Hmmm, the proverbial radar picked up an E-mu SoundEngine for a less than crazy price... that's the easy bit done, now the figuring out if I actually want it or can use it. 🤣

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-07-04, 04:25:

Absolutely, they make great cards for most games made between 1998 and 2003. I've never overclocked one myself, but I used a 9600 Pro for a while back in the day and it was an excellent card (coming from a dead Ti 4400 and a terribly underpowered FX 5600 non-ultra that was sent as replacement). Getting anywhere in that performance range on a budget would be awesome for a P4 build. 😀

I never had a Pentium 4. This is going to be like a hypothetical "what if?" build where instead of the junkbox my family got in 2005, we got a hand-me-down, fairly capable but ageing 2002 P4 around the same time instead.

I'm going to limit myself to a 533MHz FSB board so there's room for an upgrade, without going crazy. Starting out with a low-ish clocked 400MHz FSB Northwood, then I'll drop in a 533MHz 3.06 GHz Northwood HT. Any ideas on what AGP card from 2003-2007 would go well when I do that upgrade?

giantenemycat wrote on 2024-07-04, 07:58:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-07-04, 04:25:

Absolutely, they make great cards for most games made between 1998 and 2003. I've never overclocked one myself, but I used a 9600 Pro for a while back in the day and it was an excellent card (coming from a dead Ti 4400 and a terribly underpowered FX 5600 non-ultra that was sent as replacement). Getting anywhere in that performance range on a budget would be awesome for a P4 build. 😀

I never had a Pentium 4. This is going to be like a hypothetical "what if?" build where instead of the junkbox my family got in 2005, we got a hand-me-down, fairly capable but ageing 2002 P4 around the same time instead.

I'm going to limit myself to a 533MHz FSB board so there's room for an upgrade, without going crazy. Starting out with a low-ish clocked 400MHz FSB Northwood, then I'll drop in a 533MHz 3.06 GHz Northwood HT. Any ideas on what AGP card from 2003-2007 would go well when I do that upgrade?

AGP support stops at GeForce 7900 / 7950 series for nvidia. (bridged PCIe to AGP cards) last native ones were in the 6800 series i think. It was supported longer by ATi (up to HD4000 iirc).

Northwood 3.06 HT is from late 2002. As you suggested, a 9700/9800 would be period correct but harder to find (and you should stay away from the 128bit 9800 "pro"). A 9600XT should be easy to find. X800/850 other than XT/PE can still be found also quite easily. X1900 and newer is probably a bit "modern" for a Northwood. You can also try to find a Radeon 9500 (the regular one, not the pro) and softmod it into a 9700 as suggested by Ozzuneoj. The 9500 are not that hard to find but only buy tested ones with no artifacts etc.. because r300 cards tend to cook themselves. Also upgrading the cooling is advised if you're using one for gaming.

The fakes 9800 "pro" 128bit i mentioned above are not that awful. They are just not "real 9800 pro". In the end, performances are very similar to a real 9700. So if you find one for a good price, that might be a good deal after all.

Generally nVidia cards from that era tends to be more expensive than ATi ones.
I'm not recommending nVidia FX series if you're planning to use the system for real (the price is high for anything above Fx5700 because they are collectible, but performance is not great for DX9). 6600 is cheap, but not very original. 6800 can be expensive. 7600 AGP can be found easily but also not very original. 79XX AGP are not common.

Around 2002 there is also Matrox Parhelia. a DX8 card. Performance is around a GeForce4 Ti4400. Harder to find but definitely original.

I traded for something today. A friend needed a Slot-1 Coppermine and I had a 550 I could giveaway. He gave me back this in return.

I accepted the trade because I never knew there were actual 133MHz Katmai Slot-1 parts. I am still kind of dumbfounded.. What platform did Intel make these for? i820? I thought that never got a mainstream release worth mentioning, so they made CPUs for VIA's Apollo Pro133 effectively? That is incredibly weird and ironic if true..

And the question is, why? I guess Athlon was busting their balls in 1999 and this was a desparation product that just got pushed out?

Regardless, it was a curiosity I wanted in my collection and I got it. I don't think I even have an Apollo Pro133 board I can test it on, funnily enough.

Got myself this beautiful boy:

A "graphite" Mac pro G4! Bottom of the case had some very light corrosion, one of the clips holding the side panel was broken. Looks alright a few hours of disassembly and cleaning. Booted into a confused Mac after a battery swap (both drives dont seem to be bootable), so I'll have to figure out the best OS for it later - 9.2 or 10.4 or both seem like good choices right now.

