PD2JK wrote on 2024-12-30, 10:17:

Indeed interesting. I also see a DIP switch block between the 25MHz crystal and the CPU. Usually the CPU speed is half the oscil […]
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PC@LIVE wrote on 2024-12-30, 09:03:

...and although it already has a 286 16 MHz, I thought that this a 286 12 MHz....

Indeed interesting. I also see a DIP switch block between the 25MHz crystal and the CPU.
Usually the CPU speed is half the oscillator frequency, however I have seen 48MHz crystals being used for 12MHz CPU's, then the frequency is divided by four I guess.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Yes Thanks ☺️ it's a card quite similar to the one I had in the early 90s on the PC in the office, let's say it's the previous version, however the clock is 12 MHz, and I've already identified the card, it would be the same (or produced with another brand) to this one:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/cdtek-gh286-g2-ii
From the manual I saw that the switch is used to select the amount of RAM present, in case it is added or removed, it is necessary to change the position of n. 2 3 and 4.
For quartz I don't know, they usually go at half frequency, and I saw that there is the 25MHz one, maybe what you saw is a 48KHz, I don't know what it's for, but it's usually present in all the old motherboards.

I bought a 1998 Fanatec Le Mans Special Edition Steering wheel. New in box. Leather covered wheel. I believe this was Fanatec's first USB wheel for PC. Has rumble feedback, but not force feedback. A bargain for £20 I think.

I fancied owning a piece of history, even if it doesn't compare to more modern wheel. I do also have a Microsoft Force Feedback wheel. So now I have the choice of what to use.

The Fanatec definitely feels nice and smooth. It has springs inside rather than bungies.

The Microsoft wheel obviously has force feedback, but you can feel a slight roughness to it due to gears that transfer motor power to the wheel.

I have been using team Green DX8 AGP cards for years now in my Tualatin/P3B-F@133FSB rig because internet told me that team Red cards do not like 89MHZ AGP speed.
Well decided to test myself after finding few old posts confirming that at least Radeon 9000 PRO tolerates overclocking
I bought Sapphire version with 4ns memory so it's slower (250Mhz). Core is in line with orig Pro specs 275Mhz.

Results in Win98SE - It's unstable with @133Mhz FSB with 3DMark 99, 2k & 2001SE. So I had to step down to 124Mhz in order to get them running trough

So moral of the story - you should trust internet... 😁

I would imagine the red boards are the cheaped out ones and the green ones like that are the top performance 8500 boards.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-12-30, 01:30:

Here is my "I got what I want for Christmas" shopping :D, from the bay. All at great Prices, quite a steal for some of them […]
Show full quote

Here is my "I got what I want for Christmas" shopping 😁, from the bay. All at great Prices, quite a steal for some of them

ATI Radeon 8500 128MB version
Asus GeForce 3 Ti 500 Pure
Nvidia PNY FX 5700 Ultra
Herc GeForce GTS 64MB "OC/Ultra"

The attachment PXL8500.jpg is no longer available

The attachment PXL_T500.jpg is no longer available

The attachment PXL_5700.jpg is no longer available

The attachment PXL_GF2GTS.jpg is no longer available

They are all in great condition, just needed a little cleaning / fan oil and off to the races! Very excited to get them all in the collection.
Especially the GF2 GTS 64MB, Surprisingly enough this is the second to last Nvidia GPU I need for my collection. ( Still looking for a Regular GeForce FX 5800 ).

This Hercules GTS is kind of special as in, it is Factory overclocked!! I don't think there was many factory OC editions for the GeForce 2 GTS, since any memory overclocking would put you in Pro or Ti range.
The card has some very interesting clock speeds, So a stock GTS is a 200Core/ 166Mem, this Herc GTS "ultra", 220Mhz Core and 183 Mem. It benches almost 10% faster than a regular GTS.

I picked this GTS in particular as already had its older brother as well the GF2 Ultra in Blue. Yummy.

