Re: Tualatin on GA-BX2000+ / SlotT

Posted on 2018-02-09, 17:09

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you think it may be caused by a capacitor? One seems a little bulky, take a look. I don't see any obvious bulging in the picture, but if you notice it in real life then consider it bad. They don't start to bulge until after they have already failed badly, and they don't always bulge at all. If …

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Re: Where's the CMOS Battery?

Posted on 2018-02-09, 07:44

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I haven't looked recently but I think the DS12887A has generally been available on eBay. Of course some of them might be old. If your chip is socketed then replacing it would surely be easier. If it's soldered then it's your call. If you decide to desolder it then at least install a socket, in case …

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Re: Using floppy drives on modern hardware

Posted on 2018-02-08, 18:08

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

LS120 drives will hook up to an IDE port. I guess new motherboards probably don't have IDE, but many not that old ones do.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2018-02-07, 07:01

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's a 386SX-16 with 387 FPU and 4 MB of RAM. Since it runs, I ordered some parts for it: a 512MB disk-on-module, Dos 6 on 5.25" floppies, and an ESS-1869 soundcard. Looking forward to discovering just how pathetic this little cacheless, 16-bit-bus 386 really is. :lol: Those CPU and RAM specs are …

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Re: The Reason For Vintage (again)

Posted on 2018-02-06, 01:17

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by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

Simplicity is definitely why I like old cars. Not sure it's a factor in why I like old computers though. The useless bloat on current OS is something that cannot be understated... it's a shame that instead of using the power of new hardware to move towards a more "instantaneous" experience we still …

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Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2018-02-05, 17:52

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by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

Just finished the Stormcloak quest in Skyrim. At least I think so (we've taken Solitude). I wish this game wasn't so one-sided in it's depiction of the Stormcloak vs Imperial war. I identify with the Stormcloaks but the game developers are constantly making jabs at me for it. They could have …

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Re: Is my SVGA card dead?

Posted on 2018-02-05, 17:16

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I remember having a lot of flakiness with VLB slots even when they were new. Granted we had a really cheap 486 motherboard, so maybe they're not always as bad as I remember.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2018-02-05, 16:58

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not sure where to post this, but I guess it could be considered retro activity. Recently I started to get old pc hardware in mail that I had not bought and there was no senders address or anything. I tried to track who was sending it and eventually realised someone who I had bought a graphics card …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-02-05, 12:26

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by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My world seems to be raining HP LP2065 monitors all of a sudden. After buying 2 online last summer, in the past month I've come across 3 more in thrift stores. They are excellent 20" 1600x1200 monitors. They are widely known to have an S-IPS panel. There's lots of internet gossip that some have VA ( …

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Re: Best standard PCI video card of XP era?

Posted on 2018-02-04, 08:37

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by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

murrayman wrote: I tried YouTube and found it perfectly capable of playing 720p videos. The Prescott core is good for that, although many people don't like them for other reasons. It's better for video than the Northwood.

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Re: Minor (or major) injuries from gaming or building/using computer...?

Posted on 2018-02-03, 02:57

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

When I was a kid we were visiting relatives and I got into playing "Decathlon" on their Atari 2600. To do well in that game, you need to make your guy run as fast as possible. You do that by pressing the joystick left and right as quickly as possible. The recommended method is to place your thumb …

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Re: Best standard PCI video card of XP era?

Posted on 2018-02-03, 01:58

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

That's a more modern system than I thought. I didn't know there were LGA775 systems that still only had 32-bit PCI slots, but I guess it was bound to happen. The performance does look quite decent. However, the problem I suspect you might run into is rendering glitches. Things don't always work …

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Re: Socket A: Nvidia vs Via - battle of the platforms!

Posted on 2018-01-31, 19:20

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by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Screen resolution is a variable that will depend on the needs of the reader. 1280x1024 does represent the mainstream of the Socket-A days, but 1600x1200 was also a persistent standard for higher end 4:3 monitors for many years. People building systems today are likely to have those monitors since …

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Re: Socket A: Nvidia vs Via - battle of the platforms!

Posted on 2018-01-29, 17:47

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Although it's probably not the focus of this comparison, the KT880 should have an appealing I/O advantage at least, since it has SATA and GbE integrated in the southbridge, which connects to the northbridge on a 533MB/sec link. NForce2 doesn't have SATA or GbE, so those both have to use PCI, quite …

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Re: Best WinXP Video Card

Posted on 2018-01-26, 11:01

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by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

It's all personal preference of course, but if it was me building what I presume is to be an "ultimate" XP system, then I'd go with either the GTX280 or the HD5870 depending what mood I was in. I've been using the 200 series cards for a long time so the GTX280 would be the easy answer, but HD5870 if …

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Re: Concerned About My Old PC - ASUS P2B Graphics Lockup

Posted on 2018-01-25, 23:40

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sorry I've been kind of slow to reply. But if Win95 OSR2 is working, then I guess it must be a software issue somehow. Either that, or maybe Win95 isn't using AGP - I've had a couple situations before where installing an AGP driver triggered instability, but without such a driver, a system was …

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Re: Where is my L2 cache?

Posted on 2018-01-22, 12:59

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The board says "SDRAM50" under the missing chips, so those are probably dedicated RAM for integrated graphics. Assuming that's what they are, having them missing shouldn't matter if you're using a PCI graphics card. Not sure where the L2 cache is, but it might be that chip to the upper right of your …

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Re: IBM IntelliStation M Pro 6889-930

Posted on 2018-01-22, 00:53

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I'm not good with SCSI either. But you might be able to solve it by setting a termination jumper on the last device in the chain. The SCSI drives I've seen have had a jumper setting for that.

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Re: Upgrading your laptop cpu.

Posted on 2018-01-21, 13:54

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by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Good to hear that this worked out. But as a comment for other laptops in general, I want to mention that Mobile P3s support "SpeedStep", while Celerons of that time did not. This can potentially cause a problem when trying to upgrade a Celeron laptop to a P3. I remember looking into an upgrade like …

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Re: Biostar m5ala motherboard

Posted on 2018-01-21, 13:07

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm not familiar with that board but the hot component might be an onboard regulator for the +3.3V supply. From what I searched I see that's an ATX board, and ATX does provide a 3.3v rail at the power connector, but some boards still preferred to have their own onboard regulator for that voltage. I …

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