I opened up my 3-way "SLI" machine to change some drives around and found this bit of loveliness inside:

Yeah yeah, leaky cap on a 2008 GPU. Big whoop. The thing is, I only built this machine about two months ago and it looked completely fine when it went in, so this was recent. I've run across a lot of stuff where the caps went bad in the past, and that seemingly took years of use to manifest. I've never had one go bad over the span of a couple months of moderate usage in my possession.

Granted, I did just about everything "wrong" in this build - bad airflow, shoddy cable management, inadequate cooling - and you could probably argue the cap was ready to go even if it wasn't bulging when I put it in. I didn't really make this machine with the intent of keeping it together for very long. But I also haven't used it that much, just a few ~1hr long gaming sessions and some benchmarking. This card was in the very bottom slot running PhysX, and it did get hot with the big passive cooler.

Still, it looked perfectly fine 2 months ago, and now it doesn't.

Fortunately it's pretty easy one to replace, and the other caps on the card "look" fine, so I'm just gonna leave those alone unless I need to.

@xjas, that blown cap is Chemi-con KZG, a series that is infamous (along with KZJ) for being almost guaranteed that it will not last long, especially on warmer environments. ALL the KZG capacitors in my mid-2000s boards have failed.

I recommend you replace all KZG caps on your card, even if they look fine.

Thanks - yep, figures. I've run into blown KZGs on other stuff too. The others on the card are Nichicons.

It's "just" an 8500GT, but I find it's a useful card to have around for test rigs or bench setups, so it's worth repairing to me.

Upgraded WiFi card on new laptop : LINK
Because 300Mbit/s stock it had, wasn't enough 😁

FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

^^ it won't let me boot after this. Hard stop, doesn't initialize the USB controller, no response to PS/2 keyboard input or anything.

This is LITERALLY the same configuration it was in an hour ago, just with the 8500GT (which was ONLY being used for PhysX) removed. The same two "main" cards, connected by the same SLI cable, are in the same slots they were always in. For some utterly inane reason, they ordered the slots 1-3-2 on this board so if you're only using two cards you need to leave the MIDDLE one open. Well, I don't have a long enough SLI cable to stretch from the top to the bottom slot, so NO BOOT FOR ME.

I guess I'm fixing the 8500GT RIGHT GODDAMN NOW, because I need to use this machine for something minor that 'should' take less than twenty minutes, and some pisswank engineer decided they needed to prevent me from using my own hardware in a way THEY didn't approve of.

That's why I prefer to use later platforms for SLI (1366/2011).
PCI-e hardware disable switches 😁

Maybe turn off USB ?

There, I fixed it. 😠

(Which actually took way longer than it should have, because I didn't realize my "45W" soldering iron couldn't get hot enough to desolder the ground side pin no matter what I did. After I switched to a "35W" iron, it came off instantly. The "45W" one went in the bin.)

And yes, I used a 1000µF cap in place of the 820µF one. #YOLO.

In hindsight, I probably should've just yanked the SLI cable or even the second card, but hey, now the system is back to 100% functionality again & I didn't have to mess with Windows's driver weirdness, so FINE, IT'S FIXED FOREVER. DONE.

Woo nice work! Glad the PCIe slot issue went away too

Managed to get Grand Prix 4 running at a decent speed on Windows 10. Installed just three mods - 1994, 1997 and 1998 Seasons. I tried GP3 again as asked before on another topic - but GP3 does not run on widescreen resolution, just 4:3. While it is blazing fast compared to GP4 - the graphics aren't that great.

I'll now get GP2 running on DOSBox and DOSPad as well. I have F1GP (GP1) running, but the controls are a bit messy atm and needs tweaks. I'm currently waiting for a box of FIFA 98 RTWC to arrive so I can add another game to my childhood collection.

So, this weekend I just upgraded an unsupported 2009 iMac 24-inch to macOS Catalina with dosdude1's patch. So far it runs great. I've replaced the optical drive with a SSD caddy, and it's now using a 120GB SSD for the operating system, together with the original 1TB HDD. Next on the list is the unsupported 2011 Mac Mini i5 used by my dad, I'll just apply the same patch, as he already has 16GB RAM and two disks (120GB SSD and 500GB HDD). He will be happy to continue his work on an upgraded machine. =)

Ahhh the wonders of x86 hardware. I mean you can get a 23 years old system, say a P166mmx, install a current *nix like Slackware 14 or Debian Stretch and do stuff. Absolutely fantastic. All on a 6gig hard drive. And do the same for this

It's a miracle I tell you. Oh Lordy praise the wonders of x86 architecture and to multiple Operating Systems that run on it.

oeuvre wrote:

Woo nice work! Glad the PCIe slot issue went away too

Thanks! At least it's done so the card doesn't have to sit on my shelf of shame.

