RetroLizard wrote on 2026-04-09, 02:56:

For anybody who has a Radeon X850: what is the weird circled connector for? It looks like something you would find on a sound card for things like CD_IN.

On ATI X series cards with VIVO chip, this connector is used to connect composite video input from the front panel on the case, if the PC is equipped with it. You could thus record video from, for example, a camera for further processing in a PC.

This is going to be a dirty day!

I have now lifted the lid on the first PC I ever bought. It started as a P200MMX, 32MB EDO, S3 Trio64v+, ESS AudioDrive. After several upgrades I had enough spare parts to rebuild it as P200MMX, PC66 SDRAM, S3 ViRGE DX, Guillemot Maxi Gamer 3D, Ensoniq PCIAudio. The box was then a hand-me-down to my dad.

Here it is, that very same rebuild - recovered like a barn find and full of insects. It looks like the AT style PSU burned out, which explains why the PC was set aside.

One capacitor has a very strange iridescent colour?!

I'm going to start cleaning it up. As my DIY workbench probably won't be as sophisticated as yours, please scream if you see me making a big mistake..

That cap doesn't look to happy. No harm in checking if the board works with it, in doubt I'd change it.

tehsiggi wrote on 2026-04-09, 10:07:

That cap doesn't look to happy. No harm in checking if the board works with it, in doubt I'd change it.

Thank you. I was unsure because it's not bulged and that's not what my other leaked caps look like.

I have found another odd thing in the box: Zoom in on the photo to see unexpected green polymer raised up.

Due to the cramped AT layout I needed to remove the SDRAM modules before I could remove the burned out PSU. It turns out the machine had 196Mb PC100 SDRAM, which fits my profile because I used to overclock and maybe PC100 was cheaper than PC66. The 64Mb module in the photo was the module closest to the burned out PSU and touching the IDE cables.

Oddity: The solder mask on the PCB appears to have morphed. I have never seen that happen before! I'm guessing this is vibration from PSU fan rubbing the cables on the PCB for years, but that's a new one on me.

After wiping the SDRAM, I think that's actually IDE cable polymer breaking down and absorbing green die from the PCB. It's still a new observation I hadn't come across before.

It seems I maxed out that old MMX. Hello sweetie, you'r not the ViRGE DX I thought you were.. 😁

So this a true 'snapshot-in-time' representative build of a Socket 7 PC. It is a Pentium 200 MMX, i430TX, 196Mb PC100, Creative Labs GeForce2 MX, Guillemot 3Dfx Voodoo, Ensoniq ES1370 (with a Sound Blaster sticker courtesy of Creative Labs). And, I have no idea what the CPU was running at because the actual jumpers set do not match the actual silkscreen options!

Now I wonder if I had Quake 3 Arena running on this? Nah, but I would have tried! I wonder how far it got..

Ydee wrote on 2026-04-09, 08:05:

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-04-09, 02:56:

For anybody who has a Radeon X850: what is the weird circled connector for? It looks like something you would find on a sound card for things like CD_IN.

On ATI X series cards with VIVO chip, this connector is used to connect composite video input from the front panel on the case, if the PC is equipped with it. You could thus record video from, for example, a camera for further processing in a PC.

Ah. So it's basically useless for my purposes.

Only a true barn find retro box needs a good scrub in fairy washing up liquid, and that concludes what I did today.

Also noted the AT button is irreparably eroded from use, and I estimate that button was pressed at least 4000 times. And found the CPU was actually clocked to 200MHz only.

Found out that softfsb works with my pii motherboard and can move the otherwise unconfigurable fsb from 66mhz to 80.

I completed messing with that emachines EL1300G today.

I was mistaken that its video chip was supported by NT4. Big disappointment. MCP61 chipset needs at least win2k.
Successfully cooked a win2k OEM cd with UniAtA baked on to get around the lack of IDE mode in the bios.
Installed Win2k, got all the drivers loaded, updated everything from windowsupdaterestored.

