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TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

AsRock said:
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Now that is just frigging awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:respect:
 
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AsRock said:
As much as i hate Apple i do like the build quality for the most part.



Well you had to ask so, try not to mistake it for a rock. From when PC building was fun, and apparently still worth some thing :eek: . O yeah thats 1.6 inches thick with a whopping 162MB.

Yup and still works.

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WOW!! I thought you were talking about newer Seagate Barracuda drive, from the earlier pic (30GB capacity model) Nevertheless, this doesn't make any sense from the electrical perspective. The entire frame is bare (and exposed) metal, it obviously has mounting holes for the screws so all you have to do is put it inside 3.5 drive bay and it's going to become grounded through the casing (because the hard drive will touch the computer case), even without the screws which are obviously necessary to hold it in place. Therefore this drive is already grounded 5 times, and that's without the grounding cable - completely ridiculous IMHO!
 
True but not all cases are like that, i believe they did it for those manufacturers who use rails, funny part i think is that no HDD comes with them any longer and some still use rails.

No earthing what so ever unless the drives scraps though it's slot lol.
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AsRock said:
True but not all cases are like that, i believe they did it for those manufacturers who use rails, funny part i think is that no HDD comes with them any longer and some still use rails.

No earthing what so ever unless the drives scraps though it's slot lol.
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That's true, I forgot about these. Although however, to be honest most of them DO have conductive pins or pads of some sort, in order to ground the hard (or optical) drive. But then again, even if you don't ground certain component, it shouldn't have any noticeable issues, unless you're dealing with some sort of signal interface or outlet (USB, VGA, HDMI, or whatever) in which case you might experience signal degradation or interference.

In fact, I have a situation over here, where I'm experiencing this particular problem... My USB turntable is connected to a motherboard via USB cable, which isn't grounded. Probably due to the fact that entire room isn't grounded (and yes, I'm aware of potential dangers), so therefore I get pretty loud humming noise coming from the turntable, or rather its USB sound encoder module.
 
Keep in mind, that the Molex and SATA power cables both have ground wires.

Seems redundant to include a grounding cable. :p
 
Just for fun ran the canned benchmark for UT2003, this is what I got.
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UT2004 benchmark using UMark
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Edit: Managed to UT Classic to run under Windows 10 after a few failed launch attempts, trouble is it wants to run too fast no matter what I did to slow it down, be a good test of reflexes or how quick can you respond to being shot at by the CPU bots.​

Edit 2:
Code: 
UT2004 Build UT2004_Build_[2005-11-23_16.22]
Windows NT 6.2 (Build: 9200)
GenuineIntel PentiumPro-class processor @ 4004 MHz with 2047MB RAM
AMD Radeon R9 200 Series (1474)

BR-Bifrost.ut2?spectatoronly=1?attractcam=1?quickstart=1?numbots=12 -benchmark -seconds=77 -nosound exec="C:\WINDOWS\..\UMark\Data\UMarkBot.txt" -1600x1200

41.028755 / 333.823822 / 796.117920 fps  rand[28733]
Score = 334.550140
 
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Speaking of Unreal, stand by for upcoming Unreal Tournament (the original one), on that Savage 4 Pro system :) Finally got the missing floppy drive mounted earlier today, so I'm good to go!

I'm really looking forward to test the compressed textures thingy, as this is my very first Savage 4 card, ever!
 
 
Short answer - you can game on ANY GPU, even those Trident cards from the early 90s if you know the facts & keep your expectations reasonable ;)
 
 
 
I found this old buddy at work today :pimp:

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Found my first PC games in a box, didn't remember I ever had GTA 2 lol :laugh:
Played them on my first intel celeron 2GHz, ati xpress, 512Mb ram, 30GB HDD laptop back in 2003.
Also had my first "highspeed" broadband internet at the time, 2Mb/s download:rockout: No Wifi btw.:D

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Well guys, it seems I got some pretty lame news... From all the video cards in my collection which I have (either in stock, as in surplus or built into the systems), apparently the Savage4 Pro one is completely dead :( It just took me some time to realize that, because the 2D portion of the card seems to be working OK, but upon changing screen resolution or calling 3D the entire system freezes & hangs.

