Still not as bad as putting RAM loose in a standard envelope, and posting it that way... 😉 (Had that happen before)

philscomputerlab wrote:

That board is awesome! I have one with a 386SX AMD processor and it performs on the level of a 386DX 25 MHz. It's hands down my […]
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kixs wrote:

Bought this motherboard and I'm waiting for the postman 😉

Its a M396F V2.6 with TX 486slc 33MHz and 4MB ram. It almost exactly the same as I had in 1993. This was on my wishlist for sometime and it was quite expensive for my taste 25€ + postage. But wishlist is a wishlist 😊

That board is awesome! I have one with a 386SX AMD processor and it performs on the level of a 386DX 25 MHz. It's hands down my favourite board. So clean and simple. And perfect for these speed sensitive games.

Yours has a better processor I believe. I'm always on the lookout but prices are unreal at the moment. I never saw a cheap one again. The one I got was from Eastern Europe and the seller just stuck it in a bubble envelope. Couldn't believe it. It still works though. I de-soldered the old battery and put in a new one that is rechargeable.

Lots of info here: M396F motherboard

I just had to buy it. I was looking for one for months and this one is just like my old one. That one was actually Acer brand but it looked the same and it had the same processor 486slc-33. Because I used AutoCad I switched to 386DX-40 with a math coprocessor. I couldn't get a 387sx coprocessor anywhere.

I still have benchmarks of it and it was in the range of 386DX-40. But would like to retest it with your benchmark suit.

I'll look into your thread. 😁

Finally managed to find an Asus P2b to go with the PIII 700 and the bloke had a Monster 3d Voodoo 1 too, so got both for about $30.
Picking them up tomorrow and that will bring the Voodoos to 1, 2 (3), 3 and 4 and five retro machines, so I'd better stop now and play with them 😀
Pics tomorrow.

Lukeno94 wrote:

Second Armada M700 arrived today, hope it doesn't have the problems that the first one did (seems like the battery on the first one was a bit weird). Definitely works, and the only obvious issues is a slightly blemished screen (will switch them) and the dead CMOS battery... the problems only appeared last time after I swapped the CMOS battery, so guess I'll wait and see!

The M700 was an awesome notebook for it's time. IIRC, I had an E300, which is basically the same chassis. It was surprisingly fast for a Celeron and given the state of notebook technology at the time (back when notebooks where strictly business machines and hadn't arrived at the mainstream yet).

In many ways, yes, but it does suffer from what I like to call "Compaqitis" - very weird design decisions. For example, the display panel is not in the center of the screen, there is no trackpad even though it looks like it should have one (bear in mind that M700s came with Windows 98SE and Windows 2000 Professional at the very least), just a trackpoint, and there is a weird button-and-switch method for killing the power, rather than just holding down the power button. At least it doesn't have the seriously fugly battery placement and design that many older (or smaller) Compaqs (Armada M300, for example) did! They're certainly very thin laptops for the era, and yet don't run particularly hotly. Nothing that special specs-wise - standard PIII CPU (750MHz to 1GHz from what I've seen, 100 MHz FSB), 440BX-based chipset, 64MB RAM built into the motherboard and two RAM slots, 8MB ATI Rage Mobility M1 graphics chip, ESS sound chip. That definitely does make it a decent example of its era though.

This one has a better chassis than my first one (albeit a worse screen), a Windows 2000 Professional CoA, the same 850 MHz PIII CPU, and a battery that seems to last for at least one hour 45 minutes - and it was far from flat when I switched it off (25% indicated battery life remaining, but old batteries can often be poorly calibrated - may drop to nothing in 2 minutes, or may still run for 30 mins at 0% indicated charge!) It needs a hard drive, a charger, the screen swapping and a new CMOS battery, but that's not major - I did have to move the HDD caddy across, and may have to swap the DVD drive (CD portion works fine, not sure about the DVD part). The trackpoint still feels very smooth and accurate. It does seem like the battery from the other M700 has some weird glitch; although its self test indicates no problems, removing it whilst fully charged, then refitting it to the laptop, results in the laptop being unable to switch on until said battery is removed; even if you then fit the battery again, the laptop will just think it has 100% battery and not attempt to charge it, but will cut out the moment you disconnect the charger. Same issue occurred in both laptops.

