Repasted the 486 today.

Is it normal for the clips on a HSF style cooler for Socket 3 to be so weak that it really needs a blob of thermal paste or a thermal pad to secure it properly?

Also today, 28 years after first coveting a 6x86 processor, I have finally bought a Socket 7 motherboard and CPU.

At the time, all I had was a 386, and even though Pentium was a thing, the marketing from Cyrix/IBM of naming their chip a "6x86" made it seem like such an unfathomably big upgrade.

Made those 3D - Voxels of my pretty childhood time.

Compedia and Rare LTD. Game: Mr. Bloppy

Cosmo Cosmic Advanture by Apogee Eintertement!!

https://twitter.com/duke_unreal/status/177888 … kwVSExk5vA&s=19

Cosmic wrote on 2024-04-13, 06:13:

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-04-13, 02:23:

So I thought I'd update the bios using my TL866 programmer. It was all going great until I put the EEPROM in backwards. The POST analyser card now only shows "--" with it. The rom still reads okay on the programmer and I was very worried I'd killed the board? since the ROM connects directly to the southbridge. My one spare 2mbit DIP EEPROM still runs the computer but it's unusable since it's got an AMI bootblock that can't be reprogrammed.
Gonna have to wait until some replacement EEPROMs come in until I can test this computer setup out more - such a shame, I was gonna test out the 1GHz 100MHz bus coppermine CPU on it after this.

Oh wow that's crazy! So it sits at "--" with the original BIOS chip installed but it still sort of boots with the other 2mbit EEPROM? I guess that's a good sign that it's not totally dead. I just wonder how that works if the original chip still reads correctly in your programmer.

Hope you have success with a new EEPROM when it arrives!

Yeah I'm guessing one of the pins works with the programmer but no longer puts out the levels or works at the speeds needed for the mainboard to work with it. For now I've borrowed the 2MB EEPROM from my MS6168 motherboard since that's not gonna be running til I make some kind of housing for it
So the computer's up and running again but it's still crashing trying to do anything with the video card so I'll switch back to just coppermine / katmai CPUs for now.

Today I pulled out *all* the equipment to solder a new DSP onto my CT2950 SB16 soundcard now that it's going to be running the DB50XG midi daughterboard. It bugged out in like level 3 of doom before the upgrade and now after switching the DSP chip out - midi sounds perfect! And it's got the FM chip changed over to a real Yamaha YMF289, which was purchased and installed a couple of years before they all mysteriously disappeared

Just realized I was pretty far down the rabbit hole of a "retro activity"... I am researching very obscure old graphics chips, digging up old websites and articles from the early to mid 90s... while at the same time listing to\watching a live Dream Theater performance from 1993.

... And I'm having a great time.

Starting to think I'm getting old. 🤣 ... 🧓🏻

Been testing out a pile of Maxis games running Windows 3.11 on a Pentium 4. Trying to determine optimal throttling for these games...

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-04-14, 16:03:

Been testing out a pile of Maxis games running Windows 3.11 on a Pentium 4. Trying to determine optimal throttling for these games...

Sim Games.jpg

Windows 3.11 Sim Games Installed.png

That right there is a great selection of games. Lots of childhood memories.

Took my losses with a X1900XTX and a X1950XTX. 🙁

Took and installed a different DVD burner into my Athlon XP system as the old one stopped reading DVD's. Then I took and install Encarta 2009, the last version of it. I also installed Command & Conquer the First Decade and played a few minutes of all the games! The only one I didn't really care for was Renegade as it just really isn't C&C to me. I also used Norton Ghost 2003 to clone my 40GB HDD to a 160GB HDD as I was running out of room. I am trying to install a lot of my games on this system.

I had to drive my board to someone to fix at least one trace and hopefully fix the wonky RAM situation.

I had to drive two hours--one way--since I live so far from a major city.

Got a 1400MHz Tualatin Celeron working in my Gigabyte GA-6BA last night. Thanks to a tip from a 20-year-old post on a German forum, I tried a BIOS from a GA-6BXD and got it to POST! It only showed 635MHz on POST, but luckily I let it boot up and was able to confirm that it was working at the proper speed and voltage:

Yay! 😎👍

Took the opportunity to test and bench a few nVidia cards I'd done some recap work on. No surprise the GeForce 3 came out on top, so it gets to stay and the Voodoo 3 gets to.. find another home.

Think I've pretty much topped out what I can do in an AT case, pretty happy with it. There's room for an ISA sound card if I feel like it, but I don't have one to spare at the moment.

The CPU heatsink is only so-so, but it didn't get too hot while I was running with the cover off. I've no illusions about how effective the front fan will be as the front plastic case has only few tiny little slits in it. But I added a slot cover with some holes in it, so that will solve any heat issues for sure, right? 🥴

momaka wrote on 2024-04-10, 12:22:

Does ripping music CDs onto my computer count as a retro activity?

Now I decided to start ripping some more CDs and DVDs today. I guess it partially counts as retro because I'm using a laptop running Windows 7 and a USB optical drive because the internal drive failed. I can rip non-copy-protected DVDs on my main computer under Windows 10, but for people who don't read Badcaps (or didn't see the post I made), none of the software that I've tried will recognize copy protection on that computer.

Maybe I should replace the USB connectors on that laptop because they're loose and the contacts on two of the three look like oxidized bare copper (the one that's directly on the motherboard looks like gold). I tried to clean the contacts (again), but I think my can of contact cleaner lost its propellant (I'll check to see if it's clogged somehow before buying a new can). I don't know if that laptop is worth messing with, especially since I've broken everything I've touched this year.

