That's definitely faster than a stock P3-1400 with 512kB L2 cache, nice. I must have a Celeron 1300 laying somewhere, with a broken pin, but works...

PcBytes wrote on 2026-04-20, 18:42:

PD2JK wrote on 2026-04-20, 15:02:

Building my 'ultimate' Pentium 3 system comes almost to an end. […]
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Building my 'ultimate' Pentium 3 system comes almost to an end.

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Fractal Pop case with glass panel
Abit BX133-RAID
Pentium III-S 1400 with upgradeware 370GU underneath
256MB PC133 CL2
Asus GeForce 3 Ti500
Auroral Vortex 2 SQ2500
SB Live!
160GB WD CaviarHDD
LG DVD optical

Neat, I'm also on a BX133-RAID except I went with a Tualeron since it's cheaper to find at high speeds. I'm probably dropping a GF2 Ti on it, although a 3 Ti would've been my choice initially as well, even if my Tualeron 1300 runs @ 1733MHz.

Wowzers! I was thrilled enough just to get my BX + Tualeron system working as it was, never considered pushing it past spec. Unfortunately it's on a Gigabyte GA-6BA; pretty sure it's strictly jumpers and can't go beyond 100 fsb.

I'm pretty committed to the "maxed out baby at" bit with that one though, so I'll probably leave it as is.

Looking into getting a sata card for my Athlon XP machine. Which ones would be recommended for Windows 2000?

Or would it be better to consider soldering the controller chip and ports directly to the board? It's an MSI K7N2 board, and has two unpopulated connectors for SATA. I don't know which chipset to use, however.

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-04-21, 14:23:

Looking into getting a sata card for my Athlon XP machine. Which ones would be recommended for Windows 2000?

Or would it be better to consider soldering the controller chip and ports directly to the board? It's an MSI K7N2 board, and has two unpopulated connectors for SATA. I don't know which chipset to use, however.

I went down the path of PCI SATA cards, then swapped to simple IDE->SATA adapters because there are glitches/limitations with every solution.

giantenemycat wrote on 2026-04-19, 04:04:

I previously thought this was the only photo that "shows" my old family PC, which I've been on a years long quest to identify.

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Just using my phone camera for now, I was able to get this result from the negative.

Isn't that the comfiest looking chair you've ever seen for a PC corner?

MattRocks wrote on 2026-04-21, 14:54:

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-04-21, 14:23:

Looking into getting a sata card for my Athlon XP machine. Which ones would be recommended for Windows 2000?

Or would it be better to consider soldering the controller chip and ports directly to the board? It's an MSI K7N2 board, and has two unpopulated connectors for SATA. I don't know which chipset to use, however.

I went down the path of PCI SATA cards, then swapped to simple IDE->SATA adapters because there are glitches/limitations with every solution.

What about adding ports to the board?

Someone was selling a Commodore 1702 monitor for 70 bucks . Seemed like a great deal. It took a long time to arrange a time to meet. I asked about condition and all that stuff and I dont quite recall what he said but he said it worked im sure, but when I picked it up the power cord was cut . I talked him down to 40 dollars.

well I finally had time yesterday to fix the cut power cable.

I used the power cord from an old RF converter I had and was about to throw away. It came in very handy.

I think the picture and sound are a but nicer that my 1701. and yes I adjusted both of them while I had them open.

Great 40 dollar purchase . Though I spend 200 on the 1701 around xmas time.

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-04-21, 15:07:

MattRocks wrote on 2026-04-21, 14:54:

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-04-21, 14:23:

Looking into getting a sata card for my Athlon XP machine. Which ones would be recommended for Windows 2000?

Or would it be better to consider soldering the controller chip and ports directly to the board? It's an MSI K7N2 board, and has two unpopulated connectors for SATA. I don't know which chipset to use, however.

I went down the path of PCI SATA cards, then swapped to simple IDE->SATA adapters because there are glitches/limitations with every solution.

What about adding ports to the board?

I don't know about that and its way beyond my competency in electronics. I'd be concerned that a dependency is missing either mechanically (e.g. resistors) or in the firmware.

I was testing out a cheap AliExpress RGB adapter for my old PC Engine CoreGrafx console earlier. I had it hooked up to my 4K living room TV using a GBSC Scaler (RGB SCART to HDMI) and it looked and played great! It's nice to have a mindless blasting session on old games such as Blazing Lazers, Soldier Blade (love the music) and Bomberman etc.

I guess the retro activity was playing the old console itself. I personally think the appearance of the console has aged pretty well considering it was released in 1989! Mine doesn't have a hint of discolouration either.

Successfully revived the second of three industrial P4 motherboards I've been working on recently. This one is an Advantech AIMB-742 board, one of a pair that I have.

I replaced the KZG capacitors with polymer caps. Four of the six had been leaking and were toast. I also had to replace some components I'd cannibalized while trying to fix another AIMB-742 motherboard.

The board does have some nasty rust on the chokes near the CPU socket and MOSFETs. Even so, the voltages all test normal and the board booted up just fine.

