Okay okay.

I wanted to upgrade the Celeron, it was awful. First I tried a 1GHz Coppermine-T that I had available, but the laptop did not start with the Coppermine-T I had. In turn, to be safe, I went and assumed the laptop is completely incapable of using 133MHz bus cpus. This leads to the SL5QW being the best 100MHz bus cpu, and probably the best I could put in it.
So, I found an affordable SL5QW (paid much less than $100) and when it arrived went straight to installing it.

And that SL5QW certainly was better in every way. It ran cooler, performed much better and unlike with the Celery the laptop doesn't make an electrical buzz after a few minutes of use.

Cool thing, after installing the SL5QW, the bios added a new setting to control the Processor Serial Number thing that these pentium 3's had. It was meant to be...

yourepicfailure wrote on 2023-02-18, 13:01:

Okay okay. […]
Show full quote

Okay okay.

I wanted to upgrade the Celeron, it was awful. First I tried a 1GHz Coppermine-T that I had available, but the laptop did not start with the Coppermine-T I had. In turn, to be safe, I went and assumed the laptop is completely incapable of using 133MHz bus cpus. This leads to the SL5QW being the best 100MHz bus cpu, and probably the best I could put in it.
So, I found an affordable SL5QW (paid much less than $100) and when it arrived went straight to installing it.

And that SL5QW certainly was better in every way. It ran cooler, performed much better and unlike with the Celery the laptop doesn't make an electrical buzz after a few minutes of use.

Cool thing, after installing the SL5QW, the bios added a new setting to control the Processor Serial Number thing that these pentium 3's had. It was meant to be...

Pretty much what I had surmised after thinking about it a bit. Makes perfect sense. 😁

Also, nice job finding an affordable SL5QW! That's a beast of a chip for any systems that aren't built for 133Mhz FSB.

Okay this is not a today thing and more like a month worth of retro activity but:

1: I bought a Radeon HD 4850 because it had a zalman cooler, the price was good and i ended up mounting that on a geforce 4 TI 2000
2:I missed a really cheap voodoo 3 velocity because i couldn't offer at the last second for it, but through sheer force of haggling i got one for the same price
3:I caved in on a diamond monster sound MX300 because i wanted to play some of my most beloved games with A3D, especially since i want to replay deus ex again on stream and i wanted to return with something special
4: I got thanks to the kindness of acl a slot 1 mobo with a pentium 2, it's a non common form factor, so i'm planning to create a WIP thread and work on a 3d printable case for it, lucky me i work with professional 3d scanners and printers so i already have a 3d scan of the board to work with.
5: Again through haggling i was able to get a full willamette system with a 1.6 P4, i did this for 2 reasons, to put a Geforce 2 GTS in a good system and to craft a system that SHOULD in theory play deus ex at a good framerate while also being composed of hardware that got released during the release of the game, at this point is just a challenge since deus ex never plays well with the recommended specs.

I will stop with the hardware now, this was kind of a special month, i got rid of a big stress factor, i worked like a mule and i had these builds in mind for a while.

I had trouble recently with a Neo Geo CD console that I imported from Japan, which was slightly damaged in shipping with a broken CD spindle hub. I'd substitued it with a PS1 spindle while waiting for proper replacements from Aliexpress.

The original spindle hub's plastic stem had snapped into 2 pieces and 1 piece was missing. As luck would have it, as I was cleaning up the console I noticed something rattling about inside. So I tipped the console upside down and gave it a shake and out pops the tiny missing piece of plastic.

So I decided to have a go at repairing the original spindle hub - I glued the 2 pieces of the stem back together with super glue and then decided to reinforce it with some heatshrink tubing, since there was plenty of clearance to allow this. Worked a treat, popped the original spindle hub back in and it's as good as new again with the original part.

The console came with 2 controllers, 1 of which had a dodgy direction stick. With some contact cleaner applied vigorously to the Left & Down microswitches and a tiny bit of force, managed to get all directions working again. It's working but I'm not totally 100% happy, it seems ever so slightly less responsive than the other controller. So I'll probably open it up again and try submerging the microswitches into IPA.

