TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[lexluthermiester]

Thanks for that Lex. I have just seen a better deal on eBay for the same price but unopened but a better make Verbatim DataLife MF 2HD 3.5” Microdisks Floppy Disks 1.44MB 20 Pack BRAND NEW but he has a picture of a 10 pack on there.I just sent the seller a message asking if it is 20 for that price.It seems very cheap for a good brand like that.13 pounds make an offer. I will take. it at that price.The other one i put on here did not have
*MF 2HD. double Face* on it.




View attachment 242090

I can't remember what the "MF" in the name of the product stands for. I remember it was a premium disk surface coating feature designed to make the disks far more durable. I also remember Verbatum floppies being among the best, so grab those! They will serve you well and last a long time!

 

[Ruru]

I can't remember what the "MF" in the name of the product stands for.

I could say something but then I remembered that we're not in the Lounge part of forums.. I guess what you guess what I was going to say about MF floppies..

 

[lexluthermiester]

I could say something but then I remembered that we're not in the Lounge part of forums.. I guess what you guess what I was going to say about MF floppies..

That is EXACTLY what I thought the first time I saw them. Had full on Samual L Jackson moment right in the middle of CompUSA. My wife was sooo embarrassed.

 

[MachineLearning]

And these anniversary editions are nice. I got a kit myself, I think they all are GMH.

I think so too.

With that pictured kit, I was able to get #1 spot on PYPrime 2B for DDR2.

Submission | Leaderboards

Here are all of the settings, which took me a few hours to get right:

I don't think I love anything more than overclocking...

Specs:
- E8500 @ ~4.7GHz
- ASUS P5Q Turbo r1.02g
- 2x1GB Crucial 10 Year Anniversary DDR2, spec. 667MHz, 3-3-3-12 @ 2.2v (Micron D9GMH). With two 92mm fans blowing on the sticks and NB
- Super Flower Leadex III Bronze Pro 650W
- SanDisk X400 128GB
- Gammaxx 400 w/ 1x Arctic P12 in pull configuration, MX-4 paste
- Gigabyte GTX 750 "Tie"

Warp9 reigns supreme.

 

[Greenslade]

Happy birthday! I've lived through the Athlon XP, 64, LGA 775 and later era, so that's why hardware from that era is interesting as now it's half-free actually. It's now fine to get a CPU and overclock it to its max, back in my teens I was a budget gamer and well, I still am, my current PC (AMD R5 3600, 32GB, 1080 Ti) is a powerful system but not high-end.

I still need one thing to get truly to the past and that's GF4 Ti card. GF3 is weaker, I have one though.

Also, the lady was how old in this picture? She died at 109 but I've seen many 80yers who look older.

edit: I still have my NES I got in -93 ^^

Thanks for the birthday greetings Hope you have a good 32 seconed one next month.This is only 3 years ago at 106?so that picture could be anything from 99?That must be a wig she is wearing.I see people in there 70,s who look a lot older than her,I would like to know her sercret of how she has lived so long

I can't remember what the "MF" in the name of the product stands for. I remember it was a premium disk surface coating feature designed to make the disks far more durable. I also remember Verbatum floppies being among the best, so grab those! They will serve you well and last a long time!

See above that was not to be. Yes Verbatum are the best.Have you heard of *PC Line *make the ones i put on here opened.I don,t know whether to go for Verbatum £9 for 10 .or the Pc line ones for 12 pounds for 20?
I have put a offer for 7 ,30 with 3,20 pounds for shipping that would be 10,50 all in.He accepted the offer i should have going lower but a saving of 1.70 is good on 9 pounds ,and with a good message to sellers saying
something like *hope your day i s going well* helps.Its worked all the time but should have gone lower on the GPIU it was 120 i offered 112 i should have gone at least 10% especially on something in that price range.

 

[Dinnercore]

With that pictured kit, I was able to get #1 spot on PYPrime 2B for DDR2.

Congrats on the sub! I did not even know about this benchmark until now, gotta give it a try too.

And you probably already read about DDR2 voltages but 2.6V on air is up there I'm a little baby and the collector part in me does not want to loose a single part I OC so I never went beyond 2.4V on air cooling for these microns. It's all luck beyond 2.4V if your sticks survive that or not. Even at 2.4V many kits died within a few weeks leading to manufacturers quickly dropping the kits that were specified that high. It is not the heat that kills here, but the voltage.

Did you try the 333 strap too? Usually that is the one which works best for me.

 

[Ruru]

I may get a 290X in a month. Not sure but...