It's fun to get 3000+ USD (at release) cards for a fraction of these amounts of money. But I don't understand the choice of materials sometimes. For instance these rubberized looking plastics that start to melt after 10 or 20 years. The same thing what happens to some ThinkPads.

So l gave this Quadro FX 5800 the alcohol treatment:

The shiny spots can only be seen when you hold it in reflecting light, so good enough.

The hunt for a second card begins...

Shponglefan wrote on 2026-04-22, 00:44:

Successfully revived the second of three industrial P4 motherboards I've been working on recently. This one is an Advantech AIMB-742 board, one of a pair that I have.

I replaced the KZG capacitors with polymer caps. Four of the six had been leaking and were toast. I also had to replace some components I'd cannibalized while trying to fix another AIMB-742 motherboard.

The board does have some nasty rust on the chokes near the CPU socket and MOSFETs. Even so, the voltages all test normal and the board booted up just fine.

nice rescue and great platform for all kinds of late 32 bit goodness! Sometimes the poorer parts of a board, a bit of rust, evidence of leakage or damp, doesn't seem to do anything to the functioning! 😀

Shponglefan wrote on 2026-04-22, 00:44:

Successfully revived the second of three industrial P4 motherboards I've been working on recently. This one is an Advantech AIMB […]
Show full quote

Successfully revived the second of three industrial P4 motherboards I've been working on recently. This one is an Advantech AIMB-742 board, one of a pair that I have.

I replaced the KZG capacitors with polymer caps. Four of the six had been leaking and were toast. I also had to replace some components I'd cannibalized while trying to fix another AIMB-742 motherboard.

The board does have some nasty rust on the chokes near the CPU socket and MOSFETs. Even so, the voltages all test normal and the board booted up just fine.

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The attachment Advantech AIMB-742 Motherboard no 2 - successful POST.jpg is no longer available

The attachment Advantech AIMB-742 motherboard no 2 - first boot.jpg is no longer available

Great motherboard, congratulations 🎉🍾🎈
The peculiarity is obviously, the presence of ISA slots, something that is not normally available on P4s.

Today I'm very happy cause I finally managed to repair a PCI Voodoo Banshee I got a year ago or so, for next to nothing on my hometown flea market, but... it never worked 🙁

It seemed to be a bios problem, but repairing it was beyond my knowledge. Some months ago I tried to desolder chip and program it again with my T48, but no luck. Even tried to solder a new bios chip, but it did not do the trick. Also, in the process I ripped off a couple of pads so had to put some bodge wires... But some weeks ago, I attempted to take it again (never give up with 3dfx cards haha), and did a bios dump being a secondary card, using uniflash with -pcirom option.

When showing this dump to Gemini, it said it was A2 line always at 0, due to the pattern of the data. I've measured all traces multiple times but everything seemed ok, until I ordered some of the tiny LCX245 these cards carry and... after replacing the one that takes lines A0-A7 from Bios to the actual Banshee chip... It's alive!! I cannot be happier to be able to take this little card back to life 😀

gerry wrote on 2026-04-22, 11:13:

nice rescue and great platform for all kinds of late 32 bit goodness! Sometimes the poorer parts of a board, a bit of rust, evidence of leakage or damp, doesn't seem to do anything to the functioning! 😀

Indeed! I'm was pleasantly surprised it works, but I'm not going to question it! 😁

PC@LIVE wrote on 2026-04-22, 19:17:

Great motherboard, congratulations 🎉🍾🎈
The peculiarity is obviously, the presence of ISA slots, something that is not normally available on P4s.

Thank you!

I do really like these industrial P4 boards with ISA slots. I feel that it's an underrated platform for retro builds.

mmx_91 wrote on 2026-04-22, 20:07:

When showing this dump to Gemini, it said it was A2 line always at 0, due to the pattern of the data. I've measured all traces multiple times but everything seemed ok, until I ordered some of the tiny LCX245 these cards carry and... after replacing the one that takes lines A0-A7 from Bios to the actual Banshee chip... It's alive!!

Pretty great use of AI.

Decided that 70+ hours of memtest86 was enough to deem my 4x256 MiB Samsung PC133U I got here: Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today a working success. Yet another gigabyte of memory for a BX board 😎

[Edit:] Test run on an ASUS CUBX-L

mmx_91 wrote on 2026-04-22, 20:07:

Today I'm very happy cause I finally managed to repair a PCI Voodoo Banshee...

Congrats, and they are very underrated cards. For boards with SGRAM, there was a utility that exposed an SG mode that enabled something that closed the gap on Voodoo3.

Recently, I replaced the cooler on my GeForce Ti4200 8x with a “universal” VGA cooler from AliExpress. The mounting holes don’t line up, so it’s secured with only two screws. It’s not any quieter, and it’s definitely not more stylish because of the awful red color, but the temperatures are slightly better.

The appearance of the cooler reminds me a bit of the Twintech 9600GT XT, although your doesn't seem to have a heatpipe running through the fins. Mine got noisy years ago; fortunately, I was able to obtain the exact identical part of the fan (or a 100% clone), reasonably priced. Now it's cool and quiet again, but I haven't used the card much since.