TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Trekkie4]

Earlier today, I had a surprise visit & was given (back) something I didn't see for quite some time... You guys remember that Asus A7M266 board with the keyboard issue, right?


I picked it up long time ago hoping to make a Duron build around it, featuring the (in)famous Savage4 Pro card. Obviously, my plans didn't quite work out, so in the end (after going through 3 different motherboards & eventually swapping the video card for nVidia's M64) I ended up with Asus A7A266. Close to what I had in mind, but not quite. Has a Duron 950 & 256 of DDR RAM. This particular build is still here in my collection, although I never really used it for anything apart from testing purposes.


But no, this isn't about A7A model... As I said, earlier today I was given back A7M board, which (last time I had it) would randomly lock out in BIOS, freeze the keyboard and/or mouse resulting with no way to control the system, DOS or even the BIOS. Whenever it's PS/2 or USB, it didn't make any difference whatsoever. And so, I was going to dump it. Seriously, what's the point of keeping non-functioning hardware around, especially since I got tons of S462 boards laying around? But no, to my surprise when I hooked everything up & plugged in the new CPU and RAM it booted up perfectly fine. It DID however lock out several times, but whenever I restarted the system afterwards, it worked OK & would keep working perfectly OK until shutdown.

So I took the liberty of building a quick AMD system based on A7M board, featuring Athlon 1333 with Radeon 7500 and 512 MB of RAM, in 2x 256MB config. And I'm happy to report that everything seems to be working perfectly fine, now that I have the XP up & running. Even if the "peripherals" don't work upon the boot, they DO get recognized & work fine under Windows, which is obviously most important I didn't take any pics (and no, I'm not planning to keep this system, it was already given away to someone), but it only shows (and proves) that you better check twice before discarding old hardware components, even if they appear to be beyond repairs.

 

[dorsetknob]

Need to have my windows though, too used to it, never used anything else

you might want to try and Source a Retail win XP-Pro Disk with genuine Serial Num then that will run Duel CPU ( and its so "OLD" it should be free or just Cents
Some one here may be able to Oblige you After all they "Are all on 10"

 

[stinger608]

Only problem is that I have no retail pro or server versions of windows, just home, which of course can't use dual cpu.

you might want to try and Source a Retail win XP-Pro Disk with genuine Serial Num then that will run Duel CPU ( and its so "OLD" it should be free or just Cents

Pretty sure I have a retail key for XP Pro. I'll have to check, but I'm almost positive that I still have one. I could burn ya an ISO image disk of XP Pro and mail that and the key to ya.

Well, providing I do have the key and you're in the US.

 

[DR4G00N]

Pretty sure I have a retail key for XP Pro. I'll have to check, but I'm almost positive that I still have one. I could burn ya an ISO image disk of XP Pro and mail that and the key to ya.

Well, providing I do have the key and you're in the US.

I really just need a key honestly, already have a windows xp pro ISO but no valid retail key for it.

 

[Mr.Scott]

You don't need no stinkin key.

 

[DR4G00N]

You don't need no stinkin key.

Well for benching, sure. But if I want to use it online for more than 30 days without reinstalling I'll need a legit key no?

 

[Mr.Scott]

lol. No.

I'll message you.

 

[Trekkie4]

lol. No.

I'll message you.

Actually I just messaged him myself, telling him pretty much the same thing (about the same time you posted this)

 

[stinger608]

lol. No.

Actually I just messaged him myself, telling him pretty much the same thing (about the same time you posted this)

LOL, am I missing something?

 

[Trekkie4]

*eye roll* Seriously lol? You know we can't discuss these things out in the public, it's against the forum rules

 

[dorsetknob]

*eye roll* Seriously lol? You know we can't discuss these things out in the public, it's against the forum rules

which is why i posted what i did I know there are ways and methods to install just did not wish to suggest them in public

 

[micropage7]

Red_Machine

A AT /ATX Compatable Case From August 2000

Even got the Original packing Box and Polystyrene it Came in

great and the steel looks pretty solid

 

[Robert B]

Almost there.....

 

[biffzinker]

Looks like the exact Hercules Geforce 2 GTS card I had paired with a overclocked K6-III. Paid $400 for it locally on launch day, also the same card I messed up on a modification resulting in a paper weight. Picked up the same card for another $400, and skipped out on the mod.

 

[Robert B]

My work is DONE!!!

Next, I'm going to tell you the full story

 

[Trekkie4]

I got (even) more toys today!


That Soyo Slot-1 board is in need of replacing the caps, but according to the guy who gave it to me, it does seem to be working! I was also given one of those adapters, "slockets" for mounting S370 chip on a Slot-1 system and another Pentium 4 chip that wasn't in any of the pics. S775, it's a 3.02GHz model with 2MB of cache.

