TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-06, 21:46:

I got a shipment the other day of some DDR 400 sticks, in amongst them was 6 lovely bright red PCB 1gb sticks, I have never seen a red PCB that nice before, actually unusual to see red PCB for ram sticks. (They dont have heat spreaders but with how nice they look in Red and Gold it would be a shame if they did)

Going to set them aside after testing till I find an equally nice 426/478 board to put them into. (I wonder if a PIII DDR board will take 1gb DDR sticks)

If my memory serves good, Kingmax had some DDR with red PCB on offer - I have Kingstons with obvious green, but on them Thermaltake passive coolers, made of pure copper (not that they need them) that didn't once fit well with me on DDR3 with smaller BGA chips. It fits TSOP perfectly.

Ydee wrote on 2022-07-07, 12:02:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-06, 21:46:

I got a shipment the other day of some DDR 400 sticks, in amongst them was 6 lovely bright red PCB 1gb sticks, I have never seen a red PCB that nice before, actually unusual to see red PCB for ram sticks. (They dont have heat spreaders but with how nice they look in Red and Gold it would be a shame if they did)

Going to set them aside after testing till I find an equally nice 426/478 board to put them into. (I wonder if a PIII DDR board will take 1gb DDR sticks)

If my memory serves good, Kingmax had some DDR with red PCB on offer - I have Kingstons with obvious green, but on them Thermaltake passive coolers, made of pure copper (not that they need them) that didn't once fit well with me on DDR3 with smaller BGA chips. It fits TSOP perfectly.

It is indeed Kingmax ram, definitely going to keep hold of it.

The Thermaltake ones don't look bad either, but they're not very visible anyway - on s.754 boards there are often memory slots at the top above the CPU. It's a shame that the only red sound card I know of is a GUS and into an ISA slot, so in my case it's useless. And then I saw some ESS Allegro with red PCB, I guess, but she wouldn't play FM. So, leaves the obligatory black Creative...

Ydee wrote on 2022-07-07, 13:12:

The Thermaltake ones don't look bad either, but they're not very visible anyway - on s.754 boards there are often memory slots at the top above the CPU. It's a shame that the only red sound card I know of is a GUS and into an ISA slot, so in my case it's useless. And then I saw some ESS Allegro with red PCB, I guess, but she wouldn't play FM. So, leaves the obligatory black Creative...

There are a lot of red YMF7x4, CMI8738 and FM801 PCI cards out there and they all offer better FM than shitty Creative cards..

appiah4 wrote on 2022-07-07, 13:24:

There are a lot of red YMF7x4, CMI8738 and FM801 PCI cards out there and they all offer better FM than shitty Creative cards.

Can you post some links to YMF with red PCB, please? Thanks.

...they all offer better FM than shitty Creative cards
But even on nForce3 chipsets?

Ydee wrote on 2022-07-07, 14:41:

Can you post some links to YMF with red PCB, please? Thanks. […]
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appiah4 wrote on 2022-07-07, 13:24:

There are a lot of red YMF7x4, CMI8738 and FM801 PCI cards out there and they all offer better FM than shitty Creative cards.

Can you post some links to YMF with red PCB, please? Thanks.

...they all offer better FM than shitty Creative cards
But even on nForce3 chipsets?

FM801 should work on the nF3 chipset IIRC but Ruthan is the master of these topics.

As for the red PCB, where do you live?

appiah4 wrote on 2022-07-07, 14:56:

FM801 should work on the nF3 chipset IIRC but Ruthan is the master of these topics.
As for the red PCB, where do you live?

In the Czech Republic, sorry - it's not in my profile.

The FM801 is a good card with great DOS compatibility. But go ahead and try listening to the music from Duke Nukem 3D. I think my ears were bleeding.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-07-08, 01:48:

The FM801 is a good card with great DOS compatibility. But go ahead and try listening to the music from Duke Nukem 3D. I think my ears were bleeding.

They sound OK to me: https://soundcloud.com/user-470084971/sets/te … 01-fm-synthesis

Great NOS right ?

Well WRONG... This is advanced NOS++

Who said NOS items are the best, they suck, as 99.9% of ppl will never open them, and that is pure BS to me... But since i got bunch of cards i decided to open one, then i got sad, then i got the idea of improved NOS++ and here is the result, that is what i approved as NOS++, the NOS that cant be opened SUCKs....

