Trashbytes wrote on 2023-06-02, 00:33:

debs3759 wrote on 2023-06-01, 16:38:

Damn, a lot of trash talking on the last couple of pages. […]
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Damn, a lot of trash talking on the last couple of pages.

I had an ATA drive fail. Does that mean all ATA drives are bad?

In the same vein, I had several SATA drives fail SMART tests. Also am using a SATA drive that has over 10 years power on time and no issues.

Just because some folk had a bad experience with something, doesn't mean the same make and model can't work well for someone else. I have a very broad range of graphics cards and CPUs, and over 150 motherboards (mostly untested as yet, but hope to get my work space set up soon). I look forward to making my own comparisons between hundreds or even thousands of setups. Just because I can, no other reason.

.........
150 Motherboards Jesus...do you own a storage unit or perhaps a large garage 😁 but that honestly does sound like a fun time you have ahead there.

Well, you can 'stack' quite a few boards vertically in a larger crate/box, with some clever padding/separators. And the older ones are significantly smaller than their more modern counterparts.

I recently did a rough headcount, and ended up with a surprising sub 100-ish boards, divided 50/50 among older and semi-'modern' boards. Granted, that even includes all those in currently working computers, like my IBM 5150 or Ryzen PC, but a much higher total number than I initially expected.

And I do not even own a garage... 😆
(though have a couple of crude smallish storage 'rooms'/'cubicles'/'closets' alotted in my apartment building)

I am planning on doing some major culling eventually though, after deciding which ones should be kept as spares for a few actual build categories etc.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-06-01, 20:50:

I tend towards thinking SMART cries wolf a lot. 1 fail = drive out of warranty period, 2 fails, meh, third of useful life expired.... 10 fails, hmmm maybe I'll stop saving new stuff to it.. 20 fails, yah, maybe should replace this sometime, the warnings are annoying. 🤣

For serious though, there's only one or two stats that are really worrying like climbing reallocated sectors, or rapid increase of spinup time.

Power on hours seems a bit of a stupid metric to me, got several that have run wayyy over, it's heat cycles that kill sooner IMO, panic people into power off power on incessantly and they'll sell more drives maybe IDK

Heh, a dodgy IDE cable I used for testing long ago is the reason a few of my old hard drives make certain health check tools go "OMG the drive has an Ultra DMA CRC error, it's going to dieeee!!11!1" when checking SMART stats. The drives have been working perfectly for years after those SMART errors were logged. I wonder if it's possible to somehow clean those kinds of errors from the log since it's not something related to the drive itself.

Power-on hours could be useful as a metric since that's the unit used to specify the drive's MTBF, but I agree that in many cases it's not a good indication of general drive health.

I've had a couple of drives that failed to be recognised by the BIOS or Windows, both stating it's because of a SMART failure. Fortunately, in both cases, I had enough warning that they were about to fail that I was able to update my backups, and no data was lost. I'd be so pissed if I had lost 1TB of files, including about 100 GB of programming stuff, including source code examples. Irreplaceable if I had lost them 😀

dionb wrote on 2023-06-01, 21:56:

That CUBX-L looks amazing, hope you can get it working again.

Thanx!

But I was looking for CUBX because it is one of the few boards with 4 RAM slots and socket 370 (I don't like slotket).
Well, damn it, I knew that the BX440 wants double-sided memory for 16 chips.
Yep, exactly half the size is determined.
Tualatin-S with a 1Gb of RAM is relegated to an uncertain future.
And this is such a disappointment.

ubiq wrote on 2023-06-01, 22:49:

Rejoined the 3Dfx club today after not having used a Voodoo card in over 20 years:
IMG_4912.jpeg

A Voodoo 3 3000 AGP and Voodoo 1 of some sort. Haven't tested them yet, hmm where to start... somewhere in 1997 probably.

Sorry to double post but, wow... trying out an old Voodoo 1 is still amazing. You could take a computer that had no hope of decent 3D gaming at 640x480 (let alone better) and suddenly not only could it do it, it could look good doing it, with frame rates you never saw in software in the first place. The first 3D accelerated game I ever saw was POD at my friends house and it was honestly the largest technological leap I've ever witnessed. As soon as I was able to get my hands on one, I got a Diamond Monster 3D and hell yeah, I absolutely got my money's worth.

I picked up:

A Gateway Voodoo3 1000G w/5.5ns RAM. This one seems to be a terrible overclocker, though. I couldn't even get 3000 clocks out of it with a 140mm fan. Perhaps a different board and drivers (I was using the latest 3dfx beta drivers in a Via KT333) at some point in the future will turn out better results. It runs fine, otherwise.

