TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-06, 12:04:

Didn't buy these but found them in a stash of my old mans PC gear, 35x1mb 30 pin sims and 6x4mb 30 pin sims, no idea what to do with them as I dont have any board setup to test them in right now. I have an SB32 that does take them but no idea if they are FPM or something else.

Not even sure if using the SB32 would be a good idea even if its to test if the sticks actually work or not.

Guess its time to grab a 486 board off eBay that is in working order, then test these sims and sell them off, no idea why my old man was collecting them, not like he actually needed them as he was not into retro anything.

And every single user here as exactly that very same stash.
I do, definitely.

1 MB ones are a dime a dozen but 4 MB are exponentially more expensive. Like, two figures per stick.
Apparently, there are rare 16 MB sticks out there that will max out your AWE32 sample RAM possibilities.

Technically, some ISA and earlier VLB 486 and their target software will be happy about 16 MB instead of a maximum of 8.
But to me, that is a very small niche between a 386 DX-40 with 8 MB and a 486 VLB with PS2-SIMMs.

AFAIK, all of them are FPM, almost all will be 70 nanoseconds and very few 60.
Apart from modern replicas, that is.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-06, 12:54:

And every single user here as exactly that very same stash. I do, definitely. […]
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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-06, 12:04:

Didn't buy these but found them in a stash of my old mans PC gear, 35x1mb 30 pin sims and 6x4mb 30 pin sims, no idea what to do with them as I dont have any board setup to test them in right now. I have an SB32 that does take them but no idea if they are FPM or something else.

Not even sure if using the SB32 would be a good idea even if its to test if the sticks actually work or not.

Guess its time to grab a 486 board off eBay that is in working order, then test these sims and sell them off, no idea why my old man was collecting them, not like he actually needed them as he was not into retro anything.

And every single user here as exactly that very same stash.
I do, definitely.

1 MB ones are a dime a dozen but 4 MB are exponentially more expensive. Like, two figures per stick.
Apparently, there are rare 16 MB sticks out there that will max out your AWE32 sample RAM possibilities.

Technically, some ISA and earlier VLB 486 and their target software will be happy about 16 MB instead of a maximum of 8.
But to me, that is a very small niche between a 386 DX-40 with 8 MB and a 486 VLB with PS2-SIMMs.

AFAIK, all of them are FPM, almost all will be 70 nanoseconds and very few 60.
Apart from modern replicas, that is.

Went through and with the small amount of knowledge I have about reading ICs I have 3 60ns 1mb modules the rest are all 70ns with parity, mostly Siemens HYB ICs with some OKI and NEC ones.

The 70ns 1mb ones might be useful stripped for their IC's since I cant think of any real use for them, Ill keep the 60ns ones and the 4mb ones, Ill stick them in the SB32 just to protect the sim slots since I dont have any real intention of using it right now.

Having gone through the old mans collection there is a bunch of old Amiga stuff in there so I guess these ICs may have been used for his Amiga systems and cards.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-04-06, 06:51:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-04, 16:37:

Nvidia was always good with DDR2 speeds ...DDR3 was a different story and the 790i boards were a bit picky about which DDR3 they […]
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chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-04, 16:33:

I have had no issues with 1200mhz ddr2 in Nforce 680i boards. I have to Evga 680i boards and both with do 1200mhz I've seen the 680a boards also have no issues hitting those speeds. The Nforce 780i and 780a boards are reported to have no issues with 1200mhz.

Nvidia was always good with DDR2 speeds ...DDR3 was a different story and the 790i boards were a bit picky about which DDR3 they would work well with, I only have 790i based boards so nVidia wont be in this race. The other question I have is how much better is DDR2 1200 over say 1066 or 800, was it worth it back in the day to invest in 1200 over the cheaper modules, back when 775 and DDR2 was the thing I didnt have the cash to buy anything amazing so I was never involved in the enthusiast side of it.

I guess I could go look up reviews ..but I do have a good selection of DDR2 to play with so I may as well just run the tests my self.

@Chrismeyer6 - Since I dont have any nforce DDR2 boards which one would you say gives the best compatibility/stability ?, I know the 700 series had its issues and even the 790i Ultra boards I have can be a bit flaky at times but I know little about the 600 boards, would a 680i be a good pick or are the 650i boards more stable? I guess the 780i boards are an option too if they are solid.

