Bought a vintage bench multimeter HP 3468A.

Needs to be repaired but there is plenty of fixes and information on eevblog forums and most importantly, this device's manual includes the schematic and part numbers, calibration procedures.

Cheers,

Not hardware but retro nonetheless. Was marked as used on Amazon but was cheap enough to take a chance. New still in the shrink wrap, very excited.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2024-11-27, 19:38:

Bought a vintage bench multimeter HP 3468A.

Needs to be repaired but there is plenty of fixes and information on eevblog forums and most importantly, this device's manual includes the schematic and part numbers, calibration procedures.

Cheers,

Ah yeah, those are solid pieces of kit.

(Note for others, before collecting vintage bench equipment, acquire a vintage bench, preferably with 6"x6" legs.)

Last time I had my hands on one was probably 1995, when I was on placement in a former division of Ferranti, and it was hooked up to an HP-85 for data logging.

ODwilly wrote on 2024-11-26, 23:07:

Does ivy bridge count as "retro" yet? I just picked up a Pentium G 2020 based IBM Thinkcentre for $20. 2gb of ram, 500gb HDD of some flavor and in wonderful condition! Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but my 1st thought is to find 8gb of ram and a low power i7 for it + a 500gb SSD I have kicking around. It has a TPM 1.2 module, so I'm also considering fooling around with putting windows 11 on it.

My main computer is based on ivy bridge, ok not with a G2020 but an i7 like your plan. I can tell you that it's still passable for generic use. For me what really shows its age and insufficiency nowadays is not the CPU but the lack of SATA3 and good USB3 implementation on most motherboards.
(Note to self, it looks like it's time to get a new computer)

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/gigabyte-ga-8st800 got one of these. Caps look good. I needed agp universal it to test the voodoo. I wonder if I'm gonna need to test also the motherboard recursively. I know Gigabyte is not great these days but I am a Gigabyte aficionado. Been buying Gigabyte for decades at this point and it's the only brand that never failed me, in terms of motherboards. So I am optimistic.

Not sure if this counts, but I had a few board repair projects that required ISA slot additions/replacements.. then I came across this on Aliexpress for a good BF discount, and here it is..

Oooh!
Got a part number on those?

konc wrote on 2024-11-28, 07:05:

ODwilly wrote on 2024-11-26, 23:07:

Does ivy bridge count as "retro" yet? I just picked up a Pentium G 2020 based IBM Thinkcentre for $20. 2gb of ram, 500gb HDD of some flavor and in wonderful condition! Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but my 1st thought is to find 8gb of ram and a low power i7 for it + a 500gb SSD I have kicking around. It has a TPM 1.2 module, so I'm also considering fooling around with putting windows 11 on it.

My main computer is based on ivy bridge, ok not with a G2020 but an i7 like your plan. I can tell you that it's still passable for generic use. For me what really shows its age and insufficiency nowadays is not the CPU but the lack of SATA3 and good USB3 implementation on most motherboards.
(Note to self, it looks like it's time to get a new computer)

Yeah you really needed to be on Z68 to get a lot of SATA 3 and had to be on Z77 to even get USB 3 and then it was likely 2 or 4 ports with 2 of them likely being internal headers only. (IIRC you also had to be on Ivy bridge to get PCIe 3.0 too) That said you can throw a USB 3.1 PCIe card in there to deal with the USB/SATA issue, same for SATA 3 and I think you can even get both on the same card so really these limits are not a show stopping problem.

What will be a big problem is lack of IPC and later SSE/AVX instructions both of which will slow modern software down that is optimised for current multi core CPUs with greater than 4 cores.

My 3770k still trucks along but modern software runs noticeably slower on it even when its overclocked to 4.7 and while modern games do run some are nearly unplayable due to the lower memory and bus bandwidth of the system, lack of NVME doesn't help either. (Modern games can push a surprising amount of data across the system and memory bus)

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-11-28, 12:24:

Yeah you really needed to be on Z68 to get a lot of SATA 3 and had to be on Z77 to even get USB 3 and then it was likely 2 or 4 […]
Show full quote

konc wrote on 2024-11-28, 07:05:

ODwilly wrote on 2024-11-26, 23:07:

Does ivy bridge count as "retro" yet? I just picked up a Pentium G 2020 based IBM Thinkcentre for $20. 2gb of ram, 500gb HDD of some flavor and in wonderful condition! Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but my 1st thought is to find 8gb of ram and a low power i7 for it + a 500gb SSD I have kicking around. It has a TPM 1.2 module, so I'm also considering fooling around with putting windows 11 on it.

