justin1985 wrote on 2023-12-07, 22:36:

This little SocketA PC just arrived from eBay - I bought it because I was weirdly attracted to its kind of ugly early 2000s look […]
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This little SocketA PC just arrived from eBay - I bought it because I was weirdly attracted to its kind of ugly early 2000s look, and the fact it was super compact for a case that takes full height expansion cards and has full sized 5.25" and 3.5" drive bays (hidden under the flap at the top).

IMG20231207214952.jpg

The eBay photos looked a little more black than grey, and I hadn't noticed that there were also clearly drive bay and front USB covers which are missing, but I still think it has something about it! The notch round the middle feels like it's trying to look a bit like a 90s game console? Does anyone recognise it?

IMG20231207214543.jpg

The system itself is pretty dirty, but the Asrock K7VM4 seems in pretty good condition with no bulging caps or anything. It came with an Athlon XP 2500 and 1Gb of DDR RAM and the CD-RW but no HDD or floppy.

It POSTs happily, although the cheap looking little SFX PSU seems to make a really piercing whine the moment it is connected to a socket, even before it boots. I'm guessing that is just being cheap and nasty from the start? Or would it be worth opening it up to clean out and check for failing components to see if that helps?

IMG20231207213752.jpg

I saw that one too. I liked the initial look of the case, but then when I looked properly it seemed like there was something missing.

justin1985 wrote on 2023-12-14, 09:57:

zuldan wrote on 2023-12-14, 09:32:

Any reason why you’re not using a brand new PSU? I wouldn’t trust and old PSU with expensive retro hardware.

SFX format PSUs seem pretty scarce (at least in stock at UK retailers) and the better brand ~300w ones that are around from e.g. Seasonic or BeQuiet! at around £50 seem to be very weak on the 5v rail. It seems like you have to go right up to e.g. a full modular 500w Silverstone to get a 25A rating on 5v, but that costs £90 - about 3 x the value of the SocketA board and CPU!

So I was hoping that a used PSU from a brand generally regarded as good quality would be a good compromise...

This is what I use on all my 233mmx and Pentium III builds (Voodoo 3 / GF 2 GTS etc). It has a 16A on the 5v rail. All the machines are rock solid stable. It’s about £26

https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/power-sup … ASABEgLJOvD_BwE

zuldan wrote on 2023-12-14, 10:12:

justin1985 wrote on 2023-12-14, 09:57:

zuldan wrote on 2023-12-14, 09:32:

Any reason why you’re not using a brand new PSU? I wouldn’t trust and old PSU with expensive retro hardware.

SFX format PSUs seem pretty scarce (at least in stock at UK retailers) and the better brand ~300w ones that are around from e.g. Seasonic or BeQuiet! at around £50 seem to be very weak on the 5v rail. It seems like you have to go right up to e.g. a full modular 500w Silverstone to get a 25A rating on 5v, but that costs £90 - about 3 x the value of the SocketA board and CPU!

So I was hoping that a used PSU from a brand generally regarded as good quality would be a good compromise...

This is what I use on all my 233mmx and Pentium III builds (Voodoo 3 / GF 2 GTS etc). It has a 16A on the 5v rail. All the machines are rock solid stable. It’s about £26

https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/power-sup … ASABEgLJOvD_BwE

Socket A generally wants as much amps on the 5v rail as you can give it, 16A is a bit on the low side for Socket A but might be ok for a lightly kitted out rig with no overclocking, the PSU I use in my Socket A runs 57A on the 5v rail and 32A on the 3.3v rail, its a refurbished Pentium 4 PSU funnily enough.

For any other rig a new ATX PSU is perfectly fine and what I would recommend myself.

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-12-14, 10:20:

zuldan wrote on 2023-12-14, 10:12:

justin1985 wrote on 2023-12-14, 09:57:

SFX format PSUs seem pretty scarce (at least in stock at UK retailers) and the better brand ~300w ones that are around from e.g. Seasonic or BeQuiet! at around £50 seem to be very weak on the 5v rail. It seems like you have to go right up to e.g. a full modular 500w Silverstone to get a 25A rating on 5v, but that costs £90 - about 3 x the value of the SocketA board and CPU!

So I was hoping that a used PSU from a brand generally regarded as good quality would be a good compromise...

This is what I use on all my 233mmx and Pentium III builds (Voodoo 3 / GF 2 GTS etc). It has a 16A on the 5v rail. All the machines are rock solid stable. It’s about £26

https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/power-sup … ASABEgLJOvD_BwE

Socket A generally wants as much amps on the 5v rail as you can give it, 16A is a bit on the low side for Socket A but might be ok for a lightly kitted out rig with no overclocking, the PSU I use in my Socket A runs 57A on the 5v rail and 32A on the 3.3v rail, its a refurbished Pentium 4 PSU funnily enough.