As far as I can tell, the PCIe slot thing was just a completely made-up hardware lockout. Once I put the 8500GT back in slot "2" (on the bottom), it let me boot, even though that card barely gets used in any application if SIV's load monitor is to be believed. I hate that crap. I thought PCIe was supposed to be slot-agnostic?

Modern activities for retro PCs!

Designed a Socket 478 water block that can be made with minimal CNC (none at all if desired) + a saw, drill press, sharp knife, metal files, taps and a soldering iron. Need to keep overclocked NetBurst P4 from bursting into flames.

It consists of a copper cold plate, 55mm x 55mm x 6mm, a 50mm x 50mm x 6mm brass top (can easily be substituted for acrylic), a 2mm thick stainless steel mounting bracket, two rubber gaskets - one 2mm thick to seal the block and one 0.5mm thick to direct jetplate flow, a 0.5mm thick stainless steel jetplate and some 1mm wide (tall) copper strip for flow direction control.

Laser cutting would just make the fancy bracket nicer. It could be made by hand, or even easier as a plain rectangle with holes.

Render with tiny 19mm x 30mm MOSFET blocks for my ABit TH7II-RAID board, which is a 6mm copper plate, 2mm gasket and 6mm acrylic.

Would absolutely be easier to modify a cheap Chinese block but there's no fun in that. 🤣

x0zm_ wrote:

.

Would absolutely be easier to modify a cheap Chinese block but there's no fun in that. 🤣

I agree, DIY stuff is always better and much more fun!

bfcastello wrote:

x0zm_ wrote:

.

Would absolutely be easier to modify a cheap Chinese block but there's no fun in that. 🤣

I agree, DIY stuff is always better and much more fun!

So, so rewarding...

jaZz_KCS wrote:

bfcastello wrote:

x0zm_ wrote:

.

Would absolutely be easier to modify a cheap Chinese block but there's no fun in that. 🤣

I agree, DIY stuff is always better and much more fun!

So, so rewarding...

Yes, and sometimes DIY stuff is a MacGyver thing, when you want to fix something. And this show is another thing I love about the 80's. I have watched all the seasons of this show more than four times. In fact, I will watch for a fifth time when I get my christmas free time.

Actually struggling to get GP2 to run at full speed and good graphics on DOSBox. I am doing everything I can to manage that, but so far it’s an epic fail. I can’t believe a 25 year old game struggles so much to run SVGA graphics at 25 fps

EDIT: Got it to work.

I am using DOSBox-X, so basically set core to auto, cputype to pentium and cycles to fixed 140500. That works for most tracks on SVGA graphics and all textures but track turned off for mirrors. Monaco suffers a lot, so I tried to test with double cycles (281000) and it worked quite well. But other games and programs suffer from such conf settings, so I had to create two conf files (one for GP2 and one for others). I've also disabled SMARTDRV since I've read that it is quite useless for DOSBox as the host does all the caching.

For normal stuff I created a conf file with core set to auto, cputype set to 486 (as I wanted since the start to replicate the 486 I had when I was a kid, as close as possible) and set the cpucycles to fixed 24000 for testing purposes. I might just leave the cycles to auto - which was the original setting when I struggled with GP2.

Norton's SysInfo helped me a lot with the benchmark process here.

I'm testing out three modern laptops out of my hoard of five.....okay, "modern-ish" as a candidate for my first actual serious Linux computer. I've gotten rather sick of Windows 10, being as I support it all day (and it's constant stream of update related maladies), and I spend so much time both running back and fourth between retro-boxes, and messing with software on an array of platforms that it just seems like it's a good time to initiate the switch.

The Toshiba Sattelite is currently dead, won't post, no biggie, it's the weakest of the lot, so I'm selling it, probably on e-bay, as/is, for parts.