My main computer is based on ivy bridge, ok not with a G2020 but an i7 like your plan. I can tell you that it's still passable for generic use. For me what really shows its age and insufficiency nowadays is not the CPU but the lack of SATA3 and good USB3 implementation on most motherboards.
(Note to self, it looks like it's time to get a new computer)

Yeah you really needed to be on Z68 to get a lot of SATA 3 and had to be on Z77 to even get USB 3 and then it was likely 2 or 4 ports with 2 of them likely being internal headers only. (IIRC you also had to be on Ivy bridge to get PCIe 3.0 too) That said you can throw a USB 3.1 PCIe card in there to deal with the USB/SATA issue, same for SATA 3 and I think you can even get both on the same card so really these limits are not a show stopping problem.

What will be a big problem is lack of IPC and later SSE/AVX instructions both of which will slow modern software down that is optimised for current multi core CPUs with greater than 4 cores.

My 3770k still trucks along but modern software runs noticeably slower on it even when its overclocked to 4.7 and while modern games do run some are nearly unplayable due to the lower memory and bus bandwidth of the system, lack of NVME doesn't help either. (Modern games can push a surprising amount of data across the system and memory bus)

My old MSI P67A-G43 had decent enough USB 3.0 (two ports) via an NEC chip, which is what most mid\high end boards used before the 7-series chipsets. It only had two SATA 3 6gbps ports as well, but for the time period that was still more than enough for the average enthusiast. Hard drives likely still don't benefit much from 6gbps vs 3gbps SATA today, and SSDs were still so expensive back in 2011 that most systems only had one or two anyway... and even then, lots of great drives that people had from previous generations were only SATA2.

The random read\write performance is still the main benefit of SSDs, and that will still be fast enough for most uses even on a slower interface... I would be interested to see what even a modern system "feels" like with a decent SSD on SATA2 or even SATA1. Though games that benefit from NVMe storage will probably take the most noticeable hit. 😁

Sometimes miracles really do happen. After I bought a Core2Quad Q9650 at the bay, I was delivered a 15-core Xeon E7-4888V2. Obviously not what I wanted or need.
After having had a similar case before, I was expecting a long discussion to resolve the issue. Instead, surprise, surprise the seller just send me a quick note that he’ll fix it, and voila - he send me the Core2Quad and a stamp to return the Xeon today. Thumbs up…

One of the most exciting things about this hobby. It's better than the lottery. Not one, but two Highscreen mystery boxes! Some minor transport damage, i/o controller card came loose for instance, nothing serious.

Some pictures.

PA-2010+ mainboard, Diamond Stealth II S220 (Rendition Verité 2100 PCI),

Highscreen 08/15 Series Bigtower, ECS UC4915-A AIO mainboard, AMD DX2 66 MHz, Cirrus Logic GD5428 VLB graphics, Win/TV Prism (can it grab frames as well?), the most user (builder-) friendly turbo display settings panel ever.

Good to see that a graphics feature connector is occupied with a cable for once.

Both need an absolute good cleaning! Please smoke outside. Or quit.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-11-28, 13:52:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-11-28, 12:24:

Yeah you really needed to be on Z68 to get a lot of SATA 3 and had to be on Z77 to even get USB 3 and then it was likely 2 or 4 […]
Show full quote

konc wrote on 2024-11-28, 07:05:

My main computer is based on ivy bridge, ok not with a G2020 but an i7 like your plan. I can tell you that it's still passable for generic use. For me what really shows its age and insufficiency nowadays is not the CPU but the lack of SATA3 and good USB3 implementation on most motherboards.
(Note to self, it looks like it's time to get a new computer)

Yeah you really needed to be on Z68 to get a lot of SATA 3 and had to be on Z77 to even get USB 3 and then it was likely 2 or 4 ports with 2 of them likely being internal headers only. (IIRC you also had to be on Ivy bridge to get PCIe 3.0 too) That said you can throw a USB 3.1 PCIe card in there to deal with the USB/SATA issue, same for SATA 3 and I think you can even get both on the same card so really these limits are not a show stopping problem.