For any other rig a new ATX PSU is perfectly fine and what I would recommend myself.

Ahh apologies, I should have read it was socket A.

zuldan wrote on 2023-12-14, 10:12:

This is what I use on all my 233mmx and Pentium III builds (Voodoo 3 / GF 2 GTS etc). It has a 16A on the 5v rail. All the machines are rock solid stable. It’s about £26

https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/power-sup … ASABEgLJOvD_BwE

ATX format PSUs like that are easy to find, and certainly cheap. It just seems smaller form factors like SFX are much harder to find and/or much more expensive.

Small form factor is an absolute must for me - I just don't have the space for ATX.

I did try a beQuiet! SFX 300w that claimed 20A on the 5v rail (but with a maximum of 103w on 5v and 3.3v together). It works fine with more modern motherboards, or actually Socket7 with low power draw. But it was catastrophically unstable with an Athlon XP as soon as even a basic AGP card was added! That's how I ended up looking for used SFX PSUs from the era when 5v was more important...

The last days i recieverd some sound cards...
For a project i need a lot of 4th generation Aztech soundcards... so i got myself 5 HP variants that nobody wanted... so i could get them for just around 14 Euros each (4 from 1 seller, 1 card from another seller).

And as a Bonus i found another MMSD801 1st gen Aztech card with real OPL2 + Covox / Sound Source support for 24 euros. Amazing that you can still find them...

Deano wrote on 2023-12-12, 11:19:

Need a proper serial mouse for my 286, and wanted some adapters anyway so brought this off Ebay. Surprised how mint it is, wasn't really bothered by that but will now look after it as if it were my 1st born!

Its a Genius GM-F303 with 3 buttons, even comes with its own CAD and menu builder software! Will check to see if disks are archived, and upload if not.

I recently got a new in box GM-6 mouse. It's so pristine I don't want to use it.

justin1985 wrote on 2023-12-14, 09:28:

I got a used "tested" Delta brand PSU as a replacement for the brown gunk filled SFX model, and it feels much heavier and well b […]
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Kahenraz wrote on 2023-12-08, 21:59:

If that is the infamous brown adhesive, then it would be wise to replace the whole PSU. See here for more information: […]
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If that is the infamous brown adhesive, then it would be wise to replace the whole PSU. See here for more information:

PCB destroying adhesive found in my Roland Sound Canvas SC-55mkII (inspect your synthesizer!)

Here is a link to the Adrian's Digital Basement episode where he found a similar adhesive that had corroded parts of a circuit board he was working on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLVbmnViz7I&t=1089s

I got a used "tested" Delta brand PSU as a replacement for the brown gunk filled SFX model, and it feels much heavier and well built. It's also rated to 125w for the 3.3v and 5v rails combined, which might hopefully be a better fit for Socket A?

IMG20231214090655.jpg

However, I opened it up and there look like there are two possibly bulging / vented capacitors?

IMG20231214090854.jpg

Do these look bad enough to need replacing before I use it? (Or might it just be dirt?). Any ideas why the one on the left here has a little yellow jacket around it?

Any thoughts on the rest of the internals? Is the yellow goop dotted around safe? Or will it inevitably degrade into the brown crumbly gunk?

IMG20231214090818.jpg

So far I've only tested it by shorting the green wire to ground - the fan spins up but only for a few seconds. I guess that's because there's no load.

The yellow jacket is probably extra insulation because of being close to mains voltage. Some of the caps look like they could use replacement - at least the one on the pcb behind the wires.

The condition looks pretty good too me. I don't think that the caps are bulging; it might just be dirt. Wet a cotton swab and see if it cleans off.

Recapping this PSU looks like it will be difficult with all of the adhesive in there. That color of adhesive also looks okay. It's the dark brown stuff that you need to worry about.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-12-14, 16:22:

The condition looks pretty good too me. I don't think that the caps are bulging; it might just be dirt. Wet a cotton swab and see if it cleans off.

Recapping this PSU looks like it will be difficult with all of the adhesive in there. That color of adhesive also looks okay. It's the dark brown stuff that you need to worry about.

I cleaned off the dirt and the four caps at that end amongst the wires were all definitely bulging. 3 x 1500uf 16v and 1 x 2200uf 16v - none of which I happened to have amongst my components box.

I sent a photo to the eBay seller and they offered a refund without any quibble, so fair play. I'll just dump it in e-waste. The fan seems in good condition and nice and quiet, so I'll save it. Is it worth salvaging any other components?

I wonder about cutting off the wires with the molex and FDD connectors and using them to splice and replace SATA connectors on a more modern PSU, rather than using those dodgy adapters?

Talking of SATA to Molex adapters, I noticed this type of "solid" adapter on eBay (rather than using potentially loose wires). I've ordered one to try out. Are they as good as they look they might be?

