TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Robert B]

FLEA MARKET SURPRISE!!!

My biggest score ever at the local flea market! WIN! WIN! WIN!

1. Asus K7M Rev. 1.04 - SLOT A - my second one
2. AMD Athlon K7 800MHz - Slot A - AMD-A0800MPR24B A - Full-speed on-die 256 KB CACHE
3. 3dfx - VooDoo 3 3000 AGP 16MB - PCB - 210-0364-003 missing 3 10uf 16V capacitors - monday I'll receive replacement capacitors / missing the heatsink but I already have a plan to modify a DeepCool V50 cooler
4. 3dfx - VooDoo 3 2000 AGP 16MB - PCB - 210-0364-003 - in superb condition
5. Intel Celeron A Slot 1 - SL2WN - 333MHz/66
6. RAM 3x128MB PC133

Flea market prices of course...



gallery: https://postimg.org/gallery/389o5otau/

http://imgur.com/a/XgkWk

More later.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Nice score.
800 Thunderbird is tough to find.

 

[Robert B]

The full cleanup and close-up shots will be as usual on the Projects Logs section. I'm happy that I dont have to make custom thermal pads for the K7 800, as I did with the 500.550.600.700(x2).750 ones that I have...that was a time consuming job and a real PITA. All have Pluto cores.

That 800 is my first K7 Slot A Thunderbird. When I saw the damn thing, my pulse spiked and I tried to not show my emotion. I pulled it myself from a nasty PC case. I paid the price for the entire case - ~ less than 20 USD, took what I need and I left the rest behind - a 300W PSU with a funky name, an S3 card, two lan cards, a fan and the banged up case. I have plenty of parts in my collection and I dont need regular stuff. The biggest question is what kind of graphic card was in this system? It was missing when I got to it.

The V3 2000 came from a big tower case and it was the only thing I took from there. That system was with a K7S5A and a AMD socket A CPU. I already have a K7S5A at a friend of mine and I dont need another one.

 

[Trekkie4]

FLEA MARKET SURPRISE!!!

My biggest score ever at the local flea market! WIN! WIN! WIN!

1. Asus K7M Rev. 1.04 - SLOT A - my second one
2. AMD Athlon K7 800MHz - Slot A - AMD-A0800MPR24B A - Full-speed on-die 256 KB CACHE
3. 3dfx - VooDoo 3 3000 AGP 16MB - PCB - 210-0364-003 missing 3 10uf 16V capacitors - monday I'll receive replacement capacitors / missing the heatsink but I already have a plan to modify a DeepCool V50 cooler
4. 3dfx - VooDoo 3 2000 AGP 16MB - PCB - 210-0364-003 - in superb condition
5. Intel Celeron A Slot 1 - SL2WN - 333MHz/66
6. RAM 3x128MB PC133

Flea market prices of course...



gallery: https://postimg.org/gallery/389o5otau/

http://imgur.com/a/XgkWk

More later.

I just can't stop admiring budget (retro) hardware, from back in a day... Most of us who grew up in early to late 90s were under impression how Celeron "sucks" for gaming. Just like (later on) nVidia's M64 sucks for 3D video acceleration. But really, now that I look back & analyze both against much more expensive & powerful Pentium line (and TNT2 Pro & Ultra), I honestly don't see why.

For what it's worth, Celeron is actually quite a decent platform for retro gaming, as long it's "A" series, as in Mendocino over Covington which doesn't have any L2 cache. Pair those two together (either Slot-1 or S370) & you'll end up with cheap retro gaming platform that'll run just about any game from mid 90s (and earlier) up to 2002. With few exceptions of course, but that is to be expected

 

[dorsetknob]

For what it's worth, Celeron is actually quite a decent platform for retro gaming,

THEY WERE ALSO BEASTS FOR OVERCLOCKING ( not unusual to get a 100% Overclock OR MORE with additional cooling)

 

[Trekkie4]

THEY WERE ALSO BEASTS FOR OVERCLOCKING ( not unusual to get a 100% Overclock OR MORE with additional cooling)

You're absolutely right, I totally forgot about OC potential. Of course, nowdays it would be much simpler (and safer) to just grab a faster chip unless OCing old Celerons is your "thing", the ultimate goal

 

[havli]

Slot A Athlons and boards are always nice. Voodoos as well.
----------

Now I can consider my Radeon X1000 collection almost complete. In January I managed to buy X1900 CF Edition with the external CF dongle, wasn't cheap but it is worth it, not many of these cards around.

