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waybacktech |
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IDT WinChip Posts: 237   Location: USA | Some more recent acquisitions. These are just the photos from ebay, but I have received and tested everything here except for the Radeon 7500. I have been trying to get over a cold this past week, plus the work I am doing to benchmark processors at the moment, I haven't had the time to photograph this stuff myself. (P66.jpg) (radeon7500.jpg) (acerP60.jpg) (athlonK7.jpg) (3Dcool.jpg) (V3308mb.jpg) Attachments ----------------  P66.jpg (102KB - 1758 downloads) radeon7500.jpg (99KB - 1260 downloads) acerP60.jpg (50KB - 1017 downloads) athlonK7.jpg (52KB - 639 downloads) 3Dcool.jpg (56KB - 859 downloads) V3308mb.jpg (101KB - 599 downloads) | ||
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| Brostenen |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671  | |||
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| waybacktech |
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IDT WinChip Posts: 237 Location: USA | |||
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | #waybacktech I remember the school getting a complete linup of 10 or 20 Acer 486sx25's in desktop model, back in around 1991 or something. Been searching for the model number, yet I can not remember that correctly. I think it was the 450d model, though if it had 2 or 3 five and a quarter inch bay's I really do not remember. All I remember was, that every publich school got them back in 1990/91 or something. I know the year, as I was in 8'th grade at that time, from summer of 1990 to summer of 1991. Anyway... Acer made awesomme machines back then. Personally, I had to use a Unisys PW/2 Series 300 machine from 1988 (possibly 1987) and all the way up to 1993, when I bought my first computer for my own money. It was my parents that bought it, and I recemtly was given ownership of that machine. I used all of 2016 to restore it into working state again. Not because it was defect or had leaked battery or anything like that. It worked basically perfect, after sitting some 15+ years in a dry basement. I just had to find newer parts for it, in order to give it a CD-Drive, soundcard and stuff. It went well, and now I am the owner of an original Unisys 286 machine. Complete with all the original manuals, original EGA monitor, 1988 optical mouse, original keyboard and everything else. Yeah... It's a nice 286-8/10mhz machine. It is this machine here.... (Unisys-01.jpg) Attachments ---------------- Unisys-01.jpg (64KB - 631 downloads) | ||
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| DXZeff |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK | |||
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| Brostenen |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | Well... I fell in love with Unix, when I tried it first time in early 1995. I was teached in Unix on consoles that were connected to a Vax server. It was so awesomme to send my first email from a simple text mode command prompt, as there were no GUI on those consoles. Then I found out about Free-BSD in eraly 1996 and I installed my first Linux distro in late 1995. So I have a love-affair with *nix's. For MIDI, you might be able to build a MT32 box, using Munt. And there are different projects on instructables, including a complete external MIDI interface, based on "Fluidsynth". Anyway... I just like Linux and are actually using it on my daily driver at this moment. I will probably go back to Windows7 in the near future. Who knows. What have I been up to lately? Well.... I recieved that 486 VLB bundle that I bought. And I was not happy about the way it was packed/shipped. Nothing physically broke, though I was nervouse that it had suffered death by antistatic electricity. I think I will let pictures speak for them self...... I tested it all out yesterday and everything worked. I had it running with the DX-33 that came with it and a DX2-66. And I am really surprised how fast this baby is booting. Really a gem, and it feels rock solid. There were no battery on it, and since it has headers for an external battery, I quickly crafted a getto-mod. Two 2032, two wires and a lot of tape. I was just too lazy heating up a solder iron. It worked, and I am quite happy. Then I ordered a new battery holder, with room for two 2032 batteries. Now for the gruesomme and gory details in pictures..... (No-ESR_01.jpg) (No-ESR_02.jpg) (Unpacked_01.jpg) (Unpacked_02.jpg) (Unpacked_03.jpg) (Not-Defect.jpg) Attachments ---------------- No-ESR_01.jpg (260KB - 813 downloads) No-ESR_02.jpg (253KB - 611 downloads) Unpacked_01.jpg (276KB - 603 downloads) Unpacked_02.jpg (235KB - 631 downloads) Unpacked_03.jpg (187KB - 603 downloads) Not-Defect.jpg (257KB - 589 downloads) | ||
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| waybacktech |
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IDT WinChip Posts: 237 Location: USA | |||
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | |||
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IDT WinChip Posts: 237 Location: USA | If that is what you payed for the entire bundle, i'd say you did pretty well. The board you have here is similar in layout to my Chicony CH-471 board, which the prices on ebay for that board are through the roof now. It is a very good performing board, as is another more generic SIS 471 based board I have, both are close in performance actually, so I would imagine yours to be pretty decent as well. Looks like though your board only as 128k of cache installed so you might want to bump it to 256K. Oh um.. you shouldn't run the video card in the third VLB slot  that is a slave slot so there will be a bit of a performance hit.Edited by waybacktech 2017-03-08 11:17 PM | ||
