TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Robert B]

@agent_x007 - WOW I havent seen lately so many PCI graphic card in one group, that pack a punch Generally I tend to use faster graphic cards than what was available at the time and to be sincere I prefer nVIDIA cards. In the fastest PIII slot 1 which now has an 800MHz chip, I have a Inno3D GF2 Ti 64MB. As for soundcards the Creative SB Live or Aureal Vortex.

Yep PIII clips and I know how to take them out without damage The idea isnt new but I didnt see a fully detailed guide how to do it so I'll post one later.

My method requires two people though. One to hold the PCB + plastic backplate so that no damage is done to the CPU die, the other to use a small hammer and a longer rod that fits perfectly in the holes of the plastic backplate. The heatsink has to rest on a wood block.

Those clips are really held tight in there.

I tried to use a pair of pliers but that only damaged a little the collar of one of the pins so I had to find another method as I saw that the TIM was hard and had cracks in it.

After this experience I cand safely say I can take apart any slot 1 PIII/PII without fear.

I reused the clips and now the PIII 800/256/100 is running great

 

[Trekkie4]

Sound Cards for old 98/DOS games :

My DX9+ PCI (non-E) GPU collection

@Robert B Which one whould you pick for your Slot 1 ?

As much as I love Aureal & A3D standard, I can't help but to admire Creative's EAX & SB Live Series. Mainly because they're dirt cheap, easy to find & deliver 3D audio acceleration, where Aureal cards are awesome (there's no doubt about that) but are incredibly rare & difficult (read expensive) to find & buy.

But then again, this is all Creative's fault in the first place, which is why I have mixed feelings about them to begin with...

 

[agent_x007]

As much as I love Aureal & A3D standard, I can't help but to admire Creative's EAX & SB Live Series. Mainly because they're dirt cheap, easy to find & deliver 3D audio acceleration, where Aureal cards are awesome (there's no doubt about that) but are incredibly rare & difficult (read expensive) to find & buy.

But then again, this is all Creative's fault in the first place, which is why I have mixed feelings about them to begin with...

Creative/Aureal aside, have you ever used a Yamaha card (like YF724E-V or YF718E) ?

@Robert B List of GPUs :

^GPU-z gets confused with PCI-e to PCI bridges...
A GT 610 would be interesting to see with PIII

 

[Robert B]

My cousin had a Yamaha 724 and used it a lot of time on a PIII 450. Back in the day I had an onboard Creative 128. Regarding soundcards I dont have much experience. I always bought Creative cards.

No harm in trying a GT610 on a PIII I think you should go all out and use the 9500GT

 

[Trekkie4]

Creative/Aureal aside, have you ever used a Yamaha card (like YF724E-V or YF718E) ?

@Robert B List of GPUs :
View attachment 91383
^GPU-z gets confused with PCI-e to PCI bridges...
A GT 610 would be interesting to see with PIII

Hmm... Can't say I did, although TBH I'm not really that much familiar with Yamaha. But I DO have at least one (if not 2, or maybe 3) OPL3 models. One of the cards is a genuine Yamaha OPL3, and it's built into one of the 3 MMX 233 systems where the other two only have the Yamaha chip, I think? (would have to check)

 

[adamiakadam00]

My collection, GF3TI200, GF2GTS, first 64bit desktop CPU A64 ClawHammer, Hercules 3D Prophet 4000XT KYRO, Diamond Viper v770 TNT2

 

[Trekkie4]

So, speaking of Asus - I finally got my new Zenfone Max yesterday!! I know some of you will point out that it's not "new" new, but I had the choice between 3rd gen & this one here, for pretty much the same price. This one is new old stock, literally the last one they've had in store which caused some setbacks & technical difficulties, but that's a whole other story. The bottom line is that the "older" gen features 5,000mAh battery, where the newer one only had 4,200 - huge difference in my opinion. So, regardless of being the last year's model, this one was a straight & absolute choice! Especially when comparing to my old HTC M8 which only had 2,800mAh, it's completely mindblowing!

And yeah, I realize this is kinda offtopic, but since I /do/ love Asus products (especially the retro, older ones which are often conversation starters in this topic) mentioning this seemed totally appropriate!



Moving on... As I previously mentioned, I've been on a lookout for a replacement video card. Even though I can still play all the Source-powered games on "Max", the 8800GT is just not enough for the games such as GTA V or similar. Actually, only just GTA V, as I'm honestly not interested into anything newer than a Portal 2 (Perpetual Testing Initiative all the way! ) and/or Half-Life 2 & Garry's Mod. So I made a deal & bought used nVidia GTX760 which is going to take it's place.


