Re: Which modern Linux on highend 486 system?

Posted on 2019-07-01, 13:04

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hmm, corruption normally sounds like RAM, cache or CPU issues (or HDD & controller), but they would take down Win2k just as fast. For quick&dirty troubleshooting, I'd recommend NetBSD. It's about as easy to install as Debian, simple CLI guided installer.

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Re: Which modern Linux on highend 486 system?

Posted on 2019-07-01, 12:34

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You can filter on architecture at Distrowatch.org. Choosing i486 gives you this lot: http://distrowatch.org/search.php?ostype=All&category=All&origin=All&basedon=All¬basedon=None&desktop=All&architecture=i486&package=All&rolling=All&isosize=All&netinstall=All&language=All&defaultinit=All&status= …

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

Posted on 2019-07-01, 12:21

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Which band are you operating in? 2.4GHz or 5GHz. If the link rate (not the same as speed!) keeps bouncing around it indicates something's not stable. In 2.4GHz the RF itself is the prime suspect, as that band is heavily and fluctuatingly polluted as a rule. In the 5GHz it's theoretically also …

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Re: Do is worth to improve a graphic SIS 6205?

Posted on 2019-07-01, 08:49

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

90% of the problem here is the shared memory architecture of the SiS5511+6205 chipsets. That loses you half of its already not stellar memory bandwidth, dropping you down to performance levels of 32b memory controllers (i.e. total crap). Even a PCI 6205 with 1 or 2MB of its own RAM would almost …

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Re: A hardware problem that I've never seen before.

Posted on 2019-06-30, 10:38

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

GA-6WMM7... that brings back memories. Generally pretty solid board, albeit with the bad performance inherent in the i810's shared memory architecture. Some boards actually had 4MB of onboard display buffer to solve that, but they were rare. As for issues... two spring to mind. First off, it's a …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-06-28, 20:04

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also, it's a sexy board It definitely is. Which of those ISA ports accept 16 bit cards? Bottom one and 2nd from the top? I noticed the layout is a bit subpar in that regard. Indeed. It's not just 16b cards (which you could say are anachronistic) but old 8b only cards that have wider PCB where the …

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Re: Clip boards made from old motherboards

Posted on 2019-06-28, 12:34

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ah, got the socket wrong, it's just plain So3. with the i420TX 'Saturn' chipset. Looks like a nice little late 486 board.

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Re: Clip boards made from old motherboards

Posted on 2019-06-28, 11:10

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Interesting board. Unless I'm mistaken that's an So4 board, with onboard SCSI and a little CMI-640 IDE controller. Given 3-chip chipset solution I suspect SiS 501 chipset.

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Re: What's the nastiest thing you caught from a retro PC/Part?

Posted on 2019-06-28, 10:39

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

1001 cuts and slashes on ~2000 era razorblade cases... As for biohazards, not many exotic critters in this part of the woods, a dessicated mouse mummy was about as bad as I've seen.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-06-27, 21:34

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sound card time today: https://tweakers.net/ext/f/VBcqDzepgS0AVZL9yNXzt49H/full.jpg Don't normally go for boxed stuff, but if you can't find it without box and the price isn't too inflated, why not. I hate 3.5mm jacks, which leads me into the realm of prosumer audio stuff like this Emagic Audiowerk …

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Re: P3 booting problems.

Posted on 2019-06-25, 16:34

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Soltek boards had a bad case of capacitor plague around this time, so that would be my first suspicion, particularly as behaviour isn't consistent. One thing to try (given it has dipswitches) is to significantly underclock the board, so run it at 7.5x66MHz=500MHz instead of 7.5x133MHz. If it does …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-06-25, 12:11

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you have a wide selection of old and new hardware, you can see a massive progression in all aspects of the computer. Old hard drives (the 10mb mfm kind) often have small cpu's on them. Old floppy drives too - Commodore 64 FDDs had more CPU power than their host system ;) old network cards used …

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Re: Performance difference between ISA NICs?

Posted on 2019-06-24, 22:29

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Really? I have an Etherlink III too off the same chipset (I think, have to check) and I still can't get it to assign an IP or get it to NOT crash my computer on WFW 3.11. I think it's a resource management problem because the jumpers only allow 2 possible IRQs/Ports and then there's some …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-06-24, 20:35

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

These odd graphic cards... I'm pretty sure they were designed for some sort of industrial machinery like CNC machine or something... Ah, that mysterious card with no video RAM... AGP was designed to allow use of the host RAM, but it was supposed only to be used for textures, to supplement the …

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Re: Why is the Ensoniq 1370 recommended? it's trash!

Posted on 2019-06-24, 13:43

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

[...] its not like you have much choice for PCI and pure dos, Ensonic, Live/Audigy's, Aureal Vortex in that order, and that's it. Hardly... You're missing ESS Solo-1 and Aztech 3328, both of which are at least as painless as the Ensoniq 137x (and the Solo-1 supports wavetable header, one of which I …

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IBM 3270AT troubles & troubleshooting

Posted on 2019-06-23, 21:27

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Last Friday I picked up this beast (and almost did my back in - it's HEAVY): https://tweakers.net/ext/f/DeHdiEOmjPRDORf1QhQ3uT6F/full.jpg It's an IBM 3270AT. Basically, an early IBM PC/AT with some special hardware to talk to System/370 mainframes and a decidedly non-standard video solution (cards+ …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-06-23, 12:44

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Surprise purchase here - I saw an ad for 'PCI cards' come past. It looked sort of interesting, with a V3-3000 AGP and a Gf2MX PCI the most appealing, but still nothing I really needed (or was prepared to shell out a lot for). So more as a placeholder than anything else I did a lowball offer. Next …

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Re: Avoiding too much overclocked 2000s motherboards ?

Posted on 2019-06-23, 10:43

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

After 25 years I'd say natural selection will have sorted this out for you. If people truly abused the boards, they wouldn't have lasted 5 years. Bigger issue than excessive overclocking is good old capacitor plague, combined with (particularly P4) VRMs dying due to not being quite up to the high …

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Re: Performance difference between ISA NICs?

Posted on 2019-06-23, 07:54

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

One thing on my 'to-do' list is to do some extensive benchmarking of ISA NICs, both in terms of throughput and CPU usage. My day job involves quite a bit of tweaking network parameters to maximise performance; applying that to ancient stuff could be fun. There's a lot of contradictory 'common …

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

Posted on 2019-06-22, 22:00

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Broke out the soldering iron this evening. Three to-dos: - My STB Velocity 4400 (the first nVidia TNT card) lost an SMD cap due to my clumsiness. It now has its cap back and is in full working order :) - The wire piggy-backing a new battery onto a Dallas DS1387 RTC RAMified broke off. It's back on …

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