PeterLI wrote:

Played Civilization yesterday and today with the V30 in my PS/2: quite a performance difference. 🤣

Is that the ps/2 you picked up a couple of weeks ago?

PcBytes wrote:

Replaced a hellish hot FX5500 128MB card I had with a ice cold Radeon 9600 Pro 256MB AGP 8x card from Gecube. Feels better now,and faster too!

Bitten by the Radeon bug too? 😁 And the picture quality looks better plus better AA+AF controll in the display settings. 😜

Yes: the IBM PS/2 Model 30 8530 8086.

Got a deal at the thrift store. A dell dimension l1000r and a no name white box "surprise special" for $20. I got the white box cause it was in a case I owned 15+ years ago. Cleaned em up of their grime and dust and spider webs. The dell works perfectly.

P3 1000 133 fsb
Came with 128 mb pc133, upgraded to 256
Onboard video, put in a voodoo 3 2000 PCI
Working 20gb hard drive
Working CDRW and floppy

Wiped it and installed win2k. The case is near mint!

The white box surprise turned out to be a slot 1 600 on a gigabyte board. Would not power up at all. PSU works on another board so I think the board is dead but I will test more.

I mainly wanted the case though so I was ok with that. The case cleaned up well other than a couple scratches. It was a pain- looked like a can of Coke was spilled on it many many years ago. Fitted it with the following

MSI K7T Turbo 2
Athlon XP 2400+ (2.0 ghz 133 fsb)
1gig pc133
Geforce 4 ti 4600
80 gb use hard drive
One of the two optical drives it came with works, floppy also needs to be replaced.

So, my AMI Baby Voyager seems to work;

Sadly as everything is already put away, all I can do now is pack it back into the Amptron box it arrived in and wait until the other side of the move to finish this project, but the board will be ready to go as soon as I can work on it. I don't know why, but it is by far the heaviest board I have handled, sure I've held server boards that were heavier, but that was with their heatsinks on. This board has no heatsink and it weighs enough that holding it with one hand is a little uncomfortable and I worry that doing so will bend it. Interestingly, it won't boot with a UMC chip installed but that doesn't matter as I plan to leave the Intel 486DX-33 in there anyway, this isn't a performance system as evidenced by the fact it only has 8MB of RAM for the sole reason that it's all I had and the VGA card only has 256K of RAM onboard.

Seems like a nice board, it came to life with no adjustments outside of having to set the jumpers for the RAM - yeah, you have to do that to tell the board how much RAM is installed, a bit unusual but not much of a chore. It is also odd how that one SRAM chip has to be absent when 256K of cache is installed - I was aware of this before buying it because the missing socket stood out making me research the board prior to buying. Anyway, it seems like $20 well spent.

It seems after finalizing my K6-III+ build, I will be changing out one of the sound cards, but I absolutely cannot figure out how to fit the replacement card. Today, I found out about the YMF289 having reduced sound pitch, and what did I hear from the YMF719 card in the computer? Yes, the same reduced sound pitch as the YMF289. I'm an obsessive a-hole, which leads me to have zero tolerance for ANY differences in output aside from low-pass filtering (that's subjective, and while I prefer SoundBlaster Pro levels of filtering for OPL3, light filtering like the SoundBlaster 16 is acceptable too), so that card's gotta go. Problem is, the CPU placement on the Lucky Star 5MVP3 motherboard I'm using is so bad, I can't fit the SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 CT1600 and SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold CT4390 at the same time without removing the Soundscape S-2000. If I do, at least one of the cards runs into the CPU heatsink. So far, the only options I've found are to:

1. Replace the AWE64 Gold by an AWE64 Value CT4520 (I really don't want to do this)
2. Cut the heatsink to allow either the AWE64 Gold or SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 to fit

I have not been able to find a heatsink that is slightly offset, either, like a heatsink with the metal fins connected via heatpipe slightly further away from the CPU socket. I don't know if such a heatsink exists for Socket 7/370/A, but if there is, someone please let me know. This has been my biggest annoyance with the 5MVP3 since the day I got this board.

I have been testing some motherboards.

