440BX - Does it need a heatsink?

Posted on 2020-07-18, 20:58

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I recently got a Tyan Tsunami 440BX board from 1998, and while it seems to be working perfectly, I noticed that unlike most other 440BX boards I've seen this one does not have a heatsink on the main BGA chip. So my question is: does the 440BX really need some sort of extra cooling? The fact that my …

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Re: Replacing VIA RTC VT82887 battery in M560 motherboard

Posted on 2020-07-18, 17:02

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Usually motherboards will not POST without an RTC chip. If you want to use the board you should put the RTC back in, even if the battery is dead. The RTC will be powered while the computer is on, so it should work, of course you will need to fit a new battery if you want to keep the settings/time …

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Re: 72 pin SIMM brand recommendations or just get whatever (486 build)?

Posted on 2020-07-18, 04:09

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I can do 0WS on a 386DX-25 with 80ns RAM if I fill both banks and enable memory interleaving. This is on a cacheless CHIPS-based "386A" motherboard (unknown brand, might be ECS).

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

Posted on 2020-07-17, 20:32

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Woohoo, my Ali based Socket 4 P60 system works again with a brand new Maxim RTC! I'm testing all my AT boards, and am chuffed at least this one works. The other socket 4 I have also has a dead Dallas chip, but that one is not socketed... how easy is it to desolder it without proper desoldering …

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Re: Any thoughts on a CL 5430 card?

Posted on 2020-07-17, 02:36

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for the replies so far guys! Would it be a bad experience to use a 32 bit for Win.311? Are you planning to use any demanding applications in Win 3.11? In any case, the 5430 should do memory interleaving in Windows when equipped with 2MB of RAM. So if you are concerned about performance in …

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Re: Your favorite retro socket/platform

Posted on 2020-07-13, 05:20

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Socket 3/VLB for several reasons: It works fine for most of the games I'm interested in (late 80's up to around 1995) I find tinkering with hardware from that era really fun For some reason I enjoy filling as many of the MB slots as possible with cards, and it's easier to do with these earlier …

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Re: 3.3V Supplemental PCI Power Connector on AT Motherboard

Posted on 2020-07-12, 05:32

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I suppose you could do that, there are some AT power supplies (usually from OEM systems) with the additional 3.3V power connector, and it is in fact 3 +3.3V and 3 GND. On the other hand, I never had a problem with PCI video cards when leaving that connector unplugged, are you sure that is the …

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Re: AT PSU Choices for 486, advice on the better gamble

Posted on 2020-07-11, 22:43

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

CWT used to make power supplies for Antec in the early 00's, they're usually well designed but had a long love affair with Fuhjyyu capacitors, so a recap will likely be necessary, even if it's new. If you go with the Delta, just clean it up and check the fan and caps. It probably uses 100% Japanese …

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Re: Is Cache Tag size to be seen as minimum or exact value

Posted on 2020-07-08, 17:50

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

At least one of my 486 boards does not work with a 32K x 8 tag when configured for 128KB, so you need to test.

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Re: Whi is my socket 3 soooo slow?

Posted on 2020-07-08, 16:15

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Personally I never managed to get a POD83 working with L1 in Write-Back mode on that board, even though DX4 and 5x86 work fine. But I have an older revision of the board so it may be something that got fixed later. So yes, I would suggest setting L1 to WT and also get the latest BIOS if possible …

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Re: VLSI 311 386SX Mainboard won’t boot no beep but...

Posted on 2020-07-06, 21:04

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just remove the capacitor, don't short the points afterwards or you'll have the same problem! The power supply refuses to turn on precisely because the cap is shorted, and you want to remove that short. If it works after removing the cap and you want to keep using the board, I recommend replacing …

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

Posted on 2020-07-06, 20:57

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Still fighting with my VLB IO controller. I think I finally have the beast tamed to where it's not forgetting my HDD every game launch. Looks like it's jumpers where originally set for 50mhz bus speed. Changing that to 30mhz and one other jumper (1F0/170 to just 1F0 something like that? I forget …

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Re: CF Card Won't Save Partitions on 486

Posted on 2020-07-06, 20:48

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you have MS-DOS 6.22 installation floppies? If so, you can try this to let DOS do the partition creation: - Boot from disk 1, run the FDISK version there and make sure there are no partitions in the CF card. If there are, delete them - Reboot and let the installer run, once it detects that no …

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Re: CF Card Won't Save Partitions on 486

Posted on 2020-07-06, 20:32

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What size is the CF card? I assume you are trying to use DOS 6 with partitions < 2GB each, or are you using a version of DOS taken from Win 9x in order to support FAT32? Also, make sure you run 'fdisk /mbr' in order to write the Master Boot Record to the CF card, they usually need that in order to …

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Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2020-07-06, 20:17

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Those VXPro PCChips motherboards were legendary around 1996-1997 due to how incredibly cheap they were compared to the alternatives. Everyone I knew that wanted to upgrade their PC but didn't have a lot of money got one at the time. I had one myself of course, paired with a 6x86 PR150+ (which was …

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Re: 386SX board identification

Posted on 2020-07-04, 20:15

by

by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Those shorter Baby AT boards suck, in particular when using long slots such as VLB. Usually they don't provide any support in the part closer to the front of the case and will bend horribly when installing VLB cards if one is not careful. In some cases if you're lucky there are one or two extra …

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Re: 386SX board identification

Posted on 2020-07-03, 19:11

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also integrated HD and FDD controllers? I'd imagine an OEM too, good quality mainboard indeed even if I don't imagine to find a case for such dimensions.. :D It's just a standard Baby AT motherboard. It should fit on any AT mini-tower or desktop case from that era (maybe not on those that have …

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Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2020-07-03, 18:42

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Found this interesting board. On the back is name Elpina, which is also manufacturer of a COAST module. Size of RAM is unknown (no stickers) and I have never seen CPU like this. I have to take one of my two working AT PSUs and test everything. Elpina == PC Chips That seems to be one of their 486 …

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Re: Radeon 9800 Pro VRAM damage ?

Posted on 2020-07-01, 21:16

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Yeah, probably bad memory, I've seen it a lot, especially on early versions of that card. Regarding the shim issue, it's interesting to notice that later 9800 Pros do not seem to have that problem. I have a Dell-branded R9800 Pro that has a 2008 (!) date code and the shim on that one doesn't prevent …

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Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-06-30, 19:58

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My guess is that adding people who are not even retro computer hobbyists to the pool of people who want to get these parts (and even more so to sell at a higher price later) are the worst reason why this is getting so expensive now. It's clear to see when looking at how much more for instance 3dfx …

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