After minor maintenance (fresh thermal paste + reattaching the heatsink) it turned out to be working just fine when paired with regular X1900 XTX.

And now even R520 has found its way to me - Radeon X1800 XT 512 MB. The heatsink is some kind of aftermarket cooling, not very pretty but gets the job done.

 

[Mr.Scott]

THEY WERE ALSO BEASTS FOR OVERCLOCKING ( not unusual to get a 100% Overclock OR MORE with additional cooling)

Air cooling. No mods, nothing special. Poke and play.

You're absolutely right, I totally forgot about OC potential. Of course, nowdays it would be much simpler (and safer) to just grab a faster chip unless OCing old Celerons is your "thing", the ultimate goal

Thing is, all the Mendcino Celerons OC about the same max MHz. The difference will be the ram and bus speeds.

 

[dorsetknob]

I've Seen those Celeron 300Mhz hit over 700Mhz on air no problems
Higest i saw was 833Mhz

 

[Trekkie4]

Wow, never realized that before... Thanks for the info!

What I wanted to say however is that there's really no need to torture old Celerons through OC, especially now that some of them are becoming so rare & hard(er) to find. Instead, it's much easier & safer in the long term to buy (take for free?) Coppermine Celeron, running at 600, 700 or 800MHz. And not just Intel, but AMD too. Some of those early Athlons & Durons are now getting seriously old & harder to find. So my general recommendation to anyone who loves & respects old hardware is to avoid OC at all cost & just go with newer platform (or model line) instead

 

[Mr.Scott]

Eh.....depends on what you're into.
I'm a competitive benchmarker. I live to torture.
I specialize in 'old'.
Havli knows.

 

[Recon-UK]

If it counts...

XBOX project on my desk.. a right mess but i'm working so..

Pentium III mobile derived CPU with Geforce 3/4 (very custom)

 

[dorsetknob]

my Experiences with Slot 1 overclocking were with the 3oo Mhz P2
that i overclocked from Brand new

Wanted Faster CPU's (as we all Do) But they were So Expensive Lots of People bought the "Cut Price Celeron" and Overclocked it themselves ( easy as its just setting jumpers for multipliers and FSB ) or got more knowledgeable people to do it for them.
AH The Days Before Intel Started locking down CPU's and of course PnP Bios

Intel did not consider the enthusast overclocker back then and it Caught them by Surprise when Droves of People Bought the Chepo CPU's and overclocked the Crap out of them.
Sales of the Cheeper CPU's Both Celeron and P2 Canablised the Sale of Intels High end Market.

 

[Mr.Scott]

my Experiences with Slot 1 overclocking were with the 3oo Mhz P2
that i overclocked from Brand new

Same chip, different package.
I have slot 1 also.

 

[Recon-UK]

Is it true that Pentium 3 per core was faster than P4? read it somewhere.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Is it true that Pentium 3 per core was faster than P4? read it somewhere.

Some, yes.
Most all AMD K7's killed P4 netburst though.

 

[Trekkie4]

Eh.....depends on what you're into.
I'm a competitive benchmarker. I live to torture.
I specialize in 'old'.
Havli knows.

my Experiences with Slot 1 overclocking were with the 3oo Mhz P2
that i overclocked from Brand new

Wanted Faster CPU's (as we all Do) But they were So Expensive Lots of People bought the "Cut Price Celeron" and Overclocked it themselves ( easy as its just setting jumpers for multipliers and FSB ) or got more knowledgeable people to do it for them.
AH The Days Before Intel Started locking down CPU's and of course PnP Bios

Intel did not consider the enthusast overclocker back then and it Caught them by Surprise when Droves of People Bought the Chepo CPU's and overclocked the Crap out of them.
Sales of the Cheeper CPU's Both Celeron and P2 Canablised the Sale of Intels High end Market.