This started when my FIL gave me two laptops to wipe - a Dell Vostro, and a Dell Inspiron.....so I loaded Mint Linux on both, and Ran Pinguy for awhile on the Vostro. The Vostro seemed to struggle a little under Pinguy, but the Inspiron started to thrive under Linux Mint, so I've decided to stick with that distribution. Problem is, the Inspiron, being as it has a 1.3GHz "Pentium" processor - a "consumer" device - it does not have the virtualization features to run some more current O/S in Virtualbox on it.It also seems to struggle a little more with games the Vostro runs just fine under Pinguy (FNaF, Thimbleweed Park, Postal - all of which are Windows games running under the STEAM Beta translation software or whatever it is I'm making myself familiar with).

That said, then I realized the Lenovo has a NVIDIA card in it (well, more like got reminded when I checked device manager in Windows 10). So I just imaged that out to Linux Mint tonight and am writing on it as we speak. 2012 Lenovo T61, Core 2 Duo, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, 512GB SSD (the Vostro is running a 256GB SSD I have laying around and the Inspiron has it's OEM HDD).

The Inspiron seems to run a hair slower than the T61, despite having DDR3 RAM and twice as much (8GB of DDR3 vs. the T61's 4GB of DDR2).

Decisions, Decisions.....battle Worn Lenovo T61 that feels like a brick outhouse but has no Webcam or SDCARD slot? Vostro with a 100MHz faster CPU but on-chip graphics and a bigger, heavier footprint that does not feel as substantial? Or the Inspiron with twice as much RAM in a newer format (8GB of DDR3) but lacking support for certain virtualization functions the Vostro and T61 actually have......

Decisions, Decisions....

HP xw4400 chassis
400W In Win Power Man IP-S400EQ3-2 80+ power supply
Arctic F9 PWM 92mm fan
Intel Core i5 3550 3.3GHz quad core processor
6GB RAM (2 more on the way)
ATI FirePro V5700 512MB PCIe video card
LG GH24NS80 24X DVDRW drive
SanDisk X300s 128GB SSD
Seagate 320GB 7200RPM hard drive
PS/2 ports
Serial port
2xUSB 2.0 ports rear
2xUSB 2.0 ports front
4xUSB 3.0 ports rear
Audio in/out jacks
2xDisplayPort
DVI

Spare parts mostly... didn't have a case for it but this works fine. These are essentially modified ATX Compaq DeskPro cases... HP used them til not too long ago. I believe the HP Z440 workstation was the last to use these cases, so that spans nearly 20 years of it. Put it next to my Z420 and the dimensions (except for the front bezel) are identical.

Rear... original I/O shield was fixed to the motherboard tray. Had to trim it out

Silver side panel

Inside

Power supply closeup... you can see the ATX adapter for the motherboard as well

All sorts of shenanigans going on here

dat FirePro

BIOS screen... all updated with latest BIOS + ME firmware!

Specs

Windows 7 desktop

Came out quite nice. Pleased with it so far... if anything else, this will be a testing rig for drives and whatnot.

I wanted to try some old benchmarks and decided to build this config:

-Phenom II X3 720
-M2NPV-VM nForce 430 mainboard
-2x1GB Corsair XMS2 800 5-5-5-18 dual channel
-a weak 250GB Sata disk
-a cool Enermax EG375AX-VE(W)(24P) PSU heavier than the case itself
-Geforce GT610 1GB DDR3 passive heatsink, reach 100°C easily with case door opened, I can't believe this factory choice
-Asus Xonar D1
-USB 3.0 PCI-Express x1 card
-my Win 8.1 retail boxed bought and almost never used o.s.

I ran some benchmark and man the gpu beside the temperature is quite weak.. low frame rates even with 3dmark2005.. can't even understand why old benchmark run slower than a S3 Savage4 at that time (3DMark2000).
Anyway, nice cpu, I'll try with a SSD.

I've been testing some virtual machines.

Virtualbox is quite terrible although it's free. Oracle doesn't care about it, by the looks of it.

Parallels Desktop 15 is the most exciting and complete solution, has Metal support, however it is subscription based, meaning it's a no-no for me.

VMWare (Fusion) is the market leader, and it's as good as Parallels although it has no Metal support... yet. Costs about $80, which is around R$ 333 (brazilian reais), quite expensive, but not as much as Parallels.

So I've decided to go with VMWare Fusion.