TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Mr.Scott]

But enough about me, are you still benching away @Mr.Scott ?? Is your name the same in Hwbot as well? Haven't spoke to any of the guys but themaddutchdude from MLG for a long time.... I hope all is ok

Brendon is a good dude. Haven't heard from him since he quit too. I still bench, but I do it for the fun. Points don't mean anything to me. Warp9-systems is my team and site. Check it out sometime maybe.
http://warp9-systems.proboards.com/

 

[Trekkie4]

Play-me.mp3

 

[Athlonite]

Here is one for you. When was the last time you saw Bigfoot?
Don't often see working 5.25" HDDs any more.

Quantum Bigfoot CY - circa 1996.

These were a big deal back in the day. Especially the triple platter 6gb versions like this. Delicate as hell. One small drop and they were toast.

Almost cut this Bigfoot open about 10 years ago when scavenging the rare earth magnets from a stack of dead 3.5" drives. Glad I didn't. It was in my Father's system back in the mid-90s, and is running in my Win98 retro rig currently.

View attachment 100583

Look at those benchmarks. Average read = 6.1 MB/sec. Burst speed = 8.9 MB/sec (bottom bar)
Oh how far we have come!

View attachment 100584

I've still got a couple of em that work an 1.2GB hdd and an 1.6GB one aswell

 

[lexluthermiester]

Quantum Bigfoot CY - circa 1996.

Those drives were bada$$ back then.

Oh how far we have come!

Indeed!

 

[Trekkie4]

I'm surprised, kinda disappointed no one recognized the musical theme from my previous post... I know it's being played through PC speaker, but still ... ??! It's a classic! And the fact it's played through that tiny, ear-bleeding speaker makes it even bigger classic IMHO!

 

[agent_x007]

Checking 32-bit OS/Hardware limits with first Pentium 4 HT CPU (Northwood 3,06GHz on PGA 478) and... Radeon R9 390X

Valid : https://www.3dmark.com/fs/15471792
Usable system memory : ~3,12GB (3200MB)

 

[MaxiPro800]

Just got some parts and more or less did some changes. Bought a pack of boards, some in their respective boxes. Sadly some of them didn't work, and are marked with asterisk:

(*)MSI P45 Platinum
(*)MSI P6N SLi
ABIT IP35 Pro
ABIT IP35 (non-Pro)
MSI P35 Neo2 Platinum -FR
ASUS P5K SE/EPU
DFI Lanparty DK P45-T2RS
Gigabyte GA-EP31-DS3L

These are the boards. The DFI and ABIT IP35 Pro didn't come in their respective boxes (the latter came in a MSI Z77 box).

So far you can find the P35 Neo2 and DFI in my sig - former is my 2nd system and latter is my main system. The ABIT IP35 (both of them) are as backup boards along with the Gigabyte and ASUS. Sadly I tried fixing the P45 Platinum but haven't succeeded yet. The P6N Sli has a dead CoreCell chip which prevents the MB from turning on, so I scrapped it (along with a defective K9N SLi).

 

[phill]

Brendon is a good dude. Haven't heard from him since he quit too. I still bench, but I do it for the fun. Points don't mean anything to me. Warp9-systems is my team and site. Check it out sometime maybe.
http://warp9-systems.proboards.com/

I'll be sure to take a look Yeah Brend and I keep in touch, been a long time since I've seen him face to face, been even longer till I can get to see him too! Still never mind.. Be worth seeing him when I can make it over there !!

I'm surprised, kinda disappointed no one recognized the musical theme from my previous post... I know it's being played through PC speaker, but still ... ??! It's a classic! And the fact it's played through that tiny, ear-bleeding speaker makes it even bigger classic IMHO!

I still have that game for the Amiga.. Was one of my most favourite games ever!! That said I wonder if number 2 was better....

Well I've had a disappointing day today guys.. MY X58-OC is in need of a replacement CPU socket.. I've hooked it up to one of my new PSUs and couldn't get a post and the rig would just instantly shut down.. I took off the cooler and took out the CPU and found this...



