Dealing with courier bullshit with FedEx, sold one of my 486s on e-bay, sold for a high sum, then FedEx destroyed it in shipping even though I packed it enough to withstand a friggin bomb Blast (HP Server packing complete with support and isolation from the edges and wrapped in a foam cover).

I think this is the last time I sell a machine on e-bay. It's f***ing stupid. I can't trust the couriers not to smash and damage shit. This is the second system in 20 years (first one was an XT Clone with monitor they totally demolished, that time it was UPS). Put in a claim with FedEx for the full amount. Luckily I don't have anything I want to part with at this point.

That said, finished filming for #SepTandy this year already.....that went by very quickly.

^
This is probably the reason I opted to lug around a 32" 1080p capable LG 32LB5610 TV for ~800km (from Arad to Bacau, on the nicest route I've had to travel on btw) .
Would not ever entrust any courier to ever ship it intact.
Wrapped it in a blanket, threw a gazillion meters of postal packing tape, and then threw three more clothes over it, a very big garbage bag (240 litre capacity, as big as the TV itself).

Call me paranoic, but considering I spent half a morning with fear of not breaking the LCD, I wasn't ever going to risk having it smashed because the couriers like playing soccer with parcels (I've seen a lot of stuff like this happen here, and I'm fairly sure that I'm not alone in these situations). No thanks, I'm not paying you an expensive amount of money to break it when I can pack it tight and carry it myself. Even if it means I'll end up more tired than if I lugged a PC XT on that same distance.

Not that it's a special TV, but I loved it for a few reasons - can be used as a media player thanks to its USB feature, and it's native 1080p, not upscaled from 1366x768 (like my old Samsung LE32B350F was.).

Tested it with a Core 2 Quad Q9400 build as well (P5Q Deluxe + R7 265) as my recent ABIT IS7-E/X1950 Pro build, and its 1080p native HDMI output is gorgeous. Component support as well - the only thing missing is VGA, but I have a older 24 incher BenQ 2442MK TV-monitor for that.

Took my Diamond Monster 3D II out of storage and put in in my old Win10 PC (i7 4770k on a Gigabyte Z87-D3HP with 16GB DDR3 RAM), installed the Windows 10 drivers for it and ran the Donut tech demo as well as Quake 2 with the 3dfx MiniGL driver. Still amazed that it worked so well.

Well that sentence left me floored, didn't realise there was Win10 drivers for Voodoo2

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-05-30, 19:03:

Well that sentence left me floored, didn't realise there was Win10 drivers for Voodoo2

Here's everything you need:
https://youtu.be/0s6IoQXBJNo

Only downside - it's not a signed driver, so you have to disable driver signature enforcement every time you want to use it (it resets after each restart).

54 fps in 800x600 with demo1.dm2 and the 3dfx MiniGL driver. With the in Quake 2 included 3dfx OpenGL it only had 45 fps

Good thing my board has two PCI Slots left otherwise I'd have had to use an adapter. Second one houses an Adaptec 2940AU that also has drivers for Win10 (that only required disabling driver signature enforcement once)

Finally got around to upgrading my Abit AK3 / Auva TAM/40-U2 motherboard so it can turn off the built-in CPU, with the intention to add a socket and install a TX486DLC in there.

I used this very fine leg puller to get FLT# (pin 54) out while heating with my finest soldering tip, it was originally connected to VCC:

Then soldered a 3 pin jumper over a bypass capacitor since that connects to both VCC and GND in one spot. The middle pin connects with magnet wire onto the FLT# pin:

Stopped here to test with the post code reader card to see if the board would be dead when I connected FLT# to Ground. It was 😀 Then that it would work again when switched back.

So I installed the CPU socket and fitted the new CPU. It gave post code C1 so that's a memory error, then there was a bit of weirdness with it not wanting to start with some sticks of RAM. Rearranging the RAM the CPU is now working? It boots up and the Award 4.50 BIOS supports the Internal cache so it's definitely using the 486DLC.

