ltning wrote on 2022-08-16, 13:42:

...
(Anyone got ideas for other cards in funky colors I should have in this 286?)
...

How about this one:

This wonderful yellow-golden-brownish color would make a nice contrast to that standard PCB green.
512kB of RAM should also not be too generous for a 286 and a Cirrus VGA card is what everyone can have.

SB0460 Fatal1ty with break out box. Haven't got ANY clue if it's of any interest, but "oh, something to fill a 5.25 bay" 🤣

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-16, 09:58:

This is the version of the upgrade board for this motherboard, it doesnt have the chipset as the one on the motherboard is used.

This Asrock upgrade card actually implements Hypertransport in its peripheral slot as communication bus with southbridge on mainboard.
This means... Technically Asrock could implement upgrade cards for 3rd vendor CPU manufacturer, or even Architectures (PPC, ARM, MIPS, SPARC, RiscV etc) as long as them were compatible with Hypertransport, and you would supply a proper boot firmware for it.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-16, 09:58:

Edit - Im wrong about the 775 to AM2 one ..got my wires crossed due to the little information there is on this.

The 775 to 754 / 939 ones were present on only one board I'm aware of, the ECS PF88 Extreme Hybrid.

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/mainboard/ecs-p … rid-sis656.html

They used a goofy upgrade board which required you to swap jumpers on the main board to switch between different BIOS chips for the upgrade. I have never seen one of these in person and I've personally stripped/scrapped well over 10,000 different ewaste/offlease computers at this point.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-08-16, 00:02:

I looked up what this does, and it appears to be a display resolution doubler that allows you to connect two monitors to a single output. Does this mean that the two monitors appear to the device as a single monitor?

This sound awkward if you wanted to maximize a window on one of the two attached displays. Would it then maximize across both screens, since the operating system it sees only a single display from this device?

So I just tried it out and it basically sets your PC to output at a double width resolution and the little box cuts that into two outputs. The PowerDesk software then manages things like expanding across mutliple screens or not. Works very well to be fair!

ChrisK wrote on 2022-08-16, 15:35:

How about this one: td3588a2_tamarack.jpg […]
Show full quote

ltning wrote on 2022-08-16, 13:42:

...
(Anyone got ideas for other cards in funky colors I should have in this 286?)
...

How about this one:
td3588a2_tamarack.jpg

This wonderful yellow-golden-brownish color would make a nice contrast to that standard PCB green.
512kB of RAM should also not be too generous for a 286 and a Cirrus VGA card is what everyone can have.

Really now. Are you saying you know where I could find that one?
Also it's not a Cirrus Logic, is it? Or is it rebranded or something?

I also have a white Adlib clone and I think that new AWE64 Legacy thing is purple... Poor 286 will have a lot to deal with soon!

ltning wrote on 2022-08-16, 19:43:

Really now. Are you saying you know where I could find that one? Also it's not a Cirrus Logic, is it? Or is it rebranded or some […]
Show full quote

ChrisK wrote on 2022-08-16, 15:35:

How about this one: td3588a2_tamarack.jpg […]
Show full quote

ltning wrote on 2022-08-16, 13:42:

...
(Anyone got ideas for other cards in funky colors I should have in this 286?)
...

How about this one:
td3588a2_tamarack.jpg

This wonderful yellow-golden-brownish color would make a nice contrast to that standard PCB green.
512kB of RAM should also not be too generous for a 286 and a Cirrus VGA card is what everyone can have.

Really now. Are you saying you know where I could find that one?
Also it's not a Cirrus Logic, is it? Or is it rebranded or something?

I also have a white Adlib clone and I think that new AWE64 Legacy thing is purple... Poor 286 will have a lot to deal with soon!

No, it's not Cirrus Logic

http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cards/ite … marack-td3588a2

No it really is not a Cirrus. I just referred to your current one.
Picture was from the link given by debs3759 but I have the exact same one in one of my boxes.
Seemed a bit strange to me when I got it because I never heard of this manufacturer but it works as far as I have tested it.
Vgamuseum is also the only source of information for it I know of.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-16, 03:11:

Snagged a motherboard today that I have been wanting for the test bench, a Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 Motherboard! also comes with an Athlon X2 3800+ and 4gb of DDR400, this one has also had its VRM recapped with Rubycons but ill examine the others on the board too.

s-l1600.jpg

It'll be setup along side the 4CoreDual-Sata2 Rev 2 I got a few months back, hopefully I can eventually find the AM2 upgrade board for it but that board is exceptionally rare.