My first 486 board, the PCI400-4 w/RAM and an AMD Am486 (plus CPU fan, and some other I/O ports not shown); it works great!

Intel Pentium Overdrive 83MHz. Works OK. I dabbled in 100MHz, but I didn't have time to extensively test.

How could I say no to rareish 775 Gallatins x4 @$35 a pop

Got some 925XE and 865P builds planned out

Meatball wrote on 2023-06-02, 04:19:

I picked up:

A Gateway Voodoo3 1000G w/5.5ns RAM. This one seems to be a terrible overclocker, though. I couldn't even get 3000 clocks out of it with a 140mm fan. Perhaps a different board and drivers (I was using the latest 3dfx beta drivers in a Via KT333) at some point in the future will turn out better results. It runs fine, otherwise.

Afaik the different Avenger cards are configured to supply different voltages to the graphics chip depending on the desired clockspeeds. You can raise voltages to V3000 levels by replacing resistors near the LDO. That should increase your overclocking results.

ubiq wrote on 2023-06-01, 22:49:

Rejoined the 3Dfx club today after not having used a Voodoo card in over 20 years:
IMG_4912.jpeg

A Voodoo 3 3000 AGP and Voodoo 1 of some sort. Haven't tested them yet, hmm where to start... somewhere in 1997 probably.

Congratulations ! Welcome to the club ! 😀

3DFX cards are so enjoyable.

So much games had 3DFX patches coming out. But some are best be forgotten (for example, Dungeon Keeper. The original sofware rendering is much better visually).

shevalier wrote on 2023-06-02, 02:47:

Thanx! […]
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dionb wrote on 2023-06-01, 21:56:

That CUBX-L looks amazing, hope you can get it working again.

Thanx!

But I was looking for CUBX because it is one of the few boards with 4 RAM slots and socket 370 (I don't like slotket).
Well, damn it, I knew that the BX440 wants double-sided memory for 16 chips.
Yep, exactly half the size is determined.
Tualatin-S with a 1Gb of RAM is relegated to an uncertain future.
And this is such a disappointment.

BX does max 128Mb per 16Mx8 chip (note the lower-case b for bit), so yes, to get 1GB you specifically need 4 256MB DIMMs with 16 chips each.

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-06-01, 00:48:

Thankfully we have people like yourself who like collecting for the sake of collecting and appear to have unlimited space to store it all.

dude. One GTX 260 takes space for about 10 rage II and rage pro cards. I have problems with space, but honestly, I would rather take whole collection of Rage II, Rage IIc, Rage 128 cards, than one PCI-exrepress 2-slot card. There is where you need to get rid of space takers, not Rage IIc 🤣. Not to mention, that these cards are durable, they are light, they have simple logic, they don't break. Your GTX 260 have much higher chance it will get wrong even in box after 8 years, not to mention when you use it. So be wise, when you have collection, I am very space limited. But rage II cards are least problem in my collection space-wise and I would never scrap them.
And also one note. Rage II is pretty hard to get here, particualry 4MB, when you dont want to spend quite high. Like its not junk card. Im trying to get it for 2 years cheaply, so I dont have to pay like for FX5700. But it never fallen under 10$, which is too much for me to pay for such card, that is like you said, eighter into the box, or on benchmarks. I would never dare to scrap fully functional Rage II or Virge tho.

My $3.5 buy today. *** Untested *** Radeon X600 Pro 128MB. This time it works flawlessly.

dionb wrote on 2023-06-02, 11:40:

BX does max 128Mb per 16Mx8 chip (note the lower-case b for bit), so yes, to get 1GB you specifically need 4 256MB DIMMs with 16 chips each.

But there was hope that it was these memory sticks that had the correct organization, because I they were get from the two-socket Tualatin.
Apparently it was a motherboard on some kind of Server Works chipset.
I have 4 IBM branded 256 MB sticks.
But there are 2 from Infineon, 1 from Hunix and 1 from Micron.
All together they are poorly detected by CUBX at 3.3V. (((

Mandrew wrote on 2023-06-01, 05:41:

This is so dumb, he already told you the reason: "then I came across this listed as faulty for about 10 bucks and I went for it. […]
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rasz_pl wrote on 2023-06-01, 05:09:

Sorry, forgot 'niche garbage' 😀

This is so dumb, he already told you the reason: "then I came across this listed as faulty for about 10 bucks and I went for it."
He bought it because it was cheap and a potential repair candidate and test bench. You know, for fun. Who tf cares if it was a bad, low quality model when it came out decades ago? That's not the point. He liked it and that's all the reason someone needs.
Can't believe this needs to be said on a forum that is essentially based on old junk nobody else wants anymore.
What's next, people talking down on each other for not owning Voodoo 5, only a Voodoo 2? Hate this elitist shit.

