Green Tea: retro AMD-nVidia build

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

There are normaly 2 thicknesses if cutting discs stocked on store shelves. Get the thicker of the two. If you can find the reinforced disc get those.

 

[Sir B. Fannybottom]

I've got the copper versions of that ram you want I only have one 512 dimm though, SN is OCZ4001024PDC-K

 

[TRWOV]

I already have the RAM. In the P4 days I used to buy quality memory intended for OCing as back then it mattered a lot...nowadays in the age of integrated memory controllers, not so much.

 

[Luciel]

This sounds like fun!

Thought I´d post my own green project, was never meant to represent nvidia but most thought it did, and since amd is "the green" side too... figured

Hopefully that helps out a bit with ideas

 

[Peter1986C]

Subscribed.

 

[TRWOV]

woot! The board is in the post office. I'll go and pick it up later. Pics tonight.


Nice green rig over there Luciel!!

 

[TRWOV]

Having some problems to make the board post... no beeps come from the buzzer so I'm at a loss ATM

In the mean time, some pics:

I'll use a TX3 and 2400PRO as placeholders.

 

[Aquinus]

Oh man, I haven't seen AGP in a while.

 

[TRWOV]

Ok, found my answer:

Answer:This problem will occur on some AGP cards which does not use native AGP chip, but use native PCI-E chip with an "PCI-E to AGP Bridge" to become AGP interface.
Please set "AGP P2P Deep Fifo" to [Enable] in the BIOS. (Advanced>Chipset Settings>AGP P2P Deep Fifo)
It may need to upgrade the BIOS for this option:

Model BIOS version
939Dual-SATA2 P1.60 or later
939A8X-M P2.10 or later
K8A8X-M P2.10 or later
K8Upgrade-1689 P2.40 or later
K8Combo-Z P2.70 or later

Download page: http://www.asrock.com/support/download.asp

Sadly I don't have any native AGP card left. There's my Voodoo 5500 but it's 2x and the board is incompatible. I'll try to borrow one for the bios flashing.

 

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

I have that same card running in my nf2 system. Great card.

 

[t_ski]

I have some old AGP cards that probably don't have the bridge in them

 

[Aquinus]

I might have a Radeon 9200 AGP 4x sitting around somewhere. I would have to find it though.

 

[Widjaja]

Good luck with finding a cheap FX60 let alone cheap high end dual core 939skt CPUs.

Sometime last year I recall seeing an FX60 sell for around 245USD used.

I would have considered selling either my X2 4800+ or Opty180 if you were down this way.

 

[JrRacinFan]

Awaiting finished results.

 

[TRWOV]

Borrowed a 6200LE. I'll let you know how things work out




EDIT:

Still no POST. I removed the RAM and got the beep code so at least I know the buzzer is fine. That leaves me with two options:
- damaged CPU
- damaged AGP slot
- damaged board
- some other noob thing I'm not aware of

I'll try to research this a little more. I think I'll have to get a PCI card to rule out the AGP slot.


EDIT2:

Managed to POST. Apparently there are a couple of issues:

- 1st RAM slot seems to be bad. I'll give it a cleaning and see how it goes.
- The board isn't happy with my DDR500 RAM. I had to use a DDR400 stick. I'll update the bios and see if that improves the RAM compatibility.

 

[TRWOV]

Good luck with finding a cheap FX60 let alone cheap high end dual core 939skt CPUs.

Sometime last year I recall seeing an FX60 sell for around 245USD used.

I would have considered selling either my X2 4800+ or Opty180 if you were down this way.

YGPM






SUCCESS!!!

 

[Bambooz]

@Luciel: Just curious.. what case is that? Looks one heck of a lot like the MS-Tech LC-402 I used to have in the P4 heydays..

@TRWOV: I hope you're not planning on any overclocking or stuff like that. ASRock boards of that vintage aren't good for anything except office machines (no OC features, hardly any options in the BIOS), and most of them are semi-dead by now due to the crappy capacitors they liked to use (and still do .. mostly "OST", which are really nasty cause they hardly ever bloat when they go bad)

I know what you're talking about with the higher-end S939 CPUs though. I've got a Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI bundle with the matching Gigabyte 3D1 (dual 6600GT in SLI on a single card), and I'm having one heck of a hard time finding a cheap 939 dualcore for it, so I have to make due with an A64 3700+ for now

 

[TRWOV]

I suppose that I could change the capacitors. Should I replace every capacitor on the board or just the ones in the power phases? They don't seem to be of the low ESR type so replacements should be easily attainable.

BTW, these are the OC options present in the bios:

 

[Bambooz]

Motherboard caps have to be low ESR. Only exception are the tiny filter caps (like 16V 100µF) for the audio part or around the chipset.

The OST caps on yours look like OST RLX or RLS series. The others are Nippon Chemicon KZE (? ; japanese) which are OK and a ton of LTec 6.3V 1000µF scattered all over the place. Those aren't great but they should be OK.

What values are the OST's ? 6.3V 3300µF? I could look up some replacements with matching or better specs (I fix all kinds of electronics all day long for some extra income.. got all the datasheets etc. on hand)

As for the BIOS.. more settings than I expected, but as usual, some stuff just isn't there, like RAM voltage for example.

edit: just looked up the board.. really oddball one.. especially the ULi M1689 chipset
ALi (Acer Labs Inc.) was partly split up into ULi in 2003 and bought by nvidia in 2006..

 

[TRWOV]

I think that's "VCCM Voltage". Anyway, the RAM is rated for 250Mhz 3-3-2-8 but I've pushed them to 270 on stock volts in the past so I have quite a margin. More if I loose timings.

I'll look into replacing the capacitors. Maybe I'll replace the capacitors on my 775i65G and Conroe865PE while I'm at it.

 

[Bambooz]

Is the 775i65G a Rev. 2.x? If so... *jealous* .. I've bought 3 of those used and all of them were stone dead sadly.
The oddity of that board alone is what fascinates me.. i865G chipset from the P4 days and they somehow made it Core 2 capable (the chipset predates those CPUs by years Oo!)

If you need a few sources for quality low ESR caps and/or datasheets of the original caps, just PM me.

 

[TRWOV]

Is the 775i65G a Rev. 2.x? If so... *jealous* .. I've bought 3 of those used and all of them were stone dead sadly.
The oddity of that board alone is what fascinates me.. i865G chipset from the P4 days and they somehow made it Core 2 capable (the chipset predates those CPUs by years Oo!)

yup, it's my HTPC nowadays

I also have its bigger sibling, Conroe865PE

 

[Melvis]

I have 2 soon to be 3 939 Systems here if you would like help or to compare with?

System 1:

AMD FX-57
GB-K8NF-9 Ultra Mobo
2x1GB Mushkin DDR500 RAM
ASUS 9600GT 512MB

System 2:

AMD 4600X2
GA-K8N Pro-SLI
2x1GB DDR400
Sli 8600GT's

and the 3rd system which will arrive next Sat will be AMD 3800x2, 1GB ram, ASUS A8S-X. Not sure what to do with it yet, im happy to sell them off if anyone is interest?

 

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

I have 2 s939 system running as crunchers now. Pretty rock solid systems. 1 is a Asus A8n Sli premium with a x2 4200+ running 3 gb of mem on win xp pro sp3 and the other is a Asus A8n-e running a x2 3800+ and 2 gig of 3200 under Ubuntu 11.04 64 bit. Both run great.


Good luck with your build Trwov

 

[xBruce88x]

wow looking nice so far!