RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2023-03-19, 00:13:

I read up on the old D&D games that are coming to GOG with the upcoming D&D film. Some look interesting, others not so much.

I remember owning Heroes of the Lance and Dragons of Flame back in the day. Being a huge fan of Dragonlance, I got them expecting them to be proper D&D RPG games. I remember being disappointed to learn they were mediocre side-scrollers.

That said, at least all those old games are coming to GOG.

I did my first fan restoration today. It was exactly like all the youtube videos. I wasn't really sure what to do once I got it apart so I just cleaned everything with IPA and then I greased the axle and the bearing (not sure how to get the grease into the bearings--I just puts some grease on both sides). The fan was from a Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS. It was tiny.

And I used that card in a turn-of-the-century build. I had a weird issue with the DVI port. I couldn't get it to display at 1280x1024. The screen would just go blank. 1024x768 was fine. I switched back to analogue VGA and it's fine.

Finally, the northbridge on my 440BX gets pretty hot. I wanted to take the heatsink off and put some thermal compound on it, but I couldn't get those plastic pins to release. I guess I'll just keep it at nuclear reactor temperature. I suspect it would run hot either way. That heatsink seems inadequate for this chip.

Getting new grease into the bearings is difficult, and depends a lot on how the motor is assembled. Some motors actually have removable bearings. With others, they're glued in. Some are sleeve bearings. It's impossible to know how to service it without inspecting it after disassembly.

I'm surprised that your 440BX runs hot. Most boards that I've seen don't include a heatsink on it at all. I wonder if there are earlier revisions at a larger process node that simply run hotter naturally. If it came with a heatsink already on it, maybe this is the reason.

I believe that these larger process nodes are also more tolerant of heat. But that's just a guess.

I have a Radeon 9600 XT which I'm using in my early Windows XP system, and the fan was pretty noisy, so I needed to replace it. Unfortunately it's one of the ATI heatsink/fan combos with the proprietary fan inside the heatsink, so sourcing just a fan is problematic. I had tossed around several ideas about how to mount a new fan and/or heatsink, and decided upon buying an 80mm slim fan and figuring out a good way to mount it. After much deliberation, I eventually figured out I could buy some 1/16" thick angle aluminum from the hardware store, cut it for size, and bend it in a little bit to slide over the existing heatsink fins, as they are also angled which acts as a sort of retention mechanism. I secured the fan to the aluminum with a hot glue gun which should hold well enough. Sort of a bonus with the angle aluminum, it's the same material as the heatsink so it's like a heatsink extension and even matches the color. The bigger fan means it should cool much better than stock. It's not the prettiest solution, but I think it will work well!

Question: since the stock fan connected directly to the 2-pin header on the video card, and the new fan is a 4-pin connector which I'll have to connect to a motherboard fan header or a molex PSU connector, does the video card have a protection circuit which will shut the card down if nothing is connected to the 2-pin header?

And now, the pictures:

That's genuinely hilarious. I also love any kind of mod that utilizes stock fans. It means that you will always be able to service it.

Good job.

My DOS prompt was looking too flat and unmystical, so I pulled out the first fishbowl CRT I could see, which was a GoldStar 1430 plus... Fired right up, seemed to be doing well apart from only about 95% vertical height... was noodling around on it a bit, then after it had warmed right up it suddenly flashed to really bright and I had to knock the brightness control down to minimum... No smells or fireworks behind, but I figured I'll let it cool off again. Might be a dry joint acting up when things expanded. Will have to have a look inside when I'm in the mood for it. Nothing super special, your typical 14" tube size where you only get about 12.5" visible, 640x480 VGA only, 0.31 dot pitch, yer basic average 286/386 VGA photonwerfer. Gone as brown as unbleached paper towels/napkins.

I just want to say inventory management when you own 150 plus graphics cards is a real fucking nightmare.

I'm sitting here looking at my spreadsheet and I've already thought of at least 3 graphics cards that I know I own, that I know work that aren't listed.

