HighTreason wrote:

First you steal my processors and then to add insult to injury you buy the board I was going to plug them into. >:( :P […]
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First you steal my processors and then to add insult to injury you buy the board I was going to plug them into. 😠 😜

I've never actually seen another "GU" out there. A few "GE" and "BU" models but never another "GU" like mine, it is a good board. Oddly, the caps are still good on mine. Try the P2 again, because if it's a really old version of the BIOS it might not start if it lacks the CPU microcode, SuperMicro did some strange things to the way it handles that. Probably isn't it if you're actually seeing a POST but worth a try. Also don''t forget the AUX power next to the RAM, it won't like you if you don't have that connected.

The board can be stubborn about starting if you do something it isn't comfortable with, but in those cases it generally doesn't POST, so the caps would definitely be top suspect to me unless someone has overclocked the chipset with inadequate cooling.

I win anyway, because when I bought mine I got free stuff. The guy who sold me it (many years ago now) forgot to sent the SCSI cables and driver disk along with other things, I told him I didn't care but he mailed it anyway along with a load of chocolate bars and stuff... I checked them thoroughly for poison, but they were fine.

The board has the latest BIOS and as a single Katmai P3 600 works I think the issue is something else. The board posts to BIOS with two 600 Mhz CPUs without issue, it finds the HDD and the CD but it gets stuck as soon as it finds a boot record, regardless if its on the CD, floppy or HDD, it's very odd. I agree that the caps are the main suspects.

I have lots of Katmai Slot-1 CPUs so I will try some other ones and if that wont work I will try two PII 400. I do not think it's a PSU issue as the motherboard behaves exactly the same with a Corsair AX1200 connected to only the main power connector as with a PSU from the same time period as the motherboard connected to both the main power connector and the 6 pin secondary "AUX power" one. The 3.3V and 5V voltages are more steady in the hardware monitor in the BIOS setup using the old PSU with the extra 6 pin connector attached so I also think the board needs this to be fully stable, at least when I start adding more cards.

For now I'm running benchmarks with a single P3 600, oddly enough it seems faster than all my other i440BX/GX boards.

It is a speedy board. Some things start to fall off a bit once you approach the 1GHz marker, but it's a 440GX so that is to be expected. I need to fix mine, it still has some ancient virus on it, I was thinking of re-installing both Windows versions anyway and dropping back to 98SE/2K (Currently uses 98SE/XP) because it seems more appropriate and the XP install is pretty messy after bodging it to run Vegas for so long last year.

Oh, god, that's a good point. My Pentium D had its birthday on April 2nd, damn it's old, I need that Xeon.

HighTreason wrote:

It is a speedy board. Some things start to fall off a bit once you approach the 1GHz marker, but it's a 440GX so that is to be expected. I need to fix mine, it still has some ancient virus on it, I was thinking of re-installing both Windows versions anyway and dropping back to 98SE/2K (Currently uses 98SE/XP) because it seems more appropriate and the XP install is pretty messy after bodging it to run Vegas for so long last year.

Oh, god, that's a good point. My Pentium D had its birthday on April 2nd, damn it's old, I need that Xeon.

I tested the second P3 600 CPU separatly in the first slot and it worked. Then I tested both again and got the same issue as before, both these Katmai 600 are SL3JT. I switched one of the SL3JT for a Katmai 600 SL3JM and suddenly everything works, the board dosn't like matched CPUs it seems. 🤣

I don't think I will ask the seller for a partial refund as the board woks. I will replace those 6 bad "NRSY green" caps later and be happy over the fact I got this board for a reasonable price, as you wrote they are not very common.

I had four identical Katmai 500's and found that certain pairings did not work. But my board just doesn't POST when that happens.

Good to know it is now working, enjoy your SMP goodness. This was the board that turned me away from single CPU/single core computing forever, I never looked back... Well, I did, but never for my main machine, it was just clear to me from the start that SMP was the future.

HighTreason wrote:

I had four identical Katmai 500's and found that certain pairings did not work. But my board just doesn't POST when that happens.

Good to know it is now working, enjoy your SMP goodness. This was the board that turned me away from single CPU/single core computing forever, I never looked back... Well, I did, but never for my main machine, it was just clear to me from the start that SMP was the future.

I just installed CPU-Z, it can't read the FSB correctly as it jumps between 100 and 115 MHz during load. Should this be correct then I understand both why the board is so fast and why the CPU compatibility is flaky. No "test modes" are activated so if the FSB indeed jumps around its because of the bad caps. I think it's CPU-Z that fails though as there is no chance Katmai 600 CPUs are stable at 115 MHz FSB with stock voltage.

I'm almost surprised the Seventeen ST-250PIIIP 250W small form factor PSU from year ~2000 I use holds up, it dosnt even rev its fan much. It was the first PSU with the 6 pin aux power connector I found in my PSU pile, Im not digging any deeper in that mess if I do not have to. The PSU is rated 20A on the 3.3V rail and 25A on the 5V rail so it should be ok as long as the motherboard uses mostly the 3.3V rail for the AGP slot. I just ran though PCmark without any issues. When I switch to Coppermine CPUs the power usage should go down a bit anyhow.

Pictures of my Seventeen ST-250PIIIP PSU can be found here.
Re: A tale of two PSUs

Heh, that reminds me of when my Optiplex GX270, after losing its CMOS settings, decided to randomly OC a 533MHz FSB P4 to 800MHz. It flew... and then throttled to bottom-end PIII speeds.

HighTreason wrote:

I need that Xeon.

If you try to build a slot 2 Xeon build from scratch just be warned that it is a money pit 😢
In over $200 already and haven't even put it together yet 😵

I was referring to the E3. As for Slot 2 I would really like to build one, 4-Way if possible, but the cost is prohibitive. Perhaps i shall try in the future, they're a bit after my cutoff for the most part, but they are awesome enough that I still want to own one.

@Skyscraper; Check the "Manufacturer Mode Setting" in the BIOS, I think it's in "Chipset" as this allows manual control of the FSB. I just turned the system off for the night, but I'll try and look at mine tomorrow. Be warned Mode 5 and, I believe, Mode 4 will overclock the chipset, something you probably don't want to do.

I use a 430W PSU which I was very lucky to find rattling around in the bottom of a very broken K6 machine some years ago, same place as that case I mentioned yesterday.

brostenen wrote:

Yeah.... That's understandable with that load of dust inside. Must be really proud, yeah!!! :lol: […]
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Cyrix200+ wrote:

the previous owner was proud his system and wanted to tell a lot about it

Yeah.... That's understandable with that load of dust inside. Must be really proud, yeah!!! 🤣

Joking aside.
Yeah. It is a nice system, and the case can hold a lot of stuff, wich is nice.
Good catch. Just that it really need some cleaning and some cablemanagement love.

The dust is like a warm woolly sweater. I think he wanted to keep her extra warm 😉

Cyrix200+ wrote:

The dust is like a warm woolly sweater. I think he wanted to keep her extra warm 😉

One's retro-rig, can't get enough carpet then? 🤣

I think I've said before about my friend who has OCD and hates dust. He vacuums his computer out at least once a week (though I think he's started slacking now that he works most of the time).

I always save any cleaning for when he's around, I tend to leave things for years and ignore the dust until something complains, it drives him barmy. The Pentium D accumulates by far the most dust, generally large black masses of the stuff that stick together and it literally makes him feel ill, especially at times like when I found i could lift it off of the 12CM radiator in one go, producing a nearly square panel of black dust.

^ HighTreason, I like your dusting habits. As they reflect mine. Although my main pc that I built new gets the religious bi-yearly dusting 😀

I'm on a bit of a buying/finding spree lately. I won an interesting lot of old hardware, it is in the mail now and might arrive today (20 kg! of assorted stuff, some interesting ISA cards (hard to see on the pictures), cables, memory, hardrives and optical drives). I also just got a K6-III 400MHz and a SB16 CT2910. I'm done for this month now I think. I'll post pictures when I get it.

Bought a Roland MT-32 last week that arrived on Monday. Just unpacked it and it turns out it's in its original box! Box is quite worn, but still a good find, especially at the price I paid.

Cyrix200+ wrote:

I'm on a bit of a buying/finding spree lately. I won an interesting lot of old hardware, it is in the mail now and might arrive today (20 kg! of assorted stuff, some interesting ISA cards (hard to see on the pictures), cables, memory, hardrives and optical drives). I also just got a K6-III 400MHz and a SB16 CT2910. I'm done for this month now I think. I'll post pictures when I get it.

K6-III's are sweet stuff. Both the regulair and the plus.
Please do post some sweet shot's of it.

I got my large 'mystery' box today, and it was nice to unpack 😀 Since I had no real idea what I was buying except a few blurry pictures, I am not familiar with everything I got. I'll just post the pictures! The two AMD CPU's and the CT2910 are from another seller. Not included in the pictures: about 5-6 network cards, ISA and PCI)

Sound Blaster 16 CT2910

AMD K6-233 and K6-III 400

Nice to have more cables 😉 But the PS/2 headers will come in handy!

Sound Blaster 16

I have no idea, but it looks like something that never really caught on?

A dime a dozen?

??

