Any love for GeForce 3?

I think it is becoming one of my favourite cards. Just finished cleaning up this latest pickup.

Lostdotfish wrote on 2026-03-02, 20:28:

Any love for GeForce 3?

I think it is becoming one of my favourite cards. Just finished cleaning up this latest pickup.

The attachment PXL_20260302_202337573.jpg is no longer available

I have a TI500 that pairs nicely with my Tualatin 1.4 P3!

I haven't used it much lately though, been busy with some P1 and P4 stuff.

A few scores over the last few weeks:
- Geforce 7800GS AGP - needed a reflow on the RAM chips. Contrary to popular belief, G70 is apparently much less bumpgate prone than G71 and the others.
- Radeon X800 GTO 512MB DDR2 - neat card, unfortunately not only it's R430 but due to being DDR2 there's NO other BIOS to flash it to.
- ASUS A7N8X-X - 2nd one I bought, needs a recap over the 3300uF caps as usual. Does POST fine tho, despite those domed KZGs.
- Quadro 4 - possibly 700 or 750XGL. If 750, it'll prolly be easy to transform it to a 4600 I guess.

While it isn't the Athlon 1GHz, it is indeed a 1GHz Athlon. I can't complain too much about having an interesting CPU. It's one of the Thunderbird ones, so it probably even has some good OC overhead.

Locutus wrote on 2026-03-01, 15:00:

Couldn't resist buying pretty good looking Tandon drive (TM100-2A)...

The attachment IMG_3518.jpeg is no longer available

Now THAT'S vintage.

I know it's in the eye of the beholder, but I simply can't think of anything ATX as vintage.

eesz34 wrote on Yesterday, 13:54:

Locutus wrote on 2026-03-01, 15:00:

Couldn't resist buying pretty good looking Tandon drive (TM100-2A)...

The attachment IMG_3518.jpeg is no longer available

Now THAT'S vintage.

I know it's in the eye of the beholder, but I simply can't think of anything ATX as vintage.

ATX was launched longer ago I think than the Altair was when this site was founded. i.e. 7 years before the oldest old PC game. Then "Very Old" at the time extended to as recently as 10 years, maybe more recent, it was primarily all DOS games I think at first.

Anyway, due to the time compression "every year in real life is 7 years on internet/in tech" thing as it seemed when things moved so fast, the PC vintage "event horizon" seemed far away but was only a decade ago, at the time of founding.

Anyway, the original "Very Old" perception timeframe would now be starting to include Windows 10 and 1st gen Ryzen, but if if you set it back to IBM PC/XT era that's only 20 years, and that puts it late socket A, early x64 mid win XP.

But yah, just commenting on perceptions of old/vintage, not having a dig, a low density 5.25 is of course very old in PC terms.

Won this Triumph Adler "TA P35" 286 on auction for a pretty good price! Give it a little cleanup.

Was not able to find any information whatsoever on this particular model, nor any trace of anyone else owning one. Did a little research, and turns out TA were bought out by Olivetti in the mid 80s. Had a look through some Olivetti 286 models and sure enough, this "P35" is a clone of an Olivetti PCS 286 (S), right down to the proprietary power connector. You can see a teardown of one here.

Luckily the PSU works! The Dallas RTC is obviously dead, and I have 0 soldering experience - seems like it's time to fix that. The Conner CP-3024 (20MB) doesn't get detected by the BIOS, but when I plug it into a different PC, it does. There, the drive shows up on fdisk, but can't actually read it (Abort, Retry, Fail). Whether it needs to be formatted or not, I'm not sure why that would affect it being detected by the TA P35. Perhaps it needs a working Dallas battery to detect HDD? Floppy works just fine though, and boots.

Welp, time for another A8N hunt before the Opty.

I ordered a kit of A8N-SLi Premium + random A64 3000 + random RAM. Comes with the I/O shield which is a good thing.

EDIT: Fixed the A8N32-SLi. Apparently it requires the EZ Plug.

SVIRU wrote on 2025-03-16, 02:09:

Hi! Bought the same Snayo but without the front glass. Can you tell me if it is a glass or plastic? What is the thickness of the glass? Thanks

It's glass. Official manual says it's "optional smoked glass panel".

I have Sanyo CD3195C https://www.instagram.com/rustybitsyt/p/Cu-B9Fto-oe/ which I got few years back and CD3185A I bought today (on pic with yet another 8-bit Atari which I bought cheaply today as well)...

