CD boot was not a guaranteed feature, only becoming more and more common until it was nearly ubiquitous, I came across a 2000s board that didn't have a CD boot option and was rather amazed. Can't recall though which it was at the moment. That goes for motherboards as well as in era optical drives, though I think the drives were more ahead of the curve and got to be mostly bootable by 8x speed.

Though the 2006 does support it, but not as default option, has to be specifically enabled...

"Boot SequenceAllows the system BIOS to first try to boot the operating system from theselected disk drive.The options are: A, C (Default); C, A; C, CDROM, A;CDROM, C, A." in the BIOS Features menu.

Horun wrote on 2022-11-06, 03:49:

Curious why you are not test booting from a floppy drive. Booting from HD or CD would be a much later test for me for first testing an old motherboard... just saying 😀

The first thing I do is boot into UBCD.
Memtest86+, HWiNFO, System Speed Test, SeaTools...
It got almost all the DOS tools I need. Very convenient.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-11-06, 04:42:

Though the 2006 does support it, but not as default option, has to be specifically enabled...

"Boot SequenceAllows the system BIOS to first try to boot the operating system from theselected disk drive.The options are: A, C (Default); C, A; C, CDROM, A;CDROM, C, A." in the BIOS Features menu.

That's standard for old boards. The first thing I do, after a newly acquired board POSTs, is to check the boot sequence in BIOS.
Had to do the same with my two working P55T2P4 and my GA-586HX.

Maybe the BIOS is too old? Does anyone have a trustworthy source for the latest PT-2006 BIOS? I don't want to flash the P55T2p4 as long as it so unstable. Luckily I now have three of them and can transplant the BIOS onto a stable one and flash it there.

What about the fact, that the P55T2P4 (my 3rd one) needs a break, before it can be powered on again? I know this is usually caused by faulty capacitors. Can a weak Dallas battery also cause this? Another thing I noticed about the Dallas: It remembers the time, but doesn't continue to count once power is shut down. Clock was stuck in November 2021.

Just noticed that the Asus 486SP3 has a socketed Dallas chip. Nice! I'm gonna borrow the Dallas from a modified P55T2P4. Sadly the newly acquired P55T2P4 has the Dallas soldered on.
Also noticed that the 486SP3 had L2 cache activated, although there is no L2 cache present. I think the original owner moved his RAM and cache from Socket 3 to Socket 5 and then moved CPU + RAM to Socket 7.

sounds fun, might boot with el torito floppy emulation.

Found myself a Roland CM-500 module for 160 euros, which is a good price nowadays I believe. It is complete with original PSU and manual.

The seller has another one for the same price (Located in the Netherlands) so if anyone would be interested, there is still a chance because I did not buy both of them.

I just got myself a 15" Philips CRT, maybe I paid a little bit too much for it, but it really is in pristine condition. Have to test it a little bit more though...

I just got myself a 15" Philips CRT, maybe I paid a little bit too much for it, but it really is in pristine condition. Have to test it a little bit more though...

Martin85 wrote on 2022-11-06, 19:22:

I just got myself a 15" Philips CRT, maybe I paid a little bit too much for it, but it really is in pristine condition. Have to test it a little bit more though...

https://ibb.co/3srLW87

How much is too much? 😀
To post pictures you can simply attach the JPGs to the message. No need to upload them elsewhere
(Just guessing: 50 Euro? 😀 )

frankmonk wrote on 2022-11-03, 20:39:

Got a nice X58 Asus Rampage III extreme and i7-990x Extreme Edition for a good price. It's finally time to set up a windows xp b […]
Show full quote

Got a nice X58 Asus Rampage III extreme and i7-990x Extreme Edition for a good price.
It's finally time to set up a windows xp build despite having a bunch other projects...
What cooler would you guys recommend for LGA1366?
IMG_20221103_213407.jpg
IMG_20221103_213342.jpg

I have a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R with an x5650 Xeon oc'd to 4ghz for years now. Its still my primary desktop I stuck a 3070 into it and it handles most everything I throw at it.

