Pulled out my Compaq Portable to dust it off and recalled how horrible the Keytronic keyboard looked. Spent some quality time with it and feel better now.
😒 Problem is, in a few years it'll probably revert back again.

This is kind of borderline retro for me, but I took a chunk of my day to work on the beastly machine in this post:
Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

I basically gutted the thing so I could convert it to the non-inverted motherboard layout, and then rewired everything. This thing is an absolute mess of wires compared to modern setups with logical cooling solutions.

I got everything cleaned up, reassembled and running but strangely it seems like the power button is non functional. I can use the power button on the motherboard, but pressing the case power button does not short the two power button pins no matter how much I jiggle and twist wires around. Really unfortunate since the rest of the thing seems to basically work fine.

The almost obnoxiously mid-2000s Aerocool Touch 2000 LCD instrument panel looks cool (in a gaudy kind of way) but is, honestly, completely pointless. To actually make full use of it you have to run four temperature probe wires and jam them into places that probably don't need to be monitored, and then you have to wire up to four fans to it as well. There is no automatic fan control, so you have to monkey with the really fiddly touch buttons to edit each fan speed if you want to make the system cooler or quieter. So... looks neat, but feels like it would have made more sense in 2005... not so much in 2013 when this system was built. Apparently I only managed to get one fan connected to it in a way that it could monitor and control, so three of the four fan readouts just flash at me. Plus, I didn't bother running the temp probes because they serve no purpose, so those readouts all have the same ambient temperature displayed. I would have preferred a front 120mm fan in this location instead... 🤣

Surprisingly, it seems like all of the fans are still decent in this machine. It's fairly loud but only because it's just an outdated design with way too many fans in sub-optimal locations (without real speed controls). It came to me with: 2x 230mm top exhaust fans, 2x 140mm bottom intake fans, 2 x 120mm intake fans on the side panel with a small window, 2 x 120mm intake fans on the OTHER side panel (yep), 1 x 120mm exhaust fan at the back of the case, 2 x 120mm fans on the CPU cooler, plus the usual GPU and PSU fans. And only the CPU and GPU fans are actually temperature controlled as they're supposed to be... gee I wonder why it's noisy?

I was able to install Windows 10 on it for testing, but after getting through the final steps of the install process and setting up a local account it just boots to a black screen for a bit and then the monitor loses signal. I'm wondering if the drivers it installed for the GTX 770 broke something. I tried starting in low-res mode and it still did it. I will try a different video card next. I really hope the 4GB 770 is good, because that's a solid card for a dual-boot XP\7 system or something like that.

Also, one thing that just boggles my 2025 mind is that on this massive high end Socket 2011 board with 8 full length PCI-E slots, Coolermaster's genius designers managed to cause the (high end PC oriented) V8 GTS cooler to impinge on the top PCI-E slot so that it cannot be used. The heatsink itself has just barely enough room and should work, but the massive hollow plastic shell that is required to attach the fans pokes out about 1/8th of an inch too far and makes it impossible to put the GPU in the recommended top slot. Great job guys! If I had to guess, putting the two GTX 770s into less than ideal slots is probably why SLI never worked well on this system. That explains why it arrived to me with a card installed all the way down in slot 3.

Anyway... I have no idea what I'm going to do with this thing since it is unreasonably large, but it just felt right to get it all cleaned up and working again. It's a 2010-2013 time capsule of high end computing, and the only thing it's missing is a pair of 780 Tis or maybe 980 Tis. 🤩

(Wait, stop that... why?? What am I going to do with it??? Why cram more hardware into a system that takes up so much space to run XP era games at 9000fps????)

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-08-30, 02:53:

Surprisingly, it seems like all of the fans are still decent in this machine. It's fairly loud but only because it's just an outdated design with way too many fans in sub-optimal locations (without real speed controls). It came to me with: 2x 230mm top exhaust fans, 2x 140mm bottom intake fans, 2 x 120mm intake fans on the side panel with a small window, 2 x 120mm intake fans on the OTHER side panel (yep), 1 x 120mm exhaust fan at the back of the case, 2 x 120mm fans on the CPU cooler, plus the usual GPU and PSU fans. And only the CPU and GPU fans are actually temperature controlled as they're supposed to be... gee I wonder why it's noisy?

