TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Darmok N Jalad]

The dual x5690s installed. That’s 6x8GB of DDR3 1333 ECC.

 

[Ruru]

This. Cooling and motherboard are your biggest limits. If your board has nasty vDroop or your cooler isn't up to the task you will hit the same wall regardless of which of the top three Westmere 6C options you pick.

Custom loop and Asus P6X58D-E

 

[Greenslade]

Any of you guys into Thunderbirds I just saw this on F.M.P you never know what you will see on there.Last week someone was selling chocolate hash cake.Toyota previa converted into Thunderbird 2 rocket Road legal we have used this as a promotional vehicle it’s been lots of fun causes a lot of attention. I bet it does.That sure is retro.

1994 Thunderbird 2 space ship​

£15,000 for any one interested.You have to be a poser going about in that.

 

[Ruru]

Any of you guys into Thunderbirds

Only the Athlon core named Thunderbird

 

[droid-I]

 

[68Olds]

I grew up listening to a very different version of Thunderbird.

 

[Ruru]

I have an AXIA core Athlon Thunderbird 1000MHz, clocks easily to 1466MHz, in fact I haven't found its max yet.

Bought from Germany from ebay, best 8EUR ever spent!

 

[droid-I]

^^Overclocked Thunderbird

 

[Ruru]

^^Overclocked Thunderbird

Exactly! When you want to get a Socket A Athlon Thunderbird, the AXIA ones overclocks like mad!

There was a rumor that AXIAs were supposed to be 1500MHz model which were never released, and by overclocking those, that doesn't sound too impossible.

e: took a pic as well

 

[Greenslade]

I grew up listening to a very different version of Thunderbird.

Cool stuff i love that 60,s stuff.

The real thing.

 

[droid-I]

^^ almost feel like I should go through my socket A(462) stuff stashed away in the drawer for years. (ah them bridge points).
AMD Socket A OC

 

[Greenslade]

^^ almost feel like I should go through my socket A(462) stuff stashed away in the drawer for years. (ah them bridge points on the die).
AMD Socket A OC

I have a socket 462 Biotstar Board, try as I might I can't get it to boot,.given it up now.

 

[droid-I]

^sorry to hear, these twenty year old gear are calling "home". Guess you already tried a couple of skt A CPUs.
Note, classic, there is a difference between POST and boot, so if it POSTs then might be something still to "rescue".

 

[DR4G00N]

I have a socket 462 Biotstar Board, try as I might I can't get it to boot,.given it up now.

Probably needs a bios flash, not uncommon for the bios to corrupt after a while on these old boards.

 

[droid-I]

^ yes some of the s462 boards, the BIOS get messed up when the board, gets "old", tricky thing is then the method of applying a newer or "re-flashed" bios on them.

 

[Greenslade]

^sorry to hear, these twenty year old gear are calling "home". Guess you already tried a couple of skt A CPUs.
Note, classic, there is a difference between POST and boot, so if it POSTs then might be something still to "rescue".

I don,t get any signal on the monitor ,the ps2 keyboard lights up for a second.Fans spin the ethernet cable lights up.And i get a beep when there is no Ram.What is the difference between Post and Boot .?I am pretty new on this stuff.I am learning all the time.

 

[droid-I]

POST is the PC "Power On Self Test", and does need only power, CPU, RAM and GPU(and keyb/mouse too,and even might be tricky if some storage connected).
Boot is when Operating System gets going, and if there is trouble there.. well.
PC reboot /restart goes through all that in a working system, of course.

 

[Greenslade]

POST is the PC "Power On Self Test", and does need only power, CPU, RAM and GPU(and keyb/mouse too,and even might be tricky if some storage connected).
Boot is when Operating System gets going, and if there is trouble there.. well.
PC reboot /restart goes through all that in a working system, of course.

Thanks for explaining it all. Can you make sense of all I said about the board? How can I change the bios i don,t see how

 

[droid-I]

It is a long story but you need another skt A motherboard that supports the same BIOS provider, AMI or Award.
It has been years since I've done that, and even google search does not pick up on this, but in short it was something like, pluck out the failed BIOS chip
from the motherboard BIOS socket, put it in the known working board, replacing the chip it was on its and use BIOS "force/blind flash" using a DOS FDD(floppy) upon post, then when done, place the chip back in the other motherboard.

There are some guides on the net, maybe even on YT, but did not dig them out now.