What will be a big problem is lack of IPC and later SSE/AVX instructions both of which will slow modern software down that is optimised for current multi core CPUs with greater than 4 cores.

My 3770k still trucks along but modern software runs noticeably slower on it even when its overclocked to 4.7 and while modern games do run some are nearly unplayable due to the lower memory and bus bandwidth of the system, lack of NVME doesn't help either. (Modern games can push a surprising amount of data across the system and memory bus)

My old MSI P67A-G43 had decent enough USB 3.0 (two ports) via an NEC chip, which is what most mid\high end boards used before the 7-series chipsets. It only had two SATA 3 6gbps ports as well, but for the time period that was still more than enough for the average enthusiast. Hard drives likely still don't benefit much from 6gbps vs 3gbps SATA today, and SSDs were still so expensive back in 2011 that most systems only had one or two anyway... and even then, lots of great drives that people had from previous generations were only SATA2.

The random read\write performance is still the main benefit of SSDs, and that will still be fast enough for most uses even on a slower interface... I would be interested to see what even a modern system "feels" like with a decent SSD on SATA2 or even SATA1. Though games that benefit from NVMe storage will probably take the most noticeable hit. 😁

Modern SATA SSDs dont normally support SATA1 or SATA2 and will likely not to work on the older standards, you can still buy the older SSDs that do support SATA1/2 but I doubt that will satisfy the curiosity as their interface speeds are naturally limited.

But yeah the convo was about using that old hardware for modern stuff which it can do but at a large penalty due to its age and lack of modern features, I have both SATA based SSDs and NVME drives and you can tell the difference if you do a lot of larger file operations like editing but for day to day stuff .. you wouldn't notice a difference between SATA and NVME as they are both overkill for that task. Now if you asked if I can tell the difference between fast spinning rust and a SSD .. yes 100% once you get to 10k or 15k rusty rockets then you may have to really pay attention to notice for day to day stuff. (You would notice the noise first, 15k drives sound like cats fighting)

I just recently got one of them new PCIe 5.0 NVME drives .. with a staggering 14.5 gig a second reads and 12.7 gig a second writes and yeah that thing is fast to the point its silly, made it my boot drive and booting the PC happens faster than you can blink, but I cant recommend it. It runs very HOT to the point it throttles hard after ~10 seconds of use to gen 4 speeds and then throttles again ~30 seconds later to gen 3 speeds. The heat issue is going to have to be fixed soon by something other than heat sinks and I can see PCIe 4/5 drives needing active cooling in the near future. (Mine has a huge heatsink on it but its just not enough to dump 90c heat as fast as the drive needs)

Computing is fun ! dumping heat is not and I think we will need to find better cooling solutions very soon to handle modern 600watt GPUs and super fast NVME drives, even CPUs are hitting 300watt+ under load.

myne wrote on 2024-11-28, 11:46:

Oooh!
Got a part number on those?

https://tr.aliexpress.com/item/10050030090498 … ayAdapt=glo2tur

The 2x49 Pin option.

Just of note, these connectors are not gold plated and might not visually match what is being replaced.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-11-28, 15:11:

Modern SATA SSDs dont normally support SATA1 or SATA2 and will likely not to work on the older standards, you can still buy the […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-11-28, 13:52:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-11-28, 12:24:

Yeah you really needed to be on Z68 to get a lot of SATA 3 and had to be on Z77 to even get USB 3 and then it was likely 2 or 4 ports with 2 of them likely being internal headers only. (IIRC you also had to be on Ivy bridge to get PCIe 3.0 too) That said you can throw a USB 3.1 PCIe card in there to deal with the USB/SATA issue, same for SATA 3 and I think you can even get both on the same card so really these limits are not a show stopping problem.

What will be a big problem is lack of IPC and later SSE/AVX instructions both of which will slow modern software down that is optimised for current multi core CPUs with greater than 4 cores.