Now I'm gonna upgrade some more 256kb 30-pin SIMMs and test those out - earlier I was testing out a load of 72-pin SIMMs on my 486 SBC

It doesn't even have a hard drive / CF card right now, just boots up with whatever RAM that's fitted and boots off the floppy into MEMTEST.

smtkr wrote on 2023-05-29, 22:08:

Hey. I know this thread gets a lot more eyeballs than many others. I posted about a cooling mod I made to a Geforce 3 recently ( Re: Small Project: Installing a Socket 479 cooler on a Geforce 3 ). I asked if anyone had information about Geforce 3 thermals and didn't get any responses.

Is anyone in here able to check a Geforce 3 that you own and see if the back side of the PCB gets pretty warm behind the chip?

Edit Someone responded today.

I actually need to fire up my GF3 rig at some point soon, I'll try to to remember to check. GeForce3 is a fairly low power card though, I'd be surprised if the PCB heatsoaking is considerable, even with the relatively meager stock cooler.

True, considering how ARM SOCs and Atoms etc basically just lose 15W into the ground plane of the board, that is a plausible heat dissipation route.

Today I installed windows 98 on my P233 rig, and gave it a Voodoo 3, all so that I could post a CPU-Z validation at a friend.

Yesterday I noticed the prices of 3dfx Voodoo3 3000 have only gone up on ebay since the last time I checked, some lunatic has even paid 200€ for one! As I own both V3 2000 and 3000 greed started to creep in and I figured I could sell the 3k and keep the other as in my use I don't need the extra speed anyway.

So I whipped the 2k out of storage, threw it in and booted up. Black screen, monitor can't find signal. System is clearly booting up just fine, just no picture. Great. After some troubleshooting it looks like the card is dead, using a PCI video card alongside it I can see the V3 is being recognized as somesort of generic pc peripheral by POST, unknown PCI card by Win98SE and HWiNFO crashes as it collects data at launch. I tried to flash its BIOS in hopes that would help but the flasher doesn't recognize the card and aborts.

So seems to me some component has croaked. Maybe some DIY type of guy with the spares and the know-how could bring it back to life but that ain't me I'm afraid, so it's dead Jim.

I could still sell the 3k and get in the money, but as I was using the PCI video card I couldn't help but notice the HUGE difference in image quality. It's ELSA Trio64V+ which I got in advance as I've been playing with an idea of selling the Socket 370 system I currently use for DOS/Win98SE and replacing it with Socket 7 system, but I don't think I want to do that anymore. The V3 really has that much better IQ, the card might be just fine with a CRT monitor but on my LCD V3 is running laps around it. Maybe if by some miracle I'll find a PCI V3 at good price but I'm not holding my breath on that.

So I guess I keep it and the rest of the system. I flashed the V3 3k with 2k's bios in hopes lower clocks will prolong its life and enjoy it as long as I can, no way I'll get another one with ebay prices just to see it die on me within a year. Maybe I'll find a good deal locally like I did with this one too.

Sombrero wrote on 2023-06-01, 05:24:

Yesterday I noticed the prices of 3dfx Voodoo3 3000 have only gone up on ebay since the last time I checked, some lunatic has even paid 200€ for one! As I own both V3 2000 and 3000 greed started to creep in and I figured I could sell the 3k and keep the other as in my use I don't need the extra speed anyway.

So I whipped the 2k out of storage, threw it in and booted up. Black screen, monitor can't find signal. System is clearly booting up just fine, just no picture. Great. After some troubleshooting it looks like the card is dead, using a PCI video card alongside it I can see the V3 is being recognized as somesort of generic pc peripheral by POST, unknown PCI card by Win98SE and HWiNFO crashes as it collects data at launch. I tried to flash its BIOS in hopes that would help but the flasher doesn't recognize the card and aborts.

So seems to me some component has croaked. Maybe some DIY type of guy with the spares and the know-how could bring it back to life but that ain't me I'm afraid, so it's dead Jim.

are voodoo cards known to be fragile? i've read of many problems reported by voodoo owners but maybe its just because the cards have lots of attention and actually they are just as reliable as any other card

in any case i can see why someone with the skills would want to save them - partly because they want them working, partly because it could actually be worth something

V3 suffer from cracked solder connections, its probably fixable, someone might even pay good money for broken

It might also just be a corrupted rom so do a bios flash using a pci vga card.