PTherapist wrote on 2023-02-18, 16:16:

I glued the 2 pieces of the stem back together with super glue and then decided to reinforce it with some heatshrink tubing, since there was plenty of clearance to allow this.

That sounds like a good approach. I always wonder to reinforce glued joints, but never though about using heat-shrink tubing. Neat idea!

Today, I repaired my childhood life's 1st and 2nd Mouses (Serial) that came with a XT and 386 System.
Genius Serial Mouse.
I remember that both of them abandoned due to click issues and upgraded technology of PS2 and later Optical.
But since they were my 1st Mouse bought by my late father, I always kept them....

Today, I cleaned them and replaced all the switches.
Buttons are now working fine; movement is also decent enough.

P.S. I am too afraid of doing the 'Retro Bright', no experience....

Easy fix for this Voodoo2, and a reminder to pay good attention to the chips' legs.

At the moment they short, the card came up in the BIOS device list as Unknown PCI card and even got an IRQ assigned. As some of you already know, Voodoo (2) cards don't need an IRQ to work.

Before and after pics included.

iraito wrote on 2023-02-18, 15:29:

3:I caved in on a diamond monster sound MX300 because i wanted to play some of my most beloved games with A3D, especially since i want to replay deus ex again on stream and i wanted to return with something special

I have both a Vortex2 and an Audigy card in one system, and I kinda prefer EAX for Deus Ex.

This could just be personal preference, but I really like how the Audigy sounds when connected to a 5.1 speaker setup. A nice place to test positional audio is the very start of the game, when the boat is behind you on Liberty Island. By turning around, you should be able to hear the boat's motor from different directions, depending on how you're facing it. The patrol bot walking around the dock can also be used for testing.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-02-20, 12:08:

iraito wrote on 2023-02-18, 15:29:

3:I caved in on a diamond monster sound MX300 because i wanted to play some of my most beloved games with A3D, especially since i want to replay deus ex again on stream and i wanted to return with something special

I have both a Vortex2 and an Audigy card in one system, and I kinda prefer EAX for Deus Ex.

This could just be personal preference, but I really like how the Audigy sounds when connected to a 5.1 speaker setup. A nice place to test positional audio is the very start of the game, when the boat is behind you on Liberty Island. By turning around, you should be able to hear the boat's motor from different directions, depending on how you're facing it. The patrol bot walking around the dock can also be used for testing.

I have a rotting 5.1 generic system laying in my basement, i'm planning to fix it so that might be a future way to play it, the vortex from what i know is better at positional over stereo, which should be pretty interesting for the people listening to the game, i still remember when i first streamed the game and a viewer from taiwan kept telling me how good the audio was, if i can make it sound even better through stereo then i'm gonna be pretty happy about it, then we also have all the other games using A3D etc.

Yesterday's retro fun was to check out this Socket A system that I purchased for $20US at a local thrift store.

Enlight mid-tower case, DVD and CD burners, 3.5-inch floppy drive
Asus A7V333 mb (caps all look good), GeForce2 MX400 AGP, 512Mb DDR, Athlon XP 1800+, WD 120Gb hd, 3com network card.

After replacing the CMOS battery and refreshing the CPU heatsink compound, I was pleasantly surprised to have it boot right up into Windows XP SP2.
After writing down some hardware info and playing a game of Space Cadet 3D pinball, I rebooted with a DBAN cd and let it autonuke the hard drive.
(It was still full of the original owner's personal files.)

I already have a better XP machine, so I think that I'll put Windows 98 on this one. Perhaps put a sound card and better video card in it.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-02-20, 12:08:

I have both a Vortex2 and an Audigy card in one system, and I kinda prefer EAX for Deus Ex.

If the game uses EAX, it will only sound properly on a Creative chip. All of the other EAX "compatibles" have bugs and weird sound glitches. The same goes for A3D and Aureal.

I have been doing the usual bi-annual hardware checkup on a few of my builds. Things did look good, nothing leaking or bad caps. However....