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| DXZeff |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK | Also had good experiences with the SiS chipsets and it's nice to see you making progress with the system. One thing I will say on cache, test with 128K before upgrading, my old UMC UM8498 performed better with 128K + 8MB of RAM than it did otherwise so there may be others like this out there... Probably not as my board was a little wacky from years of battery rot, but still, worth testing just in case. I have been up to no good again, here's a couple of the items I recently got hold of;   WaybackTech likely knows one of the other items which I recently obtained after some careful consideration, against my initial judgement...  Given the average cost of components in the UK, this didn't actually work out too badly and I think I can make it back from a recent investment I made elsewhere. Only thing is, I have yet to locate a case for this project. I could probably make one I guess, metal project cases aren't too difficult or costly to get hold of and as all the I/O is out on headers I could probably just bolt some stand-offs into the bottom of something like this;  And it would be fine. I know a guy who works with metal for a living and am reasonably confident he would be willing to help if I had to make any serious alterations to such a casing. As a last note, Brostenen, you lucky sod with your battery headers, I have six Odin clock chips to modify and only have a hand file to do it with. It's hard going and the resin dust is probably taking years off of my life. And they're soldered to the motherboards so I have to work on them in-board. Edited by DXZeff 2017-03-08 11:32 PM | ||
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | waybacktech - 2017-03-09 1:14 AM If that is what you payed for the entire bundle, i'd say you did pretty well. The board you have here is similar in layout to my Chicony CH-471 board, which the prices on ebay for that board are through the roof now. It is a very good performing board, as is another more generic SIS 471 based board I have, both are close in performance actually, so I would imagine yours to be pretty decent as well. Looks like though your board only as 128k of cache installed so you might want to bump it to 256K. Oh um.. you shouldn't run the video card in the third VLB slot that is a slave slot so there will be a bit of a performance hit.I shure did... The sales add. Thanks for clearing it up. Hmmm.... Is there a list of 486 chipsets somewere, their rating and pro's vs con's? Regarding the cache, then I have four 64x8-15ns that I got cheap some time ago. I guess I need to buy another set, in order to upgrade my FIC 486 VIP IO to 512kb and take those 256kb-15ns and install on this Abit board. I thought that the third was master. Hmmm... TotalHardware99 have the top-slot named SL3 and the bottom SL1. Is the top-slot allways master on every single VLB board out there? | ||
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| DXZeff |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK | |||
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | |||
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IDT WinChip Posts: 237 Location: USA | @Brostenen The numbering of the slots themselves does not always relate to master or slave. I have a couple, maybe more than a couple Socket 7 boards who's PCI slots are numbers backwards from what I see on other boards, having the shared PCI/ISA slot labeled as 1 for example instead of 3, 4 or 5. I will have to refrain from saying every vlb motherboard has the master slot(s) closest to the processor, because once I say that, someone, Hightreason probably, will say they have seen 1 that wasn't that way  Now personally speaking, all of the vlb boards that I currently have, or have had in the past have always had the vlb slot furthest away from the cpu as slave. Usually it is printed on the board around the vlb slots master and slave, but of course not all boards. TH99 is a great site. I use them all the time, though I have come across a couple boards they seem to know nothing about, or have a close but not totally accurate picture or description of the jumpers and general layout. @HighTreason Oh you sneaky bastard. You found a sound module for that thing. I didn't even think about the possibility of that existing. Of course such card never came up on my ebay search for PC/104. I knew you wouldn't be able to resist getting one of those little cards. Too interesting By the way, you should see if the card does indeed need the 12v from the floppy header, or if that is just for show because i can't see a reason why this board would need more than 5v. If it does run off of 5v only, a power brick of some sorts should work to power this little guy up if you decide to use the enclosure. Maybe you should get one of those "Fake real security cameras" that William showed and put this STPC board into that. Put one of those little eyeball stickers behind the glass window. You should post more of your music to Youtube, in your videos or something. Really good stuff man.Edited by waybacktech 2017-03-09 4:50 AM | ||
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| waybacktech |
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IDT WinChip Posts: 237 Location: USA | |||