The attachment PXL_HercBrothers.jpg is no longer available

That Hercules/Guillamot GTS was expensive. I remember walking into a Best Buy in autumn of 2000 and see one prominently displayed (with I think a $400+ price tag). I wanted it so bad, but I couldn't afford it. I didn't realize it was factory overclocked. Going back through Anandtech's GPU features, it looks like a lot of manufacturers were dabbling in either factory overclocks or at least making overclocking control panels easily available.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-12-30, 21:20:

I would imagine the red boards are the cheaped out ones and the green ones like that are the top performance 8500 boards.

I think he mean green team as nVidia and red as ATI GPU brand, not PCB color only.

I've heard of a lot of failures between the high end 8000 and 9000 series ATI cards due to issues with the die and heatsink, irrespective of the board quality.

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-12-31, 10:54:

I've heard of a lot of failures between the high end 8000 and 9000 series ATI cards due to issues with the die and heatsink, irrespective of the board quality.

Certainly with the 9700 Pro that's the case. Stock cooling was insufficient and not many options for third party cooling due to a shim on the GPU stopping most coolers making contact.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-12-29, 21:58:

I believe this red circled one, is a GeForce 2 Ti. Which is kinda neat. 😀 Not 100% certain though.

Looks like a card by Creative ... i will try to have a look at it soon. (Put everything back in a box to save space)

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-12-30, 02:45:

Hmm... not seeing any of those myself. […]
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pitchshifter wrote on 2024-12-30, 00:57:

Looks like theres some gf4 ti also..

Hmm... not seeing any of those myself.

There are several Radeon 9550s and a Sapphire 9600 Pro though. I think the Asus card closest to the 5950s is an FX 5700 or 5700VE, with the next card after that being a FX 5600.

I'm sure all the fans are shot, but if you can disassemble the fan completely (with the shaft out of the housing) you might be able to clean and oil the bearings so that they are usable, if they are sleeve bearings at least. If they are ball bearing fans they are probably junk unless the bearings are removable too.

The 2 5900 cards both have extremely rattely fans .. the Radeon 9500's seem okay-ish. Indeed it's no suprise that all these tiny fans will need either work or replacement. Though i hate taking the larger heatsinks off because then i would ideally like to swap the thermal pads aswell but i haven't gotten around to buying a bunch of different thicknesses op pads (infact i don't have any). I will need to have a look at these cards one by one and have a look if the fans are servicable.

Do you try to search for the "correct" replacements if the fans are not salvageable? Or get one rougly the same size and call it a day?

Wes1262 wrote on 2024-12-30, 03:22:

G-X wrote on 2024-12-29, 16:07:

Thats a lot of stuff! I see high end Geforces and Radeons! There's no way they are all dead!

I certainly hope so! 😁

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-12-29, 20:28:

That Quadro FX 4000 (next to the 5950 Ultra) is basically a Geforce 6800 Ultra with some pipelines disabled. Notice how it has t […]
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G-X wrote on 2024-12-29, 16:07:

If there is any card except the FX5950's and Radeon 9500's that stand out or are somewhat rare just let me know. I know one or two things about older cards but i don't know everything.

That Quadro FX 4000 (next to the 5950 Ultra) is basically a Geforce 6800 Ultra with some pipelines disabled. Notice how it has two power connectors and the same PCB layout as the Ultra. You can easily use Rivatuner to set it to 16 active pixel shaders and then use the strap overrides to have it detected by the driver as a 6800 Ultra (similar to this guide)... from there it's just a matter of testing whether it is stable (it may not be). Keep in mind, the cooler is a lot weaker than the Ultra's but it's still worth a shot, maybe with some extra airflow around it. Just keep an eye on the temps.

By doing that you'll have one of the fastest AGP cards that will work in most boards and even in Win 9x, since it doesn't have one of the problematic PCI-E - AGP bridge chips.

Those 5950 Ultras may be fixable... they very often have some of the tiny components chipped off of them since the cards are so heavy and tend to have gotten tossed into a box of cards at least once in their life.

Lots of decent cards there though! FX 5200 and 5500 AGP cards are nice to have to beef up a system from the late 90s, especially if the cards have 128bit memory.

The Geforce2 GTS (top left card in the first picture) is now worth basically half what you paid for the whole lot and is a great card too.