Same thing sometimes occurs in BIOS (and POST) as well... I even thought that it was the RAM thing, then I assumed that it was the motherboard behind all the problems, but when I swapped Savage for GeForce2 MX200 & everything worked OK, I finally got my answer :p

Status Update
Oh well, I took some time to consider which way to go from this point on. Running Athlon XP 1700+ gives me more than enough muscle to go either high-end with something like GeForce4 4200, Radeon 9550 or low-end such as GeForce2 MX200. And for a moment I almost settled for Radeon 9550, but since this particular system wasn't designed for high-end GPU, and it's running 20GB HDD (instead of 40GB one), and since it only has 256MB of RAM, I've decided to keep the existing MX200. Except in the end I still had to change the card for another MX200 because the 1st one was OEM with limited compatibility & 16MB of VRAM. While the other, "Tornado MX200" has 64 & active cooling. Not much difference IMHO, but it's noticeable enough, especially in 3DMark 2000 where the OEM card lags even at "low" settings.

I'd like to hear your input on this one, which card should I put inside this thing? Potential candidates are Radeon 9550, Radeon 9100, Radeon 7500, Ti4200, MX400 & of course the existing MX200. Keep in mind that I won't be upgrading RAM or HDD, or even OS (WinME)
 
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Trekkie4 said:
Well guys, it seems I got some pretty lame news... From all the video cards in my collection which I have (either in stock, as in surplus or built into the systems), apparently the Savage4 Pro one is completely dead :( It just took me some time to realize that, because the 2D portion of the card seems to be working OK, but upon changing screen resolution or calling 3D the entire system freezes & hangs .......
I'd like to hear your input on this one, which card should I put inside this thing? Potential candidates are Radeon 9550, Radeon 9100, Radeon 7500, Ti4200, MX400 & of course the existing MX200. Keep in mind that I won't be upgrading RAM or HDD, or even OS (WinME)
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Savage4 cards are quite rare over here...:(
MX200 and MX400 are very weak cards, while Radeon 7500 is too old for that system. Radeon 9100 might be a better solution.
 
biffzinker said:
@AsRock, What about Maxtor or IBM hard disk drives? I had a few of those brands drives in my older builds.
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Dam completely missed this ^^, Anyways personally never really used either to a great extent, i was more cheapest was the way to go so was more the WD seagate drives and when i seen the Quantum drives i knew i had to have one. My 1st one was i got was from place in the UK were a bunch of shop owners would gather to sell stuff cheap and one owner had a Quantum Fireball, i was pissed but he phones the next day saying they gave him a SCSI drive and that's how i got my first one all so remember the Adeptec ( 2940U if i remember right ) card i got for it which cost a frigging fortune back then.

But with moving the the US back in 2002 it was one thing i never took with me and not seen it ever since but i got the other crap, Thinking my bother took ownership of it or got thrown away.

Better stop end up with a story else lol.
 
Komshija said:
Savage4 cards are quite rare over here...:(
MX200 and MX400 are very weak cards, while Radeon 7500 is too old for that system. Radeon 9100 might be a better solution.
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Agreed, Savage cards are indeed very difficult to find nowdays. I still can't believe that of all the cards in my collection, Savage had to be the one with the problem... Talk about bad luck, huh? :(

And thanks for the suggestion, I think you're onto something. Let's face it, Radeon 9550 would be the overkill for a system like Athlon XP 1700 and MX200 is just not enough. As for the rest of the cards, the situation is (pretty much) like this:

Radeon 9100 = GeForce4 Ti4200
Radeon 7500 = GeForce4 MX440

Therefore it only makes sense to go with the flow & use Radeon 9100, what you said.
 
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Swapped the card for Radeon 9100 which seemed to work at first, but then kept freezing up upon benchmark. Then I went into BIOS, thinking it was the AGP Fast Write that's causing the problems, when I lost the keyboard... Apparently the BIOS kept going, it didn't hang but none of the keys worked. In fact, upon the next boot sequence, the keyboard wasn't even recognized! Now looking at this entire situation, it seems there's something really bad going on with Asus mobo. The only way to find out for sure is to swap the board for other one, and that's what I'm about to do, tomorrow. This time I'm going with the older Gigabyte board, running Duron 950 and 256MB of SD-RAM. In fact, I'm going to try with Savage card 1st, just in case this turns out to be classic example of bad (or highly incompatible) motherboard. Because, remember... I've had MX200 card on Asus board & it was working perfectly fine, no problems whatsoever.
 