Created a new FAT32 partition with SVARDOS, formatted it with /S, but did not make it active.
Used winimage's bootpart to create a bootsector file, so I could put it in the boot.ini menu.
Copied the svardos packages archive to the newly made FAT32 volume. (having a NAS is very handy)
Manually unpacked the base svardos packages. (the installer wants to wipe partitions and other nasty things.)
Set up vsbhda, mtrrlfb, and pals. Copied on a smattering of test games.
took it for a spin. Works great.
Has an *actual* PC speaker, so setting that for games that need it, produces the *actually nostalgic* results.

Now I just need to find somebody that wants a retrogame rig.
(At least it's small, being a half-height SFF thing.)

Did some benchmark testing with a Pentium 4 HT 651 3.4GHZ (running at 2.4GHz) + IMB200 motherboard + Oak VGA graphics card. I wanted to see how slow I could get the system without using either ODCM or ACPI throttling.

With cache fully disabled, debug store + BTS enabled, 12x multiplier, and RAM set to DDR266, managed to get a 3D Bench score of 6.8 and PC Player Bench of 2.9. This seems well into 386 performance levels.

I wonder if it might be possible to get even lower scores with an older S478 Northwood processor. While lack multiplier adjustment options, they also have lower clocked processors like 1.8GHz or 2.0GHz.

I attempted (struggled) for many hours to get an Athlon XP system up so I could benchmark some different video cards. First tried to use CloneZilla to restore a Windows 2000 HDD image set at the second part of the install.

Had no luck with that, so I then attempted a manual install via cd. The hard drive seems to have died, so I'll have to try again.

RetroLizard wrote on Yesterday, 02:41:

I attempted (struggled) for many hours to get an Athlon XP system up so I could benchmark some different video cards. First tried to use CloneZilla to restore a Windows 2000 HDD image set at the second part of the install.

Had no luck with that, so I then attempted a manual install via cd. The hard drive seems to have died, so I'll have to try again.

Oh cool. Which graphics cards? If we can sync our Athlon boxes, maybe we can compare graphics card scores?

On the MMX, I have a sneaky feeling a G450 might outpace the GeForce2MX because for both the bottleneck will be upstream in driver pathways and the GeForce isn't going to be able to avoid using an OpenGL ICD optimised for later T&L settings whereas the G450 might cooperate with a lighter G400 MAX TurboGL optimised for the pre-T&L era (I assume specifically Quake III Arena) in the fleeting moment when Matrox actually cared about game performance.
Matrox G400/G450 Quake III Performance

There should be some similar thresholds with AthlonXP but obviously triggered by very different cards and workloads.

Yah if you get a good Matrox G4xx it's up around GF2 Ultra numbers, a bad one is below a good GF2MX400, but bad MX to good Matrox, difference might be large. One would hope a Creative Labs one would be pretty good. However it could be the case in brand name cards that the performance was strictly laddered to the range, whereas lower tier makers trying to make a name would crank GPU and RAM trying to make a name for themselves. Low end could be pretty wild for the amount of difference, nobbling by BOM shaving, nobbled to sell more profitable cards, or just let it do what it can do.

For their GeForce2MX, Creative Labs provided a loose heatsink in the box - and described its use as optional. I don't have the heatsink.

Today the metal of my AT case went swimming in the bathtub, was treated with IronX skincare, and is now tanning in the sun.

Then it dawned on me I don't have a PS1 keyboard - d'oh!

But I do have PS2 and USB backplates - sweet!

Does anyone know for sure whether or not a typical i430TX AWARD BIOS accepts a USB keyboard or PS2 keyboard on default settings? I haven't tried before.

Also, very sadly, I can see conclusively that the machine was actively used with the heatsink lifted onto the plastic holder instead of being on the CPU. That's painfully believable because I don't think my dad would have noticed. I might be trying to revive a machine that has already died multiple deaths.

