Nexxen wrote on 2025-06-19, 07:59:

... As long as it works 😀 ...
Guess the heat is hitting me hard, I have delayed memories 😀

To (only slightly) misquote:

As long as they're good memories 😀

Spent a couple of hours fixing pins on poor northwood p4 2.66 which was absolutely mangled - looked like someone stepped on it or something.

Good thing - it worked, bad thing - the board i got in those dell workstation only supports 400 FSB, so it works at 2Ghz. Still significantly better than 1.8Ghz wilamette, in fact the difference surprised me.

Sorting old pics, came across this one. Thought sharing for a smile.

Nexxen wrote on 2025-06-20, 22:34:

Sorting old pics, came across this one. Thought sharing for a smile.

ViA board, and I see a few S462 processors 😀
I also picked up a few from my collection a while ago:
https://logout.hu/tema/amd_k6-iii/hsz_48645-48645.html

Nexxen wrote on 2025-06-20, 22:34:

Sorting old pics, came across this one. Thought sharing for a smile.

I have seen these 3D Prophet 9000 cards before, but I still had to look it up because it seemed unfamiliar at first. Hercules 3D Prophet cards past the Geforce 2 GTS and Kyro II are somewhat less common in the USA... I have a lot of cards and I've never had one of these in my hands (yes, I know there are some 7000\8500LE\9000 cards on ebay right now). In my search I was surprised to see that Hercules continued to make 3D Prophet cards in that Blue-PCB style up through the Radeon 9800 Pro. From my experience 9700 and 9800 cards using non-reference designs (even if it's just a PCB color change) are super rare... I don't believe I have a single one. Hercules seems to have been one of the few companies to release them.

Anyway, looks like a nice setup for testing Athlons and Durons! Be careful installing the heatsink on each of those of course... with the corner pads degrading a bit with time it has gotten easier to crack the die with uneven heatsink mounting pressure.

DarthSun wrote on 2025-06-21, 00:06:

I also picked up a few from my collection a while ago:
https://logout.hu/tema/amd_k6-iii/hsz_48645-48645.html

We all hate them because we don't have room for mistakes, but we still have plenty in our collections - tested and benchmarked 🤣

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-06-21, 00:19:

Nexxen wrote on 2025-06-20, 22:34:

Sorting old pics, came across this one. Thought sharing for a smile.

I have seen these 3D Prophet 9000 cards before, but I still had to look it up because it seemed unfamiliar at first. Hercules 3D Prophet cards past the Geforce 2 GTS and Kyro II are somewhat less common in the USA... I have a lot of cards and I've never had one of these in my hands (yes, I know there are some 7000\8500LE\9000 cards on ebay right now). In my search I was surprised to see that Hercules continued to make 3D Prophet cards in that Blue-PCB style up through the Radeon 9800 Pro. From my experience 9700 and 9800 cards using non-reference designs (even if it's just a PCB color change) are super rare... I don't believe I have a single one. Hercules seems to have been one of the few companies to release them.

Anyway, looks like a nice setup for testing Athlons and Durons! Be careful installing the heatsink on each of those of course... with the corner pads degrading a bit with time it has gotten easier to crack the die with uneven heatsink mounting pressure.

Thanks. I should have another one or two sporting the blue pcb. Can't remember right now.

Pic is from 2020, I was careful indeed. 😀
Most cpus turned out to be dead.

Don't know why... but discussion on "sorting pics" made me think of some of the document photos I have on "Daves Old Computers":

http://dunfield.classiccmp.org/d/index.htm

some of my faves:

1968 - Computers - guide for Boy Scouts of America merit badge

Jan/Feb 1975 - Popular Electronics - Issue introducing the Altair

Sep 1975 - Byte magazine Issue #1

Replaced the mobo in my main XP box, old board started acting up so decided to swap it out. This be board # 2 since first built in 2007 using same case....

Heh. My current main case went from core2 to i9700 with a few stops on the way. I see no reason to replace it when I get around to the next bump.

