What HP system is that one?

I just fixed a bad trace on my one and only 386 board. I had "fixed" it "temporarily" a couple years ago using that Permatex rear window defogger repair goop (basically liquid metal paint that dries hard and conductive). The board worked when I did this originally so I was happy and cobbled it together into an ATX case... two years later I finally tried to use the system and it wouldn't post. I pulled the board out and tested the traces I'd repaired and sure enough, one of them was testing as broken again. I've done very few trace repairs but I got some wire wrapping wire earlier this year and decided I'd try using that to reroute the bad trace. At first I made it overcomplicated and I was going to attempt to attach it to one of the tiny test holes, then I realized it was much easier to just follow that test hole to wherever it leads and thankfully it lead to a very easy to access pin on the BIOS chip socket. This would explain why it wouldn't post! I ran the wire, tested it with no cards installed and it didn't catch fire, so... good! Next I threw in my cheap ISA POST code test cards and... it barely lit up. After testing it 20 times this way I decided to try a vintage PocketPOST card I'd gotten online and... it was working! I dropped in an expendable old ISA VGA card and sure enough it fired right up!

Apparently the cheapo post card I bought online last year decided to kill itself. I used both cards yesterday when testing this board and neither had any issue reporting the POST codes... now the cheap one is dead. I was careful not to insert it backward, so I have no idea what happened to it. I get some lights and once in a great while something will show on the LCD code indicator, but its random every time. The soldering job on it is terrible but I don't actually see any broken traces. Anyone ever had one of these fail? Mine is like this one. I do get a faint but recognizable smell of burnt electronics when I sniff it... can't pinpoint where its coming from though.

RandomStranger wrote:

Codegen PSUs are infamous PC killers. I also have some bad memories with them. I wouldn't recommend them even for short term use […]
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Merovign wrote:

🤣 I grabbed, out of a pile of discarded PSUs, a Codegen unit because the name ran a bell, even though it's a lightweight.

Finally tested it, it has the elusive -5V line. So as long as it doesn't blow up, it has a use indeed!

Codegen PSUs are infamous PC killers. I also have some bad memories with them.
I wouldn't recommend them even for short term use or testing purposes.
Just solder out the Molex and FDD power cables so you can use it in more modern and reliable PSUs replacing the SATA power cables.
It's not hard to find quality OEM PC or workstation PSUs in the 200-350W range which is perfect for P2-P4 builds

Well it's *literally* the only one I've ever tested wit -5V. I'll keep an eye out, but it's all I've got. I'd like to load-test it if I get a chance.

Right now I don't have a need to use it, yet.

oeuvre wrote:

What HP system is that one?

No idea, the board was pulled from an HP and sold on ebay to me by an e waste place from California 🤣

voodoo5_6k wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Installed a backplate on my K6-2 system, thanks to liqmat for being so generous with this part. I thought this PC would never have a backplate, but it actually does now..
[...]
With patience, time and a great community like Vogons, anything is possible I guess!

These can be found relatively easy, as many motherboards used this I/O layout. I have two of these motherboards, Asus P/I-XP55T2P4 and Intel Advanced/ML (Marl). One valid part# for this type of I/O shield is 32140544A (just in case anybody else is looking for one...).

Either I'm not as resourceful as you are, or they are always available in US and shipping over the Atlantic just doesn't make it worthy the while.. liqmat was kind enough to ship to a relative of mine in US, and they brought it over. Regardless, he made my day.

liqmat wrote:

Yes, but he got three for free. That's a price you can't beat.

Yeah, that's hard to beat 😉 But that wasn't my intent. As many motherboards of that time used this I/O layout, there's a certain probability that others are looking for these I/O shields too. That's why I put that part# in here to make it easier to search for.

appiah4 wrote:

Either I'm not as resourceful as you are, or they are always available in US and shipping over the Atlantic just doesn't make it worthy the while.. liqmat was kind enough to ship to a relative of mine in US, and they brought it over. Regardless, he made my day.