MattRocks wrote on Yesterday, 08:52:

Oh cool. Which graphics cards? If we can sync our Athlon boxes, maybe we can compare graphics card scores? […]
Show full quote

RetroLizard wrote on Yesterday, 02:41:

I attempted (struggled) for many hours to get an Athlon XP system up so I could benchmark some different video cards. First tried to use CloneZilla to restore a Windows 2000 HDD image set at the second part of the install.

Had no luck with that, so I then attempted a manual install via cd. The hard drive seems to have died, so I'll have to try again.

Oh cool. Which graphics cards? If we can sync our Athlon boxes, maybe we can compare graphics card scores?

On the MMX, I have a sneaky feeling a G450 might outpace the GeForce2MX because for both the bottleneck will be upstream in driver pathways and the GeForce isn't going to be able to avoid using an OpenGL ICD optimised for later T&L settings whereas the G450 might cooperate with a lighter G400 MAX TurboGL optimised for the pre-T&L era (I assume specifically Quake III Arena) in the fleeting moment when Matrox actually cared about game performance.
Matrox G400/G450 Quake III Performance

There should be some similar thresholds with AthlonXP but obviously triggered by very different cards and workloads.

I'm gonna be trying out a Radeon X850. Likely a Geforce 6200 and Radeon 9800 as well.

RetroLizard wrote on Yesterday, 17:36:

MattRocks wrote on Yesterday, 08:52:

Oh cool. Which graphics cards? If we can sync our Athlon boxes, maybe we can compare graphics card scores? […]
Show full quote

RetroLizard wrote on Yesterday, 02:41:

I attempted (struggled) for many hours to get an Athlon XP system up so I could benchmark some different video cards. First tried to use CloneZilla to restore a Windows 2000 HDD image set at the second part of the install.

Had no luck with that, so I then attempted a manual install via cd. The hard drive seems to have died, so I'll have to try again.

Oh cool. Which graphics cards? If we can sync our Athlon boxes, maybe we can compare graphics card scores?

On the MMX, I have a sneaky feeling a G450 might outpace the GeForce2MX because for both the bottleneck will be upstream in driver pathways and the GeForce isn't going to be able to avoid using an OpenGL ICD optimised for later T&L settings whereas the G450 might cooperate with a lighter G400 MAX TurboGL optimised for the pre-T&L era (I assume specifically Quake III Arena) in the fleeting moment when Matrox actually cared about game performance.
Matrox G400/G450 Quake III Performance

There should be some similar thresholds with AthlonXP but obviously triggered by very different cards and workloads.

I'm gonna be trying out a Radeon X850. Likely a Geforce 6200 and Radeon 9800 as well.

What is your testing approach / what are you testing?

My working cards include
Radeon 9550
Radeon 9600
Radeon 9600Pro
Radeon 9700
Radeon 9700Pro
Radeon X1650
Radeon HD3650

I'm gonna try both 3DMark 2001 and 3D Mark '03, as well as CPU-Z for a cpu benchmark.

RetroLizard wrote on Yesterday, 19:22:

I'm gonna try both 3DMark 2001 and 3D Mark '03, as well as CPU-Z for a cpu benchmark.

Careful there. The site for CPU-Z has been compromised by some Russian jerkwad.

Ydee wrote on 2026-04-09, 08:05:

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-04-09, 02:56:

For anybody who has a Radeon X850: what is the weird circled connector for? It looks like something you would find on a sound card for things like CD_IN.

On ATI X series cards with VIVO chip, this connector is used to connect composite video input from the front panel on the case, if the PC is equipped with it. You could thus record video from, for example, a camera for further processing in a PC.

I have that same front panel and yellow connector on my Geforce 3 Ti200, both were parted from a Medion PC.

TechieDude wrote on Yesterday, 20:22:

RetroLizard wrote on Yesterday, 19:22:

I'm gonna try both 3DMark 2001 and 3D Mark '03, as well as CPU-Z for a cpu benchmark.

Careful there. The site for CPU-Z has been compromised by some Russian jerkwad.

Where else would I download it from?

Also the Athlon XP system is isolated. Not connected to any networks.