Also did move the x58 system in its new home the SilverStone TJ11, that case is nuts, it cools so much better the system, compared to the shitty Corsair 600T that did overheat the system, real crap fans and real crap case it seems... What to say SS is prob one of the very best brands for case... Their fans are special, and only they did think of that insanely good reverted motherboard bed...

darry wrote on 2022-07-06, 02:45:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-07-05, 06:51:

Well, I tested the G4 MDD I acquired last week. The computer is dead, power supply is blown up. It had a Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edi […]
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Well, I tested the G4 MDD I acquired last week. The computer is dead, power supply is blown up. It had a Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition in it which someone had connected via a cheap molex splitter that decided to give up the ghost and took the power supply with it.

The red+ pin on the video card side was completely carbonized, black as coal. So the molex connector had to go, I decided to use my mediocre soldering skills to (over the course of about 3 hours) replace the molex connector with a female molex cable (salvaged from the very molex splitter that made an attempt on this card, no less). When I say I'm mediocre at soldering, I'm not kidding. But it SHOULD work...

The question is did the shitty molex connector take the graphics card along with the PSU. I won't know the anwser to that until I figure out how to flash a PC VGA bios onto it without a functioning AGP Mac.

Couldn't you just put it in a PC along with a working PCI card then flash the Mac Edition card with a PC compatible Radeon 9800 VGA BIOS ?

That's what I did with a Mac edition Radeon 9600 variant a while back .

That's the plan dan.

Again this is assuming the card isn't toast

I'm still testing the E-350 APU. I wonder if this SoC integrated probably "too much" for a 40nm production size and also the mainboard I'm using has an uncommon way for the cooling imho. The cheap heatsink/fan is an old chipset size and basically pass from low speed to highest speed (like 7000rpm at 60°C in default parameters) with noise for a ITX config and too much to let it fixed at that level. I suppose a bigger fan on the heatsink would make a bit better job (max 50 mm x 50 mm) but at the same time covering the whole heatsink area once the fan slow down increasing its temp. I changed the thermal paste with the cheap one I've got but at least now cleaned and new. Still the APU would have needed a "desktop" like cpu heatsink considering it integrate a 80 unified shaders GPU into it at the center of the core. Final power demans are not bad, in the range from 15 watts to 30 watts without the usual +5 watts lost into the atx PSU (instead using a PicoPSU).

Update: I replaced again the thermal paste because something was wrong, I probably used too few paste on the APU core which sure integrate a lot of "old" components looking at its design (two cpu cores above, the big iGPU core at the center, the L2 cache on the sides etc..) so I thought using more paste covering the whole area before installing the cheap heatsink and also replaced the original fan with a similar Sapphire board one I had in the past running a bit slower. Now temperatures seems decreased -5°C compared still around 50°C usually. Next time I'll try to polish the core side of the heatsink metal to make it almost reflective and using a better thermal paste, maybe I'll save a couple less degrees on its temperature.

Testing of WinXP solution for my brother is done. Now I have to source one machine of the same model, to give him as a present. I don't want to give up my own, as I want it for OsX. Yes. That sounded strange. Allow me to explain.

All Intel Mac's can run at least one version of Windows through bootcamp. And the model that I have, can run WinXP. I have tested the machine with XP games from 2001 to 2006 as that is his target era. And all games (at least 30 different ones tested) all runs perfect with no lag in 1024x768 in 32 bit and maxed out. The machine is not silent but it is low noise. It is small so it does not take up that much space on the table. Meaning more space for stuff like joysticks, and it can easy be on the same table as a daily driver.

The Mac Mini model is the A1283-2336. A nice Core2Duo machine. And looking at prices right now, it might be one of the cheapest XP machine for 2001-2006'ish XP-Gaming. Prices are right now aprox 54 to 68 US Dollars locally here.

Well I've spent so much time acquiring stuff and almost no time actually going through, cleaning and testing stuff, so now I'm in the mode of taking stuff apart to thoroughly inspect and clean everything, inventory all that I have, and completely piece together some systems. Most of the towers I have are complete and functional, but I want to swap in some better parts.

I just completely gutted my CTX (1997) computer with a Pentium 233 MMX, took apart the power supply, and giving it all a good cleaning, then I need to decide how I want to rebuild it and for what purpose. Most likely Windows 98/DOS.

Does working on a 21 year old car count as retro activity? If so, I replaced the ABS pump, bled the rear brakes (to a point, I need to do more), and replaced the rear struts (that was a pain doing it myself, but worth every minute).