Lian Li pc25b iirc

Thinking about inventorying all my hardware I've "hoarded" (yuck). Trying to figure end game 98 builds

Hopefully will have enough energy today (sick with some kind of a stomach bug the last few days) to finish putting back together some of the retro GPUs and mobos I have taken apart for cleaning. The list is pretty long, though, so I'll probably start with the GPUs. I have 3x GF 4 MX-440, an FX 5200, a Radeon 9600 Pro, and Radeon HD 3450 AGP all waiting to be tested. One of the MX-440 is still short of a fan to be complete, and I'd like to put a heatsink on the HD3450's Realto AGP IC before testing it out, as it's summer and a bit hotter here now. These cards simply don't last when the Realto IC runs hot... that is, if it's even working to begin with. I got that HD3450 for $2.50. Its fan was seized and cooler caked in nicotine-soaked dust (likely a smoker's PC), so not too hopeful. One of the MX-440 was near mint condition, though - bagged and with a huge "OK" sticker on top. Even saw a very faded hand-written price tag of 42 Lv (roughly $23), so I suspect this one came from a work/resell PC shop from back in the day. For $1.30, I couldn't hold myself back not to save it from the scrapper. And in general, GF MX cards tend to not have issues with RAM or GPU chip going bad like GF 3 and 4 TI does. So probably will work fine.

I also still have stacks and stacks of CDs that need washing. A lot are blanks, but also quite a few ones written with games, software, and all other kinds of crap. They are all too dusty/dirty to insert in my optical drives as-is, so washing is mandatory (and gives a lot better chance the disk will be read.) In the case of the blank discs, it lowers the chance of burning a coaster... though this last haul of blanks I got seems to be ultra-garbage quality (foil on top easily flakes off with pressure.) Maybe they really did belong in the dumpster I got them from. :p

gmaverick2k wrote on 2025-06-22, 07:12:

Thinking about inventorying all my hardware I've "hoarded" (yuck).

I did that once too - the "thinking about" part 😁 ... and I gave up.
I save stuff from scrappers, so tend to accumulate junk pretty quickly. Between that, taking apart and cleaning everything, then testing, I have very little time to organize it all and keep a list of stuff. On the other hand, I do take pictures of most of the hardware I get (and for GPUs, a mandatory GPU-Z screenshot too), so I do have a pretty good general idea of what I have and where it's stored at.

I obtained GA-8I865GME-775-RH (rev. 6.6) finally. It is very similar with ASRock 775i65G R2.0. Both have Intel 865G Chipset, support Core 2 Quad-Kentsfield and 2 GB DDR400 RAM.

I tried 2 GB DDR single stick (ECC server RAM) on it, however no life in screen. With 1 GB DDR non-ECC RAM, the motherboard starts but BIOS not recognize 2 GB Stick. Also in Windows, it shows "3,00 GB RAM (1,00 GB Usable)" Therefore, there is no chance to use GA-8I865GME-775-RH (rev. 6.6) with more than 2 GB memory. Is there any 2 GB DDR non-ECC single stick? I know there is no 2 GB DDR non-ECC stick. Max. size of non-ECC DDR sticks is 1 GB.

Have never seen standard DDR in 2GB sticks, lots of 1GB DDR 400 though. Good reason to not get a DDR board with only two slots IF you plan on running XP imho.....

gmaverick2k wrote on 2025-06-22, 07:12:

Thinking about inventorying all my hardware I've "hoarded" (yuck). Trying to figure end game 98 builds

Wasted a lot of time messing with KT133 , ymf744, AMD 756 irongate + isa w/ picogus, Ti4200 mish mash build. too much headache. settled for the first two systems for most of my needs. have to live with 800x600 voodoo 3 stability.
sc55 with passthrough to sc88pro, nice midi setup and the K7T266 Pro-R with aureal vortex 2 and voodoo3 just works. ti4200 games, windows xp should be able to cover that era

Horun wrote on 2025-06-22, 16:24:

Have never seen standard DDR in 2GB sticks, lots of 1GB DDR 400 though. Good reason to not get a DDR board with only two slots IF you plan on running XP imho.....

