Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-08-09, 19:00

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I licked the picture, tastes like a B... ... okay, my general sense is it is a B due to combo of green substrate, bridges that are blown and "look", given the stepping wasn't readable. I love your method 🤣 Yeah, it most likely is B in any case (still haven’t checked the stepping), because A was …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-08-09, 18:13

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

] I love Epox motherboards - my last Socket A motherboard was an 8RDA3+ purchased in late summer 2004 because I saw that some of the caps on my 8K3A+ were bulging. My top performing Socket A computer has a Epox 8KRA2+ which is fine, but it isn't quite the top performer that the Nforce 2 …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-08-09, 17:58

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nice. The integrated GF4 MX makes it easy to troubleshoot video problems. I wonder if there is a MCP-T under that heatsink on the south.(SoundStorm) Yes, it should have MCP-T, AFAIK it was the first MB from EpoX to have one. Yet I think it wasn’t marketed as having SS. Either it couldn’t pass the …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-08-09, 15:43

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

if you know just the fact the 9700 could overclock like a demon also didn't help. Can comfirm. I actually didn’t have 9700 Pro, but the non pro model with slightly lower clock speed (core 325 vs 275). I threw in unlocked BIOS and slapped a GPU block and could run the core @400MHz completely stable. …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-08-09, 15:24

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just received this EpoX 8RGA+ with IO shield, 2x256MB Kingston HyperX CL2 RAM and Athlon 1900+ (it is T-bred, but haven't checked whether A or B): 8RGA.JPEG Those three caps below the NB don't exactly look like in top notch condition 👀 CAPS.JPEG Well, I was sort of expecting that and was going to …

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Re: Announcement: 3D printable model for Compaq Prosignia 3.5" drive bays.

Posted on 2023-08-08, 14:09

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The model is published on thingiverse at This must be the biggest cliffhanger I've seen :D Continues on season 2! 🤣 I think this is the stuff: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6136025 I have found quite a few models of rails for different vintage systems and cases and printed few for my projects. …

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Re: General questions on win98 PC specs

Posted on 2023-08-07, 17:19

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

True, but he also mentioned "oc" and it's not going to do that in any significant way. Reading what OP actually said about OC I don't think he is after some overclocking beast here: I don't mind OC might keep everything stock. Hell I'm not sure what my most demanding game will be. The way I see is …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-08-07, 16:50

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just received this Zida 4DPS V2.11 accompanied with AMD DX4-100 and two four meg ram sticks. What an adorable little board. I guess I need to find some time for next weekend to build another DOS machine. I should have everything I need for a pretty nice and beefed up 486. AMD DX4 120 is the fastest …

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Re: General questions on win98 PC specs

Posted on 2023-08-07, 13:22

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think it's always good to start with what you have and see where it can take you. If the suggested PCI-cards are not expensive then just get one and have fun with the system. You can always build a complete new one later. So much this! OP has a system which with slight modifications (adding a …

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Re: Athlon motheboard recommendations

Posted on 2023-08-07, 06:53

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, it is good and being recapped is a huge plus, especially if you aren’t prepared doing that kind of work. IMO I’d consider something else if you would like to do some old school overclocking as there would be better options, but for stock sA rig it should be fine. I will install my old sA water …

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Re: Athlon motheboard recommendations

Posted on 2023-08-07, 04:24

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A7V333 was considered decent board back in the day, but I think in the end it all depends on your plans for the build. I don’t think you will have big issues with the board, especially if you are going to keep it stock. Having been recapped already is an obvious plus from the reliability perspective …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-08-05, 09:55

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, not today but this week nonethless: I picked up Thermaltake Xaser III "Fireball Edition" ATX case few kilometers from my home and received MSI FX5900XT from mail. These both will be part of my autumn project, socket A system with custom loop for CPU and GPU and possibly NB. I still got my old …

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Re: My IBM PS/2 model 35SX build [updated 6/22/2023]

Posted on 2023-06-22, 15:03

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by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Final surprise update to system: I found compatible ED-drive for 9€ and couldn't resist. A 2.88MB drive with same FRU as this was an option for the system, but I think very few customers actually chose it. There is not much use for it compared to 1.44MB drive, but as it was cheap, 35SX disk …

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Re: Orpheus II soundcard thread

Posted on 2023-06-04, 13:03

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

You can actually reserve IRQ and DMA channels from within Windows. There is an option for this somewhere in Device Manager; at least on 98se and ME. This can be useful when a resource you want is being gobbled up by a device that won't allow you to reassign it. Well, indeed! If you click properties …

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Re: Orpheus II soundcard thread

Posted on 2023-06-03, 17:14

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Got this card couple of weeks ago and I've been tinkering with it during the last week or so. It is simply stunning and finally, it is operating how it supposed to be. I decided to install this on my Tulip P166MMX/Onboard AT24/64MB/1.7GB machine with 3dfx Voodoo 1 and which previously carried ES1869 …

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Re: How to fix your dead on-board floppy controller

Posted on 2023-05-13, 20:15

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Since you're seeing a non-functioning LPT port and the floppy isn't working, try booting off the hard drive and see if PCM sound works, if it doesn't then perhaps something is wrong with DMA which would break floppy access. That's a late enough board that that stuff should all be integrated though. …

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Re: How to fix your dead on-board floppy controller

Posted on 2023-05-05, 12:58

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by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Gladly I found this thread as I have most likely a fried UM8663BF chip on my Gigabyt GA-5486AL that I working on. Floppy doesn’t do anything even during boot, it just stays silent and no led lights up as if it is not connected at all. Also, the boot splash screen shows no LPT port available, …

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Re: Modern Retro PC cases, whats your favourites?

Posted on 2023-05-03, 18:36

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

for the horizontal pc case folks: SilverStone Grandia GD09 fits ATX only one 5.25 bay likely strong enough for a crt on top https://i.ibb.co/55d76QP/5-ss-grandia-gd09.jpg wish there was more horizontal options out there. I have this case for HTPC use and I certainly wouldn’t put CRT on top of it. …

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Re: Your most shitty motherboard?

Posted on 2023-04-27, 07:59

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Abit NF7-S2G. I still has this board pretty much unused in box. Back in the day, I fiddled a lot with Socket A platform. Bought cheap Athlons, tested several motherboards, had fast memory, watercooling and tweaked the hell out of the systems just for fun. Athlons were so much fun, because you could …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-04-26, 12:54

by

by CharlieFoxtrot

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I agree. Anything with a genuine OPL chip is still very useful. You can always add an additional card, ISA or PCI, for digitized sound, but a genuine OPL chip is always on the ISA bus. This does of course except things such as the ESS Solo-1 (ESFM) and Yamaha PCI cards. I'm referring to discreete …

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