Meanwhile I got plans for my old 8800GT & slap it inside my other (Pentium D) system that was primarily made for music & YouTube. Will post more info once I actually receive the card (through mail), probably some time early next week

 

[agent_x007]

My collection, GF3TI200, GF2GTS, first 64bit desktop CPU A64 ClawHammer, Hercules 3D Prophet 4000XT KYRO...

Nice collection, I also have that GF3 TI 200 GS (mine overclocks to GF3 Ti 500 spec ).
As for Kyro, here's bigger brother of your card, Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 KYRO II (delivered yesterday).

 

[GreiverBlade]

awww so cute .... 2 Kyro 4XXX separated between 2 user

meanwhile .... both of them are sitting on my shelf, alongside some other hercules ofc, the 4500 was a gift from a friend and the 4000XT a 1$ auction lucky strike

i think i already posted them previously since the only recent old hardware i got is the XFX 8800 GTX

 

[Apocalypsee]

Nice collection of cards adamiakadam00, that Leadtek GeForce 2 Pro cooler looks wicked!

@Trekkie4 hows that Zenfone Max? I used to have Zenfone 5 but that thing have grey screen of death and no way to fix it. After that I been avoiding Asus phone.

Speaking of nostalgic, I have this 3D Blaster Voodoo Banshee my dad gave me few years ago, but I have no platform to use it since it's the older AGP 2X, my working Pentium4 AGP system only accepts AGP 4X/8X so I don't know whether this card still works or not. Shame really.

 

[Trekkie4]

Nice collection, I also have that GF3 TI 200 GS (mine overclocks to GF3 Ti 500 spec ).
As for Kyro, here's bigger brother of your card, Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 KYRO II (delivered yesterday).
View attachment 91494
View attachment 91495
View attachment 91496

awww so cute .... 2 Kyro 4XXX separated between 2 user

meanwhile .... both of them are sitting on my shelf, alongside some other hercules ofc, the 4500 was a gift from a friend and the 4000XT a 1$ auction lucky strike

i think i already posted them previously since the only recent old hardware i got is the XFX 8800 GTX

I have 1st gen of Kyro, "Evil Kyro" by PowerColor, I even remember posting few pics last year It took me a very long time to actually test the card, since I just wasn't motivated to try something "new" (other than 3dfx, ATI and/or nVidia), but overall I'm seriously disappointed with its performance.


TBH, I was expecting something along the line of GF4 MX400, except I couldn't play most of the games due to numerous problems and/or glitches. Like Harry Potter & Prisoner of Azkaban for example, the game started in "Safe Mode", featuring Software (CPU) video mode without 3D acceleration. NFS Hot Pursuit 2 launched, but then got completely messed up, I was seeing wrong textures & messed up colors, but the card worked OK otherwise, in other games. Which led me to a conclusion that I was experiencing driver problem(s), and not malfunctioning hardware. Sadly, I was unable to source better drivers for Evil Kyro, so I'm currently stuck using what I have. But nevertheless, I decided to hold onto the card, since it's somewhat rare & unusual ... it makes a nice & refreshing change from the usual GPU brands (System running Kyro is Athlon 1000, 256MB of RAM)

Nice collection of cards adamiakadam00, that Leadtek GeForce 2 Pro cooler looks wicked!

@Trekkie4 hows that Zenfone Max? I used to have Zenfone 5 but that thing have grey screen of death and no way to fix it. After that I been avoiding Asus phone.

Speaking of nostalgic, I have this 3D Blaster Voodoo Banshee my dad gave me few years ago, but I have no platform to use it since it's the older AGP 2X, my working Pentium4 AGP system only accepts AGP 4X/8X so I don't know whether this card still works or not. Shame really.

View attachment 91501

Well, TBH I've only been using Asus for two days now so it's too early to tell anything, but I have a family member who bought the same phone last year (when it 1st came out) and this person is amazed by Zenfone Max, I was highly recommended to buy one for myself. So now I finally decided to actually do it, I sold my HTC M8 (that was still under warranty) & went with Asus - so far so good! It has a huge 5,5 inch display, 5,000mAh battery (which also doubles as battery pack, charger for other phones & USB devices), not to mention zillion of other neat tricks & additions to ZenUI. Software-vise, it came with Android 5.0, which immediately upgraded to 6.1.

There's a huge difference between HTC & Asus, so obviously it'll take some time for me to get used to it but overall I like it! It was a good move IMHO - and the best of all, this phone costs 1/2 price of what I paid for HTC! Approx. 240 USD where on the other hand HTC was more closer to 400

On a side note, I can't believe I'm STILL missing Banshee in my collection lol! I mean, it wasn't that rare back in a day, there was a lot of ppl who bought one. But at least I'm fortunate enough to own Rush, it's currently paired with my Pentium Pro 200

 

[Bungz]

Some nice hardware posted.

