TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Robert B]

It is Spire FalconRock II alright. For me the most important fact is that it is quiet. I have a Titan CU5TB which in comparisson is noisy as hell.

The Barton AQYFA 0342SPMW seems to be locked though. I didnt know what I was about to receive.I'll try FSB 400 anyway.

http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1419

 

[Trekkie4]

Beauty...


And the beast!


@biffzinker suggested to go with 6600GT, so I'm going to leave this Radeon 9600Pro for some other occasion, while the nVidia will be paired with that S775 Pentium 3.00

Edit
Hmm, that's odd. Again @biffzinker you may have been right all along... I just plugged in the "new" 6600GT & ended up having exactly the same symptoms as with 7600GT which is hardly a coincidence. Oddly enough, I didn't have that kind of problem with the ATI card, but ONLY because (or at least I'm guessing) the ATI card is not drawing extra current through the external power plug, while both 7600 & 6600GT have either 6-pin 12V or standard 4-pin molex connectors. Could it be a power supply thing?!

 

[biffzinker]

Could it be a power supply thing?!

Maybe? PSU brand, and age? Prescott is power hungry as well.

 

[Trekkie4]

Maybe? PSU brand, and age? Prescott is power hungry as well.

Here's the best thing ... generic brand, 400W. Probably around 10-12 years old. Because if it's not a PSU, then it HAS to be the motherboard itself. But if that's the case, then how come ATI card (Radeon 9550) worked perfectly fine without any problems, whatsoever? Think I'm going to hook this thing to a PSU tester tomorrow & see what the LEDs have to say about the voltages. I might even plug in my meter across the terminals to see the actual voltage readout(s), I have the feeling something dodgy is going on inside it.

 

[alucasa]

That bottle was crystal light apple. Not piss or beer fyi...

I find it strange that you are so defensive about it...

Suspicious...

 

[biffzinker]

Either the motherboard is the dodgy component or the powersupply. Hopefully you don't have two nvidia cards that are bad.

 

[alucasa]

Here are more legacy stuff.

Aye, I am calling Windows 7 "legacy stuff". Don't hit me. I also have Windows XP x64. I loved XP x64 and used for 6 ~ 7 years. Why? At one point, the key started not to care which hardware it was on. I had the key installed on all of my PCs at home back then and it all worked for all the years I abused.

 

[Trekkie4]

Either the motherboard is the dodgy component or the powersupply. Hopefully you don't have two nvidia cards that are bad.

Either the motherboard or the PSU. Having two nVidia cards with exactly the same symptoms (from two sources) would be highly unlikely. Either way, there's a way to test this theory, and it involves two-step process:

1. Plug in some other nVidia card, such as Ti4200 for example & see if it does the same thing as 6600 & 7600. If it does, then it's something to do with the motherboard & will have to swap the board for another one. Otherwise it HAS to be the power supply thing!
2. Assuming the first step turns out productive & shows Ti4200 working OK, I will plug the power supply tester & see if all the LEDs will light up. Alternatively I can hook up the meter & see the actual readout, for each of the voltage groups & rails.

 

[Trekkie4]

After quite a lot of testing & analyzing, I finally got some answers. But more importantly, I got even more doubts & questions, as well.

So, let's take it from the top - both nVidia cards are working OK on other machines, 6600 and 7600GT! Which means 7600 is NOT damaged after all (or 6600GT for that matter), and there seems to be a problem within the Asus system, itself. I checked for voltages, and +5 & +12V are spot on, at least according to my meter. Couldn't test 3.3 and 1.5V under load, so if there /is/ a problem with the PSU, it has to be within one of these two groups. Which leaves only the motherboard itself.

However, with that being said, I tried putting 4200Ti inside it (which doesn't have external power connector) and to my surprise the card worked beautifully, without any problems or glitches showing up on the screen. Which means that ONLY the "bigger" cards, more powerful models with the external PSU connector are showing "holes" & other issues, so I do believe it's somehow related to PSU after all. Don't know, what do you guys think?

 

[uuuaaaaaa]

After quite a lot of testing & analyzing, I finally got some answers. But more importantly, I got even more doubts & questions, as well.

So, let's take it from the top - both nVidia cards are working OK on other machines, 6600 and 7600GT! Which means 7600 is NOT damaged after all (or 6600GT for that matter), and there seems to be a problem within the Asus system, itself. I checked for voltages, and +5 & +12V are spot on, at least according to my meter. Couldn't test 3.3 and 1.5V under load, so if there /is/ a problem with the PSU, it has to be within one of these two groups. Which leaves only the motherboard itself.

However, with that being said, I tried putting 4200Ti inside it (which doesn't have external power connector) and to my surprise the card worked beautifully, without any problems or glitches showing up on the screen. Which means that ONLY the "bigger" cards, more powerful models with the external PSU connector are showing "holes" & other issues, so I do believe it's somehow related to PSU after all. Don't know, what do you guys think?

You could use a different psu to test it out?

 

[Trekkie4]

I'm afraid not... None of my spare PS units are capable of driving Prescott CPU & S775 (most of them are 200, 250W) Theoretically, I could take apart one of my working systems to see if it will make any difference, but it would be easier to just buy a replacement PSU & go with that.

 

[biffzinker]

it would be easier to just buy a replacement PSU & go with that.

