momaka wrote on 2025-03-11, 06:57:

Testing a Gigabyte GA-8iPE1000 Pro-G motherboard with a 2.3 GHz P4 Celeron Northwood, 512 MB of PC2700 RAM, Radeon 7000 32M, and […]
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Testing a Gigabyte GA-8iPE1000 Pro-G motherboard with a 2.3 GHz P4 Celeron Northwood, 512 MB of PC2700 RAM, Radeon 7000 32M, and a 160 GB IDE HDD (came with the system) and Windows XP Pro SP3. Seems to work OK so far, just not 100% sure if memory slot #3 is OK. Other than that, a nice little system. This VOGONS post created from it. (Oh noes, I'm running XP and it's connected to the internet! Run away! 🤣 )

Between this and my Optiplex 170L with a 2.8 GHz P4 Prescott HT, it's a night and day difference in terms of CPU speed.
To say it in fewer words: P4 Celeron = SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW 🤣
That said, it does run really cool. Haven't tried measuring the system power draw at the wall, but I would expect somewhere around 30-40W idle and maybe 60-75W peak under load. It also undervolts quite easily. Haven't checked how far I can push it, but 1.35V at the stock 2.3 GHz speed is fine. The stock V_core voltage is 1.5V. Even with that, it still didn't seem to get hot at all. Moreover, I had no problems setting the FSB to 125 MHz, pushing the CPU frequency to 2.87 GHz with the stock voltage. The only thing I haven't tried yet is do both at the same time (OC and UV the V_core), but might do that later when I finish testing the board. There's also still a few KZG caps left on the board that I need to get rid of (did an almost complete recap.) The CPU VRM low side is running a completely custom setup, though: 3x Fujitsu FPCAP 4V 820 uF and 2x Nichicon HZ 6.3V 2200 uF. The original caps were 5x UCC KZG 6.3V 3300 uF... so as you can see, I made quite a drop in the capacitance. I suppose putting a power-hungry P4 Prescott CPU will tell if that will be a problem or not. More work for another day.

My vote is for the best Northwood P4 you can stuff in it

i dont know why
but suddenly I feel the urge to understand the computers/code between these cameras...

One of them has 8 whole bits of computing power,
while the other is... 4 massive bits. (HD63P05Y0 vs HD44860/HMCS47C)

Received a RetroScaler 2X that I ordered from Aliexpress and have been testing it all day with various micro computers & games consoles.

I was sceptical about these, because a lot of the reviews said they wouldn't work correctly with PAL systems. But I'm happy to report, it works great with both PAL & NTSC. Coupled with an RGB Scart to Component Converter and it pretty much accepts anything I connect to it. I've only had 1 device it didn't like so far - a PAL SNES via RGB Scart, but I'm guessing that may be due to the cable I'm using, as my Super Famicom via RGB Scart worked fine.

I connected it to my generic PC monitor with a HDMI to VGA adapter and was surprised that it worked great on there too, with both 50Hz & 60Hz output. Not all VGA monitors are happy with 50Hz, so it's a bonus. Always nice to have extra screens available!

It did send me down the rabbit hole a bit though, as I finally realised just how bad most of my modern flat screen TVs are at processing 240p/288p correctly. I guess I'd just gotten used to how everything looked when incorrectly deinterlaced. 🤣

I'll have to buy a few more of these at some point.

Recapped this Jaton Trident 3DImàge 9750, also add a little bit of thermal paste for the regulator.

Started to make a fan edition. Just for for fun.

A kind of fan edit of all the updates and addons.

Just playan tha game 😏

dominusprog wrote on 2025-03-12, 13:38:

Recapped this Jaton Trident 3DImàge 9750, also add a little bit of thermal paste for the regulator.

The attachment 20250312_155451.jpg is no longer available

Wow, cool looking card. What does the daughterboard/hat on top perform? I noticed some of these cards look like they came with SGRAM too which would be nice.

yourepicfailure wrote on 2025-03-12, 10:40:

i dont know why but suddenly I feel the urge to understand the computers/code between these cameras... […]
Show full quote

i dont know why
but suddenly I feel the urge to understand the computers/code between these cameras...

The attachment P_20250312_040543_1.jpg is no longer available

One of them has 8 whole bits of computing power,
while the other is... 4 massive bits. (HD63P05Y0 vs HD44860/HMCS47C)

Whoa, that's a badass camera setup. Yeah, I have to imagine it's all custom firmware for these cameras or the line of them. Maybe there's a ROM somewhere that could technically be dumped and analyzed.

Do the cameras work, or any plans to try using them?

Cosmic wrote on 2025-03-12, 15:23:

dominusprog wrote on 2025-03-12, 13:38:

Recapped this Jaton Trident 3DImàge 9750, also add a little bit of thermal paste for the regulator.

The attachment 20250312_155451.jpg is no longer available

Wow, cool looking card. What does the daughterboard/hat on top perform? I noticed some of these cards look like they came with SGRAM too which would be nice.

