What retro things have you done today?

LewisRaz · 2 Jan 2020 at 23:21

Out of all of those I am ashamed to say the sims 2 is the only one I have played

I spent another hour or so on that motherboard but still no joy. I think the only other things I have the skill for would be attempting to reflow the solder on the ram slots and replacing the dallas clock. Dont even own a soldering iron anymore so that wont be happening soon!

Also had a nice session on simcity 2000. Had a nice little town going and then a tornado hit just as I ran out of money

Forgot how brutal that game can be compared to modern city builders.

paradigm · 3 Jan 2020 at 07:43

@LewisRaz, If you ever want a second set of eyes go over the board before you give up on it, I'd be happy to take a look under my microscope and reflow what looks dodgy.

LewisRaz · 3 Jan 2020 at 08:07

paradigm said:
@LewisRaz, If you ever want a second set of eyes go over the board before you give up on it, I'd be happy to take a look under my microscope and reflow what looks dodgy.

Will do! I refuse to accept that it cannot be brought back to life!

paradigm · 3 Jan 2020 at 08:35

In other news I'm now pretty convinced that the PCIe>AGP bridge chip is dead on the 6800XT.

Stencils for re-balling a donor chip are plentiful on AliExpress and the like, but finding a good donor chip is going to take a while if I don't want to overpay for a nasty 7300GS or similar just for the chip!

paradigm · 3 Jan 2020 at 12:38

Began modding my Tyan S2507 (Tiger 230) to try and run my 1.13GHz Tualatin PIIIs on it (Via Apollo Pro133A chipset). So far I've got one socket (CPU2) happily accepting either of the two Tualatin CPUs, but so far no joy with CPU1. So far my modding has been non-destructive, using insulation tape on the pins of the socket, but I guess CPU1 is still making contact with the pins that need isolating somehow.

The board will happily run two Coppermine PIIIs, so i know the board and socket are fine.

LewisRaz · 3 Jan 2020 at 13:00

The coppermine/tualitin Era is something I have very little knowledge of. (this was during the brief period of my life where I went to this place called outside and didnt have a PC... it sucked!

)

What actually makes one better than the other? is it just clockspeed or ipc or both?

paradigm · 3 Jan 2020 at 13:43

The main difference is the intergrated heat spreader, the shrink from 0.18u to 0.13u (so run cooler and at lower voltages) and typically overclock better. You can also get versions with 512K cache rather than the 256K of the Coppermine, but as I wasn't sure if I could even get the CPUs running, I bought a cheap pair just to try out, so only 256K on mine.

LewisRaz · 3 Jan 2020 at 16:31

Oh right. I went from p2 450mhz to athon xp 2400 so there was a bit of a gap! Very interesting to read about them tho.

mattydoughts · 3 Jan 2020 at 16:37

Was playing Pokemon Red/Blue at lunch if that retro enough :cool:

LewisRaz · 3 Jan 2020 at 18:01

mattydoughts said:
Was playing Pokemon Red/Blue at lunch if that retro enough

100%

I was doing a playthrough of it last year but did put it down after getting to lavender town. Should go back to it really.

almoststew1990 · 3 Jan 2020 at 22:30

Today I tried to get my BlackMagic Intensity Pro capture card working. It refuses to work at all

I have no luck with these capture cards! The annoying thing is I have a photo of this card working in the past

and probably posted about it here.

I then for a laugh stuck an old rusty SD / analogue capture card I have that only seems to work with XP into my XP PC I built the other day with a 2GHz single core and 1GB of RAM. It's happy enough in there and worked straight away with my PS2 on S-Video. I've just realised I can capture from my Amiga using it...

LewisRaz · 3 Jan 2020 at 23:21

Wow that reminds me of a old wintv card I had and realising I could plug my N64 into it (using RF).

Its amazing how much time can pass tinkering with these old components.

Picking up the ebay win tomorrow so hopefully get a chance to play around with it in the evening.

Did anyone watch that fx5900? I stuck in a bid when it was ~£15 and then forgot about it. It ended nearly £50!

Akagi · 4 Jan 2020 at 04:06

This thread makes me wish I didn't give away all my old computer stuff. I did keep back my P4 Northwood computer though, might set that up and play some Doom.

It is water-cooled, with a Coolermaster Aquagate Viva!

Last time I used it was when I tried to install Windows 8.1 32 bit only to discover that the latest version of Windows which the chip supports is Windows 7 32 bit. Still fairly impressive that it runs Windows 7 to be honest.

