Does anyone else love the sight of these old boards that are practically wall-to-wall slots and sockets? It makes me feel excited for the expansion possibilities.

Nowadays, it's extremely hard to get a board with ample PCIe slots. Every time the standard is pushed to a new generation, they use the faster slot, often with fewer overall lanes. We've lost even more recently with all of the onboard NVMe.

I wild actually prefer a board that's one generation older of PCIe standard, to provide me with double the available lanes. Does anyone know if this is possible, without the use of a PLEX chip?

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-02-24, 21:01:

Nowadays, it's extremely hard to get a board with ample PCIe slots. Every time the standard is pushed to a new generation, they use the faster slot, often with fewer overall lanes. We've lost even more recently with all of the onboard NVMe.

I don't mind losing them as they are hardly used nowadays outside of specific needs and most of the consumer hardware that isn't a GPU doesn't need more than x1 or x4 PCIe lanes.

I wild actually prefer a board that's one generation older of PCIe standard, to provide me with double the available lanes. Does anyone know if this is possible, without the use of a PLEX chip?

Look for HEDT platform as they have plenty of PCIe lanes, but they are more expensive and tend to have the CPU microarchitecture one or two generations behind.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-02-24, 21:01:

Does anyone else love the sight of these old boards that are practically wall-to-wall slots and sockets? It makes me feel excited for the expansion possibilities.

Nowadays, it's extremely hard to get a board with ample PCIe slots. Every time the standard is pushed to a new generation, they use the faster slot, often with fewer overall lanes. We've lost even more recently with all of the onboard NVMe.

I wild actually prefer a board that's one generation older of PCIe standard, to provide me with double the available lanes. Does anyone know if this is possible, without the use of a PLEX chip?

Check out the ASUS and other workstation boards for up to 7 x16 PCIe slots. They do use PLX switches but you get the slots at least.

As was said above, the multi-CPU boards will have more lanes. The newer AMD stuff can have a massive number of PCIe lanes but are going to be expensive... 🤤

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-02-24, 21:01:

Does anyone else love the sight of these old boards that are practically wall-to-wall slots and sockets? It makes me feel excited for the expansion possibilities.

Nowadays, it's extremely hard to get a board with ample PCIe slots. Every time the standard is pushed to a new generation, they use the faster slot, often with fewer overall lanes. We've lost even more recently with all of the onboard NVMe.

I wild actually prefer a board that's one generation older of PCIe standard, to provide me with double the available lanes. Does anyone know if this is possible, without the use of a PLEX chip?

NVME pcie lanes can be reused with an adapter and for all other purposes, there's always the server boards & cpus like the Xeon W9-3495X which has 112 pcie 5.0 lanes

Exactly. As server chipsets show, it's perfectly possible to pair modern CPUs with lots of slots and I/O bandwidth- which is how you can get it if you want it today - but you simply don't need it. Bus bandwidths have so massively outstripped everything except GPU and (to a far lesser degree) SSD that a single lane is enough for everything else, usually via USB 3.0. So it's not modern board & chipsets limiting expansion, but limited expansion making more on consumer boards pointless.

When buying my Slot 1 and Socket A boards, having 6 PCI slots was a very relevant metric because I needed every one of those slots. But my previous daily driver with i7-2600 lasted for 10 years on an mITX board with just a single PCIe 16x slot.

Let's run down what I put in that 1999 board with 6 PCI slots:
- 56k modem - no need, we have had broadband for decades.
- 10/100Mb Ethernet - great then, 1GbE onboard on mITX (and 2.5GbE on current board)
- SB64 PCI - modern onboard audio easily better than *that* (I was young and ignorant - although puzzled why it didn't sound better than my old GUS Max...)
- TV Card - CATV no longer even exists in my country, video content available over internet
- Voodoo 2 - as they say in Germany: Das war einmal.
- Free slot in case I needed Firewire, USB 2.0, maybe an ATA-66/ATA-100 IDE controller etc - in 2012 I already had USB 3.0 and SATA-600

So how many of those would I need today? 0.

I replaced the i7 on mITX board with a Ryzen on an uATX board, purely because I wanted a bigger, quieter case (and my youngest was getting frustrated with his old PC so needed my i7). There's still only a single GPU in a single PCIe16x slot...

