What retro things have you done today?

It's been a while since I did anything retro, but today I received one of the final pieces of my Socket 7 machine. An AMD K6-III 450.

I'd already got hold of an interposer/voltage regulator that lets me run Super7 CPUs in my Socket7 board at the correct voltages, but only had a K6-2 400 to go in it.
 
paradigm said:
It's been a while since I did anything retro, but today I received one of the final pieces of my Socket 7 machine. An AMD K6-III 450.

I'd already got hold of an interposer/voltage regulator that lets me run Super7 CPUs in my Socket7 board at the correct voltages, but only had a K6-2 400 to go in it.
Click to expand...

What else is going into the machine? I need to get hold of a K6-III at some point.

Today I've been playing around with more Gameport Joysticks and Gamepads. a Rockfire Nest USB adapter arrived today, waiting on some other bits then i'm going to try n throw together a usb adapter for Sidewinder sticks / pads.
 
LewisRaz said:
This never turned up and have had no contact from the seller so tomorrow will have to start the item not recieved process. A shame as I really wanted this pc.
Click to expand...

Ah shame, have you messaged the seller to ask what's going on?

Finally got around to testing the 3dfx motherboard I bought a while back. Put it off until now as I really didn't want to dismantle my existing working setup at the time, plus knowing the board needs a recap means I can't really use it until that's done anyway (I'm still somewhat wary of doing this, particularly as I don't want to break it!). Boots up fine, went into bios to browse for a few minutes and no problems. Chipset fan a bit rattly, but that's to be expected due to the age of it. So a good result, but now it's had to go back in a box for storage for the time being - shame, would love to be able to use it!

On a similar subject, also re-tested my 3dfx v3 2000 that stopped working after a couple of days' use. Turns out it's not completely dead, as it works fine when cold, but after about an hour the vga signal just drops completely and becomes unusable again (system doesn't crash, just no video display). Will work again if you leave it for a while to cool off, but that's no good to me. Really not sure on this one... as mentioned before it could just be a dodgy cap, but who knows. So as it stands I own some 3dfx stuff but can't use any of it. Haha, frustrating!
 
hohum said:
Ah shame, have you messaged the seller to ask what's going on?

Finally got around to testing the 3dfx motherboard I bought a while back. Put it off until now as I really didn't want to dismantle my existing working setup at the time, plus knowing the board needs a recap means I can't really use it until that's done anyway (I'm still somewhat wary of doing this, particularly as I don't want to break it!). Boots up fine, went into bios to browse for a few minutes and no problems. Chipset fan a bit rattly, but that's to be expected due to the age of it. So a good result, but now it's had to go back in a box for storage for the time being - shame, would love to be able to use it!

On a similar subject, also re-tested my 3dfx v3 2000 that stopped working after a couple of days' use. Turns out it's not completely dead, as it works fine when cold, but after about an hour the vga signal just drops completely and becomes unusable again (system doesn't crash, just no video display). Will work again if you leave it for a while to cool off, but that's no good to me. Really not sure on this one... as mentioned before it could just be a dodgy cap, but who knows. So as it stands I own some 3dfx stuff but can't use any of it. Haha, frustrating!
Click to expand...

I sent a message today, thought I would before going straight for the ebay intervention route. Got a message back almost straight away saying that he will be sending it early next week so fingers crossed! I have been really enjoying gaming on my other socket 7 system and this one is better in many ways so it would be perfect!

Have you asked around on other forums about your v3 2000? The level of knowledge some people have on those is very high im sure someone could help!
 
Sounds to me like heat is causing a bad solder joint to move. Could be a reflow is needed, could be something internal to the chip however, which won’t be fixable without replacing the BGA. Oddly though they ARE available.
 
LewisRaz said:
I sent a message today, thought I would before going straight for the ebay intervention route. Got a message back almost straight away saying that he will be sending it early next week so fingers crossed! I have been really enjoying gaming on my other socket 7 system and this one is better in many ways so it would be perfect!

Have you asked around on other forums about your v3 2000? The level of knowledge some people have on those is very high im sure someone could help!
Click to expand...

Ah, potentially a good result then, although would be nice to hear from the seller in the first place!

