Munx wrote on 2024-09-04, 05:49:

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-09-04, 05:43:

First time I have been this excited about a "PCI" video card... 😁 This nice 9100 just came in from the mail! 👍

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Time for some Benches!

Is it really a true R200? I didn't know those came in PCI flavor.

It sure is! a full blown R200 on the PCI bus. Pretty wild honestly. They seem to be unfortunately pretty hard to find. I missed an opportunity to buy one over 2 years ago and finally another one popped up for sale that I snagged.

Cheers.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-09-04, 14:30:

It sure is! a full blown R200 on the PCI bus. Pretty wild honestly. They seem to be unfortunately pretty hard to find. I missed an opportunity to buy one over 2 years ago and finally another one popped up for sale that I snagged.

Cheers.

But ... your username ... 🤣

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-09-04, 20:24:

But ... your username ... 🤣

He has become the very thing he swore to destroy.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-09-04, 20:24:

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-09-04, 14:30:

It sure is! a full blown R200 on the PCI bus. Pretty wild honestly. They seem to be unfortunately pretty hard to find. I missed an opportunity to buy one over 2 years ago and finally another one popped up for sale that I snagged.

Cheers.

But ... your username ... 🤣

Lol Hey there is a "?" on the end of this name 😁

I mean, the AGP slot is a bastardized pci-x slot on steroids anyway.

Agp isn't 64bit is it?
I thought it was more of a boosted pci slot.

Boosted in speed, and by being isolated from the shared pcie bus - with a few minor optional extras thrown in.

myne wrote on 2024-09-04, 21:46:

Agp isn't 64bit is it?
I thought it was more of a boosted pci slot.

Boosted in speed, and by being isolated from the shared pcie bus - with a few minor optional extras thrown in.

Nope AGP was 32bit only, there was a plan for AGP 3.0 to have a 64bit bus available to it but it never happened and as AGP 3.0 was the last official version of it I'm guessing PCIe got that instead but not in the way we imagine.

PCI-X 64bit is about equal to PCIe 4x in terms of transfer speed but that's simplifying it a lot.

Right. So not pcix.

It's called Godwin's law. If you want the right answer on the internet, say something wrong, and people will stop at nothing to give you the correct answer.

Anyway,

A pair of Athlon MP 2600+ (Thoroughbred) to upgrade my 2200+ and some Socket A Thermaltake Volcano 9 coolers.
Still looking for one more DuctingMod before I install it all though: I'm avoiding that Socket A mounting system as much as I can, yikes.

MSI MS-6168 v2. Had to work on its SMDs as it came from the recyclers but so far so good.

Good work! Mine is still waiting for new memory chips, along with a working Matrox donor. I'll aim for 16MB while I'm at it. The first two attempts were not successful since I lack some soldering skills.

Given the scarcity of those boards, I'll be keeping mine at 8MB.
A lot of games that I've played seem to have run great on 8MB, with very few exceptions, and a Matrox G200 8MB AGP also agrees with it.

That, and I no longer have a proper soldering iron tip to complete such a mod. I used to do a 128MB Original Xbox mod with my iron but the tip has since decayed rather badly. No wonders since it's sort of a Gordak pencil clone, except made for 220v instead of low 12-48v operation.

By the way, which BIOS was the retail one? Award, or AMI? I recall Robert B's board had the Packard Bell OEM BIOS, while mine runs Award. (and if you ask me, I'd rather have Award than AMI.)

MSI liked to support both BIOS vendors back then for some reason. The PB bioses are AMI bioses in disguise, but MSI also made Award bioses.

If you want a good soldering iron that lasts while being cheap, I'd recommend the pinecil from pine64. However the pinecil is a "portable" iron that powers off of USB C (which can be an advantage in many situations tbh). If you want a soldering station, the KSger T12 on aliexpress is incredible as well.

I'll be looking into some T12s. I generally use those that are supplied by the chap I work with at his repair shop to fix TVs at his place, and they're pretty good.

As for the one I am using at the moment, it's this one, made by a company named "Home", model FPL 80W. Worked great for soldering them SMDs near the 3dfx chip.

Not seen are a bunch of different tips it comes with, for a total of 6 soldering tips.

This is not T12 tips and what T12 looks like are long tips shaped in a round bar, is changed by pulling out and pushing different tip into handle with a snap. This is small tips that you change by unscrewing the base nut, not best.

Look for another soldering station chinese clone that really use T12 tips as I described. T12 tips for their soldering station was originally invented by Hakko. At work I use this T12 type Hakko and can pump serious heat into work surface.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2024-09-05, 23:45:

This is not T12 tips and what T12 looks like are long tips shaped in a round bar, is changed by pulling out and pushing different tip into handle with a snap. This is small tips that you change by unscrewing the base nut, not best.

Look for another soldering station chinese clone that really use T12 tips as I described. T12 tips for their soldering station was originally invented by Hakko. At work I use this T12 type Hakko and can pump serious heat into work surface.

Cheers,

That pencil iron is what I'm currently using for SMD stuff. It goes up to 480*C as far as I can remember, which helps on big ground planes (like I had to fight on the MSI 6168, the two caps near the CPU fan header). I forgot which clone it is exactly though I vaguely remember something about the tips being of Gordak type on the iron I use, posted above.

I do plan on getting an entire soldering station using T12 tips to replace it in the future, even though the current one I use does its job fairly well atm.

I didnt order a pizza....

Inside was this big beautiful bastard of a motherboard. Intel SDS2 - Dual socket 370 Tualatin

ALSO. Just because you use a CR2032 to replace a battery, it is NEVER 100% safe to leave them in long term storage. They can still leak, and do damage like the Varta bombs. This is a relatively new battery too.

I'm liking the camera in my phone. it makes big pictures.

I didn't buy this, but instead someone at my partner's work gave this to him since they were trying to get rid of it, and he'd probably been told of my minor retro PC hobby. In any event it obviously was like a Best Buy Open Box at some point, but it looks like nothing in it has ever actually been opened packaging-wise (all CDs and even the OEM WinXP disk all still in original shrinkwrap), though I haven't actually pulled it out to see the state of the actual PC components. May keep it around since my main retro PC is much more appropriate for DOS and Win98 than it is for XP. I have no idea how upgradable the thing is RAM-wise though.

2GB of ram is very safe bet with late DDR1 systems. Even the OEM ones should have 2 slots.