|
|
IDT WinChip
Posts: 237
 
Location: USA | That's funny, my 9800XT has that exact same cooler on it. Great video card. |
|
| |
|
Chips 386
Posts: 28
Location: Wigan, UK | @waybacktech
So far, it's been amazing. Almost every game that I was having performance issues with are running smoothly, my only complaint is it's lack of SM3 for later games. A minor complaint, but then again this is a card from 2003. |
|
| |
|
UMC U5S
Posts: 54
| Everyone give it up for the postal service, the 500MHz K7 arrived with the motherboard so goddamn fucked up the cooling fins on the regulator were broken off. I've already ordered the replacement matching motherboard. The Banshee, Live, K7 + heatsink, and RAM seem to have made it out alive but the CD-ROMs are so fucked up the tray no longer opens. |
|
| |
|
Chips 386
Posts: 28
Location: Wigan, UK | 486u - 2017-06-08 8:34 PM
Everyone give it up for the postal service, the 500MHz K7 arrived with the motherboard so goddamn fucked up the cooling fins on the regulator were broken off. I've already ordered the replacement matching motherboard. The Banshee, Live, K7 + heatsink, and RAM seem to have made it out alive but the CD-ROMs are so fucked up the tray no longer opens.
I'm so sorry to hear about this... That sucks man. |
|
| |
|
UMC U5S
Posts: 54
| The postal service kills more vintage computers than any asshole gold scrapper could ever dream to.
The silver lining is that the replacement is a newer revision of the VIA chipset with 2 256MB RAM sticks instead of 3 128MB RAM sticks and a 700MHz K7 instead of a 500MHz. I'm going to try to work out a deal with the K7 seller to, instead of sending a refund, send a few odds 'n ends that I need for other systems. |
|
| |
|
IDT WinChip
Posts: 237
Location: USA | I feel your pain 486u. There is usually some kind of insurance coverage up to a certain point included with shipping. I had a guy last summer send me a computer that he wrapped in 2 brown paper bags. Needless to say, the front was hurt, case is tweaked a bit, but it sure could have been worse. I am still shocked United Postal Smashers allowed that through their system actually because you could feel the item wasn't in a box.
Edited by waybacktech 2017-06-08 9:22 PM
|
|
| |
|
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | @Brostenen; I haven't owned an MT-32 for quite a while now. The last track I used it for has an upload date of September 9th 2015 and it was already broken by that point, so it's been a long time now. Wouldn't use one anyway, horrible little module. That's £90 I'm never getting back.
@RobW0lf; Looks like a serious card, I remember the 9800XT being quite well respected in its time by some.
@486u; Is it the postal service, or the guy posting it not packing it properly? Either way, that sucks, I've been lucky enough that this hasn't happened to me yet, at least not to that level, and I'm not looking forward to when it inevitably does.
@WaybackTech; I can clearly remember that Apple machine you bought where the case actually got bent. Those cases are strong, so it must have really taken a battering for that to happen. |
|
| |
|
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Seems to work, now I just need to find some hard drives. Not sure whether to go SCSI or IDE this time, it doesn't matter too much, but I do need RAID.
Edit: Oh, no, the CMOS battery is flat... Haha, if that's the worst problem I've got, I think I'm gonna like this board. Much like my old QDI of the exact same model, it just works so far. If I get this running properly it should let me do some stuff that I've been struggling with since the thefts. The K5 and 386SX have done well to carry the weight, as I still haven't replaced the dying SCSI drives in my PIII, but with a PII-450 things should get much easier. I know I had planned to use the STPC for music, but this will be leaps ahead, Pentium II machines are the sweet spot for what I run, quick enough that I can hammer the 32-Bit applications, but compatible enough that I can still use my required 16-Bit applications without even switching operating system. Not sure what I'll do about VirtualCZ, but as I have to replace the MIDI cables and stuff, I might come up with a pass-thru solution for that, I don't mind using a cheap USB-MIDI lead solely for patching and do the actual sequencing and stuff with real MIDI cables from the PII, I'm pretty certain I could combine or switch inputs in the way I have set out in my head anyway.
Edited by DXZeff 2017-06-09 10:32 PM
 (20170609213230.JPG)
Attachments
----------------
 20170609213230.JPG (162KB - 485 downloads)
|
|
| |
|
UMC U5S
Posts: 54
| I'd choose IDE but only for sheer convenience. SCSI is going to be better in every other conceivable way.
After studying my new system, I discovered that the K7 slocket connector was damaged during shipping and not properly holding the processor in place. After a little tender love and care (slapping the damn thing around a bunch), I heard an audible click and tested the motherboard again. It works.
