Well I just bought a Dell Dimension 4300, it's still in the car. But I took a sneaking peek inside and discovered it has a Geforce2 MX. Which should be good for Quake 2, Unreal Tournament

Yeah, Quake 2 at least isn't all that demanding.

The pentium 4 era skipped me by, as I was using Athlon by that time.. So it's hard for me to gauge what the p4 can handle

Hiddenevil wrote on 2023-08-15, 12:01:

The pentium 4 era skipped me by, as I was using Athlon by that time.. So it's hard for me to gauge what the p4 can handle

I think I played Q2 with a 433 MHz Celeron BITD, and it ran pretty much as well as one can hope. It is, after all, a 1997 game; P4 is overkill.

I'm just jammin with old MIDI files from games. Right now, I'm listening to the files from EA's Magic Carpet, through the XG VST, and they sound great.

Yesterday I sold that Digital personal workstation as-is, untested.
Today we tested a few systems:
- Fujitsu Scenic-T. Has P3 1GHz, Matrox G550 and 384MB of ram. Posts etc, but needs new caps.
- A baby-at with a 430TX mobo. CPU is P166, 96MB ram. Posts fine
- IBM Aptiva 2170. Has K6-2/500, 2x64MB ram. And a surprise Bigfoot with NT4. Boots fine!
- Epox P55 VP3. No post, seems to need caps (one fell off)
- Trigon 5114Vu. K6-2/300, 192MB ram. Posts fine.
- Just mobo, cpu and ram (Asrock K7S8X). Three beeps, no post. needs CAPS? tried different RAM.

A few tested GPUs that work just fine:
- GF2mx200
- Voodoo3 2000
- FX5200
Not tested more than that they post:
- Geforce 6600GT
- 3DLabs Oxygen VX1
- Savage 3D
- Matrox MGA-G100A. Posts but seems flaky
- Banshee 16MB. Posts, has artifacts. One RAM ic gets got, and touching it make a nice demo. Ordered new ram.
- Guillemot GeForce256. Does not post, is detected. Flashsoftware will not detect correctly. Might need a reflow/reball.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-08-15, 01:17:

There's been a stack of video cards that I've not tested because my AGP systems are all built and packed away - this new rig makes it easy-ish to test out video cards again 😀 This Voodoo 3 with deep scratches and bashed up memory chips surprised me, it works perfectly with no real repairs. I think it's a Voodoo 3 3000 possibly? The BGA chip looked too clean for a glued on heatsink to have been removed:
IMG_1706a.jpg

Someone really went out and cut that small part where the S-Video port would have been? Most photos of both 2000 and 3000 have it.

amigopi wrote on 2023-08-15, 12:36:

Hiddenevil wrote on 2023-08-15, 12:01:

The pentium 4 era skipped me by, as I was using Athlon by that time.. So it's hard for me to gauge what the p4 can handle

I think I played Q2 with a 433 MHz Celeron BITD, and it ran pretty much as well as one can hope. It is, after all, a 1997 game; P4 is overkill.

I agree it is a tad overkill, but compared to my other retro gaming rig, which I built to be a bleeding edge quad core rig from 2008. This Dell Pentium 4 runs at a far more modest pace. Plus the Dell will take Windows 98SE without too much kicking and screaming. My 2008 system runs XP nicely, but it's no DOS machine, unless it's DOSBOX. I was looking on fleabay, trying to price up parts for a nice Windows 98SE system, but to buy individual parts would end up costing more than I can afford. The Dimension 4300 was being sold 30 minutes from my house for £20, it's worth that just to have a decent case to house a project 😀

BTW Does listening to the Morrowind 3 soundtrack CD, on an 80s Panasonic hi-fi count as a retro activity? Technically the youngest part is the compact disc 😜 🤣

Hiddenevil wrote on 2023-08-15, 15:28:

I agree it is a tad overkill, but compared to my other retro gaming rig, which I built to be a bleeding edge quad core rig from 2008. This Dell Pentium 4 runs at a far more modest pace. Plus the Dell will take Windows 98SE without too much kicking and screaming. My 2008 system runs XP nicely, but it's no DOS machine, unless it's DOSBOX. I was looking on fleabay, trying to price up parts for a nice Windows 98SE system, but to buy individual parts would end up costing more than I can afford. The Dimension 4300 was being sold 30 minutes from my house for £20, it's worth that just to have a decent case to house a project 😀

's cool, my man, chill. I didn't mean to criticize you for using a P4 to play Q2 – my retro rig currently in action is an Athlon XP 3000+, and all I ever play on it is Duke 3D, so... 😄

And I agree re: the case. A nice case, i.e. one that is not absolutely ass to work on or painful to look at, really is worth paying for. I was damn lucky to get a pretty nice Fujitsu-Siemens case from circa 2003 for free recently; of course, I had to fetch it from the guy's home some 40 km from where I live, and since I don't have a car, that was a bit of an adventure in itself... 😏

amigopi wrote on 2023-08-15, 15:41:

Hiddenevil wrote on 2023-08-15, 15:28:

I agree it is a tad overkill, but compared to my other retro gaming rig, which I built to be a bleeding edge quad core rig from 2008. This Dell Pentium 4 runs at a far more modest pace. Plus the Dell will take Windows 98SE without too much kicking and screaming. My 2008 system runs XP nicely, but it's no DOS machine, unless it's DOSBOX. I was looking on fleabay, trying to price up parts for a nice Windows 98SE system, but to buy individual parts would end up costing more than I can afford. The Dimension 4300 was being sold 30 minutes from my house for £20, it's worth that just to have a decent case to house a project 😀

