I don't think I can afford to join any more retro groups. I have too much stuff!

Maybe eventually we'll all have our own discords for trying to get rid of the "extras." 😀

I am making poor progress, I mean, I did move some systems and my "junk box" of dead parts out, and I'm a fair chunk of the way through the catalog, but I have to be careful.

I had a pair of Dell Vostro 230s - one C2D 7500 and one Xeon X3370, the latter with an SSD. I had the *good* one in the "move out" pile by mistake!

Passed on a local AT desktop case and I'm regretting it. Told myself I need to clear more space first, and I was right. Still regretting it. I really need to find something like a circa 1990 Everex Step or one of the cool off-brand AT clones, or even an early Gateway. Sad how "desktop" came to mean "non-server" so there's no real way to distinguish in searches between what used to be called Desktop and Tower.

I was investigating this board that i have (MS-3131):
https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/1389

Based on chipset's datasheet, it should support writeback for its cache. But i never got it to work.

I used AMISETUP and CTCHIP34 to look into chipset's registers, but couldn't find much about writeback.
There's MR-BIOS available for it as well, but that as well didn't enable writeback.

Then i took out the chipset's datasheet once again to check the pins from the chips. And what i see is that alter bit lines are fixed to 5V through resistor.

So natively, no writeback support on the board itself.

But theoretically, if one would remove the smd resistors and instead does some modding and piggyback with additional cache chip, it could be doable... but that's not for me. I have an amazing M-321 board, that does writeback very nicely and i'm happy with that.

New coolers for FireGL X1 and Radeon 9700 TX:

9700 TX appears to be a "golden sample" chip:

Artefacts start appearing north of 410Mhz, in most cases with R300 limit is ~380Mhz.

Regarding infamous "yellow goop" TIM originally used on those cards, it depends how much the card was used. In one case it was totally elastic and went 100% off with just some pre-heating and IPA. In most cases it's solid and takes hour or two to get it off using heat, WD-40, nitro thinner, scraping with razor blade ... etc.

where did you get the replacement coolers from?

All I can find that are similar are no name coolers from china for 10 dollars each, I guess a tenner isnt bad for a cooler that looks similar to the Zalman ones but I want some better quality ones for the rarer cards I have.

They appear on eBay from time to time in bulk quantites, new old stock. I bought few from Dutch seller. I think he had like 30 of them, 15€/piece.

My experience with chinese coolers is mixed. Smaller ones with push-pins vary in quality. Out of 4, two of them rattled out of the box. Fan was not centered. Bigger ones have wide flat base, which is not ideal for ATI chips with shim on.

stef80 wrote on 2022-01-03, 12:00:

They appear on eBay from time to time in bulk quantites, new old stock. I bought few for Dutch seller. I think he had like 30 of them, 15€/piece.

Got a name for the cooler that I can lookup on eBay ?

Zalman VF700, or Zalman VF900.

stef80 wrote on 2022-01-03, 12:08:

Zalman VF700, or Zalman VF900.

Cheers for that mate !

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-01-03, 12:10:

stef80 wrote on 2022-01-03, 12:08:

Zalman VF700, or Zalman VF900.

Cheers for that mate !

I recommend looking for faulty/dead graphics cards rather than the cooler itself. Gigabyte often used the VF700 on mid-tier cards like 7600, 8600 and 9600 series as well as HD4600 and HD5600 series.

You can get better deals buying dead cards with good aftermarket coolers than the cooler itself.

Same for Arctic Cooling Accelero L2. You can hunt Gigabyte GT240 and Sapphire HDx670 series cards for those.

Good idea. Same true for Zalman HP-80 passive coolers.
I have noticed vendor cards with VF700 Zalmans usually miss metal crossbar element at the back of the card:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/zalman-vf7 … stallation3.jpg
https://www.trustedreviews.com/wp-content/upl … 3543-pic2-1.jpg

Without it PCB may bend more.

The cheap chinese copy is pretty much identical. I have one on a 9800, works like a charm.