When my 2nd PC has that card, it can run practically any game without problems.

edit: typo

 

[Greenslade]

I just orded this one on eBAY it is a open box one. Unusal to get new goods on there cheaper than Amazon.
Moligh doll USB Floppy Drive 3.5inch USB External Floppy Disk Drive Portable 1.44 MB FDD USB Drive Plug and for PC Windows 10 7 8 Windows XP Vista Black
Six pounds cheaper than on Amazon, and it had 90 reviews which is the best on there for a floppy drive.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Have you heard of *PC Line *make the ones i put on here opened.

I have not. No idea as to their quality.

I don,t know whether to go for Verbatum £9 for 10

That's not a terrible price. Though you could hold out for a better offer...

I just orded this one on eBAY it is a open box one. Unusal to get new goods on there cheaper than Amazon.
Moligh doll USB Floppy Drive 3.5inch USB External Floppy Disk Drive Portable 1.44 MB FDD USB Drive Plug and for PC Windows 10 7 8 Windows XP Vista Black
Six pounds cheaper than on Amazon, and it had 90 reviews which is the best on there for a floppy drive.

Link?

 

[MachineLearning]

Congrats on the sub! I did not even know about this benchmark until now, gotta give it a try too.

And you probably already read about DDR2 voltages but 2.6V on air is up there I'm a little baby and the collector part in me does not want to loose a single part I OC so I never went beyond 2.4V on air cooling for these microns. It's all luck beyond 2.4V if your sticks survive that or not. Even at 2.4V many kits died within a few weeks leading to manufacturers quickly dropping the kits that were specified that high. It is not the heat that kills here, but the voltage.

Did you try the 333 strap too? Usually that is the one which works best for me.

Yup! I initially told myself I wouldn't go above 2.4v, but I couldn't help myself 333 strap def worked better for me, but I actually didn't try it once during any of these tests. Only afterwards, when I attempted to wring a raw frequency result (unsuccessful), did I try 333 - jaw dropped when it booted what 400 couldn't.

And thank you! I'm certain that you, Mr. Scott or ksateaaa23 could beat that score. In fact, I would love for you to do so, here are things that helped me go from > 39s to < 33s:

- You want good single core. Spots #2 and #3 are running around 4GHz, probably because it's a DRAM benchmark, but this is a mistake IMO. I saw massive gains after changing only the CPU multiplier. Your 4.8GHz E8600(?) would be amazing for this. I'm not sure how a heavily overclocked Phenom II would do, there are a couple on the rankings but I feel as though they're unoptimized. Lower IPC and probably lower max clock too, but I do wonder if an on-die memory controller overcomes these issues - @Mr.Scott may be the best one to test this, with his AM3 experience.
- Timings obviously, but the ones I noticed helping the most aside from the obvious (tCAS) were tRRD, tWR, and tRP. I didn't test it as much, but I reckon tRAS has particularly high effect on the result as well.

Good luck, I think sub 30 might be possible with the right overclocker! You can do it

 

[Dinnercore]

I'll give it a try, but today I try my luck with quad cores. Got a Q9550 installed at the moment. Currently running 4350MHz at 512MHz FSB.

Btw my good C2Ds are all E8500. I only have two E8600 as they cost 5x as much and they are becoming a bit sparse. And these two E8600 are trash.

 

[MachineLearning]

I'll give it a try, but today I try my luck with quad cores. Got a Q9550 installed at the moment. Currently running 4350MHz at 512MHz FSB.

Btw my good C2Ds are all E8500. I only have two E8600 as they cost 5x as much and they are becoming a bit sparse. And these two E8600 are trash.

Good stuff - who knows, maybe a C2Q would do way better. I also pretty much ignore E8600's, they're not cost effective as you say and 9.5x is fine enough.

Keep us posted on how it goes

 

[lexluthermiester]

Currently running 4350MHz at 512MHz FSB.

Good grief!! I didn't know they could do that...

 

[Dinnercore]

Good grief!! I didn't know they could do that...

They can, 1.28Vtt currently. At and beyond 500 the Vtt curve climbs fast tho. I don't think I can get this to 520 at a reasonable Vtt voltage. My way of clocking these is start with VTT and VNB very low, go up in 10MHz steps on the FSB until you hit instability. Then tune GTLs and go further until you encounter the bus related hard freezes (reset will not work). Then go higher on VTT and VNB.

P45 Chipset is nice for quad cores.

 

[MachineLearning]

Good grief!! I didn't know they could do that...

Hell yeah they can. Check out our team best!

They can, 1.28Vtt currently. At and beyond 500 the Vtt curve climbs fast tho. I don't think I can get this to 520 at a reasonable Vtt voltage. My way of clocking these is start with VTT and VNB very low, go up in 10MHz steps on the FSB until you hit instability. Then tune GTLs and go further until you encounter the bus related hard freezes (reset will not work). Then go higher on VTT and VNB.

P45 Chipset is nice for quad cores.

View attachment 242223

My favorite is when you're on that razor edge of stability and your BIOS thinks it's corrupt.

 

[Dinnercore]

Hell yeah they can. Check out our team best!


My favorite is when you're on that razor edge of stability and your BIOS thinks it's corrupt.

I think @lexluthermiester meant the quad core FSB. Its way more difficult to reach high FSB on quads, their 500 is like 600 on a C2D.

And yeah funny things happen on the edge. My favorite is when you can boot into a corrupted OS.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I think @lexluthermiester meant the quad core FSB.

Yes, that is what I meant.

 

[Trekkie4]

Here's something you don't get to see every day ... motor swap for an old CD-ROM drive. More about that in a second, but first let me give you a heads down.

I got couple of BTC BCD 24XH drives which didn't seem to work, or detect any media whatsoever. Whenever it's an audio CD or data one - doesn't make any difference. So long story short, I came across this 50X Acer unit which seems to share the same, Philips loader as BTC and I was hoping to do a clean swap. Old assembly out & new one in, end of story!


Unfortunately, things did not go according to plan ... do they ever? Acer (being a newer, faster model) has updated mechanism with newer firmware AND mechanical revision. Gear reduction for the servo mechanism has been changed to allow faster seek times, and there has been changes in wiring diagram, as servo motor & laser pickup now both have their separate connectors - where the older BTC does not, they share a single ribbon connector making them mutually incompatible.

Of course, I didn't ... and couldn't allow something like that to get in the way, so I started thinking... With a bit of drilling, hacking, grinding & fabricating new mounts, I could easily transfer JUST the motor alone, since the motor was the only thing I needed, in the first place. And so there you have it, one "Acer" motor mounted on "BTC" frame chassis



To be honest, mounting holes for this particular motor already existed before, but they hadn't been used on BTC, so it was mainly just a matter of hacking out the excess plastic & mounting the motor on the existing mounts.

Long story short, it didn't work ... unfortunately Yes, the CD drive DOES appear to be working, and it even plays audio CDs just fine. Therefore I've already made a huge deal of progress because it was completely dead before, I couldn't read any discs. Data CDs on the other hand does not appear to be working ... it gets recognized and the unit spins it up but then gets confused & after several attempts to read the content gives up. Now sure what is going on, but I'm guessing this is due to RPM difference between the two motors. The old one was much slower (for 24X drive) where the new, replacement one is 50X and spins at noticeably faster RPM. If only I could limit the damn thing, prevent it from speeding up & allow the BTC firmware to actually read/access the content in time - would something like that even be possible?! Either way, I call this somewhat successful! No, it's not perfect, and it didn't work according to plan, but the unit is still more operational than it was before!
And so there you have it, BTC playing audio CD... You can even see that "invisible laser radiation" beam, looks pretty decent IMHO


Oh, and for those of you who are curious, this is actually Philips loader/mech, model number is ROL 1318/2. It was a somewhat common mechanism back in a day, used on many different drives including Philips, itself:

The easiest way to recognize these is by big, round LED and tray door flap, which folds down and reveals the actual tray inside. Rather than door flap/trip being a single piece and sliding out together.

 

[Greenslade]

I have not. No idea as to their quality.

That's not a terrible price. Though you could hold out for a better offer...

Link?

​

4.3 out of 5 stars 90 ratings

I have not. No idea as to their quality.

That's not a terrible price. Though you could hold out for a better offer...

Link?

​

That's not a terrible price. Though you could hold out for a better offer...

Link?

They are the ones i put in here earlier
The only info i can see on them.I have bought them now anyway. 10.50 for 20.

Link 4.3 out of 5 stars 90 ratings

 

[MachineLearning]

Not much writing on this one... You folks know what I do. Enjoy.

1.0mm APT2560 thermal pads

NF200, the spicy boy that allows us our 5x PCIe x16 slots.

vDIMM in the upper. NF200 & SB vREG in the lower?

NB vREG?

QPI vREG?

