Predator99 wrote:

havli wrote:

Actualy Phenom is is quite obsolete for todays standards - no AVX, SSE4, not even SSSE3 support. It is 8 years old after all.

And what do you need all this for when not playing games? 😉 Most demanding application for me is watching a BD and this was also possible on my old Athlon...would be waste of money for me to buy something newer. Therefore I am glad to get a cheap upgrade 😎

Looking at the intel side C2D, C2Q are enough for most peoples needs. Really the biggest difference is the speed of the onboard video especially when rendering web pages. I use an i5-2540m and i7-2820qm in my main computers. Those are going on 6-7 years now.

Predator99 wrote:

And what do you need all this for when not playing games? 😉 Most demanding application for me is watching a BD and this was also possible on my old Athlon...would be waste of money for me to buy something newer. Therefore I am glad to get a cheap upgrade 😎

Video encoding, file compression, photo editing, compiling, you name it. All this benefits greatly from modern CPU... not to mention lower power consumption, better MB conectivity, more RAM. Also I believe soon there will be applications that simply won't run without SSE4. C2Q is even worse in some aspects (8GB RAM limit for most systems, as majority of 775 boards are running DDR2). C2Q stopped being enough for me when Sandy Bridge was released. 😀

I bought this SoundBlaster CT2980 (im pretty sure its a Vibra16)

for my 486 project

@jheronimous

That EGA monitor alone, if in good working condition, makes it all worth it. Great find!!

Got this one today. ASUS X1900XT 512MB:

Can't get what's wrong with it, could be the drivers (X series is not supported in Windows 7 anymore) because some 3dm tests glitch heavily but the card still passes the test (25000 in 3dmark05 1024x768 on a Pentium 4 3.73).

carlostex wrote:

@jheronimous

That EGA monitor alone, if in good working condition, makes it all worth it. Great find!!

Thanks!

I hope to find some time and thoroughly test the machine this weekend. I've never really used anything pre-486 in my life, and this machine is basically older than I am (the MFM drive is dated March'90 — I was born in July'90), so I guess I'll have to be really careful. I'll start by removing the leaking battery and running the PSU while everything is unplugged to make sure that it doesn't explode on me.

I also have an external battery pack, but I've already had a bad experience with it (TL'DR: the motherboard was charging it). I also know that an MFM drive requires manual "parking" before I shut down the PC.

nforce4max wrote:

ODwilly wrote:

Picked up a free Dell Inspiron 6000. 1.83ghz Pentium M 750, 128mb Radeon x300 graphics and a whopping 512mb of DDR2 533mhz. Luckily I have a pair of 512's handy to bump it up to 1gb. Heck may even have some 1gb chips laying around. Came with no HDD but otherwise complete and in great shape, and the battery even still holds a charge! Should make a pretty good XP machine. It was getting tossed out so couldn't say no of course.

Those are some of my favorite laptops as everything is serviceable and the cooling aside from the gpu is good as it gets. Modern laptops are shitty that everything is designed for casual users who don't really use laptops other than as an accessory. Apple's influence on laptop deisng these past years has really cluster fucked the whole industry so proper gaming and workstation laptops are increasingly rare especially those that are upgradable and have decent cooling.

+1 here, the Dell Inspiron 8x00 laptops are my favorite for the same reasons. the Inspiron 6000 and 6400 are good too but they don't interest me as much as the Latitudes and earlier Inspirons do.

As for what I bought, Here's another part for my AMD64 rig: a 5.25" Drive bay shelf to fill one of the empty bays.

jheronimus wrote:

Thanks! […]
Show full quote

carlostex wrote:

@jheronimous

That EGA monitor alone, if in good working condition, makes it all worth it. Great find!!

Thanks!

I hope to find some time and thoroughly test the machine this weekend. I've never really used anything pre-486 in my life, and this machine is basically older than I am (the MFM drive is dated March'90 — I was born in July'90), so I guess I'll have to be really careful. I'll start by removing the leaking battery and running the PSU while everything is unplugged to make sure that it doesn't explode on me.

I also have an external battery pack, but I've already had a bad experience with it (TL'DR: the motherboard was charging it). I also know that an MFM drive requires manual "parking" before I shut down the PC.

The board powers up without battery. Also remove the corrosion with vinegar before trying to turn it on...I got much hints on this in this forum and it works very well.
I dont think the power supply is a problem, but you should connect an old harddisk to it first before trying to power on the valuable 286 😉 MFM drive is tricky, make a photo how the cables are connected to the controller before disconnecting...will safe you some time when reconnecting 😉
I would be more scared on turning on that monitor. I also powered on one of my EGA monitors after more than 10 years of storage. It worked for some seconds then something blew up and dust came out of it. The whole room was smelling for a week. Didnt dare to try to repair it so far...

havli wrote:

Predator99 wrote:

And what do you need all this for when not playing games? 😉 Most demanding application for me is watching a BD and this was also possible on my old Athlon...would be waste of money for me to buy something newer. Therefore I am glad to get a cheap upgrade 😎

Video encoding, file compression, photo editing, compiling, you name it. All this benefits greatly from modern CPU... not to mention lower power consumption, better MB conectivity, more RAM. Also I believe soon there will be applications that simply won't run without SSE4. C2Q is even worse in some aspects (8GB RAM limit for most systems, as majority of 775 boards are running DDR2). C2Q stopped being enough for me when Sandy Bridge was released. 😀

Not all modern apps support such instruction sets, even ones that do what you mentioned. Still there are alot of people still useing Pii abd c2 systems and there more then happy.
Yes they're both outdated but still have alot to of practical use left. Only real down size is upkeep and power usage.

havli wrote:

Actualy Phenom is is quite obsolete for todays standards - no AVX, SSE4, not even SSSE3 support. It is 8 years old after all.