's cool, my man, chill. I didn't mean to criticize you for using a P4 to play Q2 – my retro rig currently in action is an Athlon XP 3000+, and all I ever play on it is Duke 3D, so... 😄

And I agree re: the case. A nice case, i.e. one that is not absolutely ass to work on or painful to look at, really is worth paying for. I was damn lucky to get a pretty nice Fujitsu-Siemens case from circa 2003 for free recently; of course, I had to fetch it from the guy's home some 40 km from where I live, and since I don't have a car, that was a bit of an adventure in itself... 😏

Wow that sounds like a real trek!

Well it was a lovely drive, went to see a castle afterwards, had home made cake in a café. All in all I'm scoring that as a win, fun outing + vintage tech to boot! 🤣 Now I just have to hook it up and see if the darn thing boots, it's covered in dust. Suspect it's not been used in a loooong time.

I spent the entire night trying to get the COM ports on my 286 working..

..only to find out that the breakout cable I was using was the wrong type.

You see, COM port headers on pretty much every motherboard I know is staggered:

1 3 5 7 9
2 4 6 8 0

But on this motherboard, it is linear!

1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 0

So I had to make converter cables using male to female dupont wires, which eventually worked but made the build look a bit janky and funny. It works though, so not complaining..

There are 3 common serial header pinouts.... unless you own every type of cable.. then there are four+

appiah4 wrote on 2023-08-15, 19:30:

So I had to make converter cables using male to female dupont wires, which eventually worked but made the build look a bit janky and funny. It works though, so not complaining..

Put a big black shrink sleeve over it. That stuff covers up everything and anything. Nice that you eventually got it working.

PcBytes wrote on 2023-08-15, 15:28:

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-08-15, 01:17:

There's been a stack of video cards that I've not tested because my AGP systems are all built and packed away - this new rig makes it easy-ish to test out video cards again 😀 This Voodoo 3 with deep scratches and bashed up memory chips surprised me, it works perfectly with no real repairs. I think it's a Voodoo 3 3000 possibly? The BGA chip looked too clean for a glued on heatsink to have been removed:
IMG_1706a.jpg

Someone really went out and cut that small part where the S-Video port would have been? Most photos of both 2000 and 3000 have it.

I have no idea, it was bought from a recycler / reseller in the UK (or maybe Hungary). I think it's had a rough ride in getting to me since the heatsink and bracket were also gone. Given the damage to the RAM chips it's likely it's had a few impacts in its journey.

Today the Miro Hiscore2 3D got a 3d printed mounting bracket and the small test bench PC got each of my problem issues fixed, now the drives do easily move out of the way to get to the card slots, and a B: drive can be plugged in easily - this system is probably going to be my all in one test system compared to the ISA SBC systems that I usually use.

The USB / parallel are on the ATX plate now. That was mostly dremeled but I found out that hammering a nail / sharp thing into the plate where holes need to be, is much easier than drilling, then just grind off the warped extra metal.

This was my evening...

PcBytes wrote on 2023-08-15, 15:28:

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-08-15, 01:17:

There's been a stack of video cards that I've not tested because my AGP systems are all built and packed away - this new rig makes it easy-ish to test out video cards again 😀 This Voodoo 3 with deep scratches and bashed up memory chips surprised me, it works perfectly with no real repairs. I think it's a Voodoo 3 3000 possibly? The BGA chip looked too clean for a glued on heatsink to have been removed:
IMG_1706a.jpg

Someone really went out and cut that small part where the S-Video port would have been? Most photos of both 2000 and 3000 have it.

Looks like the PCB had break-out tabs and contour routing for it, though ...

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-08-16, 20:34:

PcBytes wrote on 2023-08-15, 15:28:

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-08-15, 01:17:

IMG_1706a.jpg

Someone really went out and cut that small part where the S-Video port would have been? Most photos of both 2000 and 3000 have it.

Looks like the PCB had break-out tabs and contour routing for it, though ...

I have a ELSA Victory II-A16 wich has the same cut out... If i remember right this was some kind of standard for a specific case type or something like that...

amigopi wrote on 2023-08-16, 20:10:

This was my evening...

I can still remember how exciting this was. The productivity loss from including solitaire with every copy of Windows must have been staggering.

On a similar note, I played a lot of shareware as a kid without ever understanding that it wasn't the full game. I was never disappointed.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-08-17, 06:10:

amigopi wrote on 2023-08-16, 20:10:

This was my evening...

I can still remember how exciting this was. The productivity loss from including solitaire with every copy of Windows must have been staggering.

On a similar note, I played a lot of shareware as a kid without ever understanding that it wasn't the full game. I was never disappointed.

A lot of shareware games gave you more than enough content to keep you busy for awhile. The shareware versions of games like Wolfenstein could keep you busy for hours. We also didn't have huge backlogs back then, so we'd just replay the same games over again once we completed them.

yesterday I listed and ordered the required caps to recap four motherboards. Also, did a recap on a FX5200 - success.
Did a reflow on a Geforce256 - no success. I might pull the chip and reball it at some point. Does anyone have an idea what the ball size or pitch is?