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-07-08, 18:26:

darry wrote on 2022-07-06, 02:45:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-07-05, 06:51:

Well, I tested the G4 MDD I acquired last week. The computer is dead, power supply is blown up. It had a Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edi […]
Show full quote

Well, I tested the G4 MDD I acquired last week. The computer is dead, power supply is blown up. It had a Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition in it which someone had connected via a cheap molex splitter that decided to give up the ghost and took the power supply with it.

The red+ pin on the video card side was completely carbonized, black as coal. So the molex connector had to go, I decided to use my mediocre soldering skills to (over the course of about 3 hours) replace the molex connector with a female molex cable (salvaged from the very molex splitter that made an attempt on this card, no less). When I say I'm mediocre at soldering, I'm not kidding. But it SHOULD work...

The question is did the shitty molex connector take the graphics card along with the PSU. I won't know the anwser to that until I figure out how to flash a PC VGA bios onto it without a functioning AGP Mac.

Couldn't you just put it in a PC along with a working PCI card then flash the Mac Edition card with a PC compatible Radeon 9800 VGA BIOS ?

That's what I did with a Mac edition Radeon 9600 variant a while back .

That's the plan dan.

Again this is assuming the card isn't toast

Hope the card is still good. There aren't that many of them left alive.

I deshimmed my Radeon 9700 to give it a fighting chance when I do eventually use it, but TBH, I would not use either a 9700 or 9800 in a long term setup without some kind of cooling solution upgrade beyond the stock cooler.

Got soundblaster pro 2 1600 and soundblaster 16 1750 working together in same system in a bx2000 board with p2 200mhz.

Pro in dos
And 16 for windows 98.

386SX wrote on 2022-07-09, 10:45:

Next time I'll try to polish the core side of the heatsink metal to make it almost reflective and using a better thermal paste, maybe I'll save a couple less degrees on its temperature.

Back in the day we were always having to tell the n00bs, "You don't want it shiny, you want it flat, shiny is sometimes a result of extremely flat, but you're not aiming for shiny!" ..... so yeah, don't go telling a new bunch of n00bs that shiny is the thing plzkthx 🤣

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-07-10, 16:16:

386SX wrote on 2022-07-09, 10:45:

Next time I'll try to polish the core side of the heatsink metal to make it almost reflective and using a better thermal paste, maybe I'll save a couple less degrees on its temperature.

Back in the day we were always having to tell the n00bs, "You don't want it shiny, you want it flat, shiny is sometimes a result of extremely flat, but you're not aiming for shiny!" ..... so yeah, don't go telling a new bunch of n00bs that shiny is the thing plzkthx 🤣

Yes I suppose it's better to say that it should be "so flat that the heatsink becomes reflective" or something like it cause cheap heatsink are really bad on the surface work done by factory and I suppose the thermal paste doesn't need those metal imperfections to cover the missing points of contact. 😉
Anyway I suppose it's all about few degrees of differences anyway.. it's the quite wide core area of the APU compared to the compact usual environment that make it difficult to keep temps low.

386SX wrote on 2022-07-10, 16:32:

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-07-10, 16:16:

386SX wrote on 2022-07-09, 10:45:

Next time I'll try to polish the core side of the heatsink metal to make it almost reflective and using a better thermal paste, maybe I'll save a couple less degrees on its temperature.

Back in the day we were always having to tell the n00bs, "You don't want it shiny, you want it flat, shiny is sometimes a result of extremely flat, but you're not aiming for shiny!" ..... so yeah, don't go telling a new bunch of n00bs that shiny is the thing plzkthx 🤣

Yes I suppose it's better to say that it should be "so flat that the heatsink becomes reflective" or something like it cause cheap heatsink are really bad on the surface work done by factory and I suppose the thermal paste doesn't need those metal imperfections to cover the missing points of contact. 😉
Anyway I suppose it's all about few degrees of differences anyway.. it's the quite wide core area of the APU compared to the compact usual environment that make it difficult to keep temps low.

My personal preference, was to stop at 1200 grit with a satiny finish, which I did with the paper taped down to a glass door off an old entertainment unit (a smallish, thickish one, that looked optically flat.) Then at that point I'd get a cotton rag and rub zinc oxide paste into it, which typically had the effect of shining it, but then all remaining defects would be packed with zinc oxide and metal particles, and then dry wipe it, to leave whatever "stuff" was filling them filling them (A metal polish would leave waxes in there which "gloss over" things rather than helping them out for heat transfer.) So yeah, mine turned out shiny, but, some people were taking them straight out the box and attacking them with a buffing wheel and brasso, to merely shine them up, which don't do crap for them.