Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-09-16, 00:34:

I'm being saved from temptation. This sixteen megabyte Voodoo 3 has been on my local Craigslist for two weeks. I've never used a 3dfx card, and it would be interesting to see how it works on some of my systems. But it says untested, and $100.00 is a lot for a bit of ewaste should it not work. I thought I had the perfect solution - it must be untested because he doesn't have a system old enough to test it, so I emailed him and offered to bring over a computer to test it with and if I'm satisfied I'd buy the card. But I've received no reply, which makes me think he either knows it doesn't work, or is afraid that it won't, and would rather wait until someone is willing to pay the money for it "As is" so he can maintain plausible deniability. It's similar to someone selling a used car who won't allow you to take it to a mechanic to have them check it over.

i ignore those typ of ads unless its dirt cheap and there's a profitable out. 100 dollars is too high of a price, if it was 40 then maybe you could flip it for parts if not working

maestro wrote on 2022-09-16, 05:25:

It reads fishy. He wont even show you the bad side and whether or not it has that burnt taco look.

The 7800GS AGP I ordered arrived today, tested but of course no picture of it working. *sob* R.I.P. G71.

7000 and 8000 series all had horrible solder and were prone to just dying, even if never used and still in a sealed box they can still just up and die after a few months due to the shit solder used.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-16, 08:19:

maestro wrote on 2022-09-16, 05:25:

It reads fishy. He wont even show you the bad side and whether or not it has that burnt taco look.

The 7800GS AGP I ordered arrived today, tested but of course no picture of it working. *sob* R.I.P. G71.

7000 and 8000 series all had horrible solder and were prone to just dying, even if never used and still in a sealed box they can still just up and die after a few months due to the shit solder used.

All the video cards I've had die on me: Voodoo2X2, ATI Radeon 9800Pro, ATI Radeon X800XTPE, Nvidia GTX580 (This 580 actually died after I loaned it to a friend). I also sent in a RTX 2080TI that was having heat problems, didn't completely die but it was spinning up the fans super loud and might have been crashing games but I cant remember, so I count that too.

Finally documenting my haul from Vintage Computer Festival Midwest this year...
In terms of PC parts I got a variety of useful bits while not paying too much.

Motherboards:
Asus P6T (LGA 1366) + i7 930 + 12GB DDR3-1600 - a replacement X58 board so I can rebuild my 2010 PC after the P6X58D-E died.
Asus P6T-SE (LGA 1366) - thrown in free with the normal P6T... seems to be pretty much the same but without a floppy controller.
QDI Excellent I (Slot 1) - untested

A nice custom PC, actually bought it just for the case but was pleasantly surprised regarding the internals:
Asus A7M266-D (Dual Socket A)
2x Athlon MP 2400+ (Thoroughbred-B)
3GB RAM
GeForce 3 64MB AGP
Adaptec PCI-X Ultra160 SCSI
Asus PCIUSB2
36GB 10kRPM SCSI drive
80GB IDE drive
Enermax branded case, clone of Chieftec Dragon

A netbook:
Asus EeePC 1001P

CPU stuff:
A bunch of Socket A/370 coolers (copper!)
Athlon XP 2500+ Barton

Graphics cards:
Cirrus Logic GD5464 2MB PCI - writing this out is the first time I realized this wasn't a GD5446. It's a Laguna3D! Yikes!
GeForce 2 MX400 AGP (MSI MS-8837)
GeForce 3 64MB AGP (missing a RAM heatsink)
RIVA TNT AGP (Viper V550)
RIVA TNT PCI (Viper V550)
S3 Virge DX PCI

Audio:
ESS ES1868F ISA (labeled "Mako Premium")

A whole bunch of NICs:
3Com Fast EtherLink 10/100 ISA
3Com Fast Etherlink XL PCI (x3)
Netgear FA311 PCI
Unknown PCI NIC, Intel chipset?
Hayes branded ISA 56K Modem (this counts, right?)