Not very interesting I think

TNT2 M64

I did recognise this one on the seller's pictures, glad to have one!

Google tell me it's a 'Sound Galaxy Waverider 32+'

Do you guys keep all hard drives you get?

Optical drives. Some SCSI! And I like the Philips DVD / CD one on the bottom. And an extra 5.25" floppy drive is always welcome.

Two identical Adaptec SCSI cards to go with the optical drives

A heap of memory modules (EDO and SDRAM, and also some ECC SDRAM)

So, I got my $120 (shipped) Quantum 3D Graphite system in the mail yesterday and its actually smaller than I thought it'd be. Its very clean inside and out, though there are a lot of scratches on the casing and no side\top panel (which is probably common).

To my surprise, the system turned on immediately... despite the listing saying that it didn't work. The fans are pretty noisy, but it booted just fine to Windows 2000 (with a Midway desktop and no start menu, task bar or anything clickable) and attempted to communicate with the rest of the arcade machine it came from but stopped when it doesn't find anything. Task manager has the "new task" feature disabled under this account too. By booting into safe mode with command prompt and running "explorer" I was able to get an explorer window, then I accessed the administrative tools through the Start Menu shortcuts folder, added a second user account and rebooted. Thankfully that second user account actually allowed me to run a new task through task manager, so then I could browse the system freely outside of Safe Mode. I found all of the original files for Arctic Thunder, and was actually able to run the game just like a normal application.

More pictures here:

https://goo.gl/photos/5XCuPjTB8jkiKHzf8

You'll notice I cracked the PSU open to look it over pretty early on, just to be sure it didn't have any visibly failing caps or other problems. It'd be sad to kill the system by running it on a bad PSU. The fan also needed oiled, which made it buttery smooth...

What's really interesting is that the system's event viewer shows just how long this baby has been operational. The earliest dates were from 2000 (actually 1999, but that's when the BIOS clock resets too, and the manufacture dates look to be 2000) and there are dates every so often all the way up until June of 2015. That's 15 years in service! There a few other cool things on the hard drive too. A saved network location that was created in 2000 that says "arctic" and has someone's last name on it... apparently the person at Midway that set up and transferred the game data originally. There are still records of scores, as well as the reinstallation files and batch files to reinstall the game if it ever stops working. The board has a genuine Midway branded BIOS, and all of the components seem to be original... even the small PCB that connects power to external devices (powered by the system's ATX PSU) has Midway silkscreening on it. This thing really is a time capsule of gaming history, crammed inside an arcade machine and kept there for safekeeping until it was no longer economical to keep it all running.

I'll likely remove the hard drive and keep it in a safe place and use the system as a Win9x gaming system... possibly with my Voodoo 5 5500 AGP installed rather than the 3000.

I never thought I'd own any Quantum3D hardware back in the 90s when it was insanely expensive, but in the past month I've managed to come across a bunch of it.

My small lot of old arcade parts also arrived yesterday, including 2 Quantum 3D Obsidian2 10MB PCI arcade cards (with only a VGA out... no SLI, passthrough or slot cover), a main board from what I'm told was a Gauntlet Legends system (it came with the green Obsidian2), and an STB-made Voodoo 3 2000 PCI with an Atari sticker on it and no slot cover. These are all pictured in the gallery linked above. My old Voodoo 3 2000 PCI that my brother purchased in ~1999 is shown for comparison as well.

... one other interesting thing I just remembered about the Graphite is that its ATX power connector (there's a picture of it in the gallery) has the green and black wires in the same hole so that the system automatically powers on when plugged in. Is there likely to be an easy way to work around this? I'd prefer that it just stayed off until I wanted it on, even if I have to do a keyboard shortcut or attach a button to get it to power on (the case has no power button). I haven't yanked the pin out of the connector because I'm assuming that there is only one pin for both wires, which will do me no good. I do have a tool to pop the wires out, but I don't want to mess with it if there's an easier way.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

So, I got my $120 (shipped) Quantum 3D Graphite system in the mail yesterday and its actually smaller than I thought it'd be. Its very clean inside and out, though there are a lot of scratches on the casing and no side\top panel (which is probably common).

...

Wow, that is nice stuff!

My 9800 gx2 and 8800 gts arrived today to my surprise the seller being a total idiot didn't pack them right so both graphics cards were rubbing together. The brackets on both cards were bent and the 9800 gx2 look like it had been dropped /rage face but it looks like the 8800 gts survived. Why can't these sellers actually pack shit right these days, got to be the fourth such incident this year for me so far. 😠

The Windows sound system card is perhaps not the greatest invented.
Yet the story and the failure makes it an interresting piece of hardware history.

Great haul.