Dont even bother with the nForce boards. Something on them hasn't aged well. Caps I suspect. I've owned 2 680I SLIs from EVGA and a 780i from MSI and all 3 died. Only the 750i from ASUS that is all solid state caps still works and even it is finicky.

Unless your willing to do a full work up on them, its a waste of time.

My two EVGA 680i boards are both rock solid and and fast they have been in near constant use since new in 07. No bad caps or any weirdness under XP, 7 ultra, or 10.

mrfusion92 wrote on 2022-04-06, 08:58:

A working Diamond Monster 3D II for 23€. With passthrough cable and original drivers CD. (edit: got confused, there is no sli cable)
It's the 8MB version but at that price I couldn't pass on it and I always wanted a Voodoo card.

8MB Voodoo 2 is perfectly fine if you won't go SLI; I had an 8MB Voodoo 2 and never had an issue with it.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-06, 14:17:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-04-06, 06:51:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-04, 16:37:

Nvidia was always good with DDR2 speeds ...DDR3 was a different story and the 790i boards were a bit picky about which DDR3 they would work well with, I only have 790i based boards so nVidia wont be in this race. The other question I have is how much better is DDR2 1200 over say 1066 or 800, was it worth it back in the day to invest in 1200 over the cheaper modules, back when 775 and DDR2 was the thing I didnt have the cash to buy anything amazing so I was never involved in the enthusiast side of it.

I guess I could go look up reviews ..but I do have a good selection of DDR2 to play with so I may as well just run the tests my self.

@Chrismeyer6 - Since I dont have any nforce DDR2 boards which one would you say gives the best compatibility/stability ?, I know the 700 series had its issues and even the 790i Ultra boards I have can be a bit flaky at times but I know little about the 600 boards, would a 680i be a good pick or are the 650i boards more stable? I guess the 780i boards are an option too if they are solid.

Dont even bother with the nForce boards. Something on them hasn't aged well. Caps I suspect. I've owned 2 680I SLIs from EVGA and a 780i from MSI and all 3 died. Only the 750i from ASUS that is all solid state caps still works and even it is finicky.

Unless your willing to do a full work up on them, its a waste of time.

My two EVGA 680i boards are both rock solid and and fast they have been in near constant use since new in 07. No bad caps or any weirdness under XP, 7 ultra, or 10.

I have the Digital PWM version of the EVGA 790i ultra and its as solid as they come, im going to go out on a limb and suggest that perhaps there was a batch of 600 series boards that got some of the Capacitor Plague caps, I do remember reading about XFX boards being particularly bad for failures right up to the 780i series. I was thinking of grabbing a ASUS Striker II 780i board as I saw one going for cheap and I already use the Striker II extreme and while its BIOS can be a bit odd the board itself is rock solid and handles overclocking a QX9770 with zero issues.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-04-06, 14:38:

mrfusion92 wrote on 2022-04-06, 08:58:

A working Diamond Monster 3D II for 23€. With passthrough cable and original drivers CD. (edit: got confused, there is no sli cable)
It's the 8MB version but at that price I couldn't pass on it and I always wanted a Voodoo card.

8MB Voodoo 2 is perfectly fine if you won't go SLI; I had an 8MB Voodoo 2 and never had an issue with it.

*nods 800x600 is pretty much the perfect resolution for a Voodoo II and the 12mb version doesnt really give you much more until you get a second one and run SLI at 1024x768

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-06, 14:47:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-06, 14:17:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-04-06, 06:51:

Dont even bother with the nForce boards. Something on them hasn't aged well. Caps I suspect. I've owned 2 680I SLIs from EVGA and a 780i from MSI and all 3 died. Only the 750i from ASUS that is all solid state caps still works and even it is finicky.

Unless your willing to do a full work up on them, its a waste of time.

My two EVGA 680i boards are both rock solid and and fast they have been in near constant use since new in 07. No bad caps or any weirdness under XP, 7 ultra, or 10.

I have the Digital PWM version of the EVGA 790i ultra and its as solid as they come, im going to go out on a limb and suggest that perhaps there was a batch of 600 series boards that got some of the Capacitor Plague caps, I do remember reading about XFX boards being particularly bad for failures right up to the 780i series. I was thinking of grabbing a ASUS Striker II 780i board as I saw one going for cheap and I already use the Striker II extreme and while its BIOS can be a bit odd the board itself is rock solid and handles overclocking a QX9770 with zero issues.

