First post, by andrea
Hello to all 😀 , after lurking this site for a long time I've finally decided to register and post about my K6 computer.
I call it a "meh" computer because its parts were chosen mainly on a "what can I get for free and/or €verylittle", rather than going for the best. Still, all things considered, I feel like it's a nice honest machine, and it could be a lot worse (i.e. it's not a PC-chips with a chipset of dubious provenance, and its cache seems to be real).
Spec-wise its parts are:
- A DFI P5BTX/L Rev B+ (i430TX)
- AMD K6-2 (CXT) 333/AFR-66 (Running at 83*4,5 and 2,6V for 375 MHz)
- 96 MB of random RAM (64 MB PC133 and 32 MB of PC66)
- Diamond Monster 3D Voodoo 1 4 MB
- ATI Rage XL 8 MB (one of those cheap ebay ones)
- 3com 3C905B-TX NIC
- Generic Yamaha YMF-718 Soundcard
- LG 52x CD-ROM, one of those that used to be everywhere
- 40 GB Maxtor Fireball 3 Slim HDD (only disk I had that didn't complain of a 41+ MHz PCI Bus)
- 3,5" floppy (i think it's either Alps or Mitsumi, can't remember)
- Average AT minitower chassis
- All running First Edition Windows 98
Side view, if you look closely you can also see a very high tech CPU fan speed controller.
Rear View
Incredibly noisy completed picture
System properties
After building this computer I would like to add a few things:
The Rage XL isn't half as bad as I would have expected it to be, but if you buy an ebay special be aware that they (or at least mine, but I think they're all made by the same people using salvaged chips and the cheapest pcb they can get away with. It's not like there's a massive market for them) need a PCI slot that provides 3,3 V. This mainboard did not. A first test involved a china-special DC-DC converter and a wire soldered to the Rage's voltage regulator. This worked but the picture was quite shaky, probably due to inadequate filtering. After replacing the main filter cap (100 μF 6,3 V IIRC) with a bigger one (1000 μF 6,3 V, probably too much but what I had on hand) the noise went away.
After measuring the current draw on the 3,3V converter and finding out it was very low, I realised that there must be a 3,3 V regulator already on the motherboard for the CPU I/O, SDRAM and the like. Once i found it, I soldered a couple wires going from it to the pins that are supposed to provide 3,3 V on the PCI slot the card's in (they were otherwise NC) so now the whole thing works just like a bought one.
Also they seem to work only with later driver revisions, at least in this configuration. If you want one to play with ATI3DCIF stuff maybe these aren't for you.
The motherboard: when I first got it gave me the same feeling I had with another old (old as in before the UV-everything LanParties) DFI board. I can't really explain it, but it was something like "I guess it works but it doesn't look all that trustworthy". On a whim I decided to replace all the no-name capacitors around the CPU with ones salvaged from a dead ASUS A7S-VM. On paper this seemed like a good idea: They're only 17 years old, rather than 21, they're from a good brand (a mixture of Rubycon and NCC, with a couple of Panasonics thrown in just because), they didn't live all their life touching the heatsink of a linear voltage regulator and/or CPU, and they're 1500 rather than "1000" μF. Well, after doing this mod the motherboard works like new if not better! Before it would crash if you just looked at it funny (and didn't even think about POSTing at 83 Mhz FSB no matter what was the Vcore), whereas now it runs rock solid at those very same 83 MHz.
The chassis: I don't know if the designers were sadists or if the metal was stamped by Gillette, but it enjoys slicing fingers. A lot. So if you have one, be careful.
I also removed the full-lenght card holder that clipped on the front metal and drilled a 76mm hole for a 80 mm fan.
Thank you all for reading and sorry if there are any mistakes, as English is not my native language. 😀