When XP came out, most people were running it in either 256MB or 512MB builds. Obviously, XP had a very long service life and would have featured much later hardware configurations, but I'm not sure why you think running a 2GB configuration is something to be avoided. It really depends on which software you expect to be running.

I'm running XP on a Pentium 3 system with 512MB of PC133 and it performs really well for my software needs.

smtkr wrote on 2025-06-22, 19:18:

Horun wrote on 2025-06-22, 16:24:

Have never seen standard DDR in 2GB sticks, lots of 1GB DDR 400 though. Good reason to not get a DDR board with only two slots IF you plan on running XP imho.....

When XP came out, most people were running it in either 256MB or 512MB builds. Obviously, XP had a very long service life and would have featured much later hardware configurations, but I'm not sure why you think running a 2GB configuration is something to be avoided. It really depends on which software you expect to be running.

I'm running XP on a Pentium 3 system with 512MB of PC133 and it performs really well for my software needs.

You were asking about 2Gb DDR dimms. In early 2004 I was running XP on a P4 3Ghz on MSI Neo2 with 1GB ram but quickly upgraded to 2 GB when BF1942 and some other games came out. Yes 2GB is enough but is nice having 4 slots....

Thanks to Edwin over on The Retro Web, the Medion 7134 TV/FM/Modem card (CTX918) I picked up recently is now listed!

https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/medi … -data-fax-modem

There is a different model on there already (CTX908), and at first glance, I didn't realize they used different chipsets, along with a few other slight differences. I had originally submitted a "improve" request with documents for the card, not realizing the one on TRW was the 908, and I have the 918. Once that was sorted I took some photos of my card and, done, for now. Going to try and track down some CTX918 specific drivers, if any exist, and I test them out, then I'll submit them as well.

I reverse-engineered the circuit that connects the CPU and the VPD of an MSX1 (Daewoo DPC-200). The multiplexing circuits for peripherals and video and sound were put into a PAL pair. I managed to identify almost the entire circuit and map it. The problem is that the PAL seems to have some problem. I previously thought it was the VPD (a TMS9118A), but then I saw that the read and write signals weren't reaching the VDP from the CPU, and the CPU IORQ signal is a bit odd.
I've also previously had to reverse-engineer the video and audio circuits to put back some missing some components. and the keyboard interface to build a replacement.
If I don't find the real problem, I might end up recreating the original circuit from the MSX standard and replacing the PAL.

Tested this 5900Xt that arrived today, it works just fine but I will need to find a solution for the fans, they work ok but the method used to hold them in the cooler was poorly designed so they are not held in that great. Might need to find a 3rd party cooler solution for it or find a method of fixing how the fans are held in the cooler.

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 08:35:

Tested this 5900Xt that arrived today, it works just fine but I will need to find a solution for the fans, they work ok but the method used to hold them in the cooler was poorly designed so they are not held in that great. Might need to find a 3rd party cooler solution for it or find a method of fixing how the fans are held in the cooler.

The attachment FX5900Xt Front.jpg is no longer available

I always thought that design was pretty nice looking. There were lots of interesting coolers at this time but the fan setups were atrocious. At least on that one you can just take the cover off the top to get to the fans, unlike these stupid things that BFG, Chaintech, PNY and probably some others used:

The fans are so bad and the cooler is so horrible to work on that I would value a fully functional 5950 Ultra with good fans at about 1/5 the value of one of these:

I think a complete aftermarket cooling solution for those shiny dual fan turds is the best way to make them usable again. If someone wants to collect them with the original cooler style, they can have all the dead cards that were run too long with bad fans. There are thousands of them out there floating around (either FX series or 6000 series).

I'm so glad that cooling technology has improved as much as it has. The pre-7800GTX times were very dark indeed.