Possibly. I'll try a post card and see if it's getting stuck on something.

Tried to run a Diagnostic Disk on my Apple IIc only to find out it had come in contact with a magnet somewhere in transit, seller was super helpful and set another out immediately though so just more waiting for those final checks.

Instead of that I messed around on my socket AM2.5 Windows XP build and played some Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Command and Conquer Generals (beat the USA campaign even.) It's kind of incredible how fond I am of this generation of hardware. A totally over the top case, motherboard/ram/gpu/UV reactive plastics/ect all coming together in just the best way. Shopped around for a CPU cooler for that PC too but it's really hard to find something with a fancy shroud and colored plastics/clear colored plastics/UV reactive anything on ebay. I never really noticed how depressing CPU coolers look in general.

Alesia wrote on 2026-08-18, 04:49:

Shopped around for a CPU cooler for that PC too but it's really hard to find something with a fancy shroud and colored plastics/clear colored plastics/UV reactive anything on ebay. I never really noticed how depressing CPU coolers look in general.

How thirsty is the CPU in that? If it's 65W or lower you could try one of these, https://www.cablesalesusa.com/product/magic-c … 3-pin-evercool/

Which in theory should go on an AM2, if it goes on a 939. Might have to mix and match mounting hardware with something else though.

Then also, you could experiment with highlighter pens on random plastics to see how well they coat on it and react. The oldschool glowy trick in early watercooling days was to use some "highlighter juice" in the clear tube watercooling loop coolant fill with UV.

But you can also buy clear plastic fans independently and swap the fan out on a sink that uses standard 80mm.

Edit: Hmmm think you mentioned Phenom elsewhere, not too many of those around 65W, apart from a sprinkle of low end X4s, X3s and the Regor core X2s, which are a logical pick for single and maybe dual core in XP gaming.

EditII: It'll be a comfort zone thing about how hot you like your CPU, this sink seems to do about 0.38 Centigrade per Watt, so assuming 30C case ambients, will run mid 40s on a 65W, around 50C on an 80W and mid 50s to just below 60 on a 95W.

Windows XP gave me grief today.

There were issues initialising R200 drivers, Windows applying impossible settings, and my screens turning off. I went through the old routine of trying BIOS adjustments, reseating the card, alternative drivers, while painfully watching the screen deteriorate on each reboot as Windows blanked various parts out before the monitor threw a fit and went into standby. Even in VGA mode if I made any adjustments to display settings (e.g. 16 bit colour) the screen would garble. I searched old websites for clues (took a while because Archive.org has been offline with a power cut), rediscovering the famous "fix" is to reinstall Windows. Urgh..

I didn't do that. Instead, I spend far too much time in safe mode cleaning up in the registry, slimming the startup routines, deleting drivers attributed to ATi, etc. What fixed it? I am not sure.

But, the failing ATi Catalyst drivers displayed "RADEON 9100 SERIES" while the mysteriously working driver displays "VisionTek Xtasy Radeon 9100," version 6.14.10.6483 (29/09/2004).

So, hmm.. I need to make a backup of this driver .. and that means the grief is not yet over. Edit: I think the workaround is to not have Catalyst installed. When XP requests a driver, point it to the Catalyst file named xp*, and watch it install generic RADEON 9100 SERIES that don't work. Then reboot into Save Mode, enter Device Manager and uninstall RADEON 9100 SERIES. Reboot into Windows, and this time XP will ... with generic drivers gone ... correctly detect and install the specific driver for your specific vendor. That feels about right for this period of ATi.

But on the bright side I do like the new fan on what I assume is the original heatsink; does anyone have a verified photo of VisionTek Xtasy to compare?

Replacing a tantalum capacitor on an XT motherboard, it exploded and caught fire last night.

Will also be drilling out the rivets on the power supply when I get home from work to inspect in there as the fan doesn't currently spin.

I stuck a post analysis card in one of the available ISA slots. It stopped on code C1, which is related to memory according to a sheet I found on TRW.

This could mean one of the following, from most likely to least likely:

1. The SDR memory isn't getting enough power (bad caps).
2. The memory and/or memory slots are dirty/damaged
3. The CPU, SB, or bios is corrupted. (This, I have doubts about since the post analysis card worked just fine.

Past couple of days: I traded a Compaq Presario SR1910NX case for two AMD motherboards - an Asus M3A78-T and an MSI 970A-G46. I tested my Athlon II X2 220 from the $15 CPU box and after unbending some pins it worked, but unfortunately it is an AE stepping and is a proper dual core - not a reject quad core. the MSI auto overclocker on the 970A board ran it at 3.43GHz and I got benchmark numbers in Cinebench... definitely an increase from the stock 2.8GHz except in R20 from some reason. As for the M3A78-T, I think I'm going to decommission my 775i65G R3.0 with the Pentium E5800 as a proper PC (put it away in storage) and use the M3A78-T as my legacy PC with floppy and IDE.

