keenmaster486 wrote:

What is the unofficial SP3 for Win98? I haven't heard of that. What sort of stuff does it have in it?

This is the one, IIRC:
http://www.htasoft.com/u98sesp/
There's countless threads across the internet that discuss "unofficial service pack" since the mid-2000's, the ones that stick in my mind are at msfn.org. Ex. http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/61749-98-se-sp-332/

This Saturday was the last day the e-waste center I mentioned earlier was taking anything in, so I decided to go on a trip one more time before they went belly-up.

I got me a CRT monitor, the first one I've had since I (very stupidly) threw out my black Dell Trinitron(?) monitor a few years back. This one's a Compaq Presario MV700. It's not the greatest, but it was the only one there that wasn't surrounded by a wall of junk or laying face-down on the concrete.

And I also got a Leading Edge WinPro486 with a 486SLC and 4MB RAM. It seems to work, but I can't use it because I don't have an AT keyboard to plug into it. I'll see about finding an SB16 for it and making it a dedicated DOS rig.

Found a 17'inch Emachines CRT in my grandparents basement. To take, or not to take. That is the question! Already have 2 17inch Viewsonics.

clueless1 wrote:

genoa8500vl.jpg

Look's much like the 5428 I bought back in 1995. Same colour almost identical layout.

Stiletto wrote:

This is the one, IIRC:
http://www.htasoft.com/u98sesp/

Hey, that's awesome! I'll definitely try that out. Thanks!

ElementalChaos wrote:

And I also got a Leading Edge WinPro486 with a 486SLC and 4MB RAM. It seems to work, but I can't use it because I don't have an AT keyboard to plug into it. I'll see about finding an SB16 for it and making it a dedicated DOS rig.

PS/2 and AT keyboards are electrically compatible, all you need is a simple adapter:

You can even make one yourself, the connectors are standard and still sold. By the way, I think that your recycling centre should often get them with older systems.

New dumpster finding:
QDI Legend-V Intel chipset motherboard, 440LX-based, 'slotket' adapter on Slot 1 with Celeron 466mhz, unknown RAM (1 bank), SoundBlaster CT5803 (Sound Blaster Audio PCI 64 Dell/Gateway), VGA ASUS AGP-V385GX2 (S3-based), CD-Rom 50x, floppy and Maxtor HD:

Found an interesting PC Cheaps board. Going to use it to replace my S635MP, assuming it works (it's in near-new condition, which is never a good sign with hardware this old as far as I'm concerned, not even mentioning the fact that it's PC Chips hardware), as I don't like it's assortment of onboard hardware and anemic C3 processor.

It is the A31G, interesting because it's a socket 754 board with DDR400 support, and PCI-E x16 AND AGP! I never thought I'd see a board with both, just with one or the other. Currently it's fitted with some kind of mobile Sempron, so I am pretty comfortable with outfitting this with my GeForce 4MX 128MB card. Chipset is a SiS 960GX.

Right now it's refusing to POST, hoping against hope that it will clear up soon. Maybe I need a real S754 chip? Wonder how much one of those will set me back.

Also found a board out of what I think is an Optiplex GX280, it's filthy. Enough that I'm considering putting it through a dishwasher. It actually looks a bit bowed outward, don't have much hope for this one.

Indrid Cold wrote:

New dumpster finding:
QDI Legend-V Intel chipset motherboard, 440LX-based, 'slotket' adapter on Slot 1 with Celeron 466mhz, unknown RAM (1 bank), SoundBlaster CT5803 (Sound Blaster Audio PCI 64 Dell/Gateway), VGA ASUS AGP-V385GX2 (S3-based), CD-Rom 50x, floppy and Maxtor HD:

Cool find, that's a pretty good system! I've also got a dumpster find based on the same motherboard. Check on your BIOS revision, there is a beta BIOS out there that can support up to 76.8G drives (L5_B30D.BIN), I flashed mine with it, works fine. Let me know if you can't find the file, I still have it on my laptop.

JidaiGeki wrote:

Indrid Cold wrote:

New dumpster finding:
QDI Legend-V Intel chipset motherboard, 440LX-based, 'slotket' adapter on Slot 1 with Celeron 466mhz, unknown RAM (1 bank), SoundBlaster CT5803 (Sound Blaster Audio PCI 64 Dell/Gateway), VGA ASUS AGP-V385GX2 (S3-based), CD-Rom 50x, floppy and Maxtor HD:

Cool find, that's a pretty good system! I've also got a dumpster find based on the same motherboard. Check on your BIOS revision, there is a beta BIOS out there that can support up to 76.8G drives (L5_B30D.BIN), I flashed mine with it, works fine. Let me know if you can't find the file, I still have it on my laptop.

You're very kind Jidai, thanks! I'll check for sure.

Sedrosken wrote:

Found an interesting PC Cheaps board. Going to use it to replace my S635MP, assuming it works (it's in near-new condition, which […]
Show full quote

Found an interesting PC Cheaps board. Going to use it to replace my S635MP, assuming it works (it's in near-new condition, which is never a good sign with hardware this old as far as I'm concerned, not even mentioning the fact that it's PC Chips hardware), as I don't like it's assortment of onboard hardware and anemic C3 processor.