Thanks 🙂. The card itself have two 1MiB SGRAMs and the daughterboard provide two more for a total of 4MiB.

Fooled myself that the latest 815EP mobo I bought (Mercury KOB 815ep FSX) is Tualatin compatible.

It's not.

ODwilly wrote on 2025-03-11, 07:28:

My vote is for the best Northwood P4 you can stuff in it

Well, my two best NW P4s are 2.6 GHz 800 FSB and the "rare" 2.8 GHz 400 FSB.
The latter one is super tempting to OC "to the moon" by way of increasing its low FSB. After all, bumping the FSB from 400 to 533 MHz should have the effect of producing 3.7 GHz for the core... but I don't really know if I want to push an old CPU that far. Northwoods tend to be fickle things, particularly because their IHS is not soldered to the CPU die (unlike Prescott)... so they do have a higher chance of overheating and/or dying. Also, I already have it installed in another (Intel i845) motherboard that has SDR RAM and only officially supports 400 FSB CPUs. On a 2nd thought, I suspect that mobo will perform sluggishly due to the SDR RAM... so if it does, I might "downgrade" its CPU to a 2.0 Northwood... which would free up the 2.8 NW for experimentation. 😀

Still, I feel these late P4 Gigabyte mobos just call for a Presshot and/or 800 FSB CPU + PC3200 RAM.
FWIW, the 2.6 P4 could OC to 3.2 GHz via bus OC-ing from 200 MHz (800 FSB) to 250 MHz (1000 FSB). The only question is, can the chipset take it too? I'm hoping the "1000" in the motherboard's model number to suggest that it can. 😁

PTherapist wrote on 2025-03-12, 13:24:

Received a RetroScaler 2X that I ordered from Aliexpress and have been testing it all day with various micro computers & games consoles.

Thanks, looks like I'll be down a rabbit hole later tonight researching this. 😁

PTherapist wrote on 2025-03-12, 13:24:

It did send me down the rabbit hole a bit though, as I finally realised just how bad most of my modern flat screen TVs are at processing 240p/288p correctly. I guess I'd just gotten used to how everything looked when incorrectly deinterlaced. 🤣

Yeah, LCD TVs are just downright terrible for analog content / sources.
Even watching an old recorded-from-TV VHS with Tom & Jerry on a CRT TV is 10x more fluent/smooth than watching the same "remastered" version on an LCD. Sure, the remaster is much more crisp when the picture is standing still... but once things are set in motion, things become a blurry mess. With CRT --> nope! movements are all crystal clear.

Yesterday placed an order for an Intel SYP302. Early, possibly earliest 80386 based PC, so early it had to be implemented in off the shelf, discrete, and buckets of programmable logic.

It would be nice ... it would be real nice if I could create artwork for the motherboard. So others can spend quality time with such a contraption. Who knows ....

Installed the Norton Desktop for Win 3.11.

I have tinkered with a lot of early 3D accelerators but I just tested out one of the rather fancy looking DFI AGP9800 cards, which is equipped with a Trident 3D Image 9850, and I am STUNNED. With any of the drivers I can find it is SO broken in games that in some titles the screen refreshes in such a way that I can watch it draw the layers of GUI elements from left to right. It takes several seconds per frame and everything vanishes once one frame is completed so you have to guess where the buttons are until they briefly show up.

I knew these things were bad, but get this: The D3D spinning cube in dxdiag instantly displays two garbled copies of the windows interface side by side on the screen and requires a CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot (not a hard lock at least).

I've read the article at Vintage3D saying how bad they were, and I'm sure I've used one of these in the past...

Maybe this one is just bad? Who knows. It looks pristine and actually has excellent image quality in Windows 98, all the way up to 1600x1200@16bit.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-03-13, 17:16:

I have tinkered with a lot of early 3D accelerators but I just tested out one of the rather fancy looking DFI AGP9800 cards, whi […]
Show full quote

I have tinkered with a lot of early 3D accelerators but I just tested out one of the rather fancy looking DFI AGP9800 cards, which is equipped with a Trident 3D Image 9850, and I am STUNNED. With any of the drivers I can find it is SO broken in games that in some titles the screen refreshes in such a way that I can watch it draw the layers of GUI elements from left to right. It takes several seconds per frame and everything vanishes once one frame is completed so you have to guess where the buttons are until they briefly show up.

I knew these things were bad, but get this: The D3D spinning cube in dxdiag instantly displays two garbled copies of the windows interface side by side on the screen and requires a CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot (not a hard lock at least).

I've read the article at Vintage3D saying how bad they were, and I'm sure I've used one of these in the past...

Maybe this one is just bad? Who knows. It looks pristine and actually has excellent image quality in Windows 98, all the way up to 1600x1200@16bit.