Both my 680is worked for like 2 to 3 months then got the infamous "- -" on the LEDs signaling the BIOs isn't even initializing. Swapping in a new BIOs chip would let it boot exactly once, so something has failed causing instant BIOs corruption. Probably bad caps. Both of these were early first revision boards which had a myriad of issues fixed in later revisions so its possible they fixed this one too.

That explains it the early revision boards were a total crap shoot. My two 680s are late revision boards that had the various fixed.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-04-06, 16:00:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-06, 14:47:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-06, 14:17:

My two EVGA 680i boards are both rock solid and and fast they have been in near constant use since new in 07. No bad caps or any weirdness under XP, 7 ultra, or 10.

I have the Digital PWM version of the EVGA 790i ultra and its as solid as they come, im going to go out on a limb and suggest that perhaps there was a batch of 600 series boards that got some of the Capacitor Plague caps, I do remember reading about XFX boards being particularly bad for failures right up to the 780i series. I was thinking of grabbing a ASUS Striker II 780i board as I saw one going for cheap and I already use the Striker II extreme and while its BIOS can be a bit odd the board itself is rock solid and handles overclocking a QX9770 with zero issues.

Both my 680is worked for like 2 to 3 months then got the infamous "- -" on the LEDs signaling the BIOs isn't even initializing. Swapping in a new BIOs chip would let it boot exactly once, so something has failed causing instant BIOs corruption. Probably bad caps. Both of these were early first revision boards which had a myriad of issues fixed in later revisions so its possible they fixed this one too.

even early 775 intel boards had their capacitor issues so it wasn't just limited to Nforce boards, I figure it was around the tail end of bad caps that the early nForce boards were released and even AMD boards had terrible caps. I guess its good advice to avoid any boards from that era unless you are willing to recap them or are ok with taking a stab in the dark with an untested board.

I'm ok with taking a stab at untested parts, I have a few boards in my repairs pile that need new caps so one more wont bother me 😀

Sometimes, paying the idiotic premium for the shipping of unreasonably big boxes is great fun.

There was a time when people who meant business simply had to buy a full tower?
And then went on using it with a single 3.5" HDD, 3.5 Floppy and CD-ROM drive. And a whole lot of well-shielded warm air in between.
Enter the Artist P133 PCI.
From when an Intel Pentium 133 apparently still was exclusive enough to be printed directly on the bloody front panel itself.

Arrived in good condition, very dirty foot, but everything else pristine, if yellowed AF. Especially that backplate, without a single breakage.
The tower is actually very close to an "AT edition InWin Q500", including the mobo drawer and the detachable top piece.
One could almost house the average Ukrainian family around that PSU, there's simply nothing there, apart from spots for an extra 80 and 96 mm fan.
If I'm to believe my rusty caliper, the skeleton is a whopping 1.2 and the outer shell a solid mm SECC. So that most likely is the real deal.

Inside, with very little dust, an early Soyo Triton board, a monster of the full "baby" 33 cm length. Exclusively COAST cache, 2 x 8 MB EDO ram and the "Dallas" RTC in a socket.
(The CPU's production code says Q2 1996 but the board seems more like 1995.)
Was it a Soyo thing to obfuscate the chipset with a fat sticker on the northbridge, but not to print any model number on the motherboard? If someone recognizes it right away, please comment. Sticker on the ISA says "5TC0" - is it that?
The good people at "Artist" must have made it a point to transport the whole solid "made in Germany" feel with their all-Taiwanese components. Everything is tied down, tied up, fixed in place extra sturdy three times over, zip tie galore - nothing ever had the chance to clutter in that thing. Including all the cables of the typical, but temp controlled Seasonic 200W PSU. Mobo had five vinyl standoffs and was screwed onto three(!) metal posts.

Many ZIF sockets had plastic levers back then, I never really trusted those not to go brittle and break some day. This one has a massive iron bar that looks like it opens the main gate of Black Mesa. It may not quite come through in the photo, but that ZIF socket and it's mighty rod are why other ZIF sockets have an inferiority complex.

The baked-on CPU cooler gave me a headache, trying to remove it with the CPU. Just don't. Screw off the fan, then remove the clip. Bloody thermo pad.
It would not boot right away but that's not the point and I got it for cheap as "parts only".
Pretty sure it's in the 1996 original state as the RAM wasn't even maxed out and it had the old octaspeed CD-ROM drive. Rather pedestrian Trio64 2 MB VGA and coax-only NIC.
Nonetheless, I assume is was procured as some kind of industrial CAD or CNC machine as it had an extra 8 bit ISA I/O card with 2nd parallel port - mostly used for fancy plotter/printer or special purposes. Must have been way to expensive for a glorified typewriter back then.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-06, 18:05:

Was it a Soyo thing to obfuscate the chipset with a fat sticker on the northbridge, but not to print any model number on the motherboard?