There's a lot more there too. Depending how much time and energy you want to invest into it and how many are working, you've got a lot worth easily 5-10 times what you spent. You could also set up a really fast AGP system (Athlon 64 or Core 2 Duo) and do a massive benchmark spree to compare a ton of different cards from the early 2000s. 😀

Thanks for the heads-up on the Quadro! I will have a look and hope it's doing better than it's Geforce older brothers 😀

Thanks for the info on the other cards aswell! I can already say that the Geforce 2 GTS is working well and looks to be in great condition!

About the testing though .. how do you guy's go about this? Install a driver that supports most of a certain type and test all those? From what i noticed is that Windows doesn't like getting cards swapped every boot ... one time a system refused to boot windows because i kept swapping cards. Eventually it got through but it doesn't seem ideal to install and uninstall drivers all the time and swapping cards.

vutt wrote on 2024-12-30, 20:53:

I have been using team Green DX8 AGP cards for years now in my Tualatin/P3B-F@133FSB rig because internet told me that team Red […]
Show full quote

I have been using team Green DX8 AGP cards for years now in my Tualatin/P3B-F@133FSB rig because internet told me that team Red cards do not like 89MHZ AGP speed.
Well decided to test myself after finding few old posts confirming that at least Radeon 9000 PRO tolerates overclocking
I bought Sapphire version with 4ns memory so it's slower (250Mhz). Core is in line with orig Pro specs 275Mhz.

Results in Win98SE - It's unstable with @133Mhz FSB with 3DMark 99, 2k & 2001SE. So I had to step down to 124Mhz in order to get them running trough

So moral of the story - you should trust internet... 😁

It is time for you to do turbo PLL, OC t0 133MHz but downclock the AGP a little.
I am in the same boat with my AMD K6.

The simpler way is to just change the clock chip to one that's pin compatible and has the correct divider already (albeit, that won't work on bx without further mods - which I have theories about)

What board is your k6?

smtkr wrote on 2024-12-31, 02:58:

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-12-30, 01:30:

Here is my "I got what I want for Christmas" shopping :D, from the bay. All at great Prices, quite a steal for some of them […]
Show full quote

Here is my "I got what I want for Christmas" shopping 😁, from the bay. All at great Prices, quite a steal for some of them

ATI Radeon 8500 128MB version
Asus GeForce 3 Ti 500 Pure
Nvidia PNY FX 5700 Ultra
Herc GeForce GTS 64MB "OC/Ultra"

The attachment PXL8500.jpg is no longer available

The attachment PXL_T500.jpg is no longer available

The attachment PXL_5700.jpg is no longer available

The attachment PXL_GF2GTS.jpg is no longer available

They are all in great condition, just needed a little cleaning / fan oil and off to the races! Very excited to get them all in the collection.
Especially the GF2 GTS 64MB, Surprisingly enough this is the second to last Nvidia GPU I need for my collection. ( Still looking for a Regular GeForce FX 5800 ).

This Hercules GTS is kind of special as in, it is Factory overclocked!! I don't think there was many factory OC editions for the GeForce 2 GTS, since any memory overclocking would put you in Pro or Ti range.
The card has some very interesting clock speeds, So a stock GTS is a 200Core/ 166Mem, this Herc GTS "ultra", 220Mhz Core and 183 Mem. It benches almost 10% faster than a regular GTS.

I picked this GTS in particular as already had its older brother as well the GF2 Ultra in Blue. Yummy.

The attachment PXL_HercBrothers.jpg is no longer available

That Hercules/Guillamot GTS was expensive. I remember walking into a Best Buy in autumn of 2000 and see one prominently displayed (with I think a $400+ price tag). I wanted it so bad, but I couldn't afford it. I didn't realize it was factory overclocked. Going back through Anandtech's GPU features, it looks like a lot of manufacturers were dabbling in either factory overclocks or at least making overclocking control panels easily available.

Yea, I also seem to recall it was a pretty expensive version on launch. Very early on Nvidia clamped down on factory overclocked versions, as it was disrupting their product line. Right at launch however, there was some overclocked versions. They went away quickly, even this Herc GTS had a production bois update pushed later, and new versions were changed back to stock clocks! So only a limited number of cards were built with the "OC/Ultra" bios.
Pretty neat!

