AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-08-26, 00:59:

Picked up this time capsule at an estate sale for $10 Bucks! I love it, all those 90's stickers. In fantastic condition. Unfortunately couldn't find the monitor/keyboard ect at the sale.

What a beauty! Almost looks like it was never used!

During a nostalgic moment i bought a similar one for €60 (with speakers that attach to monitor aswell) because it was the first new computer our parents bought for my brother who needed one for school.
It wasn't exactly the one me and my brother used to have (that one had a AMD k6 II 400mhz and no door on the case or usb, must have been a slightly earlier model).

Powered it on and had a laugh with going through the P/O's win98 .. then second time i went to power it on ... BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ (standard bigfoot noises) TICK*TICK*TICK*TICK*TICK ( not so standard bigfoot noises ) 😒
I still wonder how it was able to power on and work flawless one last time (first time since me buying it) and then Clunk .. dead.

Hope yours last longer than mine :p

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-08-26, 12:31:

Almost no room for any upgrades

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-08-26, 12:31:

was battling it out against Apple iMac

Sounds like they were targetting the right market then 😉

Why sell a PC when you can sell a crippled PC this year and then another one in 18 months time when technology has marched on? Compaq's gotta eat!

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-08-26, 07:57:

Got this nice clean ASRock 939Dual Sata2 for a good price, seems like the perfect board for the 4800+ or an Opteron 180, they ar […]
Show full quote

Got this nice clean ASRock 939Dual Sata2 for a good price, seems like the perfect board for the 4800+ or an Opteron 180, they are essentially the same CPU just depends on which one I can dig out of the CPU box first.

The attachment 939Dual Sata2.jpg is no longer available

The attachment ASRock 939Dual Sata2.jpg is no longer available

Comes with everything except the manual, also doesnt appear to have any bad caps but will get a good testing once its here.

I sold dozens of those back in the day, quite literally every single one I sold or used in my shop had capacitors that failed after a few years of usage.

Otherwise I like that board a lot.

Updated my previous message. Its actually either December 1998 or very early 1999. https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/amd-c … ntel-in-retail/ article has wrong date attribution. Listed Retail channel best sellers, aka mum gets lost in a supermarket and spends too much on bad computer after being bombarded with slang by Computer salesperson.

1 HP Pavilion 6330 - AMD K6-2 300 MHz, 48MB memory (how?), SiS 5598 integrated "graphics". $800 + $300 15" M50 monitor
2 Compaq Presario 5030 - Pentium II 300 MHz, 64MB, integrated ATi Rage LT, Zip drive included! 17" MV700 monitor. $1650
3 Compaq Presario 2256 - AMD K6 300 MHz, 48MB, 430VX with integrated 2MB S3 Virge. $900 + ~$260 15" monitor
4 Compaq Presario 5020 - Celeron 300 MHz, 64MB, integrated ATi Rage LT. $1000 + ~$260 15" monitor
5 Apple iMac (233 MHz), 32MB, 6 MB ATI Rage Pro Turbo. $1300
6 IBM Aptiva something K6-2 300 MHz. Who knows how much.
7 Packard Bell Club 30 - Cyrix MII 300 CPU 233 MHz, 32MB, SiS 5598 integrated "graphics", 14" monitor. ~$800

iMac most expensive but surprisingly best choice from this big store dreg. No 3D games on any of them tho 😀 all for homework, senior email service and taxes.

pete8475 wrote on 2024-08-26, 19:38:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-08-26, 07:57:

Got this nice clean ASRock 939Dual Sata2 for a good price, seems like the perfect board for the 4800+ or an Opteron 180, they ar […]
Show full quote

Got this nice clean ASRock 939Dual Sata2 for a good price, seems like the perfect board for the 4800+ or an Opteron 180, they are essentially the same CPU just depends on which one I can dig out of the CPU box first.

The attachment 939Dual Sata2.jpg is no longer available

The attachment ASRock 939Dual Sata2.jpg is no longer available

Comes with everything except the manual, also doesnt appear to have any bad caps but will get a good testing once its here.

I sold dozens of those back in the day, quite literally every single one I sold or used in my shop had capacitors that failed after a few years of usage.

Otherwise I like that board a lot.

I have two versions of its 775 cousin too, but yes their caps are pretty terrible. This one "Looks" ok but I will keep an eye on it and have some replacement caps on hand in case it pops, the Opteron 180 may push them enough to pop any bad ones.

