Not really my profile but I just like Sapphire stuff and this 4890 was really cheap.

tehsiggi wrote on 2026-03-12, 17:06:

A wild Radeon HD3450 AGP appeared..

The attachment hd3450.jpeg is no longer available

Powercolor, Club3D and VTX3D really done went and used a whole PCB for a 3450. WHY.

PcBytes wrote on 2026-03-12, 19:27:

tehsiggi wrote on 2026-03-12, 17:06:

A wild Radeon HD3450 AGP appeared..

The attachment hd3450.jpeg is no longer available

Powercolor, Club3D and VTX3D really done went and used a whole PCB for a 3450. WHY.

Cheaper. I'm very certain, it has less layers and layouting took way less time than the low profile one.

Socket 939 Amd Athlon X2 4200+
100% working
This is my 2nd 4200+ for a mere 89W TDP 🤣

So I've long considered building a Pentium II system, but never have because good Pentium II boards have always been somewhat pricy.

Well I saw an ASUS P2L97-S for $44 shipped and couldn't pass that up. 440LX isn't the *best* chipset but realistically since I have no intention of ever doing a P3 build on slot 1 (already having multiple S370 P3 based options available to me) its not really a problem especially considering the premium 440BX boards run a fellow these days, and you really can't go wrong with ASUS in any case.

Also ordered a Creative Graphics Blaster TNT 16MB and a Soundblaster Live CT4760. I already have a 300MHZ Pentium II, NOS cooler, USB 2.0 expansion card, and drives laying around.
I'm also going to put the Yamaha Audician 32 Plus I have in it, which will eventually receive a MIDI board for its waveblaster header.

At some point I'll probably buy a Voodoo2 and a Creative DXR3 decoder card to finish out the build.

One Windows 98/late DOS machine to rule them all.

The only debate in my mind is if I want to put it in a black case or a beige case. I'm kind of tempted to go with black because that means it will pair nicely with a black monitor and peripheals, allowing me to seemlessly swap between my XP machine and W98 machine.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2026-03-13, 04:05:

The only debate in my mind is if I want to put it in a black case or a beige case.

Blasphemous for a P2 to be in a black case. Blonde all the way!

FWIW I have the dual version of that board (P2L97-DS) w/ 2x mendocino 533MHz in slotkets. Good times!

tehsiggi wrote on 2026-03-12, 19:47:

PcBytes wrote on 2026-03-12, 19:27:

tehsiggi wrote on 2026-03-12, 17:06:

A wild Radeon HD3450 AGP appeared..

The attachment hd3450.jpeg is no longer available

Powercolor, Club3D and VTX3D really done went and used a whole PCB for a 3450. WHY.

Cheaper. I'm very certain, it has less layers and layouting took way less time than the low profile one.

On the other hand, those cards are double sided: Railto PCIe bridge on the underside and GPU on the topside, both producing significant heat. The full size PCB positions those chips as far from each other as is reasonably practical.

Putting both chips close together, even on opposite sides of the PCB, creates avoidable problems: That would only be worth doing if transport volumes are significant enough to impact the number of crates being shipped.

I have an ASUS passive cooled version on full size PCB.

MattRocks wrote on 2026-03-13, 10:19:

On the other hand, those cards are double sided: Railto PCIe bridge on the underside and GPU on the topside, both producing sign […]
Show full quote

tehsiggi wrote on 2026-03-12, 19:47:

PcBytes wrote on 2026-03-12, 19:27:

Powercolor, Club3D and VTX3D really done went and used a whole PCB for a 3450. WHY.

Cheaper. I'm very certain, it has less layers and layouting took way less time than the low profile one.

On the other hand, those cards are double sided: Railto PCIe bridge on the underside and GPU on the topside, both producing significant heat. The full size PCB positions those chips as far from each other as is reasonably practical.

Putting both chips close together, even on opposite sides of the PCB, creates avoidable problems: That would only be worth doing if transport volumes are significant enough to impact the number of crates being shipped.

I have an ASUS passive cooled version on full size PCB.

