fosterwj03 wrote on 2021-11-27, 18:18:

If you consider hardware older than a decade retro...

i like to promote the idea; if the only reason to use a piece of hardware is nostalgia, its "retro".

I have a friend that I buy parts from who has a sizeable hoard of old stuff. Sometimes I find wierd and obscure things in there and this is one of them. I haven't bought it as I have no use for it but I thought it might be interesting for everyone to see. It's labelled a Compaq Goldrush kit. I didn't read the documents inside the box but it's some kind of CPU upgrade kit for Contura laptops. It has an interesting/odd of a name for just a random CPU upgrade kit and I can't find any info on Google about it.

Edit: Something I actually did buy was a Soundblaster 16 ct1740 with no hanging note bug. Was after one of them for ages

fosterwj03 wrote on 2021-11-27, 18:18:

If you consider hardware older than a decade retro,

At a pinch I could accept 10 years as retro - that means I have one build that isn't retro (although do plan some more recent builds like 1156/2011 and later, AM3 and later), but by that criteria one of my current 2 daily drivers is retro (FM1, my secondary PC)

Got new RAM for my overkill build:


Looks so nice with the red PCB.

Then this happened:


The sticks are fine. I checked them on a KT400 board.
It's the board which can't handle more than 2GB. My buddy has the same problem on his KT3 Ultra2 with OCZ sticks. Underclocking or raising timings/voltage didn't help.
We also found threads were people had the same problem with other sticks (Kingston, Corsair). Is this a common problem on KT333 or does it just affect the KT3 Ultra2?

The guy didn't bring all the cases but good bunch.

Found this at ewaste. Missing some capacitors, but otherwise in pretty good shape. Hope it still works.

RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2021-11-27, 22:44:

It's the board which can't handle more than 2GB. My buddy has the same problem on his KT3 Ultra2 with OCZ sticks. Underclocking or raising timings/voltage didn't help.
We also found threads were people had the same problem with other sticks (Kingston, Corsair). Is this a common problem on KT333 or does it just affect the KT3 Ultra2?

Have you programmed in the 2.7V DRAM requirement for these chips?

Also try slower clocks. I have found some motherboards/CPUs don't like full speed when all the memory slots are full.

RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2021-11-27, 22:44:

Underclocking or raising timings/voltage didn't help.

canthearu wrote on 2021-11-27, 23:05:

Have you programmed in the 2.7V DRAM requirement for these chips?

Also try slower clocks. I have found some motherboards/CPUs don't like full speed when all the memory slots are full.

We tried everything.

2 sticks run fine with 333MHz, 2-2-2-5 timings and 2.5V.

Droidekafan wrote on 2021-11-27, 21:42:

I have a friend that I buy parts from who has a sizeable hoard of old stuff. Sometimes I find wierd and obscure things in there and this is one of them. I haven't bought it as I have no use for it but I thought it might be interesting for everyone to see. It's labelled a Compaq Goldrush kit. I didn't read the documents inside the box but it's some kind of CPU upgrade kit for Contura laptops. It has an interesting/odd of a name for just a random CPU upgrade kit and I can't find any info on Google about it.

Interesting... I managed to pull this up
http://www.1000bit.it/ad/bro/compaq/Compaq-Co … yQuickSPECs.pdf
Shows it's a dx2/50 upgrade for the dx2/40 in those models.

I tried slightly hard to find that, because I've got a Contura... but it's the wrong model. However, it's also possible you've got a box of DX2/40 pulls after the DX2/50s were deployed. DX2/40 though... weird.

Nexxen wrote on 2021-11-27, 22:51:

The guy didn't bring all the cases but good bunch.

Great. Nice variety to be going on with. I maybe only have one or two very similar ones, but the overall impression is about the same as it would look if I stacked all my pre-ATX stuff together 🤣

Nexxen wrote on 2021-11-27, 22:51:

The guy didn't bring all the cases but good bunch.

I hope he brought the top-left one under the Hyundai (the one with triple 5 1/3 inch drive bays), what a beauty. I have two low-profile versions on that case. And the 486 mini-tower lower right corner (with the "fat belly"). I used to have one of those, very sad I threw it out. I was a fool when I was younger (probably still am...)

Edit: that top-left one, on its side also looks like a nice case. XT or AT? I think I've seen those as XT with a mechanical top (opens like the bonnet of a car).