Misc:
IBM Model M keyboards (x2) - excellent condition, barely used
Packard Bell 14" CRT with speakers
A few untested IDE optical drives
Random external SCSI cables
CD-ROM caddies (x2)
A pair of Altec Lansing computer speakers
StarTech PCI serial card
Belkin USB 2.0 PCI card (NEC chipset)

And the big one, outside of the PC space... where all my money went 😜
A NextStation Turbo Color! Fully specced out with 128MB of RAM and all the peripherals to get it going, including the sound box. Finally knocked that off my wishlist after a decade plus!

Another IBM PC 330, this one a 486 DX/2 66 (I think). Not opened it up yet but it does boot and beep 😀

I bought a beige IDE CDRW and some CD-Rs at a thrift store today. It doesn't match the box that it was in, and so far it works fine (I haven't tried burning anything in it yet). Did someone buy a new CDRW because 24x burning speed wasn't fast enough so they upgraded to one that was 32x? I tested it by installing Encarta Encyclopedia 99 on the old AT box I have that needed a beige optical drive.

I played the ebay lottery and won 😀
An unlocked Pentium II 400!

The auction had no photo of the production date but the description said it is an SL2SH. That's the dA1 stepping so I had high hopes that it could be an earlier model. In any case, for 15 Euro shipped it wouldn't be a real loss.
It arrived today and indeed it's from 1998/week 30 and it's unlocked 😀 Additionally it overclocks quite good and I could run benchmarks at 117x4 (468 Mhz). Even at 124x4 (496 Mhz) at default voltage it booted but Doom and Quake stopped loading with an error message. It feels like a little more voltage would do the trick, but my test board doesn't offer this and it's not really important to me.

But now the crazy thing...

The original multiplier of the P2-400 is 4 and unlocked P2s only allow mulipliers up to the default one. But during my tests I set the FSB to 100 and the multiplier (just for the lulz) to 4.5 - and it booted! Not only did I see the boot message 'Pentium II 450' but I could also run my standard benchmark. I even remember (roughly) the values: 281 for 3DBench, 681 ticks for Doom and 98 fps for Quake. At 100x4 they are 270, 715 and 91.8. So it was running at a higher speed. But I just can't reproduce that anymore! Every time I try it again it won't boot and after a restart it's back at the default fail-safe 100x2 setting - just what I expected when setting a higher mulitplier.

Is that a known behaviour? Did anybody else already observe that? Does it depend on the previous FSB/multiplier setting? Did I have too much beer today? (I swear it was only one 😀 )

Bought this at the flea market today

It has a few bent pins but nothing serious. Still have to test it...

HanSolo wrote on 2022-09-17, 01:36:

I played the ebay lottery and won :) An unlocked Pentium II 400! […]
Show full quote

I played the ebay lottery and won 😀
An unlocked Pentium II 400!

Pentium2_400_SL2SH.jpg

The auction had no photo of the production date but the description said it is an SL2SH. That's the dA1 stepping so I had high hopes that it could be an earlier model. In any case, for 15 Euro shipped it wouldn't be a real loss.
It arrived today and indeed it's from 1998/week 30 and it's unlocked 😀 Additionally it overclocks quite good and I could run benchmarks at 117x4 (468 Mhz). Even at 124x4 (496 Mhz) at default voltage it booted but Doom and Quake stopped loading with an error message. It feels like a little more voltage would do the trick, but my test board doesn't offer this and it's not really important to me.

But now the crazy thing...

The original multiplier of the P2-400 is 4 and unlocked P2s only allow mulipliers up to the default one. But during my tests I set the FSB to 100 and the multiplier (just for the lulz) to 4.5 - and it booted! Not only did I see the boot message 'Pentium II 450' but I could also run my standard benchmark. I even remember (roughly) the values: 281 for 3DBench, 681 ticks for Doom and 98 fps for Quake. At 100x4 they are 270, 715 and 91.8. So it was running at a higher speed. But I just can't reproduce that anymore! Every time I try it again it won't boot and after a restart it's back at the default fail-safe 100x2 setting - just what I expected when setting a higher mulitplier.