Apparently just adding the card make, model and specs wasn't enough and I need to add actual serialized inventory tags to all these things. Which means actually laying hands on every single item here again.

I should probably also find a way to devise a dedicated storage area that is both functional, and of adequate size to store all of them vs having them spreadout all over the place.

Fun.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-20, 03:13:

I just want to say inventory management when you own 150 plus graphics cards is a real fucking nightmare. […]
Show full quote

I just want to say inventory management when you own 150 plus graphics cards is a real fucking nightmare.

I'm sitting here looking at my spreadsheet and I've already thought of at least 3 graphics cards that I know I own, that I know work that aren't listed.

Apparently just adding the card make, model and specs wasn't enough and I need to add actual serialized inventory tags to all these things. Which means actually laying hands on every single item here again.

Fun.

I feel ya on that, Not sure I have 150 GPUs but I stopped due to lack of space to store them, as for cataloging them ...uhh Ive started doing that...yeah lets go with started.

Pretty sure I have duplicates too since ive picked up a few large lots of AGP gpus...might have to go through and keep the best ones and sell the remaining working duplicates off on evil bay.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-20, 03:13:

I just want to say inventory management when you own 150 plus graphics cards is a real fucking nightmare. […]
Show full quote

I just want to say inventory management when you own 150 plus graphics cards is a real fucking nightmare.

I'm sitting here looking at my spreadsheet and I've already thought of at least 3 graphics cards that I know I own, that I know work that aren't listed.

Apparently just adding the card make, model and specs wasn't enough and I need to add actual serialized inventory tags to all these things. Which means actually laying hands on every single item here again.

I should probably also find a way to devise a dedicated storage area that is both functional, and of adequate size to store all of them vs having them spreadout all over the place.

Fun.

What are you thinking, RFID, barcode, or some kinda QR type?

I am fairly sure I have between 50 and 100 cards... ish... IDK though if I'm thinking right about all the roach level ones, like X300s/600 class I remember trying about 4 in a Dell tryna get something working coz it was picky and I only know for sure where one is, then I swear I had more than one SiS 6326 but IDK where. I'd be kinda enthusiastic about QRish codes, but by the time you spliced it all together to run off your phone camera, you've probably got half a dozen server dependencies that might go dark unexpectedly.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-03-20, 03:40:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-20, 03:13:

I just want to say inventory management when you own 150 plus graphics cards is a real fucking nightmare. […]
Show full quote

I just want to say inventory management when you own 150 plus graphics cards is a real fucking nightmare.

I'm sitting here looking at my spreadsheet and I've already thought of at least 3 graphics cards that I know I own, that I know work that aren't listed.

Apparently just adding the card make, model and specs wasn't enough and I need to add actual serialized inventory tags to all these things. Which means actually laying hands on every single item here again.

I should probably also find a way to devise a dedicated storage area that is both functional, and of adequate size to store all of them vs having them spreadout all over the place.

Fun.

What are you thinking, RFID, barcode, or some kinda QR type?

I am fairly sure I have between 50 and 100 cards... ish... IDK though if I'm thinking right about all the roach level ones, like X300s/600 class I remember trying about 4 in a Dell tryna get something working coz it was picky and I only know for sure where one is, then I swear I had more than one SiS 6326 but IDK where. I'd be kinda enthusiastic about QRish codes, but by the time you spliced it all together to run off your phone camera, you've probably got half a dozen server dependencies that might go dark unexpectedly.

Roach Level cards ..Im borrowing this.

I just moved to a new apartment and I have stacks and stacks of my collection in clip boxes filling up my kitchen until I can build shelving.

Luckily I have made significant efforts over time to organize and safely store my collection, even if I haven't properly taken inventory or cataloged them. I agree, collecting can easily outpace organizing them. It's difficult, because it's often a multi step process. Order, unpack, inspect, maybe repair, do I need parts for repair, test on bench, is it even the right slot on the bench, catalog, make custom anti static bag, sort, etc.

