Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-03-17, 12:26:

Why couldn't AMD just put the model designation on there? I don't know why they did that with some of their chips. Makes it such a mess to decipher unless you're an AM3 collector already.

Dont even get me started on that ..fuck their stupidly huge range of AM2/AM3 CPUs that all fucking overlap each other ..what a mess.

However I have a bit of experience digging through the lists, there are 4 main lists for the older AM2/AM3 CPUs each one covers a family, its a pain in the arse but so long as you can see the ID on the CPU its a few mins of parsing the lists.

-Edit I don't bother with anything above Phenom II..AMD gets progressively worse till Ryzen, though I would love a FX9590 for the shits and giggles bacon frying coolness factor, but the few boards that have the beefy VRM to run that CPU are still expensive.

tauro wrote on 2023-03-17, 06:46:

So the point of these things is to enable 1 CPU operation on multiprocessor boards?

Exactly - https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies … pentium-systems

Turbo -> wrote on 2023-03-17, 11:19:

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-03-16, 22:26:

Also got a Belkin OmniView KVM switch with AT & PS2 support.

That is a nice looking switch. What is the model name?

It's the Belkin OmniView F1D066 4 port switch.

Well I just bought 3 Quadro 3500s (GeForce 7900GS) for $5 each. SHIPPED. Going to try to figure out how to flash them to GeForce cards.

Seller has at least 10 more: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266132993924

(I think this is one time an exception to the eBay link rule would fit? Pretty unambiguously a great deal and there's no need to fight over them with the quantities the seller has)

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-17, 15:03:

Well I just bought 3 Quadro 3500s (GeForce 7900GS) for $5 each. SHIPPED. Going to try to figure out how to flash them to GeForce cards.

Seller has at least 10 more: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266132993924

(I think this is one time an exception to the eBay link rule would fit? Pretty unambiguously a great deal and there's no need to fight over them with the quantities the seller has)

Wow... that's super cheap. Can you give me a potential use case for this? I know the 6000 series is the last to have any kind of "normal" support within Windows 9x. Is it possible to make this work? If not, what would be the benefit of running this over something newer? Any specific games\programs that prefer a DX9 level card that won't even be happy with an 8600GT, 9500GT or 9800GT?

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-03-17, 15:15:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-17, 15:03:

Well I just bought 3 Quadro 3500s (GeForce 7900GS) for $5 each. SHIPPED. Going to try to figure out how to flash them to GeForce cards.

Seller has at least 10 more: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266132993924

(I think this is one time an exception to the eBay link rule would fit? Pretty unambiguously a great deal and there's no need to fight over them with the quantities the seller has)

Wow... that's super cheap. Can you give me a potential use case for this? I know the 6000 series is the last to have any kind of "normal" support within Windows 9x. Is it possible to make this work? If not, what would be the benefit of running this over something newer? Any specific games\programs that prefer a DX9 level card that won't even be happy with an 8600GT, 9500GT or 9800GT?

The 7000 series works under 98 just fine, IIRC its only the last halo versions of these cards that have issues but that could be down to drivers.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-17, 15:03:

Well I just bought 3 Quadro 3500s (GeForce 7900GS) for $5 each. SHIPPED. Going to try to figure out how to flash them to GeForce cards.

Seller has at least 10 more: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266132993924

(I think this is one time an exception to the eBay link rule would fit? Pretty unambiguously a great deal and there's no need to fight over them with the quantities the seller has)

No need to flash, there is nothing between the FX3500 and 7900GS, they perform the same since they are the same card, that aside it doesn't look like you can convert a FX3500 into a 7900GS. The 7000 series appears to be unmoddable, all info seems to point to nVidia locking the cards in hardware.

The Quadro is technically the better card here, it has better features over the 7900GS, I would just use it as it is.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-17, 15:03:

Well I just bought 3 Quadro 3500s (GeForce 7900GS) for $5 each. SHIPPED. Going to try to figure out how to flash them to GeForce cards.

Seller has at least 10 more: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266132993924

(I think this is one time an exception to the eBay link rule would fit? Pretty unambiguously a great deal and there's no need to fight over them with the quantities the seller has)

Hahah !
Nope !

acl wrote on 2023-03-17, 15:37:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-17, 15:03:

Well I just bought 3 Quadro 3500s (GeForce 7900GS) for $5 each. SHIPPED. Going to try to figure out how to flash them to GeForce cards.

