Not today... But a few days ago. I have a grab bag of AGP graphics cards which I didn't know the state of. Stuff I got over the years that went into storage before I moved. I went ahead and tested them now that I have a universal AGP motherboard.

TNT2 M64 32M - Gets to Windows desktop, good image. A nice spare. I haven't load tested it yet but I feel lucky.
Radeon 7000 32M DDR TV out - Dead as a doornail, my post card doesn't even give me a code 😉 Why would that be?
9600 XT 128M - Boots, gets to desktop, load tested in Doom 3.... Sweet!
FireGL X1-128 - Load tested in Doom 3... Sweet!!! I thought this one was toast when I packed it up, but that was years ago. No idea why I thought that.
X1050 256M - No luck, code for no video adapter. Too bad 🙁
HD 2400 Pro 256M - Boots, gets to desktop, not load tested yet. I'll do that tomorrow.

The 9600 working makes me think I will build a Socket A machine for Christmas.

Today I started a long process of preventing bit rot of my collection. I flashed a Leadtek FX 5700LE, pretty straight forward process with nvflash through DOS environment. My goal is to take care of 1 card every day, so I might be finished within a year or so 😀

Shader_BiH wrote on 2026-11-10, 22:45:

Today I started a long process of preventing bit rot of my collection. I flashed a Leadtek FX 5700LE, pretty straight forward process with nvflash through DOS environment. My goal is to take care of 1 card every day, so I might be finished within a year or so 😀

What's the approximate volume it takes up to store them all?
Nice project there. 😀

Nexxen wrote on 2026-11-10, 22:53:

Shader_BiH wrote on 2026-11-10, 22:45:

Today I started a long process of preventing bit rot of my collection. I flashed a Leadtek FX 5700LE, pretty straight forward process with nvflash through DOS environment. My goal is to take care of 1 card every day, so I might be finished within a year or so 😀

What's the approximate volume it takes up to store them all?
Nice project there. 😀

It's a project that is primarily motivated by fear actually, because I just learned about this bit rot thing few days ago...

Concerning the management of the collection, well I have two tall cupboards where I hold the cards, motherboards, and other stuff. One of them is only for video cards. So about 1 cubic meter, a bit less probably. The challenge is wanting to avoid packing every card in separate box. That practice takes up way too much space. So what I did in the end, is leave only boxed cards that way, all other are in bubble wrap or ESD bags, and than I put about 7-8 of them in 1 cardboard box, put a sticker on it so I know what's in there.

So my goal will also be to upload as many of these BIOS files as I can in the archive, so community might have some use of it as well. For me personally, it's all the same, I have to deal with them anyway 😀

Shader_BiH wrote on 2026-11-10, 23:07:

It's a project that is primarily motivated by fear actually, because I just learned about this bit rot thing few days ago... […]
Show full quote

Nexxen wrote on 2026-11-10, 22:53:

Shader_BiH wrote on 2026-11-10, 22:45:

Today I started a long process of preventing bit rot of my collection. I flashed a Leadtek FX 5700LE, pretty straight forward process with nvflash through DOS environment. My goal is to take care of 1 card every day, so I might be finished within a year or so 😀

What's the approximate volume it takes up to store them all?
Nice project there. 😀

It's a project that is primarily motivated by fear actually, because I just learned about this bit rot thing few days ago...

Concerning the management of the collection, well I have two tall cupboards where I hold the cards, motherboards, and other stuff. One of them is only for video cards. So about 1 cubic meter, a bit less probably. The challenge is wanting to avoid packing every card in separate box. That practice takes up way too much space. So what I did in the end, is leave only boxed cards that way, all other are in bubble wrap or ESD bags, and than I put about 7-8 of them in 1 cardboard box, put a sticker on it so I know what's in there.

So my goal will also be to upload as many of these BIOS files as I can in the archive, so community might have some use of it as well. For me personally, it's all the same, I have to deal with them anyway 😀

It's a good idea to backup the ROMs (esp. obscure variants), but I don't think flashing them for the sake of it will reduce chance of a future corruption and there is a finite number of times the chip can be flashed.

Added wooden skis to my old AM2 board I was evicting from the case to live in a tote. Heh it's just kind long feet to give it the height to keep card brackets up in the air. The spacers are dollar tree small cube beads. Yes I did use woodscrews, it's wood. On the bottom of those go double sided sticky foam pads, but it's not stuck down in the tote yet. Figured I'm not gonna touch it again for a year or so, so may as well leave the envelope unpierced and cut the holes when I want it halfassed setup. Though I can run it kind of in there without, got enough clearance to plug some things in.

Pics tomorrow if someone is interested but really not all that clear what I was doing.

Anyhoo, eviction successful now it all happens in modern as I install Ryzen board.

I probed ISA slots and other ISA related stuff, one by one.
Isn't there a 16bit card project for this that would display addresses and speed up the process?
I found Necroware's 8-bit only.
Tony's riser isn't what I'm looking for.

Anybody knows anything?

Like pre plug and play config?

If you want to figure out how win95 did it, there's one.
Linux probably has something similar in modprobe circa 1999

Nexxen wrote on 2026-11-11, 14:18:

I probed ISA slots and other ISA related stuff, one by one.
Isn't there a 16bit card project for this that would display addresses and speed up the process?
Anybody knows anything?

you want to sniff ISA? two Picos plugged butt-to-butt with Logicanalyser software.Im not sure if there already is ISA bus decoder, but it shouldnt be too hard to write

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-11-12, 14:26:

Nexxen wrote on 2026-11-11, 14:18:

I probed ISA slots and other ISA related stuff, one by one.
Isn't there a 16bit card project for this that would display addresses and speed up the process?
Anybody knows anything?

you want to sniff ISA? two Picos plugged butt-to-butt with Logicanalyser software.Im not sure if there already is ISA bus decoder, but it shouldnt be too hard to write

Just a plug-in card with holes and silk screen for each address.
I'm a simple man 😀

---

I was trying to modify the detecteed Vram on a 4650 with DDR2.
Something went wrong and now the card stops POST on FF 9A or 9B, I have to remove it to complete Post.
I moved a 2 ohms resistor from a +5V--Ground to a +12V--Ground. Maybe BIOS didn't like that.
I did it because I saw a card with 512MB in that position.
Well, that's for another time to check, card had issues with Vram and wasn't displaying correctly anyway. No tears for this one.

You probably moved the straps.

myne wrote on Yesterday, 12:56:

You probably moved the straps.

I know, but why stop posting? Ah.... I also saw that half the ram has many other SMDs not installed, it's not just one 2ohms. Noticed today. 🙁
I'll reflash and check. From 1GB to 512MB, I thought it would only shutdown an address line.
Probably I need the correct version for 512.
Now I don't believe it'll fix the Vram issue. I have to replace the other chip on the channel that died.

For a few € I can get much better. Well, at least I'm closing one of these projects I had laying around for way too much time.

Straps set more than the size.
You'll find brand, arrangement Eg 64x128 vs 128x64 and I believe often via the brand, a basic timings config that posts.

Dug out an old late 1990s Dell 15" CRT Monitor from my loft. Hasn't been used for probably 20 years and has been sitting upside down in the middle of my loft all that time. I plugged it in and connected 1 of my gaming PCs to it and it just worked perfectly, picture is still excellent. It should be ideal for 1 of my 1998 gaming builds on my upcoming LAN Party, supporting up to 1024x768 resolution.

Also had to bring down from the loft 6 of my 8 gaming PCs ready to set up. Hopefully I won't run in to too many issues when testing them all.

1 of my 2007 gaming PC builds decided to cause me some grief in testing yesterday, the performance was diabolical with games struggling to hit 30fps. I didn't have time to look into the problem last night, so I switched it on today to have a quick look - only to discover there's nothing wrong with it now, everything is working perfectly. It just fixed itself, temperamental thing!

myne wrote on Yesterday, 13:29:

Straps set more than the size.
You'll find brand, arrangement Eg 64x128 vs 128x64 and I believe often via the brand, a basic timings config that posts.

I bought 2 together, same model.
Pretty lucky on that but I'll have to read the bios and flash it. Hoping I don't have to desolder anything (I don't think so).
It's boring boredom - 🤣
--

Now I have a ATI 9250 to troubleshoot, but requires glued heatsink to be removed.
Thankfully many went through the process before me and I have quite a few methods to try. 😀
Love this place.

Nexxen wrote on Yesterday, 16:13:

I bought 2 together, same model. Pretty lucky on that but I'll have to read the bios and flash it. Hoping I don't have to desold […]
Show full quote

myne wrote on Yesterday, 13:29:

Straps set more than the size.
You'll find brand, arrangement Eg 64x128 vs 128x64 and I believe often via the brand, a basic timings config that posts.

I bought 2 together, same model.
Pretty lucky on that but I'll have to read the bios and flash it. Hoping I don't have to desolder anything (I don't think so).
It's boring boredom - 🤣
--

Now I have a ATI 9250 to troubleshoot, but requires glued heatsink to be removed.
Thankfully many went through the process before me and I have quite a few methods to try. 😀
Love this place.

Interesting case there... Glued together, or is it just dried out and stuck?... I've heard that there are some compounds that act like glue, but didn't really came across such case. So how do you remove those... heating or something else?

Today I just made a quick test of DDR2 I picked up at the flea market. Took an old Esprimo case with Pentium D and tested both sticks seperately... They survived the mem test... so I hope that's that. I do plan to use them in a rig later...

Shader_BiH wrote on Yesterday, 21:41:

Nexxen wrote on Yesterday, 16:13:

I bought 2 together, same model. Pretty lucky on that but I'll have to read the bios and flash it. Hoping I don't have to desold […]
Show full quote

myne wrote on Yesterday, 13:29:

Straps set more than the size.
You'll find brand, arrangement Eg 64x128 vs 128x64 and I believe often via the brand, a basic timings config that posts.

I bought 2 together, same model.
Pretty lucky on that but I'll have to read the bios and flash it. Hoping I don't have to desolder anything (I don't think so).
It's boring boredom - 🤣
--

Now I have a ATI 9250 to troubleshoot, but requires glued heatsink to be removed.
Thankfully many went through the process before me and I have quite a few methods to try. 😀
Love this place.

Interesting case there... Glued together, or is it just dried out and stuck?... I've heard that there are some compounds that act like glue, but didn't really came across such case. So how do you remove those... heating or something else?

Today I just made a quick test of DDR2 I picked up at the flea market. Took an old Esprimo case with Pentium D and tested both sticks seperately... They survived the mem test... so I hope that's that. I do plan to use them in a rig later...

I'm shocked that RAM works, some of those pins look like they've seen better days.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on Yesterday, 21:43:

Shader_BiH wrote on Yesterday, 21:41:

Nexxen wrote on Yesterday, 16:13:

I bought 2 together, same model. Pretty lucky on that but I'll have to read the bios and flash it. Hoping I don't have to desold […]
Show full quote

I bought 2 together, same model.
Pretty lucky on that but I'll have to read the bios and flash it. Hoping I don't have to desolder anything (I don't think so).
It's boring boredom - 🤣
--

Now I have a ATI 9250 to troubleshoot, but requires glued heatsink to be removed.
Thankfully many went through the process before me and I have quite a few methods to try. 😀
Love this place.

Interesting case there... Glued together, or is it just dried out and stuck?... I've heard that there are some compounds that act like glue, but didn't really came across such case. So how do you remove those... heating or something else?

Today I just made a quick test of DDR2 I picked up at the flea market. Took an old Esprimo case with Pentium D and tested both sticks seperately... They survived the mem test... so I hope that's that. I do plan to use them in a rig later...

I'm shocked that RAM works, some of those pins look like they've seen better days.

Yeah they look like teeth after a fist fight 🤣

Radeon 9800:

I put an old Radeon 9800 VIVO into my P3-1000 rig.

Unfortunately, it produces a lot of artifacts. The seller agreed to take it back and refund my money, so I will stick with the old FX 5600 in my P3-1000 for now.

However, what puzzles me is this:

Even though the Radeon has artifacts, I was still able to run 3DBench2 under MS-DOS 6.22. The Radeon 9800 scored 495 fps in the Superscape benchmark, whereas the FX 5600 only reached 362.5 fps.

Can someone explain this difference? Was the R350 better optimized for DOS, or simply superior to the NVIDIA NV31 chip in this regard?

Shader_BiH wrote on Yesterday, 21:41:

I know both freeze and heat.
Let's hope one works 😀

---

I tried reading the bios chip, https://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/vi … NICS/25P05.html , but it fails.
I have to desolder it. 😒

Or is there any other way with "framed glass" OS?