First post, by jheronimus
- Rank
- Oldbie
Hi, all!
I've finally managed to get myself a non-branded horizontal AT case! Here it is:
I always liked these kind of cases, but they are somewhat hard to come by. You can easily find a branded desktop (IBM, Compaq), but those are not too flexible. You can also get an XT or 286 build, but those tend to be pretty expensive. So it took me nearly six months to get this case.
It's a Formoza computer — that's a Russian system builder that was pretty popular around mid-90s to mid 00-s. My other Socket 7 build is also in a Formoza case.
The original specs:
Pentium 133
16 MB EDO RAM in two sticks
a 1600MB Samsung WNR-31601A HDD
an 8x Samsung SCR-830 drive
SoundBlaster 16 Vibra CT2940 — sadly, non-OPL3
Cirrus Logic GD-5446-based 2D card with a TV tuner:
Formoza machines usually used Lucky Star motherboards, and this one is no exception — it uses a Lucky Star P54CE motherboard:
It's a 430VX, has 256 of L2 cache, 4x SIMM slots (no DIMM), only one IDE controller.
The newest part in this machine that has a timestamp on it is the Samsung CD drive, dated November 1996 — so looks like it's a late 1996/early 1997 machine. Now let's upgrade it.
First let's change a motherboard. The best option I have is another Lucky Star — a 5I-TX1:
As you can see, it's a bit wider than the board it came with, which made me concerned that the CPU will bump into the floppy drive. However, it has the same CPU socket placement, which worked out great:
Now the specs are:
Pentium MMX 233
32 MB SDRAM
SoundBlaster AWE32 CT3990
4 MB Matrox Millenium 2
6,4 Gb Seagate U4 ST36421A HDD
52x Sony CRX230E CD-RW drive
3Com 3C905C-TXM NIC
Everything works great, I'm about to install Win95:
Guess, I finally have an excuse to get another screen. This 2004 17 inch Samsung 755DFX doesn't really fit the aesthetics! Currently deciding between 14 inch Samsung 3NE, 15 inch Hitachi CM500ET and a 100-series 15 inch Sony Multiscan (like a 100SF).
The only issue I have is the fact that turbo LED/button do not work. The motherboard doesn't even have turbo switch pins. The previous motherboard had them, but ironically, the wires were too short and were not attached. Here are the pins:
It has turbo LED (TULED) pins, but for some reason the Power LED (3 pins) only works when attached to last TULED and first ATX pin. Any idea what's wrong here?
BTW, I also have an AT keyboard with a Turbo button. What do I need for the function to work?