I assume the boxes are same size. Not sure if the ASUS came with a low profile bracket to serve that niche. It's also worth noting that there are radeon 9200s in low profile with the full! 128bit bus, though there is no real need for them.

tehsiggi wrote on 2026-03-13, 10:37:

MattRocks wrote on 2026-03-13, 10:19:

On the other hand, those cards are double sided: Railto PCIe bridge on the underside and GPU on the topside, both producing sign […]
Show full quote

tehsiggi wrote on 2026-03-12, 19:47:

Cheaper. I'm very certain, it has less layers and layouting took way less time than the low profile one.

On the other hand, those cards are double sided: Railto PCIe bridge on the underside and GPU on the topside, both producing significant heat. The full size PCB positions those chips as far from each other as is reasonably practical.

Putting both chips close together, even on opposite sides of the PCB, creates avoidable problems: That would only be worth doing if transport volumes are significant enough to impact the number of crates being shipped.

I have an ASUS passive cooled version on full size PCB.

I assume the boxes are same size. Not sure if the ASUS came with a low profile bracket to serve that niche. It's also worth noting that there are radeon 9200s in low profile with the full! 128bit bus, though there is no real need for them.

Is that mixing memory chips from a later era with GPU from earlier era on a shrunk PCB to make a cheapest possible OEM card? I looked at a full width 9200 that would be "not too bad," but it had 128Mb (maybe more) and I decided against it because there would be simply no software for that GPU that uses that much VRAM. It seems to me an OEM must have thought, "customers want 128Mb GPU, so lets find them the cheapest GPU that can drive 128Mb".

MattRocks wrote on 2026-03-13, 12:02:

tehsiggi wrote on 2026-03-13, 10:37:

MattRocks wrote on 2026-03-13, 10:19:

On the other hand, those cards are double sided: Railto PCIe bridge on the underside and GPU on the topside, both producing significant heat. The full size PCB positions those chips as far from each other as is reasonably practical.

Putting both chips close together, even on opposite sides of the PCB, creates avoidable problems: That would only be worth doing if transport volumes are significant enough to impact the number of crates being shipped.

I have an ASUS passive cooled version on full size PCB.

I assume the boxes are same size. Not sure if the ASUS came with a low profile bracket to serve that niche. It's also worth noting that there are radeon 9200s in low profile with the full! 128bit bus, though there is no real need for them.

Is that mixing memory chips from a later era with GPU from earlier era on a shrunk PCB to make a cheapest possible OEM card?

The 9200s? Nope, they are from that era. Using normal DDR1 memory but have a longer low profile PCB. I can post a picture or two in the next week, as I have a 9200 and a 9250 in that style.

PD2JK wrote on 2026-03-12, 18:11:

Found one 👍 […]
Show full quote

PcBytes wrote on 2026-03-06, 19:36:

In your case you can probably harvest one from even a WD800JD or WD800JS since I think they use the same type of connectors.

Found one 👍

The attachment 20260312_164440855.JPG is no longer available

Time to heat up the station.

Take a look at the PCB number, on the donor part in the picture is 701335.
If it's the same on the Raptor you can just swap the eeprom and then replace the whole PCB.
It's a SOP8 part between the RAM IC and the SATA power connector.
It'd be much easier that swapping the whole connector assembly.

andrea wrote on 2026-03-13, 20:40:

Take a look at the PCB number, on the donor part in the picture is 701335. If it's the same on the Raptor you can just swap the […]
Show full quote

PD2JK wrote on 2026-03-12, 18:11:

Found one 👍 […]
Show full quote

PcBytes wrote on 2026-03-06, 19:36:

In your case you can probably harvest one from even a WD800JD or WD800JS since I think they use the same type of connectors.

Found one 👍

The attachment 20260312_164440855.JPG is no longer available

Time to heat up the station.

Take a look at the PCB number, on the donor part in the picture is 701335.
If it's the same on the Raptor you can just swap the eeprom and then replace the whole PCB.
It's a SOP8 part between the RAM IC and the SATA power connector.
It'd be much easier that swapping the whole connector assembly.

Nowhere close. Raptors use a bigger PCB than the donor. The standard drives of that era don't have any matches to the 36 and 74GB Raptors.

Got these few cards recently.

