TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Trekkie4]

Once again, I'm going to double-post... Although I don't think anyone will mind, especially considering what's coming up ahead


So, I fired up my RetroMaster 2000 & was hoping to play the game or two but unfortunately the entire system crashed... Once I actually got the Windows to start up, system was acting pretty weird, it didn't even want to shut down.


At this point I've had enough, so I forced it off & decided to (finally) address the issue. You know what time it is, it's tool time!


As you can probably tell, this this ain't your average gaming machine! So I had to address one step at the time, slowly taking it apart & removing one piece at the time... Starting with expansion cards


Then moving onto the DVD (which doesn't work) and 40GB Maxtor HDD


And eventually taking the entire motherboard apart, removing the Jet engine CPU cooler (Jet7), so that I could pull the old board out.


This here is the old ASRock K7VT2... Following @stinger608's suggestion, I did get to test the legacy USB components, but unfortunately it seems that removing DVD drive didn't have any positive impact on the actual board. OK, to be fair I didn't get to further test the board & see if it'll keep on crashing or not (mainly because I was in the hurry) but I'm not going to throw it away just yet. Instead I'm hoping to hook it up some time soon & go through the entire range of stress tests & benchmarks. If it's not going to be stable then yes, it's most likely to end up as e-waste.


The main "core" of RetroMaster 2000, still inside the old ASRock board


So enough about ASRock & old components... It's time to spice things up a bit! Installing the Asus board was far more easier than I expected... It simply fell right into the place!


REALLY, Asus?! This situation here is one (and only) that I've encountered with Asus boards... Fortunately the heatsink clip is not touching the RAM module, but placing it into the slot was a nightmare! (which reminds me, I need to do a full memory test, just in case I've scratched the RAM module)


OK, so the new board is in place... Time to mount the new DVD-RW & floppy drives


Followed by a pair of new Seagate hard drives... Hope I'm not making a mistake by using Seagate over WD, as I've heard a lot of bad things about Seagate (and their NAS units) recently


From this point forward, it's all just a matter of putting things back together & doing a proper cable management (oh the horrors!)


I'll be honest, I'm not 100% happy with the way cable management ended up looking, but at least it looks clear enough to see every component. Which obviously means I had to run a lot of cables through the other side, and across the case.


Few more last-minute modifications, and there you have it guys, my new ultimate retro gaming PC system!


Software benchmarks, OS installations & more pics coming up soon!

 

[Mr.Scott]

Your K7VT2 has two cooked mosfets.

 

[Trekkie4]

@Mr.Scott That would certainly explain a LOT of problems, once again thanks bunches for pointing it out! I'm not going to fiddle with SMD however, this thing is not worth the time and/OR money, so it's going to e-waste. TBH, I initially received this board in non-working condition, the owner made it absolutely clear that the board doesn't work, but the initial problem turned out to be the jumper settings ... lack of jumpers to be exact as someone removed all of them from the board. Maybe even because of the same reason, fried mosfet (never really took the time to examine the board carefully, as I was always busy with other projects & multi-tasking between two systems)

This system here started out as simple nVidia TNT2 Pro machine, which was going to run low-end games from the early 2000s and worked its way to ultimate retro gaming system

Edit
Testing the newly upgraded RetroMaster 2000 (RetroMaster 2500?) and so far everything seems to be in order... Both DVD drives are working OK, so does floppy & two hard drives. Currently testing the memory, and then I'm going to give it a quick bad-sector test, for both HDDs. Assuming both of them check out OK, I'm good to go with installing Windows

 

[biffzinker]

It's been a long time since I last seen that blower/heatsink combo. Use to have that exact one your using Trekkie4.

Edit: Couldn't tell you the Athlon XP model I had it clipped on though.

 

[Trekkie4]

It's been a long time since I last seen that blower/heatsink combo. Use to have that exact one your using Trekkie4.

Edit: Couldn't tell you the Athlon XP model I had it clipped on though.

You mean the Coolermaster Jet7 CPU cooler?