Wait, it is not outdated at all. This is a very modern cooling setup. Except nowadays people would likely want to add 3x140mm front intake fans and cover half of the fans with acrylic/glass for good measure. And add some "watercooling" with 3 more 120/140mm fans, in a way that it exhausts hot air into the case....

Not sure where you've seen actually good and "logical" setups in modern systems, all the stuff i am seeing is like this...

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-08-30, 02:53:

Also, one thing that just boggles my 2025 mind is that on this massive high end Socket 2011 board with 8 full length PCI-E slots, Coolermaster's genius designers managed to cause the (high end PC oriented) V8 GTS cooler to impinge on the top PCI-E slot so that it cannot be used. The heatsink itself has just barely enough room and should work, but the massive hollow plastic shell that is required to attach the fans pokes out about 1/8th of an inch too far and makes it impossible to put the GPU in the recommended top slot. Great job guys! If I had to guess, putting the two GTX 770s into less than ideal slots is probably why SLI never worked well on this system. That explains why it arrived to me with a card installed all the way down in slot 3.

Also happens all the time in 2025 still. Especially with hardware perceived to be "premium" where they feel the need for stuffing as much stuff as possible in and adding decorative shrouds...

Layout and design screw-ups like this are extremely common, practically everywhere...

2011 has a lot of PCI-e though, 40 lanes IIRC. Using a different slot may be not a big deal at all, even if it works at 8x 3.0 it'll make no difference in terms of performance.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-08-30, 02:53:

Anyway... I have no idea what I'm going to do with this thing since it is unreasonably large, but it just felt right to get it all cleaned up and working again. It's a 2010-2013 time capsule of high end computing, and the only thing it's missing is a pair of 780 Tis or maybe 980 Tis. 🤩

(Wait, stop that... why?? What am I going to do with it??? Why cram more hardware into a system that takes up so much space to run XP era games at 9000fps????)

Yeah, a pointless multi-GPU setup (perhaps more than 2?) would compliment a system like this extremely well. At that point having multiple GPUs was still commonly considered to be the only way to build really top-end system...

I played Desperados today. A bit tricky but interesting.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-30, 09:51:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-08-30, 02:53:

Surprisingly, it seems like all of the fans are still decent in this machine. It's fairly loud but only because it's just an outdated design with way too many fans in sub-optimal locations (without real speed controls). It came to me with: 2x 230mm top exhaust fans, 2x 140mm bottom intake fans, 2 x 120mm intake fans on the side panel with a small window, 2 x 120mm intake fans on the OTHER side panel (yep), 1 x 120mm exhaust fan at the back of the case, 2 x 120mm fans on the CPU cooler, plus the usual GPU and PSU fans. And only the CPU and GPU fans are actually temperature controlled as they're supposed to be... gee I wonder why it's noisy?

Wait, it is not outdated at all. This is a very modern cooling setup. Except nowadays people would likely want to add 3x140mm front intake fans and cover half of the fans with acrylic/glass for good measure. And add some "watercooling" with 3 more 120/140mm fans, in a way that it exhausts hot air into the case....

Not sure where you've seen actually good and "logical" setups in modern systems, all the stuff i am seeing is like this...

Yes, sealed glass front with fans behind it is totally pointless, as is a water cooling setup that puts heat into the case but I don't build or buy computers like that. Do you? Thankfully, even a poorly designed cooling system in a modern case doesn't sound like a space heater the way older systems like this did out of the box. Most designs have settled on a basic front to back airflow or a fishtank style case with front-side intake to back airflow, and they can do it with almost no noise at idle and very tolerable noise at load.

