SrFenix wrote on 2023-01-28, 15:07:

why throw away the ocz ram? I always had ocz as good hardware.

Here's an email a customer of mine got from them after sending back defective ram and receiving MORE defective ram from them. I believe this was a DDR3 kit but it's 13 years ago and I'm not sure. I've deleted the email and name of the customer for privacy. I've bolded the most important part. BTW that memory also failed in Memtest86 and the windows memory diagnostic from Microsoft, it was JUNK.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <ocztechnology@exdesk.com>
Date: Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 5:36 PM
Subject: Status Change on Your Trouble Ticket, ID: 117552
To:

Trouble Ticket ID: 117552
Description: OCZ3G1600LV4GK

-------------------------------------------------------

Please be advised that the status on your trouble ticket
has been changed from Submitted to In Progress
with the following comment:
-------------------------------------------------------
Comment: prime 95 generally stresses our memory out too much what happends when you run memtest86
-------------------------------------------------------
Status changed by: Super Administrator
-------------------------------------------------------

Regards,
ocztechnology@exdesk.com
---

Please DO NOT REPLY to this email notification. Please click on the following link below to correspond:

http://www.exdesk.com/OCZTechnologyGroup/inde … ?addcomment=yes

Thank you.
--

I worked in IT for nearly 20 years and this is just one example of the OCZ crap, probably the most memorable though. Over the years I threw out DOZENS of ocz memory kits in machines that came in for service. Every time I ran prime95 blend test on a clients machine their ram would fail. EVERY TIME. I typically sold Kingston branded memory back then and that was what I would replace the junk stuff with and that always turned out well. So yeah fuck ocz.

I must have missed this then or got luck. I used two 16GB OCZ kits (32GB) in my AMD Bulldozer system for years without any problems. I sold it to a friend and they continue to live on 10 years later. My sample size is extremely small, but I wanted to share that anecdote.

Ever since Ryzen made it a commodity, I now buy ECC memory exclusively.

I still have my ocz ddr 466 mhz kit, which worked at 500mhz without a problem.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-01-28, 15:59:

I must have missed this then or got luck. I used a 32GB OCZ kit in my AMD Bulldozer system for years without any problems. I sold it to a friend a d they continue to live on 10 years later. My sample size is extremely small, but I wanted to share that anecdote.

Ever since Ryzen made it a commodity, I now buy ECC memory exclusively.

Maybe they just shipped the junk ram up to Canada. 🤣

These days if I find any of their ram in vintage machines I acquire I just throw it out on sight.

I wouldn't hand them money by buying their new stuff, but I don't see a point of rejecting old RAM untested, because I test everything anyway, I've had bad Kingston modules, bad Dell modules, bad Corsair modules, bad Micron modules, no blame attached though, you never know how it's been treated. Only got 4 OCZ randoms kicking around and they test fine. Big thing to remember is their higher speed stuff is meant for a couple of points over standard volts usually. Weirdly, the only RAM brand I have more than 10 pieces of that I've never got a fault with is Azenram. Patriot seems okay too, but only have a few modules.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-01-28, 18:15:

I wouldn't hand them money by buying their new stuff, but I don't see a point of rejecting old RAM untested, because I test everything anyway, I've had bad Kingston modules, bad Dell modules, bad Corsair modules, bad Micron modules, no blame attached though, you never know how it's been treated. Only got 4 OCZ randoms kicking around and they test fine. Big thing to remember is their higher speed stuff is meant for a couple of points over standard volts usually. Weirdly, the only RAM brand I have more than 10 pieces of that I've never got a fault with is Azenram. Patriot seems okay too, but only have a few modules.

100% agree with testing everything and that most manufacturers are around the same quality. I have RMAed a hundred Crucial, Micron, Samsung, etc modules. Also yes I always made sure voltages, timings, etc. were right for the memory.

When the tech support for the company comes right out and says "Prime 95 is too stressful for our hardware" that means their hardware IS shit.

I've seen only a handful of good OCZ modules in 30+ years of building computers, so I don't waste even 1 second of time with them anymore. I also give the same treatment to Fujitsu hard drives and a few other notably shit products. Straight in the trash.

