kaputnik wrote:

Was originally gonna replace the FSB frequency and multiplier dipswitches with pinheaders on my Gigabyte GA-586HX board, to be able to connect external FSB/multiplier switches, but turned out there are revisions of the same board where you set those with jumpers. The jumper headers were there on my board revision (1.53) too, just not populated with pins. Great! Installed pin headers, and kept the dipswitch rack. If I ever want to go back to using the dipswitches, I just need to unplug the external switches. No replacement needed. The four dipswitches are set to OFF (open) when using the external switches, electrically it's the same thing as if they weren't there.

Beautifully done! I like the little things you did too like the nuts holding the switches in place are all lined up nicely. Certainly makes for a very flexible set up!

I did such a mod back in the 1990s 😁

Had an AMD DX4 100 and I could set the FSB as well as the multiplier.

I've been messing around with an original pentium system. It runs everything but Dos Quake for now. I'll install win95 on it and try GL_Quake - tomorrow. Right now it's time for bed 😀

LunarG donated a lovely socket 939 SLI board a while ago.

When I wanted to use it in a video it wasn't working though, spinning fans, but no POST. Trying to flash the BIOS in the G540 failed. Today I tried flashing it in my new programmer, and that worked. Quickly put the board on a test bench, and it POSTed 😀 Very happy. Can't wait to use this in the near future.

Capture of POST screen attached.

Tinkered with one of my lessor Dell Inspiron 9300s and resolved the screen brightness issue as well did some updates to get things along. The battery appears to have fixed itself 🤣 (lithums gg wp), for fun I decided to give Minecraft a try and surprisingly it is not half bad on this machine.

6800 Go (not the ultra)
PM 760 (2GHZ)
1GB ram (going to upgrade)
1440x900 screen
24GB msta SSD (msata to IDE adapter)
Win XP

Got to the last section of Ultima Underworld 2 -- The Ethereal Void. Looks like I'm almost done, but this section is going to be tough!

Swapped the Trident 9000 ISA card in my 286, for a CL-5424 ISA.
This took away 70/80% of the ugly vertical spaghetti lines on my monitor.
Things are now playable, just not perfect as in no lines....

(Was about to throw meatballs at the monitor, making it a nice italian dish)

brostenen wrote:

ugly vertical spaghetti lines on my monitor.

does not sound like its al dente

mrau wrote:

brostenen wrote:

ugly vertical spaghetti lines on my monitor.

does not sound like its al dente

Not by far... I would not serve it to Mario, that's for shure. 😁

Uncloseted (is that a word?) a Socket 5 mobo FIC PT-2000 that has an SY033 Pentium 120 MHz and 48MB of memory. How junky is that board?

Oh, what is the proper way to take off the heatsink of that processor, heat up, freeze, twist, pry, what, how, who, why?

EDIT:

Pentium is liberated from the grips of a horrid sticky tape! Some alcohol and a wooden wedge did it.

I finally got around to testing my Pine Tech PT-730A board. It's an early socket 5 motherboard using a UMC chipset. It's surprisingly speedy for a board that uses regular 486 cache. What surprised me even more is that it has a WORKING TURBO switch 😀. Even better, while messing around with the jumpers I accidentally discovered the board can do FSB speeds from 20MHz to 75MHz witch is freaking cool. Slowest I could get it is 30MHz. With cache disabled it behaves like a 386SX / 286 cpu. I'll open a thread about it at some point.

Finally started going through my parts pile. Unfortunately, it seems I've fried my Asus TX97-X. Was going to use that to approximate the primary machine that was solely mine growing up but...well shit happens. Popped a good Asus power supply at the same time too. Oh well. AOpen AX59-Pro to the rescue!

Poor Asus 🙁 Any visible damage?

Take care of the AX59-Pro. That's a nice board 😀

senrew wrote:

Finally started going through my parts pile. Unfortunately, it seems I've fried my Asus TX97-X. Was going to use that to approximate the primary machine that was solely mine growing up but...well shit happens. Popped a good Asus power supply at the same time too. Oh well. AOpen AX59-Pro to the rescue!

