TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Susquehannock]

Let's talk HDDs. What are you using and where do you get them? Drives you have saved from the old days? Rescued from recycled systems?

When playing with this old hardware I like to have several available to make switching OS and video drives simple. Just change up the HDD.

Recently had a 20gb unit go bad. It was an IBM deskstar so no surprise there. It got me thinking. PATA are not made anymore. So eventually I am going to run out.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Let's talk HDDs. What are you using and where do you get them? Drives you have saved from the old days? Rescued from recycled systems?
When playing with this old hardware I like to have several available to make switching OS and video drives simple. Just change up the HDD.
Recently had a 20gb unit go bad. It was an IBM deskstar so no surprise there. It got me thinking. PATA are not made anymore. So eventually I am going to run out.

There are SD to IDE adapters that are very inexpensive and work perfectly. Most UHS1 SD cards are faster than even the fastest IDE drive ever made so it's an easy solution. There are also CompactFlash to IDE adapters which work perfectly as well. Clint over at LGR on YT have been using them for years. Interestingly, I think using an SD card would remove a bandwidth bottleneck from an old system.

 

[StrayKAT]

Just hearing about IDE again makes me shudder. This nostalgia thing suddenly seems unappealing

 

[hat]

I've used an IDE/CF card adapter before. I used it with a socket 423 system I installed DD-WRT on back in the day.

 

[Susquehannock]

There are SD to IDE adapters that are very inexpensive and work perfectly. Most UHS1 SD cards are faster than even the fastest IDE drive ever made so it's an easy solution. There are also CompactFlash to IDE adapters which work perfectly as well. Clint over at LGR on YT have been using them for years. Interestingly, I think using an SD card would remove a bandwidth bottleneck from an old system.

Yeah. I imagine they would reduce and otherwise eliminate spin up and seek times. Good to hear the adapters are working well. They were problematic early on if memory serves. May have to get one to do some benchmark comparisons. Wonder if there are any micro SD to IDE adapters. Or if SD to micro adapters work in them? Have 20gb that would be perfect for this.

 

[SniperHF]

Let's talk HDDs.

I don't know all the details from where these came from. Most of them I used myself at one point or another though mostly in secondary systems. My primary dives had a habit of dying.


Quantum Fireballs: These are my favorite old drives. Never had one fail. 15 and 13 GB here.



Seagate 10GB and Seagate 20GB. I'm not sure why they put these weird rubber band covers on them, the black covering is some sort of rubberized elastic or something.
Both were pulled from Color iMacs and worked great in my Dual PIII tower server.




I'm pretty sure this 80GB Maxtor is dying or already dead, haven't fired it up in a long time. I had a lot of these Maxtors fail.


Toshiba 20GB (2.5") I used to swap this in my laptop for a secondary OS, usually Mandrake linux.



WD Drives: Don't remember at all where the first 2 came from. The 250 GB black drive has a weird quirk or bug or damaged controller. The damn thing WILL NOT WORK in master mode. This was an endless source of frustration for me till I figured it out.



TriGem 15GB: I'm 90% sure I pulled this from an eMachines system back in the day for MOAR storage. I always bought systems with a second IDE controller for more drives.




I also have some 500 GB IDE drives in my retro system but I don't remember what they are and I'm not taking them out

 

[lexluthermiester]

Wonder if there are any micro SD to IDE adapters. Or if SD to micro adapters work in them?

They'll work fine.

 

[Fouquin]

Voodoo was on the skids when those were made. They weren't available for very long. The PCI version seems more poular than the AGP. It was AGP1.0 and later AGP versions were lower voltage. So only the earliest AGP board (Socket7) can run those. Just about any MB has a PCI slot on it.
Originally Voodoo sold it's GPUs and SLI tech to any GPU mfg. Then they bought STB and cut everyone else out of the market they created. The Voodoo Glide API was preferred to Microsofts DirectX for most games back then. This made a lot of enemies in the gaming business. The 5500 only came in the 3DFX house brand. Nvidia bought out Voodoo in a hostile takeover and killed it off including SLI for a number of years. So yes they were always rare. When Nvidia bought Voodoo they actually pulled the cards off of the store shelves as I recall.
Voodoo cards were always interesting. The first ones were add in 3d cards that piggybacked onto a 2D video card. Then I think you could add 2 of them. The single GPU cards supported SLI also if my memory is correct. But the Voodoo 5500 was the first 2 GPU consumer video card, and the first to need an external power cable (Molex 4 pin).
Rare, historic, high performance and expensive.