Received my Gigabyte GA-6VTXE-A today. The motherboard came in the original box and included all the original documentation, driver cd's and cables.
The board itself looks also good, although I'm not quite sure about a few capacitors located at the upper left of the board. Do they need recapping?

bassix6 wrote on 2023-01-28, 21:57:

Received my Gigabyte GA-6VTXE-A today. The motherboard came in the original box and included all the original documentation, dri […]
Show full quote

Received my Gigabyte GA-6VTXE-A today. The motherboard came in the original box and included all the original documentation, driver cd's and cables.
The board itself looks also good, although I'm not quite sure about a few capacitors located at the upper left of the board. Do they need recapping?

Yes they sure do! I see at least 3 bad capacitors in your pics.

It's the tall capacitors that always seem to go first on these old boards. If you're going to replace a few though, I would recommend just replacing them all.

I have a long backlog of things I bought recently and never showed here... so I guess I need to catch up a little... here's the first one - Pioneer DRM-624X LaserMemory - 6 disc SCSI CD changer.
I paid a bit too much, however it was a bit too nice to let it go to some unenlightened hands (ie. other than mine ;D ) so here it is. It was sold as untested and arrived with the cartridge inserted (apparently the big sticker on the case saying it should be removed to transport wasn't clear enough for the seller) but turns out it works perfectly fine (head was stuck a bit but after several tries it loosened up eventually - I may apply a bit of fresh grease to future proof it).

It's a bit annoying to use (when cartridge is inserted it takes around a minute or so until all discs are indexed - doesn't matter if only one is in the cartridge or six of them) and the computer is a bit unresponsive until it's finished, then it works pretty seamless - TOCs are apparently cached and it changes CDs quickly to the desired one), but still interesting piece of hardware (and I really love vintage storage equipment).

And that's how it's internals look during operation:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DchK66t7fhU

Ebay and lack of sleep are a bad combination.

I've ordered the following lately:
Radeon 9200 128MB AGP
Athlon XP-M 2600+
MSI KT880 Delta-FSR
Acorp 5ALI61
AMD K6-2+ 570 (with K6-3+ mod)
Abit ST6

Also I got an Asus P5B (with bent CPU socket pins) for a Tim Hortons coffee. Straightened them out and it's working so far.

pete8475 wrote on 2023-01-29, 01:38:

Radeon 9200 128MB AGP

Hope you got one of the gooderer ones, I just had them all pegged as level with the 8500, but they and theire 9xx0 kin are all over the place... https://www.anandtech.com/show/1463/6

HanJammer wrote on 2023-01-29, 01:36:

I have a long backlog of things I bought recently and never showed here... so I guess I need to catch up a little... here's the […]
Show full quote

I have a long backlog of things I bought recently and never showed here... so I guess I need to catch up a little... here's the first one - Pioneer DRM-624X LaserMemory - 6 disc SCSI CD changer.
I paid a bit too much, however it was a bit too nice to let it go to some unenlightened hands (ie. other than mine ;D ) so here it is. It was sold as untested and arrived with the cartridge inserted (apparently the big sticker on the case saying it should be removed to transport wasn't clear enough for the seller) but turns out it works perfectly fine (head was stuck a bit but after several tries it loosened up eventually - I may apply a bit of fresh grease to future proof it).

It's a bit annoying to use (when cartridge is inserted it takes around a minute or so until all discs are indexed - doesn't matter if only one is in the cartridge or six of them) and the computer is a bit unresponsive until it's finished, then it works pretty seamless - TOCs are apparently cached and it changes CDs quickly to the desired one), but still interesting piece of hardware (and I really love vintage storage equipment).

And that's how it's internals look during operation:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DchK66t7fhU

its too bad its not 1 drive letter.

G'day everyone, Ive slowed down how much I post here so I have a small backlog of interesting bits I have accquired, a couple I paid a little too much for but one was too interesting to pass up and the other has been on my bucket list for a long time. So without further ado here is a few of the items.

First off the list is this QDI PlatiniX 4X with a socket 478 to 423 adapter with a P4 Northwood 2.6 slapped into it and 1gb of 800/40 RD-Ram, I didn't realise these adapters actually still existed in the wild and have been on the lookout for one eventually one popped up on the Bay. I have a soft spot for socket 423 and RD-Ram and this beautiful bit of kit was just too nice to pass up, I did pay a bit too much for it but the adapter alone is the most expensive part with the 1gb of RD-Ram and 2.6 P4 thrown in it likely works out to not be a horrible deal.