Well, turns out the Asus board isn't completely dead. The PSU *DID* explode when I had it plugged in, but it seems the board survived...mostly. Didn't realize it but the CPU had a pin bent completely flat against the underside of the package, so that chip is dead. I was also using the wrong RAM type.

Swapped the chip and ram, plugged in another known good PSU...and it posts...but it stop at the "Press F1 to continue, DEL to setup blah blah". Tried USB and PS/2 keyboards, but no key presses of any kind are recognized. If I can get that fixed, I think the board will be just fine.

I have been rebuilding my SS7 system, decided to start from scratch again. AOpen AX59Pro, K6-III+ 400MHz, 128MB SDRAM, Matrox G400 32MB, 2x Voodoo II 12MB, Soundblaster AWE64 Gold. I had no SLI cable, so I made one from a FDD cable (thank you Vogonswiki for the How-To). I wanted to use my Asus Geforce 256, but it seems to have died 🙁

senrew wrote:

Well, turns out the Asus board isn't completely dead. The PSU *DID* explode when I had it plugged in, but it seems the board survived...mostly. Didn't realize it but the CPU had a pin bent completely flat against the underside of the package, so that chip is dead. I was also using the wrong RAM type.

Swapped the chip and ram, plugged in another known good PSU...and it posts...but it stop at the "Press F1 to continue, DEL to setup blah blah". Tried USB and PS/2 keyboards, but no key presses of any kind are recognized. If I can get that fixed, I think the board will be just fine.

May I ask, what type of RAM did you use before you switched it out?

Your PSU exploded? 😲 Was this due to the bent pin?

I think it was a stick of EDO that I pulled out of one of the G3/G4 Macs I picked up. The board is supposed to be able to take EDO but i dunno. Could have just been a bad stick.

Heh, well maybe not "exploded". There were several loud pops and bangs inside the unit and nice flashes and magic smoke. The PSU was giving me issues on one of the cable chains in another machine and I stopped using that particular one.

Any ideas what to do about the keyboard issue?

senrew wrote:

I think it was a stick of EDO that I pulled out of one of the G3/G4 Macs I picked up. The board is supposed to be able to take EDO but i dunno. Could have just been a bad stick.

Heh, well maybe not "exploded". There were several loud pops and bangs inside the unit and nice flashes and magic smoke. The PSU was giving me issues on one of the cable chains in another machine and I stopped using that particular one.

Any ideas what to do about the keyboard issue?

You mean an EDO DIMM? If using SIMMs, you have to use pairs. I don't know if memory from a Mac will work with PC hardware, it may or it might not.

Could you try a USB keyboard? I don't know if these will work while within the BIOS of boards this old though, I once tried it but it had to be enabled...which I couldn't do as the ps2 keyboard would not work and I could thus not enable USB keyboard.

Only way I could think of, would be to flash the BIOS with a tweaked version that has USB keyboard enabled by default. Either that or repair if possible (I don't know how to though).

Tried with the USB keyboard first since I had to dig the PS/2 one out of a box. Either USB isn't enabled or, I dunno, there's something fucky with this board. This was the first time I'd tried it since Ingot it too. No clue if it had issues before the PSU problem.

Cyrix200+ wrote:

I have been rebuilding my SS7 system, decided to start from scratch again. AOpen AX59Pro, K6-III+ 400MHz, 128MB SDRAM, Matrox G4 […]
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I have been rebuilding my SS7 system, decided to start from scratch again. AOpen AX59Pro, K6-III+ 400MHz, 128MB SDRAM, Matrox G400 32MB, 2x Voodoo II 12MB, Soundblaster AWE64 Gold. I had no SLI cable, so I made one from a FDD cable (thank you Vogonswiki for the How-To). I wanted to use my Asus Geforce 256, but it seems to have died 🙁

The AX59Pro is one of the best SS7 boards I've ever tried. Enjoy 😀