Sometimes the repair she test part bottlenecks and I end up with a pile of cards and I'm too busy to test them. Then they go in a bin for later... I'm sure everyone here knows the drill!

I've been wanting to photograph and share how I organize things. It's good, but I'm definitely stopped by my always wanting to do better.

I do have one exception. I own a LAPC-I and it just doesn't store well. It's enormous and definitely the longest card in my collection by a mile. And I have several AWE32s.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-03-20, 03:47:

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-03-20, 03:40:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-20, 03:13:

I just want to say inventory management when you own 150 plus graphics cards is a real fucking nightmare. […]
Show full quote

I just want to say inventory management when you own 150 plus graphics cards is a real fucking nightmare.

I'm sitting here looking at my spreadsheet and I've already thought of at least 3 graphics cards that I know I own, that I know work that aren't listed.

Apparently just adding the card make, model and specs wasn't enough and I need to add actual serialized inventory tags to all these things. Which means actually laying hands on every single item here again.

I should probably also find a way to devise a dedicated storage area that is both functional, and of adequate size to store all of them vs having them spreadout all over the place.

Fun.

What are you thinking, RFID, barcode, or some kinda QR type?

I am fairly sure I have between 50 and 100 cards... ish... IDK though if I'm thinking right about all the roach level ones, like X300s/600 class I remember trying about 4 in a Dell tryna get something working coz it was picky and I only know for sure where one is, then I swear I had more than one SiS 6326 but IDK where. I'd be kinda enthusiastic about QRish codes, but by the time you spliced it all together to run off your phone camera, you've probably got half a dozen server dependencies that might go dark unexpectedly.

Roach Level cards ..Im borrowing this.

A new column in my spreadsheet and a roll of numbered labeled. I label something, then put the number in my spreadsheet.

I write a lot of detailed information on a piece of paper and tape that to the bag I make for each card. This way I can tell at a glance, while digging through a bin, which card has how much memory, bit width, etc. This is important when comparing older cards, and especially when cards have no identifying labels on them and the die is covered by a heatsink.

Gutted this PC, placed the motherboard into another case and powered it on with a random hard drive. It doesn't seem to like SATA drives, hangs on the mobo splash screen. With another random drive, it booted into W98. It's indeed a P4-2.4GHz and 512MB of RAM.

Taken the opportunity, I also tried two of the cards with the mobo. One of them an EtherLink XL 10Mbps networking card I plan to use in my period correct Pentium MMX 200 build.
The other is the exact same low-profile Tornado MX400 I recommended to check out here assuming it's 128bit and I can happily say, my assumption was right.

I'm a little disappointed the P4 board has issues with the SATA drive. The PSU I have for the case it's in only has one MOLEX plug and I hoped to use it with W2k as an AGP test bench for new acquisitions replacing the Abit SA7 I used until now.

Edit: Oh, yeah, and a Conner CP3301 340MB hard drive. It seems to be working, but the Windows 95 that's apparently installed on it fails to boot. No wonder, it's a huge change from the PC it was coming from.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-03-20, 04:51:

I write a lot of detailed information on a piece of paper and tape that to the bag I make for each card. This way I can tell at a glance, while digging through a bin, which card has how much memory, bit width, etc. This is important when comparing older cards, and especially when cards have no identifying labels on them and the die is covered by a heatsink.

that's very organised - nice way to reassess what exactly you have as well as make it easier when you need to pick one out

Here is an example of the info card I attach. The information is different depending on ISA/PCI/AGP and sound/video/etc. I try to include as much information as possible. All of my CPUs are sorted and labeled as well.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-03-20, 22:15:

Here is an example of the info card I attach. The information is different depending on ISA/PCI/AGP and sound/video/etc. I try to include as much information as possible. All of my CPUs are sorted and labeled as well.

20230320_181411.jpg

I do this with mainboards, otherwise it's difficult to find what you are looking for.
If you have more than 2 boards 😀

Spent the past couple evenings removing the anti-glare coating on this 17" Sony monitor.