Is that a known behaviour? Did anybody else already observe that? Does it depend on the previous FSB/multiplier setting? Did I have too much beer today? (I swear it was only one 😀 )

Very interesting. I didn't know there were unlocked Deschutes PIIs. Some early Klamaths yes, but not Deschutes.
I have one P2 300 SL2YK that can do 66->100MHz FSB, which makes it PII 450Mhz. There were actually 2 steppings that were known to do that: SL2W8 and SL2YK. Reason why is because they had faster 4.4ns L2 cache modules that could reliably clock to half speed of 450.
This is the pic of the one I have:

I have 2 more SL2YK incoming, so I'll have better sample to confirm this on this particular stepping.

Acting out you described could mean L2 cache cannot keep up with the core at those clocks. But, unlocked multiplier has it advantages when downclocking .... emulating Pentium MMX and such. Can it do 2 x66 ?

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-17, 07:25:

Very interesting. I didn't know there were unlocked Deschutes PIIs. Some early Klamaths yes, but not Deschutes. I have one P2 30 […]
Show full quote

HanSolo wrote on 2022-09-17, 01:36:

I played the ebay lottery and won :) An unlocked Pentium II 400! […]
Show full quote

I played the ebay lottery and won 😀
An unlocked Pentium II 400!

Pentium2_400_SL2SH.jpg

The auction had no photo of the production date but the description said it is an SL2SH. That's the dA1 stepping so I had high hopes that it could be an earlier model. In any case, for 15 Euro shipped it wouldn't be a real loss.
It arrived today and indeed it's from 1998/week 30 and it's unlocked 😀 Additionally it overclocks quite good and I could run benchmarks at 117x4 (468 Mhz). Even at 124x4 (496 Mhz) at default voltage it booted but Doom and Quake stopped loading with an error message. It feels like a little more voltage would do the trick, but my test board doesn't offer this and it's not really important to me.

But now the crazy thing...

The original multiplier of the P2-400 is 4 and unlocked P2s only allow mulipliers up to the default one. But during my tests I set the FSB to 100 and the multiplier (just for the lulz) to 4.5 - and it booted! Not only did I see the boot message 'Pentium II 450' but I could also run my standard benchmark. I even remember (roughly) the values: 281 for 3DBench, 681 ticks for Doom and 98 fps for Quake. At 100x4 they are 270, 715 and 91.8. So it was running at a higher speed. But I just can't reproduce that anymore! Every time I try it again it won't boot and after a restart it's back at the default fail-safe 100x2 setting - just what I expected when setting a higher mulitplier.

Is that a known behaviour? Did anybody else already observe that? Does it depend on the previous FSB/multiplier setting? Did I have too much beer today? (I swear it was only one 😀 )

Very interesting. I didn't know there were unlocked Deschutes PIIs. Some early Klamaths yes, but not Deschutes.
I have one P2 300 SL2YK that can do 66->100MHz FSB, which makes it PII 450Mhz. There were actually 2 steppings that were known to do that: SL2W8 and SL2YK. Reason why is because they had faster 4.4ns L2 cache modules that could reliably clock to half speed of 450.
This is the pic of the one I have:
P2300.jpg

I have 2 more SL2YK incoming, so I'll have better sample to confirm this on this particular stepping.

Acting out you described could mean L2 cache cannot keep up with the core at those clocks. But, unlocked multiplier has it advantages when downclocking .... emulating Pentium MMX and such. Can it do 2 x66 ?

Here is some olden but golden(?) info...
Slowing a 440BX based PC

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-17, 07:25:

Very interesting. I didn't know there were unlocked Deschutes PIIs. Some early Klamaths yes, but not Deschutes. I have one P2 30 […]
Show full quote

HanSolo wrote on 2022-09-17, 01:36:

I played the ebay lottery and won :) An unlocked Pentium II 400! […]
Show full quote

I played the ebay lottery and won 😀
An unlocked Pentium II 400!

