I have decided to bust out the MMX 233 system again, though I am at a partial impasse. Part of me wants to see if I can get a K6 processor running on this Sony AG430HX (Triton II) motherboard, but I am unsure if the voltage will work out. I know it Supports VRE and Overdrive voltages, but beyond that, I am at a loss. Top it off with me not having a truly good 3D card for the 1997 era as well and I have a puzzle to work on.

Has anyone gotten a K6 to work on Triton II, though?

BetaC wrote on 2021-12-07, 08:38:

I have decided to bust out the MMX 233 system again, though I am at a partial impasse. Part of me wants to see if I can get a K6 processor running on this Sony AG430HX (Triton II) motherboard, but I am unsure if the voltage will work out. I know it Supports VRE and Overdrive voltages, but beyond that, I am at a loss. Top it off with me not having a truly good 3D card for the 1997 era as well and I have a puzzle to work on.

Has anyone gotten a K6 to work on Triton II, though?

If it's one of the earlier K6 processors (233 or below) then it should electrically work, those are 2.9-3.4V. 266 onwards are 2.1-2.2V and the VRM on an HX board is very unlikely to supply that.

The famous Asus T2P4 is a 430HX board and runs K6-2 and K6-3. There's a number of HX boards with vregs that do 2.5v that will take littlefoot, chompers and CXT. But a Sony proprietary board, you might be out of luck, BIOSes aren't so general purpose, then there's the OEMs that like to actively prevent you instead of leaving doors open.

Got the parts computer in yesterday (40EC), DOA, but it has a LOT of nice cosmetic parts. I may still attempt to fix it (I only have like.....3-4 motherboards and 2-3 power-boards). Screen went to my 40EC, screens back in the V/50, which was having some kind of wacky problem always going to the floppy drive right away at boot even with a working floppy drive....the really good fix? Pull that floppy drive out of the Versa Bay during POST, let it boot off the HDD. Probably need to fix that 6.3a Fuse instead of using a jumper on it and see if any other components in that area on the V/50 are out of spec and swap them.

Also, nice thing, the parts machine came with yet another HDD caddy and connect, + now I finally have a PCMCIA Ethernet card so data xfer on all of the machines is doable despite the dock still being out of commission (need to replace 2 230K Ohm resistors in the power section).

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-12-07, 14:36:

The famous Asus T2P4 is a 430HX board and runs K6-2 and K6-3. There's a number of HX boards with vregs that do 2.5v that will take littlefoot, chompers and CXT. But a Sony proprietary board, you might be out of luck, BIOSes aren't so general purpose, then there's the OEMs that like to actively prevent you instead of leaving doors open.

Thanks for warding me off, though it was in vain anyways. All I can find locally are K6-2 or above, so it was a nonstarter.

BetaC wrote on 2021-12-07, 19:45:

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-12-07, 14:36:

The famous Asus T2P4 is a 430HX board and runs K6-2 and K6-3. There's a number of HX boards with vregs that do 2.5v that will take littlefoot, chompers and CXT. But a Sony proprietary board, you might be out of luck, BIOSes aren't so general purpose, then there's the OEMs that like to actively prevent you instead of leaving doors open.

Thanks for warding me off, though it was in vain anyways. All I can find locally are K6-2 or above, so it was a nonstarter.

It's not really of much use other than for curiosity's sake anyway. A K6-2 would be roughly on par with an MMX-233.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-07, 20:42:

BetaC wrote on 2021-12-07, 19:45:

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-12-07, 14:36:

The famous Asus T2P4 is a 430HX board and runs K6-2 and K6-3. There's a number of HX boards with vregs that do 2.5v that will take littlefoot, chompers and CXT. But a Sony proprietary board, you might be out of luck, BIOSes aren't so general purpose, then there's the OEMs that like to actively prevent you instead of leaving doors open.

Thanks for warding me off, though it was in vain anyways. All I can find locally are K6-2 or above, so it was a nonstarter.

It's not really of much use other than for curiosity's sake anyway. A K6-2 would be roughly on par with an MMX-233.

That it is. I still need to figure out if I am going to put something other than my fancy Matrox MGA card in there again.

Made a battery-resuscitation video on YouTube. Basically bringing the Energy+ Battery I got with the Parts Versa back to life (I think I need to zap it more). Figured I might as well show how I somehow have 30 year old NiMH batteries that still keep at least enough of a charge to move my vintage portables from one room of the house to another without having to restart. My first #DOSCEMBER video.

Converted an AT case to semi-ATX.

I put this together.......lots of dirt....lots of scrubbing...but it runs....

- Presumably Antec baby AT case (Moondog)
- PcChips M912 socket 3 board
- AMD Am486-DX4 100 NB8
- 32 MB of RAM
-1.44 mb floppy
- 52x cd-rom
- 160GB SATA HDD
- SB16 Value
-SMC 8416 10mbps Ethernet

Just need to format and install an O/S and rip all my game discs to it.