However! I already bought the replacement OEM compatible motherboard and its too late to refund it. I think I'll keep it around anyway. The question is, do I want to keep this system all matching and correct or do I want to replace the 384MB 500MHz K7 1st gen with a compatible 512MB 700MHz 2nd gen thunderbird K7? What do you guys think? |
|
| |
|
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Yeah, thinking about it, IDE was more than good enough last time. The problem is that the board tops out at 32GB drives... That's small though, as I still have this;
This has 48-Bit LBA addressing, so it should be capable of using almost any IDE drive ever made. I'd want to battery mod that RTC chip, but otherwise, I think it might be RAID10 time... Not sure what size disk, but large quantities of reasonable capacity drives show up at a decent cost from time to time, so I'll keep a look out. I'll just boot with the K6's old one for now to test things out.
Trivial information - the CPU under the heatsink is an i960 at 100MHz, 128MB of RAM is installed.
With your K7, I don't know, which configuration do you think you'd use more? Because that's what I'd choose.
Edited by DXZeff 2017-06-10 12:12 AM
|
|
| |
|
UMC U5S
Posts: 54
| Is that a RAID controller or just a IDE controller card?
I remember the i960 in that when the age of floating point coprocessors was coming to an end Intel tried to sell the industry on a RISC coprocessor. I've never even heard of a motherboard with a slot for one. The closest thing to that becoming reality was the weitek coprocessor and those only seemed to be supported in that they became the floating point unit if your processor lacked one.
I figure I'll keep my classic K7 because a 500MHz covers the generation span nicely that begins at the end of the 233MHz Pentium MMX (95 era) and ends at the 1.6GHz Duron (XP era). Seems like it could handle games from that period like a champ. |
|
| |
|
IDT WinChip
Posts: 237
Location: USA | i960. Very interesting chip. Intel's RISC processor, which was relegated to being used simply for controllers. I find it funny that in 1993 when the Pentium was released, Intel poo-pooed RISC processors as being a market that was starting from 0 in terms of software base, and yet here was Chipzilla themselves selling RISC processors since... what 1989 or 1990 something like that with the I960 was first released in what looked like a 486 package. It was almost like, Intel's attempt at a RISC processor was so bad, that they were embarrassed to admit they had been selling them for a few years by then...
Does that card do 12 IDE drives or is it just 6 in a point to point configuration? That open area on the PCB next to the cache ram looks like a space for a backup battery to hold the cached memory in the event of lost power. |
|
| |
|
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| 486u - 2017-06-10 7:38 AM
Is that a RAID controller or just a IDE controller card?
As far as I can see, it is an IDE Raid controller for PATA drives.
waybacktech - 2017-06-10 7:42 AM
i960. Very interesting chip. Intel's RISC processor, which was relegated to being used simply for controllers. I find it funny that in 1993 when the Pentium was released, Intel poo-pooed RISC processors as being a market that was starting from 0 in terms of software base, and yet here was Chipzilla themselves selling RISC processors since... what 1989 or 1990 something like that with the I960 was first released in what looked like a 486 package. It was almost like, Intel's attempt at a RISC processor was so bad, that they were embarrassed to admit they had been selling them for a few years by then...
Does that card do 12 IDE drives or is it just 6 in a point to point configuration? That open area on the PCB next to the cache ram looks like a space for a backup battery to hold the cached memory in the event of lost power.
Was the i960 not suposed to compete against the 486, and intel would play them out against each other and see wich one would "win the race"? |
|
| |
|
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | @486u; RAID card. There were definitely boards that took i960 processors out there, Hauppauge made a few and I think maybe DTK and Everex might have had a go. I don't own one, but I do have a board with a Weitek socket.
I think your decision with the K7 is well reasoned, faster isn't always better.
@WaybackTech; Well, that, and it's distantly related to the K5. Both the i960 and Am29K were derived from the same design, the K5 was derived from the Am29K. Beyond this, Intel likely felt even more ridiculous once they started having to migrate to RISC86 themselves.
The SX6000 card supports six drives. I may only use four and hook the last two channels up to caddys or something, could be useful.
@Brostenen; Not sure about that, but I'm sure I read that the iAPX 432 was supposed to replace the x86 line at one point. I think it's safe to say that this plan didn't work.
----------
I have located several large quantities of hard drives relatively cheap. I'm considering using 2.5 drives as they're easier to fit, I can get them cheaper and any loss of speed should be offset by striping. They're also from significantly later than the rest of the system, so they should be pretty quick and fairly reliable too.
