momaka wrote on 2024-09-05, 12:11:

Yes, I must admit they sound above average. They introduced me to bass notes in PC audio when I was a kid. Your points to improve them a bit are valuable, I have some 'bigger' caps and packaging foam, that should work. Thanks!

Ran 3dMark99 Max on my MSI MS-6168 w/ onboard V3 2000 8MB, as well as a 650MHz Coppermine.

The only nitpick I'd have is the ZX chipset being awfully picky about RAM. None of the PC133 sticks I used on BX boards work properly, with some outright spitting C1 on the POST 80 card

PcBytes wrote on 2024-09-05, 12:18:

In process of fixing a rough diamond - MSI MS-6168 VER2 w/ the legendary onboard Voodoo 3 2000 😀

Ooh! How's it going so far? This is the one that was up on ebay a few weeks ago right? Very cool that you got it and hopefully it doesn't take much to get it running again
Do ask if there's any resistor / capacitor values you need or whatever, I got my broken one working late last year 😀

Yesterday I was doing retro activities testing out video cards, I found another FX5200 that overclocks really well! It's got the NV34B core and with no volt mod it's already hitting 335mhz core which my best one was hitting with some extra voltage. The RAM is poorer though so I should compare the voltage that's running at and maybe look at the BIOS timings between the two. It's amazing how many schematics have been leaked over the years for the GF3/4/FX series cards, being able to refer to schematics for what's what is so nice.
Very odd too, I have another copy of the same card with 4ns hynix RAM while this one has 5ns hynix RAM and they both top out at 490mhz DDR which seems low. Sadly the one with the 4ns RAM doesn't clock anywhere near as well.

Today I've been doing CAD stuff which I've been putting off for ages. The main one was to make a housing for my new cheapy (£10) bench power supply and that's printing now. Earlier I decided to make a proper shroud for my LeadTek Winfast GF2 Titanium card, since they designed the cooler wrong in such a way that it's got a regular axial fan set up to try to act like a centrifugal fan but there's no shroud, the air just goes out the side and it's almost just passively cooled because the air doesn't go over the heatsink fins.
Well, a GF2 doesn't get that hot anyway but this ones got nice 4ns Samsung DDR memory and I recapped it so I think it deserves better:

This card's got so many fun gimmicks for the era, like a cool BIOS screen, real temperature sensor and LEDs that light up for AGP4x mode, any errors and just a power LED. The only other full-fat GF2 card I have is the 32MB reference design which was great for its time but this one with the good RAM is just much more fun to use. It gets trounced by the GF4 MX cards though 😁

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-09-05, 23:16:

Ooh! How's it going so far? This is the one that was up on ebay a few weeks ago right? Very cool that you got it and hopefully i […]
Show full quote

PcBytes wrote on 2024-09-05, 12:18:

In process of fixing a rough diamond - MSI MS-6168 VER2 w/ the legendary onboard Voodoo 3 2000 😀

Ooh! How's it going so far? This is the one that was up on ebay a few weeks ago right? Very cool that you got it and hopefully it doesn't take much to get it running again
Do ask if there's any resistor / capacitor values you need or whatever, I got my broken one working late last year 😀

Yesterday I was doing retro activities testing out video cards, I found another FX5200 that overclocks really well! It's got the NV34B core and with no volt mod it's already hitting 335mhz core which my best one was hitting with some extra voltage. The RAM is poorer though so I should compare the voltage that's running at and maybe look at the BIOS timings between the two. It's amazing how many schematics have been leaked over the years for the GF3/4/FX series cards, being able to refer to schematics for what's what is so nice.
Very odd too, I have another copy of the same card with 4ns hynix RAM while this one has 5ns hynix RAM and they both top out at 490mhz DDR which seems low. Sadly the one with the 4ns RAM doesn't clock anywhere near as well.