This setup is outdated in that it has nine case fans that just run full blast with the pointless side panel fans (four of them) just creating turbulence for no reason. The fan controller on the front just adds several more feet of spaghetti wiring to the internals and ensures that you can't use the far more practical (and automatic) fan controllers built into the motherboard. This is a relic of the time before motherboards had effective built in fan controllers (voltage or PWM based)... I'd say pre-2010.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-30, 09:51:

Also happens all the time in 2025 still. Especially with hardware perceived to be "premium" where they feel the need for stuffin […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-08-30, 02:53:

Also, one thing that just boggles my 2025 mind is that on this massive high end Socket 2011 board with 8 full length PCI-E slots, Coolermaster's genius designers managed to cause the (high end PC oriented) V8 GTS cooler to impinge on the top PCI-E slot so that it cannot be used. The heatsink itself has just barely enough room and should work, but the massive hollow plastic shell that is required to attach the fans pokes out about 1/8th of an inch too far and makes it impossible to put the GPU in the recommended top slot. Great job guys! If I had to guess, putting the two GTX 770s into less than ideal slots is probably why SLI never worked well on this system. That explains why it arrived to me with a card installed all the way down in slot 3.

Also happens all the time in 2025 still. Especially with hardware perceived to be "premium" where they feel the need for stuffing as much stuff as possible in and adding decorative shrouds...

Layout and design screw-ups like this are extremely common, practically everywhere...

2011 has a lot of PCI-e though, 40 lanes IIRC. Using a different slot may be not a big deal at all, even if it works at 8x 3.0 it'll make no difference in terms of performance.

Gotta disagree there. I have never owned a heatsink with any bulbous plastic parts on it, and I do not see high end coolers being released like this these days. I have bought almost exclusively Thermalright coolers for 23 years, and between the bazillion air coolers they sell and all of the nearly identical towers that other companies have released in the past ~15 years, most are just towers with minimal extra stuff hanging off of them. I don't doubt that there are some coolers out there that are huge and have functional components that are incompatible with some motherboards, but I doubt that any big companies in 2025 are wasting money on big molded plastic things that look like tires and impinge unnecessarily on PCI-E slots.

Regarding the PCI-E lanes, I believe it depends on whether one of the GPUs is installed in a slot connected to the chipset's lanes, rather than both cards being installed in CPU-lane slots. I have no experience with SLI configs like this, I just have vague memories of hearing that having one GPU running on chipset lanes is suboptimal.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-30, 09:51:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-08-30, 02:53:

Anyway... I have no idea what I'm going to do with this thing since it is unreasonably large, but it just felt right to get it all cleaned up and working again. It's a 2010-2013 time capsule of high end computing, and the only thing it's missing is a pair of 780 Tis or maybe 980 Tis. 🤩

(Wait, stop that... why?? What am I going to do with it??? Why cram more hardware into a system that takes up so much space to run XP era games at 9000fps????)

Yeah, a pointless multi-GPU setup (perhaps more than 2?) would compliment a system like this extremely well. At that point having multiple GPUs was still commonly considered to be the only way to build really top-end system...

Yeah, as far as I can tell, this thing taking up the space of a piece of furniture with 64GB of RAM, a 1200W PSU, 8 PCI-E slots, two 4GB 770s and a 12-thread CPU was totally unnecessary for anything that it was ever used for (I know the owner)... and now, with it also being outdated on top of that, any practical uses for it are out the window! 🤣 So, if we're going to fully embrace impracticality with this build, it is tempting to turn it into a 3-way SLI 980 Ti rig or something... but not that tempting that I would spend a bunch of money on them. Maybe if they came up really cheap or free... 😅

It is funny to think how system builders (and presumably GPU manufacturers) were pushing multi-GPU setups back then. I think we have to thank sites like Techreport that started the deep dive into sub-frame latencies that revealed that multi-GPU setups often sacrificed "smoothness" for FPS. I was always too poor for SLI, even when I was scrounging up enough cash for high end GPUs, so thankfully I didn't waste twice as much money in those days.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-08-30, 18:25:

Yes, sealed glass front with fans behind it is totally pointless, as is a water cooling setup that puts heat into the case but I don't build or buy computers like that. Do you? Thankfully, even a poorly designed cooling system in a modern case doesn't sound like a space heater the way older systems like this did out of the box. Most designs have settled on a basic front to back airflow or a fishtank style case with front-side intake to back airflow, and they can do it with almost no noise at idle and very tolerable noise at load.

