Completed converting a Teletype machine's very simple Call Control Unit into a multi-board beast that lets it interface to RS-232 from 20ma current loop, then connects that to a Smartmodem. Also adds cool features like semi-automatic dialing, remote controls and Automatic Answer motor control. Finished it off by mounting the machine on a stand someone had given me so I wasn't using the nasty wooden thing I made a while back.

Now to setup a machine with a modem that I can dial into. 😈

Did a new build for sale, and tested it in 3D-Mark99, plus UT99 to see how it did.

There is no AGP card and no Soundcard other that what is onboard.
It has (what I believe) an Athlon-XP 2400+ Cpu and 2x256mb PC3200.
Nothing fancy though UT99 in it's vanilla and unpatched version,
does not make any pixel errors and there is no lag.

Took a picture of the 3DMark99 score.... (sorry for the bad picture quality, bad camera)

Not a bad score, just a little bit behind a TNT2.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Not a bad score, just a little bit behind a TNT2.

Yeah... It's okay I think, not that spectaculair anyway.
Taking in, that the machine I sell have no PSU and the case is one of those extremely cheap china-crap things.
Then I will set the price really low. Think it's only fair.

I unpacked a Super Socket 7 system I bought on Ebay, mostly for the awesome AT desktop case but also for a MVP3 motherboard, a K6-2+ CPU and some other nice stuff.

The seller said the system was so well packed that as long as noone played football (soccer) with the package it would arrive in one piece, well someone did play football with the package it seems.

The case has been through a real beating but the plastic front seems fine and thats the important bit, I had to reattach some keys on the included keyboard but the worst thing is that the very large "socket-370/Socket-A" cooler had got loose and tumbled around inside the case and the PC speaker had also got loose probably when beeing hit by the tumbeling cooler. There is plenty of scratches and other visual damage but I do not think anything is actually broken, its a bit hard to see though as everything is covered in silver paste from the loose cooler.

I was going to post pics but the battery in my camera died, that is also the reason I have not removed the silver paste from "all over the computer" yet as I want some pictures in case anything important actually is broken. If its only scratches, bent front panel headers and a somewhat damaged cap on the ISA network card Im not going to contact the seller at all. I know how easy those large coolers come off during shipping but I do not think its common knowledge.

My plans for this system is to move it to a tower case and use the nice desktop case for an AMD 5x86 build using one of my Lucky Star LS486E Socket-3 motherboards.

My main retro activity lately is losing bids on retro items, sadly enough. I'm still curious why would people pay more than I was willing on a Cyrix MII anyway. It is a retro "vanity" item, as you can't really build a system around it that would be better at anything than what you can build with a cheap as chips K6-2, and serves no other purpose than to fill a collection or rebuild a childhood machine.

Skyscraper wrote:

I unpacked a Super Socket 7 system I bought on Ebay, mostly for the awesome AT desktop case but also for a MVP3 motherboard, a K6-2+ CPU and some other nice stuff.

The seller said the system was so well packed that as long as noone played football (soccer) with the package it would arrive in one piece, well someone did play football with the package it seems.

The case has been through a real beating but the plastic front seems fine and thats the important bit, I had to reattach some keys on the included keyboard but the worst thing is that the very large "socket-370/Socket-A" cooler had got loose and tumbled around inside the case and the PC speaker had also got loose probably when beeing hit by the tumbeling cooler. There is plenty of scratches and other visual damage but I do not think anything is actually broken, its a bit hard to see though as everything is covered in silver paste from the loose cooler.

Yikes! Inspect all PCB's for any sign of surface mount (SMD) components like those teeny tiny resistors and capacitors, too. Those can get knocked off easily and would be easy to miss.

Good luck!

I've installed the ELSA Gloria L 24MB PCI (Glint 500TX / Delta Geometry Processor / S3 Virge)
in my "ultimate 1997". The performance is not really exciting so far.
But it comes with Direct3D 7 compatibility!

Sorting through all my hardware, non working/defect and beyond repair is thrown out, the rest is reorganised in bigger boxes.
Little used computers are going into the closet. This takes too much time, yet have to be done.

QBiN wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

I unpacked a Super Socket 7 system I bought on Ebay, mostly for the awesome AT desktop case but also for a MVP3 motherboard, a K6-2+ CPU and some other nice stuff.

The seller said the system was so well packed that as long as noone played football (soccer) with the package it would arrive in one piece, well someone did play football with the package it seems.

The case has been through a real beating but the plastic front seems fine and thats the important bit, I had to reattach some keys on the included keyboard but the worst thing is that the very large "socket-370/Socket-A" cooler had got loose and tumbled around inside the case and the PC speaker had also got loose probably when beeing hit by the tumbeling cooler. There is plenty of scratches and other visual damage but I do not think anything is actually broken, its a bit hard to see though as everything is covered in silver paste from the loose cooler.

Yikes! Inspect all PCB's for any sign of surface mount (SMD) components like those teeny tiny resistors and capacitors, too. Those can get knocked off easily and would be easy to miss.

Good luck!

Here are some pictures of the damage.

Im not too worried about this cap.

The bent headers are not really a problem but look at "CB67", it dosnt look good.

This little fellow was loose just as it seemed.

A close up showing the CB67 spot, the Q16 thingy also looks messed up but thats probably just some artic silver paste as there is artic silver paste everywhere.

How important can that little thingy belonging at CB67 be? I asked my self while wiring up the system and powering on. Not very important it seems, the German seller can relax as everything seems to be working fine. I was hoping I could listen to some of his German Schlager Music using the installed Winamp but it seems he played everything from disc or the Internetz, even some thorough "Suchen" diddnt turn up any music 🙁.

I would to measure that smd cap with multimeter (nf) and put right cap into place, no matter if it were bigger (no SMD) ... Nice Mobo ! Every part of Mobo is from ´´ little important to very important ´´ no one (from end user) can say opposite . Smal ´´ crap ´´ can make big thing... IMH electronic O....

oerk wrote:

Yeah, that's a great idea! […]
Show full quote

133MHz wrote:

Lovin' the idea! 😁

Yeah, that's a great idea!

Anyway, still working on this system:
10 Reasons for a Pentium 4 Windows 98 DOS Retro Gaming PC :)

Main thing to do is to make it quieter. Bought four brand new Arctic Super Silent 4 Ultra TC coolers for it - I only wanted one, but I won the auction for all four with a bid of 1€ 🤣

In the meantime, I've replaced the stock cooler on the FX5700:

No idea where this one is from, but it fits perfectly. Plus, I've been able to connect it to the mainboards fan headers, resulting in the fan being controlled by the mainboard. It completely stops when the system is idle. System is rock solid and a good deal quieter that way.

OMG, my first dream agp accelerator from nVidia. Great hardware and lovin design. Golden times....

diyhw wrote:

I would to measure that smd cap with multimeter (nf) and put right cap into place, no matter if it were bigger (no SMD) ... Nice Mobo ! Every part of Mobo is from ´´ little important to very important ´´ no one (from end user) can say opposite . Smal ´´ crap ´´ can make big thing... IMH electronic O....

The system has been running constantly since I made that post so if something interesting is going to happen it at least takes some time. Perhaps a Socket-7 motherboard guru can make a qualified guess what the little cap is for.

My plan is to reattach the original cap if needed as ceramic SMD caps are unpolarised and the polarisation isnt obvious when looking at the spot for the cap which makes it hard to replace it with something else. I just need to figure out how to solder it as I do not have gear for soldering such small things.

Played around with my Asus A7V266-E motherboard in Windows98, to see if it has any defect's at all.
I was pleased to find that it is working 100%, and is 100% stable. No issues at all.
So I decided to build a machine around this board, using the Athlon XP 1800+ CPU and cooler that came with it.

The spec's at first build was:

- Asus A7V266-E.
- Athlon XP 1800+ (no overclocking or anything)
- 512mb Ram.
- GF4-ti4200.
- Yamaha YMF-724.
- Just random drives, such as 40gig HDD, Floppy and SATA DVD (with a SATA to PATA Converter).

Installed Win98se, 4in1-4.35, nVidia-Driver-44.23 (or something like that) and just the random DX7 and stuff.
Tested with 3D-Mark99 and it gave something like 6400 or 4600 (can't clearly remember what, still within "ok")
Then I tested it with my Radeon-9600-SE/LE 128mb card, and holy smoke...

Can someone please explain this huge difference in performance, between these two cards?
As far as I know, they are in the same league of performance. Or have I read all wrong?
Did just not expect this huge performance on a lowend 9600.

I just put an Abit PB4 mainboard with Socket 3, PCI, FinALI chipsed and integrated disk controller on my desk, connected a PICO-PSU and created this ultra small retro-rig with Am486DX4-100.
I wanted to test it with Voodoo1 (why not?) and launched Half-Life, but it was about 2FPS so it's terribly slow, as expected because FPU of this processor sucks.

Few months ago I bought an IBM 5x86 100MHz CPU, which should be some kind of pentium-class cpu and it could yeld much better results (and it would probably work with 120MHz speed too, because it's rebranded Cyrix CPU).
I actually never tried to use it, so now I had to try installing it in the socket.

And I was like ... what the hell? The CPU is longer than the socket, and there are all the jumpers next to it, so it's not possible to put it inside!

I looked at the jumpers, and I noticed that there are also removable resistor ladders in SIP sockets... now I have an idea!

The legs of CPU fortunately have spacing of 2,54 mm, so I can buy bunch of SIP headers and use them to extend the CPU pins. I will go to electronic store in the morning and try this. I'm almost sure this will work 😉

Skyscraper wrote:

diyhw wrote:

I would to measure that smd cap with multimeter (nf) and put right cap into place, no matter if it were bigger (no SMD) ... Nice Mobo ! Every part of Mobo is from ´´ little important to very important ´´ no one (from end user) can say opposite . Smal ´´ crap ´´ can make big thing... IMH electronic O....

The system has been running constantly since I made that post so if something interesting is going to happen it at least takes some time. Perhaps a Socket-7 motherboard guru can make a qualified guess what the little cap is for.

My plan is to reattach the original cap if needed as ceramic SMD caps are unpolarised and the polarisation isnt obvious when looking at the spot for the cap which makes it hard to replace it with something else. I just need to figure out how to solder it as I do not have gear for soldering such small things.

That looks like an Epox EP58MVP3C-M Motherboard? I have the same so can tell what cap that is if You like. Likely though it is just a 100nf decoupling cap. I'm at work so will update this post later.

Imperious wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

diyhw wrote:

I would to measure that smd cap with multimeter (nf) and put right cap into place, no matter if it were bigger (no SMD) ... Nice Mobo ! Every part of Mobo is from ´´ little important to very important ´´ no one (from end user) can say opposite . Smal ´´ crap ´´ can make big thing... IMH electronic O....

The system has been running constantly since I made that post so if something interesting is going to happen it at least takes some time. Perhaps a Socket-7 motherboard guru can make a qualified guess what the little cap is for.

My plan is to reattach the original cap if needed as ceramic SMD caps are unpolarised and the polarisation isnt obvious when looking at the spot for the cap which makes it hard to replace it with something else. I just need to figure out how to solder it as I do not have gear for soldering such small things.

That looks like an Epox EP58MVP3C-M Motherboard? I have the same so can tell what cap that is if You like. Likely though it is just a 100nf decoupling cap. I'm at work so will update this post later.

You are correct, the board is an Epox EP58MVP3C-M. Any insight on what cap it is and whether its important or not would be great. 😀

diyhw wrote:

OMG, my first dream agp accelerator from nVidia. Great hardware and lovin design. Golden times....

OK... honest question: what's so special about the FX5700?

Transferring my old IBM Deathstar to a KingSpec PATA SSD (32GB). It seems to work rather well! It did not work with the UDMA66 controller though, but that Highpoint thing is a buggy piece of garbage. UDMA33 controller with DMA enabled in Windows 98 works fine.

Skyscraper wrote:

You are correct, the board is an Epox EP58MVP3C-M. Any insight on what cap it is and whether its important or not would be great. 😀

Unfortunately my multimeter will not read it in circuit and I'm not going to desolder it to find out. It looks exactly the same as the other ones CB66 and CB65 nearby, probably 100nf but seriously I wouldn't worry about it.
Get the computer running and if all good and stable then forget about it.
You may have issues such as reboots with more powerful AGP cards in this mobo. I did with a TI4200 and mx440 and 5200. Tnt2 is ok but of course my motherboard could have some probs.