This is how it was shipped to me BTW, so I'm glad its just a broken panel clip:

Old style Motherboard and included dial-up indicates that this was the initial 400MHz model. In 2003 someone added a 1000MHz CPU, SATA and GeForce 4600 cards. USB card from 2009. 1.5GB of RAM.

Not a common this to find around where I live so I'm pretty stoked.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-07-04, 12:26:

I traded for something today. A friend needed a Slot-1 Coppermine and I had a 550 I could giveaway. He gave me back this in re […]
Show full quote

I traded for something today. A friend needed a Slot-1 Coppermine and I had a 550 I could giveaway. He gave me back this in return.

The attachment Intel Pentium III 533B.jpg is no longer available

I accepted the trade because I never knew there were actual 133MHz Katmai Slot-1 parts. I am still kind of dumbfounded.. What platform did Intel make these for? i820? I thought that never got a mainstream release worth mentioning, so they made CPUs for VIA's Apollo Pro133 effectively? That is incredibly weird and ironic if true..

And the question is, why? I guess Athlon was busting their balls in 1999 and this was a desparation product that just got pushed out?

Regardless, it was a curiosity I wanted in my collection and I got it. I don't think I even have an Apollo Pro133 board I can test it on, funnily enough.

There were all sorts of server boards - some with their own custom chipsets which may have been certified 133 before Intel got round to it.
Iirc soyo, and/or tyan had their own chipsets.

Basically, odds are, some big oem asked for it.

myne wrote on 2024-07-04, 13:45:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-07-04, 12:26:

I traded for something today. A friend needed a Slot-1 Coppermine and I had a 550 I could giveaway. He gave me back this in re […]
Show full quote

I traded for something today. A friend needed a Slot-1 Coppermine and I had a 550 I could giveaway. He gave me back this in return.

The attachment Intel Pentium III 533B.jpg is no longer available

I accepted the trade because I never knew there were actual 133MHz Katmai Slot-1 parts. I am still kind of dumbfounded.. What platform did Intel make these for? i820? I thought that never got a mainstream release worth mentioning, so they made CPUs for VIA's Apollo Pro133 effectively? That is incredibly weird and ironic if true..

And the question is, why? I guess Athlon was busting their balls in 1999 and this was a desparation product that just got pushed out?

Regardless, it was a curiosity I wanted in my collection and I got it. I don't think I even have an Apollo Pro133 board I can test it on, funnily enough.

Basically, odds are, some big oem asked for it.

It's got a Dell part number 2492U so I'm gonna guess HP 🤣 ... no but just quick lazy searching I'm not managing to track that back to which machines it was used in.

luckybob wrote on 2024-07-02, 20:46:

I wont a battle against a gold-scrapper! I also know ebay links are taboo, but I dont care: https://www.ebay.com/itm/235627579 […]
Show full quote

I wont a battle against a gold-scrapper! I also know ebay links are taboo, but I dont care: https://www.ebay.com/itm/235627579658

Some choice images if you dont want to click the ePay link: https://imgur.com/a/Vx4Ebms

All those MCA-cards! And the memory cards looks gorgeous, they must also have cost a fortune in the day. Good job saving them! Are the CPU-complexes are for the Model 95?

SCORE! Picked up this Philips 107E CRT with a mystery box Mesh PC locally. Turned out to be a Socket A system. Original booklet included showing purchase date of 2001, and detailing troubleshooting up to 2007 for some neat little history to it. Came with ME but was upgraded to XP at some point.

How much for the lot? £50.

... welp, apparently I now have an ELSA Gloria-XL on it's way to me. Seems like these are quite hard to come by these days and I caved under the pressure. 🤦

It's a monster of a card for 1997.

I am not 100% sure what I'll be able to use a 40MB Glint MX + Delta card for, but it will be fun to tinker with and the price was tolerable. 3DLabs advertised the Glint MX as being 2x to 5x the performance of the 500TX. Plus, the onboard Trio64V2/DX for DOS is pretty generous compared to the GD5420 that some other professional 3D cards were saddled with. As far as I can tell, this is the last high end 3DLabs card that was PCI... and apparently it supports 66Mhz PCI? The only way I'd probably be able to make use of that would be to overclock the PCI bus (if that counts), but it's cool nonetheless. 😀

I think i have one of these (or similar)... what makes it special? I've always figured a CAD card was pretty much worthless if you aren't doing CAD.

