TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Voodoo Rufus]

Look what I found in my father's old work rig. I thought he had a 550, but a 450 is still nice to see. Maxed out Asus P5A with 768MB of memory.

 

[Ruru]

Look what I found in my father's old work rig. I thought he had a 550, but a 450 is still nice to see. Maxed out Asus P5A with 768MB of memory.

Nice, so with that CPU the mobo cache is L3 cache

 

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

Bought a SCSI Controller. Adaptec AHA 2940W/2940UW

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And an U2W version yesterday (4 free, only shipping costs)

 

[lexluthermiester]

And an U2W version yesterday (4 free, only shipping costs)

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Very nice! Those were $310 BITD and that was 25 years ago money. I hope it works for you! Seting up RAID 0 & RAID 5 was a breeze with that card!

 

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

I wanted to try a little this weekend, just for fun with a system. But after a movement there was still some work to do. Stuff lying everywhere in the room, so i did a cleanup first, sorting things together. Then you see every retro part again. Imo i have too much. I also want to sell some systems from P3&4 era. And maybe upgrade a P3-733 to 800MHz. Just because i see the 733 more in the past and the 800 was seen less?

 

[Ruru]

This makes my first real GPU in the early 2000s (GF2 MX) look like an enthusiast-level card.

 

[wolf]

Latest aqusitions!

And while I'm thinking of it @Ruru , I have a GTX480 now to see how the 6GB Quadro 6000 compares and you were spot on about the 6800GT, it runs Ultra stock clocks all day long, I'm getting a lot of benchmark data points from these cards.

Now to the aquisitions.

Not one, but two GeForce 8800GTX 768M - looking forward to SLI with these bad boys in a future build, and comparing them to 8800GT SLI and 8800GTX 640M SLI lol. I believe that makes 4 8800GTX's now but I'm, certain one or more doesn't work, and at least one or more does now.

GeForce GTX480 1536M - Quadro 6000 comparison will be fun! Plus I have an idea for a diorama of sorts for this card when it takes it's place in the eventual display, think Thermi memes

Radeon X1950XT 256M - honestly I think this is brand new never even opened, multiple stickers on the static bag, and the seal still on it, and that glorious smell of fresh electronics is present. Looking forward to testing this against the 7950GT for a fun DX9 showdown.

Quadro4 980XGL 128M - essentially the Quadro counterpart to the GeForce 4 Ti4800 (Ti4600 8x AGP if you prefer) - I believe my leadtek Ti4400 is non functional so this will be a great one to play with when the AGP rig gets a bit more love and attention.

 

[vvkvvkvvk]

Did SAS (Serial attached SCSI) ever became as popular thing as the older SCSI in workstations/servers/etc?

SAS was (and still is, if you need bulk spinning storage) the de facto standard for disk shelves and server storage systems for the past 2 decades. It's just past 5 years that tri-mode (think SAS, SATA, NVMe on a single card, you plug any of these disks and it just works) HBAs have become the norm, and SAS and SATA stuff is slowly dying, as is the 2.5"/3.5" disk sizes in favour of completely solid state storage. Latest SAS standard goes up to 24 Gbps, instead of SATAs slow and puny 6 Gbps.

On consumer market it never made sense as SATA was "good enough" for spinny disks, and the expanders and other fun procotol features were just useless on desktops with just few disks.

E: In a way SCSI as consumer stuff still lives and works well as the standard for SATA optical drives. Look it up on Wikipedia, it's one weird lazy hack.

 

[Ruru]

Latest aqusitions!

And while I'm thinking of it @Ruru , I have a GTX480 now to see how the 6GB Quadro 6000 compares and you were spot on about the 6800GT, it runs Ultra stock clocks all day long, I'm getting a lot of benchmark data points from these cards.

Now to the aquisitions.

Not one, but two GeForce 8800GTX 768M - looking forward to SLI with these bad boys in a future build, and comparing them to 8800GT SLI and 8800GTX 640M SLI lol. I believe that makes 4 8800GTX's now but I'm, certain one or more doesn't work, and at least one or more does now.

View attachment 359635
View attachment 359636

GeForce GTX480 1536M - Quadro 6000 comparison will be fun! Plus I have an idea for a diorama of sorts for this card when it takes it's place in the eventual display, think Thermi memes

View attachment 359637

Radeon X1950XT 256M - honestly I think this is brand new never even opened, multiple stickers on the static bag, and the seal still on it, and that glorious smell of fresh electronics is present. Looking forward to testing this against the 7950GT for a fun DX9 showdown.

View attachment 359638

Quadro4 980XGL 128M - essentially the Quadro counterpart to the GeForce 4 Ti4800 (Ti4600 8x AGP if you prefer) - I believe my leadtek Ti4400 is non functional so this will be a great one to play with when the AGP rig gets a bit more love and attention.

View attachment 359639

Yeah, I remember that I haven't read about a single 6800 GT which didn't run at Ultra clocks.

I miss Ruby, those X1800/X1900/X1950 cards had the nicest cooler art ever.

 

[Greenslade]

This is one of my fav UK youtubers all though he lives in Gran Canaria lucky him
Every week he goes to the Boot fair and buys PC,s.

The guys name is Richard.