The Zida Tomato TX98-3D VIA VPX motherboard I bought seems to have died during shipping. As the sellers pictures showed the board running I gave him good feedback without testing the board first.

The motherboard was shipped very loosely wrapped in bubble wrap in a box and the motherboard could move around freely. ESD must have killed it which is rare but not unheard of. The bundle was only ~15 euro including shipping so I probably wouldnt have cared to try to get my money back anyway but a great deal suddenly transformed into an OKish deal as I at least got a Cyrix MII CPU, some memory and an Oak ISA VGA card for my money, assuming they still work that is.

I also tested a PC Chips TXpro "Top Gun" (Aladdin IV+) motherboard from one of the big lots I bought, this board seems to work just fine.

For some reason the PS/2 mouse works in the BIOS setup but not in the Windows 98 setup...

...That was solved by enabling the PS/2 mouse port, that option was hiding in a different manu from the rest of the onboard peripheral options.

Fixed a problem with 2 banks of ECC PC-133 Infineon memory 2x512mb, on my Windows 98 build (ASUS CUV4X-D): at the end, after several hours of testing with MEMTEST, I came to the conclusion that the second bank is defective, then I simply left only the first 512mb bank, more than enough for gaming on Win9x that interests me. Taking advantage of this operation, and having installed only Windows 98 (updated not officially) ignoring Windows 2000, I ended up also removing one of the two CPUs (Pentium III 800EB) leaving only one. At the moment, I am doing benchmarks using 3DMark 2001 with Matrox G400 and Voodoo II 12mb SLI (Trust Voodoo Dragon II):

Matrox G400: 1160 pts
Voodoo II 12mb SLI: 705 pts

Prepared a heatsink for my Pentium MMX machine from an old Socket A copper low-profile one, by polishing the surface a little bit, and adding a new silent fan and a very overkill thermal compound which I used some weeks ago when cleaned my main computer 🤣 🤣. I hope this little overclocked chip will run cooler after this improvement, this particular 200MMX one is capable of running at 250Mhz (2.5x100), with only 2.4V! (stock 2.8V 😲 😲 )

(The last one also shows the tiny heatsinks I added to the VRM mosfets a couple of months ago, they are for 3D printers and really cheap!! Only 2€/5pcs on eBay.)

Made a Cable for my Roland SC7 for RS232.
Now i can use the SC7 over RS232 under Windows and DOS for Games.

The Roland Windows 95 Serialoutput Driver works fine with it.
SoftMPU also works well with serialoutput (only realmode games).

The PC Chips "TXpro" M560TG "Top Gun" ALi Aladdin IV/+ motherboard Im testing isnt performing as I thought it would...

PC Chips motherboards with ALi IV/+ chipset had the worst reputation back in 1997, they are supposed to be the slowest thing imaginable.

Here are some selected quotes from Anandtech.

"The TXPro is closely based on ALi's Aladdin IV/+ chipset which is amazingly enough (yeah right...) a lot like Intel's TX chipset with a few extra features, hence the name TXPro."

"With most TXPro based motherboards offering stable performance at the 75 and 83.3MHz bus speeds, and going for about $60 why wouldn't you want a TXPro motherboard?"

"I wouldn't compare the scores of a TXPro board to a genuine TX board like the ABIT AX5 or the Shuttle HOT-569, however if you don't need the absolute best of the best, then you may want to consider this chipset. "

"Beware, you aren't getting the world's most compatible product when you buy a TXPro board, just a reminder, you get what you pay for in this industry."

I have not done that much testing yet but so far the performance has been very competitive.

Attempted to revive a dead M577 today. Tried different cpu's, different PSU's both AT and ATX, swapped ram. . .nothing. Have a backup but the socket retention is broken off 😒 wonder if superglue and thermal paste mixed would hold a HSF onto a k6-3 without melting 🤣.

ODwilly wrote:

Attempted to revive a dead M577 today. Tried different cpu's, different PSU's both AT and ATX, swapped ram. . .nothing. Have a backup but the socket retention is broken off 😒 wonder if superglue and thermal paste mixed would hold a HSF onto a k6-3 without melting 🤣.

That is unfortunate, the M577 is a great motherboard.