My 486-dx33 build had a bad CF card. Extremely unstable, so I reused an old platter drive that came from a different 486 build that I no longer have.
I already had drive overlay installed, so it was just a matter of physically installing it, setting the CF adaptor to slave and then mass copy in NC.

The other issue, that I honestly had forgotten all about. Was on my Pentium-166 build. The COM1 cable were non-working and I had lost my
PS2 mouse during the last few months. (Gone to bit-heaven). So I had to go through all my parts, and found a working cable with male-plug.
It is still on the table, as I have finished up Windows95-C and MS Dos 6,22 installation. But I need Os/2 running on this as well.
I am using Os/2 boot manager to tripple boot. Think I will try Warp 3,0 Connect.

Also. Found a 3-Com ISA network card that seems to be working under Win95-C. I can install it in the P166 and I can ping 127.0.0.1

Made a display out cable for a AiW 9600Pro that came without that super special all-in-one-with-non-standard-connector-cable.
It's not finished yet (still needs a case), but I'm finally able to connect up to two monitors to get at least any picture out of that card. Not sure if it's worth the effort but I couldn't dispose an otherwise known good card.

Unfortunately I couldn't get this to work, yet, with Win XP on my K7SEM testboard with any driver I tested (Catalyst 6.2, 6.7, 10.2 and 10.4).
Not sure if it's something board/chipset related that prevents this combination to work together. As soon as the system is booted to desktop it stops responding after some secs.
Standard Windows VGA driver seems to be working ok though.
I've read about some AGP incompatibilities of this board but due to my lack of experience with Socket A as well as older Radeons it is just try and error for me.
Maybe there are some suggestions around...

ChrisK wrote on 2023-02-21, 12:04:

Made a display out cable for a AiW 9600Pro that came without that super special all-in-one-with-non-standard-connector-cable. It […]
Show full quote

Made a display out cable for a AiW 9600Pro that came without that super special all-in-one-with-non-standard-connector-cable.
It's not finished yet (still needs a case), but I'm finally able to connect up to two monitors to get at least any picture out of that card. Not sure if it's worth the effort but I couldn't dispose an otherwise known good card.

Unfortunately I couldn't get this to work, yet, with Win XP on my K7SEM testboard with any driver I tested (Catalyst 6.2, 6.7, 10.2 and 10.4).
Not sure if it's something board/chipset related that prevents this combination to work together. As soon as the system is booted to desktop it stops responding after some secs.
Standard Windows VGA driver seems to be working ok though.
I've read about some AGP incompatibilities of this board but due to my lack of experience with Socket A as well as older Radeons it is just try and error for me.
Maybe there are some suggestions around...

Uhm i was thinking to use a similar cable but for capturing, i have an x1800xl and it has both input and output capabilities from what I have read, any experience with that?

Not really. The AiW9600Pro uses a separate box for inputs (which mine is also missing). But I'd be glad to have a usable output at first.
The second picture in my post before shows only the cable with the outputs.
Besides that I had a Rage Pro 128 back then which also had video inputs and that worked without any hassle for capturing.

ChrisK wrote on 2023-02-21, 12:04:

Made a display out cable for a AiW 9600Pro that came without that super special all-in-one-with-non-standard-connector-cable. It […]
Show full quote

Made a display out cable for a AiW 9600Pro that came without that super special all-in-one-with-non-standard-connector-cable.
It's not finished yet (still needs a case), but I'm finally able to connect up to two monitors to get at least any picture out of that card. Not sure if it's worth the effort but I couldn't dispose an otherwise known good card.

Unfortunately I couldn't get this to work, yet, with Win XP on my K7SEM testboard with any driver I tested (Catalyst 6.2, 6.7, 10.2 and 10.4).
Not sure if it's something board/chipset related that prevents this combination to work together. As soon as the system is booted to desktop it stops responding after some secs.
Standard Windows VGA driver seems to be working ok though.
I've read about some AGP incompatibilities of this board but due to my lack of experience with Socket A as well as older Radeons it is just try and error for me.
Maybe there are some suggestions around...