Yes, Trident cards (9750, 9850, etc.) are a bad choice for 3D acceleration.

dominusprog wrote on 2025-03-13, 17:36:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-03-13, 17:16:

I have tinkered with a lot of early 3D accelerators but I just tested out one of the rather fancy looking DFI AGP9800 cards, whi […]
Show full quote

I have tinkered with a lot of early 3D accelerators but I just tested out one of the rather fancy looking DFI AGP9800 cards, which is equipped with a Trident 3D Image 9850, and I am STUNNED. With any of the drivers I can find it is SO broken in games that in some titles the screen refreshes in such a way that I can watch it draw the layers of GUI elements from left to right. It takes several seconds per frame and everything vanishes once one frame is completed so you have to guess where the buttons are until they briefly show up.

I knew these things were bad, but get this: The D3D spinning cube in dxdiag instantly displays two garbled copies of the windows interface side by side on the screen and requires a CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot (not a hard lock at least).

I've read the article at Vintage3D saying how bad they were, and I'm sure I've used one of these in the past...

Maybe this one is just bad? Who knows. It looks pristine and actually has excellent image quality in Windows 98, all the way up to 1600x1200@16bit.

Yes, Trident cards (9750, 9850, etc.) are a bad choice for 3D acceleration.

I knew that, but... is it normal for dxdiag's spinning cube to not even work with hardware acceleration?

I'm just testing cards and decided to finally check some of these Trident cards that have been accumulating for years.

Also, the Blade3D is at least usable, it was just too little too late.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-03-13, 17:40:

I knew that, but... is it normal for dxdiag's spinning cube to not even work with hardware acceleration? […]
Show full quote

dominusprog wrote on 2025-03-13, 17:36:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-03-13, 17:16:

I have tinkered with a lot of early 3D accelerators but I just tested out one of the rather fancy looking DFI AGP9800 cards, whi […]
Show full quote

I have tinkered with a lot of early 3D accelerators but I just tested out one of the rather fancy looking DFI AGP9800 cards, which is equipped with a Trident 3D Image 9850, and I am STUNNED. With any of the drivers I can find it is SO broken in games that in some titles the screen refreshes in such a way that I can watch it draw the layers of GUI elements from left to right. It takes several seconds per frame and everything vanishes once one frame is completed so you have to guess where the buttons are until they briefly show up.

I knew these things were bad, but get this: The D3D spinning cube in dxdiag instantly displays two garbled copies of the windows interface side by side on the screen and requires a CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot (not a hard lock at least).

I've read the article at Vintage3D saying how bad they were, and I'm sure I've used one of these in the past...

Maybe this one is just bad? Who knows. It looks pristine and actually has excellent image quality in Windows 98, all the way up to 1600x1200@16bit.

Yes, Trident cards (9750, 9850, etc.) are a bad choice for 3D acceleration.

I knew that, but... is it normal for dxdiag's spinning cube to not even work with hardware acceleration?

I'm just testing cards and decided to finally check some of these Trident cards that have been accumulating for years.

Also, the Blade3D is at least usable, it was just too little too late.

I've run the dxdiag on my Sparkle 9750, and it's worked correctly. But not the Futuremark nor the 3DMark99 runs correctly.

I fixed a Tseng ET4000 and transplanted a Ti486SLC2-50 onto a 386 mainboard, with partial success unfortunately.

Right now a battery pooped Amiga 2000 came in and this will be my next fix for the upcoming days.

Cosmic wrote on 2025-03-12, 15:26:

yourepicfailure wrote on 2025-03-12, 10:40:

i dont know why but suddenly I feel the urge to understand the computers/code between these cameras... […]
Show full quote

i dont know why
but suddenly I feel the urge to understand the computers/code between these cameras...

The attachment P_20250312_040543_1.jpg is no longer available

One of them has 8 whole bits of computing power,
while the other is... 4 massive bits. (HD63P05Y0 vs HD44860/HMCS47C)

Whoa, that's a badass camera setup. Yeah, I have to imagine it's all custom firmware for these cameras or the line of them. Maybe there's a ROM somewhere that could technically be dumped and analyzed.

Do the cameras work, or any plans to try using them?

The cameras are both, now fully functional.
I found a replacement VCXO for the M7 (had to scrifice a "lesser" camera) so I suppose I should close out Options for a bad oscillator?

But yeah I do use them, the M7 is the one I use regularily. The M3a would love to see some use, but it's got vidicons so I don't bring it outside as often anymore.

However, had to put that one aside to finish fixing the tape recorder, Sony BVW-50, for them.
Wasn't fond of some of the maintenance performed on a few of the boards in the unit, in a lot of cases the previous engineer who worked on this simply goobered through-hole caps onto SMD pads.
Absolute nono to me. Caps were still good, but I slapped proper SMDs in their place.

The SST/main control board is the last one I haven't gotten to so I'm documenting and ordering caps for it.

Only 30 caps here that should go (a few leakers too) so much easier than the nearly 200 SMD electrolytics on the time-base corrector and video processor boards.

Only issue is I can't find that exact battery anymore (it reads exactly 0v) but I'm sure there are compatibles out there.