Yeah, I actually got this one still inside the box, as new old stock. Original box (plastic container) was broken, so instead of keeping as it was, I've decided to put it into a good use. Shame I don't have one of those acrylic transparent cases, but you can still see Jet7 inside the Coolermaster one, through the 140x140 fan holes...

 

[Apocalypsee]

Damn Trekkie4 you got stuff for everything. The stuff things I would like to buy back then

 

[Trekkie4]

Heh-heh, thanks This one was quite a surprise actually, it's not like I find these things every day.

Edit
Well, things are NOT coming along the way I expected... Everything worked out OK until it was the time to boot up the OS. However, my decision to run 80GB drive as Primary Master & 40GB one as Primary Slave completely backfired on me, because Windows 98 needs to be installed before the XP.... In fact, I need to run both drives at Fat32 before I'm allowed to install XP & convert the 2nd drive into NTFS. However, since the 80GB drive is considered primary, this is apparently where the boot loader goes, so once I actually converted the drive all the hell broke loose. Not to mention the fact that Windows 98 thinks it's being installed on partition "D", when I actually need W98 to be installed on C one...

Sooo in other words, I'll have to take the system apart tomorrow & swap the drives. 40GB one will run as master and 80GB as slave. Since they're both the same brand & have the same speed, this shouldn't be much of an issue, I hope...?

 

[biffzinker]

Sooo in other words, I'll have to take the system apart tomorrow & swap the drives. 40GB one will run as master and 80GB as slave. Since they're both the same brand & have the same speed, this shouldn't be much of an issue, I hope...?

Sounds like a plan, I don't see why it wouldn't work out. I didn't know the plan involved dual booting 98SE, and XP.

 

[Bones]

Scored a pair of Infinity boards last week and both are in working order but needed some caps replaced.
I've already fixed one with the other left to do once I track down a cap to completely redo them.
Thing that suprised me is these boards look like they just came out of the box brandnew, I mean you can't ask for these to have been in better shape except for the caps and I believe these may have been either slightly used or not at all and stored somewhere.
Naturally with age the caps sometimes will bulge anyway and thats the case here but at least it's not anything serious to worry about..... Unless I try and run them as is, then it could be trouble and not doing that. Here's a pic of one of the boards I got and I've already replaced the bad caps on this one.

 

[buzzi]

That Jet 7 is impressive!

 

[Bones]

I need to find one of those.

Got my Susanoo the same way, as NOS and I am using it - Working good with my FX-8300.

 

[Trekkie4]

Sounds like a plan, I don't see why it wouldn't work out. I didn't know the plan involved dual booting 98SE, and XP.

Well then, you seem to be missing a LOT of facts & information on RetroMaster project Take a look at these links, down below... As for the disk issue(s), it's a general "rule" to always put the faster & higher capacity drives as Master, followed by slower & lower capacity drives as Slave. And this is actually for a reason, because running lower capacity drives as Master (according to some techs) seem to affect data transfer speed, meaning your drives will run slower. I never said it wouldn't work out, but I'm sacrificing speed for the sake of compatibility here. Anyhow, since my hands are tied & I don't have any other choice (other than installing W98 on 80GB drive & using 40GB one for XP which doesn't make any sense) it seems I'll have no option but to swap them

The history of RetroMaster 2000 Part 1 & Part 2
About RetroMaster 2000 project
Upgrading from MX400 to Ti4200
Upgrading from onboard to SB Live!, DOS support

It's all been explained before, RetroMaster was (and is, will be) a multi-platform solution for retro gaming, which covers pretty much everything from late DOS to early XP, games like Half-Life 2 & similar That's the reason why it has 3 video cards, 2 sound cards & 2 hard drives. One drive will be entirely W98 + DOS, while the other one is dedicated to XP & will be formatted in NTFS.

Edit
What do you say guys, since I already have to open up the case, shall I swap the existing Ti4200 for Radeon 9550?

 

[biffzinker]

What do you say guys, since I already have to open up the case, shall I swap the existing Ti4200 for Radeon 9550?

I'm going to pick the Radeon 9550.