Today I've been doing CAD stuff which I've been putting off for ages. The main one was to make a housing for my new cheapy (£10) bench power supply and that's printing now. Earlier I decided to make a proper shroud for my LeadTek Winfast GF2 Titanium card, since they designed the cooler wrong in such a way that it's got a regular axial fan set up to try to act like a centrifugal fan but there's no shroud, the air just goes out the side and it's almost just passively cooled because the air doesn't go over the heatsink fins.
Well, a GF2 doesn't get that hot anyway but this ones got nice 4ns Samsung DDR memory and I recapped it so I think it deserves better:

The attachment IMG_4354 (Custom).JPG is no longer available

This card's got so many fun gimmicks for the era, like a cool BIOS screen, real temperature sensor and LEDs that light up for AGP4x mode, any errors and just a power LED. The only other full-fat GF2 card I have is the 32MB reference design which was great for its time but this one with the good RAM is just much more fun to use. It gets trounced by the GF4 MX cards though 😁

Local OLX Romania classifieds actually 😀

This is what it looked like initially.

Arrived today, had to fix a lot of SMDs, as seen here.

So far it's working great, showing how much of a trooper this board actually is! Also had to fix a bent pin in the SDRAM socket, and managed to "max" out the RAM at 256MB. I have 2x more 256MB sticks though I'm not sure if those work on the ZX - it's incredibly picky to what RAM it'll take, unlike my BX boards.

Updated the BIOS to the latest Award version that's on TRW (was there any newer version? Someone claimed there's an Award BIOS for this board that'll take Tualatins.), dropped a 650MHz Coppermine (the only slotket I have left wouldn't register and I wasn't going to yank the one from my ABIT BE6-II out) and so far it's been smooth sailing.
Also added a IBM Deskstar 34GXP DPTA-371360 I had from a Gateway GP6 for maximum retro (and maybe period correct-ness? 😜) which already had a 98SE install - it's actually the same drive I had in the "Laplus Deskstar" build before selling the DTK mainboard that had powered the said build.

Meanwhile I am also keeping an eye on two tracking numbers. One is for an Athlon 1133 T-Bird, the other is for a MSI 850 Pro5 board combo (CPU, mobo, 2x 256MB ECC RIMM + 2x CRIMM + 1.7GHz Willie of unknown type - either Celery or P4.).

PcBytes wrote on 2024-09-05, 23:27:

Local OLX Romania classifieds actually :) […]
Show full quote

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-09-05, 23:16:

Ooh! How's it going so far? This is the one that was up on ebay a few weeks ago right? Very cool that you got it and hopefully i […]
Show full quote

PcBytes wrote on 2024-09-05, 12:18:

In process of fixing a rough diamond - MSI MS-6168 VER2 w/ the legendary onboard Voodoo 3 2000 😀

Ooh! How's it going so far? This is the one that was up on ebay a few weeks ago right? Very cool that you got it and hopefully it doesn't take much to get it running again
Do ask if there's any resistor / capacitor values you need or whatever, I got my broken one working late last year 😀

Yesterday I was doing retro activities testing out video cards, I found another FX5200 that overclocks really well! It's got the NV34B core and with no volt mod it's already hitting 335mhz core which my best one was hitting with some extra voltage. The RAM is poorer though so I should compare the voltage that's running at and maybe look at the BIOS timings between the two. It's amazing how many schematics have been leaked over the years for the GF3/4/FX series cards, being able to refer to schematics for what's what is so nice.
Very odd too, I have another copy of the same card with 4ns hynix RAM while this one has 5ns hynix RAM and they both top out at 490mhz DDR which seems low. Sadly the one with the 4ns RAM doesn't clock anywhere near as well.

Today I've been doing CAD stuff which I've been putting off for ages. The main one was to make a housing for my new cheapy (£10) bench power supply and that's printing now. Earlier I decided to make a proper shroud for my LeadTek Winfast GF2 Titanium card, since they designed the cooler wrong in such a way that it's got a regular axial fan set up to try to act like a centrifugal fan but there's no shroud, the air just goes out the side and it's almost just passively cooled because the air doesn't go over the heatsink fins.
Well, a GF2 doesn't get that hot anyway but this ones got nice 4ns Samsung DDR memory and I recapped it so I think it deserves better:

The attachment IMG_4354 (Custom).JPG is no longer available

This card's got so many fun gimmicks for the era, like a cool BIOS screen, real temperature sensor and LEDs that light up for AGP4x mode, any errors and just a power LED. The only other full-fat GF2 card I have is the 32MB reference design which was great for its time but this one with the good RAM is just much more fun to use. It gets trounced by the GF4 MX cards though 😁

Local OLX Romania classifieds actually 😀

This is what it looked like initially.