Had a Gainward GF4 ti4200 die on me today

 

[Trekkie4]

I hate it when something like that happens All of the sudden, or have you been moving the card from one system to another?

 

[Bungz]

Took out of storage, into rebuilt machine happy all day yesterday.

First boot tday artis everywhere

Not a super rare card but meh still annoying.

 

[Trekkie4]

I realize this might sound (too) obvious, but see if re-seating the card does the trick. If not, try cleaning the AGP interface.

I remember having a tough time with certain Matrox card, which seemed to be OK, but then suddenly decided to stop working, and the BIOS kept reporting "VGA" error, one long & 3 short beeps. Taking the card out & placing it back inside didn't help, so just as I was about to give it up, I've noticed that the AGP interface was coated in dust, it had that darker matte look. So after cleaning the card & giving it one (last) try, the system booted up perfectly fine. You might also want to clean any dust from the AGP slot, and make sure none of it fell inside.

 

[Trekkie4]

It's finally here guys!! More info (and pics of my old 8800GT) to come, as soon as I hook it up into my Q6600 rig


Update
GTX 760 is mounted & connected Everything's working as it should ... but apart from that I got nothing special to say about it. It's faster & more powerful than 8800GT (duh, obviously) but it's kinda too modern for my taste...


And here's my trusty & reliable 8800GT, 512MB model. I absolutely LOVE this card, it served me great over the last 9 years or so & I sincerely hope it'll keep on doing so for years & years to come!


And yes, this is a brand NEW Tomb Raider Anniversary, which came with 8800 card, I never even opened it!

 

[jlewis02]

Something I found today

 

[Trekkie4]

Normally, I wouldn't bother fixing one of these... I mean, usually just the GPU cooler alone costs more money than the card itself, but since I bought this one for almost nothing, I figured why not... Mounting angle is a bit weird IMHO, but other than that it seems to be a perfect fit!

 

[Trekkie4]

So, here's something different... I've been playing Black Mesa (Source) & noticed all those computer props laying around the map, purely for decoration purposes. So I figured it would be a great opportunity to take few pics, maybe even make a real-life counterpart(s) from what I see in the game

Let's start with this small-factor AT machine... It seems to be a Pentium (Pro/MMX?), in one of those older cases which still had a "Turbo" button & CPU frequency indicator. Yes, I realize that it could also be 3x86 or 4x86 but since the events of Half-Life 1 originally took place in 1999, and also due to that USB expansion card on the back (which has to be PCI), I'd say it's most definitely a Pentium or Pentium MMX system inside. After all, this is Black Mesa we're talking about, these guys had some high-tech toys back in a day Joke aside for a moment, I might be getting one of these for real. I really don't want to give any more details at this point, but I've been in contact with one guy who has a small(er) AT or ATX AMD-branded tower & would be willing to give it away. In which case I'll let you guys know, of course!


Not Sure what to think of these desktops... Generic office design, could be just about anything really. Probably a Slot-1 Celeron. The optical drive is DEFINITELY a CD-ROM, kinda like resembles that Teac of mine.


CRTs... 15" or 17" maybe? It's hard to tell for real, since the scaling is off. Either way, useful for whacking zombies!


And of course, it wouldn't be a genuine retro discussion without VHS... Which is way too modern for this game by the way, as this particular unit is from around 2002, 2003 at least. The older gen model would be bigger and/or wouldn't have cassette loading opening in the middle, it would be either left or right. It also wouldn't have as much OSD (On-Screen-Display) options & fully computerized control.

 

[jlewis02]

Thinking about making it a necklace

 

[biffzinker]

Thinking about making it a necklace

Intel Pentium II CPU Pendant Necklace (1998)


http://www.chipsetc.com/intel-jewelry--pins.html

 

[Trekkie4]

Bah, nonsense! We all know that P2 CPUs are bulky, black & have a Slot-1 interface!

 

[biffzinker]

Not so bulky when it's just the CPU die though.

 

[Trekkie4]

Obviously, I was only kidding It's pretty weird to see a P2 chip though, as I always picture Pentium 2 (even P3) as a Slot-1 cartridge.

 

[biffzinker]

Found something else.

AMD Am486 DX-40 486 CPU Keychain (1993)


AMD K5 CPU Keychain (1996)



AMD K6-2 CPU Keychain (1998)

This rare keychain contains an actual AMD K6-2 CPU encased in enamel. AMD released very few computer chip keychains throughout the years, especially compared to Intel, this item is quite rare and highly collectible.

Edit: Lots to look at here. http://www.chipsetc.com/