The GeForce 4 Ti4200 enjoyed considerable longevity compared to its higher-clocked peers. At half the cost of the 4600, the 4200 remained the best balance between price and performance until the launch of the ATI Radeon 9500 Pro at the end of 2002.[8] The Ti4200 still managed to hold its own against several next generation DirectX 9 chips released in late 2003, outperforming the GeForce FX 5200 and the midrange FX 5600, and performing similarly to the mid-range Radeon 9600.[9][10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_4_series

 

[Trekkie4]

Anyhow, since my hands are tied & I don't have any other choice (other than installing W98 on 80GB drive & using 40GB one for XP which doesn't make any sense) it seems I'll have no option but to swap them

Done!

I'm going to pick the Radeon 9550

And done! Pics coming up shortly, as soon as I test the system... Also did some cable management (yet again), was trying to make it look more organized. IDK if I succeeded, you'll be the judge

Edit
I'm reading (archived) articles online, regarding the same dilemma - 4200 or Radeon 9550, and for some reason ppl seem to think that 4200 is better... I honestly don't understand why, since they both have the same bus (AGP 4X/8X), amount of memory (128MB) and core clock (250MHz). All other values are in favor of 9550, since it has 400MHz RAMDAC over 350MHz on 4200 and full DirectX 9 support which wasn't the case with GF4 cards (until the 5th, "FX" generation)

Edit2
Swapped hard drives, new cable management (around HDDs in particular & Voodoo2 cards), the IDE cable now goes all the way down to bottom drive & then back up again.


Asus A9550GE/TD video card...


Along with the older, Leadtek WinFast A280LE (nVidia GeForce4 Ti4200) This one certainly looks cooler & more powerful, but in the terms of numbers & values, it seems to be slower than Asus card...


Rear view of the case, including the I/O shield


And since you guys seem to like Jet7 so much, here's a speed controller bracket for the CPU jet turbine ... ahem, cooler fan

 

[biffzinker]

Edit
I'm reading (archived) articles online, regarding the same dilemma - 4200 or Radeon 9550, and for some reason ppl seem to think that 4200 is better... I honestly don't understand why, since they both have the same bus (AGP 4X/8X), amount of memory (128MB) and core clock (250MHz). All other values are in favor of 9550, since it has 400MHz RAMDAC over 350MHz on 4200 and full DirectX 9 support which wasn't the case with GF4 cards (until the 5th, "FX" generation)

I went looking again earlier after I posted my recommendation for 9550, apparently the Geforce4 Ti 4200 does have more memory bandwidth (7.104 GB/s - 128 MB) 8 GB/s -64 MB) compared to the 9550's (6.4 GB/s - 128 MB?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce4_series

http://www.gpureview.com/radeon-9550-card-80.html

Edit: Thanks for posting the photo of the Ti 4200 Leadtek card. I remember reading over reviews for that card. Wasn't that a fairly popular card at the time?

 

[Trekkie4]

I went looking again earlier after I posted my recommendation for 9550, apparently the Geforce4 Ti 4200 does have more memory bandwidth (7.104 GB/s - 128 MB) 8 GB/s -64 MB) compared to the 9550's (6.4 GB/s - 128 MB?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce4_series

http://www.gpureview.com/radeon-9550-card-80.html

Hmm, you're right... I could hardly find any information on the Asus card, but from what it seems, it's only 6.4GB/s, while the nVidia card is 8.2GB/s ... that's a pretty big difference IMHO.

IDK, let's ask for 3rd (and neutral) opinion - guys? What's it going to be, Asus A9550GE/TD or LeadTek WinFast A280 LE? I would need to know the answer ASAP, so that I can finally begin with driver installation & booting up the software...

 

[biffzinker]

I would imagine memory bandwidth on those old cards would be worth the consideration considering the primitive early rejection they did to conserve rendering performance/memory bandwidth unlike today's cards.

http://techreport.com/review/5009/ati-radeon-9600-pro-gpu/4

 

[Trekkie4]

You're right... However, you also have to keep in mind that Asus card supports DX9 & has higher RAMDAC... As for all other values, they're pretty much even (at least according to benchmarks & tests) IDK, maybe I'll leave this one for tomorrow

 

[biffzinker]

That Jet 7 is impressive!