I got "Schroedingers" LCD monitor today... it's actually a 10" photo frame by Fidelity, and I noticed it seemed to be 4:3, thus an earlier one, and fairly thick front to back, leading me to suspect it was an older less integrated model assembled from commodity components. Get into it and YAY, appears to have a Sharp made (or near clone) screen that does 6:6:6 RGB, 640x480 ... DOeS that sound useful or is it just me? ... The Schroedinger part is, that it ain't actually a monitor for retro hardware yet without some work. There may be several possibilities, retrobodgemod it into a 386 laptop maybe. Configure a CL or Trident card/monitor combo that could go in whatever motherboard. Be lazy and plug it into a Pi or similar and run emulators on it. Though the last may happen first as it might be the best way of determining all quirks of the screen.

Predator99 wrote on 2023-02-24, 20:34:

IMG_1410r.jpg IMG_1412r.jpg IMG_1411r.jpg IMG_1409r.jpg IMG_1408r.jpg […]
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IMG_1410r.jpg
IMG_1412r.jpg
IMG_1411r.jpg
IMG_1409r.jpg
IMG_1408r.jpg

Aaaargh (bottom pic) another baby baby AT board taunting me, where the actual heck did I put mine???

Bought an untested (probably genuinely, seller seems to mostly deal in antiques and knick knacks) GeForce FX5700VE for $30

We'll see how that goes. Probably poorly based on prior experience with GeForce FX series cards.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-24, 23:24:

I got "Schroedingers" LCD monitor today... it's actually a 10" photo frame by Fidelity, and I noticed it seemed to be 4:3, thus an earlier one, and fairly thick front to back, leading me to suspect it was an older less integrated model assembled from commodity components. Get into it and YAY, appears to have a Sharp made (or near clone) screen that does 6:6:6 RGB, 640x480 ... DOeS that sound useful or is it just me? ... The Schroedinger part is, that it ain't actually a monitor for retro hardware yet without some work. There may be several possibilities, retrobodgemod it into a 386 laptop maybe. Configure a CL or Trident card/monitor combo that could go in whatever motherboard. Be lazy and plug it into a Pi or similar and run emulators on it. Though the last may happen first as it might be the best way of determining all quirks of the screen.

Woah, that's what I do too - they can pop up cheap and they're TFTs. So far each one I've got has been 640x480 but I usually verify by reading the manual first if it can be found and it's mostly the chunky ones that are the lower res.
I've got a Toshiba LTM10C209 industrial panel that was obviously recycled out of one, and with some adaptation I was able to use my Advantech SBC with it. Another one I got out of a little DVB tv to improve my Toshiba 400CS laptop: Re: Upgrading a Toshiba laptop from DSTN to TFT panel - The Satellite 400CS becomes a 400CDT

They're not too bad to hook up, but can the pi run parallel TFTs? I thought I read something about that using the GPIOs but haven't tried it. If you've got a laptop with a Chips VGA then there are BMP utilities to modify the BIOS to suit different LCDs, but I haven't got very far with that.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-02-25, 04:07:

Woah, that's what I do too - they can pop up cheap and they're TFTs. So far each one I've got has been 640x480 but I usually ver […]
Show full quote

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-24, 23:24:

I got "Schroedingers" LCD monitor today... it's actually a 10" photo frame by Fidelity, and I noticed it seemed to be 4:3, thus an earlier one, and fairly thick front to back, leading me to suspect it was an older less integrated model assembled from commodity components. Get into it and YAY, appears to have a Sharp made (or near clone) screen that does 6:6:6 RGB, 640x480 ... DOeS that sound useful or is it just me? ... The Schroedinger part is, that it ain't actually a monitor for retro hardware yet without some work. There may be several possibilities, retrobodgemod it into a 386 laptop maybe. Configure a CL or Trident card/monitor combo that could go in whatever motherboard. Be lazy and plug it into a Pi or similar and run emulators on it. Though the last may happen first as it might be the best way of determining all quirks of the screen.

Woah, that's what I do too - they can pop up cheap and they're TFTs. So far each one I've got has been 640x480 but I usually verify by reading the manual first if it can be found and it's mostly the chunky ones that are the lower res.
I've got a Toshiba LTM10C209 industrial panel that was obviously recycled out of one, and with some adaptation I was able to use my Advantech SBC with it. Another one I got out of a little DVB tv to improve my Toshiba 400CS laptop: Re: Upgrading a Toshiba laptop from DSTN to TFT panel - The Satellite 400CS becomes a 400CDT

They're not too bad to hook up, but can the pi run parallel TFTs? I thought I read something about that using the GPIOs but haven't tried it. If you've got a laptop with a Chips VGA then there are BMP utilities to modify the BIOS to suit different LCDs, but I haven't got very far with that.