Awesome work, there's quite a few of these cards around cheap because the cables are unobtanium.

K7SEM tho... not a great board as you might have figured by now, all of the ones I've seen have had advanced cap rot. Even when those are replaced I think it might be short on AGP power, since it's a cheap design that was done a couple of years before 9x00 series. There's gonna be limited historical experience to guide you I fear, the kind of systems that got K7SEM got MX400s or other low spec cards, probably one of those and a spitfire core duron would be something of a classic combo on it. So not sure how much here is gonna be fighting the board vs fighting the GPU.

Anyway, looking forward to when you post the cable pinout and share any details about where you can get that goofy connector from.

iraito wrote on 2023-02-21, 12:10:

ChrisK wrote on 2023-02-21, 12:04:

Made a display out cable for a AiW 9600Pro that came without that super special all-in-one-with-non-standard-connector-cable. It […]
Show full quote

Made a display out cable for a AiW 9600Pro that came without that super special all-in-one-with-non-standard-connector-cable.
It's not finished yet (still needs a case), but I'm finally able to connect up to two monitors to get at least any picture out of that card. Not sure if it's worth the effort but I couldn't dispose an otherwise known good card.

Unfortunately I couldn't get this to work, yet, with Win XP on my K7SEM testboard with any driver I tested (Catalyst 6.2, 6.7, 10.2 and 10.4).
Not sure if it's something board/chipset related that prevents this combination to work together. As soon as the system is booted to desktop it stops responding after some secs.
Standard Windows VGA driver seems to be working ok though.
I've read about some AGP incompatibilities of this board but due to my lack of experience with Socket A as well as older Radeons it is just try and error for me.
Maybe there are some suggestions around...

Uhm i was thinking to use a similar cable but for capturing, i have an x1800xl and it has both input and output capabilities from what I have read, any experience with that?

ATi had several cards with that connector, even in the same series, think there was a 9600XL or something, BUT they all appeared to use it differently, on an 8500 AIW it seemed to be input and composite only, then in 9600s it was outputs also, both VGA and DVI versions, then later I think they went back to conventional bracket mounted primary video connector and input/output dongle use. So I am not very sure that those cables work between models at all. Possibly there are enough pinis on the connector that all connections rationalise to constant pin uses, but IDK, it's one of those standards that ATI never seem to have shared if so.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-21, 15:46:

Awesome work, there's quite a few of these cards around cheap because the cables are unobtanium. […]
Show full quote

ChrisK wrote on 2023-02-21, 12:04:

Made a display out cable for a AiW 9600Pro that came without that super special all-in-one-with-non-standard-connector-cable. It […]
Show full quote

Made a display out cable for a AiW 9600Pro that came without that super special all-in-one-with-non-standard-connector-cable.
It's not finished yet (still needs a case), but I'm finally able to connect up to two monitors to get at least any picture out of that card. Not sure if it's worth the effort but I couldn't dispose an otherwise known good card.

Unfortunately I couldn't get this to work, yet, with Win XP on my K7SEM testboard with any driver I tested (Catalyst 6.2, 6.7, 10.2 and 10.4).
Not sure if it's something board/chipset related that prevents this combination to work together. As soon as the system is booted to desktop it stops responding after some secs.
Standard Windows VGA driver seems to be working ok though.
I've read about some AGP incompatibilities of this board but due to my lack of experience with Socket A as well as older Radeons it is just try and error for me.
Maybe there are some suggestions around...

Awesome work, there's quite a few of these cards around cheap because the cables are unobtanium.

K7SEM tho... not a great board as you might have figured by now, all of the ones I've seen have had advanced cap rot. Even when those are replaced I think it might be short on AGP power, since it's a cheap design that was done a couple of years before 9x00 series. There's gonna be limited historical experience to guide you I fear, the kind of systems that got K7SEM got MX400s or other low spec cards, probably one of those and a spitfire core duron would be something of a classic combo on it. So not sure how much here is gonna be fighting the board vs fighting the GPU.