Doing some experiments with FM sound using emulation on my main machine and real hardware in my 286. I ran some tests on the 286 and I want to come back to it later but in the meantime the old 600MB WD Caviar disk is a bit loud, particularly with no cover being installed on the AT case. I don't want to power it off because there is no CMOS battery and I have to reconfigure BIOS settings every time I turn it on. So I start to wonder if an HDD from 1995 even supports spinning down...

Turns out, it does.
Write 1 to the sector count register ($1F2)
Write $A0 to the drive select register ($1F6)
Write $96 to the command register ($1F7)

Much quieter now.

Sombrero wrote on 2023-06-01, 05:24:

So I whipped the 2k out of storage, threw it in and booted up. Black screen, monitor can't find signal. System is clearly booting up just fine, just no picture. Great. After some troubleshooting it looks like the card is dead, using a PCI video card alongside it I can see the V3 is being recognized as somesort of generic pc peripheral by POST, unknown PCI card by Win98SE and HWiNFO crashes as it collects data at launch. I tried to flash its BIOS in hopes that would help but the flasher doesn't recognize the card and aborts.

So seems to me some component has croaked. Maybe some DIY type of guy with the spares and the know-how could bring it back to life but that ain't me I'm afraid, so it's dead Jim.

Sometimes the surface mount capacitors get damaged on the front or back of the card while in storage. Inspect the card closely for damage. There may even be cracked capacitors too small to see without a microscope.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-06-01, 12:53:

Sometimes the surface mount capacitors get damaged on the front or back of the card while in storage. Inspect the card closely for damage. There may even be cracked capacitors too small to see without a microscope.

I could't see any visible signs just by ogling it by naked eye, not that I could do anything about it even if I would somehow know where the problem is especially with those tiny caps/resistors.

I think I'll do what rasz_pl said and try to auction it, even if it ends up to someone for spare parts at the price of a cup of coffee it's still better than ending up in a landfill.

bakemono wrote on 2023-06-01, 12:41:

Doing some experiments with FM sound using emulation on my main machine and real hardware in my 286. I ran some tests on the 286 […]
Show full quote

Doing some experiments with FM sound using emulation on my main machine and real hardware in my 286. I ran some tests on the 286 and I want to come back to it later but in the meantime the old 600MB WD Caviar disk is a bit loud, particularly with no cover being installed on the AT case. I don't want to power it off because there is no CMOS battery and I have to reconfigure BIOS settings every time I turn it on. So I start to wonder if an HDD from 1995 even supports spinning down...

Turns out, it does.
Write 1 to the sector count register ($1F2)
Write $A0 to the drive select register ($1F6)
Write $96 to the command register ($1F7)

Much quieter now.

To add to that, many manufacturers from around that era had their own sleep utils and TSRs I think maybe seagate's and WD's have been around on Simtel archives.. as well as 3rd party..

Hmm, should've looked a bit closer at these SIMMs before I decided they were good candidates for upgrading to 1MB simms - Found out a little late that the A9 pin isn't wired up so had to run a new trace for it on each one:

This actually passes memtest 😀
Hopefully the epoxy coating on the magnet wire doesn't rub off since each wire runs through another signal's VIA to get to the otherside of the SIMM so that the signal is present on both sides.

But you'll notice the parity chips are missing and that's because the pinout for the HYB511000BJ-70 chips are somewhere between different and just not fully routed on this PCB. Had to run like 6 traces and pull up lots of pins to get parity to work so these are non-parity sticks. Which is fine, I had another set of 1MB SIMMs that are much more recent but didn't have parity chips fitted, now they do.

Had some trouble with the Aztech MM Pro (AZT2320) on my 386SX build.
The card was not detected: tried to unmount and mount again, change ISA slot but nothing changed.
In the end, I found out it was a driver problem: the AZT1008 DOS driver from PhilsComputerLab did not work, while the Unisound driver detected the card just fine.

EDIT: removed unhinged rant