Freebie w/ those specs:

- ASUS P5GC-MX
- KME CX-6058 case
- Rexpower PSU (also KME OEM)
- Geforce 8500GT 512MB that was artefacting
- 250GB IDE WD Caviar SE
- 1GB DDR2
- Samsung SH-S203 DVDRW (SATA)

Pic from when I was cleaning it up.

deas for a build inside it? I'm thinking of the following:

- 865 based 775 build
- ASRock P4Dual-915GL w/ Radeon X1950 XTX and Prescott P4
- mobile Barton build with either SL-75FRN2-RL or NF7-S v2.0
- (reserved space for special Socket 462 build)

PcBytes wrote on 2024-08-26, 22:38:

Freebie w/ those specs: […]
Show full quote

Freebie w/ those specs:

- ASUS P5GC-MX
- KME CX-6058 case
- Rexpower PSU (also KME OEM)
- Geforce 8500GT 512MB that was artefacting
- 250GB IDE WD Caviar SE
- 1GB DDR2
- Samsung SH-S203 DVDRW (SATA)

Pic from when I was cleaning it up.

deas for a build inside it? I'm thinking of the following:

- 865 based 775 build
- ASRock P4Dual-915GL w/ Radeon X1950 XTX and Prescott P4
- mobile Barton build with either SL-75FRN2-RL or NF7-S v2.0
- (reserved space for special Socket 462 build)

Thats wild i just picked up the exact same case, from the same estate sale I got the Compaq from. Except it has a crazy surge protector strip built in. I'll have to grab a pic of it. The lan party handle is the best thing!

Yeah, this is my 2nd one.
The other one I have (IIRC the 6059) is white/khaki, and it houses a DFI Infinity nF4 SLi w/ an Athlon 64 x2 4600+ and a Geforce 7900GTX KingKong Edition.
I wish I had the funds to swap the board for a Lanparty counterpart though.

Radeon 9250 256MB, probably never used, $7.

pete8475 wrote on 2024-08-26, 19:38:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-08-26, 07:57:

Got this nice clean ASRock 939Dual Sata2 for a good price, seems like the perfect board for the 4800+ or an Opteron 180, they ar […]
Show full quote

Got this nice clean ASRock 939Dual Sata2 for a good price, seems like the perfect board for the 4800+ or an Opteron 180, they are essentially the same CPU just depends on which one I can dig out of the CPU box first.

The attachment 939Dual Sata2.jpg is no longer available

The attachment ASRock 939Dual Sata2.jpg is no longer available

Comes with everything except the manual, also doesnt appear to have any bad caps but will get a good testing once its here.

I sold dozens of those back in the day, quite literally every single one I sold or used in my shop had capacitors that failed after a few years of usage.

Otherwise I like that board a lot.

It can be picky about graphics cards.
I use one as main test system for graphics card i buy but it's not the silver bullet. I tested a lot of agp and PCI graphics cards that just give black screen on this system. So i often have a second motherboard at hand to confirm.

Also, a few days ago, when i talked about my opteron 180 that stopped working. This was after using it in this board (For a "GPU June" video). Not sure if it'the board fault or ESD when i manipulated it.

acl wrote on 2024-08-27, 08:11:

It can be picky about graphics cards. I use one as main test system for graphics card i buy but it's not the silver bullet. I te […]
Show full quote

pete8475 wrote on 2024-08-26, 19:38:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-08-26, 07:57:

Got this nice clean ASRock 939Dual Sata2 for a good price, seems like the perfect board for the 4800+ or an Opteron 180, they ar […]
Show full quote

Got this nice clean ASRock 939Dual Sata2 for a good price, seems like the perfect board for the 4800+ or an Opteron 180, they are essentially the same CPU just depends on which one I can dig out of the CPU box first.

The attachment 939Dual Sata2.jpg is no longer available

The attachment ASRock 939Dual Sata2.jpg is no longer available

Comes with everything except the manual, also doesnt appear to have any bad caps but will get a good testing once its here.

I sold dozens of those back in the day, quite literally every single one I sold or used in my shop had capacitors that failed after a few years of usage.

Otherwise I like that board a lot.

It can be picky about graphics cards.
I use one as main test system for graphics card i buy but it's not the silver bullet. I tested a lot of agp and PCI graphics cards that just give black screen on this system. So i often have a second motherboard at hand to confirm.