Hey thanks that looks like useful encouragement. Panel turns out to be a LQ104V1DG83 so very similar to one you had there. Think I'll check out the chipset on a Zenith machine I have, that might have the C&T controller. Damn forgetting the model of it, has one of those 386/486 clock doubled cyrix chips in, and is so damn fugly I can only improve it. (i.e. yellowed, scratched and cracked) Might be a Z-star 486SL or something like that, or maybe Znote.

edit: ah specs more easily had for it's Packard Bell badged sibling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Bell_Statesman so turns out it has the 6553x class C&T ... will have to see if that's as "persuadable" as the later model.

editII: at quick scan of datasheet from here (might need to turn on translate to see the download button) https://pdf.ic37.com/icpdf_datasheet_8/F6553_ … /F6553_151.html seems I might get 5:5:5 mode or 5:6:5 mode... looks hopeful, lots of nitty gritty to plow through.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-02-25, 03:49:

Bought an untested (probably genuinely, seller seems to mostly deal in antiques and knick knacks) GeForce FX5700VE for $30

We'll see how that goes. Probably poorly based on prior experience with GeForce FX series cards.

If it's a loose card I'd say there's about a 90% chance that it has some damage to the SMD components on the back. It will just be a matter of if it's anything vital or if it's just some EMI filters or something.

I managed to snag a Gainward FX 5700 Ultra, a BFG 5700 Ultra and a BFG 5500 PCI from the same seller and all three had at least one damaged component on the back. Thankfully, the 5700 Ultras both run fine. They have an almost identical layout, so I was able to use a multimeter to check the broken components on either one, and they appear to both be filters of some kind. Sadly, the 5500 is totally dead. The two components broken on that must have been vital.

Also got a 3dlabs Wildcat VP990 Pro and it has a broken component near one of the DVI connectors... hopefully it's also nothing vital. I haven't tested it yet... the more I think about it, I have gotten a TON of hardware with PCB or SMD damage lately. I can think of 4-5 other somewhat decent cards in addition to the ones above. 🙁

So many people just didn't take care of this stuff over the years and left it all thrashing around loose in a box. I love it when sellers are so clueless about this (and physics apparently) that they take photos of heavy\bulky cards stacked and then they slide them around in all different orientations for their pictures, sometimes with the brackets perched on the backs of other cards in an attempt to look fancy. I mean... DUH. It'd be like a used car dealership leaning or stacking all of their cars on top of each other on the lot to get attention. 🤦

On Thursday, I got a TMNT CRT TV set from the thrift store for $12.99 + tax. It has a defect on the tube where the shadow mask is at and I might be able to fix it once I have the right tools and not be the 8-bit-guy, plus the front AV ports aren't working, but the back works and I'm using a universal remote to turn it on and off, yet the set works fine. Time to find my NES power brick and buy some TMNT NES games.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-25, 04:28:

Hey thanks that looks like useful encouragement. Panel turns out to be a LQ104V1DG83 so very similar to one you had there. Think […]
Show full quote

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-02-25, 04:07:

Woah, that's what I do too - they can pop up cheap and they're TFTs. So far each one I've got has been 640x480 but I usually ver […]
Show full quote

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-24, 23:24:

I got "Schroedingers" LCD monitor today... it's actually a 10" photo frame by Fidelity, and I noticed it seemed to be 4:3, thus an earlier one, and fairly thick front to back, leading me to suspect it was an older less integrated model assembled from commodity components. Get into it and YAY, appears to have a Sharp made (or near clone) screen that does 6:6:6 RGB, 640x480 ... DOeS that sound useful or is it just me? ... The Schroedinger part is, that it ain't actually a monitor for retro hardware yet without some work. There may be several possibilities, retrobodgemod it into a 386 laptop maybe. Configure a CL or Trident card/monitor combo that could go in whatever motherboard. Be lazy and plug it into a Pi or similar and run emulators on it. Though the last may happen first as it might be the best way of determining all quirks of the screen.

