** Acme's [Akagi's] Retro Odyssey! From Apple ][ to Pentium 4. Repair, modding, and more! **

[Akagi]

I have these cases, both feel fairly cheap, but they are definitely of their time.

Put in the loft for now... I have other cases coming, so I may end up giving these away.

The one on the left is a RAIDMAX Scorpio 868W, the one on the right is an Inter-Tech IT-2399.

 

[Akagi]

I connected the fans to the fan controller thing, and it turns out it isn't a manual controller, it has a temperature target. And the LEDs on the fans blink when the speed is too low, so I wont use that part of it.

I connected up the temperature probes, and they seem to work at least! I'm calling it "done" now, so I treated it to a gel "Pentium 4" badge.

I also discovered that the front fan hasn't been spinning, because the air filter foam in the front was stuck in the blades... So I removed it, which means you can now see the fan support braces through the grille... I quite like it!

I need to put a screw in the other side of the top disk drive to straighten it, but its always safe to leave one job to do, otherwise something will break.

And I opened up the Olivetti to remove the Varta barrel battery...

Only to discover it doesn't have one! So I put it back together.

Its very clean inside! It also seems to have a 125mb hard drive... So I'm not sure why I saw 20mb! I need to double check that.

 

[Akagi]

Introducing another of my systems, which has been in the loft for quite some time. A Dell Precision T5400.

I used to use this for Folding@Home back when I did it for the OcUK team, because it has two PCI-E X16 slots and a fairly beefy power supply. It also acted as my backup server during that time, and I don't think I ever dusted it.

It originally had a dual core Xeon and 4GB of ECC DDR2, and it has for a long time been sporting a pair of quad core Xeons and 32GB of ECC DDR2. I think it also has a GT210 in this picture.

A before and after of todays work!

Cleaning it up:

Spoiler

Disgusting...

The boot drive is a 120GB SSD which I had just shoved in an antistatic bag and let sit loosely in one of the hard drive bays

When I upgraded the CPUs, I couldn't find an original heatsink, so I bought that Akasa one. Hence the mismatch.

Yuck.

Drive cage, facia, and all the fans removed...

After a good brushing and dusting!

Upgrades:

Spoiler

A period correct GPU, thanks to @rare for sending me this!

A lovely Gainward GTX260 Core 216. I think its one of the ones with 3/4 of a GB because they wanted to be awkward.

And also a network adapter, because the onboard NIC in the machine doesn't work.

Slight problem with the card retention mechanism...

Solved... *cough*

I have also mounted the SSD to the bottom of the DVD drive, and re-routed the cabling as best I can. I have also opted not to re-install the HDD cages, but I may reconsider because it also integrates the RAM cooling fan.

And done!

First power on and RAM issues:

Spoiler

Poxy hell, just a few complaints then! Its like one of my famous car purchases... Its fine honest!

Looking in the BIOS, it seems a few sticks are not happy...

The cards are detected properly though, which is good!

And also the system time and date are correct after all this time! Nice.

First I tried re-seating it all...

That worked! But it did show off a bug in this BIOS revision... Can you spot the problem?

After some removing and power cycling and re-inserting and power cycling...

 

[Akagi]

I can't believe I'm doing this but... My Windows ME machine is going to be good friends with this Dell.

 

[Armageus]

I can't believe I'm doing this but... My Windows ME machine is going to be good friends with this Dell.

Nothing wrong with that - it was just a version of Windows 7 released ahead of its time before hardware support had caught up. Bet it's fairly problem free these days

 

[Akagi]

Nothing wrong with that - it was just a version of Windows 7 released ahead of its time before hardware support had caught up. Bet it's fairly problem free these days

I guess we'll see!

At least I won't have the issue a lot of people had where they complained it was slow, because their XP era machine couldn't drive it.

I've actually NEVER used Vista on anything other than underpowered junk, so perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised.

 

[rare]

I liked Vista, it was a pretty decent OS in the end

 

[Akagi]

I liked Vista, it was a pretty decent OS in the end

I'm a bit sad that Business edition doesn't include any of the Home stuff, like media centre and so on.

But its the license the machine has on it so...

 

[Akagi]

I am being tested by this computer...

I can't install Windows because the installation keeps hanging at the "completing installation" step.

