VOGONS


Reply 17800 of 27061, by Skyscraper

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bofh.fromhell wrote on 2020-12-30, 13:09:
That is very cool. Got an ultimate 2000 system put together! Wanna compare benchmarks? =) Mine is not overclocked tho. […]
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Skyscraper wrote on 2020-12-24, 01:29:
I built a fast year 2001 system that I will use in a future project. […]
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I built a fast year 2001 system that I will use in a future project.

Ths system consists of

Asus A7V266-E motherboard (KT266A September 2001)
Palomino Athlon 1800+ @1800 MHz (October 2001)
Geforce 3 Ti 500 (October 2001)
Era correct memory, storage and case.
A somewhat newer Seasonic PSU from 2005 (because it diddn't need a recap...)

I was first using a Palomino 1900+ (November 2001) overclocked to 1800 MHz but it's 12x multiplier and the resulting 150MHz FSB was not optimal. The 1800+ with it's 11.5x multiplier is at least a little bit better but I might replace it with a 1700+ running at 11*164 MHz if I find a suitable one (Or perhaps I will unlock the 1800+).

The Palomino Athlons are hot bastards, especially the ones from the first batch (AGKGA) manufactured during the summer 2001 and these will often not overclock beyond 1700 MHz without watercooling. The second batch (AGNGA) that hit the market with the 1900+ could usually do 1800 MHz with air cooling and 1.85V - 1.9V. Later batches made in Q1 2002 like the AGOIA first used for the Palomino 2100+ could often do 1800 MHz at stock voltage and diddn't run as hot.

My 1800+ is a hot running one and it needs 1.85V for full stability at 1800 MHz. The cooler I'm using is a Zalman CNPS7500 AlCu, it's not nearly good enough and the CPU hoovers around 60C but it will have to do for now.

PC Magazine tested some "Ultimate PCs" with Radeon 8500 or GF3 ti500 and P4 2.0 or Athlon XP 1800+/1900+ in the issue released the 6th December 2001. The best performing computer scored 7716 points in 3dmark 2001.

My ultimate year 2001-system scores somehat better than the ones in PC Magazine, perhaps not very surprising as my system is overclocked.

That is very cool.
Got an ultimate 2000 system put together!
Wanna compare benchmarks? =)
Mine is not overclocked tho.

Sorry for the late replay, I have been buisy with work and other hobbies latly. I do not have many benchmark results made with this system to share as it was built as a preparation for a future project.

I mostly wanted to see if this Asus motherboard could do what I needed else I would have bought a board that could. Only a few KT266A chipset motherboards are known to be able to run high FSB (190-210). The Asus A7V266-E isn't one of the great overclocking boards from year 2001 but it's very speedy at FSB 150 - 167 with really low memory latency so I figured that its lacking FSB capabilities wouldn't matter much and I was right.

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The new forum software kind of sucks and deletes my spacing....
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I did some other retro related stuff a few days ago, I replaced a few bad caps on a Geforce4 ti4600 and a single bad cap on a MSI motherboard from an Fujitsu computer.

The ti4600 with two visually bad caps, the third of the same type was also bad so I replaced that one aswell.

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Lead-free solder... I HATE that stuff... I had to add alot of real solder to get the nasty stuff out but everything turned out alright in the end.

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The old caps were baaad!

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The new caps are better!

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Seems you can only attach a few pics to a post so I will have to make two...

Last edited by Skyscraper on 2021-01-10, 12:09. Edited 1 time in total.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 17801 of 27061, by Skyscraper

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The MSI /Fujitsu board with one visually bad cap by the AGP slot.

MSI 845 Ultra (fujitsu version) with a bad cap by the AGP-slot.jpg
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The visually bad cap was really bad but I desoldered a few more of the same type and they all seemed fine, back on the board they went!

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In this case I diddn't use an ultra low ESR cap as replacement but some cheap Panasonic FR series cap, I figured it would be "good enough".

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Did the Geforce4 ti4600 and the MSI/Fujitu motherboard work after the cap replacements? Yes of course they did!

MSI 845 Ultra (fujitsu version) and Geforce4 ti4600 after repcap.jpg
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New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 17803 of 27061, by stef80

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RetroLizard wrote on 2021-01-09, 03:05:

Noted. I'll keep that in mind.