I just replaced my Phenom II X4 925 last November, and it was just starting to feel a little sluggish. Good system to last me ~7 years (the longest I've ever used a motherboard/cpu setup).

Predator99 wrote:

I would be more scared on turning on that monitor. I also powered on one of my EGA monitors after more than 10 years of storage. It worked for some seconds then something blew up and dust came out of it. The whole room was smelling for a week. Didnt dare to try to repair it so far...

Made me extremely curious, so I took the screen outside of my appartment and tried turning it on.

Good news — it's working! It says ”multi-display" on the front and it has a button that apparently makes it switch between three modes. Without any image source that looks like switching between a solid white, red and green screen. Never heard of anything like this, but I guess it'll make more sense on a working machine.

Kind of cool that it really has this “old TV" hissing sound, if that makes sense to anyone.

Bad news — the refresh rate is horrible. Again, maybe it won't be as noticeable with a working machine, but compared to LGR's footage of IBM 5154 the flickering is really irritating. Maybe that's because it's a 50Hz screen?

probnot wrote:

havli wrote:

Actualy Phenom is is quite obsolete for todays standards - no AVX, SSE4, not even SSSE3 support. It is 8 years old after all.

I just replaced my Phenom II X4 925 last November, and it was just starting to feel a little sluggish. Good system to last me ~7 years (the longest I've ever used a motherboard/cpu setup).

I used a Core2Quad Q8300 for my main for a long time. It's fine. I ran Photoshop and Vegas Pro without much issue. I also played new releases up until late 2016.

8GB RAM is still enough for non-work station tasks. Now modern video card support is where LGA775 gets fuckish. My R9 290 worked fine on an EVGA 680i but crashed the PC constantly on my ASUS P5N-D SLI 750i board which was newer.

The inability to boot from disks larger than 750GB may be seen as a limitation these days too but I usually use an 80GB for OS and separate drives for Games, and Media. Right now my main looks like:

EVGA 680i SLI Rev A
C2D E8400 @ 3.2GHZ (I could go higher, I need to swap my coolers out, will be replaced with a Q6700 soon ish)
8GB 1067 DDR2 (timing issues/voltage prevent me going above 900 so far)
EVGA GTX 260 Core216 896MB (sold my R9 299 because it put out a retarded amount of heat and most of the games I play atm are DX10 titles. Will probably get replaced with a 750TI/660)
Creative SB X-Fi ExtremeMusic
80GB Seagate (OS)
500GB WD Black (newer titles)
500GB WD Blue (older titles)
2 DVD Drives (1 IDE, 1 SATA)

I have no issues with day to day tasks. Web browsing, FTP usage, etc. Even light gaming is fine. Perfectly usable day to day. I also use a myriad of external storage and devices. Never gives me any issues.

jheronimus wrote:

Made me extremely curious, so I took the screen outside of my appartment and tried turning it on. […]
Show full quote

Predator99 wrote:

I would be more scared on turning on that monitor. I also powered on one of my EGA monitors after more than 10 years of storage. It worked for some seconds then something blew up and dust came out of it. The whole room was smelling for a week. Didnt dare to try to repair it so far...

Made me extremely curious, so I took the screen outside of my appartment and tried turning it on.

Good news — it's working! It says ”multi-display" on the front and it has a button that apparently makes it switch between three modes. Without any image source that looks like switching between a solid white, red and green screen. Never heard of anything like this, but I guess it'll make more sense on a working machine.

Kind of cool that it really has this “old TV" hissing sound, if that makes sense to anyone.

Bad news — the refresh rate is horrible. Again, maybe it won't be as noticeable with a working machine, but compared to LGR's footage of IBM 5154 the flickering is really irritating. Maybe that's because it's a 50Hz screen?

Thats good news. The monitor will switch between the modes in operation, see documenatation here 😉
Is there a win3x EGA driver that supports more than 640x350 resolution?

I dont remember well how much Hz but its the same on all EGA monitors.

Put the EGA card in another working PC with ISA slot and test it...

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

I used a Core2Quad Q8300 for my main for a long time. It's fine. I ran Photoshop and Vegas Pro without much issue. I also played […]
Show full quote

probnot wrote:

havli wrote:

Actualy Phenom is is quite obsolete for todays standards - no AVX, SSE4, not even SSSE3 support. It is 8 years old after all.