Freed up the original CPU fan and reprogrammed the LED Readout.

Got given a broken GF4ti 4600, fan doesn’t work right and is slow and the gpu appears to be fine but artifacts and crashes with driver errors after 30 mins or so.

My guess is that it needs a new cooler, fan with some new Tim and it should be fine, not a bad score if that’s all it is. Physically nothing wrong with it either no missing parts or blown caps so fingers crossed.

I finished a repair of a GeForce 4 Ti 4200. I'll post photos soon. The repair involved replacing 12 0402 (very tiny at 1.0 x 0.5mm) capacitors and rebuilding a seized cooling fan.

I'll post photos soon in another thread later today.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-11, 11:09:

I finished a repair of a GeForce 4 Ti 4200. I'll post photos soon. The repair involved replacing 12 0402 (very tiny at 1.0 x 0.5mm) capacitors and rebuilding a seized cooling fan.

I'll post photos soon in another thread later today.

I’d love to see the pics, I’m hoping it doesn’t require any rework of components, hands just ain’t steady enough for that type of soldering.

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-11, 11:45:

hands just ain’t steady enough for that type of soldering.

I figured something out for that, but haven't made one yet ... think of a rest or bridge for a snooker or pool cue, the thin end only moves around a little when you waggle the fat end around a lot right? ... so if you make a rest out of stiff wire, with glass beads threaded on it for insulation, you could perform small tip movements by making large handle movements, and minor wobbles would be divided by the length ratios. However directions are reversed, but shouldn't bother anyone used to games where that happens, and you can get used to it with practice anyway.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-12-11, 15:21:

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-11, 11:45:

hands just ain’t steady enough for that type of soldering.

I figured something out for that, but haven't made one yet ... think of a rest or bridge for a snooker or pool cue, the thin end only moves around a little when you waggle the fat end around a lot right? ... so if you make a rest out of stiff wire, with glass beads threaded on it for insulation, you could perform small tip movements by making large handle movements, and minor wobbles would be divided by the length ratios. However directions are reversed, but shouldn't bother anyone used to games where that happens, and you can get used to it with practice anyway.

Interesting idea, its worth a shot but not on a GPU, I have a few dead motherboards I would be willing to sacrifice to the "FOR SCIENCE" gods.

Got a nice "read POS" Foxconn Black Ops X48 board with the "Experiment Victim" tag on it, I think I get the gist of what you are suggesting so when I give it a shot I might post a thread with some pics about the adventure.

as a side .. not sure whats wrong with the board but its bios is difficult to work with and I have never been able to get the board to be stable enough to get past the BIOS, looks to me like the bios has been modded at some point before I got the board.

Moondog did not want to play well with the SATA drive so I put the 80GB from my P4 in it - it's nice and happy now, running FreeDOS RC4 1.3. Seems like this will be a really nice setup. Might be fun to benchmark these machines. I'm planning to plug this one into my TV for gaming with the wife, and doing YouTube videos. Also turns out the PC Chips M912 in it really does have working Cache and a the GUI BIOS (!!!).

I found a nonworking beige IBM Netvista Pentium 4 in my collection I completely forgot about.

Considering removing the insides and using the case for some sort of generic matx build.

Not sure what to build though..

Options:

-MVP4 Socket7 + Banshee
-PLE133T Socket370 + Banshee
-KM266 Socket A + Voodoo 3 (already built in a shitty case)
-P4M890 LGA775 + x800XTPE (already built in a shitty case but the NetVista PSU cant run this and I dont wanna buy a new SFX PSU)

Opinions?

Well you've got a fast PIII rig on retronautics, and the other two are already together, there's still a leftover case to put something in even if you swap them over, so do a higher end socket 7 build.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-12-11, 18:05:

Well you've got a fast PIII rig on retronautics, and the other two are already together, there's still a leftover case to put something in even if you swap them over, so do a higher end socket 7 build.

Good call, the only Socket7 PC I have now is a P133. 😀

Dont think IBM ever used K6 for 300/Aptiva/Netvista thogh right?

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-11, 11:45:

I’d love to see the pics, I’m hoping it doesn’t require any rework of components, hands just ain’t steady enough for that type of soldering.

It's impressive how much your dexterity improves under a microscope simply because you can see and react to movements that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye.

My hands aren't perfectly steady either at this pitch. As necessary, I brace my hand with a finger on the board, desk, or tool, then pivot as I place or position something that requires precision.

0402 capacitors are itty bitty teedy tiny! I think anybody would have trouble at this size no matter how steady they think they are. The problem isn't just the placement but if you use the wrong pressure with your tweezers it's easy to jettison the component into the ether.