter:
-One additional PX-W124TSi CD-RW
-One additional 18GB, 15K Cheetah
-Case - not quite what Maximum PC used, but we need to showcase this hardware anyway!

Beyond that, it should be cables and such - not that it mattered nearly as much in 2000, but it irks me how MPC put the build together in the end..come on guys - cable management!

Reply 134 of 269, by TheeRaccoon

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doogie wrote:
On the bench doing some basic functional verification of the expansion cards: […]
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On the bench doing some basic functional verification of the expansion cards:

  • Quadro 2 Pro - this card technically became available a month after the Dream Machine 2000 issue, but I figure this is a workstation and therefore deserving of a workstation GPU. Performance should be somewhere between the GeForce 2 Ti and Ultra cards, based on clocks.
  • Adaptec 39160 Ultra160 SCSI controller
  • REALMagic Hollywood Plus MPEG-2 decoder
  • Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 SB0100 - I'm looking for a different Live! variant now; this one is my favorite for "daily driver" retro gaming builds, but it isn't the same card the Maximum PC used; it looks more like the CT4760.
  • Intel PRO/1000 GT (temporary I'm thinking - was mainly used to PXE boot the machine and get an OS on it.)

voZI6HS.jpg

And the 5.25" drive stack so far:

IvFQUMN.jpg

You can see that there are a couple of RetroBrite candidates here. The Plextor 40x CD-ROM and Zip drives were by all appearances never used.

I've tracked down the Seagate 18GB Cheetahs, and I've been using the IBM 75GXP (not pictured) to do my initial tests.
My thought is to add an additional SCSI drive or two, as a more modern OS (Lubuntu 16.04 is the plan) will eat 18GB rather quickly.
The Plextor burners are incredibly expensive (PX-W124TSi, best I can figure) and hard to find. That portion may have to wait a bit.

The last detail is the case and it's a real tough one. So unless a PC Power and Cooling full tower magically appears, I think I'm going to go with an ever-so-slightly newer, but still early 00's, chassis.

In the meantime, I'm trying to see if one of my coworkers has some time to do a recap on the motherboard - I love hardware, but my soldering skills are terrible.

You mean like these? 😉

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Reply 135 of 269, by slivercr

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TheeRaccoon wrote:

You mean like these? 😉

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Outrigger: an ongoing adventure with the OR840
QuForce FX 5800: turn your Quadro into a GeForce

Reply 136 of 269, by doogie

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Ha! Looks like you have a spare! Happy to take that off your hands 😁

@TheeRaccoon oddly, I can't send private messages. I wanted to discuss where I might find one of these cases, or potentially whether you'd be willing to sell.

Reply 137 of 269, by doogie

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Back In Action

Now that's (almost) a Dream Machine! Sure wish I had one of those super fancy full towers........ 😎

qeIivsN.jpg

This haphazard bench test aims to progressively work all of the hardware in (and eventually, you know, install a real OS). The OR840 has been recapped. Big, big thanks to an extremely helpful colleague that took time out to truly give this board the gold star treatment. Things seem to be better already - it's running thru memtest86, but look ma! No CRIMMs! That's right - 2GB memory!!

I don't want to hold my breath just yet -- the board hasn't completed a full pass, but it's not the insta-fail that happened before.
Provided all goes well through a couple of passes, I'll publish a list of installed capacitors here in case it helps someone in the future. We did make some slight changes to the specs on many of the original components..this earlier revision board made for some interesting challenges as well.

More soon(tm)