Pentium2_400_SL2SH.jpg

The auction had no photo of the production date but the description said it is an SL2SH. That's the dA1 stepping so I had high hopes that it could be an earlier model. In any case, for 15 Euro shipped it wouldn't be a real loss.
It arrived today and indeed it's from 1998/week 30 and it's unlocked 😀 Additionally it overclocks quite good and I could run benchmarks at 117x4 (468 Mhz). Even at 124x4 (496 Mhz) at default voltage it booted but Doom and Quake stopped loading with an error message. It feels like a little more voltage would do the trick, but my test board doesn't offer this and it's not really important to me.

But now the crazy thing...

The original multiplier of the P2-400 is 4 and unlocked P2s only allow mulipliers up to the default one. But during my tests I set the FSB to 100 and the multiplier (just for the lulz) to 4.5 - and it booted! Not only did I see the boot message 'Pentium II 450' but I could also run my standard benchmark. I even remember (roughly) the values: 281 for 3DBench, 681 ticks for Doom and 98 fps for Quake. At 100x4 they are 270, 715 and 91.8. So it was running at a higher speed. But I just can't reproduce that anymore! Every time I try it again it won't boot and after a restart it's back at the default fail-safe 100x2 setting - just what I expected when setting a higher mulitplier.

Is that a known behaviour? Did anybody else already observe that? Does it depend on the previous FSB/multiplier setting? Did I have too much beer today? (I swear it was only one 😀 )

Very interesting. I didn't know there were unlocked Deschutes PIIs. Some early Klamaths yes, but not Deschutes.
I have one P2 300 SL2YK that can do 66->100MHz FSB, which makes it PII 450Mhz. There were actually 2 steppings that were known to do that: SL2W8 and SL2YK. Reason why is because they had faster 4.4ns L2 cache modules that could reliably clock to half speed of 450.
This is the pic of the one I have:
P2300.jpg

I have 2 more SL2YK incoming, so I'll have better sample to confirm this on this particular stepping.

Acting out you described could mean L2 cache cannot keep up with the core at those clocks. But, unlocked multiplier has it advantages when downclocking .... emulating Pentium MMX and such. Can it do 2 x66 ?

Unlocked Deschutes are not exactly rare but somewhat hard to find. This is my second 400 and I have some 3xx. They do run underclocked and of course that's exactly the reason I got them for 😀

Back in summer of 1998, I had a PII 400 Vobis Highscreen system, High End at this time and very expensive. My father has always bought High End Systems every few years, and I was a teenager at this time. The CPU was a Sl2S7 spec and an earlier produced Deschutes, I think June 1998. I remember: It was unlocked and runs fine with a 4.5x multiplier = 450MHz, 500 MHz was not stable also with a deacitvated L2 cache and 2.2V VCore, this was an eralier stepping and as we always know, the yield rates are bad with the first steppings . The later produced Deschutes cores should run with <500MHz stable.

Today, I only have a PII 333 Deschutes here with an unlocked multiplier and the rest is unlocked, also two PII 400 CPUs in my collection.

Let the party start!

I hope you put a heatsink on there 😉

Not the best of the multitude of 6800s, but it's AGP and that's what counts. This is the missing piece in my ASRock 775i65G build 'Tuvix'.

imi wrote on 2022-09-17, 12:20:

I hope you put a heatsink on there 😉

Looks like a velocity 1000 many of which didn’t come with a heat sink. Strap one to it and it was possible to get stupidly good overclocks from them.

I'm question the purchase myself, but this caught my eye this morning, seller came down 5 clams, and I bit:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/185330968340

Ultra mini pc with AMD Geode. Oh so exciting. I do love ultra mini boxes, but would prefer a really old something. Like a 186 based board. Ampro or something. I really only bought it for the case. Not that I'll necessarily stuff something else inside it. Unless the board is dead.

Bought this "grab bag" of PC hardware for $38USD shipped, I think I did pretty well. Got a Radeon 9550 256MB (didn't know such a thing existed) and a Nvidia "P118", which is apparently a GeForce 4 MX440:

I also got these two mystery sound cards I know nothing about, a "C3DX" CMI8768 8 channel card and a "Forte Media" FM801-AU that I was hoping was an Aureal Vortex until I removed it from its bag...