Our USB 3.0 buddy

Dual Intel 82574L gigabit LAN

Realtek ALC889

No Volterra, but it's a baby Classified in a way, with the NF200. Nice.
Time for some Xeon binning!

 

[karakarga]

One really bad thing happening soon is, end of life of Internet Explorer 11 in June 2022.

It is bad, because, x86 only processors from Pentium 3 ~ 4 era can not enter into web without that browser. The last browser to use with a P3-1000 CPU is to install Windows 7 with at least 1 GB ram and to use Internet Explorer 11 with it. There is still support for Windows 7 but it is in the last year of extended support.

People still can not managed to find a good solution to crack Windows 10 to run such old hardware because of newer requirements but:

XD ? --> BypassXDCheck for Intel
NX ? --> BypassNXCheck for AMD
XN ? --> BypassXNCheck for ARM (absurd!)
PAE ? --> BypassPAECheck
SSE ? --> BypassSSECheck for AMD Athlon
SSE2 ? --> BypassSSE2Check

- Did anyone tried those commands like bypassing TPM? -

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\LabConfig]
"BypassTPMCheck"=dword:00000001
"BypassSecureBootCheck"=dword:00000001
"BypassRAMCheck"=dword:00000001
"BypassStorageCheck"=dword:00000001
"BypassCPUCheck"=dword:00000001

like that we know.

--> Volunteers wanted to test those in bold above to crack Windows 10 x86 edition to run old hardware! <--

Note: A modified iso image must be prepared and written on 4.7GB DVD before installation!

 

[Trekkie4]

One really bad thing happening soon is, end of life of Internet Explorer 11 in June 2022.

It is bad, because, x86 only processors from Pentium 3 ~ 4 era can not enter into web without that browser. The last browser to use with a P3-1000 CPU is to install Windows 7 with at least 1 GB ram and to use Internet Explorer 11 with it. There is still support for Windows 7 but it is in the last year of extended support.

People still can not managed to find a good solution to crack Windows 10 to run such old hardware because of newer requirements but:

XD ? --> BypassXDCheck for Intel
NX ? --> BypassNXCheck for AMD
XN ? --> BypassXNCheck for ARM (absurd!)
PAE ? --> BypassPAECheck
SSE ? --> BypassSSECheck for AMD Athlon
SSE2 ? --> BypassSSE2Check

- Did anyone tried those commands like bypassing TPM? -

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\LabConfig]
"BypassTPMCheck"=dword:00000001
"BypassSecureBootCheck"=dword:00000001
"BypassRAMCheck"=dword:00000001
"BypassStorageCheck"=dword:00000001
"BypassCPUCheck"=dword:00000001

like that we know.

--> Volunteers wanted to test those in bold above to crack Windows 10 x86 edition to run old hardware! <--

Note: A modified iso image must be prepared and written on 4.7GB DVD before installation!

This is entirely my personal opinion of course, but Pentiums II, III and even 4 (from S423 & 478 era) have no business being online, to begin with. Why bother ... I find myself struggling with some pages running i5 760 (with GTX 760), so you can only imagine how P3 or P4 would perform in the same situation

 

[Mr.Scott]

I can't even imagine a PIII still as a web surfer.

 

[Splinterdog]

Talking of Asus P5QL Pro motherboards, this one came in yesterday not having been looked at for nearly ten years, at a guess. Running Windows 7 x64 Ultimate on a Core 2 Quad Q8200 with some weird Chinese screen saver and monitoring software virus called 360N or something, a 350w Power Cooler (July 2005) PSU which was on its last legs and the usual gunked up heatsink and GPU, so it desperately needed some tlc.
I stripped it down, rebuilt the XFX 9600GT (512Mb), changed the PSU for a nice Thermaltake TR2 600 I had stashed away, installed Windows 10 and enjoyed every minute getting it back into shape. Fortunately nothing needed backing up, which made the job a lot easier and it's not often that I come across machines like this that still function. The case, which doesn't have a side panel is a Vitsuba.
This motherboard has the 24 pin power socket in an odd place and I always wondered why Asus and others designed them like this in the past. It makes cable management a bit tricky. It only has 4Gb RAM, but at this stage it's not for gaming but in a photo shop, so I may make an offer for it when the time is right.






The old PSU readings which told the same story on a multimeter.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I find myself struggling with some pages running i5 760 (with GTX 760)

When testing Windows 11 beta last year, the Core2 T7200 I used to prove 11 could run on older systems was a bit slow, but it got there. So yeah, anything older is REALLY going to struggle. However, My Q9550 based Lenovo does fine.