VOGONS


Reply 240 of 878, by Bruninho

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ragefury32 wrote on 2020-08-20, 01:42:

Well, the 2006s with the i950s are pegged to 3GB RAM max, the 2006-8s are X3100 based and maxes out to either 6 or 8, the nVidia 9400Ms can do 8GB (DDR2 or 3), the nVidia 320Ms from mid-09/10 can do 16GB on DDR3, just like the '11/'12 Sandy/Ivy bridge afterwards.

I still retain 32 bit with Mojave and Sierra on my 2015 MBA11, 2013 MBP and my 2010 MBP13, it's good for early carbonized apps like Halo and UT2004, and titles like BioShock Infinite (which is 32 bit only)

Yeah, that's correct. Well, to stop hijacking the thread (sorry for that guys), I will refrain from going off-topic and move my talk to my thread about old virtual machines. You're welcome there, ragefury32.

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Reply 241 of 878, by MAZter

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Got this beast today, beauty laptop!

Samsung Sens 800

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1997 year
Pentium 90
10.4” TFT 640x480
Cirrus Logic GD-754X
8 Mb
Hitachi DK212A-10 1Gb
ES 1488 (SB 2.0, Adlib, ESS Audiodrive)
Made in Korea

Doom is what you want (c) MAZter

Reply 243 of 878, by creepingnet

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Those Samsung Sens are kick-butt laptops. I had the AT&T Branded 486 version years ago - it was a DX2-50 - I may even still have it hiding away in my childhood home's closet somewhere. Maybe one day I'll be able to make the 3000 mile trip there and get it. Yours is an 800, they also had a 600, 500, and I think a 400. They were also marketed as AT&T Safari and AT&T Globalyst.

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~The Creeping Network~
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Reply 245 of 878, by HandOfFate

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I finally got a laptop that I'm quite happy with: Compaq Armada 1750. I had one lying around but the IDE controller didn't work and hard drive pins were bent so I couldn't do anything with it, but with a donor system board from an incredibly damaged 1750 (which had plastic debris everywhere inside) I could make a functioning one. The original board had a 366MHz Pentium 2 CPU, the donor a 333MHz which is good enough. The rest of the hardware is mostly similar to the Armada 1700 except for the video chip, which is a ATi Rage LT with 4MB of memory.

The scaling on the Armada 1700 was very crisp in games like Quake but text looked terrible in e.g. Transport Tycoon, Windows setup and DOS to some extent (some characters, like the zero, were cut off). The 1750 applies a reasonably nice smoothing to everything and makes things far more readable when scaled. I think it's because of the video chip because scaling (toggled with Fn+T) is also applied to a external monitor.

The sound chip is a ESS ES1869 and works very well (like the ISA card version), it has great Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 compatibility. Dune sounds like it should, MIDI is fine and it doesn't require any DOS drivers. Windows 98 also recognized it immediately.

I also have the docking station for it which has a game/MPU-401 port on it. I haven't tried it yet but I'll update this post when I have with the results.

The only downside I've encountered so far: I've got a stuck pixel in the bottom of the screen. Not super noticeable but when you know it's there, you cannot unsee it.

Am486 DX4 120MHz, no L2, 16MB, Tseng ET4000/W32 1MB VLB, ESS ES1869 /// 5x86 133MHz, 256kb L2, 64MB, S3 Virge/DX 4MB PCI, SB16 + Yucatan FX, PicoGUS /// Pentium III 1GHz, 512MB, Asus V7700 64MB AGP, SB Live!

Reply 246 of 878, by HandOfFate

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I'm a bit puzzled with my Compaq Armada 1750. While running some utilities I noticed that they were reporting the CPU clock speed as 500MHz. Thinking they were wrong I used the Compaq Diagnostics boot disk to check, and it is saying the machine has a Pentium III 500MHz CPU. Windows 2000, too, is detecting a processor of "x86 Family 6, Model 8, Stepping 3" which would mean a Pentium III.

But I don't think it's physically possible that the system board I transplanted (see my post above this one) had its CPU upgraded to a Pentium III. The only reason why I'm not dismissing the idea completely is because the machine does get very, very warm. I don't want it near my lap, that's for sure.

Could there be anything that could cause a system to misreport a CPU (as a future model, no less)?

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Am486 DX4 120MHz, no L2, 16MB, Tseng ET4000/W32 1MB VLB, ESS ES1869 /// 5x86 133MHz, 256kb L2, 64MB, S3 Virge/DX 4MB PCI, SB16 + Yucatan FX, PicoGUS /// Pentium III 1GHz, 512MB, Asus V7700 64MB AGP, SB Live!

Reply 247 of 878, by HandOfFate

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Well, it is a Pentium III 500MHz alright. There is one type of socket (that I didn't know about) that was used for high-end Pentium II's and low-end Pentium III mobile CPUs: MMC-2. HWINFO mentions this socket and a benchmark reveals that the CPU performs at 50% the speed of a P3 1GHz. So that's that.