My 3770k still trucks along but modern software runs noticeably slower on it even when its overclocked to 4.7 and while modern games do run some are nearly unplayable due to the lower memory and bus bandwidth of the system, lack of NVME doesn't help either. (Modern games can push a surprising amount of data across the system and memory bus)

My old MSI P67A-G43 had decent enough USB 3.0 (two ports) via an NEC chip, which is what most mid\high end boards used before the 7-series chipsets. It only had two SATA 3 6gbps ports as well, but for the time period that was still more than enough for the average enthusiast. Hard drives likely still don't benefit much from 6gbps vs 3gbps SATA today, and SSDs were still so expensive back in 2011 that most systems only had one or two anyway... and even then, lots of great drives that people had from previous generations were only SATA2.

The random read\write performance is still the main benefit of SSDs, and that will still be fast enough for most uses even on a slower interface... I would be interested to see what even a modern system "feels" like with a decent SSD on SATA2 or even SATA1. Though games that benefit from NVMe storage will probably take the most noticeable hit. 😁

Modern SATA SSDs dont normally support SATA1 or SATA2 and will likely not to work on the older standards, you can still buy the older SSDs that do support SATA1/2 but I doubt that will satisfy the curiosity as their interface speeds are naturally limited.

But yeah the convo was about using that old hardware for modern stuff which it can do but at a large penalty due to its age and lack of modern features, I have both SATA based SSDs and NVME drives and you can tell the difference if you do a lot of larger file operations like editing but for day to day stuff .. you wouldn't notice a difference between SATA and NVME as they are both overkill for that task. Now if you asked if I can tell the difference between fast spinning rust and a SSD .. yes 100% once you get to 10k or 15k rusty rockets then you may have to really pay attention to notice for day to day stuff. (You would notice the noise first, 15k drives sound like cats fighting)

I just recently got one of them new PCIe 5.0 NVME drives .. with a staggering 14.5 gig a second reads and 12.7 gig a second writes and yeah that thing is fast to the point its silly, made it my boot drive and booting the PC happens faster than you can blink, but I cant recommend it. It runs very HOT to the point it throttles hard after ~10 seconds of use to gen 4 speeds and then throttles again ~30 seconds later to gen 3 speeds. The heat issue is going to have to be fixed soon by something other than heat sinks and I can see PCIe 4/5 drives needing active cooling in the near future. (Mine has a huge heatsink on it but its just not enough to dump 90c heat as fast as the drive needs)

Computing is fun ! dumping heat is not and I think we will need to find better cooling solutions very soon to handle modern 600watt GPUs and super fast NVME drives, even CPUs are hitting 300watt+ under load.

Yeah, I totally agree about NVMe and SATA being indistinguishible for most tasks. I went a little overkill on storage speed mainly just because the prices came down a couple years back and there were concerns that they would skyrocket... plus there were some very affordable high performing drives that don't run hot. I am running a Solidigm P44 Pro 2TB for OS\apps\games + a Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB for storage. Other than my dual SATA dock, I have no SATA cables in the computer, which is pretty cool! I think the NVMe heat thing will eventually work itself out as people continue to find near-zero benefit to top tier drives that put out excessive heat... people will stop thinking about NVMe speed all together, they will stop spending a ton on drives that reviewers find no reason to recommend, and SSD manufacturers will focus on something else for consumer-grade drives (efficiency, less heat, etc.).

Also, regarding newer SATA drives not working on older SATA1/2 systems, I have never heard of that before and I have never experienced that personally. Every SATA drive I've ever used has always worked in every SATA system I've put it in. I guess I can test it pretty easily since I have an NF7-S 2.0 on my workbench right now. That is one of the first SATA-equipped motherboards ever released, so it is obviously only SATA1. I'll post back here with my findings when I get a chance. 😀

EDIT: Yeah, just hooked up a WD Blue 250GB SSD (3D NAND, 6gb SATA 3) made in 2019 to the NF7-S from ~2003, and the drive was detected automatically by the SATA controller and was readable in Windows XP. This is a very recent model as far as SATA SSDs go. Are there specific drives you know of that aren't backward compatible for some reason?

I just bought a batch of electrolytic capacitors, in total they are 4Pz, they are quite large capacitors, two go on an ABIT MB, the other two I could use in the future on another MB, I saw the same on some MB 462 MSI, I have no idea 💡 how long it will take to arrive, I hope at most within a couple of weeks.
I chose these, I hope they are original, and not copies, unfortunately I don't know if you can tell from the photo.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-11-28, 17:32:

Yeah, I totally agree about NVMe and SATA being indistinguishible for most tasks.

Even a fast CF card is overkill for older motherboards with a slower CPU. I ran some tests with a fast enterprise CF card on a 533 Mhz Mendocino a few weeks ago and the performance was extremely disappointing. The speed was capped well below 33 MB/s using the onboard ATA33 controller as well as any PCI ATA100/133 controller I tried. Performance was slightly better with a SATA controller, but nowhere near what the drive was capable of.

There is definitely a CPU bottleneck with these older systems that make "fast" storage redundant. The only real advantage of an SSD is the access time.

PD2JK wrote on 2024-11-28, 15:10:

One of the most exciting things about this hobby. It's better than the lottery. Not one, but two Highscreen mystery boxes! Some […]
Show full quote

One of the most exciting things about this hobby. It's better than the lottery. Not one, but two Highscreen mystery boxes! Some minor transport damage, i/o controller card came loose for instance, nothing serious.

Some pictures.

The attachment DSC_2499.JPG is no longer available

PA-2010+ mainboard, Diamond Stealth II S220 (Rendition Verité 2100 PCI),

The attachment DSC_2500.JPG is no longer available

The attachment DSC_2502.JPG is no longer available

The attachment DSC_2504.JPG is no longer available

Highscreen 08/15 Series Bigtower, ECS UC4915-A AIO mainboard, AMD DX2 66 MHz, Cirrus Logic GD5428 VLB graphics, Win/TV Prism (can it grab frames as well?), the most user (builder-) friendly turbo display settings panel ever.

Good to see that a graphics feature connector is occupied with a cable for once.

Both need an absolute good cleaning! Please smoke outside. Or quit.

Wow, that 486 is so cool. Those Highscreens just SCREAM retro computer. Love the dipswitch cluster for the display. I recently picked up a mystery box and it had that same video card (rev.B). Someone was clowning, though. It was a A7V600/A-XP2500+ with the Diamond Stealth, 🤣

Major Jackyl wrote on 2024-11-28, 19:13:

Wow, that 486 is so cool. Those Highscreens just SCREAM retro computer. Love the dipswitch cluster for the display. I recently picked up a mystery box and it had that same video card (rev.B). Someone was clowning, though. It was a A7V600/A-XP2500+ with the Diamond Stealth, 🤣

The attachment 20241128_130436.jpg is no longer available

Good job! Rendition cards have something special, the company made only a few different chips and they were done. I'm gonna look into verite optimized games in the future, just to see how they perform.

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-11-28, 17:58:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-11-28, 17:32:

Yeah, I totally agree about NVMe and SATA being indistinguishible for most tasks.

Even a fast CF card is overkill for older motherboards with a slower CPU. I ran some tests with a fast enterprise CF card on a 533 Mhz Mendocino a few weeks ago and the performance was extremely disappointing. The speed was capped well below 33 MB/s using the onboard ATA33 controller as well as any PCI ATA100/133 controller I tried. Performance was slightly better with a SATA controller, but nowhere near what the drive was capable of.

There is definitely a CPU bottleneck with these older systems that make "fast" storage redundant. The only real advantage of an SSD is the access time.

Yes, that makes me think of the parallel CF card reader I use on my IBM PC 5150. I made a post about it here several years ago.

An 8bit ISA EGA + Parallel card from the mid to late 80s attached to a CF card reader from ~1996, with a 16MB CF card (that came with a Canon camera from ~2004) topped out at less than 43KB\sec transfer rate (yes KBytes), and yet it still managed to beat the internal MFM hard drive's 29.5KB\sec by almost 50%. The seek times were obviously even further in the CF card's favor. Like, most of us can game online with pings better than the seek time of a hard drive from the 80s, and we can download at thousands of times their transfer speed... What a time to be alive. 😮