G-X wrote on 2024-12-31, 12:22:

About the testing though .. how do you guy's go about this? Install a driver that supports most of a certain type and test all those? From what i noticed is that Windows doesn't like getting cards swapped every boot ... one time a system refused to boot windows because i kept swapping cards. Eventually it got through but it doesn't seem ideal to install and uninstall drivers all the time and swapping cards.

It's easier to test them on Windows 2000 or XP. Start with one brand at a time. Installing multiple drivers shouldn't be a problem there.

On Windows 9x, sometimes it's necessary to use a driver uninstaller when switching between brands to clean up random files. Some drivers don't even have an uninstaller or break operating system files when removed, like on the latest Nvidia drivers.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-12-30, 01:30:

Here is my "I got what I want for Christmas" shopping :D, from the bay. All at great Prices, quite a steal for some of them […]
Show full quote

Here is my "I got what I want for Christmas" shopping 😁, from the bay. All at great Prices, quite a steal for some of them

ATI Radeon 8500 128MB version
Asus GeForce 3 Ti 500 Pure
Nvidia PNY FX 5700 Ultra
Herc GeForce GTS 64MB "OC/Ultra"

The attachment PXL8500.jpg is no longer available

The attachment PXL_T500.jpg is no longer available

The attachment PXL_5700.jpg is no longer available

The attachment PXL_GF2GTS.jpg is no longer available

They are all in great condition, just needed a little cleaning / fan oil and off to the races! Very excited to get them all in the collection.
Especially the GF2 GTS 64MB, Surprisingly enough this is the second to last Nvidia GPU I need for my collection. ( Still looking for a Regular GeForce FX 5800 ).

This Hercules GTS is kind of special as in, it is Factory overclocked!! I don't think there was many factory OC editions for the GeForce 2 GTS, since any memory overclocking would put you in Pro or Ti range.
The card has some very interesting clock speeds, So a stock GTS is a 200Core/ 166Mem, this Herc GTS "ultra", 220Mhz Core and 183 Mem. It benches almost 10% faster than a regular GTS.

I picked this GTS in particular as already had its older brother as well the GF2 Ultra in Blue. Yummy.

The attachment PXL_HercBrothers.jpg is no longer available

Very nice stuff! That 5700 would look awesome on a Purple board like those from Soltek!

The ASUS and Hercules cards are also beautiful cards.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-12-20, 03:41:

Grabbed this PCI EvilKing Voodoo3, card looks to be in good condition but its untested so fingers crossed.

Wasnt expensive either due to being untested.

The attachment EvilKing Voodoo 3.jpg is no longer available

I've got one of these, the cooler mount spacing is oddball. Need a replacement, preferably, factory cooler. What I'm using.. works.. but I had file the mount tabs on the cooler to let the push pins space out, kinda jank.

::EDIT:: Forgot I had a cheap cooler kit laying around. The 59mm bracket worked perfectly. "AOC EC-VC-RA Evercool EC4010M12CA" on ebay.

G-X wrote on 2024-12-31, 12:22:

About the testing though .. how do you guy's go about this? Install a driver that supports most of a certain type and test all those? From what i noticed is that Windows doesn't like getting cards swapped every boot ... one time a system refused to boot windows because i kept swapping cards. Eventually it got through but it doesn't seem ideal to install and uninstall drivers all the time and swapping cards.

I have a pretty interesting testing process for Windows 9x and DOS stuff, but I won't get into that since everything you have here should be much easier to test under XP, like Kahenraz said.

Before doing any testing though, look them over really well for physical damage. Especially gouges in the PCB, on the AGP contacts or across SMD components that could bridge pins. Shorted things are "bad" , and could cause physical damage to the card or other components. Also, I have found that it helps to kind of take a step back and look for bigger marks and scratches. If you see a scratch, follow it and keep looking in the direction of the scratch... you may find more damage in that line, and it could save you a lot of time. Anything with physical damage, just set aside for later... some are worth fixing, some are really not unless you are super dedicated.

For XP testing, I would separate all the cards by vendor and by generation (Geforce 2, Geforce 3, etc.). Make sure you have DirectX 9.0C installed so it will support the newest cards. Find a couple good driver versions in the VOGONS library (nvidia and ATi). If you can find a driver that supports everything you want to test, grab that, but also grab a few that are more correct for older cards. Start off with one vendor (Nvidia...), install one of the older cards and install the newest driver that supports that card. Keep testing cards in order of oldest to newest (with similar cards back-to-back since they will often not even need the drivers to be reinstalled). If any older card doesn't work properly, just set it aside to test later with a more period-correct driver, just in case it's a software issue.