What does worry me still is the heat it produces. Unfortunately there are no internal sensors that I can read out (the fan is temperature controlled but programs I tried didn't find anything) so I'm not sure if it's getting dangerously warm.

I've thought about putting the P2 366MHz CPU from the other Armada 1750 system board in here but on the other hand this is also cool: A Pentium III with an ESS ES1869, maximum performance with good DOS sound compatibility.

My only idea so far is to replace the spinning HDD with something solid state, probably a disk-on-module. That would remove one source of heat (and noise, the current one is noisy and slow)

Do any of you have any ideas of how I could limit the heat? Can I throttle the CPU somehow?

Am486 DX4 120MHz, no L2, 16MB, Tseng ET4000/W32 1MB VLB, ESS ES1869 /// 5x86 133MHz, 256kb L2, 64MB, S3 Virge/DX 4MB PCI, SB16 + Yucatan FX, PicoGUS /// Pentium III 1GHz, 512MB, Asus V7700 64MB AGP, SB Live!

Reply 248 of 878, by cde

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If you can disable UDMA in your BIOS and force PIO mode 4, consider this 2.5" SATA SSD: Re: mSATA ssd adaptor in old pc

It has been working very well for me so far. One drawback is that mSATA drives are beginning to be more difficult to find and expensive.

Last edited by cde on 2020-09-06, 15:08. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 250 of 878, by cde

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Maybe that's a quirk of my motherboard then. But neither Windows 98 or XP would boot with it in UDMA mode, the Linux kernel has tons of errors too. Disabling UDMA solves these issues completely. It's not the cable either, using a regular drive in UDMA mode works fine.

Reply 251 of 878, by ajacocks

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Interesting! I have one machine that I had issues with an mSATA-to-IDE adapter in, but I assumed that it was age-related deterioration. I’ll have to check again.

Most of my machines seem fine with the adapters, with UDMA enabled. Off the top of my head, I have used them in:
- Thinkpad T22
- Sony z505
- Armada m700
- Portege 320

- Alex

Reply 252 of 878, by HandOfFate

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cde wrote on 2020-09-06, 15:03:

If you can disable UDMA in your BIOS and force PIO mode 4, consider this 2.5" SATA SSD: Re: mSATA ssd adaptor in old pc

It has been working very well for me so far. One drawback is that mSATA drives are beginning to be more difficult to find and expensive.

I never thought about mSATA. I will check how much it costs because I can't say I trust those no-name brand disk-on-module things too much (don't know if there even are reputable brands that make them). The Compaq BIOS has no option to disable UDMA as far as I can see but if the cost isn't too high I'm willing to take a risk.

Maybe booting in safe mode and changing UDMA to a PIO mode in Windows would also work?

While going through the BIOS I did encounter a very convenient sounding option called "Run processor at half speed", exactly what I need! But unfortunately it only works during "system idle", like a half-standby mode.

[edit]
I found some affordable 32GB mSATA drives and mSATA/IDE adapters so I bought two sets

Am486 DX4 120MHz, no L2, 16MB, Tseng ET4000/W32 1MB VLB, ESS ES1869 /// 5x86 133MHz, 256kb L2, 64MB, S3 Virge/DX 4MB PCI, SB16 + Yucatan FX, PicoGUS /// Pentium III 1GHz, 512MB, Asus V7700 64MB AGP, SB Live!

Reply 253 of 878, by ragefury32

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HandOfFate wrote on 2020-09-06, 14:48:
Well, it is a Pentium III 500MHz alright. There is one type of socket (that I didn't know about) that was used for high-end Pent […]
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Well, it is a Pentium III 500MHz alright. There is one type of socket (that I didn't know about) that was used for high-end Pentium II's and low-end Pentium III mobile CPUs: MMC-2. HWINFO mentions this socket and a benchmark reveals that the CPU performs at 50% the speed of a P3 1GHz. So that's that.

What does worry me still is the heat it produces. Unfortunately there are no internal sensors that I can read out (the fan is temperature controlled but programs I tried didn't find anything) so I'm not sure if it's getting dangerously warm.

I've thought about putting the P2 366MHz CPU from the other Armada 1750 system board in here but on the other hand this is also cool: A Pentium III with an ESS ES1869, maximum performance with good DOS sound compatibility.

My only idea so far is to replace the spinning HDD with something solid state, probably a disk-on-module. That would remove one source of heat (and noise, the current one is noisy and slow)

Do any of you have any ideas of how I could limit the heat? Can I throttle the CPU somehow?

Ah yes, the MMC-1/MMC-2 modules - the time where Intel thought it’s a good idea to put the CPU and the northbridge onto a single module and sell it that way. Only Apple tried something similar with their CPU modules for the pre-Titanium PowerBooks.