Just won this for 20€ incl. shipping:

Wanted the OCZ for an upcoming project. My red G.Skill sticks look really ugly when they're not seated on a red MSI board.
I now got a full 4x1GB Kit of the Kingston. Might use them on my Alive Dual. Blue on blue looks good.
Don't really care about the Elixir sticks. Low capacity DDR3, urghs.

Yesterday's loot:

-Delux MT302 case w/ LG DVDRW
-Gigabyte K8VT800 (had a Sempron CPU not pictured here, as well as a bulging Sanyo WG cap (surprising, since Sanyos were well regarded!)
- Delux ATX-400W P4 PSU - horribly gutless
- Rhino (Raidmax) RX-500Y - will be rebuilt soon, that's why no wires come out of it since it's empty)
- Spire SP-ATX-420WTN-PFC PSU - pretty decent, will do only 300-350W and even the PFC coil kinda states 300W...
- ABIT NF-M2SV - recapped as it had OST bulgers all round, and the Sanyos smelt nasty, enhancing my belief they're fakes. It's a rebranded ECS/PCChips as far as I can tell, but the BIOS looks pretty solid, so big props to ABIT for fixing ECS's craptacular BIOSes.
- Saphire Radeon 9550 256MB - had a seized and clogged fan which I cleaned up, used some bicycle oil and it's purring like new.
-ASUS P5PE-VM - works, although the AGP MOSFETs got pretty toasty. Currently has 2x512MB and a P4 631.
- Matsonic MS8308EP(266) - needs new VRM and AGP caps, probably runs fine. The smaller G-Luxon SM series caps will stay as those are resleeved Teapos, and on top of that, they predate the era where Teapo went downhill BAD (remember how many MSI mainboards were plagued by the newer Teapos?)
- Ford Racing 2 - XPLOSIV release, was still sealed when I bought it
-200GB 7200RPM Hitachi, IDE interface

Not pictured: Sempron 754 CPU, HP Pavilion DV8000 laptop (which besides a repaste, needed a new display and keyboard.)

kixs wrote on 2022-11-05, 16:35:

New item for the collection :D […]
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New item for the collection 😁

Still sealed Speedstar64 2MB ISA card

I love new old stock, especially cool for an ISA video card. $200 though is a pretty penny but probably about right.

Veeb0rg wrote on 2022-11-07, 04:58:

frankmonk wrote on 2022-11-03, 20:39:

Got a nice X58 Asus Rampage III extreme and i7-990x Extreme Edition for a good price. It's finally time to set up a windows xp b […]
Show full quote

Got a nice X58 Asus Rampage III extreme and i7-990x Extreme Edition for a good price.
It's finally time to set up a windows xp build despite having a bunch other projects...
What cooler would you guys recommend for LGA1366?
IMG_20221103_213407.jpg
IMG_20221103_213342.jpg

I have a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R with an x5650 Xeon oc'd to 4ghz for years now. Its still my primary desktop I stuck a 3070 into it and it handles most everything I throw at it.

I built me and my wife gaming systems around the Asus Sabertooth X58 both have Xeon X5675 at 4.2 GHz. 16 gigs of ddr3 triple channel at 1866. Both have 3060s and all SSD storage. They absolutely fly through any task we have the main game we both play is Guild Wars 2 and we have the settings maxed out at 1440p and we average in the 100-120 fps range. The best part is even with the 3060s we spent a grand total of 1200 bucks for both systems. The X58 platform might not be the latest or greatest but it's still a powerful platform.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-11-07, 11:00:

- ABIT NF-M2SV - recapped as it had OST bulgers all round, and the Sanyos smelt nasty, enhancing my belief they're fakes. It's a rebranded ECS/PCChips as far as I can tell, but the BIOS looks pretty solid, so big props to ABIT for fixing ECS's craptacular BIOSes.

