Kahenraz wrote on 2021-09-28, 19:23:

Even though I have nostalgia for my Pentium 4 experience, there isn't anything that this particular platform can do that a Pentium 3 or later AMD or Socket 775 system can't. Well, except for RDRAM but there is no advantage to using it over a slightly faster CPU with cheaper SDRAM or DDR. This is the era of PCI/AGP which isn't particularly special or exciting.

I agree on later CPUs but an average pentium 3 will struggle with a ton of games played at MAX after 2002 even with a decent Geforce 4, i never tried anything over a 933Hz for the P3 though.

iraito wrote on 2021-10-08, 10:30:

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-09-28, 19:23:

Even though I have nostalgia for my Pentium 4 experience, there isn't anything that this particular platform can do that a Pentium 3 or later AMD or Socket 775 system can't. Well, except for RDRAM but there is no advantage to using it over a slightly faster CPU with cheaper SDRAM or DDR. This is the era of PCI/AGP which isn't particularly special or exciting.

I agree on later CPUs but an average pentium 3 will struggle with a ton of games played at MAX after 2002 even with a decent Geforce 4, i never tried anything over a 933Hz for the P3 though.

I think that's his point. A Tualatin 1400 and especially a Tualatin-S 1400 is very close to a 2GHz Pentium 4 and that was enough performance to get by with most games and where it's not enough it's better to go for a Core2 (even Pentium Dual Core, the E2220 is so underrated). The P3 is better for 90s stuff and adequate for the early 2000s, while the Core2 blows the P4 out of the water in whatever the P3 is too slow for so there is little practical reason to keep a P4.

I also noticed that my most used PC-s are the Tualatin-S and the Core2 while the Prescott has decent performance, it's a little redundant between these two.

This is why I primarily collect Slot 1 motherboards; it bridges the gap between slower Pentium 2 and Celerons into Coppermine and on-die cache. I try to make sure that the boards that I buy like this also have at least one ISA slot.

My argument is that once you are on Socket 370 there is no way to use an older CPU and generally it is more common for these boards to also have only PCI slots. And if you can only use AGP and PCI then why bother with a Pentium 3? It could be the fastest Windows 98 machine but there are diminishing returns as to what games are available for it.

I feel like there is little advantage to choosing a Pentium 3 over a cheap as chips Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 unless you have a very specific use case in mind and especially if you do not plan on running Windows 98/ME. I have a lot of apathy for this point in time when for me hardware advancement started to become a very dull thing as everything became focused on software.

Follow-up post of this: Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

I started from scratch on the Arduino serial MIDI sketch (which will stay internal for now) since I found out a simple Serial.begin(31250); starts MIDI, and I managed to code in a MIDI byte indicator LED. Then I was going to tidy up my DIY MIDI/Joystick cable, as the wiring was terrible. (It still is, but now it's less so.) So, I managed to break two pins off the old SOIC 74LS00 part and had to order a replacement. I fixed the cable an hour ago and then recorded a new video (this time, it's not 15 seconds long; here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVgamLuv3n0).

I realized I filmed that video vertically and the previous one was filmed horizontally. 😑

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-10-08, 11:23:

I think that's his point. A Tualatin 1400 and especially a Tualatin-S 1400 is very close to a 2GHz Pentium 4 and that was enough performance to get by with most games and where it's not enough it's better to go for a Core2 (even Pentium Dual Core, the E2220 is so underrated). The P3 is better for 90s stuff and adequate for the early 2000s, while the Core2 blows the P4 out of the water in whatever the P3 is too slow for so there is little practical reason to keep a P4.

Seconded. By releasing Pentium M and Core that could trace their origins back to P3, P2, and PPro (all under P6 microarchitecture), Intel basically admitted the failure of NetBurst microarchitecture. It was also a time when Athlon XP / 64 / X2 enjoyed high popularity among enthusiasts before Intel's comeback with Core i; AMD then entered a long time low with its "construction vehicles" series and was almost out of business until Zen saved its life.

Printed this "fast and dirty" design of HDD bracket mounting HDD inside Commodore PC 10. This model originally had no HDD and I guess this one has been later installed somewhere around '80s. Design is not idiot-proof, but it works as long as I'm not shipping the PC.