Still need to make an SB-Link cable for that sound card, that's going to be ugly. |
|
| |
|
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| #DXZeff:
I have been reading up on them two lines of processors. The iAPX 432 was in production from 1981 to aprox 1985 and the i960 line was in production from 1984 to 2007. Looking at those years, the 486 was produced during the lifespan of the i960. I only had a vague memory on that competition thing, from an article I read a long time ago. Again, looking at the years of lifespan, I think you are right. So what I remember as competing against the 486 could probably just be competing against the x86 architecture. Hmmmm... Well. It is a little known processor after all. Looking at the awareness of the public eye. |
|
| |
|
UMC U5S
Posts: 54
| RISC coprocessors were most successful with Transputer cards which were ISA cards that had sockets for 8 - 16 16/32-bit transputers. I always wanted one but they have their own set of enthusiasts and collectors who keep those relatively rare cards in the $200+ price range. They essentially filled the role your GPGPU today would, but back in the late 80s.
Back to Intel, Intel has wanted to kill x86 at least twice now and replace it with a different architecture. If you've seen the awful state of the instruction set even back in the days of Pentium you can understand why. Some instructions require multiple switches that are wasted bytes to tell the processor "no, not the 8086 instruction set, not the 32-bit set either, the Pentium set!" and code with mixed 16-bit and 32-bit values especially hurts because of it (this was a huge deal back then). Intel decided to waste bytes that could've gone elsewhere on things like segment register overrides which barely went used even in the DOS days and were thoroughly obsolete by the 386. The plan to fix this was to introduce a RISC which sat alongside the x86, and then slowly phased it out until it emulated the x86 on-chip. Intel first hoped this would be the i960 but the i960 soon came against proper RISCs like the MIPS and PowerPC and it could not compete. If the industry was going to adopt a RISC coprocessor, it wasn't going to be the i960. Intel decided this was a bad strategy for them but people were still certain that this phasing-out was going to happen because PowerPC and MIPS were making gains on even Intel's first Pentium. What changed this was was that at the time RISC had hit a bottleneck and the 2nd generation Pentium and Pentium compatibles were just so damn good it was clear CISC still had a lot of room for growth.
An addendum to this is the Pentium Pro is a RISC at its' core with an x86 translator which is an idea that would go on to be done by AMD in its' K5 design and then from every Intel and AMD core since then. |
|
| |
|
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Hold onto your butts, this is a big one!
May have to get cables for them as I'm not sure I have enough left, but six of these, striping should make up for their 4200RPM platters, but my old drives were actually modest anyway;
For the record, the mirroring is really more important, I'm not too heavy on the drives in my P2, that's the P3's job, but I do intend to use this for actual work, so redundancy it is. No Win9X support for my SuperTrak, but it uses BIOS interrupts, so Windows don't care anyway and GHOST can see the array.
Three of these as they can fit two drives, though I'm likely to only use four in the P2;
Naturally, six of these;
A set of five of these, can't buy just one, a standard IDC cable but it will work as an SB-Link and I'll use the rest eventually;
What good is a P2 without some games, my CD got broken and I didn't have the box, so here;
Amusingly the seller misread the box as "In Wang is Shadow Warrior" which I guess I can see why.
Another one;
Hoping it's as good as the first one, but for what it cost I'll be happy just hear the music. I've seen the game, once, long ago, and the music I heard has stayed with me since. Hopefully the rest of the game lives up to it. Anyone remember when computer shops used to have their machines running games and you could play on them, instead of these shitty locked-out slideshows they love now? I miss that, it was like being in an arcade that didn't smell like ass with games that didn't suck balls and steal your pocket money.
And one for my K5;
Missed my copy for years, it wasn't a big box though. Oddly another French game with surprisingly good music, yeah, the game looks cartoonish and juvenile, it really is, but that didn't stop Philipe Vachey putting in the effort... Those strings also remind me of Rayman, I don't know what it was, but it's like the French just owned video game soundtracks at that time.
I really should play the first game some day.
Oh, also, from what I remember, this might be the only game I've ever played where you can violently beat and even drown a pregnant woman without provocation. Yeah bitch! Take my magic yellow ball to the face! Ha! How do you like that, huh? Geddouda here, your bothering me!
Some of this stuff is from Hong Kong, so it could take a while to get here. LBA should get here fast though and give me some good time to get used to my K5 properly, it wasn't even screwed together when I used it in that Shadow Warrior live stream, I literally just threw the last bits in and hit go, without even having proper SCSI termination. Well, it proved that it wanted to work, and it did so very well, so now's it's chance to work some more.
Edited by DXZeff 2017-06-12 2:18 AM
|
|
| |
|
IDT WinChip
Posts: 237
Location: USA | Boy someone has been on ebay...
I am using a sata laptop drive in my AM2 system right now actually so I find it interesting you are going with the laptop drives as well. Took testing a few of them I had laying around before I found one that wasn't like 3% health or less. 4200 rpm drives should still be pretty good speed if the drive is big enough since the platters are much smaller than 3.5" drives. Mine is a 5400rpm drive. Seems to work pretty well. I am currently playing with the last build of 64 bit Longhorn which was based on Windows 2003. Pretty interesting, which is to say, on the surface looks like XP with a slightly different theme/skin, takes up about as much memory as XP usually does out of the box, and not the 1+GB or ram Vista does. So for the code supposedly having been getting too messy and too large, doesn't seem that bad to me.