I'll post here, since I can't send PMs.
Good source would be eBay, amibay forum or local market.
Basically, you look for:
* Zalman VF700 (It may cost you on eBay, especially all-copper one. Also, it may be cheaper to buy whole other card with cooler on it.)
* Zalman VF900
* Arctic Cooling ATI silencer 1
* Arctic Cooling Accelero S2

There are also passive solutions from Zalman (ZM80C-HP and ZM80D-HP), but you'll need good ventilation for them.
All are period-correct except Accelero S2. This is the only one I didn't use on 9xxx serises (I used it on HD4670).
You'll need hair dryer (or heat gun) to remove original cooler, and nitro paint thinner to remove residue from core.

Reply 17804 of 27061, by bearking

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Replaced the ODIN/DALLAS RTC on my ABIT AB-PT5 I've got last month.
Desoldered the ODIN chip, soldered a socket to the board, recovered two DALLAS chips from two access control units. The whole process took me like 3 hours. I really need to practice my soldering/desoldering skills.
The "new" DALLAS chips are from 2011 and 2013 and bouth are working fine.
Here is the result:

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The board works fine, another one saved from the scrap 😀

Reply 17805 of 27061, by pentiumspeed

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Skyscraper wrote on 2021-01-10, 10:07:
The MSI /Fujitsu board with one visually bad cap by the AGP slot. […]
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The MSI /Fujitsu board with one visually bad cap by the AGP slot.

MSI 845 Ultra (fujitsu version) with a bad cap by the AGP-slot.jpg

The visually bad cap was really bad but I desoldered a few more of the same type and they all seemed fine, back on the board they went!

Bad cap.jpg

In this case I diddn't use an ultra low ESR cap as replacement but some cheap Panasonic FR series cap, I figured it would be "good enough".

MSI 845 Ultra (fujitsu version) with the bad cap replaced.jpg

Did the Geforce4 ti4600 and the MSI/Fujitu motherboard work after the cap replacements? Yes of course they did!

MSI 845 Ultra (fujitsu version) and Geforce4 ti4600 after repcap.jpg

Focus on ESR. This is most important part as this indicates how capable the capacitor is to source sufficient current during short time transits spikes. Capacity of uF determines storage long enough to bridge largest voltage dips. But too much capacity of too few takes too long to react due to insufficient parallelism resistance hence, multiple capacitors in parallel.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 17806 of 27061, by fool

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I was poking in old storage room and found some motherboard manuals.
10MHz Turbo is the only "lost-in-action" board. Other ones have somehow salvaged and running now.
Older ones seems to be pretty simple manuals, but if someone needs a copy I can scan some...

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Toshiba T8500 desktop
SAM/CS9233 Wavetable Synthesizer daughterboard
Coming: 40-pin 8MB SIMM kit, CS4232 ISA wavetable sound card

Reply 17807 of 27061, by Skyscraper

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pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-01-10, 16:38:

Focus on ESR. This is most important part as this indicates how capable the capacitor is to source sufficient current during short time transits spikes. Capacity of uF determines storage long enough to bridge largest voltage dips. But too much capacity of too few takes too long to react due to insufficient parallelism resistance hence, multiple capacitors in parallel.

Cheers,

Well the Panasonic FR series caps are low ESR, just not ultra low. The 1000uf 6.3v cap I used closly matched the 20 year old caps (of the same type as the one I replaced) still on the board when it comes to ESR so if it isn't good enough they all have to go.

It was good enough though and that's great as there is no chance I would waste 16 Nichicon HZ 1000uf 6.3V caps on that board. I guess poly modding could have been a last resort but I have only electrolytics at hand.

I was even tempted to use Panasonic FR series on the Geforce4 ti4600 but I read that it diddn't work for one person who tried while others said they used even worse caps ESR-wise when recapping GF4 without issues. At least the ti4600 has some real value but using expensive good quality ultra low ESR caps on stuff that has no (monetary) value at all dosn't make much sense and in such cases where scores of ultra low ESR caps are really needed I just keep the hardware in a box somewhere without fixing it.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 17808 of 27061, by Almoststew1990

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I did some retro activity for the time in a month or so. My main PC has had some issues so my retro area has been used for general computing with an i7 860 system whilst I sort out my main PC. But that's all fixed so I put together a retro PC.

