TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[framebuffer]

Yeah - I was leaning on it a little with chilled water cooling.
To clarify, the board I used is a DFI SLI-DR.
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That's not bad at all!
Also like the RAM at 308 CL2.5 / 1T, what modules are you using?

 

[droid-I]

A socket 462 and 939 board from days past, these are still in working condition, I think. The EPoX I made a re-cap, not really in use since.
The S939 board was a bit tricky with its SATA connections at POST.

 

[stef]

Nice job! Epox 8RDA3 series was notorious for crappy caps.

I have refrubished MSI FX5900XT. Put a decent cooler on it.

Also tested this beast:

What a fun card . And heavier then Leadtek, which carries a lot of copper.

 

[de.das.dude]

Nice job! Epox 8RDA3 series was notorious for crappy caps.

I have refrubished MSI FX5900XT. Put a decent cooler on it.
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Also tested this beast:
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What a fun card . And heavier then Leadtek, which carries a lot of copper.

Zalman coolers were *chef's kiss*

 

[stef]

Not a huge fan of Fatal1ty brand, but it looks nice .

 

[droid-I]

Here an nvidia N6600/TD/128M AGP version, needs a bit of care, perhaps I will get into it some day, have a couple of soldering irons to work with this
When I tested this card some time ago, it actually worked for while, until it warmed up, display froze.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Here an nvidia N6600/TD/128M/A that needs a bit of care, perhaps I will get into it some day, have some four soldering irons to work with this
When I tested this card some time ago, it actually worked for while, until it warmed up, display froze.

Yeah, caps are shot.

 

[droid-I]

Here another s939 board. No visible damage seen on the board. Installs windows and Linux without hick-up every time, but as soon as desktop is on, it'll lock-up. Tried both PCI-e and PCI vga and different CPUs including the whole drill with RAM, PSU.
There are a lot of caps on this board, renewing them all is a bit daunting while the end result is unknown. (the bridge chip cooler I have removed after testing the board)

 

[stef]

Didn't nvidia chipsets of the era suffer from bumpgate?

 

[droid-I]

hmm, can't recall. This is the only nforce4 chipset board I have. Another one, by now lightly scrapped MSI nforce4 was doa when bought it 2nd hand. Not sure what happened to it.
EDIT : Had to look up "bumpgate". Yes, the RoHS matter did bring up some issues at the time, might well be a reason these boards fail.

 

[Robert B]

Those caps look to be Panasonic and Rubycon, so they are good for sure. I'm pretty sure that the problem lies somewhere else.

I also have one board like that which won't post at all.

 

[MachineLearning]

CPU-Z Validation Here

Got around to overclocking on my Jetway NC62K-LF mini-ITX board. I already posted about it here, so if you're interested in seeing the box + board alone + VRM configuration, that post holds it all

However I will copy/paste the quirky bits about this motherboard from that post since they really show why it's a unique piece of kit.

- PCI slot only, no PCIe expansion!
- nVidia chipset for an AMD socket, but after AMD bought ATI (nVidia 8200)
- ITX (only one I own)
- both PCI and PCIe gigabit LAN controllers are on the rear of the board, as well as the onboard audio and Fintek super I/O chip (ITX space saving stuff, still weird to me)
- Jetway
- G R E E N P C B
- 1x DDR2 DIMM slot for a maximum of 2GB
- Only a 20-pin ATX connector, not 24!
- All solid capacitors
- 2 serial ports, for my extensive serial needs
- According to some of the reviews on Newegg from back in the day, this should have overclocking options in BIOS, for some reason.

Well, it does indeed have OC options in BIOS, which honestly surprised me. This is a 6-layer single-DIMM DDR2 ITX board so memory overclocking at least should be strong imo, I don't see why it wouldn't be. CPU overclocking I was a bit more worried about going into this, it boots with a Phenom 9950 BE but I really don't want to nuke the VRM so I went straight to my Athlon II X2 270 for overclocking.

CPU-Z reads this board as being an nVidia 720a which I suppose isn't entirely inaccurate. The nVidia 8200 chipset, which is what this board really has, is the MCP78 (same codename as 720a), but with a GeForce 8200 mGPU vs the 8100 on the 720a. Wikipedia has a comparison of nVidia chipsets here for reference. Also despite the fact that this CPU cannot be unlocked, CPU-Z calls it a Phenom II x4 970 as well.