As for the heat, It’ll be fine. I remembered reading blogs of people bragging about souping up their Armada 1750s with P3-500s - the difference in TDP is only from 13w on the Dixon P2 Mobiles to around 17w on the Coppermine P3s. What to do? Clean the fan more often, replace the default thermal compound with better ones and keep the air vents clear of obstructions. 4w of thermals over a 1-2 hour gaming session shouldn’t do much to kill the machine.

As for throttling? Well, this is before the Speedstep was implemented on the P3m, so the only thing you can do is turn off the L2 cache (a large part of the chip real estate).

As for spinner replacement, either go with an mSATA to IDE adapter, or use an SD to IDE adapter. With the mSATA you can probably go with a Kingspec or Venke, while with SD get something name brand like a Sandisk and with a Class 30/V2 rating - endurance is so-so but unless you are planning to use it 24/7, occasional retro-gaming would be fine (I use SDXC on my Thinkpad 560Es and the Thin Clients, and it does just fine). The SD to IDE adapter is internally limited to 25MB/sec transfer rates due to the architecture of the translation chip, but the latency is much better than the old spinners and ran much cooler. DMA is optional - some of the mSATA/SD bridge chips work well with it, some doesn’t.

Note that the southbridge component of the 440BX/ZX chipset common to MMC-2 module machine is restricted to LBA28, so no DMA operations to access anything over 137GB.

Reply 254 of 878, by HandOfFate

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ragefury32 wrote on 2020-09-07, 16:24:

Ah yes, the MMC-1/MMC-2 modules - the time where Intel thought it’s a good idea to put the CPU and the northbridge onto a single module and sell it that way. Only Apple tried something similar with their CPU modules for the pre-Titanium PowerBooks.

As for the heat, It’ll be fine. I remembered reading blogs of people bragging about souping up their Armada 1750s with P3-500s - the difference in TDP is only from 13w on the Dixon P2 Mobiles to around 17w on the Coppermine P3s. What to do? Clean the fan more often, replace the default thermal compound with better ones and keep the air vents clear of obstructions. 4w of thermals over a 1-2 hour gaming session shouldn’t do much to kill the machine.

I haven't been able to get the heatsink off the board yet (trying it on the old board) but looking at Intel's MMC datasheet it very much reminds me of the Power Mac G3 CPU and somewhat that of the Power Mac G4. I guess that form factor was a trend around that time.

But yes, replacing the thermal paste is probably a good idea. The donor laptop I got this board from wasn't in a very good state so it's worth to check it out.

As for spinner replacement, either go with an mSATA to IDE adapter, or use an SD to IDE adapter. With the mSATA you can probably go with a Kingspec or Venke, while with SD get something name brand like a Sandisk and with a Class 30/V2 rating - endurance is so-so but unless you are planning to use it 24/7, occasional retro-gaming would be fine (I use SDXC on my Thinkpad 560Es and the Thin Clients, and it does just fine). The SD to IDE adapter is internally limited to 25MB/sec transfer rates due to the architecture of the translation chip, but the latency is much better than the old spinners and ran much cooler. DMA is optional - some of the mSATA/SD bridge chips work well with it, some doesn’t.

Note that the southbridge component of the 440BX/ZX chipset common to MMC-2 module machine is restricted to LBA28, so no DMA operations to access anything over 137GB.

Thanks for the advice 😀

I'm not seeing any affordable Kingspec or Venke drives at the moment. The 32GB mSATAs that I found are probably big enough for the select group of games that I'll play, but I'll keep my eye out. I might use mSATAs for other IDE systems as well in the future.

My experience with SD cards haven't been great but that was mostly with Raspberry Pis. Read speed was great but writing was slow, and I've gone through multiple Sandisks (assuming I didn't get fakes) in a short time. So I'm a bit careful with using them and CFs (by association) for storage on more serious systems.

Am486 DX4 120MHz, no L2, 16MB, Tseng ET4000/W32 1MB VLB, ESS ES1869 /// 5x86 133MHz, 256kb L2, 64MB, S3 Virge/DX 4MB PCI, SB16 + Yucatan FX, PicoGUS /// Pentium III 1GHz, 512MB, Asus V7700 64MB AGP, SB Live!

Reply 256 of 878, by bjwil1991

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When you press and hold the power button while it's on, does it turn off? My mom's Inspiron 1525 does the same thing when I plug in the charger once the battery is dead, including the CMOS battery. I mean, it's possible the CMOS battery is flat and needs to be changed, but I digress.

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Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
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Reply 258 of 878, by bjwil1991

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That's an odd one. My Pentium laptops only turn on once I press the power button. Must be a setting somewhere that'll turn the laptop on once the charger is plugged in with a dead main battery or designed like that. Hard to tell. My Armada M700 might be doing that as well, but I haven't powered it on yet in a while.

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Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
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Reply 259 of 878, by Bruninho

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Surely someone will want a setup like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGHcX0YTPKw

"Design isn't just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
JOBS, Steve.
READ: Right to Repair sucks and is illegal!