You've got most of that correct. 3Dfx was the company, Voodoo was the product line. The 3Dfx Voodoo 5 5500 is AGP 1.0 @ 2x and does work on any board with an AGP Universal bus, which includes boards like the ABIT Sa7 and ASUS P4S533-E (both with an SiS chipset).

The nVidia purchase of 3Dfx was not a hostile takeover; it was actually a coordinated buyout by 3Dfx's board of directors. They divided the company resources up and presented them to nVidia, who then made a bid. nVidia had no use for the manufacturing portion of 3Dfx and left it alone, only taking technology, research labs, and personnel associated with those departments. The manufacturing portion (along with its associated departments) is what then filed for bankruptcy.

If you want to look for the rarest of the rare, there was a company named Obsidian I believe that built custom multi GPU Voodoo2 cards for commercial Video Arcade machines before the Voodoo 5500. This stuff seems to be in German, but a picture is wurth a thousand words.
https://pctuning.tyden.cz/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4814&Itemid=44&pop=1&page=4

Quantum3D is the company in question and they were founded as a spinoff of 3Dfx for the professional market occupied by Sgi, 3DLabs, and Evans & Sutherland (to name a few) creating real-time 3D graphics accelerators and workstations. They actually still exist and operate primarily as a military contractor providing full-feature training simulators to the Air Force and Navy. They also contract with the FAA in providing the same real-time simulations for training commercial pilots and running flight-traffic simulations. The commercial cards from their first couple years in operation are certainly sought after by anybody collecting 3Dfx hardware. Quantum3D's contracts with 3Dfx were part of nVidia's acquired assets and they switched to using NV17 for their products in 2001 and 2002.

 

[agent_x007]

65nm Core 2 Quad refuses to give up

 

[SystemViper]

Hello everyone, First time poster in this club, I am loving it.....
I am sure some of you know me and hope you had a great summer....


I have been collecting socket 478/479 and 775 stuff for a few years and it's all coming together for a fun winter hobby
of overclocking. I figured if I was going to pump 2v into a chip, that they should be not toooooo expensive, plus i just have a love for this stuff..
I Still need a few 775 chips but i must have at least 30 different ones now plus some sweet old time boards, same same with the 478/479 stuff.
Have my sweet phase tuned and ready to go and a rockin Kingpin Dragon F1 Extreme and my trusty Fluke II....

That is a little background......

**********COOLER MASTER JET 4 80mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan
this was the first time i ever saw this, wow how cool for the simple 478. It was really the cooler that made me make this purchase.

I just love this find / motherboard and COOLER MASTER JET cooler, I saw this several months ago and jumped on it, i have never seen the Cooler Master Jet.... WOW! how cool....
Now this is old and they even started putting some LED's on this, how revolutionary, a red one in the exhaust nozzle and a white one blinking on the front of it.
Check out the vid, the cooler is actually high end for it's time....

So I figured I would start my posting here with a vintage .....


DFI 865PE - LANPARTY - motherboard - ATX - Socket 478 - i865PE
and a
COOLER MASTER JET 4 80mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan

I will start posting more as I start getting it together and getting my bench in the living room set up (wife loves that- lol)

ENJOY

if you got this far check out this vid

 

[phill]

Does it shoot flames as well?? Oh I forgot... No RGB

Seriously though, I wonder if it sounds as noisy as I expect it too....?? I think I'd rather have my Tornado fan on there spinning at 5000 RPM instead of that thing! lol Loving the DFI board tho!!

 

[Trekkie4]

Let's talk HDDs. What are you using and where do you get them? Drives you have saved from the old days? Rescued from recycled systems?

When playing with this old hardware I like to have several available to make switching OS and video drives simple. Just change up the HDD.

Recently had a 20gb unit go bad. It was an IBM deskstar so no surprise there. It got me thinking. PATA are not made anymore. So eventually I am going to run out.

When building a retro system, I always use old IDE drives... As far as I'm concerned, there's really no reason to complicate things with SATA units & ATA to SATA adapters, for as long as these old ones are available & still working OK

There are SD to IDE adapters that are very inexpensive and work perfectly. Most UHS1 SD cards are faster than even the fastest IDE drive ever made so it's an easy solution. There are also CompactFlash to IDE adapters which work perfectly as well. Clint over at LGR on YT have been using them for years. Interestingly, I think using an SD card would remove a bandwidth bottleneck from an old system.