Don't bother. For some reason he keeps on telling others what to like, regardless of replies.

Hi.
Just bought this card, waiting delivery.
Is it any good for vintage msdos gaming ?

luckybob wrote on 2023-06-01, 14:12:

Asus was top of the line in this era. I never had a significant issue with any of their products until very recently.

Their boards were top notch in an ocean of mediocre Taiwan clones.

One of my first self built and purchased systems had an Asus P3B-F at its core.

*cough* Abit *cough*

And in my opinion, during the late socket A - early socket 939 (or 775 if you like) eras, Gigabyte made much better boards (than Asus) in terms of stability, features and reliability. In fact one of my favorite KT333 boards is the Gigabyte GA-7VRXP - stable even today (original caps too) and on board creative (ensonic) CT5880 audio. The only Asus boards I really like are the P6T Deluxe (but gigabyte made a nicer version of that, with blackjack and hookers usb 3.0 and sata 3) and the A7V880 (for lack of a better KT880 implementation). Can't say I'm a fan of gigabyte - they do have their lemons - but not a fan of asus either. For me it's Abit who consistently made good boards up until 2006? and then DFI with their Lanparty series.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-06-01, 07:30:

Something nobody here will ever admit is that you can get 99 percent of the fun with like 10 percent of the work. If I actually played games as opposed to building absolutely unhinged "perfect for *insert activity*" builds, I'd legit throw a GeForce 6600 PCIe onto a late LGA775 board (mostly for the solid state caps that came into common usage around that time) with an LGA775 Pentium 4 with a modern SATA optical drive and a modern SATA SSD. You could probably put this build together for $100~ and it would run nearly every game made from 1995 to 2005 flawlessly and it would be extremely reliable. For monitors any late 1280x1024 LCD would be my recommendation, CRTs are getting kind of pricy and they are a nightmare to keep adjusted correctly.

I was thinking mostly along those lines but with newer hardware. Yeah, stopping at the 6xxx series is a good idea for win98 d3d games that use odd rendering techniques (like Thief or Dungeon Keeper 2) but I recently found out there's ports of those games that run on modern systems with hardware acceleration and all.

So I'm either going to re-purpose my main XP gaming PC (i7 950 / Radeon 7970 GHz edition) or build a new PC based on an i7 2600k + Z77 mainboard I recently bought for pennies. I'm thinking of running DOS games in DosBox under windows 7 and win98-early XP era games on windows XP. It should be able to run 90% of the games made from 1985 to 2010. Haven't settled on what video card to use yet - I was thinking of a radeon 290x or a GTX 780. I also want to use a CRT monitor - a dell P1130, so the 290x might be out, since I'm not sure it supports analog out - but the GTX 780 does.

Xanxi wrote on 2023-06-02, 15:59:

Hi.
Just bought this card, waiting delivery.
Is it any good for vintage msdos gaming ?

Yes. The ESS AudioDrive chip onboard has very good SBPro compatibility, with ESFM being mostly faithful to the OPL3 FM synth.

However, I don't have any experience with the Dream SAM9407 chip, but from what I read it is capable of loading a sound bank sounding similar to the Roland SC-55 in DOS. Having S/PDIF connections is a nice bonus.

Socket3 wrote on 2023-06-02, 16:02:

In fact one of my favorite KT333 boards is the Gigabyte GA-7VRXP - stable even today (original caps too) and on board creative (ensonic) CT5880 audio.

I can only assume that it's a rev 2.0 up because the 1.x revisions were a steaming pile that Gigabyte would not stand behind.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-06-02, 16:20:

Socket3 wrote on 2023-06-02, 16:02:

In fact one of my favorite KT333 boards is the Gigabyte GA-7VRXP - stable even today (original caps too) and on board creative (ensonic) CT5880 audio.

I can only assume that it's a rev 2.0 up because the 1.x revisions were a steaming pile that Gigabyte would not stand behind.

yup. Never had a 1.0 board, didn't know they are problematic.

Yah, terrible AGP regulation and instability, that Gigabyte wouldn't admit to for long enough that many couldn't RMA them due to warranty expiry. They were pointing the finger at PSUs and AGP cards such that they cost owners a bunch getting other parts, trying to get their systems to run right when they were the problem all along.