Hmmm, might wanna put Abit BIOS on my ECS 🤣 ... Though the Abit is looking feature lightened, less SATA for one thing.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-11-07, 15:18:

PcBytes wrote on 2022-11-07, 11:00:

- ABIT NF-M2SV - recapped as it had OST bulgers all round, and the Sanyos smelt nasty, enhancing my belief they're fakes. It's a rebranded ECS/PCChips as far as I can tell, but the BIOS looks pretty solid, so big props to ABIT for fixing ECS's craptacular BIOSes.

Hmmm, might wanna put Abit BIOS on my ECS 🤣 ... Though the Abit is looking feature lightened, less SATA for one thing.

Actually, that SATA port was ripped off the board, it seems. I'll see if I can harvest a port from another dead board and solder it on there.

Yesterday, i cleaned some cards i "recently" bought.
Not very recently actually because i took a break from my retro hobbies after an very frustrating incident with a GTX 7800 512MB.

I love that 2005 card. Twice the memory and hugely overclocked in comparison to the standard 256MB version.
But it's not a super common card. I had one for some years. It worked well, but i wanted an SLI.
I finally found some in US. Cheap, but untested. Less than 15$ each. But adding shipping and taxes raised the price to 50$ a piece.
I badly wanted my SLI so ordered two. To have a total of 3. Just in case one would be dead on arrival.
Waited a month. The two cards arrived. On artifacting, the other was fine.
With the one i already had, i still had my SLI.
Frequencies were a bit different. So i moded a bios with nibitor.
I tested the SLI. Everything worked ! Awesome. After so many years !
I cleaned everything, changed paste, pads. Fan lubrification. Good to go !

I took the time to install everything in the case. I started F.E.A.R.
After less than 1h of gameplay. Computer reboot. Card not detected.
The "old" 7800 GTX 512 just died live in game.

The same week, i received a broken mainboard and an 8800 Ultra that started artifacting a few days after.
So... i just stopped retro activities for a week or two... i was too pissed.

But on the bright side, i was able to repair my Soltek SL-54U1 SS7 motherboard (bios was missing)

I found a nice standard Radeon 8500 (not LE, not AIW, not DV, just the "normal"one)

I cut two of my fingers cleaning the dissipator. It's probably what ATI calls "cutting edge DirectX 8.1 graphics".
Yes, definitely razor sharp.

HanSolo wrote on 2022-11-07, 00:50:

How much is too much? :) To post pictures you can simply attach the JPGs to the message. No need to upload them elsewhere (Just […]
Show full quote

Martin85 wrote on 2022-11-06, 19:22:

I just got myself a 15" Philips CRT, maybe I paid a little bit too much for it, but it really is in pristine condition. Have to test it a little bit more though...

https://ibb.co/3srLW87

How much is too much? 😀
To post pictures you can simply attach the JPGs to the message. No need to upload them elsewhere
(Just guessing: 50 Euro? 😀 )

Yep, 50euros... I tried with 40, but didn't want to lower the price. 😀 Isn't that too much for a totally common crt?
On the other side, today I finally got myself the joystick of my childhood and a free cherry keyboard with AT style connector as a bonus. The joystick cost me 10euros and the keyboard a coffee 😅.

Been on an AMD KT400 motherboard binge recently. Need to stop as I've bought a fair few.

Had a pleasant surprise in today's mail. Currently working on a couple 386 builds and can't wait to try this out in one of them. 😁

(Does this count as retro hardware?)

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-11-07, 22:03:

Had a pleasant surprise in today's mail. Currently working on a couple 386 builds and can't wait to try this out in one of them. 😁

(Does this count as retro hardware?)

Legally, no. By purpose? Very much so.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-11-07, 22:03:

Had a pleasant surprise in today's mail. Currently working on a couple 386 builds and can't wait to try this out in one of them. 😁

(Does this count as retro hardware?)

Beautiful, simply beautiful