When it comes to old Compaq P3 notebooks N410C is my choice today aswell as back then, I have owned mine since 2002.
The coin cell is dead and I have not bothered to change it for a new one so I have to reset once to get it to boot if the computer has been disconnected from the electrical grid without battery charge.
Other than that it still works just as good as new, in fact better since it now sports 1GB memory.

On topic. I did receive the Northwood socket 478 P4 3.4 GHz CPU that I bought last week, today.

It was shipped in an ordinary small envelope without other padding than two small pieces of cardbord, and the CPU made it without even one pin bent 😳.
Its the first socket 478 CPU I ever bought from the net that diddnt have bent pins when it got here*, and at the same time it was the most carelessly packed CPU I have ever seen.
*Excluding ones sent in motherboards or loose sockets.

no selling on vogons

Asus P2B and Monster Voodoo 1, all working well except for the P3 700 which I picked up in a boot sale and it's dead.
I'll be using a P2 400 until I can get a P3.

Found one of the remaining graphics cards on my "want list" - the Asus Radeon 9800. This card (random web-grab image):

Should arrive next week. 😀 Will certainly test it against the 5900XT/5800U for my (still unfinished 😵) P4 build. May even take the few minutes to throw an X16xx AGP in there just to see how it stacks up against the older boards. 😈

Good news: I got the HDD caddy for my Toshiba Satellite 200CDT, and it fits perfectly.
Bad news: system won't boot from a CD drive (doesn't support it), and I can't find the floppy disk I have with me to create a Windows 95 boot disk, as Windows 95 won't boot from a CD either... and I have to use a separate laptop as the Toshiba doesn't have a FDD.

An addition to my MIDI tower 😊

Actually had the MU80 for a while but didn't get around to trying out. Found a suitable 12V power supply with the correct polarity and now it works 😀 I tried out my 4 port MIDI router but the Yamaha would get Illegal Transfer errors. Back to using MIDI THRU and all works well.

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I've found the "Descent" soundtrack sounds really good with an MU80.

MMaximus wrote:

I've found the "Descent" soundtrack sounds really good with an MU80.

I'm planning on making another Roland vs Yamaha General MIDI video in the near future 😀

Maybe it's placebo but I find that the MU80 sounds quite different compared to the NEC / Yamaha wavetable board I used before. Maybe the Sound Card added it's flavour to the mix not sure.

Picked up a Roland SC-7 $25 AUD

Nice bargain!

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Danger Den water-cooling Waterblock for the Geforce 6800 Ultra (brand new - $4.95 + shipping). According to an ebay listing for the Geforce FX 5900, and looking at the pin holes and my water block it might fit those too. But It's going on my 6800 ultra, some day. Things run really warm with the stock air cooler.

And All-Copper heatsink I found at local store cheap for AthlonXP / Socket-462 for $6 + tax

Mirror finish bottom.

I hope the pics aren't too big, I tried to scale em down some for forums.

EDIT: The place I bought this waterblock from has 2 more, they're a small shop out of Florida. If anyone wants one just PM me and I can share a link to their site.

from friends business, got these for free, price is gasoline spent to haul scrap to recycling...

From left to right(ish): 2* Intel Pentium III Xeon, 500 MHz, 22* EDO ECC memorysticks (1920 mb total, 32-128 mb), Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 939, P4 3 Ghz SL8HZ, 2* P4 2,6 GHz SL6WH, AMD Duron 1,3 GHz Morgan and Intel Pentium II 266 MHz SL269.
Xeon's and most of memory are from IBM Netfinity 7000-server, Pentium II and 32 mb sticks are from Compaq Proliant 1600. Both machines were scrap, i just salvaged those parts. Desktop CPU machines were also scrap just with motherboards and CPUs.

That's a very nice haul and should keep you busy for a while!