Nip!

Tetrium's wrote:

You also stated that the snapping of the stock Intel CPU HSF must have been some kind of user error on my part. I've build over a 100 systems of that era and taken apart and repaired literally hundreds of systems from that era and I can tell you that the snapping of this particular piece of plastic was abnormal.
But noooOOOooo, you had to reply with this ranfurie idiotic generalization of yours that it must have been some kind of user error of my own doing or something.

It's definitely an issue, just like for instance the yellowing of white and beige plastics is. Or are you gonna say that these were manufactured this way as well now?

No kidding, back in the day, when P4 just came out, at work, we put together this and their intel's design two lever heatsink made alarming noise when we carefully latched on. But being curious, tried to unlatch snap!

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-12-01, 03:14:

Nip! […]
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Nip!

Tetrium's wrote:

You also stated that the snapping of the stock Intel CPU HSF must have been some kind of user error on my part. I've build over a 100 systems of that era and taken apart and repaired literally hundreds of systems from that era and I can tell you that the snapping of this particular piece of plastic was abnormal.
But noooOOOooo, you had to reply with this ranfurie idiotic generalization of yours that it must have been some kind of user error of my own doing or something.

It's definitely an issue, just like for instance the yellowing of white and beige plastics is. Or are you gonna say that these were manufactured this way as well now?

No kidding, back in the day, when P4 just came out, at work, we put together this and their intel's design two lever heatsink made alarming noise when we carefully latched on. But being curious, tried to unlatch snap!

Cheers,

While I don't care for the two latch Intel system, the only time I have had one break was when I dropped the cooler on the floor from a few feet up. think I had one damaged in shipping as well but that was because the seller of the parts I bought did not package properly.

I will take the lever system over the God awful pushpins any day. Iv had 5 break when installing them and 2 break when just removing them.

adalbert wrote on 2020-11-30, 21:59:

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-11-30, 21:50:

The ESS Maestro/Allegro on the machine (also found on the Inspiron 4000) is a bit of a hit-and-miss though. It's not hardware ESFM so some of the FM synthesis sounds a bit off (kinda like an Ensoniq S2000).

Yeah, for that I have Presario 1800 with ESS Solo-1, which is nice for late 90's games (P3 700MHz, ATI Rage Pro 128 16MB /i soldered additional 8MB/). It can even run Windows 3.11 with working display drivers and sound.

Ah yes. My K6-2+ thin client and my Thinkpad 240s all have ESS Solo-1s, and they are excellent for FM synth. My Dell Inspiron 4000 features the Rage Mobility M3 / 16MB of VRAM which is very similar to yours - I do like it enough to keep it around.
Does your Presario originally have 8MB of VRAM and you solder in an extra 8 to yield 16 in total, or are you on 24MB of VRAM now? The extra RAM actually increased your total VRAM bandwidth so it'll show a performance bump-up....from what I remember off an old Anandtech writeup (https://www.anandtech.com/show/505/2) all of the Rage Mobility 128s / M3s have 8MB embedded internally with a 64 bit data-path (think TNT2 m64), while the 16MB version has an extra 8MB on its own 64 bit data-path, giving you the full 128 bit.
The Compaq Presario 1800s are very solid machines - it's too bad HP pulled the old Compaq documentations making it difficult for collectors to shop configurations based on sub-model information. If I didn't get the Dell I would've gunned for the Presario.

ODwilly wrote on 2020-12-01, 03:44:

I will take the lever system over the God awful pushpins any day. Iv had 5 break when installing them and 2 break when just removing them.

Oh yes... the push-pin system was/is horrid. Ever had one pop loose while a system was powered on?

I mean.. it works most of the time but I am always afraid I am going to break something when locking the last one in place.

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-12-01, 04:08:

Does your Presario originally have 8MB of VRAM and you solder in an extra 8 to yield 16 in total, or are you on 24MB of VRAM now? The extra RAM actually increased your total VRAM bandwidth so it'll show a performance bump-up...

It originally had 8MB only on-chip and two empty solder pads. I soldered two chips taken from desktop Rage 128 Pro card and now it has 16MB. 3dmark99 went up from 4160pts to 5314pts 😀 /I had 1GHz P3 during both benchmarks, but 700MHz generates less heat/

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-12-01, 04:08:

The Compaq Presario 1800s are very solid machines - it's too bad HP pulled the old Compaq documentations making it difficult for collectors to shop configurations based on sub-model information. If I didn't get the Dell I would've gunned for the Presario.

Yeah, there are numbers like 18XL123 etc., but it's hard to tell what that means, and higher doesn't mean that it's better.

Another CPU to add to my collection: Am5x86-P75. I've been wanting to play with one of these.

Just to participate even once, todays catch is the following...