With a sample size of 2 that appears to be the case for Socket 5/7 motherboards at least.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-06, 18:05:

If someone recognizes it right away, please comment. Sticker on the ISA says "5TC0" - is it that?

Seems about right. Thea Socket 7 motherboard from Soyo that I have says 5TF5, so it's somewhat consistent with that.

devius wrote on 2022-04-06, 20:05:

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-06, 18:05:

If someone recognizes it right away, please comment. Sticker on the ISA says "5TC0" - is it that?

Seems about right. Thea Socket 7 motherboard from Soyo that I have says 5TF5, so it's somewhat consistent with that.

Yep, that's actually their nomenclature for S7.

I was used to mainly ignoring stickers as they're more often misleading than not.
But, that's actually the official nameplate, on the side of a ISA slot and invisible when mounted.

Board must be rather rare as it took me quite some clicks to find a manual:
https://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/Soyo/m … 86/5tc0-2-5.pdf

Several places list it as "KUKA / SOYO"
https://www.ebay.de/itm/165254090483
https://www.maaslos-guenstig.de/kuka-soyo-5tc … nstiges/a-60168
- Kuka is a prolific manufacturer of industrial robots and I guess, some of their control units use the same board. Fits the build quality 😉

The board's silkscreen legend suggest jumper settings for "75 / 90 / 100 MHz" - which must be the FSB, assuming the P5 and P54 CPUs with 1.5 multiplier.
Apparently, 2x was yet unknown upon design.
And that manual does not know of the 200 MHz P54CS... 😜

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-06, 20:17:

Yep, that's actually their nomenclature for S7. […]
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devius wrote on 2022-04-06, 20:05:

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-06, 18:05:

If someone recognizes it right away, please comment. Sticker on the ISA says "5TC0" - is it that?

Seems about right. Thea Socket 7 motherboard from Soyo that I have says 5TF5, so it's somewhat consistent with that.

Yep, that's actually their nomenclature for S7.

I was used to mainly ignoring stickers as they're more often misleading than not.
But, that's actually the official nameplate, on the side of a ISA slot and invisible when mounted.

Board must be rather rare as it took me quite some clicks to find a manual:
https://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/Soyo/m … 86/5tc0-2-5.pdf

Several places list it as "KUKA / SOYO"
https://www.ebay.de/itm/165254090483
https://www.maaslos-guenstig.de/kuka-soyo-5tc … nstiges/a-60168
- Kuka is a prolific manufacturer of industrial robots and I guess, some of their control units use the same board. Fits the build quality 😉

The board's silkscreen legend suggest jumper settings for "75 / 90 / 100 MHz" - which must be the FSB, assuming the P5 and P54 CPUs with 1.5 multiplier.
Apparently, 2x was yet unknown upon design.
And that manual does not know of the 200 MHz P54CS... 😜

It's on ultimate retro as well, which is more up to date and aims to correct errors from other sites as well as currently being added to daily. https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/4714

debs3759 wrote on 2022-04-06, 20:54:

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-06, 20:17:

Yep, that's actually their nomenclature for S7. […]
Show full quote

devius wrote on 2022-04-06, 20:05:

Seems about right. Thea Socket 7 motherboard from Soyo that I have says 5TF5, so it's somewhat consistent with that.

Yep, that's actually their nomenclature for S7.

I was used to mainly ignoring stickers as they're more often misleading than not.
But, that's actually the official nameplate, on the side of a ISA slot and invisible when mounted.

Board must be rather rare as it took me quite some clicks to find a manual:
https://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/Soyo/m … 86/5tc0-2-5.pdf

Several places list it as "KUKA / SOYO"
https://www.ebay.de/itm/165254090483
https://www.maaslos-guenstig.de/kuka-soyo-5tc … nstiges/a-60168
- Kuka is a prolific manufacturer of industrial robots and I guess, some of their control units use the same board. Fits the build quality 😉

The board's silkscreen legend suggest jumper settings for "75 / 90 / 100 MHz" - which must be the FSB, assuming the P5 and P54 CPUs with 1.5 multiplier.
Apparently, 2x was yet unknown upon design.
And that manual does not know of the 200 MHz P54CS... 😜

It's on ultimate retro as well, which is more up to date and aims to correct errors from other sites as well as currently being added to daily. https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/4714

Ah, thanks for the heads up!

