shamino wrote on 2023-08-02, 06:43:

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TNT2 M64 "Pro"
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TNT2_M64 front.jpg
This was listed as a TNT2 Pro, and the labeling implies that with the name "G4000 Pro", but it's actually an M64.
tnt2M64Pro-driver40.72.gif
I think there's such a thing as an "M64 Pro" - an M64 that's clocked slightly higher on the core, and that's what this is, apparently. The Windows driver lists the device name as "TNT2 Model 64 / Model 64 Pro" so apparently the latter exists.
So I was disappointed with what this turned out to be, but it appears to be new or at least well kept. It's a late produced card with 32MB. It works fine and overclocks well and although there was a return policy I decided to keep it. Believe it or not, this is my only working TNT2 card, low end as it may be. I'd have been a lot happier with a proper TNT2 Pro, though.
It clocked up to about 184MHz core / 194MHz RAM, so it likes to run.

even such a modest tnt2 is still good for just about anything the late 90's can throw at it, good all round cards so its nice to have it in your collection as its the only one (working)

Bought these two ATi beauties, a Radeon 7200 DDR 64 and a Radeon 9100 DDR 128. The 128Mb 9100 is rather unusual as it appears to be a Crucial model . .even has the Crucial sticker on the back, wonder what they changed if anything. Im also curious as to what drugs ATI was smoking .. why is the 9200 and 9250 such a huge downgrade ? ...were TMUs expensive to put on GPU dies that they cut them in half ?

Bought them along with two other parts which Ill have to throw in a second post.

Part 2

To go with the two ATi cards above I also bought a very clean Iwill BD100 Plus BX board and a P3 500 CPU, the whole kit is heading to the Lian Li PC 10 case I bought last month.

Might do a build post about it, not sure yet as the post Im sure will take more time to edit and format that the actual build 🤣.

appiah4 wrote on 2023-08-01, 14:44:

Yeah I already have a WaveRider 32+, pretty great card if you don't count the 37KB TSR required to use the onboard wavetable 😅

TSR is only needed on the card with WaveFront chipset which lacks a CPU to do MIDI processing (like AWE32 for example). Ones with the Samsung one (like on that photo) or its rebranded Aztech version don't need any TSR as those chips have internal MIDI processor in them.

Tiido wrote on 2023-08-02, 11:51:

appiah4 wrote on 2023-08-01, 14:44:

Yeah I already have a WaveRider 32+, pretty great card if you don't count the 37KB TSR required to use the onboard wavetable 😅

TSR is only needed on the card with WaveFront chipset which lacks a CPU to do MIDI processing (like AWE32 for example). Ones with the Samsung one (like on that photo) or its rebranded Aztech version don't need any TSR as those chips have internal MIDI processor in them.

Mine is the ICS WaveFront chipset.. On the plus side, it has a very pleasant 2MB sample vs the 1MB sample on the Samsung ones. On the negative side, it's not very feasible to use for games.. I haven't tried loading that TSR high TBH, but I'm not sure it'd be very easy to do so. Maybe with QEMM etc?

Tiido wrote on 2023-08-02, 11:51:

..rebranded Aztech version...

Its interesting that they sometimes rebrand chips and sometimes not.
I had a look at my model and its a rebranded one.

I bought these 2 Asrock combo boards listed as not working,

K8 combo just needed new caps on cpu vrm and new sata connectors,
vrm caps on P4 combo was already replaced by someone and they were backwards, probably he got fooled by the markings on the pcb, also 2 mosfets on 1.5v rail were dead.
board was struggling to post with any cpu higher than 3.0Ghz, so I added 4 polymer caps near cpu socket where asrock didn't bother to solder and that fixed the issue.

Karbist wrote on 2023-08-02, 14:24:

I bought these 2 Asrock combo boards listed as not working, […]
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I bought these 2 Asrock combo boards listed as not working,

Asrock.jpg

K8 combo just needed new caps on cpu vrm and new sata connectors,
vrm caps on P4 combo was already replaced by someone and they were backwards, probably he got fooled by the markings on the pcb, also 2 mosfets on 1.5v rail were dead.
board was struggling to post with any cpu higher than 3.0Ghz, so I added 4 polymer caps near cpu socket where asrock didn't bother to solder and that fixed the issue.

Looks like the P4 board has broken ram sockets .. unless they are meant to be like that .. I wouldn't think so though.

Checked the Asrock site and yeah they are broken, do they still work like that ? would seem like the ram stick wouldn't be held in well enough.

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-08-02, 14:37:

Looks like the P4 board has broken ram sockets .. unless they are meant to be like that .. I wouldn't think so though.

Checked the Asrock site and yeah they are broken, do they still work like that ? would seem like the ram stick wouldn't be held in well enough.

yeah one end of 2 ram slots are broken but they work fine, I probably cut 2 ends of ram slot if I find similar one and glue it to these ones, not gonna bother replacing them.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-08-01, 23:48:

shamino wrote on 2023-08-01, 23:10:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-08-01, 12:16:

They released this in 2002?
Black/silver wasnt a thing until for a couple of years, at least not on the mainstream.

It was cards like this that got the maufacturers to start making cases you could see into. Not the other way around.

It's a shame that AGP cards are installed upside down, though, so even with a window the interesting side of fancy video cards are hidden.
They didn't even fix that with PCI Express, which kind of surprised me. The only reason cards got flipped in the first place was so they could have a shared slot position between ISA and PCI.

I mean TBF there is reverse ATX like what Dell used for some of their mid 2000s designs, but that creates a whole slew of new problems.