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-31, 01:16:

The 17" CRT arrived to day and it works perfectly but I've noticed some minor flaking of the antiglare coating, I cant fault the seller for this as its difficult to even see it unless you have the right light angle. But now I know its there I cant unsee it, does anyone have some advice in how to either remove the coating safely or how to repair it if at all possible.

Personally I would prefer to just remove it since once the rot starts it'll keep spreading and the coating does visibly make the monitor darker.

I had a NOS Sony trinitron a few years ago that had ‘gone off’. I removed it all with regular kitchen grade cleaner (e.g. spray and wipe), and nice micro fibre cloth, and lots of elbow grease. The image was much brighter so that was a win, but the glass was like a mirror finish and the reflection drove me nuts.

So yeah factor that in - maybe there’s something that can be applied afterward to replace the anti glare?

badmojo wrote on 2022-01-04, 09:11:

So yeah factor that in - maybe there’s something that can be applied afterward to replace the anti glare?

3M still do them, but might need to buy a larger 16:9 or 10 size and trim it... https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/c/office-suppli … ers-protectors/

Messing around with the 2nd DX4-100 box, getting it up and running. Having to Fight FreeDOS 1.3 RC4 every step of the way, so considering throwing on a base-install of MS-DOS 7.1x and using that, I also found the problem with running Ultima 7 goes away with that.

The Vibra 16 is also being a bit of a PITA, does not like to do Digital Audio in protected mode games for some crazy reason....might swap with the 286 (which I'm thinking I'll sell once I upgrade the Tandy to a V20 and 8087) which has a CT1600 SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 in it.

Also working out a method for wireless keyboard/mouse on that system. My Model "M" works nicely as it's cable is super long, but the mice I have don't reach, and a Serial extention cable does not work.

I've been finding a lot of issues with FreeDOS lately so I'm now toying with maybe converting my FreeDOS setups over to MS-DOS 7.01, the version I have seems to work perfectly with everything, so maybe that's the route to go by. Plus I can run Windows 3.1x on that particular setup too.

Most of the Microsoft mice seem to have a nice long cable on.

Have had a go at the AG coating and it appears to be some kind of film, its flaking off but is going to take more than cleaning wipes and microfibre cloth.

Might try some Mr Muscle magic erasers and if that fails .. toothpaste.

Got to play with the rather notorious Diamond Viper II Z200 based on the Savage 2000 GPU and I can indeed confirm that it is as terrible as it was reported to be, I spent more time working around driver issues than actually testing the card. (I secretly enjoy hardware like this, its frustrating but enjoyable when you finally get it to work)

I dont own this card but it was actually rather fun to tinker with it, if I ever see one on eBay for a reasonable price I may just buy it for my dumpster fire collection.

Did some corrosion cleaning on my Commodore Colt motherboard. Wasn't the worst I've seen.

Here's the thread: Commodore Colt (PC-III): cleaning, repairs, and testing

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-01-05, 03:14:

Got to play with the rather notorious Diamond Viper II Z200 based on the Savage 2000 GPU and I can indeed confirm that it is as terrible as it was reported to be, I spent more time working around driver issues than actually testing the card. (I secretly enjoy hardware like this, its frustrating but enjoyable when you finally get it to work)

I dont own this card but it was actually rather fun to tinker with it, if I ever see one on eBay for a reasonable price I may just buy it for my dumpster fire collection.

I own one, it's not THAT fucking bad. UT99 runs faster in MeTaL than it does on a Voodoo3 3000 in GLIDE on a Pentium III 933 and the super texturing MeTaL has support for makes the sky texture in maps like CTF Facing Worlds look pretty great. It really does suck outside of MeTaL mode though.

Its kind of exaggerated, just like everyone swears Oblivion didn't run on the GeForce FX series but my FX5950U runs it fine @ 800x600 @ Medium Low settings. Is it a next gen experience? No, of course not. But its more than playable.

I wish I still had the time to test shit and dis spell myths.

In my old age of 22 I mostly just hoard various forms of CRTs and sit around thinking about all the ways I can setup my hardware to better play games, implement those improvements, and then still not play games because I would rather watch Star Trek then catch some sleep before my next shift as a slave retail worker. I'm slowly accepting I'm just a hardware tinkerer that doesn't actually play games anymore.

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