Which power supply brand are you considering?

 

[Trekkie4]

Again, probably something cheap & generic. 400W is more than enough IMHO. Let's face it - it's not like I'm going to use it on a regular basis or anything, but I am considering to buy a brand new PSU...

 

[Norton]

Found this in the closet this morning

Number 9 PCI card with an S3 Virge gpu- think it can play Crysis?

 

[biffzinker]

Found this in the closet this morning

Number 9 PCI card with an S3 Virge gpu- think it can play Crysis?

Any points for me recognizing the silk-screened 9 before I scrolled down? Is this one of the famous 3D de-accelerators I've heard of? Never had any S3 graphics card myself.

Edit: didn't see the Number Nine across the top of board

 

[Red_Machine]

Is this one of the famous 3D de-accelerators I've heard of?

Can confirm, had one in my first Windows PC. Dad bought Tomb Raider for it, but it ran like a dog, so he swapped it for the PlayStation version instead.

 

[Trekkie4]

So, after taking a break from this thing, I successfully fixed a missing mouse problem on my Pentium MMX (233) It was apparently due to serial (COM) port header, which is quite odd, since I previously replaced it for another one. Seriously, what are the odds of having TWO mouse headers not working properly?!

On a side note, I did get some more problems from the replacement VIA board, as I first couldn't find the drivers which would work under W95, and then once I finally got them & installed everything, the hard drive started acting up. It wouldn't read data, sometimes it wouldn't even boot up Windows, so I replaced it for another, higher capacity (10GB) model... As if that wasn't enough, my CD-R drive started doing exactly the same, except it wasn't happening during the POST or boot process, it would happen within the Windows session.

Even though I was pretty sure this one is NOT hardware related, I swapped the CD-R drive for older (and therefore more authentic) 24X Teac CD-ROM unit. The old CD-RW drive was mainly in good shape, but the headphones volume control wheel got stuck at some point, I'm guessing the potentiometer inside either broke or something fell inside it, so to be on a safe side I scrapped the entire unit. There's plenty more of those around, identical to the one @Robert B showed in one the latest posts, so it's not worth it. It also occurred me at some point that the hard drive fault(s) might had also been related to software issues (enabling DMA feature in particular), but since the hard drive would also stop working in DOS or even within FDISK app, during the partition editing procedure (it would report "disk write protected") I'm pretty sure this other one is hardware. However, with all these failing components inside, I'm wondering if the old motherboard really WAS damaged to begin with, or perhaps was it just terribly "confused" due to bad COM headers & failing hard drives...? Good thing I still have it, so I might give it a quick test.

 

[Bungz]

Reinforcements have arrived!!!

gallery: https://postimg.org/gallery/1xgpaqcpe/

Love Epox stuff but it is so difficult to find in the UK 2nd hand.

If anyone has a old 8K3A someone could make me a very happy man, would also settle for a 8RDA as had a few of them too.

Have a few more bits to update the thread with later, managed to get the one card which is harder to find than a 5500

 

[Robert B]

EPOX RIP!!!! Old friend. Some boards can still be found on the local OLX site and some forums.

Dont give up. Have patience and keep searching. Eventually you'll find one!.

*****************************************************************

HE HE (evil laughter )

HE HE HE !!! no voltage increase

Today I went guns blazing on EPOX EP-8RDA3I !!! Story later this week

 

[Bungz]

Not sure how sought after these are but I had a devils job finding one.

Lucked out a bit as it is new.

Anyone else have one?

 

[Robert B]

GEFORCE 256???

 

[Trekkie4]

Looks more like Evil Kyro IMHO... But then again, without the model number it could be just about anything lol

Edit
Nevermind, just saw CG256 on top of the PCB... Yes, it has to be GeForce256 just like @Robert B said!

 

[Robert B]

On the top part It says GC256 Ver1.1

 

[Trekkie4]

On the top part It says GC256 Ver1.1

Right, seems we both posted at the same time. You're right, it IS GeForce256! Had one of these up until recently (different brand though), but got rid of it since the GPU got corrupted, it was throwing artifacts all over the screen.

Edit
Anyway, regarding my MMX project, here it is! In all its AT glory


It has a "new" motherboard, new CPU (same clock speed, 233MHz), new RAM (went from 64MB SD back to 32MB EDO, even though this board also supports SD), new 10GB IBM hard drive (old one was 4.3 WD), brand new CPU fan & last but not least new front panel LEDs (restored the original, retro-style look instead of the new, modern ones)


Even modded the PSU cables, soldered a 3-pin fan header directly into the 2nd floppy 12V line & insulated everything with the heat shrink tubing. This will make it a lot easier to remove the fan and/or motherboard, since the board doesn't have designated CPU fan header (or any other fan headers, whatsoever)


This here is what caused the mouse problem... Pretty simple, yet very annoying problem which kept re-appearing even after I tried with other header (which is why I assumed it's the board itself, rather than just a COM header)

I'm still in the process of booting up the software, but other than that, everything seems to be working OK! This includes the Voodoo card of course

 

[Mr.Scott]

Not sure how sought after these are but I had a devils job finding one.

Lucked out a bit as it is new.


Anyone else have one?

Yup.
Looks like you have the SDR version.
I have the DDR version.