Arrived today, had to fix a lot of SMDs, as seen here.

So far it's working great, showing how much of a trooper this board actually is! Also had to fix a bent pin in the SDRAM socket, and managed to "max" out the RAM at 256MB. I have 2x more 256MB sticks though I'm not sure if those work on the ZX - it's incredibly picky to what RAM it'll take, unlike my BX boards.

Updated the BIOS to the latest Award version that's on TRW (was there any newer version? Someone claimed there's an Award BIOS for this board that'll take Tualatins.), dropped a 650MHz Coppermine (the only slotket I have left wouldn't register and I wasn't going to yank the one from my ABIT BE6-II out) and so far it's been smooth sailing.
Also added a IBM Deskstar 34GXP DPTA-371360 I had from a Gateway GP6 for maximum retro (and maybe period correct-ness? 😜) which already had a 98SE install - it's actually the same drive I had in the "Laplus Deskstar" build before selling the DTK mainboard that had powered the said build.

Meanwhile I am also keeping an eye on two tracking numbers. One is for an Athlon 1133 T-Bird, the other is for a MSI 850 Pro5 board combo (CPU, mobo, 2x 256MB ECC RIMM + 2x CRIMM + 1.7GHz Willie of unknown type - either Celery or P4.).

Awesome! I'll have to try out that BIOS on my one if it's later than what already on TRW. Pretty sure no stock BIOS could handle a tualatin but there are probably ones out there with the microcodes added in. I like that yours has the 'coppermine ready' "C" sticker on it, mine didn't have that so idk if it's really coppermine ready or not (except I know the VRM is coppermine compatible since I had to rebuild it so...)
It being picky about the RAM it takes could be marginal connections or dirty contacts?, I don't recall either my MS-6168 v1 or v2 being picky about the ram they'd take, but I've got a lot of spare ram so maybe it was? Personally I don't think the ZX chipset is a big limitation for retro computing stuff since over 256MB is only useful if running XP and later, which I think the Voodoo 3 is not the right fit.
That damage to the Voodoo 3 chip 🙁 That's awesome that it's working, you'd know very soon if there were any bad pins on the GPU as it maps the whole framebuffer across the 4 chips.

So that was what the (C) sticker on the SIO chip was for? Neat.

As for the BIOS, v1.3 seems to be the latest if you're runnin' Award BIOS.

The damage was really what almost put me off on the chip itself, however it seems a bit of dents didn't stop it being a trooper, and the board itself as a whole.

I did finish recapping it and pasting some heatsinks over, as shown below. The one covering the 3dfx chip comes from a unfixable ABIT VP6 (hairline crack in the northbridge 🙁 ) and the orange/black one is off a PCChips M848, although I painted the middle side black using an acrylic pencil.

I did fix the RAM issue - one of the slots had a bent pin, and now it's rocking a whoppin' 256MB of RAM - oughta' be nuff' for even 2k/XP.

Received a Power Mac G4. My second. Haven't tried plugging it in yet.

Single Voodoo2 for XP - 0 MB RAM, 0 bit color depth, but the smooth 3DM99 runs, although the result is mournful, Max version must be over 4000 if I can start it.

Finished installing a small display for my WaveTablePi on the case using a bezel to make it pretty... Then, I built a soundfont selector to load soundfonts through MT32pi Control.

Installed a sound card in my 286 and got it up and running. Very nice to have sound beyond PC speaker beeps.

Linoleum wrote on 2024-09-06, 20:13:

Finished installing a small display for my WaveTablePi on the case using a bezel to make it pretty... Then, I built a soundfont selector to load soundfonts through MT32pi Control.

The attachment IMG_5408.jpg is no longer available

The attachment IMG_5409.jpg is no longer available

Very nice!

Alesia wrote on 2024-09-07, 02:53:

Installed a sound card in my 286 and got it up and running. Very nice to have sound beyond PC speaker beeps.

Good work, which one? 🙂

I have a Philips P3230 without one, I'm thinking of soldering/DIY an AdLib clone myself.

