Burnt this poor piece of hardware today:

Kamerat wrote:

Burnt this poor piece of hardware today:

burned1.jpg

burned2.jpg

what's that? how?

Looks like a S478 Pentium 4 of some kind, with the heat spreader removed.

Yea looks like the spreader is removed.
Not really a thing I'd recommend doing.

nemail wrote:

what's that? how?

Don't know how or why this happened, the CPU and motherboard worked just fine when I put them to storage together a little time ago. Now I wanted to build a "new" rig out of the motherboard. The motherboard actually survived this.

The victim is a delidded Pentium 4 1.80 GHz "Williamette" and the motherboard used is an Asus P4C800-E.

Well, now that piece of NetBurst hardware will burn in hell!

Joking xD I may not be a fan of NetBurst, but I'm far from hating it.

alexanrs wrote:

Well, now that piece of NetBurst hardware will burn in hell!

Joking xD I may not be a fan of NetBurst, but I'm far from hating it.

Not a big fan of Netburst myself (the Northwood wasn't that bad), but with this motherboard I'm not restricted to that architecture. 😉

Replaced the 1.8 GHz Williamette with a 1.7 GHz Willamette (with heatspreader) for now. 😜

Kamerat wrote:

Burnt this poor piece of hardware today:

burned1.jpg

burned2.jpg

Good riddance!

(sorry 😀)

jwt27 wrote:

Good riddance!

(sorry 😀)

Nothing to be sorry for, I'm just happy the motherboard survived. 😀

Kamerat wrote:

alexanrs wrote:

Well, now that piece of NetBurst hardware will burn in hell!

Joking xD I may not be a fan of NetBurst, but I'm far from hating it.

Not a big fan of Netburst myself (the Northwood wasn't that bad), but with this motherboard I'm not restricted to that architecture. 😉

Replaced the 1.8 GHz Williamette with a 1.7 GHz Willamette (with heatspreader) for now. 😜

Whoa, does that motherboard accept Pentium Ms? I've always wanted to tinker with a Pentium M desktop. I still have my dad's old Pentium M laptop, and aside from the ACPI being weird (I've never been able to get a battery reading since I formatted it, both in XP and Linux, but everything worked just fine with the factory XP installation), it is rock solid even after the abuse it went through when my younger brother was its main user.

alexanrs wrote:

Whoa, does that motherboard accept Pentium Ms? I've always wanted to tinker with a Pentium M desktop. I still have my dad's old Pentium M laptop, and aside from the ACPI being weird (I've never been able to get a battery reading since I formatted it, both in XP and Linux, but everything worked just fine with the factory XP installation), it is rock solid even after the abuse it went through when my younger brother was its main user.

Yes, with the use of the Asus CT-479 adapter. Actually used this motherboard (and an Asus P4GD1) with Dothans back in the good old days. I killed both the Dothans and the adapters (my own fault due to modding and overclocking).

1. Cleaned an NEC Multisync CRT monitor I found the other day at the thrift store.

used a combination of just soap and water, mr. clean magic eraser (for the marker stains), and glass cleaner. Looks good as almost new 😀

2. Set up my Intellivision last night to test out my Extron DVS204 upscaler. Pulled out a Sony VCR and connected my Intellivision to CRT like so:

Intellivision - RF-> Sony VCR (RF input) -> out from Sony VCR Composite output -> to Extron DVS204 -> NEC Multisync (RGB signal)

It was a success (quality is not too bad - this is much better with the Extron signal processor/upscaler than hooking up composite to CRT TV or LCD TV).

The Extron DVS204 can output to component YUV as well but I find the RGB to a CRT is better quality. Image jumps a bit when set to lower resolutions. I found the best results when I set the output resolution of the scaler to 1024x768. But overall all resolutions worked great.

3. Tested out my new VGA/RGB/YUV(Component) to HDMI scaler I purchased yesterday as well. Worked pretty well converting the VGA/RGB signal from the above setup to HDMI->DVI into my Samsung 24" LCD monitor. Astrosmash looked slightly better on the CRT I found.

jwt27 wrote:

Kamerat wrote:

Burnt this poor piece of hardware today:

burned1.jpg

burned2.jpg

Good riddance!

