TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[AugeK]

Local bus, original Vesa Local Bus (VLB), to be more precise was meant to be the successor of ISA bus, with 33 MHz instead of 11 (ISA). As Speed was shared between cards it died after a year or two with the advent of 1st gen PCI.
Must have been around 95/96.

 

[Ruru]

Local bus, original Vesa Local Bus (VLB), to be more precise was meant to be the successor of ISA bus, with 33 MHz instead of 11 (ISA). As Speed was shared between cards it died after a year or two with the advent of 1st gen PCI.
Must have been around 95/96.

Wasn't the standard speed for 16-bit ISA around ~8MHz after CPUs got faster? Originally it ran at the CPU (or bus, as they didn't have multipliers) speed (4.77MHz on PC and XT, 6MHz and later 8MHz on AT)

VLB ran also at the bus speed, that's why the 486DX 50 (not DX2) and VLB were usually an unstable combination.

 

[Robert B]

I think that the LOCAL BUS SLOT isn't VLB. It looks like an EISA slot but I am pretty sure that it isn't an EISA slot as back in the day thing weren't so regulated like today. For all intents and purposes it may be a proprietary slot.

L.E. I found this webpage where is says that is an OPTi Local Bus Slot

Opti Local Bus – ancientelectronics

Posts about Opti Local Bus written by justinwl

ancientelectronics.wordpress.com

"The two slots at the bottom that I have circled are the Opti bus connectors in question. If you know a lot about this era of motherboards you may mistake them for EISA slots which is what I thought they were at first. One of the biggest issues with this slot type is that it looks exactly like the somewhat more common EISA slots of the time and will physically accept EISA cards without issue. The problem is installing a EISA card in a Opti bus slot and powering on the board could very well result in a blown out card, motherboard or both. This being the case make completely sure what kind of expansion slot your motherboard is sporting. Fortunately when I found this board in a box of random PC parts at a local monthly electronics fest I also found an accompanying Opti Local Bus video card."

I don't know if I'll find the manual for that dinosaur. Heck even jumper settings will be hard to be found. I'll try all the combinations.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Saw this and thought it would fit in here;

 

[Ruru]

Saw this and thought it would fit in here;

RETRO Hardware also put together a cool 775 setup:

 

[DR4G00N]

I was just playing around with crossfire for fun with 2x HD 5870's & a Q6600 (choked them to death of course).

 

[Trekkie4]

What will I find next week?!?!

More later.

At this point, I'm too afraid to ask...

 

[agent_x007]

Vsync be damned, nothing can stop me from having my Hz and smooth FPS

 

[AlwaysHope]

They are low voltage CL5 PSC chips. They suck for overclocking. Only DDR2 worth anything is Micron D9 based.
But hey, if you're happy with them that's all that matters. At least I'll know you are not a threat to any of my benching scores. lol

PSC? suck for OC? don't think so...
I'll post some screenshots when I'm able to access that machine again although its on a P45 board.

 

[AugeK]

Remember this?

 

[Ruru]

Remember this?
View attachment 222330View attachment 222331

Yonah and Penryn? Sure.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Yeah heat has definitely cooked them, and the fact they are all pretty turdy brands, OST Teapo and some Jamicons.

Shame as shuttles were not cheap back in the day.

The issue was a couple of dead 470uf Jamicons on the 5vsb that looked fine till I put them on the meter.

Well that was stopping it powering up, not much filtering being done by the rest.

All redone now with Panasonics, board too.

Just need to find time to stick it all back together.

Clawhammer was a bonus too

That 3D Mark 2001 SE score looks about right for a stock ATI Radeon 9000 Pro, which regularly got beat by a Radeon 8500 in benchmarks.

 

[Ruru]

That 3D Mark 2001 SE score looks about right for a stock ATI Radeon 9000 Pro, which regularly got beat by a Radeon 8500 in benchmarks.

9000 Pro is just an overclocked 9000 (which got replaced by 9200, same clocks, only difference is AGP8X support) so no wonder. 8500 was a high-end card and 9000/9200 were lower end.

 

[Trekkie4]

3, actually! I also found the smaller, mATX "baby" one Seems to share the internal structure with its bigger brother (especially the power switch, LEDs, and blanking plates), but everything else is unique to this particular model & not compatible with Midi tower design.

Remember this small, mATX Adison case from several months ago?

Weeell, I found another one! A fellow forumer called me on my cell around 8AM and told me that he ran into one of the "Adison" cases and asked me if I wanted it or not. Seriously, as if he had to ask me...


Mobo inside was that Chaintech 6ASV0 which I mentioned & talked about yesterday. Entirely original layout from the store, as it was back in 1998.


After taking the whole thing apart, cleaning every corner & part of the frame and washing the plastic front in my dishwasher, this is how it looks now. Quite the improvement, don't you think so?


Would you believe that it even had original CR2032 CMOS battery inside?!


The idea was to preserve the original specs, but upgrade the overall performance. Especially when it comes to 3D & gaming, but I'm afraid that will have to wait as I don't have any decent PCI cards available, at the time. Also, you may have noticed that it's missing a floppy cable. Other than that, it's all done & fully operational!