Run Driver Cleaner in between vendor changes just to rule out any complications there.

Also, every time a new device is installed on XP (even if an already installed driver is used) you may notice that the system will still act like it doesn't have hardware acceleration, so you'll want to reboot, even if Windows doesn't say you need to.

Some weird part of me enjoys testing cards, so I do this a lot. 😀

Skalabala wrote on 2024-12-31, 13:00:

vutt wrote on 2024-12-30, 20:53:

I have been using team Green DX8 AGP cards for years now in my Tualatin/P3B-F@133FSB rig because internet told me that team Red […]
Show full quote

I have been using team Green DX8 AGP cards for years now in my Tualatin/P3B-F@133FSB rig because internet told me that team Red cards do not like 89MHZ AGP speed.
Well decided to test myself after finding few old posts confirming that at least Radeon 9000 PRO tolerates overclocking
I bought Sapphire version with 4ns memory so it's slower (250Mhz). Core is in line with orig Pro specs 275Mhz.

Results in Win98SE - It's unstable with @133Mhz FSB with 3DMark 99, 2k & 2001SE. So I had to step down to 124Mhz in order to get them running trough

So moral of the story - you should trust internet... 😁

It is time for you to do turbo PLL, OC t0 133MHz but downclock the AGP a little.
I am in the same boat with my AMD K6.

Wait what one can downclock AGP bus? On 440bx or you talking only about K6 platforms?
Well I'm using patched P3B-F bios with manual 124/31 FSB profile. I assume that 31PCI speed there actually brings down also AGP clock from 89MHz (standard 133/33 bios profile). I need to hook up my oscilloscope to get proper reading.
Actually after some more testing I found out that 9000 Pro is mostly working fine on 124/31 speed with 3d bench programs and few games (Serious Sam, Quake III Arena). However system locks up with more demanding Farbrausch fr-029 and fr-030 demos Then again fr-025 is working fine. No issues on default 66Mhz AGP speed so it's clearly 9000PRO bus OC issue.

@myne any links where I could educate myself on best practices replacing clock chips on year 2000-ish MBs?

Negative.
Agp is fsb/2.

Though, rasz thinks, and I agree that pulling one resistor and supplying an alternative clock should work.

Re: The thing no one asked for: KICAD 440bx reference schematic

As for links... What clockgen do you have?

I've done some research on clockgens for the above

Found it.

1ICS						hublink					
2xx	Chip format	CPU#	CPU volts	SDRAM#	PCI#	66mhz?	Jumpers	minMhz	Maxmhz	Serial VID max clocks	Other/notes
3ICS9250-08 	56ssop	3	2.5	17	7	0	4	66	133	150	
4ICS9250-10 	56ssop	3	2.5	9	8	2	2	66	100	133	
5ICS9250-12	56ssop	4	2.5	0	8	4	2	100	133	NA	2xcpu/2. For rambus systems
6ICS9250-18 	56ssop	3	2.5	17	7	0	4	66	150	166	
7ICS9250-23 	56ssop	2	2.5	13	8	2	5	66	166	same as jumpers	
8ICS9250-27	56ssop	3	2.5	9	7	3	3	66	133	same as jumpers	
9ICS9250-50 	56ssop	2	2.5	13	8	3	5	66	133	undocumented	
10ICS9250-16 	56ssop	3	2.5	9	8	0	3	66	133	150	
11ICS9212-13 	-	-	-	--	-	-	-	-		-	rambus
12ICS9250-28 	56ssop	2	2.5	13	2	3	3	66	133	same as jumpers	
13ICS9150F-04	56ssop	5		16							

paste into excel to make it look right again

Thanks myne. I'll dig into this probably over weekend.
However my card might be defective. VidMem stress test CE 1.21 is showing errors regardless of FSB speed

Sucks. One single bit on one chip is faulty and you can't just unmap it from use.

Gotta replace the whole chip once you figure out which one.