Seller has at least 10 more: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266132993924

(I think this is one time an exception to the eBay link rule would fit? Pretty unambiguously a great deal and there's no need to fight over them with the quantities the seller has)

Hahah !
Nope !

For me I have to buy 3 to even make the shipping and import costs worth it ...40AUD to ship 1 or 42AUD to ship 3 and the shipping costs are still more than the 3 cards, import is at 12AUD regardless.

Sigh

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-17, 15:03:

Well I just bought 3 Quadro 3500s (GeForce 7900GS) for $5 each. SHIPPED. Going to try to figure out how to flash them to GeForce cards.

Seller has at least 10 more: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266132993924

(I think this is one time an exception to the eBay link rule would fit? Pretty unambiguously a great deal and there's no need to fight over them with the quantities the seller has)

Arrgh... well, that escalated quickly.

I got some of those Quadros... aannd... I saw that the seller has piles of older ITX motherboards for cheap too. So I grabbed a couple Asus Celeron 847 (Sandy Bridge dual core) boards and an Asus J1900 (quad core BayTrail-D) board. They come with the I/O shields and were far below the going rate on ebay. I don't really "like" low powered stuff like this, but for those prices I could think of a few uses for them. I almost bought way more than I need because they're so cheap, but realistically, what am I going to do with them? Hope that they are somehow worth more in a couple years when I still haven't done anything with them? 🤣

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-03-17, 16:29:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-17, 15:03:

Well I just bought 3 Quadro 3500s (GeForce 7900GS) for $5 each. SHIPPED. Going to try to figure out how to flash them to GeForce cards.

Seller has at least 10 more: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266132993924

(I think this is one time an exception to the eBay link rule would fit? Pretty unambiguously a great deal and there's no need to fight over them with the quantities the seller has)

Arrgh... well, that escalated quickly.

I got some of those Quadros... aannd... I saw that the seller has piles of older ITX motherboards for cheap too. So I grabbed a couple Asus Celeron 847 (Sandy Bridge dual core) boards and an Asus J1900 (quad core BayTrail-D) board. They come with the I/O shields and were far below the going rate on ebay. I don't really "like" low powered stuff like this, but for those prices I could think of a few uses for them. I almost bought way more than I need because they're so cheap, but realistically, what am I going to do with them? Hope that they are somehow worth more in a couple years when I still haven't done anything with them? 🤣

A linux compute cluster !!!

Dudes, stop prodding the monster 🤣 .. I have a 7900GS I haven't put to use, so think I'll skip on the headliner, got some good stuff cheap though, could get yourself a hella lot of redundant storage with his HDD prices... I'm favouriting him for later though... when I fill up 6TB when I've got my serveriest server organised I'll see what he's got then.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-03-17, 02:34:

I'm checking out their site now. Was tempted by the keyboard until I saw that ISO enter key. Nope. 😁 😁 😁

I think those keyboards are gone now. But yah, not a good return key if you're afflicted with fat pinkie syndrome and keep clipping it when you meant to hit backspace. I am am very used to those but still catch it wrong occassionally.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-03-17, 17:25:

Dudes, stop prodding the monster 🤣 .. I have a 7900GS I haven't put to use, so think I'll skip on the headliner, got some good stuff cheap though, could get yourself a hella lot of redundant storage with his HDD prices... I'm favouriting him for later though... when I fill up 6TB when I've got my serveriest server organised I'll see what he's got then.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-03-17, 02:34:

I'm checking out their site now. Was tempted by the keyboard until I saw that ISO enter key. Nope. 😁 😁 😁

I think those keyboards are gone now. But yah, not a good return key if you're afflicted with fat pinkie syndrome and keep clipping it when you meant to hit backspace. I am am very used to those but still catch it wrong occassionally.

My issue is that my muscle memory for entering backslash commands in DOS is totally destroyed by anything without a "normal" horizontal enter key. I have no muscle memory for doing backslash on keyboards with a big fat enter key or an ISO shaped enter key. Really limits my desire to use retro keyboards on retro systems, as many of them have big huge enter keys and I have to slow down and think about every backslash. 🙁

Something complete 😀

Terratec Wave System SCW001/2

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-03-17, 18:08:

My issue is that my muscle memory for entering backslash commands in DOS is totally destroyed by anything without a "normal" horizontal enter key. I have no muscle memory for doing backslash on keyboards with a big fat enter key or an ISO shaped enter key. Really limits my desire to use retro keyboards on retro systems, as many of them have big huge enter keys and I have to slow down and think about every backslash. 🙁

I have the same problem. I won't buy any keyboard that isn't a standard layout with a horizontal enter key. It's too confusing otherwise.