For me - work 286 with CT1740. But not today, made in 2017 😀

DarthSun wrote on 2024-09-07, 13:44:

For me - work 286 with CT1740. But not today, made in 2017 😀

The attachment 225621_riyklzphca6qdvvc_ct1740_1.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 225621_rgtk1t0rozibriyu_harris.jpg is no longer available

Now all you have to do is to install it on a XT Model 286 😁.

Now all you have to do is to install it on a XT Model 286 😁.
[/quote]

XT?
Digital Equipment P3100CE motherboard
Oak oti-077 1MB ISA VGA
SB CT1350B Sound Card
Western_digital_wd93038-x 3.5 "double high here XT HDD 32MB
Seagate ST351A/X 3.5 "Here HDD AT/XT mode, 42MB
2x1.44MB FDD in 720k XT mode
Medion Matx House+Noname 200W power supply
TPC Keyboard Model No TK-1000 XT switching
Genius Netscroll serial/ball mouse

Ultra modern motherboard, IDE HDD interface is integrated on it.

Also 2017 assembly this too. As the 286.

DarthSun wrote on 2024-09-08, 09:42:

dominusprog wrote on 2024-09-08, 05:19:

DarthSun wrote on 2024-09-07, 13:44:

For me - work 286 with CT1740. But not today, made in 2017 😀

The attachment 225621_riyklzphca6qdvvc_ct1740_1.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 225621_rgtk1t0rozibriyu_harris.jpg is no longer available

Now all you have to do is to install it on a XT Model 286 😁.

XT?
Digital Equipment P3100CE motherboard
Oak oti-077 1MB ISA VGA
SB CT1350B Sound Card
Western_digital_wd93038-x 3.5 "double high here XT HDD 32MB
Seagate ST351A/X 3.5 "Here HDD AT/XT mode, 42MB
2x1.44MB FDD in 720k XT mode
Medion Matx House+Noname 200W power supply
TPC Keyboard Model No TK-1000 XT switching
Genius Netscroll serial/ball mouse

Ultra modern motherboard, IDE HDD interface is integrated on it.
[/quote]

Nice build! At some point, you should recap the sound card.

Nice build! At some point, you should recap the sound card.
[/quote]
Thanks 😀
It was still working, though had been no switched in for a long time.

Hmm, trying to figure out why I'm getting memory errors in games on my FX5600 card which used to have a big Zalman cooler on it but I put a smaller regular cooler on it. It runs okay for a few minutes but when it warms up then reality in games starts falling apart with triangles heading off into infinity 🙁

MATS showed me that FBC is where the errors are so I've been trying to find out what Frame Buffer channel "C" data lines C12 and C15 look like on the card in the physical dimensions. There's no pinout of the FX5600 cards that I can find so I looked for schematics and found a few, including an MSI MS-8912 card which I've already got some good pictures of, so I can map out which chip is on which location of the card.

The result is pretty interesting, learned a lot about how BGA pinouts work with certain characters like "O" being excluded from the column naming letters. The BGA pins in the schematic are kind of upside down and only correct when looking at the card from the underside, so I used excel's transpose ability to flip it around so it's looking from the top instead:

Looking at BGA stencils for the chip which is about all I can find of the layout, it certainly looks correct.
Since Frame Buffer channel C data lines C12 and C15 are both at the edge of the BGA, I bet that heatsink or an impact has broken their BGAs. The two pins I've got problems with go to the RAM chip in the top left on the front - hmm maybe it's the RAM chip, there was a bit of damage around that chip and I did have to resolder some capacitors, perhaps reflowing the RAM chip and verifying those capacitors will help more...

Replaced my Armada E500's weak display, and added a CMOS battery to it, as well as a properly working touchpad.

The only thing left is to find the backside cover. I know I had it somewhere.

dominusprog wrote on 2024-09-05, 18:35:

Repair, recap and retrobright these Typhoon speakers. Also changed the LED because why not 😁.

The attachment IMG_20240905_215241.jpg is no longer available

nice! i had those same speakers, my dad was using them till recently, i noticed he changed his speakers so i asked for them back, he then told me he threw them out as they stopped working, i wasn't happy as i would have had a go a fixing them, im pretty sure they were the same ones i got with my socket 7 pc back in 98, i'll probably never find another set 🙁