This setup is outdated in that it has nine case fans that just run full blast with the pointless side panel fans (four of them) just creating turbulence for no reason. The fan controller on the front just adds several more feet of spaghetti wiring to the internals and ensures that you can't use the far more practical (and automatic) fan controllers built into the motherboard. This is a relic of the time before motherboards had effective built in fan controllers (voltage or PWM based)... I'd say pre-2010.

I do not buy or build them, but i see them way more often than i'd like. I've even seen advice to put water cooler heatsink onto front panel as intake being given in some places. And side panel fans are still commonly there too. In fact i've seen advice to use them right here relatively recently 😀

Other than that yeah, if someone sensible builds the system then you are right 😀

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-08-30, 18:25:

Regarding the PCI-E lanes, I believe it depends on whether one of the GPUs is installed in a slot connected to the chipset's lanes, rather than both cards being installed in CPU-lane slots. I have no experience with SLI configs like this, I just have vague memories of hearing that having one GPU running on chipset lanes is suboptimal.

Yeah, using PCH lanes is suboptimal. They are commonly of lower version and PCH<->CPU link easily becomes a bottleneck. However LGA2011 has 40 lanes from CPU. That's up to 5 x8 slots, and they can be divided into x4 if needed too. So ideally there should be something like x16-x16-x8, or if there are more slots x16 ones can be split into 2 x8 as needed. Should not be any x16 slots connected to PCH on LGA2011, not unless motherboard manufacturer is really weird...

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-08-30, 18:25:

Yeah, as far as I can tell, this thing taking up the space of a piece of furniture with 64GB of RAM, a 1200W PSU, 8 PCI-E slots, two 4GB 770s and a 12-thread CPU was totally unnecessary for anything that it was ever used for (I know the owner)... and now, with it also being outdated on top of that, any practical uses for it are out the window! 🤣 So, if we're going to fully embrace impracticality with this build, it is tempting to turn it into a 3-way SLI 980 Ti rig or something... but not that tempting that I would spend a bunch of money on them. Maybe if they came up really cheap or free... 😅

It is funny to think how system builders (and presumably GPU manufacturers) were pushing multi-GPU setups back then. I think we have to thank sites like Techreport that started the deep dive into sub-frame latencies that revealed that multi-GPU setups often sacrificed "smoothness" for FPS. I was always too poor for SLI, even when I was scrounging up enough cash for high end GPUs, so thankfully I didn't waste twice as much money in those days.

LGA2011 is actually a fascinating platform. Longevity of this hardware is amazingly good - stick something like E5-2667v2 into it and it will still perform up to a mid-range modern system level of performance. And that 6 core i7 is not bad either. You can also go crazy with M.2 SSDs with all the pci-e, something many modern systems can not do.

But multi-gpu sure is pointless. I've practically used it close to its end with a pair of GTX660. Yes, the worst thing ever - mid range SLI, but i wanted to try. And it was every way as bad as you'd assume. Limited amount of games could use it and perceived "smoothness" was never good.

Re-did the front panel of my DOS system to accommodate the Wavetable Pi LCD...

It works... for now. Think I'm going to redesign the whole thing to be one unit. 😀

I spent the whole evening trying to unlock the disabled vertex and pixel pipelines on my GeForce 7300GT to turn it into a 7600GS. It appears to be impossible, annoyingly.

If anyone knows otherwise then please do say!