Also quiet a few MACs run 66mhz pci by default. So it might be cross platform capable.

luckybob wrote on 2024-07-04, 23:58:

I think i have one of these (or similar)... what makes it special? I've always figured a CAD card was pretty much worthless if you aren't doing CAD.

Also quiet a few MACs run 66mhz pci by default. So it might be cross platform capable.

Being honest: Once you've seen your 100th Voodoo or Geforce, they are a lot less interesting to collect since I will absolutely *never* be able to collect all the different minor variations of them. So, at some point I started collecting very early cards that could be used for 3D gaming or at least were advertised as such since there is a fairly limited number of them and they are obscure enough that they sometimes fly under the radar. Some are ridiculously rare and barely do anything, but finding them is pretty cool. The Glint series can apparently be used for games with the right driver + OS combination... with horrid performance I'm sure... but hey, it's probably way better than an S3 Virge, right? 🤣

Anyway, I remember seeing cards like this all the time a while back but for whatever reason they seem to be more valuable now and much harder to find, so I jumped on this one... mostly just to prevent myself from buying one at a higher price later. I will probably tinker with it for a while and then put it on display because it is super impressive looking with the dual heatsinks, S3 chip and Glint Delta... plus all that tasty RAM.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-07-04, 12:26:

I traded for something today. A friend needed a Slot-1 Coppermine and I had a 550 I could giveaway. He gave me back this in re […]
Show full quote

I traded for something today. A friend needed a Slot-1 Coppermine and I had a 550 I could giveaway. He gave me back this in return.

The attachment Intel Pentium III 533B.jpg is no longer available

I accepted the trade because I never knew there were actual 133MHz Katmai Slot-1 parts. I am still kind of dumbfounded.. What platform did Intel make these for? i820? I thought that never got a mainstream release worth mentioning, so they made CPUs for VIA's Apollo Pro133 effectively? That is incredibly weird and ironic if true..

And the question is, why? I guess Athlon was busting their balls in 1999 and this was a desparation product that just got pushed out?

Regardless, it was a curiosity I wanted in my collection and I got it. I don't think I even have an Apollo Pro133 board I can test it on, funnily enough.

There was also 600MHz slot-1 Katmais in 133 (the 600B)

Ithink I've found my new favourite board. For one euro, since it was supposed to not work at all, but frankly it does...
BIOS voltage readings are somewhat concerning as I'm using a modern high quality ATX power supply. Where should I probe with multimeter or are these W83977EF likely to provide inaccurate readings in BIOS? Fan speed wasn't detected either.

A001 wrote on 2024-07-05, 14:55:

Ithink I've found my new favourite board. For one euro, since it was supposed to not work at all, but frankly it does... BIOS v […]
Show full quote

Ithink I've found my new favourite board. For one euro, since it was supposed to not work at all, but frankly it does...
BIOS voltage readings are somewhat concerning as I'm using a modern high quality ATX power supply. Where should I probe with multimeter or are these W83977EF likely to provide inaccurate readings in BIOS? Fan speed wasn't detected either.

The attachment 922.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 924.jpg is no longer available

I wouldn't be all that worried software reported voltage readings are very inaccurate.

On a bare board test, probably not pulling enough watts for the PSU to stabilise.

Would make sense if I didn't have one spinning rust there. Readings won't change at all when I swap the 333Mhz celery for a 500Mhz Katmai.

Picked up a couple systems from thrift stores recently.

I'm not normally a huge fan of 2000's style of cases, but I do appreciate them in the traditional beige.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-07-05, 23:30:

Picked up a couple systems from thrift stores recently.

I'm not normally a huge fan of 2000's style of cases, but I do appreciate them in the traditional beige.

Both are beautiful. Have you got any gear planned to go in them?

I’m so jealous you can walk into a store and grab retro gear.

zuldan wrote on 2024-07-06, 00:30:

Both are beautiful. Have you got any gear planned to go in them?

I'm thinking of putting my Pentium 4 multi-OS build into the Antec case.

The other case, I'm not sure yet. Maybe a Pentium III build?

I’m so jealous you can walk into a store and grab retro gear.

It's a numbers game. I've probably done between 5o to 100 visits to thrift stores this year alone.

Rarely is there any hardware worth getting, but once in awhile I get lucky. Mostly I'm just after old computer games.