Both of floppy drives were stuck and HDD didn't boot. A bit of cleaning and greasing for floppy drives, HDD low level format and it's working perfect. Complete set with original Commodore keyboard and monochrome display.

Installed Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 on my Pentium MMX rig.

I set the desktop theme to "Dangerous Creatures" which was my favorite as a kid. Now this PC looks and sounds exactly as my old one did back in '97.

Is that the one with the cougar on the wallpaper?

Ydee wrote on 2021-10-09, 13:49:

Is that the one with the cougar on the wallpaper?

That's the one. I think it was probably the first wallpaper that I ever used.

Attaching image in case anyone else is interested.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-10-09, 13:54:

That's the one. I think it was probably the first wallpaper that I ever used. […]
Show full quote

Ydee wrote on 2021-10-09, 13:49:

Is that the one with the cougar on the wallpaper?

That's the one. I think it was probably the first wallpaper that I ever used.

Attaching image in case anyone else is interested.

MS_Plus.JPG

That is a really nice wallpaper. It looks kind of familiar, but I don't think I ever used win 95 plus.

Joakim wrote:

That is a really nice wallpaper. It looks kind of familiar, but I don't think I ever used win 95 plus.

I think it was included by default in some later Windows versions.

Windows 98 was one of them. I have it set on my 98SE Orange build (PIII-S 1.4 Tualatin). Brings back a lot of memories.

In fact, I have that on my 486 computer running 95C (still have the Plus! 95 CD).

Yesterday I woke another old-PC from hibernation that I had kept aside for several years, it is a Pentium 60 SKT4, the motherboard is AT with Intel 8243X LX chipset.
This card is from Intel, in this case the card model is Hendrix (or so it seems they call it), it has the VGA on board with 1MB of RAM expandable to 2MB, the VGA chip is from Cirrus Logic GD5434, but for to make it work you need an AT power supply with P10 connector (in addition to P8 and P9) and a special card for connecting the VGA port to the MB (which I do not have), if you want the problem of the card can be overcome, making one by hand with a little of recycled materials (scrap motherboards), for PIN connections should not be complicated, just look at the connections of a VGA to understand what individual PINs are. For the moment I remedied by installing a VGA PCI (if desired, an ISA would also be fine), to be precise a SIS 6215 with 2MB of RAM, I tried other cards including a matrox mystique and G450 but it did not display anything in the monitor the same with the ATI Rage XL, maybe the problem could be the monitor, at the moment I have two that are broken and I should fix, one I remember having problems with the Vga Matrox not displaying anything, so maybe this is the cause, maybe there is some difference video signal, and some older monitors don't detect it.
Returning to the MB it starts correctly displaying the BIOS screen, from here I detect the AMI BIOS version 1.00.02.BL0, the installed RAM is only 48MB while the RAMs are all 16MB each (so they would be 64MB), trying and trying again the two pairs, I notice that a pair of 16MB is read for half, then I replace it with a pair of 8MB each, now the 48MB are detected correctly, I notice in one of the RAM slots a Pin between 72 that is folded and almost goes to touch the neighboring one, unfortunately I was unable to straighten it because it broke, but despite this the RAMs are read correctly, perhaps it is a mass or common PIN so the absence is not noticed.
Unfortunately it has a dallas DS12887 RTC chip with low battery, to which you have to do the MOD., It is not so much for the low battery, but for the BIOS info that is lost at every boot, also there is a bug to the bios, at least for the moment you do not enter by pressing F1, pressing it the PC freezes. The only thing possible is to boot it from floppy. But even here for the moment it doesn't work, maybe it's the reader or the floppies that are missing, I should try other ones that are sure to work and see what happens (that is, if it starts).

I've set up my test bench on my usual Abit SA7+Pentium 4 1.60A with Windows 98SE. Now on a CF card and saved an image of the fresh install.
In the meanwhile tested my dumpster found S3 Trio3D/2X which was labelled faulty. It seems to be working alright.

I finally setup a test machine to try and retrieve files from some old MFM hard drives that have not seen action in decades. My setup currently is an old Packard Bell (Socket 7 150 mhz ) paired with a Gotek floppy emulator with Flash Floppy installed. This is the first time I've been successful in such an endeavor as my previous test machine, a Pentium II with a stubborn oem bios that does not really let you disable the IDE controller it seems.