True, but I wouldn't trust CF/SD card adapter ... at least not as much as I trust the actual hard drives ... even if it's an old IDE one. Thing is, these cards are not meant to be written & deleted so many times & this will eventually cause them to lose data. Pretty much the same story as those early SSDs, when they were first introduced to the market.

I don't know all the details from where these came from. Most of them I used myself at one point or another though mostly in secondary systems. My primary dives had a habit of dying.


Quantum Fireballs: These are my favorite old drives. Never had one fail. 15 and 13 GB here.
View attachment 106462View attachment 106463


Seagate 10GB and Seagate 20GB. I'm not sure why they put these weird rubber band covers on them, the black covering is some sort of rubberized elastic or something.
Both were pulled from Color iMacs and worked great in my Dual PIII tower server.
View attachment 106464View attachment 106465



I'm pretty sure this 80GB Maxtor is dying or already dead, haven't fired it up in a long time. I had a lot of these Maxtors fail.
View attachment 106461

Toshiba 20GB (2.5") I used to swap this in my laptop for a secondary OS, usually Mandrake linux.
View attachment 106466


WD Drives: Don't remember at all where the first 2 came from. The 250 GB black drive has a weird quirk or bug or damaged controller. The damn thing WILL NOT WORK in master mode. This was an endless source of frustration for me till I figured it out.
View attachment 106469View attachment 106470View attachment 106471


TriGem 15GB: I'm 90% sure I pulled this from an eMachines system back in the day for MOAR storage. I always bought systems with a second IDE controller for more drives.
View attachment 106467



I also have some 500 GB IDE drives in my retro system but I don't remember what they are and I'm not taking them out

Yup, you got it right! Quantums were awesome drives. I still got my Fireball 6.4GB running OK, and without bad sectors! Of course, I no longer use it on a regular basis, but it is still there & available when & if I need to boot it up. Paired with my original Pentium II machine from back in a day even, unfortunately inside the modern case, but that's a whole other story for some other time.

When it comes to my regular choice for Retro gaming system(s), I always go with Western Digital drives. Yes, I've had couple of them fail over time, but statistically speaking those are the best! On the other hand, Maxtors are absolutely awful ... except for "SlimLine" series. I've had a Maxtor drive fall apart, during the operation ... I was running Windows ME & just finished installing some of the games I've had, when the heads somehow jammed into the platter at full speed, sounded almost like the explosion. Windows stopped responding obviously, and when I restarted the system, the Maxtor drive was no longer there, being recognized *sigh*

Hello everyone, First time poster in this club, I am loving it.....
I am sure some of you know me and hope you had a great summer....


I have been collecting socket 478/479 and 775 stuff for a few years and it's all coming together for a fun winter hobby
of overclocking. I figured if I was going to pump 2v into a chip, that they should be not toooooo expensive, plus i just have a love for this stuff..
I Still need a few 775 chips but i must have at least 30 different ones now plus some sweet old time boards, same same with the 478/479 stuff.
Have my sweet phase tuned and ready to go and a rockin Kingpin Dragon F1 Extreme and my trusty Fluke II....

That is a little background......

**********COOLER MASTER JET 4 80mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan
this was the first time i ever saw this, wow how cool for the simple 478. It was really the cooler that made me make this purchase.

I just love this find / motherboard and COOLER MASTER JET cooler, I saw this several months ago and jumped on it, i have never seen the Cooler Master Jet.... WOW! how cool....
Now this is old and they even started putting some LED's on this, how revolutionary, a red one in the exhaust nozzle and a white one blinking on the front of it.
Check out the vid, the cooler is actually high end for it's time....

So I figured I would start my posting here with a vintage .....


DFI 865PE - LANPARTY - motherboard - ATX - Socket 478 - i865PE
and a
COOLER MASTER JET 4 80mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan

I will start posting more as I start getting it together and getting my bench in the living room set up (wife loves that- lol)

ENJOY

View attachment 106474


View attachment 106475


View attachment 106476


View attachment 106477


View attachment 106478


if you got this far check out this vid

Welcome to the club! To quote the words from the song "Hotel California", You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!

