What retro things have you done today?

paradigm said:
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.
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I honestly never knew there was a difference in voltages for AGP!

Is there anything I shouldnt put in it?

I have geforce 2mx and geforce 4mx

Also an 8mb Ati card that I couldnt get to work in my other system.
 
@LewisRaz as your motherboard has a keyed AGP slot, only 3.3v cards "should" fit (though it wasn't unheard of for manufacturers of GPUs to vary from the spec).

If the key of the AGP slot was at the other end it would be a 1.5v slot. No key at all would be a universal slot that accepts either (or again "should" do).

So looking at the AGP port, with the motherboard IO to your left, if it's 1/3rd 2/3rds split (like yours) it's 3.3v. If it's 2/3rd 1/3rd split then 1.5v. No segments at all means universal.
 
Man the board looks rough, I hope you can get it into a good state. The sloket looks interesting, is there any branding on it?

Gigabyte BX boards are really solid so it would be worth your while to get it cleaned and running.

Good luck!
 
cee-S-dee said:
Man the board looks rough, I hope you can get it into a good state. The sloket looks interesting, is there any branding on it?

Gigabyte BX boards are really solid so it would be worth your while to get it cleaned and running.

Good luck!
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Cheers. Cant wait for the family to go to bed so I can get tinkering :D

the sloket is an Epox EP-S1C rev 0.5
 
paradigm said:
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).
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The watercooled P4 is all in a box at the moment and I don't know if I have a spare case to build it in. But I will somewhen. :p

Good to know about ME/etc. I can always dual/triple boot though I guess!
 
Well after a few hours of not ideal tesing setup and every pci/agp gpu I own.. I have a post!

the built in motherboard speaker doesnt work so I was wasting quite a bit of time that I might have saved if there was one.

Not really sure what kickstarted it to life, took all the ram out and added a stick one by one and once there was 2 sticks in it booted?!

As an added bonus the rage pro I couldnt get to work in any other system works fine in this one! (Although its too weak for this system really)



Not sure what my next steps will be. I think my socket 7 system is going to be evicted from my MESH case and this one will replace it. Also not sure if I will steal the ide-cf from my compqa deskpro or stick an old HDD in there. I do intend to order myself a few ide-cf adapters so might go that route.

@almoststew1990 do you still have that tiny case from your sale thread? I remembered I had seen it and have just scrolled through way too many posts to find it... That is the exact case my p2 450 was in!
 
Nice that it boots, that definitely makes the bundle a bargain.

So what AGP card worked and which ones didn't?

I had a similar problem with my Epox dual S370 board. The first 3 GPUs I tried... Nothing, yet the same GPUs were fine on my Slot 1 board :/
 
It was the rage pro turbo that worked originally.
After I had finished fitting it into a case it decided not to work again. I had a PC speaker on it now so could hear it was a RAM issue. After seemingly 1000 combinations of sticks and slots it seems the 2 slots nearer the cpu do not register having RAM sticks in them.. Slightly wierd as it was those 2 that worked before fitting it to the case. Putting sticks in there doesn cause it any problems it just does not see them there. Possibly need to clean the contacts as these were practically welded in and were not happy about being removed.
Once I had it confirmed working and in a case I swapped out the gpu for a new old stock geforce 2mx that I had and it worked fine with this now.
Realised my windows 98 cd was in the loft (cant go in there at night when kids asleep) so I took the HDD from my p3 compaq and it actually booted into that windows install after a few driver installs.
Ran a 3dmark to check performance and all seems good.




It is odd what happened with with your GPUs. My rage pro turbo has not worked in my 2 previous attempts (both were AMD systems). Possibly something in the slot 1 setup helps with compatability?
 
@LewisRaz I do still have it. It'currently at the back of the queue for a project. Stuff a SFX PSU in there and make a (*sigh* I hate this word being used for PCs) "sleeper" PC. My Dad needs a new PC really so maybe a Ryzen 2400G system in there for him. Happy to move it on though... anyone? please!?

Is the RAM slot issue before or after a visit to the dishwasher?
 
almoststew1990 said:
@LewisRaz I do still have it. It'currently at the back of the queue for a project. Stuff a SFX PSU in there and make a (*sigh* I hate this word being used for PCs) "sleeper" PC. My Dad needs a new PC really so maybe a Ryzen 2400G system in there for him. Happy to move it on though... anyone? please!?

Is the RAM slot issue before or after a visit to the dishwasher?
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Ah if you do decide to get rid let me know :)

This motherboard has not been to the dishwasher........... yet ;)
 
Today we did a massive clear out. A lot of things went into the loft but my Dreamcast came out of the loft! I'll finally do the fan mod. I also tested out my VGA to HDMI adapter, which works. I found a setting in my monitor for 4:3 aspect too.

L3SG8iBh.jpg

I ordered the 40mm Noctua fan after testing out this random 3pin fan I had worked fine. I am looking forward to having a quiet Dreamcast!
 
Cleaned my IBM Thinkpad X31. An impulse eBay purchase a couple of years ago, always been a fan of the Thinkpad range (my old man a technophobe, used to get these with work, they sat unused in their bag). I used to borrow and install Quake and whatnot. The X31 is in great shape, swapped the keyboard for a new one and now, only the lid was letting it down.

IBM's infamous rubbery surface, has marks which I can only guess, caused by Coca Cola or candle wax? During the last few months, I tried Cif, car interior cleaner, whilst both improved, the marks still came back.

Well, I read a post on Vogons about Magic sponges (never heard of them before) purchased a pack for other jobs and tonight, randomly got the urge to give it ago on the Thinkpad.

Well, they are amazing, it makes my laptop look like new.

Currently running Blood like a champ, now going to download Quake etc to see how it fares. Definitely recommend if you have a Thinkpad.
 
Bought 3x slot 1 “slockets”, no real need for one other than the fact that I fancy trying to mod one for tualatin on my slot 1 440BX board.

Also bought a relatively rare Geforce 7900GS 512mb AGP card for decent money, likely not to use this on my 98SE build due to the lack of official drivers and potential memory problems (without unofficial patching of 98/ME) but might run it on my 2K/XP dual boot P4 Northwood build. That said it would be rude not to at least “try” getting it to work in 98 :p
 
LewisRaz said:
Isnt half the fun of this hobby seeing what you can make work when it possibly wasnt meant to? :)
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Oh god yes, but it also costs more money than you would expect ancient hardware to cost. I damn near bought a Voodoo 5 5500 as well but had to draw the line.

I’d rather save the cash to get me an old Asetek VapoChill XE like I used to have, assuming one ever comes up for sale, I should never have sold it!
 
paradigm said:
Oh god yes, but it also costs more money than you would expect ancient hardware to cost. I damn near bought a Voodoo 5 5500 as well but had to draw the line.

I’d rather save the cash to get me an old Asetek VapoChill XE like I used to have, assuming one ever comes up for sale, I should never have sold it!
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:D :D :D

It can get expensive! I feel like I am "done" with the hardware (although I do plan a stupid fast XP build with quad SLI or something one day) mostly bar a couple of things:
I really want an AT desktop case to house the socket 7 windows 95 kit.
Also some more interesting soundcards for the systems other than my soudblaster LIVE.

Always will be on the lookout at bootsale and FB market for vintage bits and bobs tho! Cant help myself.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pair-of-...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649

This is the seller that sold the motherboard I just got. I cant stop wondering if I could refurbish at least one of those!
 
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