So I'd been prodding around in there and managed to get it working but with only 2 out of the 6 memory slots working. Sadly me being me I wanted to try and get more of it working which had only lead to more of it not working.. I'm not sure if a CPU socket can be swapped out but I'm already writing it off as a dead board.. Good way to waste £160 I suppose on a good paper weight.. People lesson is, always check your Ebay purchases as soon as possible.. I remember unboxing it and looking at it (from the pics I've taken and saved) but I never checked the CPU socket.. What a numpty.... Still, if anyone knows of someone or even if Gigabyte might swap it out for me, I'd be dead excited to hear from you.. There's a few on Ebay and one finishing tomorrow, so I'll be grabbing that one I think.. Not what I had in mind but I'm not going to have something here that's dead and of no use to me.. I might even message the guy who I bought the board from and let him know that it's not working.. Still not sure he'll care to much right now....

 

[debs3759]

Just got a SB16 CT2230 Revision 49432 (the last and best revision). Need to find a CT1748A chip to fit in the socket. It looks a lot better than the photo

This will be going in the 486 build I'm working on, with Win 95 OSR 2.1

 

[Trekkie4]

I'll be sure to take a look Yeah Brend and I keep in touch, been a long time since I've seen him face to face, been even longer till I can get to see him too! Still never mind.. Be worth seeing him when I can make it over there !!



I still have that game for the Amiga.. Was one of my most favourite games ever!! That said I wonder if number 2 was better....

Well I've had a disappointing day today guys.. MY X58-OC is in need of a replacement CPU socket.. I've hooked it up to one of my new PSUs and couldn't get a post and the rig would just instantly shut down.. I took off the cooler and took out the CPU and found this...

View attachment 100638

So I'd been prodding around in there and managed to get it working but with only 2 out of the 6 memory slots working. Sadly me being me I wanted to try and get more of it working which had only lead to more of it not working.. I'm not sure if a CPU socket can be swapped out but I'm already writing it off as a dead board.. Good way to waste £160 I suppose on a good paper weight.. People lesson is, always check your Ebay purchases as soon as possible.. I remember unboxing it and looking at it (from the pics I've taken and saved) but I never checked the CPU socket.. What a numpty.... Still, if anyone knows of someone or even if Gigabyte might swap it out for me, I'd be dead excited to hear from you.. There's a few on Ebay and one finishing tomorrow, so I'll be grabbing that one I think.. Not what I had in mind but I'm not going to have something here that's dead and of no use to me.. I might even message the guy who I bought the board from and let him know that it's not working.. Still not sure he'll care to much right now....

Never played Lotus II, so I can't speak from personal experience, but I absolutely adored III. Used to play it ALL the time, before I eventually moved on to newer games such as "Stunts", and eventually to Need For Speed III Hot Pursuit. So I can't tell you how much I missed seeing (and playing) this game, which is always going to have a special place in my heart And regardless of amazing AWE32 that's inside my 486, I say f*ck the Sound Blaster! The ONLY proper way to play this game is through the integrated PC speaker

Just got a SB16 CT2230 Revision 49432 (the last and best revision). Need to find a CT1748A chip to fit in the socket. It looks a lot better than the photo

This will be going in the 486 build I'm working on, with Win 95 OSR 2.1

Welcome to the 4x86 family Yes, that SB16 is almost the same as mine, and will be a perfect match. Again, I really DO love my AWE32, but I find it to be overkill on a 4x86 system. 5x86 maybe, but 4x86 is just a perfect match for SB16. Too bad mine has a MIDI issue, but I've decided to keep the card & (hopefully) use it on a Windows (Pentium?) system, that's not going to run any of the DOS games, featuring MIDI soundtrack(s).