You could try gluing a new piece of plastic to the socket to replace the one that broke off, with the right glue it should be possible to make it as strong as it ever was.

Skyscraper wrote:

You could try gluing a new piece of plastic to the socket to replace the one that broke off, with the right glue it should be possible to make it as strong as it ever was.

I know 🙁 and I had just got the motherboard setup, 98se installed and a bunch of games and benchmarks configured on it when it died. Will due with the socket! I just have to find where I put the spare and it will get swapped out/fixed.

Putting together two DOS test computers based around VIA C3 processors, trying out some new cards I got last weekend and running through all my sound cards based around Yamaha chipsets to check for below-normal sound pitch.

The specs for the C3 computers are not finalized as I have a C3 Nehemiah on the way, but the current computers have the older Ezra and Ezra-T CPUs on a Soyo SY-6BA+ motherboard with a slotket and Gigabyte GA-6VXE7+ rev. 3.0 motherboard respectively.

As for the cards, I managed to test a 3DFX Voodoo 3 2000 PCI and an unknown ISA sound card based on the Avance Logic ALS100+. The Voodoo 3 2000 works very well and I was quite impressed with the ALS100+. Its OPL3 sounds virtually perfect (reversed Stereo output is about the only problem I found) and I was surprised to find out this chipset is SoundBlaster 16-compatible.

And much to my dismay, every single Yamaha audio chipset I tested (YMF719, YMF724 and YMF744) all have lower sound pitch on their OPL3 output than normal, much like a YMF289. I'm actually a bit bummed out by that, to be honest.

What I am not bummed out about is this (this is more of a mixed retro/modern activity): hardware OPL3 (not true OPL3, mind you, but it is hardware OPL3) on Windows 10 x64. I bought a batch of CMI8738-based PCI sound cards for the sake of using these in modern versions of Windows in conjunction with DOSBox Daum for hardware OPL3 support and I finally found one that is both stable under Windows 10 x64 and works on my HP Workstation Z420 desktop PC (it's a computer based around an Intel Xeon E5-1603 Sandy Bridge-E CPU). Makes me want to try to get hardware OPL3 working on a Skylake motherboard with the Z170 chipset, although I was told it might not work, but even then, just for the sake of curiosity, I bought a PCI Express x1 sound card based around the CMI8738-LX (really just a plain PCI CMI8738-LX chipset with a PCI to PCI Express bridge between the chipset and the PCI Express card edge). I would like to see if this PCI Express x1 card can put out OPL3 with DOSBox Daum under Windows 10 x64.

Finally got a 5153 CGA monitor. Now I can really start playing with my XT. 😊

Cool! Looks like fun!

I had a 5153 in 2014 or 2015 but could not get it to work with my OEM PCs. They did not like me disabling onboard VGA and using a CGA card.

Im a bit irritated over the fact that my PC Chips M560TG "Top Gun" wont activate write allocation for K6-2 CXT core CPUs, it activates it for Chomper cores without issues.

No K6-X CPUs are officially supported but someone (Not Jan S) has modified a BIOS with supposed support for all K6-X CPUs, even the + ones although those needs a socket adapter to bring down the voltage. The BIOS-modder diddnt do a perfect job it seems. It hurts the performance when a K6-2 CPU @500 MHz has a memory write speed of a 486. In my Socket-7 benching project Im not using any utilities to activate performance enhancements the BIOS lacks options for or wont turn on.

Antother strange thing with this motherboard is that it's faster when it comes to decoding video with a Pentium P54C than with a Pentium MMX... All other motherboards and chipsets I have tested have been faster with a Pentium MMX compared to a vanilla Pentium when it comes to decoding MPEG (and everything else).

Edit

No write allocation for the K6-3 (non plus) either, the performance is still looks OKish though but the memory write speed is just awful.

/Edit

Im investigating the lackluster cache and memoy write speeds with K6-2 CXT and K6-3 CPUs in my PC Chips M560TG motherboard.

This is how it should look, with a Chomper K6-2 everthing is fine.