But even then the cards were designed so as to be upside down.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-08-01, 23:48:

shamino wrote on 2023-08-01, 23:10:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-08-01, 12:16:

They released this in 2002?
Black/silver wasnt a thing until for a couple of years, at least not on the mainstream.

It was cards like this that got the maufacturers to start making cases you could see into. Not the other way around.

It's a shame that AGP cards are installed upside down, though, so even with a window the interesting side of fancy video cards are hidden.
They didn't even fix that with PCI Express, which kind of surprised me. The only reason cards got flipped in the first place was so they could have a shared slot position between ISA and PCI.

I mean TBF there is reverse ATX like what Dell used for some of their mid 2000s designs, but that creates a whole slew of new problems.

My Precision 690 is BTX.
Even with the cards mounted so the front side is up the cards is upside down, the GTX text on the card is orientated so the motherboard is down, but Im not looking at it from the motherboard.
The only time fancy looking PCI cards make sense is when in a desktop PC case with a window in the side. Because thats the only time the card is the right way up when youre looking at it.
Its only in recent years case manufacturers have realised this and mount video cards on PCIe headers away from the motherboard infront of the window.

GF4200ti-8x
HD3650
HD5870
HD6870
Damn wife caught me. All those ATI are surplus for me, can't test them as they are PCIe. And I don't have a PCIe-capable test set - nor do I now have the option to build one ...
Might not tell her I'm looking for two cases atm.. This shit got out of hand.

Karbist wrote on 2023-08-02, 14:56:

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-08-02, 14:37:

Looks like the P4 board has broken ram sockets .. unless they are meant to be like that .. I wouldn't think so though.

Checked the Asrock site and yeah they are broken, do they still work like that ? would seem like the ram stick wouldn't be held in well enough.

yeah one end of 2 ram slots are broken but they work fine, I probably cut 2 ends of ram slot if I find similar one and glue it to these ones, not gonna bother replacing them.

They are awesome boards, glad you have them working again!

Tseng ET6000 with its strange MRAM (of 1.25MB each module, 2.5 in total).
Another non-working ET6000 - if broken and not fixable it will be salvaged for the RAM to have 4.5MB on the first one.

Aaaand - boxed Matrox Rainbow Runner studio - MPEG encoder for my Matrox Millenium II. This is going to be part of a glorious Pentium Pro build.

Bought a Diamond Viper V770 for P3 build I'm planning right now. 30€ plus shipping, not an amazing price but I guess that's the status quo right now.

Also picked up a Pentium MMX 233 today, for the extra low price of free - bad photos/description and untested, but I'm not complaining. Had to drive a bit, but the sun was shining and the top was down, so I declare that a win.

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-08-02, 09:55:

Bought these two ATi beauties, a Radeon 7200 DDR 64 and a Radeon 9100 DDR 128. The 128Mb 9100 is rather unusual as it appears to be a Crucial model . .even has the Crucial sticker on the back, wonder what they changed if anything.

I vaguely remember the days when Crucial was advertising video cards on their web site. I've never actually seen one though. Cool card.

rkurbatov wrote on 2023-08-02, 16:43:

Tseng ET6000 with its strange MRAM (of 1.25MB each module, 2.5 in total).

It's not that strange when you think about it: at 1280x1024@16 you need exactly 2.5 MB

Bought two ISA sound cards for my PIII Slot 1 build

Sound Blaster Pro 2 CT1600

Awe64

Going to set them up to work together, Ill use the AWE64 for windows and late DOS games and the SB Pro2 for earlier Pure DOS gaming, I believe both cards should be just fine with a 500Mhz CPU, I don't remember either being speed affected. I wanted a AWE64 Gold 4390 but ...prices for that card are not great and even at 200 USD I cant justify the cost when the 4380 is only 50 bucks and I have a compatible Simmcomm for it. No idea why AWE64 Gold prices still remain so high, its pretty silly.

Also have a pair of 12Mb Diamond Monster II Voodoo2 cards that dont have a home yet so they may end up in this build paired with the 9100 or 7200.

Hmmm Just realised I also have a Diamond MX300 not in a PC yet ...wonder if this build can support 3 sound cards...leaving the AWE64 for just late DOS stuff and the MX300 for Windows.

Picked up two GPUs recently:

Caught a ASUS GeForce FX 5700 256MB (normal version, not LE nor Ultra) right as it was listed for $30. "Working enviroment" pull so we will see how that plays out.

I also bought the "ATI Rage 128 Pro 32MB AGP VGA ATI-128 PRO/ULTRA Vintage Video Graphics Card"

Or as I like to call it: an ATI Radeon X800 GTO (or possibly XL, hard to tell without the cooler).

Paid $20 including shipping untested. Looks like it either had at one point aftermarket cooling, or someone tried to put aftermarket cooling on and gave up. Could be either, I think the mostly likely answer is its been through the eWaste system and someone saw a giant block of aluminum and snagged it. Or the OG owner upgraded and moved their cooling setup forward. The fact it HAD aftermarket cooling tells me it was well cared for at some point, so I am hopeful. The sellers only other listed item is an article of clothing, so thats not much to go on.

HanSolo wrote on 2023-08-02, 20:58:

It's not that strange when you think about it: at 1280x1024@16 you need exactly 2.5 MB

That's true. But I've read another explanation that such amount of memory is a result of a memory structure.

rkurbatov wrote on 2023-08-03, 10:36:

That's true. But I've read another explanation that such amount of memory is a result of a memory structure.

Multibank DRAM allows for chips of capacities other than powers of two, but powers of two were also available.
I've seen MDRAM-based cards with 2, 2.25, 3, and 4 MB.