Woah, that's what I do too - they can pop up cheap and they're TFTs. So far each one I've got has been 640x480 but I usually verify by reading the manual first if it can be found and it's mostly the chunky ones that are the lower res.
I've got a Toshiba LTM10C209 industrial panel that was obviously recycled out of one, and with some adaptation I was able to use my Advantech SBC with it. Another one I got out of a little DVB tv to improve my Toshiba 400CS laptop: Re: Upgrading a Toshiba laptop from DSTN to TFT panel - The Satellite 400CS becomes a 400CDT

They're not too bad to hook up, but can the pi run parallel TFTs? I thought I read something about that using the GPIOs but haven't tried it. If you've got a laptop with a Chips VGA then there are BMP utilities to modify the BIOS to suit different LCDs, but I haven't got very far with that.

Hey thanks that looks like useful encouragement. Panel turns out to be a LQ104V1DG83 so very similar to one you had there. Think I'll check out the chipset on a Zenith machine I have, that might have the C&T controller. Damn forgetting the model of it, has one of those 386/486 clock doubled cyrix chips in, and is so damn fugly I can only improve it. (i.e. yellowed, scratched and cracked) Might be a Z-star 486SL or something like that, or maybe Znote.

edit: ah specs more easily had for it's Packard Bell badged sibling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Bell_Statesman so turns out it has the 6553x class C&T ... will have to see if that's as "persuadable" as the later model.

editII: at quick scan of datasheet from here (might need to turn on translate to see the download button) https://pdf.ic37.com/icpdf_datasheet_8/F6553_ … /F6553_151.html seems I might get 5:5:5 mode or 5:6:5 mode... looks hopeful, lots of nitty gritty to plow through.

With the C&T 65530 / 65535 there's been some work done for the PC110 already 😀 yyzkevin on here has some details on his site about how that's wired up: https://www.yyzkevin.com/v3-pcb/ along with BIOS patching to make a switch from mono/colour STN to TFT into a permanent modification.
This other PC110 site, which I think was the first to change the PC110's DSTN to TFT: https://garakutaen.sakura.ne.jp/pc110/18thmLCD.html There's ct65535e.exe which changes the registers to output to TFT on the fly, in DOS and I think there's a Windows version too as ct65535w.exe. Since those registers are for the graphics chip and not parts of the BIOS, it should work on any laptop with the 65530/65535 chip I think. Can't test it, don't have one 😀
At this point, I personally think that replacing a ruined screen on a 386/486 laptop where the polariser has gone bad, is easier than trying to fix the original screen with the damaged polariser.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-24, 08:33:

Asininity wrote on 2023-02-24, 08:07:

I'm not sure what use it'll have other than filling an empty slot on my Tandy 1400 LTE but it's pretty neat to have.

Keep it for the Apopcalypse, when the internet has died and they have to blackboot the entire network again and we are set back to 1980 levels of speeds.

That seems like too much responsibility. I haven't delved into the manual, other than flipping through it, so maybe there is something fun I could do with it.

Asininity wrote on 2023-02-26, 02:09:

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-24, 08:33:

Asininity wrote on 2023-02-24, 08:07:

I'm not sure what use it'll have other than filling an empty slot on my Tandy 1400 LTE but it's pretty neat to have.

Keep it for the Apopcalypse, when the internet has died and they have to blackboot the entire network again and we are set back to 1980 levels of speeds.

That seems like too much responsibility. I haven't delved into the manual, other than flipping through it, so maybe there is something fun I could do with it.

Heh I'm sure there is a way to get that old girl up and running again, wont be much else to do while the Internet is down.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-25, 04:40:

If it's a loose card I'd say there's about a 90% chance that it has some damage to the SMD components on the back. It will just […]
Show full quote

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-02-25, 03:49:

Bought an untested (probably genuinely, seller seems to mostly deal in antiques and knick knacks) GeForce FX5700VE for $30

We'll see how that goes. Probably poorly based on prior experience with GeForce FX series cards.

If it's a loose card I'd say there's about a 90% chance that it has some damage to the SMD components on the back. It will just be a matter of if it's anything vital or if it's just some EMI filters or something.

I managed to snag a Gainward FX 5700 Ultra, a BFG 5700 Ultra and a BFG 5500 PCI from the same seller and all three had at least one damaged component on the back. Thankfully, the 5700 Ultras both run fine. They have an almost identical layout, so I was able to use a multimeter to check the broken components on either one, and they appear to both be filters of some kind. Sadly, the 5500 is totally dead. The two components broken on that must have been vital.