Detailed specs, along with "before & after" comparison:

CPU: Intel Pentium II, 350 (was originally Celeron 333A)
MBO: Chaintech 6ASV0 (original)
RAM: 1x 128MB PC133, SD-RAM (was originally 1x 32MB PC100)
VGA: ATI Rage Turbo (On-Board) (original, but hoping to upgrade to something better...?)
HDD: Quantum Fireball 4.3GB (HDD was missing)
ODD: BTC BCD 24X (ODD was missing)
FDD: Teac 1.44MB Floppy (FDD was missing)
PSU: Codegen 300W, ATX (was originally 200W)
OS: Windows 98 First Edition
Other: Diamond 56k V90 dial-up modem (didn't have any expansion cards)

 

[Ruru]

Remember this small, mATX Adison case from several months ago?

Weeell, I found another one! A fellow forumer called me on my cell around 8AM and told me that he ran into one of the "Adison" cases and asked me if I wanted it or not. Seriously, as if he had to ask me...


Mobo inside was that Chaintech 6ASV0 which I mentioned & talked about yesterday. Entirely original layout from the store, as it was back in 1998.


After taking the whole thing apart, cleaning every corner & part of the frame and washing the plastic front in my dishwasher, this is how it looks now. Quite the improvement, don't you think so?


Would you believe that it even had original CR2032 CMOS battery inside?!


The idea was to preserve the original specs, but upgrade the overall performance. Especially when it comes to 3D & gaming, but I'm afraid that will have to wait as I don't have any decent PCI cards available, at the time. Also, you may have noticed that it's missing a floppy cable. Other than that, it's all done & fully operational!

Detailed specs, along with "before & after" comparison:

CPU: Intel Pentium II, 350 (was originally Celeron 333A)
MBO: Chaintech 6ASV0 (original)
RAM: 1x 128MB PC133, SD-RAM (was originally 1x 32MB PC100)
VGA: ATI Rage Turbo (On-Board) (original, but hoping to upgrade to something better...?)
HDD: Quantum Fireball 4.3GB (HDD was missing)
ODD: BTC BCD 24X (ODD was missing)
FDD: Teac 1.44MB Floppy (FDD was missing)
PSU: Codegen 300W, ATX (was originally 200W)
OS: Windows 98 First Edition
Other: Diamond 56k V90 dial-up modem (didn't have any expansion cards)

What a nice setup! Though I'd change that PSU immediately, Codegens were F-tier even in the early to mid-2000s. One such unit (350W) murdered my 6600 GT back in the day.

 

[Trekkie4]

What a nice setup! Though I'd change that PSU immediately, Codegens were F-tier even in the early to mid-2000s. One such unit (350W) murdered my 6600 GT back in the day.

My own setup "Open Space" from back in a day (which was a noticeable step-up in terms of price & performance) originally came with 200W Codegen PSU. On the other hand, the one I found inside this smaller, mATX case is some other brand entirely, can't remember the name at this point.

In either case, it was a small ATX factor PSU, with the maximum capacity of 200W or less. This particular model was called "Multimedia Hit 15" (with the number "15" referring to 15" CRT screen) and it was never meant to be a powerhouse and/or high performance machine, which would certainly explain the PSU choice. Besides, I'm not sure I'd trust PSU that's been out of the service for over 20 years, regardless of which brand it was.

So really, that Codegen is actually quite the improvement over the original PSU

Edit
Here's the model lineup from entry level (Aurora) to expert, high-performance model (Star Gate 21)


The one I got yesterday was second model (Multimedia Hit 15), where on the other hand mine was second to last (and best), Open Space 17

 

[Mr.Scott]

PSC? suck for OC? don't think so...

DDR2 ? Yes, suck.
DDR3 PSC is a different animal though.

 

[AlwaysHope]

DDR2 ? Yes, suck.
DDR3 PSC is a different animal though.

You didn't explain what PSC means. Please do. And by 'suck', what % of OC is considered this by you?

 

[Trekkie4]

You didn't explain what PSC means. Please do. And by 'suck', what % of OC is considered this by you?

Uhh... I'm going to take a wild guess & say Printer/Scanner/Copier?

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

The amount of copper in this 775 build wow....

 

[DR4G00N]

You didn't explain what PSC means. Please do. And by 'suck', what % of OC is considered this by you?

Powerchip Semiconductor Corp.. They're an IC manufacturer like Micron, Samsung, Hynix, Ect.
I'm sure back in they're day PSC DDR2 was pretty decent for a daily system but it still can't compare to Micron D9 DDR2 for benching purposes, 1200 CL5 or 6 with PSC doesn't cut it, any good D9 will do around 1300+ CL5 @ 2.2-2.3V.

 

[seth1911]

within the next 4 weeks ill get a Board for my Athlon 7750, 8GB RAM and HD 5870 2GB

 

[bobbybluz]

Saw this and thought it would fit in here;

Now I know where I was 20 years ago yesterday: At the official Microsoft TS2 party here for the release of Windows XP. I used to go to all of the TS2 events mainly to get free stuff plus fed with the cheap buffet food they always had. I still have some of the contents of the SWAG bag everybody was given including two of the XP t-shirts that have somehow survived intact but far from their original bright white. Oh what a different world it was back then, many fond memories.

 

[lexluthermiester]

The amount of copper in this 775 build wow....

That is just cool!

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

That is just cool!

It sure looks like miniature rollercoater track. Have this PC run some rollercoaster Tycoon game and it would be perfect. Damn do I miss where motherboard and heatsinks are all copper like this.

Edit : I am still looking for the Scythe copper Ninja cooler until today. No one is selling it at all.