My KT266 system gave up the ghost. Suspecting the xp 2000+ palomino CPU died due to overheating 😒
Got kt333 system up and running

Ash515253 wrote on 2025-08-31, 21:53:

I spent the whole evening trying to unlock the disabled vertex and pixel pipelines on my GeForce 7300GT to turn it into a 7600GS. It appears to be impossible, annoyingly.

If anyone knows otherwise then please do say!

AFAIK GF7 GPUs can not be unlocked - the traces are physically cut.

Ash515253 wrote on 2025-08-31, 21:53:

I spent the whole evening trying to unlock the disabled vertex and pixel pipelines on my GeForce 7300GT to turn it into a 7600GS. It appears to be impossible, annoyingly.

If anyone knows otherwise then please do say!

I don't want to be rude, but what convinced you to spend a whole evening doing that? The first thing that comes up in a Google search is this page saying it isn't possible:

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/7800-7900-7 … -is-why.184707/

I'm trying to remember if nvidia ever had any chip which was unlockable, and I'm pretty sure there never was.

My best guess is that they moved to fuses like Intel a long, long time ago.

myne wrote on 2025-09-01, 01:48:

I'm trying to remember if nvidia ever had any chip which was unlockable, and I'm pretty sure there never was.

My best guess is that they moved to fuses like Intel a long, long time ago.

They did, and it's at the link above.

Q. I have a 7800/7900/7600/7300 card and I want to unlock the pipelines like I did on my 6800 LE, how to do this? A. You can't. […]
Show full quote

Q. I have a 7800/7900/7600/7300 card and I want to unlock the pipelines like I did on my 6800 LE, how to do this?
A. You can't.

Q. Are you sure? Then, why not?
A. Please see Unwinder's reply here:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=141 … 355#post1418355

Q. So - which cards *can* be unlocked?
A. Only NV40, NV48 and NV43 rev A2 cards that have disabled or hardware-locked vertex/pixel pipelines can be unlocked
to better performance in games (and all other programs)
These are 6800 AGP8x, 6800 LE AGP8x, 6800 GS AGP8x, 6800 XT AGP8x, 6800 XE, and 6600 LE (only with NV43 rev A2 chips)
NB!! Newer 6800 plain/LE/GS/XT cards are often made with NV42 chips instead, and therefore, not possible to unlock... 🙁
As an example, see http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=182249

I believe Quadro FX 4000 cards that use those same chips should also be unlockable.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-09-01, 02:02:

They did, and it's at the link above. […]
Show full quote

myne wrote on 2025-09-01, 01:48:

I'm trying to remember if nvidia ever had any chip which was unlockable, and I'm pretty sure there never was.

My best guess is that they moved to fuses like Intel a long, long time ago.

They did, and it's at the link above.

Q. I have a 7800/7900/7600/7300 card and I want to unlock the pipelines like I did on my 6800 LE, how to do this? A. You can't. […]
Show full quote

Q. I have a 7800/7900/7600/7300 card and I want to unlock the pipelines like I did on my 6800 LE, how to do this?
A. You can't.

Q. Are you sure? Then, why not?
A. Please see Unwinder's reply here:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=141 … 355#post1418355

Q. So - which cards *can* be unlocked?
A. Only NV40, NV48 and NV43 rev A2 cards that have disabled or hardware-locked vertex/pixel pipelines can be unlocked
to better performance in games (and all other programs)
These are 6800 AGP8x, 6800 LE AGP8x, 6800 GS AGP8x, 6800 XT AGP8x, 6800 XE, and 6600 LE (only with NV43 rev A2 chips)
NB!! Newer 6800 plain/LE/GS/XT cards are often made with NV42 chips instead, and therefore, not possible to unlock... 🙁
As an example, see http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=182249

I believe Quadro FX 4000 cards that use those same chips should also be unlockable.

I was able to unlock my Quadro FX 4000 with Riva Tuner, but when I played Halo with it it had a weird strobing effect on the grass, so I went back to stock. It was a pretty small difference in performance.