Anyway, looking forward to when you post the cable pinout and share any details about where you can get that goofy connector from.

Yes I know it's more lower end but it is the only board I can use as a testbench atm. I've already recapped it and it did run ok with most graphic cards I throw at it. The last must have been a GF4 Ti4200 AGP4x.
I think the reason lies somewhere in the AGP support. The SiS chipset only supports x4 (even the board's manual says it only suppports nvidia AGP x4 cards, whatever the reason is) and the 9600Pro is an x8 card.
I know the 9600Pro works as I had it in some board when figuring out the pinout of the vid-out connector. I just can't remember which one it was.

ChrisK wrote on 2023-02-21, 16:08:

Yes I know it's more lower end but it is the only board I can use as a testbench atm. I've already recapped it and it did run ok […]
Show full quote

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-21, 15:46:

Awesome work, there's quite a few of these cards around cheap because the cables are unobtanium. […]
Show full quote

ChrisK wrote on 2023-02-21, 12:04:

Made a display out cable for a AiW 9600Pro that came without that super special all-in-one-with-non-standard-connector-cable. It […]
Show full quote

Made a display out cable for a AiW 9600Pro that came without that super special all-in-one-with-non-standard-connector-cable.
It's not finished yet (still needs a case), but I'm finally able to connect up to two monitors to get at least any picture out of that card. Not sure if it's worth the effort but I couldn't dispose an otherwise known good card.

Unfortunately I couldn't get this to work, yet, with Win XP on my K7SEM testboard with any driver I tested (Catalyst 6.2, 6.7, 10.2 and 10.4).
Not sure if it's something board/chipset related that prevents this combination to work together. As soon as the system is booted to desktop it stops responding after some secs.
Standard Windows VGA driver seems to be working ok though.
I've read about some AGP incompatibilities of this board but due to my lack of experience with Socket A as well as older Radeons it is just try and error for me.
Maybe there are some suggestions around...

Awesome work, there's quite a few of these cards around cheap because the cables are unobtanium.

K7SEM tho... not a great board as you might have figured by now, all of the ones I've seen have had advanced cap rot. Even when those are replaced I think it might be short on AGP power, since it's a cheap design that was done a couple of years before 9x00 series. There's gonna be limited historical experience to guide you I fear, the kind of systems that got K7SEM got MX400s or other low spec cards, probably one of those and a spitfire core duron would be something of a classic combo on it. So not sure how much here is gonna be fighting the board vs fighting the GPU.

Anyway, looking forward to when you post the cable pinout and share any details about where you can get that goofy connector from.

Yes I know it's more lower end but it is the only board I can use as a testbench atm. I've already recapped it and it did run ok with most graphic cards I throw at it. The last must have been a GF4 Ti4200 AGP4x.
I think the reason lies somewhere in the AGP support. The SiS chipset only supports x4 (even the board's manual says it only suppports nvidia AGP x4 cards, whatever the reason is) and the 9600Pro is an x8 card.
I know the 9600Pro works as I had it in some board when figuring out the pinout of the vid-out connector. I just can't remember which one it was.

Only thing in particular I'm hearing about SiS chipsets and ATi is to make sure AGP fast write is off in CMOS setup. Presumably you've got the SiS AGP drivers installed if the 4200 was working before.

Today I perfomed a quick and easily reversible modification to my Neo Geo CD console.

I took 2 pieces of jumper wire, soldered a toggle switch onto 1 end and then soldered the other end of the wires to the region selection jumper pad inside the console. Now at the flick of a switch, I can select the console's region between Japan & USA. USA for English language on the games that don't offer it as an option and Japan for full uncensored glory - ie. full red blood in fighting games & the likes of Metal Slug and other unadulterated graphics in several games.

I didn't want to drill a hole in the case, as I want this 100% reversible, so hot glue and electrical tape bodge job it is -

Not the prettiest looking thing, but it's hidden away at the back. It does the job, so will suffice!