Re: Wht's the fastest unlocked PII?

Posted on 2020-02-10, 19:15

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Very interesting case where PII is useful with SVGA games, still have too fast issues that one needs to slow the PII down and still use LFB W-C? Secondly, Which video card to use with the LFB W-C? Cheers,

---

Re: IBM ThinkPad A30 - optical drive has no power (Solved - info how I did it inside)

Posted on 2020-02-10, 15:44

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I reside at thinkpads forums as well. Lot of people reported both A30 and A31 failing due to overheating ATI chip set. I added copper plate on it. A30/A31 boards is really rare now. Cheers,

---

Re: 386sx Setup and Build

Posted on 2020-02-10, 00:45

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

How's the 386SX fare with DOS games except Doom? Decent ISA card is harder to get with performance minded like 1MB WD 90C31 or very late cirrus logic. I'm aware of Tnesg ET4000 cost on ebay is high but I had benched the Doom on a ISA ET4000 and a generic cached baby AT 386DX 25 but did not keep (was …

---

Re: IBM ThinkPad A30 - optical drive has no power (Solved - info how I did it inside)

Posted on 2020-02-10, 00:37

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I advise use thermal adhesive and 1mm or 1.2mm thick copper sheet cut to size larger than the ATI radeon video IC and still can assemble the computer. These overheat and fail any better cooling will help. I had to do this mod to my A31 just in case. Cheers,

---

Re: Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H 1.1, Intel Core i7 3770K, MSI GeForce 960

Posted on 2020-02-09, 21:11

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Intel Pro/1000 PT is 32 bit XP, 7 64bit and 10 64bit supported, can run 10, 100 as well, available in x1 with one port. I bought this specially to relieve the TCP/IP processing overhead, called "IP offload" for my XP C2D E8600 Dell optiplex 780, saw about 15% to 25% faster when loading websites and …

---

better voltage regulator or switching regulator to supply 3.3V for the pentium socket 5

Posted on 2020-02-08, 02:38

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Lots of chinese regulators but no feedback or trim pin to monitor output closer to the socket? Do you have favorite circuit or a regulator module that works well or a good maker of switching 3.3V regulator? I do not want to keep using TO-220 on small heatsink (LT1083 type) two of my pentium …

---

Re: Differences in Millennium, Millennium II and Mystique 22o?

Posted on 2020-02-07, 20:58

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Thank you, that's much better than what I find in wiki and vogon wiki and other places.

---

Differences in Millennium, Millennium II and Mystique 22o?

Posted on 2020-02-07, 17:53

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Besides the integrated DAC in Mystique 220, (I have this card). What these Mystique 220, Millennium and Millennium II differs in hardware features. Also compatibility with these three cards with early games? I know had looked at Gona's list of video cards. Also, over-heard some people here mentioned …

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-02-07, 17:47

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

AN430TX motherboard but crucially has two chips one of them is XG audio IC, not common around here. Hopefully that TX board will allow me to use newer PCI video cards that wouldn't initialize in other board with HX chipset. SIS Asus baby AT motherboard with SRAM ICs for 256K total to play with, know …

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-02-07, 01:51

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Last brown card photo is compaq's IDE and floppy, serial and parallel controller. Very well made. Had one and liked it and purchased another years later and is in my collection for old computer. Cheers,

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-02-06, 23:55

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh right, another type of fake "write back" how I could miss that? 😀 Cheers,

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-02-06, 23:11

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Fake cache chips is molded in characters, not printed on. Had seen that. Cheers,

---

Re: Compaq SLT 286

Posted on 2020-02-03, 21:24

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Good mods. While ago when I had SLT 386s/20 I tried a WD caviar hard drive, the black one around 270mb 3.5". Turning off that computer and that violent action of self parking of this hard drive sends electrical surges back through the motherboard corrupting the cmos settings in the RTC dallas IC. …

---

Re: Memtest86+: does it also test cache memory?

Posted on 2020-02-03, 20:29

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Use the cache utility that test performance. memtest86+ only tests the main memory only and very sensitive and very useful for hard to catch errors. That other software wouldn't even windows tests wouldn't find. Cheers,

---

Re: Sorting out memory issues on AthlonXP

Posted on 2020-02-02, 19:22

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That confirms the reviewer's impressions and explanations is correct when I read about these on their websites. Socket 462 cpu is limited at bus bandwidth to northbridge, but dual channel mode only benefits the *onboard* integrated video in the northbridge chipset when running in dual channel mode. …

---

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

Posted on 2020-02-02, 19:13

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

12.jpg Few minutes ago, i was soldering on a older revision 3 xt-ide 8 bit controller card. The pcbs i purchased a few years ago, but after problems with my weller wsd-81 soldering station i quit for a while. 1 week ago i purchased a cheapass soldering station which performance a lot better then …

---

Re: Inaccessable Bios, due to unknown password and RAM PARITY-ERROR

Posted on 2020-01-31, 23:00

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Did you go into bios settings and disabled parity checking or something like this? Reported MHz correct for the 486DX2 80 (saying 80mhz) and is CPU cooled with a heatsink? Make sure the VLB motherboard has wait state set to one. Not zero? Take all the cache chips out and test again or disable the …

---

Re: Stuck ST-177I drive

Posted on 2020-01-31, 21:27

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do not open it up. Wiggle computer when instant it is turned on to try to free up the platters. If it is. and stuck again on next powered off, then look into MCA scsi card and scsi drive. Have to splice 12V and 5V and two ground wires for the drive. Cheers,

---

Re: Inaccessable Bios, due to unknown password and RAM PARITY-ERROR

Posted on 2020-01-31, 21:23

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No problem. Is your FPM memory 9 or 3 chips each? Cheers,

---

Re: Inaccessable Bios, due to unknown password and RAM PARITY-ERROR

Posted on 2020-01-31, 20:21

by

by pentiumspeed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Show us the memory modules used in this motherboard. The parity feature uses either 3 chips or 9 chips per module and EDO is not supported on 486 since 486 only use FPM type. Pentium uses FPM or EDO memory. Cheers,

---