TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[MaxiPro800]

Pretty much the same reason you can run a mobile Athlon XP-M on a desktop mainboard (and heck, even mobile ceramic Athlon/Duron).

The BIOS will default to the closest microcode it can use to understand the new CPU.

Funny thing - Duron 1600 + Soltek SL-75KAV on the older PhoenixNET enabled BIOS (REV Q8.1 I think) results in a funny CPU string mismatch of "AMD Pentium 3".

 

[KLiKzg]

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.

I hear what you are saying, but I think that NONE of the motherboard's BIOS came with this specific microcode. So that is why it can't run!

Also, I did some moding in my days, on legendary ABIT BP6...this board could not run P3, only P2 chips!
Only later P3 boards could work with older P2.
& yes, on 1st gen P3 motherboard later Tualatins would not work, also.

& yes, I do know about 775 to 771 mod...I have also been running some way of using some Xeons to run that way, but considered that it was a waste of moding skills...as only thing getting is some 30Wh difference in power usage (as electricity is dirt cheap in Croatia).

Even if that motherboard does run with this processor, not sure if OS would! Do note that Q9550S would not run on Win10 OS, while Xeon X3360 would run on Win10 (& we are talking about almost identical twins of processors).

 

[MaxiPro800]

BP6 was limited to Celerons only, not P2s. A bit of socket modding did bring Coppermine to the table but only in P3 form - Celerons of the same CuMine core weren't capable of SMP.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Also, I did some moding in my days, on legendary ABIT BP6...this board could not run P3, only P2 chips!

I had that board. There was no way for it to run Pentium 2 as it was a Socket370 based dual CPU board. Pentium2 was exclusively Slot1. Not sure what board you're thinking of, but that one isn't it.

Not sure why you're arguing this point either as the point I was making is not only well known, but well documented.

 

[jak_2456]

As a vintage PC enthusiast, I figured I would show off some of my old PC collection. The first thing I have here is a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop from 2004.

It has a desktop P4-class Celeron at 2.4 GHz, 512 MB of RAM, integrated graphics, a 40 GB HDD, and a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive. It's quite a nice machine, especially the keyboard. The chassis has seen better days but it's not too bad; gotta love that early-2000s blue/silver combo! Let me know if you have any questions or would like to see more of my collection! I also have an eMachines Athlon XP desktop, a custom-built Cyrix 6x86 desktop, and an incredibly old TI 486DLC-based DOS/Win 3.1 PC.

 

[lexluthermiester]

As a vintage PC enthusiast, I figured I would show off some of my old PC collection. The first thing I have here is a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop from 2004.
View attachment 361080

It has a desktop P4-class Celeron at 2.4 GHz, 512 MB of RAM, integrated graphics, a 40 GB HDD, and a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive. It's quite a nice machine, especially the keyboard. The chassis has seen better days but it's not too bad; gotta love that early-2000s blue/silver combo! Let me know if you have any questions or would like to see more of my collection! I also have an eMachines Athlon XP desktop, a custom-built Cyrix 6x86 desktop, and an incredibly old TI 486DLC-based DOS/Win 3.1 PC.

That was a nice laptop! Believe it or not, installing a Northwood 2.4 or 2.6 model did nothing to power usage or heat but gave good a boost to performance, for the time.

 

[jak_2456]

That was a nice laptop! Believe it or not, installing a Northwood 2.4 or 2.6 model did nothing to power usage or heat but gave good a boost to performance, for the time.

Interesting. This thing ran quite hot for a while before I opened it up and found a literal carpet of dust inside the fan and some very crusty thermal paste. Let's just say there's a reason why we don't put desktop CPUs in laptops these days!

Edit: I should also note that this laptop comes to mind when people talk about how laptops aren't built like they used to be. Yes, it does have a wonderful keyboard by modern laptop standards. Yes, it has a socketed desktop CPU. Here's the problem, though: that laptop cost around $750 back then (about $1250 adjusted for inflation) and that was one of the cheapest laptops on Dell's website. Not only that, that thing weighs over 5 pounds (about 2.3 kg)! For a cheap laptop! Even better, it has a 99 Wh battery and the battery life still stunk (somehow that battery still holds a little bit of charge today). The laptop I'm typing this on right now, a $250 Asus VivoBook from 2019, has a 37 Wh battery and it lasted about six hours when it was new.

 

[Ruru]

Another interesting fact for you guys is that Northwood mobile Celerons had 256k of L2 instead of the pitiful 128k like their desktop cousins.

 

[masterdeejay]

Waiting for an SLI cable.


The brothers

 

[Ruru]

Waiting for an SLI cable.

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The brothers
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Damn those fan shrouds look way better than their GF 8800 counterparts.

 

[masterdeejay]

Damn those fan shrouds look way better than their GF 8800 counterparts.

And the cards themselves are much better quality. I've seen a lot of dead 8800 cards, somehow the quadros can live longer.
And the 1.5Gb of vram... that was a lot. I had a Leadtek 6800ultra 256mb and after that an Inno 8800GT 512mb at that time.

 

[jak_2456]

Waiting for an SLI cable.

View attachment 361146
The brothers
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I find it quite cool that you managed to get a Zalman-style CPU cooler; really fits the aesthetic of the build. Also, the SLI GPUs reminds me of LGR's Windows XP Dream PC.

 

[basco]

i am digging out my cellar and hope not to find dead 8800 gtx and ultras but i only had 2-3 bad gpu´s(mostly gtx4\570) in my long years with hardware(20+) and one 8500 core2duo- so fingers crossed.

some even volt modded and core2 cpu´s pushed to 1,85 volts under adequate cooling.
will report back

 

[68Olds]

Waiting for an SLI cable.