Yep, that site is pretty good. I did not abstract from the zero at the end, so did not find that one. Very nice - if I get it to work, I'll have a bios download.

Either Soyo's nomenclature was a bit of a mess or the "Also known as:" section designates different revisions or editions. (Still a bit of a mess then.)
Mine does not have the "old" sram cache sockets (dip? dil? whatever...) but only the coast socket. Some fewer jumpers, vacant solder spots.

Says a bit about 90s hardware progress that you could have that or ATX, DIMMs and AGP with the same CPU, technically.

Definitely a decent, but not a very advanced S7 board. No split voltage, no nothing. But thick PCB and very clean layout.
Actual photo of my board:

(Yes, I really need to stop taking these with a potato.)

Note that big-ass ZIF lever 😉

Nexxen wrote on 2022-04-03, 09:53:

Battery is beyond dead I presume? If I'm not wrong, you have to leave it 24 hrs connected to power to see if battery recovers ar […]
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dragonerosso wrote on 2022-04-03, 09:21:

Just bought on ebay. Thinkpad 370c Like new esthetically but turn on display only without battery

Battery is beyond dead I presume?
If I'm not wrong, you have to leave it 24 hrs connected to power to see if battery recovers are is really just a dumpster thing.
Mine had a red led that stayed so, but if it turns to orange you may get some juice in it.

Beautiful machine 😉

i will try. Mine battery has a orange led when turned on, and now i'm still charging and charghing led is green. I would to change cmos and standby batteries too and check the hdd.

So I'm about to buy this mITX board because.. I'm curious. This is the only photo I have and I can't ID it. It's Probably SOME variation of the VIA EPIA line, but not one I know of. Not sure what the VT133 on the NB heatsink means but I guess it's a PLE133T? Reported as having 800MHz CPU so probably a C3 eden. Sounds like it would make a fantastic mITX DOS build with a lot of SETMUL flexibility..

appiah4 wrote on 2022-04-07, 10:25:

So I'm about to buy this mITX board because.. I'm curious. This is the only photo I have and I can't ID it. It's Probably SOME variation of the VIA EPIA line, but not one I know of. Not sure what the VT133 on the NB heatsink means but I guess it's a PLE133T? Reported as having 800MHz CPU so probably a C3 eden. Sounds like it would make a fantastic mITX DOS build with a lot of SETMUL flexibility..

From the ECS EVEm series of boards - https://www.manualslib.com/manual/981685/Ecs- … vem-Series.html

Also - https://web.archive.org/web/20040305073745/ht … ec/evemspec.pdf

Ah, thanks for the ID. I wish it had a more DOS compatible AC97 codec but this looks like it woould be worth grabbing I guess.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-04-07, 10:25:

So I'm about to buy this mITX board because.. I'm curious. This is the only photo I have and I can't ID it. It's Probably SOME variation of the VIA EPIA line, but not one I know of. Not sure what the VT133 on the NB heatsink means but I guess it's a PLE133T? Reported as having 800MHz CPU so probably a C3 eden. Sounds like it would make a fantastic mITX DOS build with a lot of SETMUL flexibility..

For a while I was considering getting a similar tiny VIA system, too. But in the end I decided against it because I don't see much use for a retro-machine with so few slots.
How are you planning to use it?

HanSolo wrote on 2022-04-07, 11:06:

appiah4 wrote on 2022-04-07, 10:25:

So I'm about to buy this mITX board because.. I'm curious. This is the only photo I have and I can't ID it. It's Probably SOME variation of the VIA EPIA line, but not one I know of. Not sure what the VT133 on the NB heatsink means but I guess it's a PLE133T? Reported as having 800MHz CPU so probably a C3 eden. Sounds like it would make a fantastic mITX DOS build with a lot of SETMUL flexibility..

For a while I was considering getting a similar tiny VIA system, too. But in the end I decided against it because I don't see much use for a retro-machine with so few slots.
How are you planning to use it?

The best use I could think of getting out of it would be to throw it into a modern mITX case and build a reverse sleeper mITX DOS PC. Sounds like a fun project but I'm pretty sure the novelty would wear off prett wast. Also not sure if that's worth doing considering I already have this:

So yeah, still haven't managed to completely sell myself on the idea, don't expect me to do it for you 🤣