appiah4 wrote on 2022-03-25, 08:09:

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-25, 00:58:

Did you apply oil to lubricate before trying to back them out? I warned you. 😀

Yeah, I tried oil as well as WD40 to break the rust and that inhuman grip, but it only worked on two of the screws. That thing is bolted onto there by Thor himself.

They're designed to be removable with an Allen key - they're Advel Rivscrews, though I too have had mixed success in the past

appiah4 wrote on 2022-03-25, 08:09:

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-25, 00:58:

Did you apply oil to lubricate before trying to back them out? I warned you. 😀

Yeah, I tried oil as well as WD40 to break the rust and that inhuman grip, but it only worked on two of the screws. That thing is bolted onto there by Thor himself.

Don't do it. Just find one with SECC2 cooler.

Yesterday I played Sims on SIMMs

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-25, 01:16:

So I turn this over to fellow Vogons users .. do I dare trust this system to a SHAW PSU ?

(Looks at Insignia with 18A on the 5v rail I just used to bench a 3200+ testing videocards, declines to comment)

I will probably have a couple of posts soon in General about the big benchmarking and, separately, a resurrected Hercules Stingray with an oddity or two. I need to test it in at least one more system (and then research whether it's possible to add memory on empty pads with no other changes than BIOS, if that).

Surprised how much bottlenecking I observed and will have to re-run some tests on much newer systems. Unfortunately that somewhat limits me WRT AGP, though IIRC there are newer retro-intended socket 775s with AGP.

I found this while searching, this inflation is really getting out of control: https://www.walmart.com/ip/ASUS-P5GDC-V-Delux … annel/196250404

stef80 wrote on 2022-03-25, 08:40:

appiah4 wrote on 2022-03-25, 08:09:

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-25, 00:58:

Did you apply oil to lubricate before trying to back them out? I warned you. 😀

Yeah, I tried oil as well as WD40 to break the rust and that inhuman grip, but it only worked on two of the screws. That thing is bolted onto there by Thor himself.

Don't do it. Just find one with SECC2 cooler.

I actually just found a Pentium II 450 which worked out even better for me; now my 1998 build has the best CPU that was available that year. (I only had a PII-300 😀 )

Lately, I've had an itch to downgrade my i386SX-25 PC to an i286-16, for no other reason than that it is more period correct for the 1987-89 era games I have on it. That means I will probably also remove the ES688 sound card and CD-ROM I have there, and replace the sound card with something more appropriate, such as a SoundGalaxy BXII. It runs MS-DOS 5.0 and Win3.0 so I guess those will have no issues running on it. This is your opportunity to cheer me on or tell me that it is pointless and dumb..

Merovign wrote on 2022-03-25, 10:15:

(Looks at Insignia with 18A on the 5v rail I just used to bench a 3200+ testing videocards, declines to comment) […]
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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-25, 01:16:

So I turn this over to fellow Vogons users .. do I dare trust this system to a SHAW PSU ?

(Looks at Insignia with 18A on the 5v rail I just used to bench a 3200+ testing videocards, declines to comment)

I will probably have a couple of posts soon in General about the big benchmarking and, separately, a resurrected Hercules Stingray with an oddity or two. I need to test it in at least one more system (and then research whether it's possible to add memory on empty pads with no other changes than BIOS, if that).

Surprised how much bottlenecking I observed and will have to re-run some tests on much newer systems. Unfortunately that somewhat limits me WRT AGP, though IIRC there are newer retro-intended socket 775s with AGP.

I found this while searching, this inflation is really getting out of control: https://www.walmart.com/ip/ASUS-P5GDC-V-Delux … annel/196250404

Yes what version of the 3200+ and what motherboard ? How many HDDs or did you use low power SSD ? Test it fully loaded with USB peripherals and add-in cards or a bare bones bench setup with only the bits required for testing? Overclocking ? these things make a difference between being able to use a weak +5v PSU or requiring one with a bit more room on the +5v rail.

Now I didn't use great power supplies for my quick tests and they all have junk +5v rails just from my limited testing but they were never designed for a system that relies more on the +5v rail than the +12v rail, I have one other option which I trust even less than the SHAW and thats a AXi 1200 with the OCP bug, it trips in a modern system with a high +12v draw but in a system using mostly the +5v rail it should hopefully be ok and its got 30A to play with.

I didn't think of this PSU earlier because I buried it in storage and had forgotten about it.

Found out why my PR440FX with 2x blacktop ppros shuts down ungracefully when i run Quake3 with SMP=1.
My bench PSU don't have enough oomph on +5v to run it! (Corsair AX760 with 25A on +5v).
Enter an old Chieftek and everything is fine again.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-25, 13:35:

Yes what version of the 3200+ and what motherboard ? How many HDDs or did you use low power SSD ? Test it fully loaded with USB peripherals and add-in cards or a bare bones bench setup with only the bits required for testing? Overclocking ? these things make a difference between being able to use a weak +5v PSU or requiring one with a bit more room on the +5v rail.