EvieSigma wrote on 2022-09-17, 19:57:

Bought this "grab bag" of PC hardware for $38USD shipped, I think I did pretty well. Got a Radeon 9550 256MB (didn't know such a […]
Show full quote

Bought this "grab bag" of PC hardware for $38USD shipped, I think I did pretty well. Got a Radeon 9550 256MB (didn't know such a thing existed) and a Nvidia "P118", which is apparently a GeForce 4 MX440:

PXL_20220917_145750461.jpg
PXL_20220917_145559441.jpg
PXL_20220917_145554241.jpg

I also got these two mystery sound cards I know nothing about, a "C3DX" CMI8768 8 channel card and a "Forte Media" FM801-AU that I was hoping was an Aureal Vortex until I removed it from its bag...

PXL_20220917_145619610.jpg

PXL_20220917_145834969.jpg

I LOVE grab bags! Especially when they are a good deal. And when you get that one card which is usually valued more than the entire lot... jackpot! ...And then everything else is gravy.

HanSolo wrote on 2022-09-17, 11:37:

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-17, 07:25:

Very interesting. I didn't know there were unlocked Deschutes PIIs. Some early Klamaths yes, but not Deschutes. I have one P2 30 […]
Show full quote

HanSolo wrote on 2022-09-17, 01:36:

I played the ebay lottery and won :) An unlocked Pentium II 400! […]
Show full quote

I played the ebay lottery and won 😀
An unlocked Pentium II 400!

Pentium2_400_SL2SH.jpg

The auction had no photo of the production date but the description said it is an SL2SH. That's the dA1 stepping so I had high hopes that it could be an earlier model. In any case, for 15 Euro shipped it wouldn't be a real loss.
It arrived today and indeed it's from 1998/week 30 and it's unlocked 😀 Additionally it overclocks quite good and I could run benchmarks at 117x4 (468 Mhz). Even at 124x4 (496 Mhz) at default voltage it booted but Doom and Quake stopped loading with an error message. It feels like a little more voltage would do the trick, but my test board doesn't offer this and it's not really important to me.

But now the crazy thing...

The original multiplier of the P2-400 is 4 and unlocked P2s only allow mulipliers up to the default one. But during my tests I set the FSB to 100 and the multiplier (just for the lulz) to 4.5 - and it booted! Not only did I see the boot message 'Pentium II 450' but I could also run my standard benchmark. I even remember (roughly) the values: 281 for 3DBench, 681 ticks for Doom and 98 fps for Quake. At 100x4 they are 270, 715 and 91.8. So it was running at a higher speed. But I just can't reproduce that anymore! Every time I try it again it won't boot and after a restart it's back at the default fail-safe 100x2 setting - just what I expected when setting a higher mulitplier.

Is that a known behaviour? Did anybody else already observe that? Does it depend on the previous FSB/multiplier setting? Did I have too much beer today? (I swear it was only one 😀 )

Very interesting. I didn't know there were unlocked Deschutes PIIs. Some early Klamaths yes, but not Deschutes.
I have one P2 300 SL2YK that can do 66->100MHz FSB, which makes it PII 450Mhz. There were actually 2 steppings that were known to do that: SL2W8 and SL2YK. Reason why is because they had faster 4.4ns L2 cache modules that could reliably clock to half speed of 450.
This is the pic of the one I have:
P2300.jpg

I have 2 more SL2YK incoming, so I'll have better sample to confirm this on this particular stepping.

Acting out you described could mean L2 cache cannot keep up with the core at those clocks. But, unlocked multiplier has it advantages when downclocking .... emulating Pentium MMX and such. Can it do 2 x66 ?

Unlocked Deschutes are not exactly rare but somewhat hard to find. This is my second 400 and I have some 3xx. They do run underclocked and of course that's exactly the reason I got them for 😀

How can you tell if its unlocked? I have several p2's sitting around I'd like to check.

edit: found this thread - List of UNLOCKED Pentium II CPUs - A Quick Glance Looks like one of the ones I have is unlocked. Its a SL2S7 98/16 400mhz Malay. I'll have to dig up the other ones I have to check.