 

[Ruru]

^^ almost feel like I should go through my socket A(462) stuff stashed away in the drawer for years. (ah them bridge points).
AMD Socket A OC

Got a cheap Asus A7N8X-X to play with those CPUs

 

[MaxiPro800]

I have a boxed (kinda) A7N8X-E Deluxe here. The only reason I'm not using it is the absence of a 12v P4 plug - the other ones I have (K7N2 Delta-ILSR and Epox EP-8RDA6+ Pro) both sport the 12v connector.

 

[Fouquin]

The only reason I'm not using it is the absence of a 12v P4 plug

Good news.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Thanks, but I already have the EP-8RDA6+ which seems like a better choice - native onboard SATA from the MCP (which the ASUS seems to lack), an upgraded Sillicon Image RAID chipset (3114 on the Epox vs 3112 on the ASUS), and looking it up on HWBot gives promising results. Oh, and the audio chipset is much more robust than the ASUS.

I'll very likely sell the ASUS locally in my country - I have had a few A7N8X-E Deluxe boards and I can't say I have been very impressed of their performance - the K7N2 and the Epox do seem slightly better in choice.

Of course, nothing beats a NF7, but good luck finding any NF7/AN7 in my country that doesn't cost as much as a mid-high end AMD FX or Sandy/Ivy Bridge build alone - again, I'm not counting flea markets or recycler stuff, which is pretty much a gamble (at least for me, though thanks to @Robert B I've begun learning SMD repair work and some other crazy stuff he's been doing - ZIF socket replacements included ).

Same goes for DFI boards of almost any kind - the only luck I've had so far with DFI boards were the Infinity nF4 SLi I'm currently running and the AM2 variant of it which needs a new northbridge HSF, as well as new caps around the CPU.

Lanparty boards are obscenely scarce from my classified searches, and anything that shows up has a price tag that would cost me at least a arm or a leg.

 

[Fouquin]

I already have the EP-8RDA6+ which seems like a better choice [...] and looking it up on HWBot gives promising results

It has 29 results and all of them worse than the mid-tier uploads for the A7N8X-E. Maybe it needs your help to show it's the favourable option.

Oh, and the audio chipset is much more robust than the ASUS.

You use the onboard audio on boards from 2003? I assumed everyone and their mother had an SB Live for their old boards. Those things are like cockroaches, they appear in your storage dusty and gross but refuse to die.

Of course, nothing beats a NF7, but good luck finding any NF7/AN7

The NF7 lacking USB boot is a drag for those who don't still keep binders full of CDs to recover/reinstall from. AN7 is absolutely a great board, though then again at the tippy top of performance squeezing the ASUS options just seem to be more flexible with so many options for hardmods.

 

[MaxiPro800]

I wouldn't trash the audio chipsets that were onboard during that era - Realtek's chipsets, while not stellar - aren't bad either. Except for Foxconn's implementation of it on the nF4 Ultra I have - there's something awfully wrong with it and I have no clue what it is. Anything else (even NF2) seems to work fine and sound pretty great for what they offer - I'm not very surprised of Sound Blasters of that era - I have a Audigy 2 ZS and a SE, and neither sound any different to me than the onboard ALC chipset of that era - 650, 655 and 850 included (since the EPoX uses ALC850).

ASUS' garbage ESD protection is also why I won't use it - either it's my fault or anything, but among all three boards (5 if you can consider a Jetway N2PAP-Lite and a A7N8X-VM/400 worth anything) the Deluxe variants usually had the worst ESD issues of all time - two of the Deluxes I had died due to it - and this 3rd one is a miracle to still live. Even the ASUS P4 boards I have were a trainwreck ESD wise (and I recall there being a warning to those who had P4P800 and P4C800s with the 82801ER southbridge in this regard), something enough for me to stay well away from anything ASUS that's Deluxe branded from those two eras, and instead turn my head to other companies - EPoX, Gigabyte and MSI, for the most part.

As for the EPoX - being among the top 10 rankings on the HWBot site does give me enough confidence. Not that I would be overclocking anytime soon - we're talking about hardware that's nearing the 25-30 year mark pretty soon - I'm not even expecting them to live at stock settings any longer than at best a few year tops. Especially the A7N8X boards - their MB build quality doesn't give me much confidence compared to other boards of the era.

NF7's USB boot issue wouldn't be something of big issue - boards of that era in general weren't really made to boot USB drives yet - even as far as Intel and AMD goes, the earliest I know of that can PROPERLY boot USB drives were early AGP 775 and Skt 754 mobos - anything below them had varying issues booting as much as Vista/7 USB install drives, and even XP wasn't a trouble-free experience anyhow - this applies to both Award BIOS and AMI BIOS - with the note that the latter was a horrible nightmare to get USB flash drives to boot - this was happening on a P4P800-E Deluxe, as well as a P4C800-E Deluxe!