devius wrote on 2024-02-24, 14:01:

Shadzilla wrote on 2024-02-24, 10:00:

Funny you should say that, I couldn't get them running at CAS2 either yesterday. Going to start a thread asking for advice on that one but so far a bit disappointing.

If I remember correctly they need extra voltage to be able to run at CL2 at the rated 400MHz.

Thanks, I'll give that a shot. I found a thread on the Corsair forum that says similar, although also mentions possible limitations with the XP platform.

https://forum.corsair.com/forums/topic/48305- … ms-ddr-200-mhz/

I'm using an ABIT NF7-M and currently a Barton 2500+ at stock settings, although soon to be a 3000+ Barton 400MHz part at 3200+ if it will do it.

Nexxen wrote on 2024-02-22, 23:45:

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-02-22, 23:13:

Anything look worth giving space to here? Looks like all Core2 or late P4 even. It's going real cheap, but not sure if I see anything worth the gas...

I'd inquire on 4:3 screens. Maybe there is a hidden gem.

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-02-22, 23:54:

There is nothing wrong with a good 4:3 LCD. Dell made good panels for the time and, while they may appear a little dull compared to modern IPS panels, they are good workhorses. I keep a matched pair of small 15" Dell panels specifically for retro machines.

Those Dell Optiplexes are also good all around socket 775 Pentiun and Core 2 machines, although nothing particularly special. I believe those models are all 1x PCIe x16 and 3x PCI or 2x PCI and 1x PCI x1 (none have AGP).

I think I'm gonna take a look, it's a one time grab what you can deal tomorrow. The monitors might be 5:4 rather than 4:3 .... well if google recognised them right. I don't really need any more core2 stuff, but I want an mATX box to throw some other bits in, light modding required or not, so will give them an eyeball, though they are probably much the same. Maybe one has a PCIe gfx card in that works in 98. I know how the dell thing goes, got a Optiplex 360 and a Dementia 5150, annoying lack of drive connectors quite often, both power and interface. Might just scoop all those laptops at the back and figure them out later. Depends how much of a scrum it all is though, nothing worth fighting for. May drag one of the UPS bricks home on the offchance there's enough in the batteries to keep my modem and phones up an hour or so through power outages.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-02-24, 18:29:

I think I'm gonna take a look, it's a one time grab what you can deal tomorrow. The monitors might be 5:4 rather than 4:3 .... well if google recognised them right. I don't really need any more core2 stuff, but I want an mATX box to throw some other bits in, light modding required or not, so will give them an eyeball, though they are probably much the same. Maybe one has a PCIe gfx card in that works in 98. I know how the dell thing goes, got a Optiplex 360 and a Dementia 5150, annoying lack of drive connectors quite often, both power and interface. Might just scoop all those laptops at the back and figure them out later. Depends how much of a scrum it all is though, nothing worth fighting for. May drag one of the UPS bricks home on the offchance there's enough in the batteries to keep my modem and phones up an hour or so through power outages.

Yep those Dell 1908’s are 5:4. Perfect 😀

For entertainment value I purchased this non-functional FX5200 video card for £15, which is a bit pricey but it looked like fun to fix:

Now that I've actually used them some, I'm liking the Geforce FX series for old gaming and overclocking. I only ever saw Geforce 4 Ti4200 > Radeon 9700 > Geforce 6800GT back in the day and never used an FX card. The drivers have an auto detect function for overclocking and can pretty reliably find memory errors. The cheaper cards i.e. everything under the FX5800 series have basic VRM so volt mods are easily done with resistor modifications.
The FX5200 series is a mess though with so many cards having just 64-bit wide slow DDR memory and they were often built very cheap. This one's no exception but I could tell from the design and cooling that it had 128-bit wide slow DDR memory - which was correct, this card has 8 chips for the full 128-bit wide memory bus, with a paltry 5ns rating so they'll top out around 400MHz or maybe a little more.