 

[Ruru]

My old Pentium M laptop is a great retro gaming machine. Also got a Razer Basilisk mouse some time ago which feels okay.

 

[Greenslade]

Does anyone collect lp records or know much about them? Brand new and sealed, creased along spine.The price that we have listed this at is inclusive of the damage.Which was £17.50
He has sent me an offer £15,50.As prices are all over the place on eBay.The next price up from that is £25 for a perfect copy.
It does not look that bad to me it looks like a little bit at the top of the spine.They did not put a photo of the actual disc but a lot of the sellers just put stock images .I asked the seller to send me a photo.

Its good collectable Psychedelic 60,s LP.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Newest score. Soltek SL-75KAV, awaiting a ceramic Athlon

 

[Ruru]

Newest score. Soltek SL-75KAV, awaiting a ceramic Athlon
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Try to get one with the AXIA stepping. Legend says that they were supposed to be 1.5GHz models which would make sense as they're great overclockers.

 

[Paganstomp]

Dell Dimension 4600 - Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz - ATI Radeon 9600 Pro - AUDIGY 2 Platinum eX. The way it was in 2004.

 

[Ruru]

Dell Dimension 4600 - Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz - ATI Radeon 9600 Pro - AUDIGY 2 Platinum eX. The way it was in 2004.

Looks like the card is using a 9600 XT PCB, shouldn't have any issues running with its clocks. Love that external box of the Audigy, looks like a Live! Drive on steroids.

 

[Apocalypsee]

Oh I love Radeon 9600Pro/XT cards. Look at that dinky small heatsink, back in the day it's a good performance midrange cards.

 

[Ruru]

Oh I love Radeon 9600Pro/XT cards. Look at that dinky small heatsink, back in the day it's a good performance midrange cards.

Also 9550 was a good card since it was basically an underclocked 9600 but with a good discount. Mine OC's between Pro and XT levels.

9600 SE & 9550 64-bit were the only bad ones from RV350 lineup.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Try to get one with the AXIA stepping. Legend says that they were supposed to be 1.5GHz models which would make sense as they're great overclockers.

Given how scarce ceramic Athlons have become here, anything goes.

After all, the RedStorm overclocking feature will detect the sweet spot of the chip anyways. (forgot how many MHz increments tho, either 1 or 8 MHz?)

 

[Ruru]

Given how scarce ceramic Athlons have become here, anything goes.

After all, the RedStorm overclocking feature will detect the sweet spot of the chip anyways. (forgot how many MHz increments tho, either 1 or 8 MHz?)

Lets just talk about Thunderbirds as they're the codename for those ceramics

Ceramic Durons do come in two variants though, Spitfire is Thunderbird Athlon based and Morgan is Palomino AthlonXP based. I have a 1.2 Morgan in my collection (as well as an AXIA 1GHz Thunderbird )

edit: with good cooling, going at 2V or more vcore is totally doable with Tbirds

 

[MaxiPro800]

I do have two working Durons - a 800MHz Spitfire and a 1100MHz Morgan (which is ceramic FWIW).

The ones I'm after are proper 256K T-Bird Athlons though

Now time for a fun fact. Remember Tom's HW video on CPU thermal protections?

I have finally managed to find out which mainboards were used during the tests. Surprise, the SL-75KAV was used for the KT133 board!

Anyways, here's the list:
P4 @ 2GHz - ASUS P4T pre-release
P3 @ 1GHz - ASUS CUSL2
Athlon 1400 - Soltek SL-75KAV
Palomino 1200 - Fujitsu-Siemens D1289-B

 

[Apocalypsee]

I wonder how Tejas would really perform I don't think there is any working prototype in the wild...

 

[Frick]

Work is moving and as such I got some cool old stuff. Finally I have dual Pentium III's! The beige one I haven't looked into really, will do when I get time. Also a Dell D630 (not really nostalgic though). A bunch of Pentium 4 HP desktops which I'm not interested in (remember the really low end Pentium 4 HP desktops? it's those).

Of course a 20 year old beastly Dell has no use, but they were going to throw it away. Can't have that. Dual Pentium III's!

 

[KLiKzg]

I wonder how Tejas would really perform I don't think there is any working prototype in the wild...

Amazing...guy just tests Tejas & Jayhawk in normal motherboards...without updating microcode's in BIOS.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Amazing...guy just tests Tejas & Jayhawk in normal motherboards...without updating microcode's in BIOS.

You do know that all motherboards load ALL of the CPU microcode contained in it's BIOS into RAM upon bootup, right? So if you plugin a CPU not specifically loaded in the microcode but has the same architectural design as others that are loaded, it'll run. It's just that the motherboard will either not properly identify it, or will misidentify it. This is why Pentium3 CPUs always worked on Pentium2 boards, Pentium 4 Northwood updates would work on OG Northwood boards, the Q9XX0S quads would work on board without the microcode for them, and so on..

Additionally, a socket 771 CPU can be plugged into a 775 motherboard, with minor modifications, and it'll work. Xeon 771 CPU's were a popular focus of mods to make them run in 775 boards.

So yeah, not a far fetched idea..

If he can get his hands on the original microcode and inject it into the BIOS of a motherboard with a compatible chipset, those CPUs might boot and even run an OS.