Also got a 3dlabs Wildcat VP990 Pro and it has a broken component near one of the DVI connectors... hopefully it's also nothing vital. I haven't tested it yet... the more I think about it, I have gotten a TON of hardware with PCB or SMD damage lately. I can think of 4-5 other somewhat decent cards in addition to the ones above. 🙁

So many people just didn't take care of this stuff over the years and left it all thrashing around loose in a box. I love it when sellers are so clueless about this (and physics apparently) that they take photos of heavy\bulky cards stacked and then they slide them around in all different orientations for their pictures, sometimes with the brackets perched on the backs of other cards in an attempt to look fancy. I mean... DUH. It'd be like a used car dealership leaning or stacking all of their cars on top of each other on the lot to get attention. 🤦

This makes me wonder if there's a bunch of cards out there that are just a heat gun and a small order from Mouser away from working again.

Got this beauty recently. I don't think it really does anything special that would pertain to gaming, but eh, it's a 4MB Tseng ET6100 and it is named the Integral Technologies Flashpoint 128, which sounds pretty cool to me. 🤣 There isn't a ton of information out there about the Tseng Viper fx chip, but here is some information here and here, that refers to it being used for real time image scaling. I did find the manual for the Flashpoint 128, and it refers to the whole card as a "Frame Grabber" with very little mention of it even being a VGA card.

I tested it out and it works great in Windows 98SE with the built in ET6000\ET6100 drivers. 😀

Asininity wrote on 2023-02-26, 03:09:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-25, 04:40:

If it's a loose card I'd say there's about a 90% chance that it has some damage to the SMD components on the back. It will just […]
Show full quote

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-02-25, 03:49:

Bought an untested (probably genuinely, seller seems to mostly deal in antiques and knick knacks) GeForce FX5700VE for $30

We'll see how that goes. Probably poorly based on prior experience with GeForce FX series cards.

If it's a loose card I'd say there's about a 90% chance that it has some damage to the SMD components on the back. It will just be a matter of if it's anything vital or if it's just some EMI filters or something.

I managed to snag a Gainward FX 5700 Ultra, a BFG 5700 Ultra and a BFG 5500 PCI from the same seller and all three had at least one damaged component on the back. Thankfully, the 5700 Ultras both run fine. They have an almost identical layout, so I was able to use a multimeter to check the broken components on either one, and they appear to both be filters of some kind. Sadly, the 5500 is totally dead. The two components broken on that must have been vital.

Also got a 3dlabs Wildcat VP990 Pro and it has a broken component near one of the DVI connectors... hopefully it's also nothing vital. I haven't tested it yet... the more I think about it, I have gotten a TON of hardware with PCB or SMD damage lately. I can think of 4-5 other somewhat decent cards in addition to the ones above. 🙁

So many people just didn't take care of this stuff over the years and left it all thrashing around loose in a box. I love it when sellers are so clueless about this (and physics apparently) that they take photos of heavy\bulky cards stacked and then they slide them around in all different orientations for their pictures, sometimes with the brackets perched on the backs of other cards in an attempt to look fancy. I mean... DUH. It'd be like a used car dealership leaning or stacking all of their cars on top of each other on the lot to get attention. 🤦

This makes me wonder if there's a bunch of cards out there that are just a heat gun and a small order from Mouser away from working again.

Yes, literally thousands of cards if I had to guess. The problem is knowing what the components were... and when it comes to actually replacing them, not everyone is capable of working with such tiny components. I have done a fair amount of them, but at some point the components just got SO small that it is nearly impossible to do the work manually unless you have a lot of experience (which I do not... hence the pile of cards waiting for the day I'm capable of fixing them).

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-26, 03:40:

Yes, literally thousands of cards if I had to guess. The problem is knowing what the components were... and when it comes to actually replacing them, not everyone is capable of working with such tiny components. I have done a fair amount of them, but at some point the components just got SO small that it is nearly impossible to do the work manually unless you have a lot of experience (which I do not... hence the pile of cards waiting for the day I'm capable of fixing them).

Yeah, once you get below 402 and throw in a bunch of BGA-like components things start to get really complicated. I feel like high-resolution photos, or a functioning unit, is basically a must for determining what's missing. Someday I'll need to build myself such a pile.