I too had to wait for some time to get one for a decent price locally, but having the part# made the search a little easier. Anyhow, congratulations on this great deal. Sometimes, all the pieces just seem to fall in the right places 😉

voodoo5_6k wrote:

Yeah, that's hard to beat 😉 But that wasn't my intent. As many motherboards of that time used this I/O layout, there's a certain probability that others are looking for these I/O shields too. That's why I put that part# in here to make it easier to search for.

Thanks for doing that actually. Luckily all of mine are new old stock. I wish I could give out more, but I have to have enough for the PPro mobos I have in the haul. If I have any extras left over I will hand them out to the community here to whoever might need them. That will be a few months from now though.

First of all happy new year to everyone

Yesterday I swapped the motherboard from my main DOS system box as the one that had was kind of dying

Original mobo was a Tekram one and I swapped for a common PCChips mainboard, yes, all you guys are going nuts with me but I had to do it

I kept all the original hardware until something went horribly wrong and that was that not only the motherboard was kind of dying, also the video card too, I mean, it works fine but it started showing lines so what I did is I wanted to reseat both RAM chips and in the middle of getting them out I managed to pop one out and putting it backwards (Oh damn...) and then I smelled something burning and I touched it and I instantly burn my finger so I said, oh... no no NOO!! so I went to remove the second one and the plastic on the socket was so dry that I managed to break the right part of it 😠 so... I saved it and I went to a Cirrus 5436 and I was SO LUCKY to find the original Windows drivers with the utility (!!!) on DriverGuide and yanno what guys?? My system works like a champ now!!

Also I made a rebuild of my very very first AT machine that I had back in 2015 so the specs are as follows

P233 MMX (The '15 build had a 200 one)
32 MB FP RAM
SB16 MCD
Cirrus 5436 (The '15 one used the VIA onboard one)
WD 2.1 GB HDD
Windows 3.11
3com 3c905B

Built my fourth PC for the holidays (and probably the last), this one for the Win95 era (still running Win98SP3).

Shuttle AV14 motherboard
Via C3 Ezra 866Mhz
S3 Savage4 Pro AGP
Audigy SB0090
Voodoo2 12MB SLI (Creative 3DBlasters)
AWE64 Value (soon to have a memory upgrade)
256mb PC133
500gb seagate cucked down to 120gb.

After solving the jigsaw puzzle that is configuring a motherboard with a Via chipset (the Audigy worked in only 1 PCI slot for example), I am actually surprised just how well everything works. No conflicts between any hardware, graphics cards work well together, sound cards ignore each other splendidly. The supposed quality loss from passing through the V2 is unnoticeable to my eyes.

Tested so far:
- Unreal Gold with HD textures and S3TC/Metal api.
- Quake2 using Glide/minigl.
- Doom2 and Duke3D using the AWE.

DOS gaming from within Win98 is easier than I remember when you have a nice SB16 compatible card like the AWE64 available. Probably because the PC I had in the late 90s almost certainty had a cheap PCI card and I had no idea how to configure it for DOS gaming if it even supported it. Just echo %BLASTER%, enter those values into the setup and it works like a dream. Only change is to move the audio cable from one line-out to another 😀

Today I've decided to build a(n almost) dream machine of mine from the mid-to-late 2000s.
Originally I wanted a QX6700 and a full size ATX board, but the board I was eyeing with had a little accident.
The seller dropped a Codegen PSU on that. It was a good board, it's really a shame. Maybe I'll uprade it later.

Still, I would have sold my soul for this back then.

So, after talking about the issues I had with Episode 1: Racer refusing to run when it came out because only 28MB RAM was usable on my PC at the time I decided to mess around in PCem and set up a similar specced system with the same amount of RAM. As before it failed the hardware analysis check except this time the game still let me play it. No error message saying my PC didn't meet the minimum requirements or anything.

At this point I don't know what the hell I was doing back then but it was interesting to give it another try. Perhaps this was another case of memories merging together.

Backed up all of my GameBoy Game Saves using the InterAct Mega Memory Card for GameBoy and GameBoy Color games (battery backup games only) that I've had for 2 years as a precautionary measure. Might buy an adapter to read the EEPROM chip to make a backup of it as well to be safe. I wonder if there is one for the N64 games as well? Also:

Got an old gateway g6-350 rebuilt. Must have been some kind of corporate machine. It was pronounced dead by someone else, so it was free to me. It had some kind of network card with a built-in bios, that for some reason would only allow a network boot. Yanked that and the modem, and a 98se CD, and at least got it to boot.

Installed win98se, but no audio/video drivers built in to 98. So I wiped that out and tried ME. Riva128 graphics and a built in es1373 creative audio. Haven't gotten to test it's capabilities vs other setups just yet.

Oddly enough, it's got a fan far superior to the gateway g6-266 I have (which is supposed to run 'hotter', isn't it?). The downside? It's only a 90w PSU. How is that possible? I didn't even think that would work.

Fancy.

2000th post on this fine site. Here's to another 2000 more.

Bought some mint condition Wang APC system & software 5¼" diskettes from a gentleman in Massachusetts off of Craigslist so I could archive them properly for future collectors and preservationists. Unfortunately there are not a lot of downloads for this software to be found online currently. The Wang APC had its own way of doing things so these disks only work with the actual hardware even though it is a DOS compatible machine. The seller even included a 5¼" and 8" cleaning disk for good measure.

The Wang APC system & software disk images are now uploaded over at minuszerodegrees:

http://minuszerodegrees.net/manuals.htm#Wang

What was really neat is he included his family's old business postcards from the 1960s which were in mint condition and he gave me permission to share my scans of them online. He even has a website documenting the business. I love when there is a lot of history behind a purchase.

http://www.acme-electronic.com/

Did a easy repair on a Radeon X1650 Pro 512MB AGP GPU I bought. Had a bad cap near the 4 pin floppy power plug which I replaced. Works fine, no artefacts, so I guess for $1 it was worth it.

While on holiday at my parents' I ran into an old friend...

My old Athlon64 setup!
Its a Newcastle core 3000+ CPU overclocked to 2400 MHz, the motherboard is the nForce4-4x based K8N-Neo3, with PCIe and an AGP-like slot called AGR; and a Radeon x1950 Pro. I'm taking it with me to restore it and build a nice XP/7 machine.

slivercr wrote:

While on holiday at my parents' I ran into an old friend... […]
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While on holiday at my parents' I ran into an old friend...

DSC_0305.JPG

My old Athlon64 setup!
Its a Newcastle core 3000+ CPU overclocked to 2400 MHz, the motherboard is the nForce4-4x based K8N-Neo3, with PCIe and an AGP-like slot called AGR; and a Radeon x1950 Pro. I'm taking it with me to restore it and build a nice XP/7 machine.

Nice! I have, right next to me, an Athlon64 PC myself, a 3200+ Clawhammer with an X1950PRO AGP; it's a fantastic PC. I plan to upgrade it to a 3700+ soon, though. Socket 754/939 Athlon64s were things I really missed out on (went from AthlonXP right to Athlon64 X2 AM2 stuff) so I am REALLY enjoying using this system as a fast single processor Windows XP box.

appiah4 wrote:

Nice! I have, right next to me, an Athlon64 PC myself, a 3200+ Clawhammer with an X1950PRO AGP; it's a fantastic PC. I plan to upgrade it to a 3700+ soon, though. Socket 754/939 Athlon64s were things I really missed out on (went from AthlonXP right to Athlon64 X2 AM2 stuff) so I am REALLY enjoying using this system as a fast single processor Windows XP box.

I have really fond memories of that setup, so I plan to take really good care of it: it needs to be recapped and cleaned, I already ordered a new orb-like copper heatsink for the nForce4, got a red USB3 card to fit into the PCIe 1x slot, and I'll be upgrading the CPU and RAM down the line. I'm really digging the all red look, too. Back when I got it I thought it looked tacky, but now I think it looks beautiful!

For the CPU upgrade I kinda wanna try a Turion: lower voltage requirements so I have more headroom when overclocking, plus it has E stepping so it comes with SSE3 and more memory dividers. The last BIOS update for this mobo adds support for some Turion CPUs, so I may go that route.