Right, we all OCed (or at least wanted to OC, but didn't know how ) our Celerons, Pentiums II, III back in a day.

Having said that, it brings us exactly to what I said earlier - those CPUs were 20yrs younger back in a day. And even then you would probably lose a warranty over OC-related hardware fault, which is why I'm against OCing old hardware. I got nothing against "torturing" my Q6600 (even though it's fairly old), but Sockets 7, 370, 462 & Slot-1 are a whole other matter

 

[Mr.Scott]

I'm against OCing old hardware. I got nothing against "torturing" my Q6600 (even though it's fairly old), but Sockets 7, 370, 462 & Slot-1 are a whole other matter

You forgot Slot A.
All of my favorites.

 

[havli]

When it comes to overclocking old HW, most of the time motherboards are the weak point, not CPUs. On the other hand most of these boards are simple enough to be repaired when they fail. Most of the time it is either capacitors or burned VRM. For example my Gigabyte GA-5AX mosfets blew up when trying to run (posibly defective) K6-III few years ago... but now it is once again running perfectly with new mosfets. http://hwbot.org/submission/3804991_havli_winrar_6x86mx_pr200_91_kbs

 

[Trekkie4]

You forgot Slot A.
All of my favorites.

Haha, true! Guilty as charged

When it comes to overclocking old HW, most of the time motherboards are the weak point, not CPUs. On the other hand most of these boards are simple enough to be repaired when they fail. Most of the time it is either capacitors or burned VRM. For example my Gigabyte GA-5AX mosfets blew up when trying to run (posibly defective) K6-III few years ago... but now it is once again running perfectly with new mosfets. http://hwbot.org/submission/3804991_havli_winrar_6x86mx_pr200_91_kbs

True ... maybe. However, I DID experience a situation couple of years ago where passively-cooled Pentium III, 550 model went belly-up. Technically, it was working, and it booted up the system, even made it to Win98. However, it would randomly crash the system during gaming. In fact, I specifically recall the time & place, where I was speeding through "Hometown", in NFS3 Hot Pursuit, when the entire thing froze & wasn't responding to anything.

Took me quite a lot of troubleshooting to locate the problem, but as it turned out swapping the CPU for another one (with stock bus frequency), and/or dropping down the bus frq on previously-mentioned P3 550 did the trick. So obviously something DID go wrong, and I've been trying to stay away from passively cooled Slot 1 cartridges ever since. I realize that CPUs are usually very difficult to destroy, unless they're being mishandled and/or fried due to a discharge or improper voltages, but nothing lasts forever. So therefore, in my opinion running these beyond what they're capable of is asking for trouble, kinda like playing the russian roulette.

 

[Red_Machine]

Here's an interesting video, examining performance degredation over successive drivers using WIndows 98 and a series of late 90s and early 2000s nVIDIA cards. Shocking to see how bad the later drivers are.

 

[havli]

Shocking? No. Newer drivers are more complicated and optimized for new CPUs and instruction sets.... so when running on old CPU they are more likely to be slower.
I've observerd this in my tests also https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=477394#p477394 You can see here GeForce 7800 + old drivers is faster than the same CPU paired with GTX 285 and new driver. On the other hand the old driver doesn't benefit from dual-CPU setup, while the new one does:

Opteron 242 + GF7800 = 40 fps
2x Opteron 242 + GF7800 = 38 fps

Opteron 254 + GTX 285 = 53 fps
2x Opteron 254 + GTX 285 = 77 fps

 

[Trekkie4]

True. From my experience, ForceWare 43.45 is among the few last, stable releases. Everything that came later on had some sort of issues with the games. NFS3, NFS4 wouldn't even start (black screen), Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone had flickering textures, the list goes on & on

 

[Red_Machine]

I remember reading around the time that the GeForce4 MX series had vertex shader 1.1 in software, by virtue of the GeForce2 having basic vertex shading, but it didn't work in the later drivers. You have to use an older one to get it to function.

 

[Toothless]

Trying to see if this HP Touchsmart IQ770 will run, does that count as old?