I'm using the same card as test bench, but i had some compatibility issues.

• Some PCI graphics adapters prevent the card to boot. I had the issue with a Mach64CT
• It's AGP 1.5v only

The card is also weird with 3 SATA ports but only 1 SATA2 !?!
So it is not as universal as i expected. But still a good card.

Of course, the AM2 upgrade is extremely rare and is probably not very interesting for practical use... Since attics, cellars, storage boxes and trash bins are full of AM2 boards...

acl wrote on 2022-08-17, 10:59:

The card is also weird with 3 SATA ports but only 1 SATA2 !?!
So it is not as universal as i expected. But still a good card.

Southbridge ULi can only SATA I ports natively, that one SATA II is from the added controller JMicron JMB360 and it has only one port.

Meatball wrote on 2022-08-16, 15:17:

I've nabbed another MISB Vortex 2. Unlike the last this one is completely sealed; so much so it is crushing the thinly constructed box. The seal has a couple of the 'Diamond' brand stamps inked onto the wrap along the bottom seams.

Nice grab! Would love to snag one but I'm a "penny pincher" as of late!

A bit late since this technically arrived a little ago, but nonetheless, I finally found a DDR Pentium III board! Featuring the VIA Apollo Pro 266 chipset, and support for both DDR SDRAM and SDR SDRAM, this board is pretty feature complete. It's even got the semi-ubiquitous Promise IDE RAID controller onboard.

A couple of things I have noticed in testing this board include the following:

• For a VIA chipset, this is remarkably stable, more-so than the VIA 694X motherboards I've tested.
• This board is wicked fast, yielding memory reads in the ~750MB/s range and writes in the ~420MB/s range with a PIII-S 1.26.
• The quirks this board had when reviewed by THG (no AGP Fast Write support) seem to have been remedied by the latest BIOS and performance notably increases upon upgrade to v1.5.
• Between DDR and SDR, the performance delta is measurable, but not quite as large as you'd at first guess. This makes sense, given the bandwidth-limited FSB of the PIII, but still, the fact that there's any performance difference just shows how nice these mature DDR chipsets could be.

Overall, then, this board is pretty weird, but nice and capable all the same.

WJG6260 wrote on 2022-08-17, 19:07:

A bit late since this technically arrived a little ago, but nonetheless, I finally found a DDR Pentium III board! Featuring the […]
Show full quote

A bit late since this technically arrived a little ago, but nonetheless, I finally found a DDR Pentium III board! Featuring the VIA Apollo Pro 266 chipset, and support for both DDR SDRAM and SDR SDRAM, this board is pretty feature complete. It's even got the semi-ubiquitous Promise IDE RAID controller onboard.

A couple of things I have noticed in testing this board include the following:

• For a VIA chipset, this is remarkably stable, more-so than the VIA 694X motherboards I've tested.
• This board is wicked fast, yielding memory reads in the ~750MB/s range and writes in the ~420MB/s range with a PIII-S 1.26.
• The quirks this board had when reviewed by THG (no AGP Fast Write support) seem to have been remedied by the latest BIOS and performance notably increases upon upgrade to v1.5.
• Between DDR and SDR, the performance delta is measurable, but not quite as large as you'd at first guess. This makes sense, given the bandwidth-limited FSB of the PIII, but still, the fact that there's any performance difference just shows how nice these mature DDR chipsets could be.

Overall, then, this board is pretty weird, but nice and capable all the same.

MS-6366-R.jpg

Looks nice, and that would definitely be a fun motherboard to have. I remember there was a member of the Overclockers.com forums a couple of decades back who was so proud of his that his username was "DDRP3".

Thank you for the kind words! I’m very fortunate to have found this board out in the wild. It seems there aren’t too many DDR P3 boards out there these days.

I’d like to imagine that person on over lockers is still using their DDR P3 to this day for non-internet tasks.

WJG6260 wrote on 2022-08-17, 19:07:

A bit late since this technically arrived a little ago, but nonetheless, I finally found a DDR Pentium III board! Featuring the […]
Show full quote

A bit late since this technically arrived a little ago, but nonetheless, I finally found a DDR Pentium III board! Featuring the VIA Apollo Pro 266 chipset, and support for both DDR SDRAM and SDR SDRAM, this board is pretty feature complete. It's even got the semi-ubiquitous Promise IDE RAID controller onboard.

