Hmm I wouldn't call a ATX psu with a pass-through socket "rare" but more like uncommon.. (I had some of these, I believe but ICBW that they were made during the transition from AT to ATX, in a way in the same period where those mobos with both AT and ATX power connectors were made.)

dicky96 wrote:

Hi guys I found this one at the flea market today

Intel 845WN, Pentium 4 socket 478 1.5GHz, Geforce 2MX 200

I was quite pleased to find this beige tower 😊 It has some parts I not seen in a while. It has a Plextor CD Writer, and I thought it was really interesting to find an ATX PSU with a mains power pass-through for a monitor. I don't recall seeing that before, the monitor power connector seemed to disappear along with AT power supplies though i never understood why. At first glance I thought this was an AT supply in an ATX case!

Difficult to make work sensibly with soft-power-off/on.

[...]

Oh it also has PCI IEEE 1394 card though I'm not sure what use that is.

For all your turn-of-the-Millennium vintage DV Firewire camcorders. Seeing as the Nokia 3210 couldn't film you needed one of these.

One AGP and 6 PCI slots seems very generous! Also there is this funny little slot that looks a bit like PCI-e 1x. According to the manual it is a 'CNR' slot and there were modems and sound cards made to fit it? Never seen one myself and a quick look on ebay didn't show any result for CNR sound cards.

They were quite popular with OEMs as they could be cheaper than a PCI card. Look for the Aztech CNR2800, a well-known auction site is crawling with them (for low prices, as nobody wants them anymore). Theoretically CNR could support audio or LAN too, but every board with AMR/CNR/ACR (three slots with same purpose) had onboard audio and I can't say I've ever seen a NIC on one in the flesh, so basically they were only used for analog dialup modems, and died out as analog telephony did.

Very, very rarely you see an Intel PRO/100 VE (aka CNLA6000) CNR NIC for sale, which made marginally more sense, however they were never cheaper in retail than a PCI card and by this time the need for so many PCI slots was dropping anyway.

Edit: there's one for sale now in the US for I price I'd be willing to pay for something obscure like this - but I'm not willing to pay for transatlantic shipping for something so pointless, so feel free if you do 😉

The parts are not unusual. They were produced in large numbers, and are nothing that special. Look at it, as a kind of run off the mill machine. The standard configuration of it's time. Regarding the PSU, then I did see a lot of those cheap flimsy cases from around 2003/05 that had PSU with it as standard. Like Codegen and stuff.

Difficult to make work sensibly with soft-power-off/on.

Not sure I can see why it wouldn't work sensibly - seeing as monitors also have soft power off/on these days. The pass through was always useful as it saved the need for an additional mains socket - and we all know you can never have enough of those! In fact even many CRTs had a standby mode with no video input so the monotor would still go to sleep when the PC shut down.

@brostenen
Sorry you didn't like it - I thought it was an interesting find especially for next to nothing at the flea market..

dicky96 wrote:

@brostenen
Sorry you didn't like it - I thought it was an interesting find especially for next to nothing at the flea market..

Don't get me wrong... I do like it, and I think it is a good find/bargain. Never stated otherwise. I have just seen to much and too many P4's, to say that they are unusual. 😀

Looks like a decent motherboard. Replace the president Macron PSU with a new mid range or better Seasonic or bequiet PSU, replace the CPU cooler with something quiet, install something like a GF4 Ti4200 graphics card, add a module of RAM and off you go 😀

SpectriaForce wrote:

... Replace the president M... PSU ...

😎 😀 🤣 😈

+1

Potentially a decent Windows/DOS hybrid (with the right sound card). What's the CPU and motherboard?

Intel 845WN motherboard
Pentium 4 socket 478 1.5GHz cpu

As stated on the first post 😀

I'd probably make it a stupid fast Win98 PC, but duel boot to XP.
Add a GF 6800 GT or Ultra and you'll have more then enough power to turn everything up to max, including AA,AF,etc in games that wont run in XP

I join the Win98 suggestion. Yet I think it is too slow for general XP gaming though. That would require something with a bit more horse power. Win98se gaming machine, with a GF4-ti4200 for good Win98 gaming and perhaps really late-era Dos gaming (93 to 96 era).

dionb wrote:

dicky96 wrote:

[...]

Oh it also has PCI IEEE 1394 card though I'm not sure what use that is.

For all your turn-of-the-Millennium vintage DV Firewire camcorders. Seeing as the Nokia 3210 couldn't film you needed one of these.

Hard disks and other peripherals, audio interfaces, etc. Pretty useful for Firewire audio interfaces, really (which are just high-end external sound cards).

Agreed with most of the other posters here. It's a pretty normal machine from 2001. Nothing particularly rare, but definitely a good pickup for a cheap price. Intel boards are well made and reliable, so they're great for retro gaming systems. With that P4 1.5 GHz it's perfect as a Windows 98 gaming machine. That board can actually handle up to a 2.8 GHz 400 FSB Northwood P4, which would be better for Windows XP, but the SDRAM will be holding it back. So there's not really much reason to max it out. If you want a little more speed, Socket 478 Northwood P4's with 400 MHz FSB in the 1.8 - 2.2 GHz range are plentiful and cheap.

gdjacobs wrote:

Potentially a decent Windows/DOS hybrid (with the right sound card). What's the CPU and motherboard?

Okay, I'm blind.

brostenen wrote:

I join the Win98 suggestion. Yet I think it is too slow for general XP gaming though. That would require something with a bit more horse power. Win98se gaming machine, with a GF4-ti4200 for good Win98 gaming and perhaps really late-era Dos gaming (93 to 96 era).

Exactly, it just needs the right PCI sound card and it covers a good range of DOS and Win9x gaming.

gdjacobs wrote:

Exactly, it just needs the right PCI sound card and it covers a good range of DOS and Win9x gaming.

Perhaps something like Vortex2 or YMF-724.

Aha ... well it just so happens one of the other PCs I picked up at the weekend from the flea market is a HP Compaq D530 Tower PC, also 10 euros and I was getting a good look at that one today.

It is a socket 478 and boots to Win XP from the 40Gb IDE but there is a password on the OS so I can not log in. Its got IDE CD Writer and CD ROM. According to the bios it has 512Mb RAM (has two 256Mb dimms fitted for sure) and bios says a 3.0GHz P4 CPU. Maybe I could put that CPU in this PC and still sell the remaining parts from the D530 for more than 10 euros.

Actually I picked up five compete PCs for 50 euros at the weekend. The others are not so interesting but the i5 on gigabyte 'durable' motherboard will make me a good profit for sure.

Rich

I just noticed you're in the Canaries. I've always wanted to tour Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, so this is cool!

gdjacobs wrote:

I just noticed you're in the Canaries. I've always wanted to tour Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, so this is cool!

Thank you! Though I'm English I love my adopted home, actually I'm in the south of Gran Canaria, the observatory is on La Palma known as ' La Isla Bonita - the beautiful island' https://www.visitlapalma.es/en/la-isla/

It's a short hop on a domestic flight and thanks to the Spanish Government all residents get 75% off flights and ferries to anywhere else in Spain, or the islands 🤣

We do have this near to us though - I drive past it every day on the way to work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maspalomas_Station NASA built that originally in the 60s

Gran Canaria may not be La Isla Bonita but it isn't short of beauty. Here's a pic I took myself in November last year. It was taken from Pico de Los Nieves. The rocks you can see jutting up in the middle distance is Roque Nublo, the worlds largest free standing rock, and the island 'floating in the clouds' is Tenerife. It was gorgeous sunny day (as usual here) mid 20s Celcius or about 77 of them funny degrees 🤣.

dicky96 wrote:

Aha ... well it just so happens one of the other PCs I picked up at the weekend from the flea market is a HP Compaq D530 Tower P […]
Show full quote

Aha ... well it just so happens one of the other PCs I picked up at the weekend from the flea market is a HP Compaq D530 Tower PC, also 10 euros and I was getting a good look at that one today.

It is a socket 478 and boots to Win XP from the 40Gb IDE but there is a password on the OS so I can not log in. Its got IDE CD Writer and CD ROM. According to the bios it has 512Mb RAM (has two 256Mb dimms fitted for sure) and bios says a 3.0GHz P4 CPU. Maybe I could put that CPU in this PC and still sell the remaining parts from the D530 for more than 10 euros.

Actually I picked up five compete PCs for 50 euros at the weekend. The others are not so interesting but the i5 on gigabyte 'durable' motherboard will make me a good profit for sure.

Rich

This should help you break the password. https://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/