Fixing the card requires all new capacitors, all the 1000uF caps are no longer functioning and have popped. There are so many schematics for these cards that have been leaked over the years, which I could refer to for cap values, but this one was relatively easy to figure out. In the top right there's what appears to be a linear regulator doing the memory voltage rail(s), that's a pretty simple looking setup so it gets some regulator electrolytics there.
Then on the left by the DVI port there's the GPU voltage rail with the usual buck regulator with high/low mosfet thing. Looking at similar cards made with better parts, it made sense to use polymer capacitors for the buck regulator and one of those purple caps for its power feed.
In this case the high/low mosfet is all in one package (9926B) and the F72820 controller is right next to it. I'm getting good at identifying where the resistor pairs are for setting voltages and the numbers on the resistors match on both my spreadsheet and actual DC voltage measurement. Adding a little 3.3k resistor between the feedback pin and ground pushes the vcore up from 1.52v to a slightly hotter 1.58v - the heatsink is big enough to handle that I think.

After the cap replacement the card worked first try and has no memory issues 😀 the fan is nice and quiet too. I had a go at overclocking it and it's beating my GF3 Ti200 at its best so it's a pretty good card:

Noooo, you're letting the secret out, the 0-$20 cards that substitute the mostly very spendy DX8 cards. Let ppl keep going on about how much they suck 🤣

A little while ago I ordered an old 486 motherboard, with a soldered 486 chip from UMC, the conditions are more than fair, some repairs need to be done, I hope to succeed, I have a similar motherboard in my collection, always in need of repair, maybe one or the other sooner or later I can make it work, possibly, if you have suggestions and want to follow the repairs and tests on this and other MBs, you can always find them here on vogons.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-02-25, 00:29:

Noooo, you're letting the secret out, the 0-$20 cards that substitute the mostly very spendy DX8 cards. Let ppl keep going on about how much they suck 🤣

Hmm..! I guess the very much higher 3d mark score has to do with the fact that the gf3 does not run the nature demo, but the FPS is clearly higher!

Why is the gf3 so rare anyway? Did everyone and their gramma get a gf4 when doom 3 came out?

Joakim wrote on 2024-02-25, 09:04:

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-02-25, 00:29:

Noooo, you're letting the secret out, the 0-$20 cards that substitute the mostly very spendy DX8 cards. Let ppl keep going on about how much they suck 🤣

Hmm..! I guess the very much higher 3d mark score has to do with the fact that the gf3 does not run the nature demo, but the FPS is clearly higher!

Why is the gf3 so rare anyway? Did everyone and their gramma get a gf4 when doom 3 came out?

Geforce 3 was on the market for one year and was expensive till the later cheaper Ti200 was released, by the time people could afford a Ti500 or stock GF3 the Geforce 4 was out. There was only a year between the GF3 and GF4* and the GF4 was faster and cheaper and came with the MX models as a budget range. The GF3 by comparison only had the three models GF3, Ti200 and TI500, the GF3 really didn't have time on the market to develop a lot of spares and initially I suspect nVidia was not going to even bother with the GF3 but needed something to compete with the Radeons. (It could also have been that the GF3 the PC community got was built from spares from the GF3 cores made for the XBOX so there were never going to be many going to GPUs)

*Both were released in February one year apart and the two initial models the 4400/4600 blew the GF3 out of the water performance wise.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-02-25, 09:19:

Geforce 3 was on the market for one year and was expensive till the later cheaper Ti200 was released, by the time people could afford a Ti500 or stock GF3 the Geforce 4 was out. There was only a year between the GF3 and GF4* and the GF4 was faster and cheaper and came with the MX models as a budget range. The GF3 by comparison only had the three models GF3, Ti200 and TI500, the GF3 really didn't have time on the market to develop a lot of spares and initially I suspect nVidia was not going to even bother with the GF3 but needed something to compete with the Radeons. (It could also have been that the GF3 the PC community got was built from spares from the GF3 cores made for the XBOX so there were never going to be many going to GPUs)

Grabbed this on Friday Bought these (retro) hardware today

I thought maybe I might have been bidding against you.