Just one question - why Win95?! Surely 3.11 & MS-DOS 6.22 would be more appropriate for this particular build.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I'm surprised, kinda disappointed no one recognized the musical theme from my previous post... I know it's being played through PC speaker, but still ... ??! It's a classic! And the fact it's played through that tiny, ear-bleeding speaker makes it even bigger classic IMHO!

Never played the Lotus series..

Checking 32-bit OS/Hardware limits with first Pentium 4 HT CPU (Northwood 3,06GHz on PGA 478) and... Radeon R9 390X
View attachment 100618
Valid : https://www.3dmark.com/fs/15471792
Usable system memory : ~3,12GB (3200MB)

WITHFHB?

 

[agent_x007]

WITHFHB?

?
What "WITHFHB" means ?

 

[phill]

Never played Lotus II, so I can't speak from personal experience, but I absolutely adored III. Used to play it ALL the time, before I eventually moved on to newer games such as "Stunts", and eventually to Need For Speed III Hot Pursuit. So I can't tell you how much I missed seeing (and playing) this game, which is always going to have a special place in my heart And regardless of amazing AWE32 that's inside my 486, I say f*ck the Sound Blaster! The ONLY proper way to play this game is through the integrated PC speaker

Lotus 2 just didn't have the selectable music or the choice of cars that Lotus 3 did or could you make your own tracks but that said, still had a great time playing both I have them on my Amiga upstairs, brilliant games, they really were

 

[lexluthermiester]

?
What "WITHFHB" means ?

See PM. How did you pull that off? Wasn't aware that anyone ever made a Socket 478 based board with a PCIE..

 

[agent_x007]

How did you pull that off? Wasn't aware that anyone ever made a Socket 478 based board with a PCIE..

The same way I booted NVMe drive from it
Actually, there is quite a few PGA 478 boards with PCIe slots around : LINK.

As for 390X, I simply went with the flow.
PCI-e is PCI-e, and Intel chipset have best compatibility on it.
Wasn't sure how to fill a 4GB VRAM when I only have a little over 3GB of system RAM on hand.
I'm glad I got Advanced version of 3DMark while it was on sale
In custom mode, you can set even 8k as rendering resolution, and resolution "eats" only VRAM.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Actually, there are quite a few of them : LINK.

Wow! Rare stuff. I miss Albatron. They always made such wonderfully stable boards. Last I remember seeing from them was a solid 478 board, then they just dropped off the planet. Never found out why..

 

[debs3759]

Welcome to the 4x86 family Yes, that SB16 is almost the same as mine, and will be a perfect match. Again, I really DO love my AWE32, but I find it to be overkill on a 4x86 system. 5x86 maybe, but 4x86 is just a perfect match for SB16. Too bad mine has a MIDI issue, but I've decided to keep the card & (hopefully) use it on a Windows (Pentium?) system, that's not going to run any of the DOS games, featuring MIDI soundtrack(s).

Just one question - why Win95?! Surely 3.11 & MS-DOS 6.22 would be more appropriate for this particular build.

I hope eventually to dual boot DOS (with Win 3.11) and Win 95. The system will be used to test (and bench) all my 486 class CPUs. Once all are tested, the system will be used with my fastest 486 (probably an AMD 5x86 P75) for testing VLB graphics cards.

 

[Trekkie4]

Never played the Lotus series..

WITHFHB?

Aww, too bad Your loss, the game was (is) awesome, one of the best racing simulators from that period IMHO. Come to think of it, the ONLY game which allowed creating your own tracks (well, kinda), very detailed graphics (for 1992, 1993, that is) and probably the coolest soundtrack ever! It also has audio (sound) hardware switching through the game itself. Therefore, you don't need to exit the game & enter the setup mode, in order to switch from PC Speaker mode to SB. Instead, you just opened up the appropriate "window" within the game & set your choice to whichever you prefer

Lotus 2 just didn't have the selectable music or the choice of cars that Lotus 3 did or could you make your own tracks but that said, still had a great time playing both I have them on my Amiga upstairs, brilliant games, they really were

Never played Amiga before, my first gaming experience was 486, DX2 - same as the one that I've just made recently. Okay, except mine didn't have AWE32, and/or "Multimedia Package*" right out of the box, that came few years later.