Today I managed to snag a working 5.25 Mitsubishi FDD for $5, and 16MB of 30 pin ram for $10. So now I have a way to read just the driver disk for my almost-working serial mouse both kinds of floppies, and have way too much ram for what a SX2-66 can actually run.

BetaC wrote on 2021-11-28, 08:06:

Today I managed to snag a working 5.25 Mitsubishi FDD for $5, and 16MB of 30 pin ram for $10. So now I have a way to read just the driver disk for my almost-working serial mouse both kinds of floppies, and have way too much ram for what a SX2-66 can actually run.
IMG_2527.jpg

WOW!!

pan069 wrote on 2021-11-28, 00:34:

Nexxen wrote on 2021-11-27, 22:51:

The guy didn't bring all the cases but good bunch.

I hope he brought the top-left one under the Hyundai (the one with triple 5 1/3 inch drive bays), what a beauty. I have two low-profile versions on that case. And the 486 mini-tower lower right corner (with the "fat belly"). I used to have one of those, very sad I threw it out. I was a fool when I was younger (probably still am...)

Edit: that top-left one, on its side also looks like a nice case. XT or AT? I think I've seen those as XT with a mechanical top (opens like the bonnet of a car).

AT case, if sticker isn't wrong (sold in 1992). I have a keyboard with a switch for XT and AT.
It has metal buttons on the sides to open the cover. Handy!

The Hyundai is for a SUPER-286X 😀

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-11-27, 23:32:

Nexxen wrote on 2021-11-27, 22:51:

The guy didn't bring all the cases but good bunch.

Great. Nice variety to be going on with. I maybe only have one or two very similar ones, but the overall impression is about the same as it would look if I stacked all my pre-ATX stuff together 🤣

Unfortunately I'm not going to keep all of them as I don't have enough space (even in the basement).
It looks beautiful though.
The guy made a good deal if I took all of them, and I took all of them. Retro guy meets retro stuff: what should I have done??? 🤣
He forgot to bring one and one more keyboard but it's ok even so.

Nexxen wrote on 2021-11-27, 22:51:

The guy didn't bring all the cases but good bunch.

Those are some fine looking cases, I can never seem to find good at cases around where I live

fosterwj03 wrote on 2021-11-27, 18:18:

If you consider hardware older than a decade retro, I got this GeForce GTX 285 OC in the mail yesterday. I got it for my Overkill yet vanilla Windows 2000 build. So far, it works with the last Win2k-compatible nVidia drivers in my test system. I'm going to put it in the Overkill system this afternoon.

Despite being a blower, the fan is actually pretty quiet even under full load. I think I'm going to like this card in Windows 2000 quite a bit.

What driver?

RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2021-11-27, 22:44:

Got new RAM for my overkill build: https://i.imgur.com/HwQJi9T.jpg https://c.tenor.com/1EPcfrfuO3UAAAAM/more-power.gif Looks so […]
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Got new RAM for my overkill build:


Looks so nice with the red PCB.

Then this happened:


The sticks are fine. I checked them on a KT400 board.
It's the board which can't handle more than 2GB. My buddy has the same problem on his KT3 Ultra2 with OCZ sticks. Underclocking or raising timings/voltage didn't help.
We also found threads were people had the same problem with other sticks (Kingston, Corsair). Is this a common problem on KT333 or does it just affect the KT3 Ultra2?

So I went ahead and downloaded the manual for the KT3 Ultra2 (as this was the board model number you mentioned in this reply) and it did indeed make no mention of having certain limitations to the memory, which somewhat surprised me as I was expecting them to be there. Manual was downloaded from the MSI website itself.
From memory (my own that is, no pun intended 🤣) these chipsets did have certain limitations when using larger amounts of memory, mostly needing to lower clockrates and/or loosen timings to be able to run stable.

Somewhat unexpectedly, I got my hands on a HP Vectra VL5.

Not sure what to do with it. My Pentium MMX rig already covers that era of gaming. I guess I might refurbish the Vectra and resell it at some point.

Droidekafan wrote on 2021-11-28, 09:29:

Nexxen wrote on 2021-11-27, 22:51:

The guy didn't bring all the cases but good bunch.

Those are some fine looking cases, I can never seem to find good at cases around where I live

I'm not keeping them all. No space.
I checked and I should put some under my bed, up on my library and swap them with bedside tables 😀
I guess I overdid it. But 🤣 Cleaning is going to be a long chore 😀