Speaking of Jet7 CPU cooler, I got one of those inside my RetroMaster 2500 rig (see my profile system for more info). Pretty cool piece of hardware, but unfortunately ONLY just that. For a heatink fan/blower, it's pretty noisy & ineffective I'm afraid

Does it shoot flames as well?? Oh I forgot... No RGB

Seriously though, I wonder if it sounds as noisy as I expect it too....?? I think I'd rather have my Tornado fan on there spinning at 5000 RPM instead of that thing! lol Loving the DFI board tho!!

Yup, and very much even. I keep mine at the lowest speed, because I can't stand the racket of Jet7 running at max. speed!!

 

[SystemViper]

for that time in cpu cooler evolution i bet there are
a lot more examples of idea,s good and bad, i love
that were trying to expand the enthusiast market...
sweetness

 

[lexluthermiester]

True, but I wouldn't trust CF/SD card adapter ... at least not as much as I trust the actual hard drives ... even if it's an old IDE one.

Let me assure you, having used them, they are completely reliable.

 

[StrayKAT]

I feel like an idiot. I don't know why I never thought of that (converting IDE to sd card). My raspberry pi is pretty much the same thing. Maybe faster?

That said, if I were to shell out for vintage components, I'd be more interested in an old UNIX workstation or a Mac. I can do all the vintage PC stuff I want already on a modern PC. I just need a CRT monitor to better display DOSBox games.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I feel like an idiot. I don't know why I never thought of that (converting IDE to sd card). My raspberry pi is pretty much the same thing. Maybe faster?
That said, if I were to shell out for vintage components, I'd be more interested in an old UNIX workstation or a Mac. I can do all the vintage PC stuff I want already on a modern PC. I just need a CRT monitor to better display DOSBox games.

There are SD to SCSI adapters as well.

 

[Red_Machine]

Seagate 10GB and Seagate 20GB. I'm not sure why they put these weird rubber band covers on them, the black covering is some sort of rubberized elastic or something.

The rubber sleeve is for reducing vibration transferring between the drive and the PC chassis.

 

[StrayKAT]

edit: Eh, nvm. Kind of derailing about a new monitor. Ordered a 4:3.. but found out it was 5:4. Damn false advertising Hopefully it gets canceled.

 

[agent_x007]

QX6850 @ 3,9GHz vs. Battlefield V (Beta) 4k - short gameplay

 

[SystemViper]

QX6850 on a Rampage Extreme, that is soooooooo sweet....

 

[Fouquin]

There are SD to SCSI adapters as well.

There are also just straight up IDE SSDs, for those that are wary of SD cards for some reason.

 

[Trekkie4]

When I wanted to build a working Pentium 133, I wanted it to be as authentic as it can be, all the way down to the finest of details. However, what I ended up with in the end is a little bit too authentic if you ask me because it turns out this system here doesn't have a working 3D accelerator, which means I'm stuck in software rendering mode


Can't really say I'm surprised, since the Voodoo1 card that I've put inside doesn't work. At least it didn't work last time I gave it a try (so I just wanted to make sure one more time), and I certainly wasn't expecting S3 Trio64V+ to put up 3D accelerated environment ... Therefore, just like I said, authentic P133 system from around 1996, 1997 in all its software rendering glory

And here is the picture of that updated BIOS, for the model ATC-1000+. If you compare the screen with the old one, you can clearly tell the difference between the two versions, even years.


And here they are, FINALLY! Some of the more famous & better-known titles from back in a day. These are all working more-less acceptable, except for Monster Truck Madness 2 ... which apparently doesn't start at all. Will have to look into that tomorrow. I also wanted to set up Need for Speed (II and III), but being limited to software rendering only (and system lagging due to CPU usage) I gave it up entirely...

Worms Armageddon


Monster Truck Madness 2


Tomb Raider II/II Gold


Quake


Dark Colony


Hard Truck


Grim Fandango


Curse of Monkey Island


Discworld II


Broken Sword I


Broken Sword II


Carmageddon


Shadow Warrior


Undersea Adventure

 

[AlwaysHope]

Found an unused stick of DDR2 ram, rated at 533MHz in 1GB size whilst clearing out an old box in storage.
I think this was current around 2005 for early LGA775 platforms.

 

[hat]

@Trekkie4 that's pretty cool... but Quake on Normal? C'mon man...

 

[Trekkie4]

@Trekkie4 that's pretty cool... but Quake on Normal? C'mon man...

Hey, I'm too young to die!

I was actually testing that system, making sure everything's running OK for the sake of future development. Not to mention stopping every couple of minutes to take pics, so I almost had it "easy" So, let's put our differences behind us ... for science. You monster!