Semi failed troubleshooting:

Spoiler

Every time it fails and I re-boot, I have to start the install again from scratch. At this point I have practically memorised the product key!

Ran an extended memory test / system self test which took over 3 hours to complete...

It passed everything.

Attempted to try another SSD which I stole out of my laptop...

It didn't like it...

Tried to make it like it...

Huh? But you just said.......... what

Doesn't matter, it still didn't like it.

Perhaps it doesn't have enough capacity. But I had Windows 10 installed on this when it was in my laptop so surely it must do...

Tried a different graphics card...

No dice there either.

Next thing I am going to do is try installing from a different DVD drive.

If that doesn't work, I am going to burn a fresh install DVD.

If that doesn't work, I have ordered a new SSD, so I'll try that.

If that doesn't work... Well, I have also ordered a pair of upgrade CPUs, to max out the machine. X5460s!

If that doesn't work (and I wouldn't expect it to, how often to CPUs fail really?) then I'll buy a replacement motherboard I guess!

Lets see how far down that list I have to go...

 

[Rroff]

I liked Vista, it was a pretty decent OS in the end

Was only 2 problems with Vista really - some of the background processes were unoptimised resulting in the system always being slight busy with the knock on effect of that and some stuff was just slightly awkward flow wise. A lot of the changes in 7 are really minor but make all the difference when you are using the OS daily, especially if operating more than one system. Sadly things they've not learnt with 10/11.

The one on the left is a RAIDMAX Scorpio 868W, the one on the right is an Inter-Tech IT-2399.

That kind of design skates a thin line between cool and tacky - made with premium materials and slightly understated it would be a great looking case, with cheaper materials and just a touch shouty it leans towards tacky.

 

[Akagi]

@Rroff this one is definitely tacky!

Right so, I tried a slightly different Vista ISO, on a fresh DVD, and used my known-good USB DVD drive.

The setup failed at the same spot, during the final step after the main install, but this time instead of a lockup I got a rather useful BSOD!

0x00000101 "CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT"

"This indicates that an expected clock interrupt on a secondary processor, in a multi-processor system, was not received within the allocated interval."

So it could be CPU related (how convenient that I have a new pair of CPUs on the way, then...) or it might still be a RAM issue.

One last go for the night, with half the RAM removed.

Was only 2 problems with Vista really - some of the background processes were unoptimised resulting in the system always being slight busy with the knock on effect of that and some stuff was just slightly awkward flow wise. A lot of the changes in 7 are really minor but make all the difference when you are using the OS daily, especially if operating more than one system. Sadly things they've not learnt with 10/11.

Interesting to know. I did the same as most and went from XP straight to 7, so I've never really experienced it myself, nor have I given it a chance until now.

I doubt I'll use this machine heavily enough to notice!

 

[Akagi]

So it turns out that I am a moron. I know this is a shock to you all.

The only thing I had added into the configuration since it was last working was the network card.

I had apparently completely forgotten that fact... Naturally removing it resolved the issues immediately...

I finally arrived at this after first eliminating absolutely everything else... I tried installing with half the RAM slots populated, I tried the other RAM slots, I tried the other RAM sticks, I tried one RAM stick, I tried another GPU, I stole the SSD out of my laptop and formatted it (good job me!) to try that, I tried another optical drive, I burned another copy of Vista to another disk, I even changed some BIOS settings, and ordered another SSD, (order since cancelled...) before finally... It dawned on me...

I must have half installed Windows to and re-formatted that poor Gigabyte SSD about a dozen times...

So... The onboard NIC still doesn't work. It is detected, and the drivers automatically install, but it doesn't detect when a cable is connected.

I found the Broadcom chip on the board and had a look at the condition of the components around it, and there was a tiny surface mount resistor that looked a little crooked. I gave it a gentle prod, and it fell off...

Circled here in red:

So, thats quite likely to be the issue I'd imagine. I have a Microsoft Surface USB to ethernet adapter somewhere, I'm going to see if I can use that... If I can, problem solved as far as I'm concerned!

Before I resign myself to that solution though, I am going to see if I can install the drivers without the network card installed, and then see if it will boot into windows and work. Fingers crossed... I am not holding out hope!

e; That didn't work, though the BSOD didn't occur when the card was installed in the second PCI-E x16 slot. Regardless, I can't make the drivers work anyway, so USB thingy it is... It better work or I might lose it.

