sliderider wrote:

He's going to end up like that guy in Italy who had like a million dollars worth of vintage video game gear in his cellar.

I am starting to be concerned about "hoarding" vintage gear myself. It's like I just can't help myself when I see this stuff, even when I don't need it. I simply rationalize to myself that hey:

I might need it some day. Or, I might want to try some different configuration at some point. Or, That's just plain too cool to pass up! ~ Whatever my reasons, I am filling up any empty spaces around here pretty quick.

Judging from the raised eyebrows I am getting lately- my wife's mind is not quite as "rational" as my own when it come to these things.

One thing is for sure- the bug that bit me is but a nat compared to the monster that has bitten some around here!! 🤣

You should definitely build some systems with that stuff.
I would personally build a few that really stand out and arrange the boxes next to it so it shows whats inside.

It is a shame for it to just sit somewhere, its museum value 😀

I picked up an Intel SE440BX-2 today... and the MSI Slocket adaptor I mentioned over in Marvin.

I'll be posting pics when I've modded the adaptor for some Tualatin action. 😉

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

Turned on by ticking the 'Use DMA' checkbox you mention. That is on a Athlon XP system with a KT333 board and a S478 celeron setup from 2004; both with 500gb+ drives

Interesting. I tested this on a BX440 board. Another member confirmed the same issue.

On later machines I'm fine as they usually have chipset SATA.

I'm thinking about 32GB Ide SSD drive for my BX.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Kingspec-40PIN-IDE-32 … =item2a39c7de24

Or wait until 32GB SATA SSD price drop like $10-20 and use it with pics above (no controller).

If these SSDs are detected my BX in BIOS level, I would buy it. But I never saw this try like CF2IDE.

Way too expensive for my liking. For not much more I can get a current 1 TB Seagate, put a 32GB limit on it and I'm set 😀

Over the weekend I picked up a Dell OptiPlex GX400 PC for only $1 USD at a local yard sale.

The stars of this find were the GeForce 2 32mb DDR GPU, and the Sound Blaster Live! sound card which were installed. 😀

Got my Chaintec 6ITM + Pentium Pro today.

I found this forum in Google, and I've been massively intrigued by the stuff in this thread.

I didn't buy these today, but very recently (pictures are from eBay as I'm too lazy to take photos myself right now):

A MSI 915GM Speedster. Yes, that's a Socket 479 micro-ATX motherboard. A pity I haven't yet got it to POST (not sure my power supply is any good).

A Pentium M 730 (1.6 GHz) to go with it. Cost all of £1.09!

A Sega Mega Drive, with 5 games, the power brick, a controller and the RF cable. Works perfectly, and was great value as well.

That MSI is a nice board and have one my self plus it plays nice with modern graphics cards. As for the cpu the one you bought is ok but for that build to really shine you want a PM 770 or 780 as they are easy to max out. Keep in mind there is no voltage control and the only vmod that I know is a wire that results in 1.6v to the cpu. As for cooling go for a 478 cooler that has heat pipes, NB likes to get a little on the hot side when near its limits and the sata controller quits working after 160mhz.

This was bought for the purpose of being a basic Win2K machine for some of my older games. As such, overclocking wasn't really part of the plan, and I just wanted a cheap PM chip. I'm not sure if the board is bad, or my el cheapo PSU is bad - I haven't got access to a P4-era power supply at the moment (I attempted to use the PSU I pulled out of a 850 MHz Athlon system a few years ago, but that didn't anything, as I'd expected due to the lack of an ATX12V connector, and the lack of a 24 pin connector - and now it doesn't want to disconnect from the motherboard, yey...)

I've finally gotten the PSU disconnected without breaking anything (I hope!), so here's some proper photos of that board and processor. If anyone can find the manual for this board, I will be enormously grateful - MSI don't seem to have it (or most of the drivers - the driver files are all 0 KB on their site) and I'd really like to know what the jumper settings should be.

It's not on a level surface, hence why it looks odd - the motherboard is resting on the side panel of my Tsunami Capricorn case. Never buy one of those, they're horrendously cheap quality, and the only thing good about them is the styling. Both front USB ports disintegrated and shot sparks at me - something I'd never seen before, and haven't seen since.

The Pentium M processor in-situ.

And this is the 250W FSP PSU that didn't want to come out, and is the one I pulled from a 850 MHz Athlon system with some of the worst capacitor leakage I've seen anywhere. The power supply itself was good at the time, as it still powered on that knackered system.

Is this ^^ retro hardware ? 😒

All of it is, yes. The motherboard and processor are now 9 or 10 year old designs, the power supply is a pre-P4 unit so definitely counts. I'll go through my storage boxes and photograph some of my spare older cards and hard drives and such tomorrow.

vmunix wrote:

Is this ^^ retro hardware ? 😒

To some it is not but the board is pretty rare and most don't know that such exists, this is one of my favorites and I only use modern power supplies with them. Compared to the usual this is an exotic board and very fun to work with, will be one of those status symbol builds years from now. MSI did a another generation for the Core Duo and Core 2 mobiles but they are very rare which is sad that I got a box of procs that would be fun to play with.

the board has SATA connectors and PCI-X slots, wow. 😳

vmunix wrote:

the board has SATA connectors and PCI-X slots, wow. 8-O

This is pci-e, not pci-x.

That's right my mistake, but hey at least PCI-X IS retro 🤣, (unix sysadmin here) worked with them in the late 90's in Alphaservers.

I'm not sure why something that has SATA connectors and PCI-e slots is causing such a problem for you vmunix - I've seen newer graphics cards than these things happily accepted here. I bought it as it is extremely unusual (I already have a Pentium 4 system in a Dell Optiplex GX270) - if I can't get the motherboard running, I'll probably buy a Socket A board in the summer, and put an Athlon XP in it, unless I happen across another Socket 479 board. I'd rather have had a 865-era chipset Socket 479 motherboard, which would've enabled a Win2K/Win98 dual boot setup - but there aren't any for sensible prices right now in the UK.

vmunix wrote:

That's right my mistake, but hey at least PCI-X IS retro 🤣, (unix sysadmin here) worked with them in the late 90's in Alphaservers.

The drivers and manual should still be available online, last year when I first got it everything was available on MSI's sites plus there are Win 9x drivers 😎

Lukeno94 wrote:

I'm not sure why something that has SATA connectors and PCI-e slots is causing such a problem for you vmunix - I've seen newer graphics cards than these things happily accepted here. I bought it as it is extremely unusual (I already have a Pentium 4 system in a Dell Optiplex GX270) - if I can't get the motherboard running, I'll probably buy a Socket A board in the summer, and put an Athlon XP in it, unless I happen across another Socket 479 board. I'd rather have had a 865-era chipset Socket 479 motherboard, which would've enabled a Win2K/Win98 dual boot setup - but there aren't any for sensible prices right now in the UK.

Some people on the Internet get grumpy when others don't adhere to their own personal standards of XYZ. Ignore them, create a build thread in System Specs and go for it. I for one am keen to see how it pans out! 😀

Welcome to the forum!!