Also, a few days ago, when i talked about my opteron 180 that stopped working. This was after using it in this board (For a "GPU June" video). Not sure if it'the board fault or ESD when i manipulated it.

Agp motherboards in general seem to be randomly picky about the graphics cards you put in them. I have come to find you need to test all video cards in at LEAST two motherboards with different chipsets before declaring an agp gpu is dead.

To many times I have dropped in a card only to think its dead, then the next motherboard works perfectly. I even had one card reject Nforce 3 & Via K8T800 Pro chipsets, only to run perfectly on another with an intel chipset.

New (to me) PCI graphics card to try in my Pentium 233 system...

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-08-27, 14:23:

acl wrote on 2024-08-27, 08:11:

It can be picky about graphics cards. I use one as main test system for graphics card i buy but it's not the silver bullet. I te […]
Show full quote

pete8475 wrote on 2024-08-26, 19:38:

I sold dozens of those back in the day, quite literally every single one I sold or used in my shop had capacitors that failed after a few years of usage.

Otherwise I like that board a lot.

It can be picky about graphics cards.
I use one as main test system for graphics card i buy but it's not the silver bullet. I tested a lot of agp and PCI graphics cards that just give black screen on this system. So i often have a second motherboard at hand to confirm.

Also, a few days ago, when i talked about my opteron 180 that stopped working. This was after using it in this board (For a "GPU June" video). Not sure if it'the board fault or ESD when i manipulated it.

Agp motherboards in general seem to be randomly picky about the graphics cards you put in them. I have come to find you need to test all video cards in at LEAST two motherboards with different chipsets before declaring an agp gpu is dead.

To many times I have dropped in a card only to think its dead, then the next motherboard works perfectly. I even had one card reject Nforce 3 & Via K8T800 Pro chipsets, only to run perfectly on another with an intel chipset.

I have seen lots of picky AGP cards\boards too.

I think part of the time these quirks can be blamed on the physical AGP interface itself. I have seen situations where a card can be latched in place and screwed in and yet still have some play within the socket - sometimes making the system not POST unless the card is pressed on a bit. It can be even worse with older cards and boards that don't have latches.

If you compare the contacts on an AGP card vs ISA, PCI and PCI-Express, you'll see that the shape of the pins is very different on AGP and they are staggered. I don't know if this is why some combinations of cards + boards can be so picky, but it could be why we don't see connectors like this on consumer gear these days (there may be some, but I can't think of any). It seems like that would have been a pretty huge oversight in the design, but they may have had other good reasons to make the connector this way. Maybe they did this to manage the force required to insert or remove cards? If half the pins are at different depths then it would require half the force spread out over two rows of pins.

But then, this also makes the card come loose more easily too. Does anyone remember opening up PCs back in the late 90s and early 2000s and finding hot glue on the AGP connector to make sure the video card didn't lose connection in shipping? Good times. 🤣

Going along with all of this, if an AGP card just doesn't seem to "agree" with a certain board, you do not have any other slots to try it in, so if there's anything even remotely weird going on with the slot or the pins within the slot you have no way to troubleshoot except to try the card in a different board. If it works there, then it can give the appearance that the board or chipset is to blame. I have gone back and forth with cards in different boards only to have it work in the original board eventually.

I have finally acquired a Cube. A PowerPC, ATi graphics cube. No, I am not talking about the GameCube this time.

Yes, a mostly good condition G4 Cube. Only real problems are the slightly sticky cabling and the dry-rotting speakers. Both are kind of expected issues, since it's a 24 year old computer.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-27, 17:28:

It seems like that would have been a pretty huge oversight in the design, but they may have had other good reasons to make the connector this way. Maybe they did this to manage the force required to insert or remove cards? If half the pins are at different depths then it would require half the force spread out over two rows of pins.

Given the number of pins, if AGP card edges weren't staggered it would end up being like VLB all over again. No-one wanted the "thousand pin apocalypse".

nfraser01 wrote on 2024-08-27, 16:07:

New (to me) PCI graphics card to try in my Pentium 233 system...

How have I never heard of this graphics card before?

Two more mobos tomorrow:

- MSI 815EM Pro (MS-6315) - no POST or beeps, needs recap
- Soltek SL-75FRN3-L - unknown condition apart from bad capacitors

Next week:
- CONFIDENTIAL INFO

Big Pink wrote on 2024-08-28, 00:38:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-27, 17:28:

It seems like that would have been a pretty huge oversight in the design, but they may have had other good reasons to make the connector this way. Maybe they did this to manage the force required to insert or remove cards? If half the pins are at different depths then it would require half the force spread out over two rows of pins.