Spent a few hours trying to fix convergence and geometry on a generic chinese 20in CRT TV I got for free a while back. It took 5 convergence strips, 2 fridge magnets and lots, LOTS of patience to get somewhat acceptable results. The top right corner in particular was really messed up, and being a late "flat" style CRT geometry is going to be kind of wonky anyways.

Still, it's a low hour Samsung tube and the TV has all kinds of inputs (RF, 2 composites, S-Video and component) so it will be really convenient as I can use it with all my retro consoles. It's not a high-end set like those Sony TVs you see on retro YouTube channels but at least it was cheap!

Oh yeah, that's a chore, and frequently frustrating. I had a tube that was all distorted, the grid had got magnetised somehow, I was like doing something like Tai Chi over it with a huge magnet in each hand for ages before it got "just a little crooked and slightly shaded" and a few hits of degauss brought it the rest of the way.

The typical construction of fridge magnets often isn't very useful though, the rubbery ones in particular. The domains are arranged like a bunch of horseshoe magnets glued together with their poles down. So usually not a very coherent field that's usable.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-09-01, 00:22:

Ash515253 wrote on 2025-08-31, 21:53:

I spent the whole evening trying to unlock the disabled vertex and pixel pipelines on my GeForce 7300GT to turn it into a 7600GS. It appears to be impossible, annoyingly.

If anyone knows otherwise then please do say!

I don't want to be rude, but what convinced you to spend a whole evening doing that? The first thing that comes up in a Google search is this page saying it isn't possible:

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/7800-7900-7 … -is-why.184707/

A fair question.. It was not a planned event though, I was lured in!

I had the card in the system and Riva tuner installed, I clicked out of interest and noticed the disabled pipelines then starting fiddling.. I had a feeling that it was my version or Riva tuner so I was hunting for an older one, then I tried some older drivers, a few restarts for DDU and miscellaneous clicking, I had a look to see what it said in the BIOS and eventually came to the conclusion that it couldn't be done.

I have no regrets, I had a few glasses of the 12 year old Glenmorangie that my brother-in-law bought me and listed to an audiobook, playing with these old systems is my peaceful time.

Ash515253 wrote on 2025-09-01, 19:29:

A fair question.. It was not a planned event though, I was lured in! […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-09-01, 00:22:

Ash515253 wrote on 2025-08-31, 21:53:

I spent the whole evening trying to unlock the disabled vertex and pixel pipelines on my GeForce 7300GT to turn it into a 7600GS. It appears to be impossible, annoyingly.

If anyone knows otherwise then please do say!

I don't want to be rude, but what convinced you to spend a whole evening doing that? The first thing that comes up in a Google search is this page saying it isn't possible:

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/7800-7900-7 … -is-why.184707/

A fair question.. It was not a planned event though, I was lured in!

I had the card in the system and Riva tuner installed, I clicked out of interest and noticed the disabled pipelines then starting fiddling.. I had a feeling that it was my version or Riva tuner so I was hunting for an older one, then I tried some older drivers, a few restarts for DDU and miscellaneous clicking, I had a look to see what it said in the BIOS and eventually came to the conclusion that it couldn't be done.

I have no regrets, I had a few glasses of the 12 year old Glenmorangie that my brother-in-law bought me and listed to an audiobook, playing with these old systems is my peaceful time.

No worries! Glad it wasn't a terrible experience at least. I was mainly just curious if anything\anyone out there on the internet was trying to convince people that it could be done.

Gave my Wavetable Pi LCD a new home while getting my new printer dialed in. Looks like my Z-offset is a bit off. Oh well, worry about that tomorrow. That's good enough for this purpose. 🤣

Redesigned the adapter. That insert that says "MT-32 / SD IDE" is a placeholder. Going to wire up a rotary encoder at some point, and that's where it's going.

Also, using the PicoGUS in MPU-401 mode, feeding into the AWE64. Best of both worlds! 😀

Guys, is there a patch/update for Windows95 on supporting the Cyrix 6x86 processors?