What retro things have you done today?

[LewisRaz]

I'll be honest this is well out of my comfort zone but I dont really have anything to lose.

From what I can gather it doesnt even need to be the same type of motherboard as long as the pinout for the bios is the same. I do have another socket 7 system with the same brand of bios (Award) but I would rather not mess with that one unless I have to.

I am sure I read somewhere you can fit the bios into NICs with a socket and flash them like that but I cannot find anything about that now

 

[cee-S-dee]

I can flash you a bios if you need mate? I have a programmer and a spare chip. Any particular bios you want flashing? I can get it out in the post on Friday.

 

[LewisRaz]

I can flash you a bios if you need mate? I have a programmer and a spare chip. Any particular bios you want flashing? I can get it out in the post on Friday.

Cheers for the offer mate but I really dont know if it will help! Dont want to put any resources other than time into it.
The current behaviour is:

press power button. CPU fan spins for 2-3seconds. caps/numlock lights flash as normal and then cpu fan stops.
No pressing or holding down of the power button will stop the PSU. It has to be turned off at the wall.

I have studied the board over and over and cannot see any way that it has physical damage. I have dusted it(with compressed air) and given it a bath in Isopropyl alchohol.

I have the socket 7 board that you traded me which also has an AWARD bios. Could be a contender for the hotflash as I wont have to pull apart my main rig. Just need to wait for the toddler to be in bed as she enjoys messing about with PCs.

 

[almoststew1990]

My SFX PSU arrived today. It's fan doesn't spin up when it is powering my 450MHz P3 so now I have an entirely silent DOS retro PC which is nice!

 

[LewisRaz]

I managed to do the hotflash procedure and it went very smooth...
Did not change the behaviour of the board tho

One to add to the scrap pile.

In slightly better news I have discovered that my main socket7 rig can be easily modded to accept the k6-3. So I might try that if I can bring myself to take it to bits.

 

[hohum]

Can you try the motherboard with another cpu to rule that out? I realise the item was listed as being in good working order, but you never know...

 

[paradigm]

Fired up my SS7 motherboard today (DFI P5BV3+/e) with my K6-III and Voodoo 3 3000. Just installing 98SE now, along with collating drivers for various things (VIA 4-in-1, 3dfx install CD, USB flash driver, etc) and hopefully have it fully configured this afternoon.

I don't however have a case for it

My new Socket 2 486 board arrived today (known as dead) but I *think* I know what's wrong with it as I can see some damaged traces. Fingers crossed I manage to get this one working as I'm still without a good 486 board (and I refuse to pay decent money for one, this one was £24).

 

[LewisRaz]

Can you try the motherboard with another cpu to rule that out? I realise the item was listed as being in good working order, but you never know...

I have tried 3 now

I decided to play around with my P3 system afterwards to test the other cards that came with the PC. Got that done(all working nicely) and thought about moving that into this new case, before I could make my decision the P3 system froze and no longer posts.. This was a issue I knew about before but I thought I had sorted it. 2 motherboards added to the scrap pile last night

 

[paradigm]

Inspired by the build @GeX has just posted, and in light of the fact that I don't have a case for my AT Super Socket 7 build, but DO have a Dell Dimension 2400 case knocking about, I'm going to convert it to AT.

The board is marked up and fits with the exception of needing an additional slot for the AGP. Tonight comes the dremel and the drill, new standoffs, a cutout for the AGP slot, and a new I/O shield with just a hole for the 6-PIN DIN keyboard connector (not that I'm using it, I'm using the onboard USB1.1 for kb/mouse through a PCI backplate breakout cable). Then all I need to do is replace the power button with a latch rather than momentary button (using an ATX to AT PSU adapter with wires for a switch).

Tempted to also spray it beige using the paint that the 8bit guy used to restore various machines, black/grey is un-befitting a 90's build!

Now I just need to find a working PCI network card, the Intel dual-port one I have here causes the motherboard not to POST.

 

[LewisRaz]

I have a bag full of PCI networks cards if you want one sent your way

 

[GeX]

@paradigm awesome! Looking forward to seeing the result!

 

[cee-S-dee]

Fired up my SS7 motherboard today (DFI P5BV3+/e) with my K6-III and Voodoo 3 3000. Just installing 98SE now, along with collating drivers for various things (VIA 4-in-1, 3dfx install CD, USB flash driver, etc) and hopefully have it fully configured this afternoon.

I don't however have a case for it

My new Socket 2 486 board arrived today (known as dead) but I *think* I know what's wrong with it as I can see some damaged traces. Fingers crossed I manage to get this one working as I'm still without a good 486 board (and I refuse to pay decent money for one, this one was £24).