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| DXZeff |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK | The closest I've seen to slots not being laid out that way is my P66 which induces endless headaches with regards to PCI implementation. Slot 1 is the lowest slot, but they're all the same distance from the CPU and it is, from a routing perspective, closer to the required pins on the chipset. Either that or the BIOS is wired backwards which doesn't seem unlikely as many of the settings are a little strange and don't always do what you expect them to. Thanks to requiring memory holes and such, the setup in there is particularly precarious and if just one setting is slightly off the whole thing stops working. VLB boards seem to be consistently the same though, which makes sense given the apparent constraints on trace length, supposedly the CPU struggles to drive slots which are further away and the only boards I have seen with slots that are a long way from the CPU are generally VIP boards which run some sort of bridge and don't always perform very well. Some VLB boards place the CPU in the top corner and those ones tend to move the VLB slots up to the center of the board so as to keep them close to the CPU, like this one;  I wasn't sure audio existed for PC/104 but then I was also suspicious I had unwittingly used a kiosk that was running either PC/104 or something very similar that had audio and figured it didn't hurt to look. I stumbled into that ESS module and figured that as I could get one of those, I could therefore look at using this system as my new sequencing system as I need something smaller than the K5/P4 combination I have now and a 486 will have more than enough power. According to the datasheet, only a single +5V supply is required with very low current, an abundant and well standardized voltage that should be easy to supply the system with. I even wonder if a USB port on a nearby machine might have enough current to run the system. I think I'll stick to a generic metal enclosure, I rather like those, very utilitarian and given I have gear housed in those that has been around for upwards of 40 years, I think it's safe to say they're quite rugged. That music is going to appear on YouTube, one song for each part, though results do vary greatly. I have located my Pentium Pro, I spent ages looking for it only to remember it is right at the end of my sofa inside a cardboard box. It would be strange if mine didn't have the bug, but I'd imagine the result will be the same. | ||
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | |||
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| waybacktech |
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IDT WinChip Posts: 237 Location: USA | |||
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | |||
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TM Crusoe Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK | The TSeng in my 486SX is in the second lowest slot with no penalty and they are not labelled. There appears to be no consequence, so perhaps my board is similar in how it operates. Said TSeng does not work at 50MHz regardless of the WS/BUS CLOCK jumper positions, yielding only an ominous red flashing screen. In other news, I have mostly rebuilt the Pentium Pro, it has been moved to the beige case my Athlon was temporarily living in, so here it is before the swap began;  I have not set up the OS or anything yet, and I also have to do this with the Athlon as that has changed drives - as noted in my Mario 64 videos, I was using the old drives from my Athlon 1500+ which are very heavily worn and cannot exceed 3.5MB/s transfer speeds anymore. I have switched to a 40GB Hitachi Deathstar for the time being but will likely switch to CF in the future. Anyway, here is the Athlon in that case;    Massive amounts of copper in this machine are mandatory to keep the temperature under control, the 266MHz Athlon 2800+ is a very hot processor, I dare say it dumps more heat than the 3200+ likely due to the lower FSB making everything significantly less efficient. Essentially it is an older 2600+ core with double the L2 cache installed. You may be able to make out the GeForce 4 Ti 4600, the Bt878 and the SW1000XG cards. Due to the nature of the Athlon and the fact that it will eventually replace the role of two NetBurst machines, I have nicknamed this system the "ChipZilla Killer" even though I think the 2800 marker was where Intel started catching up again - the Athlon would still have been better value if you could get a motherboard that actually worked, it's a shame so many of them didn't. My board has a trade-off for it's "actually f-ing works" qualities, and that is the fact it predates ATX12V and so requires a very strong +5V rail to get it to even start up properly. I still need to re-cap my 650 Watt supply, but the 430W one should hold up for now and seems to be running at acceptable temperatures, but I wouldn't want to stress it 24/7 and I don't plan on using it in here forever if I can help it. I cannot make my mind up which sound card to install in the Pentium Pro as yet, because I won't be using the SB128 again, that was temporary and I have always had a strong dislike for those cards. Actually, that's an understatement, I absolutely hate those cards. As the DOS side is a little weak and I won't be using it for that very much if at all (I want to run Windows 95 and NT mostly) I am not sure I care very much about the DOS support so I may move the SoundScape from my POD and install the GUS in that system, as it has been homeless for quite a while since the PB became too flaky for my liking. This would leave the S-2000 for the PPro and the POD as my demo-rig, as it doesn't really get along with the S-2000 anyway. My other possibility is the Terratec from my K5. I am hoping the PPro is capable of playing Atlantis: The Lost Tales as I have wanted to play it again for a while, but my P3 is too quick - and has a dead drive which puts me off fixing some software problems, as I plan to re-install the OS on new drives when I make my mind up if I want SCSI again or to just give up and go IDE - and everything else is either too slow, fast to a level that makes it unplayable, or else too new to run it at all. Thinking of re-playing RotH on my P66 soon too, might record that after Mirror's Edge though for the second channel. Not sure about any of this yet. Edited by DXZeff 2017-03-09 11:31 PM | ||