The original coating was partially coming off and as a result the display looked really uneven and spotty when using. The before photo doesn't quite show how bad it was; it a fair bit worse in person.

It took several hours to remove the coating doing everything by hand.

IPA did most of the work, but there were some really stubborn areas left. I used some plastic scratch remover which I figured would be okay to use on glass, since I hoped it wouldn't scratch the glass itself.

The result is better than I expected. While it is super reflective now, it's a lot brighter and clearer than it was previously.

I did a double take at a CPU, dunno how long I've been ignoring this. It just fired a neuron that this DX2 66 doesn't have an S-Spec on it, and looking that up, I realised IBM made some straight intel 386 and 486 under license for a short while. However, other examples have the clue "MFG BY IBM" in the bottom line of text on the CPU, whereas it's not obviously there on mine... now not sure how forum compression gonna mangle it, but what I did not see on naked eye I could see on the photo, slight traces of M . . .. .. . BM ... so unless it said MASSIVE BM for boasting a bowel movement, I guess this one was IBM made too.

Anyhoo, anyone know anything about these, do they clock any better or worse than intel's? Do they cause magic pixies to fly out your butt and so get priced higher than normal, or anything about them other than the non-info at the usual suspects (wikipedia, cpu-world etc) ?

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-03-21, 01:01:

The result is better than I expected. While it is super reflective now, it's a lot brighter and clearer than it was previously.

For a moment I was kinda sad that you had to do that, quite a few good trinitrons have been ruined by damaged anti-glare coating. Thankfully I haven't had to do this on either of mine yet. (CPD-100ES & Nokia 447F)

However looking at the pictures, the outcome looks wonderful. It'd be nice if there was some way to replace the original AG coating, but in a room without other significant light sources, that should look fantastic. Perhaps even better than it did originally 😀

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-03-21, 04:20:

I did a double take at a CPU, dunno how long I've been ignoring this. It just fired a neuron that this DX2 66 doesn't have an S-Spec on it, and looking that up, I realised IBM made some straight intel 386 and 486 under license for a short while. However, other examples have the clue "MFG BY IBM" in the bottom line of text on the CPU, whereas it's not obviously there on mine... now not sure how forum compression gonna mangle it, but what I did not see on naked eye I could see on the photo, slight traces of M . . .. .. . BM ... so unless it said MASSIVE BM for boasting a bowel movement, I guess this one was IBM made too.

Anyhoo, anyone know anything about these, do they clock any better or worse than intel's? Do they cause magic pixies to fly out your butt and so get priced higher than normal, or anything about them other than the non-info at the usual suspects (wikipedia, cpu-world etc) ?

The part code of "03H4939" is a good clue that it's IBM, they almost always used 2 numbers, one letter then 4 numbers for things like FRUs and part numbers.

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For me, I've been trying to get 5 out of 5 of these broken mainboards working, the last one is super complex though and doesn't seem to be reading the BIOS even. It's an Abit AG4 and checking out my Abit AN4 for comparison - the 85C407 buffer chip gets hot when it's doing stuff. On my Abit AG4, the 85c407 stays about room temperature. The reset finishes properly but nothing happens after and I'm lost on what to do now. Pulled off the 85C407 with no immediate replacement with some low temp solder like the chipquik stuff. Leaving that for now and picked my broken MA013 mainboard back up - it's an AMI Color bios and after some fixing getting the PLL back to working, I got to where I had D3 and D4 connected to each other. After fixing that the bios finally gives *a* diagnostic code, 01. That's it, I think that's the first code, which should be a CPU error. Since it's an AM386DX40 soldered onto the board that's going to be interesting to solve. I probably caused the "--" error on this board in the first place trying to reflow pins on the chipset but it's good that we're back to something happening. Less bad than my Abit AG4

An interesting little thing while I was checking with my thermal camera, notice how 2x of the cache chips on the Abit AN4 are much hotter than the rest? They're china re-marks and now I'm wondering if the voltage / speed rating / manufacturer are not quite accurate. It says W24257AK-12 on each chip, but they're clearly not the same: