He just gave me all this stuff because I wanted to buy the case. So I feel like I bought all of it.

I'm currently taking the case apart for cleaning and damn that thing is well made. Really thick walls and brass connections.

luckybob wrote on 2022-05-02, 16:47:

a pair of dual cpu board! You stole those! As for the HP board, they are 99% the same as the consumer version Asus board. They change almost nothing save for some silk screening and the bios.

🤣, I'm such a sucker for old geforce cards that I didn't notice he skimmed off half a grand in rare mobos there 😁

Someone replaced the cooler on the GF3 with a massive Socket 370 copper cooler they glued on. That thing is really heavy.

chrismes wrote on 2022-05-02, 16:54:

Someone replaced the cooler on the GF3 with a massive Socket 370 copper cooler they glued on. That thing is really heavy.

They glued that thing on?!?!?!? 😳
OK, I'm taking back all my praise for it. Some people just need to be g...ently reminded not to do such evil things.

Yeah, I checked the GF3 and it turns out that cooler won't come off without killing the chip. They used epoxy or something. I'll clean the card and leave it as is. I also found the original invoice for the card in the bottom of the box all this stuff came in: it was 999,- Deutsche Mark.

As of late I've been on something of an RDRAM kick. I'm not sure why that is. I suppose it's just interesting technology and this old Anandtech review brought up some memories of discussions I'd had with friends back in the day that the i850E was essentially par with the i875, as mighty as the latter seems in retrospect.

I find this to be quite interesting, since RDRAM is basically maligned now--almost universally--as a great failure by Intel; it's seemingly heralded as one of the company's greatest missteps, and perhaps it is so. In actuality, and in terms of real-world use case scenarios, DDR RAM is certainly more useful and amenable. It provides the same--or greater--bandwidth without a number of downsides, including: RDRAM's excess heat; the requiring of RIMM pairings to function; and the narrow 16-bit bus on which RIMMs are based.

And yet, it's not that bad. After taking a gander at this chart from TomsHardware, I was sold on acquiring some hardware:

It seems that PC800 in dual channel is really only matched by DDR400 single channel RAM or DDR266 in dual channel, the latter of which seems less impressive in terms of the grander comparison at hand; however, considering that dual-channel DDR chipsets weren't as common as dual-channel RDRAM chipsets at this time, the comparison grows a little more favorable for RDRAM's case.

As such, I went ahead and purchased the two boards you see here. The ASUS P4T-E is a nice one, being a reference model and a logical upgrade from my old P4T. Unfortunately, this one lacks the Cypress RDRAM clock generators required for PC1066 operation, but the FSB is stable at 133MHz without issue.

The D850EMV2, however, is a monster of a board. It's stable, fast, and really easy to work with. It's surprisingly modern, offering something akin to today's "fast boot" and boy does it boot fast! I appreciate that this board can drive the 3.06GHz Northwood with HT, and I've got one on the way just to see how it does. Unfortunately, however, I have discovered that this board--whilst being of late enough revision to natively run PC1066--cannot handle more than 1.5GB of PC1066 RAM, confirmed by the issues another fellow member of the forum had here. (Check out this build by the way, it's quite nice!) Does anyone have any ideas as to why this is the case? Apparently, it's fine with 2GB of PC800, and other RDRAM boards based on the i850E are good to go with 2GB of PC1066.

It's funny to me that I've gotten so deep into this niche now, and it all started with a search for an RDRAM Pentium III board! I've got one of those FIC KC-19+'s that can handle RDRAM and Pentium IIIs, but I'd really be interested in finding an ASUS P3C-E or some other i820-based board with ISA that's not a VC820 and can run a Tualatin one of these days; while RDRAM's bandwidth can't help the 133MHz FSB-driven PIII platform, I'm curious to see how these boards do with a Pentium III-S because RDRAM chipsets had a place in later Pentium III days, whereby the i820 could run a 133MHz FSB while keeping AGP in spec, unlike the fabled 440BX. I'm curious to compare one with i815 and see if it was worth it or not, especially since the i820 was awfully close to rivalling the 440BX in performance, just like the i815.

Anyway, that's enough rambling! I hope you found this somewhat interesting.

Got a boxed SoundBlaster 1.5.

I do love that 80's box styling, from the chrome logo to the ridiculous over-the-top marketing blurbs. Finally I can blast away that PC sound barrier! 😁

Interestingly it came with the Phillips SAA1099P chips installed, which I assume must have been an aftermarket addition?

chrismes wrote on 2022-05-02, 16:54:

Someone replaced the cooler on the GF3 with a massive Socket 370 copper cooler they glued on. That thing is really heavy.

That's silly. The GeForce 2 Ultra and GeForce 3 series didn't get very hot at all. Maybe the fan died or the previous owner wanted to do some crazy overclocking. It's a terrible waste of a good GPU regardless.

You could always try putting it in the freezer. I've never tried this personally, but I've heard a lot of positive anecdotes.

Joining the VisionRGB E2S gang this week. Managed to find a new fan (well, ordered 2 just in case) for the x800 I got for my PowerMac G5; old one was absolutely upset at being alive. Not surprising considering how dirty the thing was when I got it. Also got a VGA and DVI distribution amplifier/splitter/whatever for recording reasons. DOS/98 rig now up to a GeForce 4 MX460 from the GF 2 MX400; not that the 400 was a problem but the 460 was $30 and is _faster_ ignoring the fact it's on a AGP 2x slot

OSSC because i have problems with planning things out all the way through

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-05-03, 01:28:

chrismes wrote on 2022-05-02, 16:54:

Someone replaced the cooler on the GF3 with a massive Socket 370 copper cooler they glued on. That thing is really heavy.

That's silly. The GeForce 2 Ultra and GeForce 3 series didn't get very hot at all. Maybe the fan died or the previous owner wanted to do some crazy overclocking. It's a terrible waste of a good GPU regardless.

You could always try putting it in the freezer. I've never tried this personally, but I've heard a lot of positive anecdotes.

I wouldn't think the GPU is wasted, giant copper cooler will still do the job epoxied on. all you're losing is one PCI slot, which is unlikely to be much of an issue in most builds unless you really really need that LAN, SCSI or SATA, dual voodoo2, sound card and... modem? heh

seconding freezer though, if you do want to remove the cooler. the epoxy typically becomes brittle at subzero temps and will break when a bit of leverage is applied. this tended to also work for epoxied athlon 64 and pentium 4 CPUs amongst others.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-05-03, 01:28:

and GeForce 3 series didn't get very hot at all.

Orly? Run a few passes of Aquamark on one then stick your finger on it.

How can I stick my finger on it when the fan is spinning? 😜

I have not tried it, but I think it should be alright.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-05-03, 00:58:

Got a boxed SoundBlaster 1.5.

I do love that 80's box styling, from the chrome logo to the ridiculous over-the-top marketing blurbs. Finally I can blast away that PC sound barrier! 😁

Interestingly it came with the Phillips SAA1099P chips installed, which I assume must have been an aftermarket addition?

Cool item! Jealous. 😀

I completed my set of 66MHz Celerons, from the original 266MHz up to the 766MHz. I also picked up another Slocket - I like the Pentium II casing on this one.

chrismes wrote on 2022-05-02, 16:26:

I searched my local offers for cases I liked and stumbled over an acrylic case that looked okay.

Oh dude, that's awesome! I've kind of been thinking about, just for grins (when I have the living space for it at least) building a PC made with as many UV reactive parts as possible. I remember they used to sell cases like this, some of them in UV acrylic too. They seem to be rarer than unicorns these days ...

WJG6260 wrote on 2022-05-03, 00:15:

As of late I've been on something of an RDRAM kick. I'm not sure why that is. I suppose it's just interesting technology and thi […]
Show full quote

As of late I've been on something of an RDRAM kick. I'm not sure why that is. I suppose it's just interesting technology and this old Anandtech review brought up some memories of discussions I'd had with friends back in the day that the i850E was essentially par with the i875, as mighty as the latter seems in retrospect.

I find this to be quite interesting, since RDRAM is basically maligned now--almost universally--as a great failure by Intel; it's seemingly heralded as one of the company's greatest missteps, and perhaps it is so. In actuality, and in terms of real-world use case scenarios, DDR RAM is certainly more useful and amenable. It provides the same--or greater--bandwidth without a number of downsides, including: RDRAM's excess heat; the requiring of RIMM pairings to function; and the narrow 16-bit bus on which RIMMs are based.

And yet, it's not that bad. After taking a gander at this chart from TomsHardware, I was sold on acquiring some hardware: RAM Bandwidth Reference Sheet - TomsHardware.png It seems that PC800 in dual channel is really only matched by DDR400 single channel RAM or DDR266 in dual channel, the latter of which seems less impressive in terms of the grander comparison at hand; however, considering that dual-channel DDR chipsets weren't as common as dual-channel RDRAM chipsets at this time, the comparison grows a little more favorable for RDRAM's case.