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The brothers
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I'd be interested to see what the PCIe slots do in SLI. I wanna say I remember 16x & 4x on P35 (maybe that was Xfirex).
Very nice looking build!

 

[masterdeejay]

I'd be interested to see what the PCIe slots do in SLI. I wanna say I remember 16x & 4x on P35 (maybe that was Xfirex).
Very nice looking build!

It is just 16/4 and needs sli hack to work.

 

[Audioave10]

Now, for something completely different, I am always amazed by the monster machines from the years 75 to 85.

and some history...

 

[Ruru]

Now, for something completely different, I am always amazed by the monster machines from the years 75 to 85.

Practically I'm not interested in those, for older machines, it's the 286 to 486 range which videos I watch the most.

 

[Frick]

Oh hey an old GPU, lying in a box.

And oooohhhh it's a Radeon 9800 Pro??

Now I just need a system to try it with... Another thing I really wanted but at the time it was just incredibly far out of reach. I did at one point have a 9600 Pro, but that time is falling into the mists of time so I don't remember much about it.

Inside. Lots of dead caps. 1GB RAM. Athlon 1Ghz. PSU looks good. Good project for the winter.

Note how clean it looks, I really don't think it has been cleaned since it was new. Even the PSU was relatively clean inside, and that was made november 2000!

 

[jak_2456]

Oh hey an old GPU, lying in a box.

View attachment 361359

And oooohhhh it's a Radeon 9800 Pro??

View attachment 361360

Now I just need a system to try it with... Another thing I really wanted but at the time it was just incredibly far out of reach. I did at one point have a 9600 Pro, but that time is falling into the mists of time so I don't remember much about it.

Inside. Lots of dead caps. 1GB RAM. Athlon 1Ghz. PSU looks good. Good project for the winter.

Note how clean it looks, I really don't think it has been cleaned since it was new. Even the PSU was relatively clean inside, and that was made november 2000!

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That's a cool PC! I have two Socket 462-based PCs at home. My newest one is an eMachines T3265 with an Athlon XP 3000+ and integrated Nvidia nForce graphics which aren't horrible; I got it for free in 2019 when someone left it on the side of the road for oversize trash day. I have rescued two computers doing that, the other one was a Dell XPS 410 that I fixed and sold. I also have a beige box with an Athlon @ 700 MHz with a crappy PCChips motherboard that likes to hang the system frequently. Both machines have decent caps though; good luck replacing yours!

 

[basco]

pencil mod incoming on that athlon 1000 ?

 

[Rakhmaninov3]

Pretty much the same reason you can run a mobile Athlon XP-M on a desktop mainboard (and heck, even mobile ceramic Athlon/Duron).

The BIOS will default to the closest microcode it can use to understand the new CPU.

Funny thing - Duron 1600 + Soltek SL-75KAV on the older PhoenixNET enabled BIOS (REV Q8.1 I think) results in a funny CPU string mismatch of "AMD Pentium 3".

lol! that’s hilarious. I remember seeing “phoenix” when computers were starting up and I didn’t know what the heck it was at the time (I think I was 14 or 15 lol)

 

[Frick]

pencil mod incoming on that athlon 1000 ?

I might actually have some old conductive silver paint laying around... Have to fix the motherboard first, and that is some ways off.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Let's agree that I might be going a bit crazy.

My brain is constantly fighting itself over the fixability of this mobo above... a pretty sad looking MS-6168, the well known integrated V3 2000 experiment conducted by Packard Bell's plans. I shall be ordering it soon, along with (hopefully) a few more retro madness going on. Most of my concerns are regarding the chipset and GPU BGA. The chipset's dent is quite the worry point but in my defense, I've had a Gigabyte 7DXE looking far worse there. The GPU however might be the important point. If it has survived the scrap chap's screwdriver attack, high chances this board will spring to life and work perfectly with as much as new HSFs over the 440ZX and 3dfx chip, and a polymod (I have a broken GTX275 ready to massacre for this.)

Meanwhile, my Soltek 75KAV now received its original splash screen, in all its "RSA SECURE" glory.

I did have to replace the CPU I had in there (AXP 2000+, T-Bred core I think?) with a 800MHz Spitfire placeholder for a upcoming T-Bird CPU. I also unfortunately had to retire my 20GB Drekstar 60GXP... its storage just wasn't enough. A 40GB Maxtor Fireball 3 took its place. Think of a slim 40GB Maxtor, 'cept engineered by former Quantum staff instead of Maxtor.

Oh, and the original soundcard choice (Aureal Vortex II) got updated to a SB Live 5.1. Yeah, I know, 686B southbridge... but the Vortex II had given me enough headaches under Win2k to warrant the change.

BIOS interface wise, I did notice that it's vastly different than what I was used to seeing on the Intel side - I recall seeing the ones made for LuckyStar 6VA694 and Soyo 6VBA133 - both were looking quite barren, unlike what Soltek and Epox received, seen down below.

And yes, the CPU logo (in this case Duron) does indeed change depending on what CPU you were using. Unfortunately, the neat PhoenixNET GUI splash screen didn't last - REV Q8.1 is the last BIOS the SL-75KAV has with this splashscreen.

Starting with REV Q9 onwards, up to Q12, you only get the same old text based POST screen present on most boards. The only difference is Soltek used a similar EPA logo approach to Gigabyte's DualBIOS tag on their DualBIOS enabled boards - Soltek logo is on its own EPA, and a 2nd EPA logo file present in the BIOS shows the "RedStorm Overclocking" logo.

 

[KLiKzg]

WoW, that MS-6168 really has "bad caps"...but those could be updated for a better ones!

 

[MaxiPro800]

Of course, once I get it it's going to get a temporary lytic recap then all polys after I can get it to POST.