This little 10" color PVM! It was suspiciously cheap. Apparently it's NOS. Smells and looks like new inside, only the front is a bit dirty.
While it's late 90s monitor and pretty much Chineese OEM it has great picture quality, is very small, easy to carry and has s-video in. While it has no audio it will be easy to add (it has holes for RCA connectors and for the speaker).

giantenemycat wrote on Yesterday, 21:56:

Won this Triumph Adler "TA P35" 286 on auction for a pretty good price! Give it a little cleanup. […]
Show full quote

Won this Triumph Adler "TA P35" 286 on auction for a pretty good price! Give it a little cleanup.

The attachment TA (8).jpg is no longer available

The attachment TA (5).jpg is no longer available

Was not able to find any information whatsoever on this particular model, nor any trace of anyone else owning one. Did a little research, and turns out TA were bought out by Olivetti in the mid 80s. Had a look through some Olivetti 286 models and sure enough, this "P35" is a clone of an Olivetti PCS 286 (S), right down to the proprietary power connector. You can see a teardown of one here.

Luckily the PSU works! The Dallas RTC is obviously dead, and I have 0 soldering experience - seems like it's time to fix that. The Conner CP-3024 (20MB) doesn't get detected by the BIOS, but when I plug it into a different PC, it does. There, the drive shows up on fdisk, but can't actually read it (Abort, Retry, Fail). Whether it needs to be formatted or not, I'm not sure why that would affect it being detected by the TA P35. Perhaps it needs a working Dallas battery to detect HDD? Floppy works just fine though, and boots.

The attachment TA (4).jpg is no longer available

I just had an Epson machine that didn't recognise any HDD until the Dallas was replaced, so that is a possibility.

However, it's also a possibility that this BIOS is old enough not to auto detect HDD and you've got to select the type manually. Something in my head is telling me type 6 is a 20MB but ...
http://www.techhelpmanual.com/54-at_bios_hard … 20is%20reserved.
looks like you could also try 2, 13, 16.

giantenemycat wrote on Yesterday, 21:56:

Won this Triumph Adler "TA P35" 286 on auction for a pretty good price! Give it a little cleanup.
..TA were bought out by Olivetti in the mid 80s.

oh that is beautiful, just as expected of Olivetti design

giantenemycat wrote on Yesterday, 21:56:

Won this Triumph Adler "TA P35" 286 on auction for a pretty good price! Give it a little cleanup. […]
Show full quote

Won this Triumph Adler "TA P35" 286 on auction for a pretty good price! Give it a little cleanup.

The attachment TA (8).jpg is no longer available

The attachment TA (5).jpg is no longer available

Was not able to find any information whatsoever on this particular model, nor any trace of anyone else owning one. Did a little research, and turns out TA were bought out by Olivetti in the mid 80s. Had a look through some Olivetti 286 models and sure enough, this "P35" is a clone of an Olivetti PCS 286 (S), right down to the proprietary power connector. You can see a teardown of one here.

Luckily the PSU works! The Dallas RTC is obviously dead, and I have 0 soldering experience - seems like it's time to fix that. The Conner CP-3024 (20MB) doesn't get detected by the BIOS, but when I plug it into a different PC, it does. There, the drive shows up on fdisk, but can't actually read it (Abort, Retry, Fail). Whether it needs to be formatted or not, I'm not sure why that would affect it being detected by the TA P35. Perhaps it needs a working Dallas battery to detect HDD? Floppy works just fine though, and boots.

The attachment TA (4).jpg is no longer available

The mobo looks great, even if it's half empty it has a strange nice effect.

BitWrangler wrote on Today, 04:24:

I just had an Epson machine that didn't recognise any HDD until the Dallas was replaced, so that is a possibility. […]
Show full quote

I just had an Epson machine that didn't recognise any HDD until the Dallas was replaced, so that is a possibility.

However, it's also a possibility that this BIOS is old enough not to auto detect HDD and you've got to select the type manually. Something in my head is telling me type 6 is a 20MB but ...
http://www.techhelpmanual.com/54-at_bios_hard … 20is%20reserved.
looks like you could also try 2, 13, 16.

The BIOS on this seems non-standard, maybe proprietary to Olivetti. Pressing F3 to modify "HDU" only presents two options: 01-020Mb and 02-040Mb.

I'm wondering if I shouldn't just try to format the drive when I have it hooked up in another PC. The only thing stopping me is the chance there's an install on there I want to preserve. I'm not sure if I can't read the drive just because the version of DOS I'm using on that PC is too new. Is that a thing? i.e. if this drive was originally formatted by and running, say, DOS 3.3 or something, and I'm trying to read it with 6.22, could that be incompatible? Seems unlikely, but I'm not that experienced with DOS tbh.