As such, I went ahead and purchased the two boards you see here. The ASUS P4T-E is a nice one, being a reference model and a logical upgrade from my old P4T. Unfortunately, this one lacks the Cypress RDRAM clock generators required for PC1066 operation, but the FSB is stable at 133MHz without issue.
P4T-E Seller Pic.jpg

The D850EMV2, however, is a monster of a board. It's stable, fast, and really easy to work with. It's surprisingly modern, offering something akin to today's "fast boot" and boy does it boot fast! I appreciate that this board can drive the 3.06GHz Northwood with HT, and I've got one on the way just to see how it does. Unfortunately, however, I have discovered that this board--whilst being of late enough revision to natively run PC1066--cannot handle more than 1.5GB of PC1066 RAM, confirmed by the issues another fellow member of the forum had here. (Check out this build by the way, it's quite nice!) Does anyone have any ideas as to why this is the case? Apparently, it's fine with 2GB of PC800, and other RDRAM boards based on the i850E are good to go with 2GB of PC1066.

D850EMV2 Seller Pic.jpg

It's funny to me that I've gotten so deep into this niche now, and it all started with a search for an RDRAM Pentium III board! I've got one of those FIC KC-19+'s that can handle RDRAM and Pentium IIIs, but I'd really be interested in finding an ASUS P3C-E or some other i820-based board with ISA that's not a VC820 and can run a Tualatin one of these days; while RDRAM's bandwidth can't help the 133MHz FSB-driven PIII platform, I'm curious to see how these boards do with a Pentium III-S because RDRAM chipsets had a place in later Pentium III days, whereby the i820 could run a 133MHz FSB while keeping AGP in spec, unlike the fabled 440BX. I'm curious to compare one with i815 and see if it was worth it or not, especially since the i820 was awfully close to rivalling the 440BX in performance, just like the i815.

Anyway, that's enough rambling! I hope you found this somewhat interesting.

I have a bunch of Rimms from a huge batch of SDRAM I bought and have been looking for a Tually board capable of running RDRAM looks like I will have to look for a slot 1 board that has Rimm support since RDRAM Tually boards appear to be as rare as DDR based ones. I guess I could fire up a Willamette based build but I dont honestly like P4s enough to drop cash on a Rimm based board for one.

I do havea board that can run FC SDRAM but I have yet to find any FC SDRAM to put into it to see if its any faster than normal SDRAM, one day I shall find some on eBay finger crossed !

Meatball wrote on 2022-05-03, 02:53:

I completed my set of 66MHz Celerons, from the original 266MHz up to the 766MHz. I also picked up another Slocket - I like the Pentium II casing on this one.

Congratulations: a nice collection that traces the history of a CPU that made so many people happy in the Slot1/Socket370 era 😄

Low cost, good overclocking and good gaming performance - good times 😄

In 1998 I was a happy boy with Abit BH6 + Celeron 300A ❤️

My Awe 64 Gold came in today , I'll have to get it set up , but first ill need to figure out how to get a dual boot install of win95 alongside dos 6.22 since I don't want to lose all my files and game installs.

Meatball wrote on 2022-05-03, 02:53:

I completed my set of 66MHz Celerons, from the original 266MHz up to the 766MHz. I also picked up another Slocket - I like the Pentium II casing on this one.

Nice, but ... 😀

According to my philosophy, there's a few more than that:

The Covingtons: 266 and 300, both exist in a version with a small lid and one with a big lid, all in Slot-1
Mendocino 300A, 333, 366, 400 and 433 both exist in Slot-1 and Socket 370 versions

So all in all that's a total af 25 variants 😉

However, you seem to have at least all speeds covered, but do you have both a 300 and a 300A? 😀

WJG6260 wrote on 2022-05-03, 00:15:

The D850EMV2, however, is a monster of a board. It's stable, fast, and really easy to work with. It's surprisingly modern, offering something akin to today's "fast boot" and boy does it boot fast! I appreciate that this board can drive the 3.06GHz Northwood with HT, and I've got one on the way just to see how it does. Unfortunately, however, I have discovered that this board--whilst being of late enough revision to natively run PC1066--cannot handle more than 1.5GB of PC1066 RAM, confirmed by the issues another fellow member of the forum had here. (Check out this build by the way, it's quite nice!) Does anyone have any ideas as to why this is the case? Apparently, it's fine with 2GB of PC800, and other RDRAM boards based on the i850E are good to go with 2GB of PC1066.

Are your RDRAM RIMMs (PC1066-32P) ECC or non-ECC, as the board is known to support 2GB (albeit rather grudgingly) with PC1066-32P ECC...http://wp.xin.at/archives/tag/d850emvr