zuldan wrote on 2024-02-25, 10:48:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-02-25, 09:19:

Geforce 3 was on the market for one year and was expensive till the later cheaper Ti200 was released, by the time people could afford a Ti500 or stock GF3 the Geforce 4 was out. There was only a year between the GF3 and GF4* and the GF4 was faster and cheaper and came with the MX models as a budget range. The GF3 by comparison only had the three models GF3, Ti200 and TI500, the GF3 really didn't have time on the market to develop a lot of spares and initially I suspect nVidia was not going to even bother with the GF3 but needed something to compete with the Radeons. (It could also have been that the GF3 the PC community got was built from spares from the GF3 cores made for the XBOX so there were never going to be many going to GPUs)

Grabbed this on Friday Bought these (retro) hardware today

I thought maybe I might have been bidding against you.

The 486 ?

I have three now so nope got two too many, I dont really bid on much any more as I have the parts I want, mostly now its grabbing smaller things like more MO Discs, 5.25 1.2Mb floppies, sub 1Gb HDDs and DDR500 ram sticks. I only have a few halo wants left and they only show up on eBay once in a blue moon.

Right now Im looking at buying some brand new AT power supplies, didn't know anyone was still fabbing them. But they are for industrial machines and have an accordingly silly price tag but they are spanking new 300watt AT power supplies so one or two might be worth having.

Might be cheaper to grab some ATX to AT adapters.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-02-24, 17:53:

Excellent find 😀 Good graphics and a cool running CPU make for a great little system. These Pentium M systems with good graphics cards (where the graphics chips haven't failed) are really excellent little systems, especially now there's SBEMU for DOS games. I've got an Acer Travelmate 8000 for a similar niche which has a 15" 1400x1050 panel and Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics. Looks like Toshiba and Dell both have a bunch of models with good graphics chips like the Inspiron 5150 - although that's a rather more toasty Pentium 4.

I never had a P4 Laptop but a friend had one. He had do build a wooden stand to avoid having it on his knees when using if from a couch/bed. Because the heat was so intense that it was painful.

It was a gamer's laptop with a "big" GPU (X800 iirc).

This was my only experience with them but there might have been some cooler P4 laptops.

1400x1050 panel is a high resolution for the time. The image must be super sharp !

acl wrote on 2024-02-25, 12:21:

I never had a P4 Laptop but a friend had one. He had do build a wooden stand to avoid having it on his knees when using if from […]
Show full quote

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-02-24, 17:53:

Excellent find 😀 Good graphics and a cool running CPU make for a great little system. These Pentium M systems with good graphics cards (where the graphics chips haven't failed) are really excellent little systems, especially now there's SBEMU for DOS games. I've got an Acer Travelmate 8000 for a similar niche which has a 15" 1400x1050 panel and Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics. Looks like Toshiba and Dell both have a bunch of models with good graphics chips like the Inspiron 5150 - although that's a rather more toasty Pentium 4.

I never had a P4 Laptop but a friend had one. He had do build a wooden stand to avoid having it on his knees when using if from a couch/bed. Because the heat was so intense that it was painful.

It was a gamer's laptop with a "big" GPU (X800 iirc).

This was my only experience with them but there might have been some cooler P4 laptops.

1400x1050 panel is a high resolution for the time. The image must be super sharp !

I avoid p4 laptops like the bubonic plague... Too hot, too high power draw.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-02-25, 09:19:

Joakim wrote on 2024-02-25, 09:04:

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-02-25, 00:29:

Noooo, you're letting the secret out, the 0-$20 cards that substitute the mostly very spendy DX8 cards. Let ppl keep going on about how much they suck 🤣

Hmm..! I guess the very much higher 3d mark score has to do with the fact that the gf3 does not run the nature demo, but the FPS is clearly higher!

Why is the gf3 so rare anyway? Did everyone and their gramma get a gf4 when doom 3 came out?