Drive #1 - 10 MB IBM - This was installed in an IBM 5150 which even has it's original 63.5 w psu. It booted right up to DOS on the test machine and I was able to copy all the files I wanted right to the floppy drive (Gotek with blank 1.44mb images). Not the most efficient method but it's the best low effort method I had at this time. After this feat I ran Spinrite 3.1 and this drive had a clean bill of health. Definitely a sweet running drive it seems.

Drive #2 - 42 MB Seagate ST251-0 - This one came from an IBM XT 5160 that was seriously decked out for it's time featuring color graphics, AST SixPak expansion, 3.5'' 720k floppy, math coprocessor, and a DEFINICON DSI-020 68020 coprocessor. In today's money this system as spec'd could easily pay for a new car. Unfortunately it seems that it is too late for the drive unless someone with some expertise can assist or advise in this matter. I was however able to access this drive which gave me some insights of what this machine was used for and copy a small handful of files. Essentially I would hear drive noises and get a 'sector not found' message about 99% of the time when copying a file or accessing certain directories. This is unfortunate as this drive was chock full of interesting development software, source code, and various utilities including a directory with all the software needed to enable the Definicon Coprocessor to actually work. The previous owner it seems may have been an engineer or scientist of some kind, perhaps aviation related.

4dam wrote on 2021-10-05, 19:12:

What Atlhon is there ?

I'm working on kind of simmilar project, and It's calling "Budget Tualatin Smasher". 😉

It's an Athlon 900 MHz, I believe 100 MHz FSB, though the board is a KT133A chipset so it could be upgraded, but I'm just going to run it as I bought it, except with a new hard drive and Radeon 9600 XT. I got the whole tower for $10, so with the hard drive and GPU upgrade, it's about $70 for a complete late Win 98 system. Not too bad. Though I do want to replace the onboard sound with an Audigy card.

I have a faster AMD 1.4 GHz Tbird system with a KT266A chipset board but I'm using that for early XP fun.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-09-28, 19:23:

I also believe that the entire Socket 423 and 478 (Pentium 4) era can be skipped entirely unless it fits a particular niche or you get it at a good deal. You can easily get a Pentium 4 on Socket 775 where there is much more room for growth with the option of either AGP or PCIe.

Even though I have nostalgia for my Pentium 4 experience, there isn't anything that this particular platform can do that a Pentium 3 or later AMD or Socket 775 system can't. Well, except for RDRAM but there is no advantage to using it over a slightly faster CPU with cheaper SDRAM or DDR. This is the era of PCI/AGP which isn't particularly special or exciting.

One advantage I can think of over a Pentium 3 though is that these platforms are very stable. I can see someone choosing these early Pentium 4 sockets as a way to stay near the late Pentium 3 in performance but with more reliability and hardware compatibility.

My Pentium 3 rig has RDRAM so that can't be used in defense of the Pentium 4 either.

Today I've been continuing to install & test games on my Athlon XP 3200+build. It's been rock solid for about a week after I changed out a faulty motherboard.

Then today I got around to installing & testing OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast and suffered constant BSODs after a few minutes of running the game - CPU overheating, running at 68-69 degrees! Opened it all up again, replaced the back exhaust fan and swapped the CPU cooler for something a bit bigger and beefier and now it seems to be happy again, CPU seems to be maxing around 63-65 degrees now which is still not ideal but no more BSOD problems. To solve the temperature issues fully I'll probably have to get a better case allowing for a side fan.

This build has been the biggest pain in the ass so far. I'll probably configure a backup Socket 754-based Athlon 64 system, in case this thing craps out on me when I need it.

Do you have picture of the heat sink? Buff the whole area of the heat sink with 800 or 1000 grit sandpaper will make surface more smoother for better thermal contact.

Are you using MX-4 or MX-5 even Arctic Silver 5? Not the old fashioned white paste. Not sufficient mW/k.

Cheers,

I tried running the Coppermine family CPU on a slot1 board with i440LX, so far it didn't look hopeless on the quick test, but I'll see after I plug in and install OS (W98SE). If the HDD controller bites the FSB 83MHz, I'd have a decently variable allrounder DOS/W9x.