Given the number of pins, if AGP card edges weren't staggered it would end up being like VLB all over again. No-one wanted the "thousand pin apocalypse".

Normal AGP only has around 16 more pins than PCI, so I don't think it was purely a connector size issue. AGP Pro is, of course, much larger and has more pins, but that came several years later and could have just as well never been created (aux power connectors on cards made AGP Pro irrelevant). Perhaps they anticipated AGP getting larger over time and were expecting PC motherboards to shrink over that same time period, necessitating a more dense slot, but AGP 2x, 4x and 8x all work in the same size slot, so I don't know how much that really affected things.

PCI-Express x16 slots have 32 more pins than AGP and are longer than AGP, but the designers seemingly didn't feel the need to stagger the pin depth to save space.

Anyway, it is surprising to me just how little information exists about the AGP standard and why it was made the way it was. Or, I should say, my Google search attempts are mostly coming up with barely-related results and nothing very technical. I would be curious to know exactly why it was made the way it was.

The only standard PC interfaces I can think of that use staggered pin-depth connectors like these are EISA, Slot 1, Slot A and AGP. I don't think any of these are known for being exceptionally reliable or stable connectors, which may be why PCI-E and other interfaces moved away from staggered pins.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-28, 03:30:

Normal AGP only has around 16 more pins than PCI, so I don't think it was purely a connector size issue. AGP Pro is, of course, […]
Show full quote

Big Pink wrote on 2024-08-28, 00:38:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-27, 17:28:

It seems like that would have been a pretty huge oversight in the design, but they may have had other good reasons to make the connector this way. Maybe they did this to manage the force required to insert or remove cards? If half the pins are at different depths then it would require half the force spread out over two rows of pins.

Given the number of pins, if AGP card edges weren't staggered it would end up being like VLB all over again. No-one wanted the "thousand pin apocalypse".

Normal AGP only has around 16 more pins than PCI, so I don't think it was purely a connector size issue. AGP Pro is, of course, much larger and has more pins, but that came several years later and could have just as well never been created (aux power connectors on cards made AGP Pro irrelevant). Perhaps they anticipated AGP getting larger over time and were expecting PC motherboards to shrink over that same time period, necessitating a more dense slot, but AGP 2x, 4x and 8x all work in the same size slot, so I don't know how much that really affected things.

PCI-Express x16 slots have 32 more pins than AGP and are longer than AGP, but the designers seemingly didn't feel the need to stagger the pin depth to save space.

Anyway, it is surprising to me just how little information exists about the AGP standard and why it was made the way it was. Or, I should say, my Google search attempts are mostly coming up with barely-related results and nothing very technical. I would be curious to know exactly why it was made the way it was.

The only standard PC interfaces I can think of that use staggered pin-depth connectors like these are EISA, Slot 1, Slot A and AGP. I don't think any of these are known for being exceptionally reliable or stable connectors, which may be why PCI-E and other interfaces moved away from staggered pins.

I have a book "Computer buses design and application" W. Buchanan.
With some details about AGP (and other buses) implementation. Unfortunately nothing about the
staggered pins design but there are information about the extra pins over PCI.

This is not a great book... but it contains interesting details and can be found as PDF online (it's from 2000 and probably out of print)

I personally think that the staggered pins design is just more compact. As motherboards became more and more integrated (with sound, usb, disk/raid controllers) physical size could become a problem for manufacturing. And if you want your new standard to be supported by the manufacturers you want to lower the cost and complexity barrier.
I read that it's also why AMD chosed to re-use the Intel Slot1 connector (but rotated) for SlotA...
The connector was already manufactured (for Intel) and available to motherboard manufacturers. Not having to source a different connector lowered the cost of producing an AMD motherboard and made the manufacturers happy.

BetaC wrote on 2024-08-27, 23:24:

I have finally acquired a Cube. A PowerPC, ATi graphics cube. No, I am not talking about the GameCube this time.

The attachment IMG_3827.jpg is no longer available

Yes, a mostly good condition G4 Cube. Only real problems are the slightly sticky cabling and the dry-rotting speakers. Both are kind of expected issues, since it's a 24 year old computer.

Looks good!