jmrydholm wrote:

I have an AMD 2.1GhZ system with a socket A chip and 1.5 Gigs of Ram, Audigy 2 ZS, etc. Plenty of free slots and a spare drive...should I install Win98 as a second OS and used the Glide cards with my GeForce 5200? That system should handle it easy enough. Or should I use hacked 3dfx drivers for XP?

Oh, that's a different story. Frankly it's more optimal than my own glide setup, I went from a P4 2.8ghz to a 1ghz coppermine simply because the coppermine was more nostalgic 😀. You'll get plenty of juice out of twin V2's on any box with a cpu say 800mhz+ (with 1+ ghz being golden).

If you go for Win98, whatever you do don't add more ram. It can only address a max of 2GB, and if the rumors are true it sucks at 512mb and above without an official service pack. Oddly enough, I've run both PIII with 768MB and a P4 with 1GB of ram with no troubles, but then again all I ran on them was games.

I say try it with Win98 though. You don't have to do a thing to get games of the era to work right the first time.

Got a free haul today, 4 old Pentium 3 servers! Pics coming tomorrow or the day after (now I remembered pics in another thread...can't remember where though...)

Sounds like a plan. It has an A7N8X deluxe Asus motherboard, with SATA, so it would be the fastest Win98 system/XP rig I ever owned. I might use my spare drive, or dual boot or something. Then I can use the Optiplex as a footrest/portable radiator in the winter.

jmrydholm wrote:

Sounds like a plan. It has an A7N8X deluxe Asus motherboard, with SATA, so it would be the fastest Win98 system/XP rig I ever owned. I might use my spare drive, or dual boot or something. Then I can use the Optiplex as a footrest/portable radiator in the winter.

Haha.

Back in the day when I ran folding (before electricity skyrocketed) I would block off the heating register in my room as my cpu had a TDP of 90W (Pentium D). It kept the room cozy even on the coldest winter nights. Sometimes I'd even need to crack a window.

I also hated it though as I sleep in the same room, so I had to remove every single activity light from the box.

I made a couple really quick pics as I'm expecting someone at my door any moment now.

2 seem to be standard server-ish ATX cases and the other 2 are those weird proprietary designs. One of those 2 is HUUUGE!

Heres the huge one, I put a dead Slot 1 board on top of it for comparison. It's VERY heavy, so better not try to lift it on your own!

They are not totally complete, but 2 come with a standard ATX ASUS CUR-TDR dual s370 board while the other 2 are Slot one I think. Alas, no PPro.

Have you opened them up yet? You might have multiple hard drives in them.

I opened them up real quick only. Yes, theres a couple SCSI drives in them, 9.1GB iirc.
3 of those are in the really big machine

I've had no time yet to take any more pics or investigate them further yet, just got home from a dinner and was busy all day.

Tetrium wrote:

I opened them up real quick only. Yes, theres a couple SCSI drives in them, 9.1GB iirc.
3 of those are in the really big machine

I've had no time yet to take any more pics or investigate them further yet, just got home from a dinner and was busy all day.

Then they're fast, and loud. But fast 😀

SavantStrike wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

I opened them up real quick only. Yes, theres a couple SCSI drives in them, 9.1GB iirc.
3 of those are in the really big machine

I've had no time yet to take any more pics or investigate them further yet, just got home from a dinner and was busy all day.

Then they're fast, and loud. But fast 😀

I have 10k RPM SCSI in my Compaq W4000, and yes, they do get loud when they spin up. That was my Everquest machine for a long time and I never suffered lag when zoning with I like I did with my previous machine and it's ATA-66 drive. It would take me 5 minutes to change zones sometimes or sometimes it would just lock up and I'd have to reboot which was why I went with a system with SCSI when I upgraded and I never had those problems again.

And to keep this post topical, I recently added a second Voodoo 3 3000 PCI and a Voodoo 3 1000 AGP to my 3DFX collection. 😜

sliderider wrote:

SavantStrike wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

I opened them up real quick only. Yes, theres a couple SCSI drives in them, 9.1GB iirc.
3 of those are in the really big machine

I've had no time yet to take any more pics or investigate them further yet, just got home from a dinner and was busy all day.

Then they're fast, and loud. But fast 😀

I have 10k RPM SCSI in my Compaq W4000, and yes, they do get loud when they spin up. That was my Everquest machine for a long time and I never suffered lag when zoning with I like I did with my previous machine and it's ATA-66 drive. It would take me 5 minutes to change zones sometimes or sometimes it would just lock up and I'd have to reboot which was why I went with a system with SCSI when I upgraded and I never had those problems again.

And to keep this post topical, I recently added a second Voodoo 3 3000 PCI and a Voodoo 3 1000 AGP to my 3DFX collection. 😜

Zomg! Cheers for the V3 3000 PCI! I never been able to find one. Only got the AGP 3k ones (along with 1 working V3 3500).

I did get another interesting mail today, but that's more about official MS Windows CD's...😁

Edit:And loud harddrives...make me nuts!
Long shot, but eh...is there any kind of firmware or something that can make then turn slower? I don't care if this would make them twice as slow. If they're noisy, I won't ever use them in the first place.

My 3dfx Black Magics came today! The seller was awesome enough to give me a *third* card for free. I'd put his ebay feedback as over 9000, but it only let me do 5 stars. 😁 Gonna put the third into the Pentium, see what it can do. Maybe I'll sell or keep it as a spare in case one dies. These cards look pristine!

I just drank a ton of water, the MO temp. went down to the 60's, and I blew stuff up on Quake 4 b/c I'm too tired to set up the 3dfx now. Good times.

Full boxed (with box) Gravis ultrasound MAX for 30 euros..