K6-2 Chomper 2x66 MHz (I used a Chomper for benching at this setting here because the CXT cant run at 2x)

Cache/Memory Benchmark
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³ Read ³ Write ³ Move ³ Average ³
ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ´
³ Cache Level 1 ³ 504.55 MB/s³ 497.77 MB/s³ 498.03 MB/s³ 500.11 MB/s³
³ Cache Level 2 ³ 204.55 MB/s³ 120.31 MB/s³ 120.31 MB/s³ 148.39 MB/s³
³ Memory ³ 145.15 MB/s³ 65.92 MB/s³ 65.91 MB/s³ 92.33 MB/s³
ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ

MMX(tm) Cache/Memory Benchmark
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³ MMX Read ³ MMX Write ³ MMX Move ³ Average ³
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³ Cache Level 1 ³ 736.44 MB/s³ 729.45 MB/s³ 386.39 MB/s³ 617.43 MB/s³
³ Cache Level 2 ³ 221.16 MB/s³ 125.88 MB/s³ 120.33 MB/s³ 155.79 MB/s³
³ Memory ³ 153.33 MB/s³ 67.54 MB/s³ 65.92 MB/s³ 95.60 MB/s³
ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

Then I switched to a CXT core and suddenly there is no write caching going on at all.

K6-2 CXT 3x66 MHz

Cache/Memory Benchmark
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³ Read ³ Write ³ Move ³ Average ³
ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ´
³ Cache Level 1 ³ 755.09 MB/s³ 51.33 MB/s³ 742.77 MB/s³ 516.40 MB/s³
³ Cache Level 2 ³ 314.63 MB/s³ 51.15 MB/s³ 141.05 MB/s³ 168.94 MB/s³
³ Memory ³ 225.25 MB/s³ 51.32 MB/s³ 71.67 MB/s³ 116.08 MB/s³
ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ

MMX(tm) Cache/Memory Benchmark
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³ MMX Read ³ MMX Write ³ MMX Move ³ Average ³
ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ´
³ Cache Level 1 ³ 1098.77 MB/s³ 102.48 MB/s³ 579.18 MB/s³ 593.47 MB/s³
³ Cache Level 2 ³ 340.50 MB/s³ 102.29 MB/s³ 141.07 MB/s³ 194.62 MB/s³
³ Memory ³ 238.16 MB/s³ 102.64 MB/s³ 71.67 MB/s³ 137.49 MB/s³
ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

With a K6-3 the issue remains.

K6-3 6x83 MHz (PCI=33)

Cache/Memory Benchmark
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³ Read ³ Write ³ Move ³ Average ³
ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ´
³ Cache Level 1 ³ 1900.08 MB/s³ 64.03 MB/s³ 1900.08 MB/s³ 1288.06 MB/s³
³ Cache Level 2 ³ 1273.86 MB/s³ 63.82 MB/s³ 1175.45 MB/s³ 837.71 MB/s³
³ Cache Level 3 ³ 425.18 MB/s³ 63.81 MB/s³ 185.57 MB/s³ 224.85 MB/s³
³ Memory ³ 297.32 MB/s³ 65.52 MB/s³ 84.97 MB/s³ 149.27 MB/s³
ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ

MMX(tm) Cache/Memory Benchmark
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³ MMX Read ³ MMX Write ³ MMX Move ³ Average ³
ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ´
³ Cache Level 1 ³ 2769.28 MB/s³ 127.83 MB/s³ 1456.69 MB/s³ 1451.27 MB/s³
³ Cache Level 2 ³ 1795.94 MB/s³ 127.61 MB/s³ 1300.25 MB/s³ 1074.60 MB/s³
³ Cache Level 3 ³ 425.24 MB/s³ 127.60 MB/s³ 187.38 MB/s³ 246.74 MB/s³
³ Memory ³ 297.32 MB/s³ 131.04 MB/s³ 84.97 MB/s³ 171.11 MB/s³
ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

SetK6 and/or Setewb cant seem to fix the issue. I have tested disabling/enabling all BIOS options like "pipeline function" and such with no change.

The system still runs pretty good* but with working write caching Im sure it would do even better. Does anyone have any ideas?

*7000 CPU 3dmarks and 2500 3dmarks in 3dmark99 with a 85Mhz? Voodoo2.

Watched An American Werewolf in London. Fun movie. Jenny Agutter was hot as hell.