Also, I bought a brand new PS/2 optical mouse - a Perixx Perimice 209. It's a bit small for my liking, and a bit fast for old computers given its modern high DPI sensor, but I do like that it's readily available brand new for $10.

A Western Digital Protégé 40GB drive (WD400EB) wasn't detected by the BIOS at all. The platters were spinning, and you could hear the actuator moving and initializing the drive.

Removing the circuit board and cleaning the contacts was sufficient to get the drive detectable again. It has just completed the extensive test in WD's DLGDIAG.

I took the top plate off my PGA321 socket to take a look at the pins embedded in it. One of them (besides the alignment pin) appears to be missing. What would be a good way to add it back in?

Me, I'd identify it, and if it's ground or vcc, don't bother. If it's not, steal a ground or vcc.

edit: or n/c of course, there's maybe one or two of those, could have got lucky.

Well, that's fun. The pin is still there, but it's bent enough to have gotten trapped UNDER the socket. Should be an easy enough fix.

Finally assembled my little Frankestein nForce 4 on socket 754 & 8800GT OC edition. XP era games just fly.

Don't you just hate it when you replaced the RIFA caps in a power supply but missed a third one?

Yes this was a 'My First RIFA' blow up experience. I got a Philips :YES system recently, and suddenly it pretended to be a smoke machine. Not to mention a loud 'tearing' sound following a big explosion. My heart was in my throat.

Last week I actually built a working and small linux distribution (an image that can be copied to a n SD card) which works on my K6-3, using one of the latest long term kernel (6.6 if I remember correctly). It's derived from the buildroot project, has GRUB as a boot loader, the kernel with drivers for the voodoo 3, Aladdin 5 chipset, SB Live and 3C905, some user space utilities (bash, network tools etc...) mostly from busybox and a working network. The challenge is to find the right combination of kernel and tools still wanting to compile without CMOV instruction. I'm surprised the CLI version only uses 21MB of RAM. I'm currently in the process of building a version with the fluxbox GUI.

Out of left field socket i810 370 build. I had this Half-height Voodoo 4500 solution looking for a problem.

1Ghz Coppermine 133FSB
256MB PC-133
ZXC64 Voodoo 4500 (Mini ME)
Intel 10/100
Used the Via Vinyl driver the has great windows DOS box support.

Just this past Friday, I got a bunch of PCI cards for free off the same guy I got the R9K Pro All-in-Wonder from. One of the cards was an AGP thing, a Dell GeForce4 Ti4200! Tested it in my AGP testbench and it seems to work just fine!

Outlink to imgur album.

Dothan Burger wrote on Yesterday, 23:02:

Used the Via Vinyl driver the has great windows DOS box support.

Which one - you mean genuine VIA or another one?

versawizkid2002 wrote on Today, 08:36:

Just this past Friday, I got a bunch of PCI cards for free off the same guy I got the R9K Pro All-in-Wonder from. One of the car […]
Show full quote

Just this past Friday, I got a bunch of PCI cards for free off the same guy I got the R9K Pro All-in-Wonder from. One of the cards was an AGP thing, a Dell GeForce4 Ti4200! Tested it in my AGP testbench and it seems to work just fine!

Outlink to imgur album.

4200s usually make better 4600s than 4600s do, due to not having BGA RAM that desolders itself.

Minutemanqvs wrote on Yesterday, 17:55:

Last week I actually built a working and small linux distribution (an image that can be copied to a n SD card) which works on my K6-3, using one of the latest long term kernel (6.6 if I remember correctly). It's derived from the buildroot project, has GRUB as a boot loader, the kernel with drivers for the voodoo 3, Aladdin 5 chipset, SB Live and 3C905, some user space utilities (bash, network tools etc...) mostly from busybox and a working network. The challenge is to find the right combination of kernel and tools still wanting to compile without CMOV instruction. I'm surprised the CLI version only uses 21MB of RAM. I'm currently in the process of building a version with the fluxbox GUI.

Would you be willing to share this on a public repo when it's finished?

Kahenraz wrote on Today, 14:07:

Minutemanqvs wrote on Yesterday, 17:55:

Last week I actually built a working and small linux distribution (an image that can be copied to a n SD card) which works on my K6-3, using one of the latest long term kernel (6.6 if I remember correctly). It's derived from the buildroot project, has GRUB as a boot loader, the kernel with drivers for the voodoo 3, Aladdin 5 chipset, SB Live and 3C905, some user space utilities (bash, network tools etc...) mostly from busybox and a working network. The challenge is to find the right combination of kernel and tools still wanting to compile without CMOV instruction. I'm surprised the CLI version only uses 21MB of RAM. I'm currently in the process of building a version with the fluxbox GUI.

Would you be willing to share this on a public repo when it's finished?

Yes, I’ll also publish the build instructions. The only thing compared to a « standard » Linux distribution is that you have no package management, what you compile in your image (it’s done via a container) is what you get.