It's a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 with 1GB of DDR 400 RAM and a 7600GS. I couldn't be bothered swapping out the case, PSU or SATA drives so it's got a 750GB SATA3 SSD, which XP installed onto just fine! As a bonus it's got 3 120mm fans working just fine too, not that I anticipating that helping to keep the P4 cool that much...

Interestingly I couldn't be bothered finding a Sata to Molex adapter to power the 7600GS on the modern PSU but it posted without this additional power. Does an 8X AGP slot deliver more power than 4x?

When I install the drivers I assume it'll pop up with a "low power mode" or something.

Ryzen 3700X | 16GB 3600MHz RAM | AMD 6800XT | 2Tb NVME SSD | Windows 10
AMD DX2-80 | 16MB RAM | STB LIghtspeed 128 | AWE32 CT3910
I have a vacancy for a main Windows 98 PC

Reply 17809 of 27061, by pentiumspeed

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Actually what I meant focus on ESR for health of the capacitors being checked, your tool has this feature. Do not worry about farads.

Polymer capacitors has very low ESR allows them to work even the farads is less than the normal electrolyte low ESR types.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 17810 of 27061, by pentiumspeed

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Almoststew1990 wrote on 2021-01-10, 20:41:
I did some retro activity for the time in a month or so. My main PC has had some issues so my retro area has been used for gener […]
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I did some retro activity for the time in a month or so. My main PC has had some issues so my retro area has been used for general computing with an i7 860 system whilst I sort out my main PC. But that's all fixed so I put together a retro PC.

It's a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 with 1GB of DDR 400 RAM and a 7600GS. I couldn't be bothered swapping out the case, PSU or SATA drives so it's got a 750GB SATA3 SSD, which XP installed onto just fine! As a bonus it's got 3 120mm fans working just fine too, not that I anticipating that helping to keep the P4 cool that much...

Interestingly I couldn't be bothered finding a Sata to Molex adapter to power the 7600GS on the modern PSU but it posted without this additional power. Does an 8X AGP slot deliver more power than 4x?

When I install the drivers I assume it'll pop up with a "low power mode" or something.

All AGP slot 1x, 2x, 4x and 8x are rated same watts max due to limited number of contacts for power find the power adapter and do this correctly, if card needs external power plug, plug that in. AGP *PRO* has bit more watts due to more contacts.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 17811 of 27061, by Almoststew1990

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@pentiumspeed yes when I installed the drivers it said it was in low power mode so I dug out my SATA to Molex adapter. I usually set it up properly I was just being lazy.

However I've reached the point where most of my DDR1 is dead and I might actually have to buy some; I'm used to having a never ending pile of DDR1 as it finds you rather than you finding it! I'm down to 1x 512Mb stick and doing just browsing to this forum was painful. Hopefully it's still throw-away money on eBay.

Ryzen 3700X | 16GB 3600MHz RAM | AMD 6800XT | 2Tb NVME SSD | Windows 10
AMD DX2-80 | 16MB RAM | STB LIghtspeed 128 | AWE32 CT3910
I have a vacancy for a main Windows 98 PC

Reply 17812 of 27061, by liqmat

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Spent the weekend getting the twins setup after almost two years in storage. In Win A500 ATX mid tower case in the middle for scale.

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Last edited by liqmat on 2021-01-11, 07:28. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 17813 of 27061, by pentiumspeed

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What on earth why no information on these twin computers? Are they intel-made servers?

Have some time taking these pictures and describe them in detail what are they? Web search is thin and your extra information will help big time.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 17814 of 27061, by liqmat

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pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-01-10, 23:21:

What on earth why no information on these twin computers? Are they intel-made servers?

Have some time taking these pictures and describe them in detail what are they? Web search is thin and your extra information will help big time.

Cheers,

Journey of a Unisys Aquanta HS/6, aka ALR Revolution 6x6

Last edited by liqmat on 2021-01-11, 07:26. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 17815 of 27061, by dionb

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Frustrating day. I want the impossible, and surprise surprise: it turned out to be impossible 😉

What? a 2000s era Knoppix Linux install with hardware detection and enough useful software for a lot of diagnostics, on a HDD smaller than the 2GB BIOS limit. Nope. Knoppix 5.1.1 at least requires 512MB swap if <128MB of RAM (likely), and install is about 1.5GB. It *just* fits onto a 2.1GB HDD, but that HDD is >2GB and so fails to be correctly recognized in the sort of early Pentium system I want to use it on. 1.6GB HDD is detected fine, but it doesn't fit.