Geforce 3 was on the market for one year and was expensive till the later cheaper Ti200 was released, by the time people could afford a Ti500 or stock GF3 the Geforce 4 was out. There was only a year between the GF3 and GF4* and the GF4 was faster and cheaper and came with the MX models as a budget range. The GF3 by comparison only had the three models GF3, Ti200 and TI500, the GF3 really didn't have time on the market to develop a lot of spares and initially I suspect nVidia was not going to even bother with the GF3 but needed something to compete with the Radeons. (It could also have been that the GF3 the PC community got was built from spares from the GF3 cores made for the XBOX so there were never going to be many going to GPUs)

*Both were released in February one year apart and the two initial models the 4400/4600 blew the GF3 out of the water performance wise.

Though it's funny about the "affordable" thing in retrospect. It was kinda like the Geforce 3 was the RTX4080 and then the Ti500 came out as holding the 4090 position then the Ti200 as the 4070TI .... but meanwhile pricing was kinda RTX4060 and down. The bottom end range fillers were the revamped GF2 as Ti200 still and the MX200 MX400 and even Riva TNT2 still in production. for being like the x060 x050 x030 x010 cards. But those expired after GF4200 etc launch and they brought the GF4MX out. I got caught out at the time, bought a GF3 Ti200 when prices relaxed a few months after launch thinking I was good for a couple of years, then didn't have it 5 minutes before Geforce4 teasers started and was all "Oh crap"

Joakim wrote on 2024-02-25, 09:04:

Why is the gf3 so rare anyway? Did everyone and their gramma get a gf4 when doom 3 came out?

"Riva 128 (April 1997) to TNT (June 15, 1998) took 14 months, TNT2 (March 15, 1999) 8 month, GF256 (October 11, 1999) 7 months, GF2 (April 26, 2000) 6 months, | 3dfx dies here |, GF3 (February 27, 2001) 9 months, GF4 (February 6, 2002) 12 months, FX (March 2003) 13 months, etc"

Everything between TNT and GF4 was very short lived. Nvidia was switching old flagship lines off while retaining value products for longer. Tons of GF2mx/GF4mx/FX52 while not a lot of full cards.

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-02-25, 17:49:

Joakim wrote on 2024-02-25, 09:04:

Why is the gf3 so rare anyway? Did everyone and their gramma get a gf4 when doom 3 came out?

"Riva 128 (April 1997) to TNT (June 15, 1998) took 14 months, TNT2 (March 15, 1999) 8 month, GF256 (October 11, 1999) 7 months, GF2 (April 26, 2000) 6 months, | 3dfx dies here |, GF3 (February 27, 2001) 9 months, GF4 (February 6, 2002) 12 months, FX (March 2003) 13 months, etc"

Everything between TNT and GF4 was very short lived. Nvidia was switching old flagship lines off while retaining value products for longer. Tons of GF2mx/GF4mx/FX52 while not a lot of full cards.

And I’m very glad that nowadays you can keep the same card for multiple years and still play the latest games. This period was crazy.

zuldan wrote on 2024-02-24, 21:03:

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-02-24, 18:29:

I think I'm gonna take a look, it's a one time grab what you can deal tomorrow. The monitors might be 5:4 rather than 4:3 .... well if google recognised them right. I don't really need any more core2 stuff, but I want an mATX box to throw some other bits in, light modding required or not, so will give them an eyeball, though they are probably much the same. Maybe one has a PCIe gfx card in that works in 98. I know how the dell thing goes, got a Optiplex 360 and a Dementia 5150, annoying lack of drive connectors quite often, both power and interface. Might just scoop all those laptops at the back and figure them out later. Depends how much of a scrum it all is though, nothing worth fighting for. May drag one of the UPS bricks home on the offchance there's enough in the batteries to keep my modem and phones up an hour or so through power outages.

Yep those Dell 1908’s are 5:4. Perfect 😀

Well this was a total bust in terms of computer hardware. I arrived 10 minutes before official start and the "riot" was already in progress, computer shelf picked clean apart from the 2 phones.