The end core OC was 4.19GHz (4.3GHz booted but overheated, damn these low AMD temp limits). On the memory, I was able to get to 986MHz 5-4-4-12 @ 2.22v using my v3.3 Corsair XMS2 800MHz stick. CL4 and/or CR1 refused to boot, and I'm not willing to add more voltage to this DIMM. In HWiNFO, VIN1 = vCore, and as you can see it fluctuates quite a bit even at idle, about 20mv and never at or below the set voltage. Under load it's pretty much the same story, but now 30mv fluctuation overall. The above image (final OC) was with a BIOS setting of 1.475v vCore, 1.45v CPU/NB, and 1.31v NB. I'm honestly fine with the poor voltage regulation, I expected it to be absolute crap but if this sensor is to be believed, it's at least not drooping down to like 1.2v or anything like that. NB never went above 43⁰C during all stress testing but the CPU was kicked in the teeth thermally, as expected

Overall I'm pretty happy, this little board can do way more than I thought but that absolutely garbage mGPU holds it back all it needed was a full length PCIe slot and that would have been perfect...

edit: I forgot to get a screenshot, but CPU-Z benchmark was at 191 single core and 370 all-core at the final OC.

Full specs:
- Athlon II X2 270 @ 4.19GHz, HT @ 1233MHz (as high as it needs to be)
- Jetway NCP62K-LF (GeForce 8200 NB) BIOS version A09
- 1x2GB Corsair XMS2 v3.3 @ 5-4-4-12-22-2T
- GeForce 8200 mGPU
- Super Flower Leadex III Bronze Pro 650W
- DeepCool Gammaxx 400 w/ 1x Arctic P12 PWM (FDB), MX-2 thermal paste
- MX-2 and 40mm Noctua fan for the NB heatsink
- SanDisk X400 128GB SSD

 

[Bones]

CPU-Z is mis-identifying the chip.
Could be something in the BIOS making it read incorrectly what the chip is and CPU-Z is just reporting what it's seeing.

Can't be an X4 chip anyway if it's an X2 270.

The X2 270 is a Regor core chip that only has two cores period in the die, there are no hidden cores to unlock with it so no way it can be an X4 chip.

That's not bad at all!
Also like the RAM at 308 CL2.5 / 1T, what modules are you using?

Corsair XMS v1.1 PC4400 2x 512MB sticks rated @2.5-4-4-8 stock.

 

[MachineLearning]

CPU-Z is mis-identifying the chip.
Could be something in the BIOS making it read incorrectly what the chip is and CPU-Z is just reporting what it's seeing.

Can't be an X4 chip anyway if it's an X2 270.

The X2 270 is a Regor core chip that only has two cores period in the die, there are no hidden cores to unlock with it so no way it can be an X4 chip.

Thank you, I didn't catch this and was going off of the CPU-Z readout. Edited

 

[lexluthermiester]

Had a Commodore64 in my teenage times (well I still have it in the attic somewhere) incl. a 8" drive.

I didn't know Commodore made an 8" floppy drive. Was that is the early days before the 5.25"?

 

[fec32a4de]

Got my old MacBook to run again... but with Windows

Not truly impressive on the inside, except battery won't hold a charge and it wouldn't start with it, removing it and running on power adapter works fine though.
GPU-Z validation: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/details/dq84v
CPU-Z: http://valid.x86.fr/pqcdai
Userbench: https://www.userbenchmark.com/userrun/50643254

Can't believe this thing managed to get 20fps in Original Crysis (on low)

 

[MarsM4N]

I didn't know Commodore made an 8" floppy drive. Was that is the early days before the 5.25"?

Before the 8" floppy they even had cartridges & tape drives. I got the 8" floppy drive "Commodore 1571" you can see in the video above @10:49.
He even demonstrates @10:19 how to use the back side of the disk. 170Kb per side, wouldn't get you far nowadays, lol.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Before the 8" floppy they even had cartridges & tape drives. I got the 8" floppy drive "Commodore 1571" you can see in the video above @10:49.
He even demonstrates @10:19 how to use the back side of the disk. 170Kb per side, wouldn't get you far nowadays, lol.