I just replaced my Phenom II X4 925 last November, and it was just starting to feel a little sluggish. Good system to last me ~7 years (the longest I've ever used a motherboard/cpu setup).

I used a Core2Quad Q8300 for my main for a long time. It's fine. I ran Photoshop and Vegas Pro without much issue. I also played new releases up until late 2016.

8GB RAM is still enough for non-work station tasks. Now modern video card support is where LGA775 gets fuckish. My R9 290 worked fine on an EVGA 680i but crashed the PC constantly on my ASUS P5N-D SLI 750i board which was newer.

The inability to boot from disks larger than 750GB may be seen as a limitation these days too but I usually use an 80GB for OS and separate drives for Games, and Media. Right now my main looks like:

EVGA 680i SLI Rev A

I have no issues with day to day tasks. Web browsing, FTP usage, etc. Even light gaming is fine. Perfectly usable day to day. I also use a myriad of external storage and devices. Never gives me any issues.

1) Time Spy CPU test requires SSSE3, and VR Mark needs SSE4.1.
Requirement, and ability to use those instructions - are two different things.
I bet there will be no AVX only programs for at least next 3-8 years.
Minimum instruction set requirements are in general set by OS (like Win 8 and 8.1 x64), not individual programs (because compatibility limits users pool the most, and from $ point of view it's dangerous to limit that in any major way).

2) 750GB boot limit, WTF ?
I booted 1TB drives no problem on my Intel boards.

3) AMDs GCN has problems on some PCIe 1.x MBs.
Simply use NV, GTX 780 Ti worked fine for me, even on Intel's 945P chipset.

martin939 wrote:

Can't get what's wrong with it, could be the drivers

Windows VIsta (7) drivers are horrible for X1800-1900 series. I've experienced it firsthand with hardware crossfire setup.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

martin939 wrote:

Can't get what's wrong with it, could be the drivers

Windows VIsta (7) drivers are horrible for X1800-1900 series. I've experienced it firsthand with hardware crossfire setup.

That was also my experience under XP. I bought an X1950 Pro when they first came out, to go with my then-new C2D E6600. Couldn't get the system stable with that card, kept locking up with the GPU fan going to 100% speed whatever I did. Sent it back in the end and got a Geforce 7900GTO which was a great card.

Hope you get yours working.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

I used a Core2Quad Q8300 for my main for a long time. It's fine. I ran Photoshop and Vegas Pro without much issue. I also played […]
Show full quote

probnot wrote:

havli wrote:

Actualy Phenom is is quite obsolete for todays standards - no AVX, SSE4, not even SSSE3 support. It is 8 years old after all.

I just replaced my Phenom II X4 925 last November, and it was just starting to feel a little sluggish. Good system to last me ~7 years (the longest I've ever used a motherboard/cpu setup).

I used a Core2Quad Q8300 for my main for a long time. It's fine. I ran Photoshop and Vegas Pro without much issue. I also played new releases up until late 2016.

8GB RAM is still enough for non-work station tasks. Now modern video card support is where LGA775 gets fuckish. My R9 290 worked fine on an EVGA 680i but crashed the PC constantly on my ASUS P5N-D SLI 750i board which was newer.

The inability to boot from disks larger than 750GB may be seen as a limitation these days too but I usually use an 80GB for OS and separate drives for Games, and Media. Right now my main looks like:

EVGA 680i SLI Rev A
C2D E8400 @ 3.2GHZ (I could go higher, I need to swap my coolers out, will be replaced with a Q6700 soon ish)
8GB 1067 DDR2 (timing issues/voltage prevent me going above 900 so far)
EVGA GTX 260 Core216 896MB (sold my R9 299 because it put out a retarded amount of heat and most of the games I play atm are DX10 titles. Will probably get replaced with a 750TI/660)
Creative SB X-Fi ExtremeMusic
80GB Seagate (OS)
500GB WD Black (newer titles)
500GB WD Blue (older titles)
2 DVD Drives (1 IDE, 1 SATA)

I have no issues with day to day tasks. Web browsing, FTP usage, etc. Even light gaming is fine. Perfectly usable day to day. I also use a myriad of external storage and devices. Never gives me any issues.

I had a 290 in a p5d sli. It never had any problems

Grabbed a lot of 4x Slot 1 motherboards for about $10 a piece shipped.

Abit BX6 version 1
Abit BH6
ASUS P2B 1.02
ASUS P2L97

Thinking the current BX based motherboard I have is faulty as I was not able to get it to POST. Haven't messed with it in a while, so it may have been something else.

Jade Falcon wrote:

I had a 290 in a p5d sli. It never had any problems

I'm sure its an issue that varies between the different BIOs and vBIOS and between different brands of R9 290. Mine was a Gigabyte Windforce Dual BIOs

I found an HP Vectra VEi 8 with unknown configuration; apparently a P3 Slot 1 with integrated Matrox G200 and Crystal CS4280, for 15 bucks.. Not sure if I will get it though as I have a system that covers the era. Just curious whether there is anything special about their builds or cases..