Looking forward to seeing your completed build. I have a K6-III+ build and its my only build that never gets pulled apart. I run a Voodoo 3 with it also along with a Matrox M3D PowerVR card. Its Great for Win98 and powers through any of the DOS games. Along with Setmul its really a very flexible machine. I really need to come up with a way to switch the FSB from outside the case as being able to switch from say 100mhz FSB to 60mzh fsb along with Setmul would be awesome for slowing the system down.

 

[paradigm]

I have a bag full of PCI networks cards if you want one sent your way

I'll happily take one off your hands if you are offering. I can see the CPU still hasn't arrived

 

[LewisRaz]

I'll happily take one off your hands if you are offering. I can see the CPU still hasn't arrived

Ill grab them out of the loft trust you an pic this evening mate. Got a range of brands in there.
Royal mail have been struggling in my area so we just get things as they come at the mo!

I did some benchmarks on the sx50 ready to compare with the dx66 - Although I will need to find some glue for the heatsink as the socket does not have mounts.

I have been spending most of last night/this morning contemplating what to do with my builds. I did want to get the k6 400mhz going but I dont think im willing to cut traces on my board to do it. I saw a k6 -233 on ebay for about £15 posted. That would max out the boards officially supported cpu. Might fit that setup into the new case!
Just feeling a bit miffed at the moment with my luck. First the dx4 system arrived in a state and then the k6 - 400 one arrived non working!

Do enjoy seeing the builds go up on here tho! Keeps the interest up in the hobby.

 

[paradigm]

Ill grab them out of the loft trust you an pic this evening mate. Got a range of brands in there.
Royal mail have been struggling in my area so we just get things as they come at the mo!

I did some benchmarks on the sx50 ready to compare with the dx66 - Although I will need to find some glue for the heatsink as the socket does not have mounts.

I have been spending most of last night/this morning contemplating what to do with my builds. I did want to get the k6 400mhz going but I dont think im willing to cut traces on my board to do it. I saw a k6 -233 on ebay for about £15 posted. That would max out the boards officially supported cpu. Might fit that setup into the new case!
Just feeling a bit miffed at the moment with my luck. First the dx4 system arrived in a state and then the k6 - 400 one arrived non working!

Do enjoy seeing the builds go up on here tho! Keeps the interest up in the hobby.

Thanks Lewis, appreciated on the NIC!

For the thermal epoxy, the "old school" approach (before Arctic Epoxy was a thing) was a blob of superglue in each corner, and thermal paste in the middle!

As for the K6 400 (K6-2?), "officially" my board only supports K6-III 400 at the top end (but also supports up to K6-2 550), so happily took a K6-III 450 by changing the multiplier. Does your board support ANY faster CPU's than a K6-233?

 

[LewisRaz]

Thanks Lewis, appreciated on the NIC!

For the thermal epoxy, the "old school" approach (before Arctic Epoxy was a thing) was a blob of superglue in each corner, and thermal paste in the middle!

As for the K6 400 (K6-2?), "officially" my board only supports K6-III 400 at the top end (but also supports up to K6-2 550), so happily took a K6-III 450 by changing the multiplier. Does your board support ANY faster CPU's than a K6-233?

It will accept them but its the voltage that requires the mod.

Here is the link that I found:

http://www.geocities.ws/CollegePark/2177/BioStar/M5ATA/index.html

I have that motherboard and CPU!

also ty for the superglue hint. I was tempted to just stick a tiny drop in each corner
Now I definitely will!

 

[paradigm]

I've got a P55C-K6-S2 interposer here that sits between a S7 motherboard and a K6/K6-2 CPU to regulate the voltage down to either 2.4v, 2.2v or 2.0v.

They seem rare though. Only one on eBay at the moment (in the US), $70!

 

[LewisRaz]

Yea those things have crazy value!

I have pulled apart my main s7 machine to see about this mod. Its a much smaller part than I expected! Lets see how this goes

 

[paradigm]

Rather than hard mod, have you tried posting (or even searching) on biosmods to see if someone could modify a BIOS image to allow greater control?

 

[Chris]

Hi

I've been playing around getting these setup during lockdown and they are now in some sort of working order. I had forgotten how much of a pain Win98 can be setting up.



Win 98SE Machine
Shuttle XPC SS51G
Intel Pentium 4 Processor 2.40 GHz
512MB DDR200
128Mb Abit Siluro Geforce 4 Ti4400
Yamaha YMF724F-V
120GB IDE Western Digital
Windows 98SE (Unofficial Service Pack 3)

XP Machine
Intel Core 2 Extreme - QX6700 @ 3Ghz
AsRock SLI N7AD Motherboard
4GB DDR2 800Mhz
512MB ASUS EN8800GT
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
1TB SATA Seagate SSHD
Windows XP Pro SP3

On the 98SE system I have most DOS games working through Windows but there are a few I can't get working such as Duke3D, Rott & Redneck Rampage, they work fine in DOS but there are some odd glitches which I think are down to the USB keyboard, I have a PS/2 one arriving soon.

Chris