Microcool NorthPole XE chipset cooler for Intel / AMD Northbridge + Socket 479

I received an old early Pentium era PC today. Originally I bought it to harvest its power supply for another build. The complete machine was the same cost as a PSU alone. So gave it a shot and bought it without knowing whats inside. Its a common little computer shop build which are long gone. I miss those times where you can walk into an computer shop nearby and buy parts or complete custom made systems.

It arrived in an okay state, a little bit grubby and in some state of disrepair. It works, but the Windows 95 installation on the hard disk is messed up. In no longer then 10 minutes I stripped it down to the parts. Inside I found an Pentium 100 based board, which has an dedicated 8 bit ISA slot. Something I never saw before on an Socket 7 era system. The sound card is an early ESS one, the NIC is an 3com and the CD drive is an 4x speed Mitsumi drive. When it works I'll use it in my IBM ValueLine 486. The cables, floppy drive and the Mach64 VGA card will come handy too.

Todays mail service brought me a Terratec AudioSystem EWS64 with the front panel and some MIDI cables.

Usually I don’t buy German technology, except for ICP vortex products, but I was willing to give this one a try.
It’s pretty filthy but the overall condition seems to be good (caps are good, traces and connectors seem to be OK).

In addition I’ve got a random VLB IO controller card for my “low end” 486.

(I still can’t contain myself over a SCC-1 for less than 100$ … I think I’ll finally give up searching for one and keep using the Sound Canvas VA)

Edit: This one came a little late to the party. It was loosely packed in an envelope... welcome test candidate 1 for 50MHz FSB.

Hail to the king, baby 😁

I never thought I'd find a Golden Orb, let alone NOS. I am so happy 😀

On a side note, I always thought that the Titan Majesty-IV was a Golden Orb rip-off (I was happy to find one nonetheless). However, before installing, I saw that it has Thermaltake stamped on the heatsink... It just makes me wonder why.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-02-17, 22:07:

dulu wrote on 2021-02-17, 20:16:

As soon as I saw the title of the offert "9800 pro" I bought it without even looking if it works. $ 13 (includes shipment). Good purchase or bad? It is 128MB only (and palit, heh) but copper cooler looks pretty nice. Seller`s picture

That doesn't look like a 9800 Pro to me, but I did find some pictures online of similar Palit cards being sold as 9800 Pros. We just had a post recently about these non-standard 9800 models. I'm not sure exactly what you've got there, but it isn't a 9800 Pro the way ATi designed them. The through-hole caps and the rectangular memory chips (and the layout) give it away.

It may perform as a 9800 Pro, or it may have reduced performance... it's hard to say. Either way, it was cheap, so congrats! 😁

Could you give me a link to this post?

W.x. wrote on 2021-02-19, 17:03:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-02-19, 16:10:

*shrug*
I didn't manufacture them.

Of the 30-40 MX cards I've tested in recent years, none had overheating issues, though I didn't game on them for hours and my test bench is well ventilated. Anyway, I'm not here to be the defender of OEM un-cooled MX cards, I was just stating the facts. 😀

Well, back then, y0u know how it was with cooling conditions in many those retro baige cases... 😀 (no intake fan, lots of IDE, LPT, COM wide cables, bad cable management, lots of cards and stuff close to AGP slot. If OEM builder designed it bad, to put Geforce 2 MX without heatsink and play on it heavily, was suicide. Particulary, if even noname version, with worse construction/memories, was used. Also, if thunderbird CPU was presented, which was putting much more heat into the case, troubles can be around. But anyway, thank you for note, that really non-heatsink version existed. Didn't know about it.

I have come across these non-heatsink MX cards quite regularly as well, these were relatively common. Most MX cards did have a heatsink though and some even had active cooling (though usually using a very tiny heatsink).
Personally I'd at least consider to add a heatsink to these, especially if they actually start locking up when in use. It's not the only example of a graphics card which is designed with some ... lesser design choices having been made for them (like the R9700 shim issue or perhaps the BGA issue which plagued GF7 and GF8 cards in particular). Even Voodoo 3 can use some extra cooling and personally I always found the passive Geforce 7600GS to run too hot and added a 8cm fan to botrh my cards (bought 2 of them when brand new, both being different brands, back in the day).

Imo always a good thing to think for yourself, also with regards to these MX cards. These MX cards were considered the bottom of the barrel, so not many people actually cared much for these cards back then. They were considered fodder and there were masses of them!

Having said that, these cards run fairly cool so I wouldn't expect them to die of overheating soon.

Tetrium wrote on 2021-02-20, 21:11:

Imo always a good thing to think for yourself, also with regards to these MX cards. These MX cards were considered the bottom of the barrel, so not many people actually cared much for these cards back then. They were considered fodder and there were masses of them!

Well, I don't agree with it. Maybe in some wealthy countries, where everyone had 2000$-3000$ salary as average Here, salaries around year 2000 were like 300-400$ or something like that. GTS and Ultra versions was almost not sold here. MX was considered mid-range card, and was bought by masses here. Also all gaming magazines and sites with hardware recommended it, and most gamers (kids/young people) in that time could not afford GTS or Ultra version. I would say, out of all Geforce 2 series, like 90% cards was sold as MX, and only 10% as GTS (at least here). I would guess, similiar situation was in other post-socialistic countries too, and wuold not be suprised, if also in Brazil, south America, Mexico, and some Asian countries too.

feltel wrote on 2021-02-20, 10:57:

I received an old early Pentium era PC today. Originally I bought it to harvest its power supply for another build. The complete […]
Show full quote

I received an old early Pentium era PC today. Originally I bought it to harvest its power supply for another build. The complete machine was the same cost as a PSU alone. So gave it a shot and bought it without knowing whats inside. Its a common little computer shop build which are long gone. I miss those times where you can walk into an computer shop nearby and buy parts or complete custom made systems.