No dead spot (lack of air flow) in the middle of heatsink caused by a normal fans bearing hub were as the Jet's motor is up top out of the way.

 

[Trekkie4]

No dead spot (lack of air flow) in the middle of heatsink caused by a normal fans bearing hub were as the Jet's motor is up top out of the way.

Nah, that's what "they" want you to think... In real life, it doesn't really matter much. Maybe 1-2 (Celsius) difference but that's about it, really. What makes Jet7 so terrible is the noise, this thing is VERY loud. And I do mean loud, even by my standards, and I'm not the kind of person who's afraid to use fan extra, just to keep the system running cooler So in order to put up with the noise, I have the speed controller set all the way down to bare minimum, as you can probably tell from the picture above. Still, I wouldn't change this for anything mainly because it's kinda unique & looks cool!

 

[biffzinker]

Nah, that's what "they" want you to think... In real life, it doesn't really matter much. Maybe 1-2 (Celsius) difference but that's about it, really.

You sure about that? What's the hottest part of the heatsink usually? The middle right where the CPU's die sits bare or under a heatspreader, and where does the air flow from a normal fan touch the outside parameter of the heatsinks fins.

Spoiler: No peeking

I'm just giving you hard time Trekkie4.

 

[Trekkie4]

You sure about that? What's the hottest part of the heatsink usually? The middle right where the CPU's die sits bare or under a heatspreader, and where does the air flow from a normal fan touch the outside parameter of the heatsinks fins.

Spoiler: No peeking

I'm just giving you hard time Trekkie4.

That's true, although the heat will spread across the heatsink & will get dissipated by the cooling fan one way or another. Which brings me to what I said above, yes it really does have better efficiency but considering how small it is, it's not worth it. However, if you crank up Jet7 all the way up to the max speed, you WILL notice instant performance, temp will immediately drop down by several Celsius. I've tried it several times just for fun, but couldn't stand the racket for too long

Edit
All this blower vs fan talk reminded me of tower-design CPU coolers, and all the hype over the number of fans... According to Cooler Master, running so called "push-pull" configuration on Hyper TX3, Hyper 212 & similar will have a better effect than just using single "push" fan, which comes with the actual heatsink. I've tried both, single push & push-pull and can indeed confirm there's barely any difference between those two. The only advantage of running two fans is that you can have better efficiency at lower RPM, while the single fan struggles due to (apparently) air not reaching the heat pipes.

Spoiler: No lurking

Nah, you're not! I LOVE these things!

 

[Mr.Scott]

You need to try a SLK 900 with a Vantec Tornado then. It will make your Jet7 sound quiet.
There is no better for socket A though......short of water.

 

[Trekkie4]

Thermalright? I just Googled it & got speechless

 

[biffzinker]

Thermalright? I just Googled it & got speechless

Also tried this type of fan back in day. Has the magnets in the four corners no motor in the middle. Edit: Y.S TECH TMD 70mm fan

Thermalright? I just Googled it & got speechless

I did have the Vantec Tornado attached to a Thermaright SK-6, I remember messing around with Tornado on my desk by plugging it in and watching it push it self around the desk.

This fan is a Delta FFB0612EHE, kindly provided by Cool PC, who sell it for $AU26. It's an 8000RPM horror good for more than 50 quoted cubic feet per minute, with a run power up around nine watts. Not much by car radiator fan standards, but you'll still find it pretty darn impressive if you absent-mindedly stick your finger in it.

The FFB0612EHE makes a very nasty racket. It also provides a pretty definite upper performance indicator for the SLK-600 heat sink.

With the Delta blowing a gale through the SLK-600, it scored very well indeed. Very, very well indeed. Miles better than any cooler I'd previously tested with the small contact patch, in fact. 0.46°C/W.
http://www.dansdata.com/coolercomp_p6.htm