- Hercules Dynamite VL Pro, very nice condition and 4x512kB chips. Perfect for my Shuttle HOT-419R3 + Am5x86 P75 build.
- Beige ATX-case, clean and very good condition. I will make some approproate PII or K6-2 build into. Period-wise keyboard and speakers came along.
- Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, nothing special here but for a good price could not miss.

fool wrote on 2020-12-01, 19:04:

- Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, nothing special here but for a good price could not miss.

A sentence that has words nothing special and Voodoo doesn't exits. 😀

fool wrote on 2020-12-01, 19:04:

Just to participate even once, todays catch is the following...

- Hercules Dynamite VL Pro, very nice condition and 4x512kB chips. Perfect for my Shuttle HOT-419R3 + Am5x86 P75 build.

Nice ET4000 VLB card! The ISA one is relatively common, VLB is quite rare, thought.

guys, if you can't make your points without calling other users names, just don't make them at all.
For now I've deleted several posts in which you named others idiotic, stupid, retarded. Sorry if that breaks a bit of this thread but would you just behave, please?

Turbo -> wrote on 2020-12-01, 19:57:

fool wrote on 2020-12-01, 19:04:

- Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, nothing special here but for a good price could not miss.

A sentence that has words nothing special and Voodoo doesn't exits. 😀

Funny, I have a voodoo 3 2000 PCI and I also think it's nothing special. IMO, the special voodoo cards are the 1 and 2, which seem to be compatible by default with all the cool voodoo-only accelerated games. The voodoo 3, while mostly compatible, many time requires patches and what not to play properly, and for the ones that it is compatible by default (like Unreal) they look the same or better (again: IMO) using the latest updates and OpenGL. Anyway, I'm glad of having that card, it was given to me as a gift because "it was broken" many years ago with its drivers CD. In fact, it was just dirty and it works perfect.

I think the Voodoo 3 PCI and Voodoo 4 AGP are also special cards as far as I'm concerned. Voodoo 3 AGP and Voodoo 5 mean nothing to me though.

Bought a Asus GTX 570 from a pawnshop for $20. This card : https://www.newegg.com/asus-geforce-gtx-570-e … N82E16814121432 I think I will pair it with a I5-760 Dell XPS, bump the ram from 8gb up to 16gb and throw a 500gb SSD on it for my 14 year old niece. She needs something for school since her laptop died, and wants something to game on since she doesnt have a console.

Now I have a feeling I should have been more specific with the statement

- Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, nothing special here but for a good price could not miss.

That is a great card, I did not mean to criticize... although Voodoo 2 SLI is more interesting to play with.
Voodoo 3 just gives me anything new for my retro builds. I have a bunch of those already and it also reminds me about PCI version I need badly.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-12-01, 04:46:

ODwilly wrote on 2020-12-01, 03:44:

I will take the lever system over the God awful pushpins any day. Iv had 5 break when installing them and 2 break when just removing them.

Oh yes... the push-pin system was/is horrid. Ever had one pop loose while a system was powered on?

I mean.. it works most of the time but I am always afraid I am going to break something when locking the last one in place.

Omg nope I cant say I have, thats nuts! I currently have one 2nd gen i5 system with 3 push pins secured. The 4th one simply wont latch. Temps are stable and low, so I dont think I care enough to replace the HSF.

This was in a computer I bought. Nothing special, just a token ring card, but the PCB looks interesting. I wonder why it was built like this? It almost looks like some hobbyist prototype made on strip board.

CrFr wrote on 2020-12-02, 12:47:

This was in a computer I bought. Nothing special, just a token ring card, but the PCB looks interesting. I wonder why it was built like this? It almost looks like some hobbyist prototype made on strip board.

IMG_1040.JPG
IMG_1041.JPG

That card is pure sexy looks. That's a wall hanger imo.

CrFr wrote on 2020-12-02, 12:47:

This was in a computer I bought. Nothing special, just a token ring card, but the PCB looks interesting. I wonder why it was built like this? It almost looks like some hobbyist prototype made on strip board.

IMG_1040.JPG
IMG_1041.JPG

That card is super cool looking. I'd probably mount it on a shadow box to display.

I have been waiting for the better part of a year scouring local deals hoping a 486 PC would show up and I've seen nothing other than some either overly expensive ebay options or really cruddy low profile 486 33sx compaq-ish types.

So I bit the bullet and bought a Socket 3 VLB motherboard with an AMD DX4 100, 16MB ram, a controller card and a 512KB Trident video card. If I find that the motherboard is working nicely I may consider a VLB video card and faster VLB controller card as I've never used or had VLB before.

The controller card has a Winbond chip, are these decent and reliable? Should I have any issues with a master CF card or maybe SD card adapter with a slave CD rom on the same cable? The oldest I have is a 48x Creative CD drive.

It's going to go into an AT case (no mhz LED or turbo button sadly) and probably going to put in my big ass SB16 CT2830. Maybe the CD drive can connect to this? I've also got an ESS Audiodrive that has a CDROM header.