*For those who don't remember, Multimedia Package = Sound Blaster, CD-ROM drive & desktop speakers, usually with built-in amplifier (aka active speakers)

I hope eventually to dual boot DOS (with Win 3.11) and Win 95. The system will be used to test (and bench) all my 486 class CPUs. Once all are tested, the system will be used with my fastest 486 (probably an AMD 5x86 P75) for testing VLB graphics cards.

Oh, Ok. Yeah, agreed. 5x86 is more suited for Win95, I've done the same thing on my own build. With the exception of modifying Config.SYS/Autoexec.BAT, so that I could take advantage of both DOS & Win95 to their full potential - EMS, CD-ROM, Mouse driver & similar. Actually, I also modified DOSStart.BAT, in "Windows" folder. If you want/need me to share the config with you, let me know

 

[phill]

Ah you need to try it on the Amiga Sound was even better I think at that time I might actually have to go and turn that on....

 

[Trekkie4]

Right, I only just found out about that, yesterday That YouTube video, featuring the musical theme was taken from Amiga version, and the sound quality is indeed much better, smoother than PC version!

 

[phill]

I think at that point of the 486 etc, the Amiga was the much better bit of kit.. Remember writing something in college saying the same thing lol

I would very much recommend getting it

 

[MaxiPro800]

So I've finally finished building Croix. I replaced the MSI board with the vanilla IP35 I mentioned earlier from ABIT, and it's looking pretty good. Just need a new GPU though, since the 7300 gives some artefacts. Should have a GB 8400GS 256MB coming through this week. The MSI board had a problem where as soon as I'd flip the switch it would turn on and proceed with POST, should look more into it sometime.

Specs:
CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 @ 2.66GHz
MB - ABIT IP35 (M630)
RAM - 1GB DDR2 800 Kingmax
PSU - 500W I built myself with various parts and recapped
GPU - ASUS 7300GT Silent (artefacts tho, gotta replace it)
Case - JNC w/ Temperature sensors (bigger than the previous one)
ODD: 2x Hitachi-LG DVDRW, one GSA-4167B and the other is a GSA-H58N
HDD: Hitachi 160GB SATA + WDC WD1600AVJS 160GB SATA (storage) and 80GB Hitachi laptop drive as boot drive
Other: Pixelview PlayTV Ultra (CX23881 chipset) PCI

 

[Robert B]

ALL DONE!

 

[phill]

Did you buy these new @Robert B ?? Wow...

 

[Robert B]

They werent new. I bought them from the flea market on 10.03.2018 I cleaned them up and look at them Uhhhh SHINY!

To clean the board it took:

1. 800 ml isopropyl alcohol
2. lots lots and lots of cotton sticks.
3. soft long hairs brush
4. soft used toothbrush with the head bent using a lighter so that I could enter tiny spaces.
6. metal polish paste for the screws and other metal parts
7. patience and elbow grease
8. the whole job took 3 cycles of washing with isopropyl alcohol 99% even if by the second cycle it was really clean. Brush using alcohol-Dry-Cotton sticks dipped in alcohol-Dry-Brush using alcohol-Dry-cotton sticks dipped in alcohol-brush etc. I let the alcohol evaporate as now the weather is nice. Otherwise I could've used my small air compressor.
9. attention to detail and removal of any spots, dirt and other blemishes using dry or lightly moist cotton sticks with isopropyl alcohol.
10. 5-6 hours including the drying time

I also took off the retaining clips and jumpers. I didnt take of the BIOS chip this time as the position was awkward. The area was cleaned well nevertheless. I can assure you

The alcohol was sprayed.

After cleaning I used gloves to handle the board. It is a magnet for finger prints, dust, hairs etc.