What retro things have you done today?

Soldato
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:p I consider all my retro hardware bits amazingly irreplaceable.

I've shown self-control lately and haven't bought anything. I've given up on car boot sales and gumtree as I literally haven't got the room for any more kit.

Same, I dont think I'll ever part from my old systems. Sadly I've reached the capacity of my loft!

27 computers at last count, and 15 retro consoles! :)
 
Soldato
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Same, I dont think I'll ever part from my old systems. Sadly I've reached the capacity of my loft!

27 computers at last count, and 15 retro consoles! :)
27! I'm at 2 in use, 2 more built and 1 project ongoing.

The Voodoo arrived today. Very quick post and well packed too.

Had to use a 5ft long passthrough cable as I dont have a proper one but...



Nice to hear that relay "click" that I have read about too.
 
Soldato
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Well my collection grew by 2 tonight.. Mrs is on some freecycle type app and got these 2 dead units. Perhaps I can get something fixed.
Big one is some sort of athlon with a gigabyte board with 2x ISA slots so would be nice to get going. Shows D4D3 post code which means chipset is likely dead.
Smaller one some sort of i3 system which looks like everything is good but just wont power on.
 
Soldato
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It would be a nice restoration project should the GA-7IXE4 motherboard be able to be fixed. Quite doubtful tho as it seems beyond repair. If I can revive it I am tempted to use the board to replace my main retro system.
Inside it had a TNT2 M64 32mb and a CT4810 as well as a netgear 10/100 NIC.
 
Caporegime
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It would be a nice restoration project should the GA-7IXE4 motherboard be able to be fixed. Quite doubtful tho as it seems beyond repair. If I can revive it I am tempted to use the board to replace my main retro system.
Inside it had a TNT2 M64 32mb and a CT4810 as well as a netgear 10/100 NIC.

That was my first custom build motherboard, the GA-7IXE4! With a TNT2 Ultra and a Duron 650.

What's wrong with it Lewis?
 
Associate
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I really like that board. 2 ISA slots is a nice plus on a 462 platform. I have one with a Athlon 1200 B CPU at 115mhz. Max CPU it can take is a XP 1500+ Palomino but i've never manage to come across one.
 
Soldato
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That was my first custom build motherboard, the GA-7IXE4! With a TNT2 Ultra and a Duron 650.

What's wrong with it Lewis?
D4D3 post code, reset light stays on the post card. PC wont react to power button after being turned on.

All I had time to do so far is:
Remove ram
Remove expansion cards
Clear CMOS

Same behavior the whole time. Didnt see a great deal of info about these post codes online only that its possible ram count or chipset error. Also the reset being active the whole time is a problem.

The caps board looks good visually, no obvious damage or blown caps.
 
Caporegime
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Ended up buying a pair of water-cooled GTX 295s on a whim. Still not got around to finishing the dual socket-604 build so these would go well in there!

Should be able to run some pretty modern games on what is essentially a P4 :p
 
Caporegime
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Got a lot of time for the 295. Played many an hour of BF3 operation metro 24/7 on that card. It even killed 2 PSUs! Cant imagine the PSU you need for 2 of them!
1000W would be ok, the issue is amperage available on the 12v rail more than the overall wattage. Fortunately I’ve got a beast of a Lenovo workstation PSU that has just shy of 100A available on the 12v rail.
 
Soldato
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wow! Yea I was told to look for a PSU with at least 48A on the 12v rail. That was when I learned about PSUs :D

The 2 that exploded where both by CiT.... and had like 30A total across 2 12v rails. Terrible things.

My go-to forum back then certainly educated me about PSU quality and proper specs that day.
 
Caporegime
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Well that was gutting. The "parcel" arrived with many clear puncture wounds to the box. I hoped that what was within was suitable packaged to the extent that this would be superficial, but beyond the small spattering of bubble wrap to fill the void in the large outer box, there were two "cereal packet" thickness boxes, each containing the bare cards, no foam packaging, not even an anti-static bag.

Needless to say, one card is totalled, the PCIe edge connector and the SLI connector are both crushed/snapped/contorted beyond repair and likely traces on the inner layers are FUBAR anyway. The other card looks "ok" at a quick glance, though is clearly bent.

Fired off a message to the seller, which was ignored for over 24 hours, so opened a return case with eBay, which the seller has just responded to with "not my problem mate, take it up with Hermes".
 
Soldato
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23 May 2016
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Well that was gutting. The "parcel" arrived with many clear puncture wounds to the box. I hoped that what was within was suitable packaged to the extent that this would be superficial, but beyond the small spattering of bubble wrap to fill the void in the large outer box, there were two "cereal packet" thickness boxes, each containing the bare cards, no foam packaging, not even an anti-static bag.

Needless to say, one card is totalled, the PCIe edge connector and the SLI connector are both crushed/snapped/contorted beyond repair and likely traces on the inner layers are FUBAR anyway. The other card looks "ok" at a quick glance, though is clearly bent.

Fired off a message to the seller, which was ignored for over 24 hours, so opened a return case with eBay, which the seller has just responded to with "not my problem mate, take it up with Hermes".
That is terrible!

Also it is his problem, your deal is with him. He paid hermes not you. Should be easy money back especially with that message being sent.
 
Associate
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I think my Voodoo 2 Card died today, started suffering with artifacting while playing some games this afternoon and now is not being recognised by Windows :(
 
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