Matrox G400 32MB. Although not a rare card by any means, I haven't had one in my parts bin this far:

This Tandy clone sound card. Bumped into this almost by accident, this will be a nice option for my Micro 8088 build:

HIS CL 5429. Pretty mid VLB card, but then again I only have one Mach32 VLB besides this and this should at least be improvement over that:

And finally a working 9800 Pro! The third party cooler probably has saved this puppy. I currently have one AIW in my bin which has at least has failed solder joints on under one memory chip. Reflow didn't fix, so either I did it poorly or the chip is also busted or there are more faults and I just haven't bothered with it:

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2026-03-14, 14:37:

HIS CL 5429. Pretty mid VLB card, but then again I only have one Mach32 VLB besides this and this should at least be improvement over that:

You never know until you try them. Some seem fast at 33, but are flaky with a VLB i/o card installed, some seem slow at 33, but play nice with the i/o AND tolerate 50mhz bus, so then you are flying. But then some can be very mid, just okay at 33, but don't like to be pushed much.

SODIMM DDR1 1gb x2 + 512 x2 + 256 x2
Apple magsafe 1 60W

FM2+ board
ASUS A88XM-E35 + A8-6600

Got this unusual Gateway model today. Its a PII 266 manufactured in June 1998. Intel Slot 1 motherboard with 2 isa slots. I'd love to make it a pentium 3 machine as I don't have one of those yet... but I have a suspicion the motherboard is a 440lx that only supprots a 66mhz fsb rather than a 440bx, so between that and the bios referring to 1997, not sure I have ready support for Pentium IIIs on this board.

Its a curious case design. It looks like it would be a conventional metal case horizontal desktop, but in reality, only the very top panel is metal (resting on the internal metal chassis) and the sides are plastic held into the metal chassis themselves by 4 brittle looking clips. I'll have to remember not to put much weight on those, I've seen several similar models for sale online missing one or both of these side panels.

I acquired a PCISA-C800 SBC motherboard, which features a VIA C3 800MHz processor based on the Ezra architecture and uses the PCISA bus, allowing it to be paired with an ISA sound card. It should be well-suited for building a retro SBC desktop PC.

zwrr wrote on 2026-03-17, 02:25:

I acquired a PCISA-C800 SBC motherboard, which features a VIA C3 800MHz processor based on the Ezra architecture and uses the PCISA bus, allowing it to be paired with an ISA sound card. It should be well-suited for building a retro SBC desktop PC.

this seems like a fun project, would be good to see it in action with DOS, 9x etc

dukeofurl wrote on 2026-03-17, 01:33:

Got this unusual Gateway model today. Its a PII 266 manufactured in June 1998. Intel Slot 1 motherboard with 2 isa slots. I'd love to make it a pentium 3 machine as I don't have one of those yet... but I have a suspicion the motherboard is a 440lx that only supprots a 66mhz fsb rather than a 440bx, so between that and the bios referring to 1997, not sure I have ready support for Pentium IIIs on this board.

"The company also announced the E3110-1233 system with a 233-MHz Pentium II, 32MB of memory, a 3.2GB hard disk drive, a 12X CD-ROM, and a 17-inch monitor would be priced at $1,979. The E-series is Gateway's line of business desktop PCs." Quote from 1997.
Looks like it was there attempt to crack the corporate market... Never seen one before. Nice/Niche depending on your point of view 😀

dukeofurl wrote on 2026-03-17, 01:33:

Got this unusual Gateway model today. Its a PII 266 manufactured in June 1998. Intel Slot 1 motherboard with 2 isa slots. I'd love to make it a pentium 3 machine as I don't have one of those yet... but I have a suspicion the motherboard is a 440lx that only supprots a 66mhz fsb rather than a 440bx, so between that and the bios referring to 1997, not sure I have ready support for Pentium IIIs on this board.

Its a curious case design. It looks like it would be a conventional metal case horizontal desktop, but in reality, only the very top panel is metal (resting on the internal metal chassis) and the sides are plastic held into the metal chassis themselves by 4 brittle looking clips. I'll have to remember not to put much weight on those, I've seen several similar models for sale online missing one or both of these side panels.

The attachment gatewaypii.jpg is no longer available

If it has the 440LX chipset, it won't work with any P3 CPU whatsoever.