 

[Kurgen]

I actually liked vista as well, it was my first 64bit OS... and the condition that i installed was it must work with Battlefield 2. and it worked fine. Im not sure on the system , i think it was the i7 920, with 6gb RAM which is probably why i thought it was speedy and our corporate pc at time was a pentium 4 and literally took 10 minutes to boot up

 

[Akagi]

I actually liked vista as well, it was my first 64bit OS... and the condition that i installed was it must work with Battlefield 2. and it worked fine. Im not sure on the system , i think it was the i7 920, with 6gb RAM which is probably why i thought it was speedy and our corporate pc at time was a pentium 4 and literally took 10 minutes to boot up

I can see an i7 feeling pretty quick after using a P4!

When using the Dell earlier on I had to keep reminding myself that I can have a few tabs open without the machine going into meltdown. With the P4 system I was in a habit of only having one thing going at a time.

In other news, I picked up a parts machine for free. An interesting looking case, but it was bashed and bent and had paint scraped off of it and buttons missing, so I decided to just strip everything useful out of it.

Tear-down and parts pilfered:

Spoiler

Bit of a birdsnest

Cold cathode! When was the last time you saw one of those?

Soundblaster Live! This was the main reason I was interested in it... This will go nicely in the Me machine that is having trouble giving me audio. That is of course assuming the Windows 98SE driver works!

PalitDaytona MX440 64MB. It works, but what else is there to say about it? It has a cool purple PCB I guess!

A mishmash of RAM. The SuperTalent stick is interesting.

Asus A7V8X-X socket A board

Athlon XP 2600+

A nice (relatively of course) Hiper PSU!

Cheapy blue CPU heatsink, the fan doesn't light up.

The cathode may live to see another day!

A couple of Hitachi Deskstars, a 150GB and a 180GB? They say 123.5GB and 164GB on them.

Another DVD writer

Good quality Samsung floppy drive

And just about every other scrap of usefulness

 

[Armageus]

Cold cathode! When was the last time you saw one of those?

Quite often actually (My "upstairs" PC has a pair of Green ones that survived a good few upgrades and I refuse to throw away, mind you it's almost Retro in it's own right - i5 2500, and 3 Optical drives for CD/DVD/Bluray ripping duties)

Athlon XP 2600+

2500+ Barton core - decent OC stepping iirc

A couple of Hitachi Deskstars, a 150GB and a 180GB? They say 123.5GB and 164GB on them.

120GB and 160GB. I can't be bothered to work it out, but probably from a time when HDD manufacturers were a bit more "honest", and you actually got 120GB and 160GB formatted capacity. (Due to the difference in Gigabytes vs Gibibytes 1024 vs 1000)

 

[Akagi]

2500+ Barton core - decent OC stepping iirc



120GB and 160GB. I can't be bothered to work it out, but probably from a time when HDD manufacturers were a bit more "honest", and you actually got 120GB and 160GB formatted capacity. (Due to the difference in Gigabytes vs Gibibytes 1024 vs 1000)

That makes sense! Hence "2500" written on it. CPU-Z said its a 2600+ hence my confusion.

Ah, cool, thanks for explaining!

 

[Akagi]

The Precision now has 2x Xeon X5460 at 3.16GHz.

Why you ask? Because I can I say.

I don't know, something about the CPU clock speed starting with a 3 instead of a 2 makes it seem more beastly...

But that is another 500MHz per core, so it's almost like having an extra 1.5 cores! Or something...

 

[Akagi]

Back together with the X5460s and the drive cage and RAM fan are back in, because a.) the RAM gets extremely hot, and b.) the POST moans at me about the fan being missing and there is no way to disable that test.

Remember these widgets?

In other news, the Soundblaster Live! is now in the Me machine, Windows 98 drivers installed perfectly, and I have sound!

I also added a rear fan grille to make it look less jank.

 

[Kurgen]

i had plenty of those cold cathodes and plenty of that little controller powerbox that went up in smoke

 

[Akagi]

i had plenty of those cold cathodes and plenty of that little controller powerbox that went up in smoke

Hmm, perhaps I shouldn't use it...