You could use a XT-IDE device, so that you can connect any disc (or compact flash card) to the PC. It's usually very handy for these older machines that only accept a few very specific HDDs.

I don't think being formatted in a different MS-DOS version would cause the issue you're seeing.

giantenemycat wrote on Today, 12:03:

BitWrangler wrote on Today, 04:24:

I just had an Epson machine that didn't recognise any HDD until the Dallas was replaced, so that is a possibility. […]
Show full quote

I just had an Epson machine that didn't recognise any HDD until the Dallas was replaced, so that is a possibility.

However, it's also a possibility that this BIOS is old enough not to auto detect HDD and you've got to select the type manually. Something in my head is telling me type 6 is a 20MB but ...
http://www.techhelpmanual.com/54-at_bios_hard … 20is%20reserved.
looks like you could also try 2, 13, 16.

The BIOS on this seems non-standard, maybe proprietary to Olivetti. Pressing F3 to modify "HDU" only presents two options: 01-020Mb and 02-040Mb.

I'm wondering if I shouldn't just try to format the drive when I have it hooked up in another PC. The only thing stopping me is the chance there's an install on there I want to preserve. I'm not sure if I can't read the drive just because the version of DOS I'm using on that PC is too new. Is that a thing? i.e. if this drive was originally formatted by and running, say, DOS 3.3 or something, and I'm trying to read it with 6.22, could that be incompatible? Seems unlikely, but I'm not that experienced with DOS tbh.

This is an Olivetti BIOS and the same bios on my PCS 286 can only boot with 20 or 40MB Connor drives. In order to use any oder IDE drive you need to boot with an XT-IDE.

giantenemycat wrote on Yesterday, 21:56:

Won this Triumph Adler "TA P35" 286 on auction for a pretty good price! Give it a little cleanup. […]
Show full quote

Won this Triumph Adler "TA P35" 286 on auction for a pretty good price! Give it a little cleanup.

The attachment TA (8).jpg is no longer available

The attachment TA (5).jpg is no longer available

Was not able to find any information whatsoever on this particular model, nor any trace of anyone else owning one. Did a little research, and turns out TA were bought out by Olivetti in the mid 80s. Had a look through some Olivetti 286 models and sure enough, this "P35" is a clone of an Olivetti PCS 286 (S), right down to the proprietary power connector. You can see a teardown of one here.

Luckily the PSU works! The Dallas RTC is obviously dead, and I have 0 soldering experience - seems like it's time to fix that. The Conner CP-3024 (20MB) doesn't get detected by the BIOS, but when I plug it into a different PC, it does. There, the drive shows up on fdisk, but can't actually read it (Abort, Retry, Fail). Whether it needs to be formatted or not, I'm not sure why that would affect it being detected by the TA P35. Perhaps it needs a working Dallas battery to detect HDD? Floppy works just fine though, and boots.

The attachment TA (4).jpg is no longer available

Interesting. it's the SAME COMPUTER as an OLIVETTI i have. same case, same board, same HDD.

devius wrote on Today, 12:15:

You could use a XT-IDE device, so that you can connect any disc (or compact flash card) to the PC. It's usually very handy for these older machines that only accept a few very specific HDDs.

I don't think being formatted in a different MS-DOS version would cause the issue you're seeing.

I wanted to use the CP-3024 anyway, but I think the drive's a goner unfortunately. I ran Norton Ghost and it complained about bad sectors and wouldn't let me continue. ScanDisk and chkdsk can't examine the drive. Deleted the partition in fdisk, but when I try to make a new one it hangs on trying to verify drive integrity. Partition Magic 7.0 also hangs. Sad times. Unless there's something else to try, I think this is a RIP for the old Mr Conner.

Ugh, that's a shame, I have seen the 3024 and 3044 fetch silly prices on eBay, perhaps because of this and other machines requiring them. There's a clamshell laptop takes them too I think. So you're probably gonna want to go the XTIDE route.

BitWrangler wrote on Today, 15:07:

Ugh, that's a shame, I have seen the 3024 and 3044 fetch silly prices on eBay, perhaps because of this and other machines requiring them. There's a clamshell laptop takes them too I think. So you're probably gonna want to go the XTIDE route.

I see XT-IDE cards being sold on eBay, but they're network cards like this one. How does that work? I install it, it loads the XT-IDE BIOS on boot, then any HDD will work, even via the internal controller on the Olivetti motherboard?