What happened to using the Asrock K7VT2?

Edit: Don't forget your also taking a hit on L2 Cache (256 KB) by stepping down from the AMD Athlon XP 1800+ to a Duron @950 MHz (64 KB.)

Edit 2: Come to think of it I did have a similar Asus board (think mine had a N in the product name) acting funny sent it back to NewEgg for different board. (EpoX?)
 
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biffzinker said:
What happened to using the Asrock K7VT2?

Edit: Don't forget your also taking a hit on L2 Cache (256 KB) by stepping down from the AMD Athlon XP 1800+ to a Duron @950 MHz (64 KB.)
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These are two different systems we're talking about. One of them, so-called RetroMaster 2000 is running ASRock K7VT2 which is about to be upgraded to Asus A7V8X-X, therefore totally different Asus board ;) The one I'm talking about right now is Asus A7M266, similar board but not quite the same. But here's an idea... If the Asus board really turns out to be defective, I might end up putting ASRock board inside the "Savage" or Radeon 9100 build (the same, depending on which card I'll end up using), although I'd prefer to keep the Asus board mainly due to its good reputation. Well, for the most of other Asus boards that is lol.

Edit
Regarding your 2nd edit, I Googled around & found some interesting results. Apparently A7M266 was highly sensitive for some reason to Athlon XP 1700 (the exact model which I used for my own system) and some of the video cards. Again, don't ask me why because I have no idea lol. Some components every once in a while seem to be more sensitive to compatibility stuff, while the other boards not so much & can handle almost anything. At this point I can't tell if A7M266 is indeed defective or not, but I'm hoping to find out soon enough!

Edit2
Again, just to make it absolutely clear to anyone, since these two systems look very much alike. The RetroMaster2000 system, running AthlonXP 1800+ from my signature will remain the same, except it'll get the new & better motherboard soon, probably some time this next week. As for the system that's causing problems, that was Asus A7M266 & Athlon XP 1700+, which are now (temporarily?) swapped for Gigabyte board running Duron 950 (can't remember the model number at this point). Older model, with 1x ISA slot and SD RAM... Either way, IF I can get the Savage card to work, these specs will be more than enough for what I had in mind - games like Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, etc. Otherwise I'll look into other options & swapping the motherboard for another S462, so that it can run both Radeon 9100 and previously mentioned Athlon 9100. One thing I'm NOT worried about is shortage of S462 motherboards, as I got loads of these laying around ;)
 
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Status update, yet again...

Seriously guys, I've never, EVER experienced the weirdest case before. So, regarding the Savage card ... yes, it DOES work! I successfully tested the card on another board & everything worked out OK... Then I went back to Asus & did some troubleshooting, heck I've been literally chasing the phantoms all over, thanks to this Asus board.

Now here's the weirdest part, you'd think the Asus board doesn't work right? Or that it's experiencing some sort of malfunction due to keyboard which tends to disappear or get stuck randomly, even in BIOS? But nope, as soon as I swapped the card(s) for GeForce, it all went back to normal. I'm doing a benchmark test on Asus as we speak, it's perfectly fine... Now I'm going to swap MX200 for GeForce4 Ti4200 & see if it still works or not. If it does, then I have a solid proof of what's going on here, the board for some odd reason only works with nVidia GPUs!
 
Trekkie4 said:
Status update, yet again...

Seriously guys, I've never, EVER experienced the weirdest case before. So, regarding the Savage card ... yes, it DOES work! I successfully tested the card on another board & everything worked out OK... Then I went back to Asus & did some troubleshooting, heck I've been literally chasing the phantoms all over, thanks to this Asus board.

Now here's the weirdest part, you'd think the Asus board doesn't work right? Or that it's experiencing some sort of malfunction due to keyboard which tends to disappear or get stuck randomly, even in BIOS? But nope, as soon as I swapped the card(s) for GeForce, it all went back to normal. I'm doing a benchmark test on Asus as we speak, it's perfectly fine... Now I'm going to swap MX200 for GeForce4 Ti4200 & see if it still works or not. If it does, then I have a solid proof of what's going on here, the board for some odd reason only works with nVidia GPUs!
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Nah. You have a hardware problem or OS problem.
I have A7M266 and A7M266 dual boards and neither of them do what your's does.
 
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