Haven't asked anywhere else no, but then I'm only registered on two forums these days (here and Bordersdown). Might be a good idea to sign up to Vogons though.

paradigm said:
Sounds to me like heat is causing a bad solder joint to move. Could be a reflow is needed, could be something internal to the chip however, which won’t be fixable without replacing the BGA. Oddly though they ARE available.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's also a possibility, but to be honest if that is the case I'd probably just sell it cheaply as faulty and buy another (and attach a fan to it, seems these things do like to cook themselves).
 
LewisRaz said:
Do you have a heatsink or a fan on it? Arent they notorious for killing thelmselves over time?
Click to expand...

I think most 3dfx cards have a reputation for being toasty. It has a heatsink of course, but no fan (pretty sure only v4/5 cards had fan cooling generally). I do have a front case intake fan which is reasonably close to it, but if I was to get another card down the line I'd put something over it directly.
 
Just spent about 4 hours on my 486sx2 system. Mostly wanted to try out that SB 2.0 that I had acquired a while back.

Spent more time than I should have getting DOS installed. my 6.22 disks were not working and rather than just install my 5.0 I tried messing about directly copying the files to the CF card. That didnt work so I eventually just installed dos 5.0 and windows 3.1.
Got the SB2.0 drivers installed and set about playing a few games and seeing exactly what an sx50 can handle. I was quite surprised.
DOOM was playable. Played the first few levels just fine!
Duke3D was struggling but I could easily have played it like that in the 90s. Sounded good too.
Transport tycoon deluxe ran but was not really playable.
The lion king looks and sounds great. I still cant get over how good it is. I only ever knew of the megadrive version which was already good.
Then I loaded up simcity 2000. I was having a great time but once my city started to grow the game started to crawl and eventually crashed which was when I called it a night.

Overall I was really impressed with this system and the sound from the sb2.0. I think it deserves the dx66 upgrade I was thinking about.
 
LewisRaz said:
Overall I was really impressed with this system and the sound from the sb2.0. I think it deserves the dx66 upgrade I was thinking about.
Click to expand...

I've got a spare ST branded DX2-66 you can have if you trust me your address.

Bought a Super Socket 7 board today, going to pair it with my K6-III and my Voodoo 3 3000 for the ultimate late 90s PC.
 
paradigm said:
I've got a spare ST branded DX2-66 you can have if you trust me your address.

Bought a Super Socket 7 board today, going to pair it with my K6-III and my Voodoo 3 3000 for the ultimate late 90s PC.
Click to expand...
Sounds like a niec build! I got tracking info for the socket 7 machine I ordered from ebay so I am looking forward to see it!
I dont know if you saw the auction on ebay last night a sought after SS7 build was involved and I narrowly missed out on it but it did get higher than an impulse buy.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Old-PC-C...arance/254570333034?ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

I would be happy to take up that offer of the DX2! Will send you a trust shortly.
 
Rehoused my Penitum 233 MMX machine today. I did a trade with LewisRaz a while ago after i saw his machine on Gumtree and finally got to work on it today. 3 digit MHZ readout which is a real nice bonus. The Machine does has functioning turbo so display switches from 233 to 175.

u4jZnmCl.jpg
mOPoXgbl.jpg
 
That is ceaner than I remember!
Lovely looking system nice to see the display too.

Out of curiousity what does going from 233 to 175 achieve? Isnt 175 still too fast for speed sensitive games?
 
LewisRaz said:
That is ceaner than I remember!
Lovely looking system nice to see the display too.

Out of curiousity what does going from 233 to 175 achieve? Isnt 175 still too fast for speed sensitive games?
Click to expand...

It changes the fsb to 50mhz. What i could really could do with, is trying to fashion up a switching system so i can change the multi easy. Combined with Setmul and the MMX registers i guess it could slowdown some what. I need to do some testing :-)
 
Soo confession time.
This 486 I have been using originally came with no cache. After some help from vogons I ordered some chips from israel and fit them however the cachechk program suggested there was no cache and the chips were fake.. So I just wrote it off.
I noticed in the bios today while setting the HDD parameters that there was a cache section and it needs to be enabled.... It works fine now :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom