TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[lexluthermiester]

Ah I just wanna be able to play Aquanox and Decent I and II (I know they're available but Aquanox isn't) I enjoyed the shiz outta those two games

Umm, yes it is. GOG for the Win!

AquaNox

The undersea world has undergone a transformation from a tranquil environment to a place

www.gog.com

And it's only $6.

They have the whole series;

AquaNox 2: Revelation

In 2666 a young freighter pilot called William Drake sets out to search for the heritage

www.gog.com

$6

Archimedean Dynasty

The all consuming darkness has you battle-scarred submarine in a vice-like grip. As you n

www.gog.com

$6

Aquanox Deep Descent

Aquanox Deep Descent is a first person underwater vehicle shooter, in which players c

www.gog.com

$30 for the standard edition.

 

[Valantar]

No for me. I swear by them! Have only twice seen a disc go bad without some identifiable reason. However, I suspect the discs were recorded at their max speed, which is ok for quick and dirty burns you don't care about. But anytime I make a backup, I burn at the slowest speed the drive offers to ensure maximum stable burn for longevity. I still have CD's recorded in 1997 that are perfect.

Like anything else in life, using common sense and understanding the technology is what ensures long lasting usefulness..

I think I've seen some discs fail, but they have been rare. (Then again, not having used an ODD actively for a decade, it's kind of hard to recall!) For me, it's always been the drives that have died. Then again, I might have been living under a temporary curse of mechanical computer component failure, as I had quite a few HDDs die on me in various ways in the 2005-2015 period as well. Everything since has been rock solid though! Anyhow, I've always considered ODDs to be the light version of inkjet printers - something that can be mass produced relatively cheaply but that is relatively complex mechanically, meaning that in time it will crash and burn, often spectacularly, especially when made from poorly/unlubricated cheap plastics.

I'm Guybrush Threepwood, a mighty pirate!

Btw, have you heard the story of the origin of the name Guybrush? Apparently one of the artists drawing the sprites for the game named the original sprite file guy (as he had no name at the time) + "brush" to indicate that it was the "brush" file for the character sprite. And thus, through the magic of old-school file names, guybrush.bbm was born Man, game development is fantastically janky at times. Gotta love it.

Right, I know. LGR even covered this subject in one of his earlier videos. But I hope you understand, CF/SD to IDE adapters are not really reliable & have more potential to fail than ODD or even a real thing, an old HDD.

It's because of the Read/Write cycles ... substituting CF or SD card for SSD is generally a bad idea because the system keeps reading & writing onto the card which obviously wasn't designed for intensive application such as this one, in the first place. You could theoretically hook up the real thing, SSD through SATA to P/ATA converter but this is going to affect the access/transfer speed. Again, speaking from personal experience ... I once tried using 80GB SATA drive through the converter & could feel the performance drop when accessing large amounts of data.

Yeah, SD cards are well known to fail easily, as does all cheap flash media. I wouldn't imagine there being tons of write cycles on anything with a relatively modern storage capacity though - if your PC expects 650MB CDs or 4GB HDDs, I can't imagine it making much of a dent in the write endurance of a 32-64-128GB SD card, at least not if you buy a decent quality one. A crappy one I would understand, as the controllers no doubt do minimal wear leveling etc. But at least they're easily accessible still, affordable, easily replaced, compatible with modern systems for making new copies or adding files, and not physically fragile.

 

[lexluthermiester]

For me, it's always been the drives that have died.

I seriously can't remember the last time I had a drive fail on me. Then again, I never by cheap crap. I always by quality drives.

if your PC expects 650MB CDs or 4GB HDDs, I can't imagine it making much of a dent in the write endurance of a 32-64-128GB SD card, at least not if you buy a decent quality one.

This! Always buy quality. You get what you pay for 99.9% of the time...

 

[F-Zero]

Finally got around and put the Asus board in a case ready for benching !



3DMARK03



3DMARK05



D00M 3 1280x1024 Ultra No AA



FAR CRY 1280X1024 MAXIMUM DETAIL NO AA AF



Cinebench R11.5



The whole PC got really hot during Cinebench got to say and the neighbours started to wonder were do I keep my fighter jet ?

 

[micropage7]

Finally got around and put the Asus board in a case ready for benching !

View attachment 207433View attachment 207434View attachment 207441

3DMARK03

View attachment 207437

3DMARK05

View attachment 207438

D00M 3 1280x1024 Ultra No AA

View attachment 207439

FAR CRY 1280X1024 MAXIMUM DETAIL NO AA AF

View attachment 207440

Cinebench R11.5

View attachment 207442

The whole PC got really hot during Cinebench got to say and the neighbours started to wonder were do I keep my fighter jet ?

View attachment 207443

nice, btw you don't add some intake fans to cool the temp inside?

 

[Robert B]

Today's haul. After a disappointing Saturday, Sunday was the day I redeemed myself as I didn't leave the flea market until I found something worthwhile and find I did indeed!

SOYO SY-D6IBA - it will be fully recaped. The CPU on the board is a PII-400. The other one was MIA.

Does anyone have the DRIVER CD for this beast? Looking further into the future we should mirror all the FTP sites of the once great manufacturers as in 10 years or so we won't be able to find much of the stuff that still is available.

Also, on a minor note, I found a Phenom X4 9550, a PIII 550 S370, P4 1.4GHz S478, Athlon 1100MHz/200, a Celeron 1200 Tualatin and I scavenged 4 BIOS chips from boards that weren't too valuable.

 

[Trekkie4]

Today's haul. After a disappointing Saturday, Sunday was the day I redeemed myself as I didn't leave the flea market until I found something worthwhile and find I did indeed!

SOYO SY-D6IBA - it will be fully recaped. The CPU on the board is a PII-400. The other one was MIA.

Does anyone have the DRIVER CD for this beast? Looking further into the future we should mirror all the FTP sites of the once great manufacturers as in 10 years or so we won't be able to find much of the stuff that still is available.

Also, on a minor note, I found a Phenom X4 9550, a PIII 550 S370, P4 1.4GHz S478, Athlon 1100MHz/200, a Celeron 1200 Tualatin and I scavenged 4 BIOS chips from boards that weren't too valuable.

IDK about drivers, but I don't think (or expect) you'd need any ... maybe to just Google for Adaptec chipset instead?

Speaking of Tualatins, I wasn't going to mention anything yet ... but I have a "flagship" Tualatin coming up shortly, probably bundled with those BTC drives. PIII 1.4GHz, which I'm planning to pair with Asus P3B-F motherboard & 440BX chipset. Maybe even OC the heck of it, why not?

 

[DR4G00N]

IDK about drivers, but I don't think (or expect) you'd need any ... maybe to just Google for Adaptec chipset instead?

Speaking of Tualatins, I wasn't going to mention anything yet ... but I have a "flagship" Tualatin coming up shortly, probably bundled with those BTC drives. PIII 1.4GHz, which I'm planning to pair with Asus P3B-F motherboard & 440BX chipset. Maybe even OC the heck of it, why not?

Nice. I need to fix mine, the pad came off with a pin and I need to reattach it without shorting the center contact to the outer ring (GND).


In other news it looks like my Abit BH6 isn't dead after all, it just hates practically all of my sdr mems, managed to get it to boot with a 66mhz stick I found and it only boots in the outer-most slot of course.

 

[MaxiPro800]

In other news it looks like my Abit BH6 isn't dead after all, it just hates practically all of my sdr mems, managed to get it to boot with a 66mhz stick I found and it only boots in the outer-most slot of course.
View attachment 207461

Have you tried replacing the capacitors on it? More than often they were the main issue on ABIT boards.

Today's haul. After a disappointing Saturday, Sunday was the day I redeemed myself as I didn't leave the flea market until I found something worthwhile and find I did indeed!

SOYO SY-D6IBA - it will be fully recaped. The CPU on the board is a PII-400. The other one was MIA.

Does anyone have the DRIVER CD for this beast? Looking further into the future we should mirror all the FTP sites of the once great manufacturers as in 10 years or so we won't be able to find much of the stuff that still is available.

Also, on a minor note, I found a Phenom X4 9550, a PIII 550 S370, P4 1.4GHz S478, Athlon 1100MHz/200, a Celeron 1200 Tualatin and I scavenged 4 BIOS chips from boards that weren't too valuable.

Unfortunately, you're probably better off making an DIY driver CD. I couldn't find any for my 6BA+IV either (that or I didn't look in the right place) so I just made a DIY driver disc with Intel chipset drivers from PhilsComputerLab and HPT366 drivers from DriverGuide. Didn't add anything else as that's the basic drivers, without any unnecessary software the original Soyo discs came with.

 

[F-Zero]

nice, btw you don't add some intake fans to cool the temp inside?

Not really possible, the case is closed up, no air openings. The case is really not fit for this setup but it's the only I had left. Thanks for the tip anyway

On another note my Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz gets around 74~ FPS in D00M 3 same settings. I have to try overclocking the Xeons to see if they can match the performance of the P4

 

[Trekkie4]

Nice. I need to fix mine, the pad came off with a pin and I need to reattach it without shorting the center contact to the outer ring (GND).
View attachment 207460

In other news it looks like my Abit BH6 isn't dead after all, it just hates practically all of my sdr mems, managed to get it to boot with a 66mhz stick I found and it only boots in the outer-most slot of course.
View attachment 207461

Yikes! Good luck with that Tualatin...

Have you tried replacing the capacitors on it? More than often they were the main issue on ABIT boards.

Unfortunately, you're probably better off making an DIY driver CD. I couldn't find any for my 6BA+IV either (that or I didn't look in the right place) so I just made a DIY driver disc with Intel chipset drivers from PhilsComputerLab and HPT366 drivers from DriverGuide. Didn't add anything else as that's the basic drivers, without any unnecessary software the original Soyo discs came with.

Agreed on capacitors being an issue on Abit boards, however I don't think this is the case with his BH6. I had the same "problem" with two of my Adison boards, Chaintech 6BTM. Apparently only some (few) of the RAM modules worked without causing weird issues and ironically only PC133 modules which isn't compatible with 6BTM (they work in PC100 mode, instead)

Just a reminder that both 6BTM systems had been completely recapped with Panasonic caps, and that I tried loads of memory modules before I settled for 64MB/PC133 one(s)

 

[DR4G00N]

Have you tried replacing the capacitors on it? More than often they were the main issue on ABIT boards.

Not yet but I may do that later, it seems more of a bios related problem rather than hardware.

One thing I want to do is swap the the W124G clock gen for a W196G to run higher than 133 fsb. Nobody would happen to have one just kicking around somewhere would they?

Edit: Managed to get the PIII-S 1.4 to work again with a bodge, a dab of solder on the pad and another on the pin, put the pin in the socket and it manages to make a connection. Would've glued it on but I don't have any epoxy handy.

 

[lexluthermiester]

SOYO SY-D6IBA - it will be fully recaped.

THAT is a nice find! Deserves some love!

 

[QuietBob]

Finally got around and put the Asus board in a case ready for benching !

For reference, here are my old Socket A results from 3DMark03 with an Athlon XP 3200+ and a 7600GT. Sorry, no screenies:

Your Xeons score the same as my stock Athlon. In game tests 1-3 the GF6800U is faster by 18%, 11% and 9%, while in game 4 it's marginally slower.

And here's 3DMark05:

This time the Athlon needed a 2.5 GHz OC to catch up. The GPUs score about the same in game tests 1 and 3, but in game 2 a stock 7600GT is 13% ahead.

 

[F-Zero]

For reference, here are my old Socket A results from 3DMark03 with an Athlon XP 3200+ and a 7600GT. Sorry, no screenies:
View attachment 207512
Your Xeons score the same as my stock Athlon. In game tests 1-3 the GF6800U is faster by 18%, 11% and 9%, while in game 4 it's marginally slower.

And here's 3DMark05:
View attachment 207517
This time the Athlon needed a 2.5 GHz OC to catch up. The GPUs score about the same in game tests 1 and 3, but in game 2 a stock 7600GT is 13% ahead.

Thanks @QuietBob ! Now I have to fire up my P4 2.66 Ghz and 3.2 Ghz and see how it does against that Athlon. What memory speeds are you using ?

 

[DR4G00N]

I caught the repair bug again. Decided to dig out my PC-DL and try to fix it. Tried running a Nocona chip in it (which did work) but one of the mosfet's let the smoke out a bit after (Board still works fine with just 3 phases but I can't trust it with both cpu's).
I ran an external vrm on it since then for benching which is why it looks a bit rough.

 

[Athlonite]

It's not socket 754 if it has Athlon 4800+. It's either socket 939 with Athlon 4800+ or socket 754 with some lesser Athlon 64.

You are correct it's not it is actually an Athlon 64 3200 probably why I should clean tim off instead of trying to rememguess what the CPU was which means the the CPU in the A8R32 is probably the 4800+ ahwell it had been such a long time since I used those boards at my age things start to get a little skewiff

Umm, yes it is. GOG for the Win!

AquaNox

The undersea world has undergone a transformation from a tranquil environment to a place

www.gog.com

And it's only $6.

They have the whole series;

AquaNox 2: Revelation

In 2666 a young freighter pilot called William Drake sets out to search for the heritage

www.gog.com

$6

Archimedean Dynasty

The all consuming darkness has you battle-scarred submarine in a vice-like grip. As you n

www.gog.com

$6

Aquanox Deep Descent

Aquanox Deep Descent is a first person underwater vehicle shooter, in which players c

www.gog.com

$30 for the standard edition.

Cheers for that but the last time I tried to run AquaNox on any OS over XP it failed to work even with the DX update patch it wouldn't even start on windows 7 so I very much have doubts about it being playable on Windows 8 or 10 like GOG are saying but I'll give it ago

 

[QuietBob]

Thanks @QuietBob ! Now I have to fire up my P4 2.66 Ghz and 3.2 Ghz and see how it does against that Athlon. What memory speeds are you using ?

The tests were run at DDR-400. Looking forward to your results!

Cheers for that but the last time I tried to run AquaNox on any OS over XP it failed to work even with the DX update patch it wouldn't even start on windows 7 so I very much have doubts about it being playable on Windows 8 or 10 like GOG are saying but I'll give it ago

Have you tried running it in compatibility mode? According to PCGamingWiki the game should be playable on modern systems, and even in 4K/ultrawide.

 

[MaxiPro800]

I caught the repair bug again. Decided to dig out my PC-DL and try to fix it. Tried running a Nocona chip in it (which did work) but one of the mosfet's let the smoke out a bit after (Board still works fine with just 3 phases but I can't trust it with both cpu's).
I ran an external vrm on it since then for benching which is why it looks a bit rough.

View attachment 207550

As far as I can see, it's just the big drain pads that are gone. You could probably safely scrape away some of the lacquer above it, drop heavy amounts of solder on it and then solder the MOSFET's drain pads together. Also I'd populate that empty MOSFET spot next to the 8pin 12V socket for further enhancement of power.

 

[F-Zero]

The tests were run at DDR-400. Looking forward to your results!

Hey @QuietBob here are the test results for the:

P4 2.66 Ghz, 533 FSB, 512 KB L2 Northwood, DDR 333 Mhz,
P4 3.2 Ghz, 800 FSB, 1 MB L2 Prescott, DDR 400 Mhz
for fun I added a C2Q Q6600, DDR2 533 Mhz

 

[lexluthermiester]

Cheers for that but the last time I tried to run AquaNox on any OS over XP it failed to work even with the DX update patch it wouldn't even start on windows 7 so I very much have doubts about it being playable on Windows 8 or 10 like GOG are saying but I'll give it ago

If it didn't run well, the reviews would would be telling of such. Haven't played any of them myself, so I can't personally say. I think you'll be fine though.

 

[QuietBob]

Hey @QuietBob here are the test results for the:

P4 2.66 Ghz, 533 FSB, 512 KB L2 Northwood, DDR 333 Mhz,
P4 3.2 Ghz, 800 FSB, 1 MB L2 Prescott, DDR 400 Mhz
for fun I added a C2Q Q6600, DDR2 533 Mhz

View attachment 207629View attachment 207630

View attachment 207631View attachment 207632

View attachment 207627View attachment 207628

Thanks for those, it's always fun to compare different architectures! Here are my oc'd results on the same platform:

 

[Trekkie4]

99,9% to the finish line, only missing a CD-ROM drive & a Tualatin upgrade

 

[agent_x007]

Not sure if I shown my VGA ISA cards yet :

Here's my latest AGP card though :

 

[Robert B]

Doom OST - MasterMind

CJ #1 aka Client Job No. 1 - Usually I don't take jobs from other people yet but I made an exception this time.

I got this puppy in for some repairs and CPR and let's not forget some SPA treatment Robert B style! FTW!!! It is not mine but heck I couldn't pass up the chance to have my way with it.

Even if it doesn't look like it, this card is a train wreck! The damage is mostly on the back. I have all of the parts from a donor V5 5500 card and a Leadtek GF 4 Ti 4200, believe it or not! Also it needs some trace repair on the back and even if I succeed in this endeavor with just my basic tools, there still is a big question if one of the memory chips has survived a shattering impact ... I like the odds! RIP and TEAR!!!

Old parts for a relic of times gone by! This seems appropriate don't you think? At DOOM's Gate