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | Nice... Athlons are a nice platform. Personally I do not know what speed suits me the best or rather wich one is the best. Slot-A are not really that special, Socket-A are perfect for fast Win98 and Socket 754 are sometimes too fast for Win98. Actually a 754 are the top line when it comes to Win98 systems. Athlon64 is for XP, wich is perhaps a bit off the table. SocketA it is then.  So you'r Athlon is a bit like Socket 478 regarding heat then? What exact cooler would be the best that you can think of? I know it should be all copper, yet, wich cooler? The only one that I have tried that are pure, is a NorthQ (60 to 120mm) EDIT: Regarding the blue light... Uhmmm... Everyone has his own taste. Personally I like green or orange better. On a second thought, then I have actually allways had a slightly lesser liking to those coloured lights. I think it has to do with all them young ones, that are tricking out their cars. I am more of a basic man.... I remember around 1999/2000, were you could buy gearnobs, stereoframes and stuff like that with cold light. You know... Making the cabin shine bright with cold blue cathode light. To me, it just went too far. Edited by Brostenen 2017-03-10 12:00 AM | ||
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TM Crusoe Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK | I like Socket A the best as with Slot A (which I've never owned) I don't think there's any point in me getting one over a Pentium III and even a Pentium II is probably more useful to me personally for software from that time, I like the Pentium II. Socket 754 was a good budget socket, but it never appealed to me and whilst I have a board and processor, I only use it to test hardware I don't trust to avoid potentially blowing up something I care about. Indeed, I run 98SE on Socket A machines because I think whilst XP is the OS of the time (for the Athlon XP. I know, who would have thought?) the only software that requires XP exclusively will benefit from a faster system anyway and software which doesn't need a faster machine almost always runs fine (and often better) under Windows 98. I've always said that there's a certain snappiness about an Athlon under Windows 9X, when configured correctly, that has yet to be matched. I do usually have XP too, in dual-boot, but only use it if I have to or to play around with things. The cooler I use is the only copper one I have ever seen on sale, a CompUSA branded one that sold surprisingly cheap (as in, the copper itself is worth more than I paid for it) and was unused, sealed in the box. Lovely heatsink and a decent fan, no stupid temperature control. I'm not really one for lights and I like plain looking cases. I take pride in not having a case window because if I can forget what the inside of the computer looks like, this implies I must have had no reason to go in there and that must mean that I built it properly because it worked for long enough that I could forgot. The Athlon though is essentially the chav of processors in my mind - and you're pretty much right, because any self respecting chav wants to be a boy racer and will usually ruin a half-decent car by sticking badly fitted body kits and mismatched neons onto it whilst blasting their crappy "oonts-oonts" music - but as such, it must also have "the bling" and needless show-off accessories that probably only serve to make it worse. Personally I like white lights or red. Green is fine but only a specific shade and finding things with the green LEDs I like is quite hard to do. The blue fans came with the case and the only cathodes I had left over were UV and Cool Blue. I did want it to look as tacky as possible though, so I think it works as intended. Me and a friend once replaced the LEDs in his PC, one at a time, as we put it all together. We used these tiny indicator bulbs, they were LED sized and ran at 3 Volts, though were rated higher so had a nice orange glow at 3-5V. Unfortunately I have been unable to source them in recent years. They looked like these;  One of many times where I wish I'd had a digital camera to hand back then, or at least had my 110 to hand with film loaded, it was beautiful to look at. They did puke out a decent amount of heat though. I have seen them referred to as "Grain of Wheat Bulbs" and "Miniature Incandescent Bulbs" as well as "Rice Bulbs / Rice Lamps" before now... Wait... I found them! http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/100Pcs-Ature-Lamp-3Mm-12V-Indicator-Bulb-... Be warned if you want to follow in our footsteps, most LED headers don't like driving these and whilst it never happened, I would not be surprised if they could melt plastic housings if sufficient heat build up was allowed to form. Edited by DXZeff 2017-03-10 1:17 AM | ||
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | |||
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| waybacktech |
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IDT WinChip Posts: 237 Location: USA | |||
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TM Crusoe Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK | Vortex86, MP6 core right? I'm kind curious as to if the new ones with the 1GHz+ clock at DDR3 are still an MP6 internally. At that price I would imagine it is well worth it, especially with CF support right out of the front panel. Not for me though, I'll stick to my STPC Atlas as I'm a 486 guy through-and-through. Edit; If this is correct, then the Cray XT3 (An Opteron supercomputer) still used 486 technology inside to control things - https://www.okqubit.net/crayxt3.html  Makes me wonder if they were still there in the XT4 and XT5 as they were mostly just updated versions of the XT3. Edited by DXZeff 2017-03-10 6:49 PM | ||
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