Re: I think I've smoked both of my 2400 t-breds

Posted on 2009-11-20, 09:07

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I wanted to retest the board, just once more. I ran the f.e. twice, and it didn't crash. Then, I ran the s.e. and it went mad. The textures on the tests were very corrupted. It's possible that some complex programs (eg 3DMark) don't clean up the system correctly after use, and the s.e. didn't like …

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Re: I think I've smoked both of my 2400 t-breds

Posted on 2009-11-20, 07:57

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

bushwack wrote: So has VIA gotten better or worse? I believe they got better. 😀

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Re: I think I've smoked both of my 2400 t-breds

Posted on 2009-11-19, 23:09

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

HunterZ wrote: I'm bored of VIA-bashing, but you guys are definitely silly for banging your head on buggy VIA stuff. Yeah but, 97589 bungholioMarks don't lie!

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Re: I think I've smoked both of my 2400 t-breds

Posted on 2009-11-19, 21:30

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I switched off the machine for a few minutes, then back on again. I just wanted to rerun 3DMark2001 s.e. a couple more times, to see if the problem had gone. I ran it twice more. Test result 1 score was 4090. The problem with this score is that it is inconsistent with all of the other scores. …

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Re: I think I've smoked both of my 2400 t-breds

Posted on 2009-11-19, 21:04

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I tried 2 other things, both of which sound like they are "clutching at straws", but may have some merit in solving this problem. 1) For the CD-ROM drive, I unticked the "auto insert notification" option. This can be found inside Control Panel -> System -> CD-ROM -> Settings tab 2) Inside Control …

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Re: I think I've smoked both of my 2400 t-breds

Posted on 2009-11-19, 19:48

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

OK, I reckon it's time to roll back these VIA chipset drivers, to an earlier version. I'm going to overwrite my 4.56 package with an older version. First of all, I'm going to try 4.35. I'll install it, then retest 3DMark2001 S.E. and see if it crashes back to the desktop... Edit: Nope, that didn't …

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Re: I think I've smoked both of my 2400 t-breds

Posted on 2009-11-19, 19:16

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hmmm, that's very interesting! I wonder what's going on? Let's see if we can solve this problem. Some questions - What FSB are you running at? (I am running at 133) What RAM are you using? (I am using 1 stick of PC-133, 256mb) What BIOS settings are you using? (I am using "fail safe", but I also …

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Re: I think I've smoked both of my 2400 t-breds

Posted on 2009-11-19, 18:47

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There's something unstable about this KT7A 1.3 non-raid board. I've run 3DMark2001 second edition several times, and twice it's dropped back to the desktop. I've never seen that happen before. (Also, I can't install an ATI Radeon 7500 in it, because the win98 desktop gets corrupted.) I'm using the …

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Re: I think I've smoked both of my 2400 t-breds

Posted on 2009-11-19, 12:57

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I got a "new" t-bred 2400+ CPU, to replace the ones I accidentally cooked last week. It works OK in this Abit 1.3 board, and runs at 133FSB with a real clock speed of 2000Mhz. Here is a step by step list of actions that resulted in the successful installation of this CPU - 1) Removed then replaced …

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Re: My new crusty socket 3 board!

Posted on 2009-11-18, 15:29

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I decided to run two benchmarks on the Soyo board - 1) with the BIOS settings on their default values, and 2) with most of the BIOS memory and cache options maxed out. (I couldn't set the value of "DRAM Write Cycle" to 0 WS, because the BIOS POST screen froze, so I set it to 1 WS instead.) Both …

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Re: post up pics of your "computing area"

Posted on 2009-11-18, 14:14

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

When I said "The original Battlezone was an 8-bit classic", I made a mistake about it being an "8-bit classic", because I was actually thinking about the classic arcade coin-op game. (There was a fairly fun 8-bit game called Encounter!, which had a similar theme.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= …

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Re: My new crusty socket 3 board!

Posted on 2009-11-18, 13:20

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I reinserted the Intel Overdrive dx2-66 CPU, and set the mobo's CPU jumper speed setting to 40mhz, giving me a real clock speed of 80mhz. As I can't use my AMD CPU without a voltage regulator (or VRM as they are called), I will stop testing this Micronics board today. (I have got one VRM somewhere, …

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Re: My new crusty socket 3 board!

Posted on 2009-11-18, 10:29

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hehe! Thanks. I viewed them all as a slideshow. My favourite is this one, because I think it sucks the most -

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Re: My new crusty socket 3 board!

Posted on 2009-11-18, 09:48

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ah! Your reference to Gateway was inspirational! :happy: Thanks a lot for that clue. I briefly looked through Gateway's support section, but I couldn't find any information about "Gateway 2000" products, or Micronics motherboards. However, a quick google for: gateway 2000 micronics, and I found this …

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Re: My new crusty socket 3 board!

Posted on 2009-11-18, 08:57

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I removed the AMD DX4-100 CPU from the Soyo board, and put it in the Micronics board. Two surprises: 1) Looking at the Stason webpage for this board, I notice that the CPU voltage jumpers need to be changed from 5V to 3.3V. (From a typical dx2-66 5V setting, to an AMD dx4-100 3V setting.) I must …

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Re: My new crusty socket 3 board!

Posted on 2009-11-17, 20:36

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've just checked the BIOS POST screen, and also examined the BIOS set up area by pressing the F2 keyboard button on boot up. The board uses the PhoenixBIOS version 4.04 (other Micronics boards also use this BIOS), and this BIOS set up area seems rather "bare bones" - there are no options to mess …

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Re: My new crusty socket 3 board!

Posted on 2009-11-17, 19:33

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh yes! :happy: Simply by removing jumper W15, the CPU speed now reads: 80mhz on the BIOS POST screen. I then reran Speedsys - Memory bandwidth is now 85.37 (was 76.21; 12% improvement) Overall score is now 30.05 (was 24.93; 20.53% improvement) (The other 3 memory related scores have not increased.) …

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Re: I would like to build a really bad system

Posted on 2009-11-17, 18:38

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hehe! Lots of good suggestions from everyone! I particularly like the idea of something being remembered for "its legendary noise". I had another idea for a case. Instead of an unholy lump constructed from about 2 rolls of parcel tape, I could house these "evil innards" within a strong cardboard box …

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Re: I would like to build a really bad system

Posted on 2009-11-17, 18:12

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ah thanks! 😀 Yes I see it now! VGA interface CN7 I'm sure sometime in the past, I've had some of these cables lying around - never quite sure what their purpose was - so they went in the "box for the recycling centre".

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Re: I would like to build a really bad system

Posted on 2009-11-17, 17:48

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Damn, I had a working Packard Bell 486 SX-50 PC about 10 months ago. It had 1 stick of 16mb 72 pin RAM, a 3.5" FDD, a HDD (1GB?), a CD-ROM (2 speed) which was connected to an Aztech soundcard. I think it was called an "Executive Multimedia" PC, and it had built in video - possibly Cirrus Logic, …

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