PXL_20210220_081858470.jpg PXL_20210220_082128486.jpg

PXL_20210220_082140269.jpg PXL_20210220_085415946.jpg

It arrived in an okay state, a little bit grubby and in some state of disrepair. It works, but the Windows 95 installation on the hard disk is messed up. In no longer then 10 minutes I stripped it down to the parts. Inside I found an Pentium 100 based board, which has an dedicated 8 bit ISA slot. Something I never saw before on an Socket 7 era system. The sound card is an early ESS one, the NIC is an 3com and the CD drive is an 4x speed Mitsumi drive. When it works I'll use it in my IBM ValueLine 486. The cables, floppy drive and the Mach64 VGA card will come handy too.

I remember selling those Mitsumi drives back in the day. They were pretty good and reliable at the time. Nice little rig pickup.

Seems this is the last ISA AudioDrive. Produced in 1998. Pretty recent even for my PCI 486 box but I certainly could buy this one that year.
Will go to PCI 486 box as a replacement for ES1868F that I moved to my VLB 486 one.

Intel EtherExpress 10Mbit NIC. Produced in 1995.
Will connect my VLB 486 box to LAN.

P.S. Gonna kick my wife's ass in Doom 2 over the network. 😀))

effy wrote on 2021-02-20, 21:45:

I remember selling those Mitsumi drives back in the day. They were pretty good and reliable at the time. Nice little rig pickup.

You and me both. Those drives bring back the old early 90s tech shop memories. Had stacks of those model drives for pretty much every mom & pop computer tower that went out the door.

Gabriel-LG wrote on 2021-02-20, 20:19:

On a side note, I always thought that the Titan Majesty-IV was a Golden Orb rip-off (I was happy to find one nonetheless). However, before installing, I saw that it has Thermaltake stamped on the heatsink... It just makes me wonder why.

In which place? I had titan orb but didn`t notice thermaltake logo.

Bought a floppy + I/O + RTC board for my Compaq Portable in case the floppy controller died (it's a DTK I/O floppy RTC XT card, but it might work).

I almost couldn't sign in and click buy it now fast enough. Was 30 dollars a good price?

Warlord wrote on 2021-02-21, 03:46:

I almost couldn't sign in and click buy it now fast enough. Was 30 dollars a good price?

For a Gravis Ultrasound? No it sounds like a steal.

It's a poor man's GUS. It has no RAM so most of the things that a GUS is normally sought after for won't work with it. Basically just a cheap (ROM based) wavetable card.

I read it was crippled. I wonder if I can mod it or use the chips to make a real ultrasound.

Sounds like a good idea.

Interestingly I saw a CT4330 on fleabay today...which is almost the exact AWE32 equivalent - the EMU8K with zero expansion ram, just a really crappy ROM. Don't think I'll buy it though, despite the novelty factor.

W.x. wrote on 2021-02-20, 21:34:

Tetrium wrote on 2021-02-20, 21:11:

Imo always a good thing to think for yourself, also with regards to these MX cards. These MX cards were considered the bottom of the barrel, so not many people actually cared much for these cards back then. They were considered fodder and there were masses of them!

Well, I don't agree with it. Maybe in some wealthy countries, where everyone had 2000$-3000$ salary as average Here, salaries around year 2000 were like 300-400$ or something like that. GTS and Ultra versions was almost not sold here. MX was considered mid-range card, and was bought by masses here. Also all gaming magazines and sites with hardware recommended it, and most gamers (kids/young people) in that time could not afford GTS or Ultra version. I would say, out of all Geforce 2 series, like 90% cards was sold as MX, and only 10% as GTS (at least here). I would guess, similiar situation was in other post-socialistic countries too, and wuold not be suprised, if also in Brazil, south America, Mexico, and some Asian countries too.

I was talking about the MX cards and apparently we share the same opinion about their popularity, so no idea why you are bringing up the high-end cards now but whatever.
Most people here in The Netherlands bought OEM computers and those usually had either an MX or onboard graphics at the time. Sure, older generations were still often for sale here but they would usually have a terrible price/performance ratio and would barely sell.
Years later I was there revamping old computers for repurpose and I can guarantee you that MX was widely used here while I barely ever saw any of the higher end cards. Heck, I didn't even have a single GF4 non-MX card for years even though I already had basically 2 kiwi boxes of MX cards 🤣

Anyway, was merely adding in some background information and afaic I've said what I wanted to say.

Unfortunately I haven't purchased anything retro in a while now, if only because thrift stores are selling less and less of them and because they have been closed down a lot in the last year due to covid.

Bought this Toshiba Satellite 220CS for 5€ + shipping. I don't have a suitable power supply for it to test it, but i think it is Pentium 133MHz, at least 16MB RAM, 800x600 screen, Yamaha OPL3-SA3 SB Pro compatible sound card.