A couple of things I have noticed in testing this board include the following:

• For a VIA chipset, this is remarkably stable, more-so than the VIA 694X motherboards I've tested.
• This board is wicked fast, yielding memory reads in the ~750MB/s range and writes in the ~420MB/s range with a PIII-S 1.26.
• The quirks this board had when reviewed by THG (no AGP Fast Write support) seem to have been remedied by the latest BIOS and performance notably increases upon upgrade to v1.5.
• Between DDR and SDR, the performance delta is measurable, but not quite as large as you'd at first guess. This makes sense, given the bandwidth-limited FSB of the PIII, but still, the fact that there's any performance difference just shows how nice these mature DDR chipsets could be.

Overall, then, this board is pretty weird, but nice and capable all the same.

MS-6366-R.jpg

I would love to have one of those! Some of the caps between the pci slots look questionable in that pic btw.

That's an interesting board. DDR, four IDE ports with two channels is 8 drives, and a universal AGP slot. Up to what AGP speed does it support?

I also agree that some of the larger caps lok questionable. It might be the lighting though. I have definitely had stability issues that I tracked down to caps that appeared to be only slightly bulging when inspected with a bright light and the closeness of my eyeballs.

pete8475 wrote on 2022-08-17, 21:36:

WJG6260 wrote on 2022-08-17, 19:07:

A bit late since this technically arrived a little ago, but nonetheless, I finally found a DDR Pentium III board! Featuring the […]
Show full quote

A bit late since this technically arrived a little ago, but nonetheless, I finally found a DDR Pentium III board! Featuring the VIA Apollo Pro 266 chipset, and support for both DDR SDRAM and SDR SDRAM, this board is pretty feature complete. It's even got the semi-ubiquitous Promise IDE RAID controller onboard.

A couple of things I have noticed in testing this board include the following:

• For a VIA chipset, this is remarkably stable, more-so than the VIA 694X motherboards I've tested.
• This board is wicked fast, yielding memory reads in the ~750MB/s range and writes in the ~420MB/s range with a PIII-S 1.26.
• The quirks this board had when reviewed by THG (no AGP Fast Write support) seem to have been remedied by the latest BIOS and performance notably increases upon upgrade to v1.5.
• Between DDR and SDR, the performance delta is measurable, but not quite as large as you'd at first guess. This makes sense, given the bandwidth-limited FSB of the PIII, but still, the fact that there's any performance difference just shows how nice these mature DDR chipsets could be.

Overall, then, this board is pretty weird, but nice and capable all the same.

MS-6366-R.jpg

I would love to have one of those! Some of the caps between the pci slots look questionable in that pic btw.

I hope you're able to find one! I didn't believe any DDR P3 boards were out there but then I found this, so anything is possible!

Definitely! I plan on recapping the board in the near future. It doesn't have the best quality caps to begin with, so some changes are in order! (I will say that upon second glance at both the board and this shot, a few of the caps that look bad in this shot are not suspect on the board itself. I've checked them out and they all seem okay, but I do think a recap is overdue 🤣)!

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-08-17, 22:16:

That's an interesting board. DDR, four IDE ports with two channels is 8 drives, and a universal AGP slot. Up to what AGP speed does it support?

I also agree that some of the larger caps lok questionable. It might be the lighting though. I have definitely had stability issues that I tracked down to caps that appeared to be only slightly bulging when inspected with a bright light and the closeness of my eyeballs.

The larger caps are definitely okay, but they're still sketchy brands so I'd rather recap them. I will admit the lighting in this quick pic was not great haha. It looks okay in person overall, but this picture doesn't seem too flattering.

The AGP slot supports AGP 4x at 1.5V maximum, so 1066MB/s! It's taken pretty much anything I've thrown in it, so that's a plus!

Picked up these two Socket 7 CPUs, a low voltage P90 and a 225 Win Chip.

Going to throw them in the HX rig and see how they perform relative to my other CPUs in that speed range.

The P90 might be good for a pure DOS rig.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-18, 01:15:

Picked up these two Socket 7 CPUs, a low voltage P90 and a 225 Win Chip. […]
Show full quote

Picked up these two Socket 7 CPUs, a low voltage P90 and a 225 Win Chip.

Winchip.jpg

Pentium 90.jpg

Going to throw them in the HX rig and see how they perform relative to my other CPUs in that speed range.

The P90 might be good for a pure DOS rig.

A P90 is a great choice for a pure DOS rig. It won't be doing high res Duke but it will handle all the modern DOS games at time period resolution. Also it can be slowed down pretty well by disabling the cache. I beefed mine up to 133 but that's because I'm also running a Banshee for excellent 2d performance and fun 3d dos/win for early titles. It runs GL quake great.