I don't bother with drive brackets for those laptop drives, I can usually get them to line up with the mounting holes on the case. One side holds those drives just fine.
I was going to buy some of those IDC cables myself, but realized I could just use a couple cdrom audio cables to do the same thing. Not quite as proper looking but i'm sure would get the job done.
Edited by waybacktech 2017-06-12 3:16 AM
|
|
| |
|
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Yeah, well, the drives were like £5 a go and I'd projected them costing at least four times as much, so that left room for a few other things.
I use a laptop drive in a testbed, or I did until I butchered the motherboard in it to save something else. It worked well enough there, but that was SATA stuff. I read somewhere, it was years ago and I don't remember where, that 4200RPM drives tend to last longer due to less wear or some such, no idea, but potential speed issues are almost certainly going to be negated by the fact I'm using 4-6 drives as one and I have a fairly large buffer - I doubt if anything is really going to stress a 128MB cache all that much under Windows 98. Eventually this server will also be moved to laptop drives and a proper PSU so I can close the case again.
Never really understood why they went with Vista, it was a total mess, practically unusable.
I prefer to have the drives mounted properly. I've cheated that way before and it has been fine, but I'd rather not and the brackets don't really cost very much, as in skip two pot noodles and I'll have made back what they cost. Also, I always considered the chassis to be acting as something of a heatsink to the drives, so at the very least they should run a bit cooler than they would.
Thought about using a few smaller cables like that, but don't like the mess. Also, I'd have the buy the cables as most of my CD Audio cables are Panasonic types, for some reason CD Audio cables cost more than the 6-Pin IDC cables. |
|
| |
|
UMC U5S
Posts: 54
| DXZeff - 2017-06-12 5:05 PM
...as in skip two pot noodles...
): We've all been there. I feel like I'll be there again soon too. My entire industry is becoming obsolete and there won't be much left for me in the area so I don't know what to do. I've been taking half of the money I usually set aside for myself and saving it in the bank, and some of the other half and buying ammunition. One or the other will make sure I'll have a safe landing should this shit economy be shaken up too much further.
OEM non-standard drive caddies are the absolute worst because the caddy holds the drive in with security bits and so when you buy an old PC that has the drive removed its almost a guarantee that caddy will be gone too. Have a few drives that are just taped in to the case.
Edited by 486u 2017-06-12 8:43 PM
|
|
| |
|
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | You know, these days, I'm not sure I'd consider that a bad idea.
There are plenty of butchered non-OEM cases out there with blank plates and caddys missing too, they often can't be replaced. For me the worst is people throwing out cables, they strip out a card that needs a breakout cable but throw away the cable, rendering the card useless. RealMagic cards are probably the best known example, but I have a few others where this could be a problem. I've been lucky and gotten most such devices with cables, but at inflated costs, one of them which I don't have a cable for involves MIDI, which is also lucky as it uses a standard 9-Pin connector and should be easy to reverse engineer, MIDI only uses like two pins in each direction anyway, aside from Ground which is obviously very easy to find. |
|
| |
|
Intel P5
Posts: 85
Location: UK | Got a few more 486 CPU's for messing about with for a very fair price, i.e. not from ebay! lol AMD DX 40, SX/2 66 and a intel DX 33.
 |
|
| |
|
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| I am in the process of sorting out my collection. Deciding what stuff I really do not need anymore.
Been taking a lot of pictures. Pictures, pictures and even more pictures.... Ohhh boy.
Creating sales add's on local sites. So I am kind of beat up right now. Things has to be described
firmly and correct you know... :-) |
|
| |
|
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | That old P60 is almost ready to be sold, need to fix the RTC and screw everything in properly. Otherwise, everything is set up as it should be.
Hard drives are here, Atlantis II is here, Shadow Warrior is here.
Completed the script for a CD burner video, will set about work on the PPro one in the coming days.
Currently bolting cards and such into the Pentium II. Going to go with a Matrox card and have found one that I'll order next pay day, unless something else comes up.
If the other parts get here before payday, I'll probably start with the included ATI card for now and switch it out later.
Does anyone have any problem with me editing posts that have large images? They do bad things to the page layout and there isn't a workaround in the forum software that I am aware of.
Of course, you can fix them yourselves, but I understand that with the variety of screen resolutions you might not always catch it.
Edited by DXZeff 2017-06-15 12:48 AM
|
|
| |
|
Intel P5
Posts: 85
Location: UK | Oh, that was me, sorry! edit away chap  |
|
| |
Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