Well, let me say how close to the edge I was (it was test bench with real HD and optical, BTW)... When I was testing a EVGA GeForce 7300 GS with an extra molex power connector, if I added a 1.6W 92mm fan in addition to that card, I would get a low power mode warning from the driver software. Unplugged that fan, no problems. 😀 The motherboard was an Asus A7VBX-LA.

I need to dig out a bigger PSU as I want to re-test some (or all) of the PCIe cards with an i7-4790 because it looked like an awful lot of the cards were bottlenecked by the x3370 (which surprised me, there were no Titans or RTXs or anything, I mean like 9800GT, 3870, 4890, and lower power GT520 and GTX 745 cards, that kind of thing.

I did have a couple of cards show up dead, so I might have enough spare inductors to fix the 9800GT (which works but with insane coil whine).

appiah4 wrote on 2022-03-25, 11:45:

Lately, I've had an itch to downgrade my i386SX-25 PC to an i286-16, for no other reason than that it is more period correct for the 1987-89 era games I have on it. That means I will probably also remove the ES688 sound card and CD-ROM I have there, and replace the sound card with something more appropriate, such as a SoundGalaxy BXII. It runs MS-DOS 5.0 and Win3.0 so I guess those will have no issues running on it. This is your opportunity to cheer me on or tell me that it is pointless and dumb..

Sounds more like "build an additional system" time to me.

A MOSFET on one of my motherboards shorted and welded itself to the copper ground plane. I ended up ripping a hole in the board trying to remove it, but even then it still would not let go.

I still don't know if this event damaged anything else that was installed in the system at the time.

One of my computers caught fire today

Merovign wrote on 2022-03-26, 03:21:

The motherboard was an Asus A7VBX-LA.

I presume you meant the A7V8X-LA? 😋
I used to make a similar mistake with my GA-6OXT (with an ooooo and not with a zero 😂😋).

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-26, 06:30:

A MOSFET on one of my motherboards shorted and welded itself to the copper ground plane. I ended up ripping a hole in the board trying to remove it, but even then it still would not let go.

I still don't know if this event damaged anything else that was installed in the system at the time.

One of my computers caught fire today

There's not many Supers or Metahumans on this Earth, so my power mimicry superpower often goes unused, but for rare situations like this when I can call on the combined powers of Captain Obvious and Captain Hindsight and say... "It's better if you don't let it do that."

Tetrium wrote on 2022-03-26, 13:09:

Merovign wrote on 2022-03-26, 03:21:

The motherboard was an Asus A7VBX-LA.

I presume you meant the A7V8X-LA? 😋
I used to make a similar mistake with my GA-6OXT (with an ooooo and not with a zero 😂😋).

Actually, yes, and Asus IIRC has used that ambiguous 8 for a long time, it really does look like a B. My "at a glance" reaction is always that it's a B, it's a very square 8.

Today I spent 3 hours trying to get my Diamond MX300 sound card working with DOS games in my Win 98 build. Finally tried to Google the issue and found out that DOS PCI sound card support isn't a thing with nForce2 chipsets. Blarg.

Ordered a motherboard with a KT600 chipset instead and hopefully will have better luck with that one.

I have experienced very mixed compatibility among chipsets when it comes to PCI sound card compatibility in DOS. There are event differences between Intel depending on how new the chipset is. Between Intel, VIA, SiS, and NVIDIA, the only way to know what it supported by your motherboard is to try various configurations and see what works.

I have a particular Slot 1 VIA motherboard where even the onboard Creative (Ensoniq) sound chip refuses to work in DOS, among almost ever other PCI sound card I tried. There are no hard rules when it comes to PCI sound cards in DOS, unfortunately.

If the DOS games you want to run will work in Windows, you can try some of these same sound cards using their legacy device drivers. Sometimes those are more stable than their DOS counterparts. For example, Creatives Live!/Audigy DOS drivers were unstable in my system or had bugs in games, but those same games work fine from within Windows.

Cards to try include:

Ensoniq / Creative AudioPCI
ESS Solo-1
Yamaha XG
Aureal Vortex
Creative Live!/Audigy
ForteMedia FM801

All of these cards have Sound Blaster compatible DOS drivers with varying degrees of compatibility between chipsets and PCI features.
All of these PCI cards have

Yeah, I'm going to keep experimenting with different cards / chipsets until I can get something running how I'd like.

I do have plans for another DOS build which will use ISA soundcards. But I still wanted to at least be able to run DOS stuff on my Windows 98 machine, if only for the convenience factor.

I went mad with a Magic eraser earlier, and brought my 3.5 and 5.25 Apple II drives in to looking as good as the main computer. I also used a friend's floppy emu to make sure the system was working beyond the self-testing.

Out of curiosity does anyone here have experience with Ark Logic Video cards >?

I've been offered a pair of them an Ark 1000PV and a Ark 2000MI, I dont know much if anything about where the Ark based cards sit in regards to DOS or what other cards perform on a similar level.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-27, 07:47:

Out of curiosity does anyone here have experience with Ark Logic Video cards >?

I've been offered a pair of them an Ark 1000PV and a Ark 2000MI, I dont know much if anything about where the Ark based cards sit in regards to DOS or what other cards perform on a similar level.

If you look them up around here they seem to be great for DOS but absolute garbage for Windows Acceleration