Fun fact. During my childhood, our middle school filled the computer lab with brand new Compaq computers. Compaq did something really bizarre. They split the keyboard into two keys, one of the spacebar, and the other side as the backspace. So if you had already trained your muscle memory to use your thumb on the wrong side, every time you tried to hit the spacebar, you would backspace instead.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-03-17, 15:15:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-17, 15:03:

Well I just bought 3 Quadro 3500s (GeForce 7900GS) for $5 each. SHIPPED. Going to try to figure out how to flash them to GeForce cards.

Seller has at least 10 more: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266132993924

(I think this is one time an exception to the eBay link rule would fit? Pretty unambiguously a great deal and there's no need to fight over them with the quantities the seller has)

Wow... that's super cheap. Can you give me a potential use case for this? I know the 6000 series is the last to have any kind of "normal" support within Windows 9x. Is it possible to make this work? If not, what would be the benefit of running this over something newer? Any specific games\programs that prefer a DX9 level card that won't even be happy with an 8600GT, 9500GT or 9800GT?

The 7000 series cards are the last to use traditional pixel/vertex pipelines as opposed to a unified shader architecture. The 7900GS is the 5th fastest among them (only 7900 GTO, 7900GTX, 7900GX2 and 7950GT are fast. None of them by a large margin). You also have to keep in mind that as you start using newer drivers (which your forced to use newer drivers the newer of hardware you use) the more driver based compability breaks you see with older software. Around GeForce 8 you see NVIDIA driver start to balloon up in size and feature set. You can really see GeForce 7 as more of the end of an era at NVIDIA than anything else.

For $5 its worth stocking up on a few cards just to throw them cheap Pentium D/Core2 Windows XP machines. I own an actual 7900GS (along with almost every other 7000 series card) but 7000 series cards are all on borrowed time so I don't like to use mine in builds, I just keep them around for when I need benchmark data or some specific function of them for a test. I won't be pissed if a $5 Quadro dies on me.

I bought 2 for an SLI Pair, the third is to experiment with flashing them to 7900GSs so I can run them as true GeForce cards. Also I don't think there are as many protections to prevent going from Quadro to GeForce as the other way around. Quadros were massively more expensive, no one was buying them back then to use for gaming. That would be stupid. I think the main way NV prevented GF to Quadro flashing was locking out the high precision float and memory self checking (not ECC, different tech) that Quadros use.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-03-18, 01:27:

I have the same problem. I won't buy any keyboard that isn't a standard layout with a horizontal enter key. It's too confusing o […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-03-17, 18:08:

My issue is that my muscle memory for entering backslash commands in DOS is totally destroyed by anything without a "normal" horizontal enter key. I have no muscle memory for doing backslash on keyboards with a big fat enter key or an ISO shaped enter key. Really limits my desire to use retro keyboards on retro systems, as many of them have big huge enter keys and I have to slow down and think about every backslash. 🙁

I have the same problem. I won't buy any keyboard that isn't a standard layout with a horizontal enter key. It's too confusing otherwise.

Fun fact. During my childhood, our middle school filled the computer lab with brand new Compaq computers. Compaq did something really bizarre. They split the keyboard into two keys, one of the spacebar, and the other side as the backspace. So if you had already trained your muscle memory to use your thumb on the wrong side, every time you tried to hit the spacebar, you would backspace instead.

vintage-compaq-computer-keyboard_1_7250e36c11a542cc6f0fc48f4fa4f118.jpg

It doesn't phase me much because I've always been on multiple keyboard layouts for decades. Whether it was Amiga or UK to US or Canadian ML to US or whatever. I can use 5 or more slightly different keyboards a day sometimes.

kixs wrote on 2023-03-17, 20:39:

Something complete :) […]
Show full quote

Something complete 😀

Terratec Wave System SCW001/2

It's always neat to have the full box. How does it sound? I wasn't able to find much on the particular board, but what I did seems like it could have an interesting sound.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-03-18, 01:27:

I have the same problem. I won't buy any keyboard that isn't a standard layout with a horizontal enter key. It's too confusing otherwise.