(sorry 😀)

+1

Finally got some of my Vintage Computers LAN-ed yesterday. I installed a Belkin 10/100 Ethernet card into my 1996 Packard Bell Platinum 55 (Windows 98SE) and a Linksys 10/100 Ethernet card into my 1995 Packard Bell Legend 812CD (Windows 95C) and ran a cable from my room to the living room where the custom Windows XP professional computer I built for my father is.
I had no trouble getting the Windows 98 and 95 computers to see each other and share files but for some reason XP doesn't show them on the network so I cannot access their shared files from the XP computer but I can access the shared files on the XP computer from the 98 and 95 computers. 🤣 (I'm starting to remember why I hated Windows 2000 and Windows XP)
Regardless of this hiccup in the file sharing the games we wanted to play saw each other fine and my father and I played a few skirmishes on Starcraft. 😁

Im testing stuff I have found in dumpsters or bought in untested lots

Something very strange happend when I tried a MSI P35 Platinum Combo DDR2/DDR3 motherboard. It seems one memory channel is bad, when I powered on with some nice DDR3 memory I saw a huge spark (my room is pretty dark) and the system powered off instantly, the familiar burnt electronic smell filled the room and upon inspection one trace on the memory module is melted right at the "slot connector". Perhaps this dosnt seem very strange, the strange thing is that the memory still works perfectly when tested in another system which is kind of great as its a part of a 6x2GB set. The memory module still smells like crap though.

edit

After some more testing my conclusion is that both DDR2 channels (4 of 4 slots) are dead and one DDR3 channel (1 of 2 slots) so there is only a single working memory slot. 1 x 4 GB DDR3 @ 1333+ Mhz should be enough for a socket 775 system anyhow so at least I dont have to bin the motherboard.

I started working on my MIDI-Box project. It's similar to what others have done (even a couple of commercial products like Dox-Box), but not exactly the same. Not to mention WaveBlaster DB boxes are somewhat hard to obtain in the USA. I'm working to built an external box that will take a MIDI input stream and feed it to a mounted WaveBlaster compatible daughterboard. The output audio would be routed to RCA outputs mounted on the box as well. I'm also planning on having four MIDI-Thru ports on the box that will work regardless of whether there is a daughterboard mounted or not.

I'm designing it such that the daughterboard and the MIDI-Thru ports receive the MIDI data at the same time. This will negate any time skew that normally occurs due to chaining MIDI devices via the MIDI-Thru port. With four MIDI-Thru ports, you won't need to chain all your devices in serial in order to switch between different synths on the fly. The idea is to have them all connected in parallel -- leaving the user only to worry about mixing/switching the analog output of the synths to their favorite speakers/headphones.

Only quality 1%-tolerance parts will be used and only audio-grade components (nichicon caps, DC-DC converters with low peak-to-peak voltage ripples, etc.)

So far, I've just got the basics working... ensuring I can read the MIDI stream from the PC's MIDI out, and pass it back out to a MT-32 connected on the projects' MIDI Thru port (that all works). I tested the integrity of the MIDI stream from inside my circuit by hooking up an Arduino MEGA, feeding it the MIDI serial/UART data, and decoding the MIDI instructions in realtime while playing Monkey Island. I saw the correct instructions on the Arduino and heard the music on the MT-32 connected on the MIDI Thru. So that all works.

Adding additional MIDI Thru ports is trivial. So I won't need to test that. Now I need to test DC-DC voltage conversion for the +/- 12V that waveblasters need as well as the entire waveblaster interface. If that all works, it'll be time to design a prototype PCB to fit in the enclosure. When done, it'll have a rocker switch for power as well as LED's for power as well as MIDI activity. It will be able to be powered using a simple 9V AC/DC adapter available anywhere. In addition, any AC/DC adapter you may use for your MT-32's or Sound Canvas' should work as well.

I'll be the first to admit that I have NO idea what all that stuff is on your desk (besides the keyboard, mice and gamepad), but it sounds like a great project is underway. Nice work!

For me....

I finished my Socket 3, AMD DX4-100 WB build and will be posting it this week in the System Specs thread.

I also set up my test bench to test out various PCI video cards. Today's tests - One of my more rare Real3D StarFighter 24MB PCI cards...Even flashed the video BIOS!

Asus P2B-LS with latest Beta BIOS
Pentium III 450Mhz
1 x 256MB PC100 RAM
4GB Transcend 133x CF Card
CD Drive
GOTEK Floppy Emulator
Win98SE on Fat32 partition

I don't think anyones posted a score in the 99 thread for the Real3d starfighter card yet.
How compatible is that card for gaming anyway? Noone ever talks about it.