I think I'll stick ME on it as I never actually used that one. Went straight from 95/98 to XP.

paradigm · 4 Jan 2020 at 08:38

Acme said:
This thread makes me wish I didn't give away all my old computer stuff. I did keep back my P4 Northwood computer though, might set that up and play some Doom.

It is water-cooled, with a Coolermaster Aquagate Viva!

Last time I used it was when I tried to install Windows 8.1 32 bit only to discover that the latest version of Windows which the chip supports is Windows 7 32 bit. Still fairly impressive that it runs Windows 7 to be honest.

I think I'll stick ME on it as I never actually used that one. Went straight from 95/98 to XP.

First off, pics needed of the watercooled P4. I've just started building a 2.8HT Northwood rig to go with the rest of my collection.

Secondly, as someone who used ME back in the day, I'll say this, don't bother. Sure it's nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be (much like Vista), but I can't think of a single advantage to running it over 98SE. The biggest problem is that the driver model changed, but the announcement that the 9x line of operating systems was dead meant that all driver production for hardware like GPUs and Chipsets either stayed with the user base on 98, or moved to the NT Kernel with 2000 (or the upcoming Whistler/XP). As a result, you WILL see more instabilities and reduced performance compared to 98 or 2K/XP especially with kit that post-dated ME's release (I.e. your P4).

LewisRaz · 4 Jan 2020 at 10:00

ME really wasnt that bad but as above it was so short lived and you can tell it by the supporting software. Its not as good as 98se for the older stuff and not as good as XP for newer stuff.

paradigm · 4 Jan 2020 at 11:35

LewisRaz said:
ME really wasnt that bad but as above it was so short lived and you can tell it by the supporting software. Its not as good as 98se for the older stuff and not as good as XP for newer stuff.

I guess the real “problem” with ME was that it wasn’t meant to exist at all. Project Neptune was meant to be the consumer OS alongside Windows 2000, using the NT kernel and with a lot of the elements that made it into both ME and XP (such as the welcome screen from XP, the help and support centre from ME, etc). ME was essentially rushed out of the door so there was something to ship.

I’ve got an install of Neptune in my Virtual Lab (VMware Workstation) along with most OSes (Microsoft) back to MS-DOS 6.22. Funky little OS, would have been far better than ME had it seen the light of day.

LewisRaz · 4 Jan 2020 at 13:07

Picked up the motherboard today. Much better condition than expected but absolutely caked in grot, sticks and even bird poop..
Everything looks like it will clean up nicely tho!
I did rip off the heatsink to see what I got and it appears to be a 750mhz pentium 3 (thats what the jumpers are set for)
The only immidiate concern is a scratch underneath has taken the protective coated from a few traces but the traces themselves do not appear to be broken.

Interested how any of you guys would clean it?

My usual spot cleaning method is vinegar and compressed air but this looks like it could need a bath!

paradigm · 4 Jan 2020 at 13:10

I would definitely start with a scrub using an old toothbrush and some isopropyl alcohol. If it's still disgusting after that then maybe entertain the dishwasher (unless you have access to a sizable ultrasonic!). Looks like some corrosion on the ISA slot so you'll need to do the usual neutralise with vinegar and possibly some gentle scraping to clean that off.

Finish with some conformal coating over the scratched traces assuming it still works.

Edit: Also with that being a 100mhz P3, you might get lucky with it booting at 7.5x133 (1GHz) with a bit more voltage (which the board should provide being a slot1).

LewisRaz · 4 Jan 2020 at 13:25

paradigm said:
I would definitely start with a scrub using an old toothbrush and some isopropyl alcohol. If it's still disgusting after that then maybe entertain the dishwasher (unless you have access to a sizable ultrasonic!). Looks like some corrosion on the ISA slot so you'll need to do the usual neutralise with vinegar and possibly some gentle scraping to clean that off.

Finish with some conformal coating over the scratched traces assuming it still works.

Edit: Also with that being a 100mhz P3, you might get lucky with it booting at 7.5x133 (1GHz) with a bit more voltage (which the board should provide being a slot1).

I do have a 1ghz p3 chip in a compaq SFF system that I was using for my main windows 98 machine. That however has no agp slots and is very integrated being an OEM machine. Perhaps I could swap them over? Will have to take a look. Although really I wanted this motherboard to recreate my 450hz P2!

I did spot that bit of green on the isa slot after reviewing my post. After taking a look into it it does seem very localised so that is lucky!

paradigm · 4 Jan 2020 at 13:30

It'll certainly be a good home for a PII assuming it boots, I'd rather run a proper Socket 370 board for PIIIs anyway as you'll likely be able to get a 1.5v AGP slot rather than the 3.3v one you have there.