Robin4 wrote:

http://i55.tinypic.com/11rda46.jpg […]
Show full quote

Full boxed (with box) Gravis ultrasound MAX for 30 euros..

I don't know why, but your pics keep being invisible to me, as if they are blocked on my side or something.

Now back OT, picks of the 4 servers coming up!

Iam using tinypic
i would try an other host.

First the pics of the really large server.
The front panel seems to have broken, so it keeps dropping away, so to say. Theres nothing holding it in position anymore, previous owner must've broken off some of those "KeepMeInPlace" thingies.

The front of the case looks bad-ass imo, but I don't think I'll be keeping it, even though the case itself is awesome. It's simply too heavy to lift and can't be repaired with standard parts if anything were to break.
Heres some pics, one of the front and 1 with the side panel removed:

For anyone wanting to see more pics, click these links:

Front panel removed
Drive cage (on the side)
3 SCSI drives
One of the HDD's
"Fan panel" removed
The 2 CPU's, no idea why there are 2 completely different CPU's installed though
PCI-E netowork card, taken upside down woops!! 😁
2x kingston memory modules, the buffered kind
The weird PSU, taken from the other side of the case.

This case is VERY easy to replace broken parts with. You can remove parts of the casing by just loosening a single thumbscrew.
The "fan panel" is actually somekind of metal piece of the case holding a whopping 4 fans!
1 is located in the top, one in the middle and 2 are directly next to eachother! My guess would be that this was done so 1 failing fan wouldn't be catastrophic to cooling the CPU's, even though running 2 fans next to eachother has no real benefit by itself.

I found 2 CPU's installed, but they were different. No idea why this is, but I did learn from the previous owner that at least 1 of the 4 machines wouldn't even post.

Even though I think the machine is AWESOME, I prolly can't keep it around as it's too heavy for me to lift alone!
To gine you an idea, the length is about 1.5 times that of an ordinary ATX case, and it's all made out of steel.

Robin4 wrote:

Iam using tinypic
i would try an other host.

I could recommend you create an account on photobucket. Been using it for a year or so and am very satisfied 😉

I've had the exact same problems on other forums as well with tinypics. I haven't got a clue why, it's the same in all my browsers. Also I know this wasn't always an issue.

Heres the second case.

It's pretty much a broken casing. It has the kind of "roof+sides are 1 piece" way of opening it up, and it can't be "clicked back into place" because probably some of those little thingies are broken. When I took these pics I heard a little bit rumbling around (somekind of broken bit it sounded like).

Like the previous huge case, this one uses totally non-standard parts, so I'll prolly be scrapping this one (I'll scrap this one and the huge one because I'll be keeping the other 2...just watch! 😁).

Heres a pic with the cover removed:

One interesting thing is, it appears (just from a first glance) to have an on-board VGA chip (probably Matrox), which is under the black heatsink. The little memory module is I presume a graphics card upgrade module, very similar to some of the very early Matrox AGP cards (and that's why I suspect the chip to be Matrox. Another reason is the shape of the black heatsink).

Heres 2 more pics, embedded withing clickylinks to preserve bandwidth 🤣
Another pic
One more other pic

The expansion card appears to be somekind of network card again. I noticed one of the case cover plates is missing, presumably the ISA card that was previously part of this system had been removed before the system found it's way to me...oh well.

The final 2 servers I've gotten are very similar and are only different in the parts that were in them. The 2 cases are identical and appear to be standard ATX inside while looking server-ish from the outside.

I haven't checked if theres any proprietary hurdles waiting for me, but from 1st glance these 2 cases appear to be quite standard ATX ones.

These 2 I will keep for sure!!!
They both have an ASUS CUR-DLS dual-Socket 370 motherboard with no less then seven PCI slots, 2 of which are the larger 64-bit variety.
They have somekind of server chipset, which northbridge appears to be VERY flat (it's the chip with orange lettering).
The cases have a 8cm fan in the rear, which means these cases have at least decent cooling.
One odd thing about these 2 cases is that they come with the old-fashioned U-cap instead of separate side-panels. Never seen an U-cap case with a rear exhaust fan before.

I'm not sure if these work or not, but if even one of these work, I'll be very happy!
These don't have AGP, but they will accept those nasty buffered/registered SDRAM modules, of which I have plenty for these boards.
I'm already thinking...Voodoo2 SLI!!!

Afaik they also won't work with Tualatin, so Coppermine it will be!
For single CPU use, one needs a dummy CPU placed in the second CPU socket. One of these boards came with an empty CPU socket and one dummy while the other came with 2 CPU's (haven't checked which ones as I haven't removed the coolers yet). This means I'll be one dummy short, unless the dummy's I have as spares will work in these (not planning any dual-CPU rig atm).

No idea about LSI 9x drivers, will have to look into this. Prolly ASUS have them? But this will have to wait, now for the pics (sorry, only 4 but it's enough!).

Now on to the pics!

The back, with 8cm fan:

The U-cap removed:

Pic of the drive bays
Odd looking PSU, dunno yet if a standard will fit without some hacking yet. We'll see how things go 😉
Pic of the PSU label, with a surprisingly low amperage for the 12V line!

All in all, I think these 2 cases look very neat!!

Odd looking PSU, dunno yet if a standard will fit without some hacking yet. We'll see how things go

Those Astec PSUs are pretty close to bulletproof... way overbuilt. The low amperage on the 12V line isn't that unusual for older OEM PSUs, and it does have 30A available on 5V, so it'd be a prime candidate for a badass Athlon system if it turns out either of the existing boards doesn't work.

@Tetrium

That's a sweet haul! You have to keep one at least and max it out.. V2 SLI or V5500 PCI would be super in that...and pls post some pics of the final result too!

P.S wish I had the space for that in my house