It is the A31G, interesting because it's a socket 754 board with DDR400 support, and PCI-E x16 AND AGP! I never thought I'd see a board with both, just with one or the other. Currently it's fitted with some kind of mobile Sempron, so I am pretty comfortable with outfitting this with my GeForce 4MX 128MB card. Chipset is a SiS 960GX.

Right now it's refusing to POST, hoping against hope that it will clear up soon. Maybe I need a real S754 chip? Wonder how much one of those will set me back.

Also found a board out of what I think is an Optiplex GX280, it's filthy. Enough that I'm considering putting it through a dishwasher. It actually looks a bit bowed outward, don't have much hope for this one.

This AGP PCIe Boards don't support all AGP Cards.

Then what cards might it support? A GeForce4MX really shouldn't be an issue, should it? I also have a GeForce 7600GS (PCI-E bridged design), Radeon 9600XT, and GeForce2MX200 that I could use.

Rescued from the dumpster today two P4-based rigs - in the last times I can see a lot of these architectures being trashed:

#1:

#2:

ElementalChaos wrote:

This Saturday was the last day the e-waste center I mentioned earlier was taking anything in, so I decided to go on a trip one m […]
Show full quote

This Saturday was the last day the e-waste center I mentioned earlier was taking anything in, so I decided to go on a trip one more time before they went belly-up.

I have the same case, I just wish I could find the Dell 5.25" bay cover. Instead, I am using 2 optical drives.

Back on page 3 in this thread I posted a sorry lot of stuff someone else had found in a dumpster or even more likely in the woods and then sold on Ebay as working parts without any good pictures showing the sorry state of the items.

Among the items were a PC Chips M507 i430FX Socket 5/7 motherboard. It was dirty and rusty and came without BIOS and RTC chips, surprise surprise. I tried to get it going with the help of a BIOS chip marked 586 1995 which seemed to indicate it was for a FX board but when the board diddnt show any signs of life I gave up.

A few days ago I cleaned the board and today I borrowed a BIOS chip from a dead Biostar 8500TAC-A i430FX board and a RTC chip from another dead board, this time I had more luck. The "Bio-Chips M507-TAC-A" posted at once and everything seems to work. The M507 dosnt seem to have any issues with the BIOS transplant, probably because the two motherboards use exactly the same UMC I/O chip. The best thing is that the cache slot works eventhough the Biostar board dosnt have one, this is key as the onboad cache on the PC Chips board is fake. The only reason I can think of that makes it worth to flash the correct BIOS is that is an Award one, the BIOS from the Biostar board is an AMI Win-BiOS. On the other hand the PC Chips board now thinks its a Biostar board which is an upgrade. 😀

The PC Chips boards FX chipset is marked SB82437FX while the Biostars FX Chipset is marked SB82437FX66, I guess they are two different revisons of the 430FX chipset?

The PC Chips M507 as when I got it with the worst crud brushed off.

The now clean PC Chips M507 with RTC and BIOS chip.

The Biostar 8500TAC-A - Version 6 donor board.

Im happy as I now have a 430FX board with a both CR2032 battery and pipeline burst cache, my other 430FX boards use Dallas/Odin RTCs or DIP memory or dont work at all.

The sad lot of items I wrote about in the post above also included a PC Chips M520 i430VX motherboard.

The PC Chips M520 as I got it, the BIOS chip on the board is a non flashable EEPROM actually belonging to the M507 in the post above, I guess the previous owner moved the chips around trying to get the boards to work before dumping them. This EEPROM 100% dead.

I tried a BIOS chip from a PC Partner i430VX board and although the diagnostic post card started spitting out codes it just looped the same codes over and over without ever posting. I used the PC Partner 35 8320 05 i430VX board to hotflash the correct BIOS on a spare flash chip but as the RTC chip from this board is now used on the PC Chips i430FX board in the post above I hoped to be able to use a RTC module with internal battery from a dead 486 board to help resurrect this board.

The PC Chips M520 i430VX board after cleaning and with the new BIOS chip and the somewhat odd RTC module.

Did the motherboard come alive with the new hotflashed BIOS chip and the odd RTC module? Yes it did! 😀

Found this nice 4 MB Card in a 15 € Scrap lot

^ that's a really nice vga, lucky!

Sedrosken wrote:

It is the A31G, interesting because it's a socket 754 board with DDR400 support, and PCI-E x16 AND AGP! I never thought I'd see a board with both, just with one or the other. Currently it's fitted with some kind of mobile Sempron, so I am pretty comfortable with outfitting this with my GeForce 4MX 128MB card. Chipset is a SiS 960GX.

Right now it's refusing to POST, hoping against hope that it will clear up soon. Maybe I need a real S754 chip? Wonder how much one of those will set me back.

This chipset don't have native AGP support, it's "hacked" using PCI, so it can be picky about graphic cards, if you can try the integrated graphics or a PCIe graphic card; of course it's probable that it don't post for a million other different reasons.

BastlerMike wrote:

Found this nice 4 MB Card in a 15 € Scrap lot

NIce finding! I've never had a S3 ISA video adapter...