The 1571 is 5.25". I think you got your drives mixed up.. I went digging. Commodore doesn't seem to have ever made an 8" drive.

 

[MarsM4N]

The 1571 is 5.25". I think you got your drives mixed up.. I went digging. Commodore doesn't seem to have ever made an 8" drive.

Ohh yea, you're right. Didn't know they even existed. They look the same, but are side by side gigantic, size wise.

 

[stef]

Flashing my Vortices

In order of apperance:
* Pine Technologies PT-2628
* Aureal Vortex 2 SQ2500 by Aureal
* Diamond Sonic Impact S90
* generic Aureal Vortex 2 by Aureal
* Diamond Monster Sound MX300

 

[MachineLearning]

ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3... at this point I have about a dozen ASUS boards from a few different eras (by far the most of any manufacturer, I love old ASUSTeK). With this little guy we have:

- AMD 890GX NB, coupled w/ SB850
- ASUS core unlocker, despite AMD's SB850 not having ACC
- 8+2 phase VRM according to marketing, to me it looks correct (1 high 1 low, doubled?) but I'm not an expert so I'll leave a picture and allow you to draw your own conclusions.
- USB 3 thanks to NEC
- Realtek lan & audio
- As far as I can tell, the top white PCIe x16 slot is actually only wired for x8 operation, and the blue one is electrically x16. Seemingly that's why the VGA switch card is included?
- This was the last AMD chipset to include onboard graphics, before APUs were around.

That tall 8-pin EPS connector is pretty funky too, I guess they thought it'd be hard to reach if it were standard height? Though the VRM heatsink isn't as intrusive as that would imply. It would have been cool if they put capacitors in that chamber for instance, but I'm sure that's not what happened

I already tried two Phenom II 960T's on this board, one unfortunately is unable to unlock at all but the other one I got all 6 cores running at 4.1GHz+... when I finalize voltages, HT and uncore speeds, and get it stable, I'll post about it alongside another AM3 board I picked up... this time with an nVidia chipset.

EDIT: I didn't realize this at first, this motherboard has sideport GDDR3 for the onboard HD4290. It appears to be Samsung 1Gbit E-die according to the part number.

 

[Apocalypsee]

I'm looking for CRT monitor in 2nd hand market, but all I can find was old TV CRT, or just monitor that badly damaged and or not working. So I just looking for old LCD with 4:3 or 5:4 ratio so at least I have one monitor thats easy for old games. The I stumble upon this, EIZO Radiforce MX215, a 21.3 inch 3:4 display that was meant for MRI or CT scan. I paid RM172 or USD 41 dollar only for this beautiful monitor.

Because its 3:4 I need to rotate it so the button on the side, it looks odd but whatever as it does came with rotatable monitor stand. So much more space on my tiny computer table I like it!

Though its only 60Hz compared to 165Hz on my previous monitor, but this one support 10-bit color and its IPS instead of VA. Watching videos is a big difference. This was a professional monitor for medical application so I expect nothing less, but still, the colors are simply amazing even old games like Fallout 3 looks amazing on this monitor. The color just simply pop. Man I love this monitor!

 

[RyzenMaster.sys]

Nice find. I quite like older high end monitors myself as well. I have 2 19in 1280x1024 Dell Ultrasharps on my desk. One has DOM on 06 and the other is from roughly the same time period. One was given to me by my grandparents, the other was $10 from a flea market. Latter of which is really nice with the clip on sound bar (way better than normal monitor speakers) and built in USB hub. Also it's 75hz.

 

[Apocalypsee]

Nice find. I quite like older high end monitors myself as well. I have 2 19in 1280x1024 Dell Ultrasharps on my desk. One has DOM on 06 and the other is from roughly the same time period. One was given to me by my grandparents, the other was $10 from a flea market. Latter of which is really nice with the clip on sound bar (way better than normal monitor speakers) and built in USB hub. Also it's 75hz.

Yeah those are kind of monitor I was looking for initially but then this came along and I'm really sucker for EIZO monitor as I have Eizo Flexscan E55D before, even though its only 15 inch but it uses Sony aperture grill, image quality is simply amazing.

 

[Robert B]

After God knows how much gruesome stuff that medical grade EIZO RadiForce MX215 has seen I guess games and movies are like a breath of fresh air.