I've just been using Windows Media Player to rip and tag CDs, even though it adds some weird characters to the song titles. I've run into a lot of CDs that are detected as HDCDs without the HDCD logo on the cover (mostly my parents' '90s and early-2000s country music collection - I showed them how to rip CDs). I rip those as lossless files and run through an HDCD decoder (I think I used FFmpeg last time), even though I probably wouldn't hear the difference aside from the decoded files being quieter (part of the HDCD encoding involves compression).

gerry wrote on 2024-03-12, 09:27:

that's a real downsize! no regrets yet? […]
Show full quote

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2024-03-11, 10:26:

Well over the past several months I've sold almost my entire GPU collection, my entire retro laptop collection, most of my actual software (after making ISO images of everything to put on my NAS), and I'm currently selling off/disposing of alot of loose misc hardware (random low-end junk tier motherboards, broken motherboards, random BS decoder and networking cards).

that's a real downsize! no regrets yet?

it makes sense for space reasons.

it's possible to make do with a few machines and some spares

not many of us truly purge after acquiring too much though

Not really. I've definitely had some moments where I'm watching a retro tech YouTube video or reading some forum post somewhere and I think to myself "gee, I used to have that piece of really rare hardware, why did I sell that?" and then i remember I sold it because it sat unused in a desk draw for half a decade. I haven't had a single moment where I've actually regretted selling something because I've found I had a use for it later.

Like I said in my OG post. When I was an unemployed teenager or only working part time, it was cool to have all this random hardware to tinker with 24/7. As I've gotten older and my career has progressed and I work full time now, its mostly just annoying spending 5 hours trying to find whatever piece of hardware I was looking for, several more hours building a system around it and setting that system up, troubleshooting random problems etc. Now-a-days I just want to get off work and play a fucking video game. The computers I've kept let me do exactly that. I've also reinvested in some of those few systems I kept, like I went ahead and ordered a 3.4GHZ Pentium4 for my FX5950 rig and a 3.0GHZ Athlon64 X2 6000 for my 7900GTO rig. I'm mostly focused on optimizing the systems I've kept to cover as much ground in terms of compatibility as I can.

On a side note, I truly didn't realize how many graphics cards I own. I've been selling mine off for 6 months and still once in a while I still run across a random graphics card hidden somewhere. Like I thought I had sold both my GeForce2 GTS cards, but I opened up my HP Vectra and found another 64MB GTS, apparently I had 3 of them 🤣

johnvosh wrote on 2024-04-14, 17:42:

Took and installed a different DVD burner into my Athlon XP system as the old one stopped reading DVD's. Then I took and install Encarta 2009, the last version of it.

I have been suspicious of the later versions of Encarta, they always sounded like an online/offline hybrid, that had too much of the content online. So do you get a lot of articles offline with that one?

After I scored these cases for free I decided to build one of them into a permanent system. Soyo K7V Dragon Plus! that was modified to work with Thoroughbred CPUs, a Ti 4600, 1.5 gigabytes of DDR, an Audigy SB0090, an SSD, and a Thermaltake Silent Purepower 480 watt power supply with a fan speed rheostat. I have the CPU at 2,174 MHz running Windows 2000.

I initially used an Audigy SB0160 that I've had for some time and used in a number of different systems (a friend gave it to me) and after I set everything up and began testing it, all seemed fine. I installed Half-Life and played it for a while, then I installed Opposing Force and began playing that. While doing so, the machine locked up while an annoying whine came through the speakers. I hit reset, and turned down the overclock thinking I had overheated it, but it again locked up as soon as it got to the desktop. I finally realized it was the sound card, so I tried different slots, a newer driver, but I was having no success. I then swapped in the SB0090, and it got to the desktop, installed the driver, and it has been working fine ever since! I suppose it's probably failing capacitors on the sound card - I've had to recap the motherboard and the video card, I guess I'll have to try doing the sound card as well.

For a generic 2002 case it has decent cooling, with a space for 120 MM fan front and rear (none were installed when I got it but I had a pair in my spares box). The Thermaltake power supply is perfect for Socket A, having both a strong +5 rail and the speed adjustable cooling fan.

I did try an XP-M 2600+ in this system, and it worked pretty well, allowing a higher overclock and the extra cache, but there was a cold boot issue where fairly often you would have to hit reset to get it to POST, so I gave up on it.

Tried the most YOLO "fix" (I know it isn't a proper fix, but I had nothing to lose (than time, maybe) honestly) on the X1950XTX - pasted the GPU die, stuck a copper penny (5 bani in romanian currency), stuck some more paste so it makes contact with the HSF, tightened the screws over the backside, and fired it up on a P5WD2-E Premium + Pentium D 930.

I know penny fixes are stupid but this is even more stupid... it now works without any artefacts and even installed drivers fine. I am at a loss of words. If this thing doesn't commit sudoku when loaded, then I suppose I got myself a "working" X1950XTX PCI-E. Neat.

I'm not certain of the thermal conductivity of Romanian currency. Have you considered buying copper shims?

I would have tried copper shims, but they usually are not as thick as the coins. Given I used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut (I bought a 11 grams tube for a lot of applications) though I don't think it's gonna be much of an issue.

I'll test it out in depth later on the P4Dual-915GL, since I planned using it there in the first place had it worked from the get-go.

Went through troubleshooting a vid card.
Found the issue but after ordering and replacing dead parts I'll have to see if the core survived.

Welp, so far that "penny'd" X1950XTX has been running through 3DMark03 like butter on the P4Dual-915GL w/ a Northwood HT @ 2.8GHz.
15613 3DMarks is the result. Wow 😁