Booting Knoppix from CD isn't an option due to lack of CD boot support. However SCSI might be an option, so that will be my next approach.

Also ordered 35 64k x 8 SRAM DIPs to boost some boards to 512kB/1MB of cache.

Reply 17816 of 27061, by Caluser2000

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dionb wrote on 2021-01-10, 23:36:
Frustrating day. I want the impossible, and surprise surprise: it turned out to be impossible ;) […]
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Frustrating day. I want the impossible, and surprise surprise: it turned out to be impossible 😉

What? a 2000s era Knoppix Linux install with hardware detection and enough useful software for a lot of diagnostics, on a HDD smaller than the 2GB BIOS limit. Nope. Knoppix 5.1.1 at least requires 512MB swap if <128MB of RAM (likely), and install is about 1.5GB. It *just* fits onto a 2.1GB HDD, but that HDD is >2GB and so fails to be correctly recognized in the sort of early Pentium system I want to use it on. 1.6GB HDD is detected fine, but it doesn't fit.

Booting Knoppix from CD isn't an option due to lack of CD boot support. However SCSI might be an option, so that will be my next approach.

Also ordered 35 64k x 8 SRAM DIPs to boost some boards to 512kB/1MB of cache.

Use plop from a floppy disk to boot the cd... or a lighter linux cd such as Damn Small Linux or similar.

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There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 17817 of 27061, by dionb

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Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-01-11, 08:41:

[...]

Use plop from a floppy disk to boot the cd... or a lighter linux cd such as Damn Small Linux or similar.

I suppose that would do the trick, it just combines two things I hate (floppy & CDs).

That's one of my other little projects - using a RaSCSI Raspberry Pi SCSI emulator to basically do a Gotek-for-CDs. Managed to get it working for HDD images, but not (yet) CD images. Given that it was designed for FM Towns/X68000, then adapted to vintage Mac systems, it's hardly aimed at bootable PC CDRoms, but I'd be very happy if I could get it working. Still, no time to dig around any more for the next few weeks :'(

But for this purpuse plain old SCSI HDD would do the trick and be less fiddly than a Pi needing an extra USB power supply etc. Except of course all my suitable drives have SCA connectors, so need fiddly adapters after all...

Reply 17818 of 27061, by appiah4

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dionb wrote on 2021-01-10, 23:36:
Frustrating day. I want the impossible, and surprise surprise: it turned out to be impossible ;) […]
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Frustrating day. I want the impossible, and surprise surprise: it turned out to be impossible 😉

What? a 2000s era Knoppix Linux install with hardware detection and enough useful software for a lot of diagnostics, on a HDD smaller than the 2GB BIOS limit. Nope. Knoppix 5.1.1 at least requires 512MB swap if <128MB of RAM (likely), and install is about 1.5GB. It *just* fits onto a 2.1GB HDD, but that HDD is >2GB and so fails to be correctly recognized in the sort of early Pentium system I want to use it on. 1.6GB HDD is detected fine, but it doesn't fit.

Booting Knoppix from CD isn't an option due to lack of CD boot support. However SCSI might be an option, so that will be my next approach.

Also ordered 35 64k x 8 SRAM DIPs to boost some boards to 512kB/1MB of cache.

If you have at least 64MB RAM in the PC you can just use Puppy Linux Retro 4.1.3 and even install it onto a hard drive. Granted, it works a million times better with 128MB RAM.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 17819 of 27061, by Caluser2000

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dionb wrote on 2021-01-11, 09:20:
Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-01-11, 08:41:

[...]

Use plop from a floppy disk to boot the cd... or a lighter linux cd such as Damn Small Linux or similar.

I suppose that would do the trick, it just combines two things I hate (floppy & CDs).

You rearly need to get over that when dealing with old kit and doing something they were never designed to do.

Last edited by Caluser2000 on 2021-01-11, 17:08. Edited 1 time in total.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