Today I bought a second hand CF. After failing twice to attach a 128GB SSD to my P200MMX using two different SATA->IDE adapters, I gave up and bought a CF->IDE.

mtest001 wrote on 2023-12-14, 20:59:

Today I bought a second hand CF. After failing twice to attach a 128GB SSD to my P200MMX using two different SATA->IDE adapters, I gave up and bought a CF->IDE.

IMHO 128GB is simply way too large for your Socket 7 motherboard to handle; some models got updated BIOS but many didn't.

Large Disk HOWTO wrote:

The 33.8 GB limit (August 1999)

The next hurdle comes with a size over 33.8 GB. The problem is that with the default 16 heads and 63 sectors/track this corresponds to a number of cylinders of more than 65535, which does not fit into a short. Many BIOSes couldn't handle such disks.

In my personal experience, I had only 1.08GB in 1995, 8.4GB in 1999, 80GB in 2003, and 160GB in 2009.

mtest001 wrote on 2023-12-14, 20:59:

Today I bought a second hand CF. After failing twice to attach a 128GB SSD to my P200MMX using two different SATA->IDE adapters, I gave up and bought a CF->IDE.

Be aware that you might have worse compatibility with CF cards than with a SATA-IDE adapter. This is because a lot of CF cards have a special "removable" bit set in the hardware that indicates that it is hot-swappable to the BIOS. I think that early BIOSes that were patched to work with larger drives so not account for this alternate code path and fail to support the larger size.

I encountered this recently where my 128GB CF card would only recognize as 33.8GB, suggesting a BIOS limitation, but large disks sizes work fine with both IDE and SATA-IDE adapters on proper SSDs.

Re: Disappointing DFI ITOX G4V620-B experience

Trying to use a CF card with this bit set will cause problems in Windows XP, because it will not allow you to allocate a swap file on a removable disk.

mtest001 wrote on 2023-12-14, 20:59:

Today I bought a second hand CF. After failing twice to attach a 128GB SSD to my P200MMX using two different SATA->IDE adapters, I gave up and bought a CF->IDE.

This CF card works perfectly with that CF->IDE adapter you have. I use it on 3 machines.

Thanks @Zuldan and @Kahenraz for the feedback and advices.

My BIOS is patched and theoretically should support a 128 GB drive but I know that 1.I am trying to push the limit and 2.I will never need that amount of space.

No hard feelings then, we'll see how the CF works. I will work on that this week-end.

mtest001 wrote on 2023-12-15, 07:24:

My BIOS is patched and theoretically should support a 128 GB drive but I know that 1.I am trying to push the limit and 2.I will never need that amount of space.

I had a similar issue with one of my systems where a 128 GB SSD wouldn't work, but a 120 GB model would.

In theory, this shouldn't have made any difference, but in practice things were quite different.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-12-15, 07:51:

I had a similar issue with one of my systems where a 128 GB SSD wouldn't work, but a 120 GB model would.

In theory, this shouldn't have made any difference, but in practice things were quite different.

its not the capacity. It is the backwards compatibility of the SSD itself. Sata 3 is supposed to work at 2 and 1 speeds, but not all controllers bother. this is most apparent with Sata3 devices on older sata one boards.

This MB 486 PCI will arrive in the next few days, it's probably not working, at least that's what the seller says, but sometimes it can happen that there isn't a real fault, but it's just incorrect jumper settings, which prevent correct booting, this at least in the simplest cases, if there is a faulty component, well you have to find it, and it's neither easy nor simple.
In the past I had a similar motherboard, it was a BEK, with 4 banks of RAM, here there are only three, but using large memories, up to 128 MB can be installed, which allows the installation of subsequent Windows to those of the period (mid 90s).
Only after having solved this, will I try to complete the configuration, adding VGA PCI and ISA audio, as a CPU I initially thought of an i486-33 because the heatsink is not needed, later I change it with an AMD 5x86 133 or an Intel DX4 100, but I think to use the 5x86 133, because it's the fastest 486 I have available.

Some small parts arrived today (themselves not retro but for retro systems, so I think that counts 😀)

EEPROM is to restore a Pentium mobo that has ROM with a broken leg
S2 Dreamblaster is to attempt a 8 pin motherboard (on my PPro build) to normal waveblaster adapter (if not it will go on a sound card I have)
CVX4 Covox is to play Megatraveller 1 with the best sound possible (its a Covox or speaker only game).

Awaiting a big package of games but now looks like Monday due to transport fun delivering it to the wrong postal service!

I just got back from a thrift store and saw a creative labs box deep on the low shelf behind a bunch of other stuff so i grabbed it. It is a Graphics blaster exxtreme 4MB PCI card. It looks pretty complete. has the card , the cd, the manual and registration card.

Is this a good card?

Ill post pics when I take some