Fun fact. During my childhood, our middle school filled the computer lab with brand new Compaq computers. Compaq did something really bizarre. They split the keyboard into two keys, one of the spacebar, and the other side as the backspace. So if you had already trained your muscle memory to use your thumb on the wrong side, every time you tried to hit the spacebar, you would backspace instead.

vintage-compaq-computer-keyboard_1_7250e36c11a542cc6f0fc48f4fa4f118.jpg

Ugh!! That is absolutely evil! Is that "feature" meant specifically to help train proper typing skills, or is it just a horribly sadistic "improvement" someone thought people would benefit from? Why would you want ONE keyboard manufactured out of thousand of different models to have a backspace for half of the spacebar? Do they think people carry these with them and only use this keyboard their whole life? If you were used to using that and then tried to use anything else you'd be so messed up. What a joke.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-18, 03:28:

The 7000 series cards are the last to use traditional pixel/vertex pipelines as opposed to a unified shader architecture. The 7900GS is the 5th fastest among them (only 7900 GTO, 7900GTX, 7900GX2 and 7950GT are fast. None of them by a large margin). You also have to keep in mind that as you start using newer drivers (which your forced to use newer drivers the newer of hardware you use) the more driver based compability breaks you see with older software. Around GeForce 8 you see NVIDIA driver start to balloon up in size and feature set. You can really see GeForce 7 as more of the end of an era at NVIDIA than anything else.

I was aware of all of that, and I agree, the 7 series was the end of an era for Nvidia. I just didn't know if you knew of any specific games that were affected by any of these things. I think we've had this discussion a few times lately and I keep wanting to see specific examples. 😁

The big news for me is that these should be usable in Windows 98 with the right drivers. For some reason I had been under the impression that the 7 series (and Quadro equivalents) would not work well under 9x, but I had never tried it or looked into it much. I have a bunch of these cards on the way now though. 😁

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-18, 03:28:

The 7000 series cards are the last to use traditional pixel/vertex pipelines as opposed to a unified shader architecture. The 79 […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-03-17, 15:15:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-17, 15:03:

Well I just bought 3 Quadro 3500s (GeForce 7900GS) for $5 each. SHIPPED. Going to try to figure out how to flash them to GeForce cards.

Seller has at least 10 more: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266132993924

(I think this is one time an exception to the eBay link rule would fit? Pretty unambiguously a great deal and there's no need to fight over them with the quantities the seller has)

Wow... that's super cheap. Can you give me a potential use case for this? I know the 6000 series is the last to have any kind of "normal" support within Windows 9x. Is it possible to make this work? If not, what would be the benefit of running this over something newer? Any specific games\programs that prefer a DX9 level card that won't even be happy with an 8600GT, 9500GT or 9800GT?

The 7000 series cards are the last to use traditional pixel/vertex pipelines as opposed to a unified shader architecture. The 7900GS is the 5th fastest among them (only 7900 GTO, 7900GTX, 7900GX2 and 7950GT are fast. None of them by a large margin). You also have to keep in mind that as you start using newer drivers (which your forced to use newer drivers the newer of hardware you use) the more driver based compability breaks you see with older software. Around GeForce 8 you see NVIDIA driver start to balloon up in size and feature set. You can really see GeForce 7 as more of the end of an era at NVIDIA than anything else.

For $5 its worth stocking up on a few cards just to throw them cheap Pentium D/Core2 Windows XP machines. I own an actual 7900GS (along with almost every other 7000 series card) but 7000 series cards are all on borrowed time so I don't like to use mine in builds, I just keep them around for when I need benchmark data or some specific function of them for a test. I won't be pissed if a $5 Quadro dies on me.

I bought 2 for an SLI Pair, the third is to experiment with flashing them to 7900GSs so I can run them as true GeForce cards. Also I don't think there are as many protections to prevent going from Quadro to GeForce as the other way around. Quadros were massively more expensive, no one was buying them back then to use for gaming. That would be stupid. I think the main way NV prevented GF to Quadro flashing was locking out the high precision float and memory self checking (not ECC, different tech) that Quadros use.

No, I spent a few hours digging around and the G71 Quadro cards are hardware locked to prevent flashing, the 7900GS can "reportedly" be flashed to a Quadro though, but whats the point of that ..the 7900GS doesn't have the extra Quadro features unlocked on the silicon as nVidia was lasering them off during production. (I guess its possible it was Vbios lock)

That said, I don't see the point in flashing a Quadro FX3500 even if it was possible, there is no performance difference between the two cards (identical mem/core clocks, shaders, ROPs and TMUs) and the Quadro has the better feature set, even with production drivers it'll play any game you throw at it without skipping a beat.