giantenemycat wrote on 2026-03-22, 21:18:

Have set up two contenders for my alternate-timeline-2006-second-hand-cheapo-PC. […]
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Have set up two contenders for my alternate-timeline-2006-second-hand-cheapo-PC.

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The MESH has an ASUS A7V-E - Socket A (VIA KT133). Athlon 1100, 256MB SDRAM.

On the right in that lovely tacky case, we have a Gigabyte GA-8SIMLH - Socket 478 (SiS 651). Pentium 4 2.0 (Northwood), 512MB DDR (in single-channel for the jank).

Which would you pick?

I'd put the AMD in the blue case 😉

Looked through my boxes of IC tubes, for a 6264 (8k SRAM), lots of 62256s (32k) but no 6264s! Then I "remembered" the "long forgotten" boxes of ICs in a back corned of my workshop and went through then... found 5 6264s (yay!) but also a some other pretty interesting old ICs:

Several 2016 (2k SRAM) and 5516 (2k CMOS SRAM)

2x 486 CPUs - I didn't think I had any x86 prior to Pentium anymore!

3x 8080, 2x 8085, and 2x Z80 CPUs

4x 68000 CPUs (original 64pin DIPs)

1x 1702 EPROM (256byte) I knew I still had a few 2708s (1k) but I've not seen a 1702 in years (this is the first EPROM type I ever worked with!)

1x 1771 floppy disk controller (very early - might be the 1st WD)

Lots more "old stuff" but these were the ones which stood out to me.

MattRocks wrote on Today, 00:36:

I'd put the AMD in the blue case 😉

I thought of that, but I would feel weird gutting the MESH. I got it from a very nice man with a very nice Philips 107E CRT for a very nice price.

This manual he still had is the main reason I don't wanna mess with it, gotta preserve that slice of history. Windows ME and hard drive issues...sounds about right. Come to think of it, that probably explains why there's a 120GB HDD in there. That would have been crazy for 2001.

Ozzuneoj wrote on Yesterday, 23:43:

Whelp... I had already reassembled the GRID system when I got the idea to make my own SIPPs, so I ended up being a bit off with […]
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Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-03-21, 20:14:

Yeah the SIPP sockets are very cramped in this system. […]
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BitWrangler wrote on 2026-03-21, 12:02:

I think custom is gonna be the way then, all the SIPPs I have come across are more like 15-20mm, so shorter ones must be super rare, but I've seen ~10mm high SIMM. There are angled SIMM slots though, but if you haven't got horizontal clearance those will be out too.

For games, if you've got an inverse function key or button, that makes things easier, I have seen some that let you cycle the colors/greyscales. Maybe also there is a TSR for that. The Wolfenstein3D CGA mod will probably run nice on current RAM. FastDoom has gained CGA modes, but needs 4MB. Other stuff, there was some 1987ish to 1990ish games that came out with CGA but then in budget rereleases 90-93 only had VGA. Some stuff I can think of in CGA is StarGoose, Outrun, Elite, Prince of Persia... there's also that big thread on here about CGA games on Mono. But yeah, apart from FastDoom, I can't think of anything that demands more than 1MB. I don't suppose you noticed the video chip when you were last in there? If it's a paradise or something you might get more than plain CGA out of it, not that you'll notice too much benefit, but there's maybe a game or two that had a mode between CGA and VGA.

edit: thread Best CGA & Hercules monochrome games

Yeah the SIPP sockets are very cramped in this system.

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I have a decent assortment of very small 1MB SIMMs, so I'm hoping I can use some of these.

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The ones on the right are around 12.7mm tall, but given the CPU and video limitations I really don't think 8MB would provide much more functionality than 4MB, and I would prefer not to break up a matching set of 8. So I am leaning toward using this set of 4, which are around 14.5mm tall.

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These IBM branded memory chips seem uncommon and I cant find a datasheet for them but according to this page these should be 1MB sticks. Of course I will have to install them to find out if they are compatible, but don't think it will be too hard to solder some pins to them. I will try to figure out beforehand if I actually have an extra 2mm of space in there... but I might be able to install four sticks at a slight angle even if they are a bit too tall.

