That's a sweet deal!

Got the parts and have been doing lots of play...er work on it. Everything looks like new, but smells faintly of cigarette smoke... just glad it's not caked with the smell or tar. The fan for the cpu was coolermaster and REALLY badly failing - sounds like there's sand in it, bushings must be totally shot. The fujitsu 8.4gb drives fail DBAN tests miserably, but everything else works great and looks great too!

I had problems with the cirrus logic AGP card and puppy linux, but I really don't care about that card at all, as I am already using my ATi rage128 in the PC and everything is good.

I seem to not be able to set the motherboard to 50MHz FSB, someone said I should be able to, but I cannot find the DIP settings anywhere on the net. Works well at 66MHz though, and the CPU multi is completely locked ignoring all motherboard multiplier settings lower or higher than default (4.5). The CPU looks brand new and honestly does look like a retail one, but it does not have the intel stock number on it, so that might remain a mystery for far longer.

The system seems to have a bug on hard-reset, it beepblasts, I can eventually get it to restart, but it sees only 128MB ram... so like most old boards of that era, I will just stick with ctrl+alt+del soft restarts or poweroff-poweron restarts.

I have yet to install anything but DOS 6.22 on it, but soon I will have 95c and xp on it.

I am waiting for more income to buy some proper era u2w SCSI drives for it, last month I happened across a killer deal on an adaptec AHA-2940U2W 80Mbps SCSI 1st gen LVD card, which also has a 50 pin fastSCSI SE channel. I really hope I can find a good SCSI CD drive for this for cheap. That would truly make this a top of the line 1998 gaming computer 😀

jaqie wrote:

I seem to not be able to set the motherboard to 50MHz FSB, someone said I should be able to, but I cannot find the DIP settings anywhere on the net. Works well at 66MHz though

Yeah I already noticed I said something not entirely true. Because 50MHz goes for Giga-Byte GA-6BXC and GA-6BXD with PLL chip type ICS 9148-26.
You have a GA-6BXE, I don't know anything about that one.

So far it seems all Pentium II's with Deschutes Core stepping "dB0" are locked.

Everything looks like new, but smells faintly of cigarette smoke... just glad it's not caked with the smell or tar.

This seems to happen with ALL old computer gear I buy off ebay. I am starting to wonder if its some sort of metal or plastic in the PCB breaking down and releasing the smell - or is it just that every retro computer nerd is a chain smoker?

Most seem to be - but not all. Ive gotten clean stuff before, and my own stuff never, ever smells like that.

I've been getting a lot of things that stink of cigarettes in the last year. There's an old trick they use in the Mac community with motherboards from the original compact Macs and that's to remove anything socketed and wash the board in plain hot water in the dishwasher then be sure to blow dry it thoroughly before reassembly. It gets everything off including leaking cap/battery goo for when you're ready to do a recap job.

No thanks, I'd much rather use something that doesn't have the risk of water retention and future oxidation of small inside areas. I think I would much rather take a toothbrush with mineral spirits to a board than that!

The dishwasher method is a favourite of the Amiga community too, especially when the board has suffered battery acid damage. I personally haven't been game to try it.

jaqie wrote:

No thanks, I'd much rather use something that doesn't have the risk of water retention and future oxidation of small inside areas.

That's why you subsequently heat the board in the oven at 90-100°C.

Any water will turn to vapor pretty quickly, but it's not hot enough to affect solder, plastics, or components.

Looks like I will have to build a 'bridge' system now to go between my main system and my old DOS computers. Not only does my new motherboard not have PATA and FDD ports, but it turns out ZIP100 ATAPI drives can't stand my ATA to USB2 adapters, I don't have a SCSI or LPT ZIP drive, nor do I have one of the very hard to find / expensive USB ZIP drives...

In the past I had always relied on ATAPI ZIP100 drives and discs to copy things between my DOS system and my main system, but that is no longer an option, it seems...

And here I had just upgraded the two main systems I use to the same exact gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 motherboard, I love it, don't get me wrong, I very rarely buy two of the same motherboard but cmon... AUUUGH!

Or ya know, networks cards! 😉

Ever try to get p2p networking going in DOS?

It ain't worth it, I would rather build a gobetween system.

I have a memory card reader in my main desktop. And in my retro PC an IDE to CF adapter. Very easy to load software this way.

The other option is using CD-RWs.

Rather than going to the effort of a whole new PC, why not try an IDE compact flash adapter in the DOS machine, (like one of these external ones for example) and a USB card reader on your modern PC?

Alternatively, stick a network card in and FTP files to the DOS machine.

EDIT: I'm apparently a slow typer. 3 replies got in before I posted 😒\

Ever try to get p2p networking going in DOS?

I haven't bothered with SMB/NetBIOS file sharing, but I have used FTP successfully, and many years ago I used IPXFER on an IPX/SPX network. Neither are too difficult to get working.

I've been using CDRWs, that's how I got my stuff on there so far, but that is such a PITA compared to just copying files.

As for using an IDE CF adapter? um... that would be the same as dumping the HDD onto one of my usb2 ATA adapters, it would require me powering down the DOS computer, yanking out a part, hooking it up to my new pc, copying, and then putting it back into my DOS PC... half a dozen of one, six of another. The whole point of this is to get things into the DOS PC without having to open it up or power it down.

So, there's some sort of TSR FTP host for DOS?

jaqie wrote:

Ever try to get p2p networking going in DOS?

Nope, I use Windows for Workgroups.

Almost exclusively for the purpose of file transfers, in fact.

hmph. I guess I'll cave in and dump XP and 95c onto it. such a pain.

jaqie wrote:

So, there's some sort of TSR FTP host for DOS?

Not an FTP server that I'm aware of, but there is a good client:
http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP_FTP.html

EDIT: oh look he made an FTP server too 😀

http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP_FTPSrv.html

Another idea, you could use a Linux live CD. Boot from it, transfer your files over SMB, FTP, whatever, then boot back to DOS.