Re: Dual 1.4ghz Pentium 3

Posted on 2013-02-13, 09:43

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Blue ZIF's and a never soldered-in ISA slot. What happened here? I don't know about the ISA slot, but Gigabyte used blue CPU sockets for boards that support Tualatin chips. I guess they just wanted to make it easy for people to know if they were supported. Actually, I think maybe they were also …

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Re: Compaq LTE 5400

Posted on 2013-02-10, 15:28

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

That's a shame about the video on your laptop; it mars an otherwise solid bit a hardware. I would think that, at least, you'd have the luxury of scaling VGA or earlier games to take up more of the screen. There's either a Fn-key or BIOS setting that does that, I don't remember which. I'm guessing …

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Re: M571 - Is it dead?

Posted on 2013-02-09, 16:53

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The battery holder is easy. There's probably just 2 solder points to deal with, so you can heat them alternately with your iron and gradually walk it out of the board with the other hand. Just be careful not to heat anything for more than 2-3 seconds at a time (depending on your iron). If you have …

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Re: Video Card Solder Failure

Posted on 2013-02-09, 15:13

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The caps shouldn't go over 105C but once you have cracked joints under a BGA, the caps are really the least of your concerns. Caps aren't too hard to replace, I would just plan on doing that if the affected device otherwise seems to have recovered. Or another approach would be to remove them ahead …

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Re: Video Card Solder Failure

Posted on 2013-02-09, 09:09

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Lead free solder + large temperature changes = cracked solder joints. Also, video card manufacturers don't really want your card to last very long. 2nd hand high end cards can hurt sales of new lower end cards. The early death of higher end (and hotter running) cards is a good thing for their …

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Re: Sound Blaster Pro - speed sensitive?!

Posted on 2013-02-09, 08:46

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't know the game, but are you talking about digitized sound here? Because it sounds like the game might be using a primitive method of programming PCM where you just throw bytes at the card in real time. If that's what it's doing, and if they didn't implement any timing based on the real time …

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Re: Compaq LTE 5400

Posted on 2013-02-09, 08:22

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Welcome! I inherited an LTE5380, which seems to be very similar to yours other than minor specs (they look the same). These are solid laptops for sure. Mine has been idle for a long time, but my plan is to use it for car diagnosis. I think it will be perfect for datalogging the car - it's small and …

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Re: I got weird 486...

Posted on 2013-02-07, 04:19

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, it's probably just a mismatch in how the 2 boards are configuring the drive. Reminds me of when I had a Type 17 40MB hard drive, and at one time mounted it with CHS settings instead. Both ways worked, but something didn't match, so when it was switched back to type 17 the drive appeared as …

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Re: BIOS does not detect input devices in ASUS CUV4X board

Posted on 2013-02-07, 02:44

by

by shamino

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

The most straightforward would be to measure the inputs at the ATX power connector. It's easier to do that from underneath the board, but it might also be possible to backprobe the connector. To do that you'd slide the probe into the top of the connector, far enough to make contact with the …

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Re: Help me decide about the SLI V2 setup.

Posted on 2013-02-06, 01:17

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The first contender is my first PC I built back in 1998, it has a Slot 1 440BX based motherboard from DFI and a PIII 550, that is the max I can go because the VRM only deals Katmai I think. I can easily get it to 600MHz and it would be a very capable system. What part number is the VRM chip? Some …

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Re: Cheapie pentium 3 retro rig build

Posted on 2013-02-06, 01:04

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

EDIT: i looked on the cpu for the info . 600E,256,100,1.65V . Ah, good, it's a coppermine already then. So you'd be good for faster CPUs if you ever care to use them. That's a beefy heatsink for a coppermine, it looks the same as the ones I've seen on 2.0V Deschutes and Katmais. The heatsink itself …

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Re: Cheapie pentium 3 retro rig build

Posted on 2013-02-05, 05:11

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

By the size of that heatsink, I'm guessing that's a Katmai 600MHz (2.0V). If you have any interest in going to a Coppermine later, it's possible that board might support them. You'd need to check the part number on the voltage regulator chip. From the photo it looks like it's probably the chip near …

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Re: Advice regarding IDE to CF/SD adapters

Posted on 2013-02-05, 04:41

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The oldest system I've booted Flash with was a socket-7 Intel/Gateway 430VX board. It's old enough that it knows nothing about flash drives, and it just worked. As noted earlier though, that was with CF but I imagine it would be similar with an SD adapter. Probably not much difference between doing …

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Re: BIOS does not detect input devices in ASUS CUV4X board

Posted on 2013-02-04, 16:27

by

by shamino

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

This is a longshot, but make sure the CMOS battery is good. Some boards start to have weird problems when the battery gets weak. Other than that, I'm wondering if the 5V standby rail is having an issue, either on the board or PSU side is equally likely. This is also a longshot given that the PSU …

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Re: Advice regarding IDE to SD adapters

Posted on 2013-02-04, 01:34

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The issues people have with booting from CF is normally because of the formatting of the card, not the adapter. I think there's a "fixed disk" mode flag that needs to be set, and many don't come from the manufacturer in that configuration. If you ever turn up a CF that you can mess with, try hooking …

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Re: Is there any Socket 370 Board with 3 ISA Slots?

Posted on 2013-02-02, 11:33

by

by shamino

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Just saw an interesting one. Adek MB-700 (440BX) FIVE isa slots. And an mPGA478 P4 board with 3 of them. http://www.adek.com/ATX-motherboards.htm

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Re: Is there any Socket 370 Board with 3 ISA Slots?

Posted on 2013-02-02, 03:05

by

by shamino

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Anyone heard of a 3 ISA that uses intel? Anyone think the VIA is perfectly fine and that I'm just simply mistaken? I got very frustrated with VIA on my Super 7 board, especially with AGP. I'm sure they must have improved by the P3 era, but I think they were still known for being a bit of a pain. …

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Re: Putting old hardware to full time work

Posted on 2013-02-01, 16:22

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

That's probably overpowered for the application, you could probably just use 1 CPU, not sure how much power that would save though. The RAM might not be doing much good either, but I don't know if Smoothwall has some way of making use of it. I have a dual slot-2 HP which uses way more power than I'd …

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Re: Intel-built 486/Pentium/PPro/PII motherboard guide

Posted on 2013-02-01, 15:52

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

But why? Didn't the SL3XG already work on 440BX motherboards? I know the multiplier is locked but the FSB should still be selectable from the BIOS or a jumper, right? So shouldn't selecting the 66mhz fsb without the hardware hack give the same result? On the 440BX Intel boards I've messed with, …

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Re: Want to build powerful PII machine

Posted on 2013-02-01, 07:53

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I remember a long time ago seeing an article, I think on Tom's Hardware, which considered whether SSE and 3DNow would make 3D accelerator cards obsolete. Back in the day I got hold of an updated version of MASM just so I could try writing 3DNow code for my (then-new) K6-3, which they labeled as "K3D …

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