 

[GreiverBlade]

annnd she's here and complete quite well the XFX Nforce 650i Ultra mobo i have :

XFX 8800 GTX! 1$ but bricked (didn't test it nonetheless) original boxing and accessories ... pure bliss!



seeing the hamsterwheel .... seems the hamster died in that wheel (and probably bricked due to overheating i guess ... will see that later )


ahhh the best accessory ... good old Alpha Dog ....

 

[Bungz]

I got (even) more toys today!


That Soyo Slot-1 board is in need of replacing the caps, but according to the guy who gave it to me, it does seem to be working! I was also given one of those adapters, "slockets" for mounting S370 chip on a Slot-1 system and another Pentium 4 chip that wasn't in any of the pics. S775, it's a 3.02GHz model with 2MB of cache.

How odd just got a very similar board in a ultra cheap local purchase, looks like yours might be the OEM version?

Asus P4S533-E

Asus V844 Deluxe Geforce 4 Ti 4400 (Bling Bling yo!)

Quite a decent find for the price of a Pint.



PSU is a good example of why you always check a PSU even if it seems clean and to run fine! Will recap that as otherwise it looks decent.

 

[Trekkie4]

Actually no, yours is part of "P4S533" family, that's not (directly) related to P4SE/U2 which is older & far more outdated. On the other hand, I DO have P4S533-X for quite some time now, and it's mounted inside the case with Pentium 4 @2.00GHz and 1GB of RAM (in fact, I've been working on this particular system over the last couple of days, trying to improve the specs & performance). I also have P4S533-MX which is exactly the same thing as -X, except in mATX form with less PCI slots (obviously)

On a side note - as a general rule of nostalgic hardware, I never (ever) repair old power supplies. Seriously, if it's blown (and/or doesn't work, boot) it's getting scrapped & is replaced with the whole new (used) unit that's in good condition.

I've had my share of blown PSUs over the last couple of months, two of my systems didn't work OK. One didn't boot at all (even though 12V rail seemed to work, as all the optical drives & fans worked OK) and the other one would only boot after 5-10 minutes AFTER being plugged into mains. Probably due to caps slowly building (charging up) the capacity. So if you would plug it into the AC & turn the system immediately the system would just hang with all the LEDs lit up & black screen (without any sounds of feedback) so I assumed it was the motherboard that's causing all the problems. But nope, it was the PSU all along

 

[Bungz]

What chipset is it? The layout is near identical and the southbridge is the same

 

[Trekkie4]

What chipset is it? The layout is near identical and the southbridge is the same

They're all the same, SiS chipset... I was trying to find a pic from the previous post(s), but there doesn't appear to be any, I probably never took the pic of P4S533-X (or -MX for that matter). I did however found the PSU replacement post....LINK

 

[Bungz]

I was asking in relation to the P4SE

Only difference is the P4S533 uses the Sis 645DX so supports 533 stuff.

Meddled with a few of these SIS boards, don't seem to be half as bad as I thought them to be at the time.

Oh and mine talks.

Just downloaded the voice changer lets see what rude things I can get it to say

 

[Trekkie4]

Oh yeah!! My P4S533-X (and -MX) doesn't talk unfortunately, but the other, P4SE/U2 does! There's actually a jumper to switch the "speech" option on & off... I also have one other talking board, P4B that's built into a working system (also featured & discussed long time ago)

Anyhow, I didn't bother removing the -MX board from the box (where I have it stored), but here's the pic of my P4S533-X system! It's running a P4 chip @ 2.00GHz, 2x 512 DDR333 & it's paired with GeForce4 4800SE!


Sounds (and certainly looks) impressive, but it's actually outpowered by this other MSI system here... This other one is running AMD Athlon XP 2400+ @ 2.00GHz but unlike the Asus board it's running 1GB of DDR400, and has AGP 8x support with GeForce6 6600GT. It used to have 6200LE up until yesterday, so I swapped the graphics for 6600GT mainly because I had it laying around & doing nothing. And it made a HUGE difference IMHO, take a look at the benchmark results yourself!


Benchmark results for P4 system:


Benchmark results for AMD system:

 

[Bungz]

Those agp 6600GT cards are great, usually dirt cheap and go like stink in older systems.

 

[Trekkie4]

So true!! It almost outpowered RetroMaster 4000 (mATX build with S775 P4 @ 3.00GHz, 2GB of DDR400 & ATI X1550)

Edit
I was actually considering to put that 6600 into P4 system, and have 4800 one inside AMD but it didn't quite work out the way I expected, mainly because I didn't have any spare molex connectors inside P4 system and I didn't have a splitter adapter here, so I took the easy route instead. Probably for the best anyway (even though Intel can be easily overclocked to 2.60GHz) since the Asus board doesn't have full DDR400 RAM support, and/or AGP 8X so it wouldn't take full advantage of the 6600GT card. Meanwhile the AMD system appears to be locked (tried to mess with the FSB & multipliers, doesn't work), but everything else seems more than adequate for 6600GT. I was afraid the CPU (2.00GHz) would be bottleneck, but according to the results it certainly doesn't feel that way. IDK, you guys be the judge.