What retro things have you done today?

paradigm said:
Excellent! I hope it's going into a suitably period retro build? Or is it going into a collection?
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A collection, but a used collection!

It's in a Dell Dimension XPS T450 which has a Slot 1 BX440 chipset, 600Mhz coppermine P3 and 768MB ram. Also chucked a SB Live! and NIC in there too :)

I have some GPU's, nothing wildly exciting tho!

S3 Virge 4MB PCI
3dfx multi gamer 4mb PCI
ATi Rage IIc 4mb AGP
ATi Rage Pro Turbo 8MB AGPX2
Sparkle SP 6800 AGP 32MB AGP (geforce 2 mx)
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 64MB AGPX8
MSI NVIDIA GEFORCE4 MX440 128MB DDR 128Bit AGPX8
Point of View GeForce FX 5500 256MB 128Bit AGPX8

A few more CPU's also, duplicate 450Mhz P3's. I think I've used liquid metal on the 600Mhz :D
 
Socket 604 motherboard arrived today. Dug out my 3.4GHz HT Xeons and found 8GB of ECC memory for it. Just need to slice the end off the PCIe x8 slot so that it'll take an x16 GPU.

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Still waiting on the waterblocks to arrive, and also have that dual-core CPU on the way to test as well.
 
almoststew1990 said:
You've got me looking at S604 boards now! Not sure why as the dual S370 wasn't exactly a resounding success.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/152184763922

This seems to have a PCI-E x16...
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That's essentially a standard E7525 board, it will use standard 24-pin ATX and an 8-Pin CPU connector. Looks like a decent board for the money, mine was £20, but as you know, PCIe 8x only.
 
Tbh I'm more concerned with finding good coolers and CPUs if I ended up going down this route!

Tempted to set myself a challenge... Can I get a dual p4 momster set up with an old high end, hot GPU to outperform a cool, quiet modern ITX set up (by which i mean my ivy i3 and GTX645)
 
Coolers seemed OK to come by when I was looking, though obviously now I've got the waterblocks (£2.50 plus postage!) on the way I stopped looking! The biggest challenge will be finding the cooler backplate that goes through the holes on the board!
 
Don't think I've ever played that @almoststew1990!

Today I recieved my Xeon 7140M (that I still don't know if it works in my board or not), and was staggered by the difference in size, I genuinely didn't think it would fit on the socket 604 board, but it does!

4 different generation of Netburst CPUs. I've never owned a Willamette (Socket 423) P4 so don't have one for comparison.

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Yes, that's a Socket 775 Pentium D (915) that fits entirely onto the heat spreader of the Xeon 7140M! These things had monstrous L3 cache baked into the die!
 
Great pics on the CPU and server boards above.

My ebay BT Prologue 56K Voice/Fax modem does support Windows 3.11. :cool: It is brand new.

In my early internet days, I had a Hayes Accura Message Modem (28.8 Kbps) with the above functionality that I never used. I still have the modem and box, but have lost the floppy disks.

My wife is out tonight. As soon as the kids are in bed, this is getting set up and hooked up to the phone line for a fully automated comms system. :p

The prodigy sound card arrived. I've ordered the breakout cable for that too.

And because I can't help myself, a Windows 3.11 'label maker' software was delivered too. All my future physical correspondence will sport some dot matrix printing of some sort.
 
Lunchtime came and went and I didn't have anything better to do in my lunch hour so:

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The Cumana (CD Drive) and Panasonic (Magnetic Optical) are my two SCSI external drives awaiting on a cable to connect them to my SCSI card.

The modem works and I dialed my mobile phone from it. The on/off switch is ridiculously stiff. The included SuperVoice CD ROM Software installed but didn't run.
 
Man how waterblocks have come on over the years!

My Socket 604 blocks arrived, they are made of 3 parts, a bottom copper plate with a massive 7 fins, a middle copper plate that acts as the "jet" in the center and the outlet on either side, and a top aluminium plate that, yes is held into the copper pieces using RAWL PLUGS! I kid you not, RAWL PLUGS!

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I'm pretty sure I was making more complicated metalwork in 6th form!

These are going to be comprehensively leak tested before going anywhere near a motherboard!
 
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