Picked up a bunch of old file folders to interleave between boards when storing them, that was it.

Was in a town over so checked the thrifts while I was there, got a little excited when I found some fans and a 2x6pin to 8pin PCIe power adapter up front of one, thinking they'd got a bunch of stuff in... nope, just strays.

Picked up a Compaq Deskpro XE 450 for a decent price.

Some damage in shipping, but doesn't look too bad - a little bending and gluing back together should put it right.

Not much interesting inside:

Oh joy, a token ring card. (Maybe I can put XT-IDE on it?) No HD, no CDROM, no additional RAM (4mb on-board).

Yay, a coin cell, but boo, it's a soldered-in BR2335. Haven't had to deal with one of these yet. Should I try to replace it with same, or is there a drop-in CR-2032 holder I can use?

What's going on with the video connector? Compaq making people use proprietary monitors? Assuming it's VGA-compatible. It's got 3 full-size ISA slots, so a video card and sound card to replace the terrible onboard ones is probably the way to go anyway.

Anyway, it's been a few decades since I've touched a 486. I'm gonna give this one some attention and see how well I get can get it looking and working. 🙂

I don't know why, but I bought that strange 486 early board with ISA ports only. Soyo SY 020C. And 486 DX-50 in pair to it.

Typical 486 is DX2-66 with VLB - that is quite interesting per se, but it's PC of year 1994, that transition between Win3.11 and Win95.

But finding something of the early high end is somewhat problematic - components are much more rare and expensive (were and are).

It could be pretty interesting build - I have ATI Mach 32. If it really has Bus mouse onboard , then I need Microsoft Bus-mouse.

Probably one of my 2.88 floppy drives can be an interesting match. And if I had Adlib Gold - it would be something really special - full of strange and expensive components that never became popular and quickly became obsolete.

Purchased a Compaq 2895 docking station by mistake thinking it was for the LTE 5000 series laptops. Confirmed in another Facebook group that it is for the Armada 7300 and 7700 series. Realizing this mistake, I reached out to the seller ASAP to have them cancel the order before it shipped, but unfortunately they either ignored my message, or did not see it. I figured at that point it's a $79 loss...whatever. I buy plenty of stuff from them in the past and never had a problem, so I'll let it slide and figured I'll just re-sell somehow.

Package arrived last week and just opened it today. Having a look at the docking station, I noticed there were two occupied PCI slots of what appeared to be two VGA outputs and two VGA inputs. At this point I'm thinking there is NO WAY those could be Voodoo cards, so I hastily cracked open the back cover of the docking station and to my astonishment, discovered THEY'RE VOODOO 2 CARDS IN SLI (Creative Labs CT6670)

Best $79 mistake I've spent!

rkurbatov wrote on 2024-02-25, 22:07:

I don't know why, but I bought that strange 486 early board with ISA ports only. Soyo SY 020C. And 486 DX-50 in pair to it. […]
Show full quote

I don't know why, but I bought that strange 486 early board with ISA ports only. Soyo SY 020C. And 486 DX-50 in pair to it.

Typical 486 is DX2-66 with VLB - that is quite interesting per se, but it's PC of year 1994, that transition between Win3.11 and Win95.

But finding something of the early high end is somewhat problematic - components are much more rare and expensive (were and are).

It could be pretty interesting build - I have ATI Mach 32. If it really has Bus mouse onboard , then I need Microsoft Bus-mouse.

Probably one of my 2.88 floppy drives can be an interesting match. And if I had Adlib Gold - it would be something really special - full of strange and expensive components that never became popular and quickly became obsolete.

Logitech bus mouse should also work. If you see Microsoft "kidney" mouse with a serial connector, check the label underneath it might be serial and busmouse, just needs an adaptor. Think it was "in port mouse" they called it.

Edit: Just thinking, mine has a sage green color plug, don't know if that's helpful for quick ID.

I have an old CAD system, has Asus ISA-486 motherboard and Diamond Stealth VRAM ISA, it only had a DX33, but I am thinking of putting my DX50 in it.