The Northwood P4 does actually run at the full 2.6Ghz with a 26x100 setup !

I do wonder how hard it would be to reverse engineer the adapter so others can have one too, might be worth looking into.

Second is this Geforce4 Ti4600, its been on my bucket list for a long time and I have a few dead versions of it in my spares box from gambles with untested cards, this one has been tested by the seller so I figure it stands a slightly better chance than the other dead ones I have 🤣. Paid a lot more for it that I wanted to but I'm done with grabbing untested gambles of this model.

I might pair it with the above board for a nice mid tier XP rig.

The next two Items are bits of kit that I want for upgrades

Yamaha Audician32 Plus variant for my 486 box, Ill throw the DreamBlaster X2GS on this card to make it a exceptionally good DOS sound card.

Athlon XP-M 3000, been looking out for one of these to throw into my Abit NF7-S box but they don't show up on the bay very often and are usually priced stupidly high, this one was pretty reasonable. IIRC these are unlocked out of the box so it should make for a fun little overclocker.

A common fault with the on the GeForce 4 Ti cards and Quadros is for cooling fan to fail. Keep an eye out for that, and I would recommend locating an alternative replacement ahead of time to be prepared.

HanJammer wrote on 2023-01-29, 01:36:

It's a bit annoying to use (when cartridge is inserted it takes around a minute or so until all discs are indexed - doesn't matter if only one is in the cartridge or six of them) and the computer is a bit unresponsive until it's finished, then it works pretty seamless - TOCs are apparently cached and it changes CDs quickly to the desired one), but still interesting piece of hardware (and I really love vintage storage equipment).

You may play with LUN support in SCSI Select (controller BIOS).

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-01-29, 07:02:

A common fault with the on the GeForce 4 Ti cards and Quadros is for cooling fan to fail. Keep an eye out for that, and I would recommend locating an alternative replacement ahead of time to be prepared.

Another one that is very common with these is broken SMD components on the back side. There are SO MANY back there, and it's likely that after all these years the cards have been either put in a box loose with other cards or have had later (heavier) GPUs set on top of them. It's slightly more common to see this damage on the FX series and later cards because they are heavier, but I have found many of Ti 4x00 and Quadro4 9xx with similar damage as well.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-01-29, 07:02:

A common fault with the on the GeForce 4 Ti cards and Quadros is for cooling fan to fail. Keep an eye out for that, and I would recommend locating an alternative replacement ahead of time to be prepared.

I may have one or two new fans *looks at pile of dead Geforce4 cards

Even have experience in removing the shitty epoxy they used on them, fuck that stuff.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-01-29, 07:17:

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-01-29, 07:02:

A common fault with the on the GeForce 4 Ti cards and Quadros is for cooling fan to fail. Keep an eye out for that, and I would recommend locating an alternative replacement ahead of time to be prepared.

Another one that is very common with these is broken SMD components on the back side. There are SO MANY back there, and it's likely that after all these years the cards have been either put in a box loose with other cards or have had later (heavier) GPUs set on top of them. It's slightly more common to see this damage on the FX series and later cards because they are heavier, but I have found many of Ti 4x00 and Quadro4 9xx with similar damage as well.

The most common fault by far is dead BGA ram chips, the shit solder they used in the day is rather fragile so any undue stress on the PCB can crack the joints on the BGA ram, I have a few of these dead GF4 Ti cards now and they all post but the dead Vram quickly shows a dead card.

I have zero experience in re flowing BGA chips and wouldn't like my chance of trying, but now I have a working model I may try re flowing the dead cards to see if I can resurrect one or two of them. They wont be sold or even be useful for running full time but as test rig benchmark GPUs they will likely be perfect.

Warlord wrote on 2023-01-29, 04:00:

its too bad its not 1 drive letter.

It wouldn't be possible to switch discs without additional software (would be a nightmare installing it for every possible OS and SCSI enabled machine) or controls on the drive itself (so again not that different from manually replacing the discs).