I am looking forward to this though. I don't know why, but having a system upgraded to the point that it is as balanced and as useful as it realistically could be makes it seem "complete" and gives me a good feeling. Even if it works okay with 1MB and no 387, having 4MB and a 387 installed just feels right.

As for the video chip, it is visible in the first picture above. It is a Yamaha V6366C-J, similar to the one here. It is apparently MDA, Hercules and CGA compatible. I didn't look into it too much, but Checkit said that the system has 16KB of video memory available, so it seems limited to CGA.

The biggest limiting factor in the system I think will be the tiny hard drive. I think I have around 18MB free right now with hardly anything on it. That doesn't leave a lot of room for activities. For me, part of this computer's charm is that it is still running what is likely its original hard drive from 37 years ago, and it sounds cool... Of course, it would be nice to have a CF card or something in there to give more space, performance and reliability. For all I know this drive could be riddled with bad sectors or have other problems... I just haven't used it enough to know.

Interestingly, in the years since I got this machine back in 2020 a TON of work has been done by others to overcome several limitations. At the time there was no reliable way to use a CF card with them due to some BIOS bugs, but this guy seems to have figured out a way to patch the bugs relatively easily. I will consider doing this at some point and switching to a CF card. The rabbit hole is getting deep quickly though. All this started with me just digging this thing out of storage to show to my daughter a few days ago... 🤣

Whelp... I had already reassembled the GRID system when I got the idea to make my own SIPPs, so I ended up being a bit off with the size of the SIMM. These ones are definitely too big. They are too tall once assembled. And it looks like all SIMMs are too wide since they are meant to snap into SIMM slots and this system has only a few millimeters of space on either side of the SIPPs.

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The two top ones are my attempts to convert SIMMs to SIPPs. I think these would work totally fine for a larger board, so I'll keep them.

The middle one is the original 256K SIPP from the GRIDcase 1530.

The next one down looks like it has no traces in the empty space at the sides, so should be able to be cut down to the size of the tiny SIPP. By comparison, the one under it also doesn't have much there but it looks like there is at least a copper layer in there, where the other one seems to have nothing.

What do you guys think? Could I just cut the ends of that SIMM (4th one down) to be the size of the SIPP without it causing an issue?

EDIT: Doh... I just tested them for fitment and these pins don't even slot into the ones in the GRID motherboard. They are close, but the pins on the old SIPPs are even smaller diameter than these precise round header pins apparently. That really stinks. I don't know of anything else that would work, aside from sanding these ones down, which would be tedious to say the least.

I wonder if I could just swap out the memory chips themselves? I have a big bag of 72pin SIMMs that don't have matches, so one or two of those would likely be good donors.

... the rabbit hole is getting very deep now.

Yes!!

This ended up being the easiest solution. After practicing pulling SOJ chips off of a 72pin SIMM and reattaching some it seemed like something I could do without destroying anything. So I pulled all 8 chips off of the SIMM, pulled the chips off of each SIPP and swapped them out. All I used was a bit of thinned out flux, long angled tweezers, a heat gun and a tiny bit of solder paste for the legs that didn't want to flow with the existing solder (applied as needed with a super tiny flat blade screw driver).

I figured this method would be the safest and least likely to cause any damage to the PCB or solder pads since I am not that great with desoldering braid and don't have much experience using solder paste on multi-leg chips (yet). I think I made the right choice since I had basically no problems at all.

After completing each stick I tested every pin with my DMM and everything was connected.

I inserted the four SIPPs and the system booted right up and immediately found 4MB of RAM!

I'm so happy this worked! This thing is one step closer to being as good as it really ever needs to be.

I have had a bit of trouble getting a patched ROM working properly (to fix BIOS issues related to fast hard drives or CF cards), but I will take another stab at that tomorrow. Once I have that working I'll swap the hard drive for a 512MB CF card. Then I should be able to load this thing up with just about any game or program that uses CGA or monochrome graphics. Should be a fantastic machine for that. 😀

For historical preservation the original memory chips, BIOS ROMs and hard drive will be safely stored in a labeled box... because I can't really imagine doing this any other way. @_@