TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Trekkie4]

Someone put a genuine effort into this. Note the brush strokes on the TIM. And they took extra care not to daub the pads...
Good job cleaning it tho!

WD-40... Yes, I'm not kidding It will dissolve ANY thermal compound, regardless of how old or how thick it is. Just make sure to wipe it off clean, otherwise you are going to end up with "warm WD-40" stench, coming from inside the computer case!

 

[hat]

WD-40... Yes, I'm not kidding It will dissolve ANY thermal compound, regardless of how old or how thick it is. Just make sure to wipe it off clean, otherwise you are going to end up with "warm WD-40" stench, coming from inside the computer case!

One time when I had some really stubborn TIM that rubbing alcohol wouldn't clean, I used Goo Gone. Good to know WD-40 also works.

 

[Susquehannock]

Bah, you haven't seen nothing yet. Take a look at this one...

To those of you who are Nostalgic Hardware Club seniors, this Athlon will probably look familiar Picture was taken a while ago, back in 2015 and even now in 2020 it is STILL officially the worst TIM application that I've seen with my own eyes!

And yes, just in case some of you are wondering - that Athlon 1000 cleaned up just fine. In fact I've had it all this time up until recently, when I gave the entire machine to a fellow forumer, from a local forum, where it will hopefully continue working for many years to come

That is pretty bad. Remembering back when nForce2 and socket A were still top dog there was a huge thread in another forum about bad customer returns. Wish I still had the screenshots. All manner of crazy stuff. From installers thinking the little AMD sticker was a thermal pad, to a huge wood screw used to hold down the NB heatsink, which ended up badly cracking the mainboard. Amazing the things some customers tried to pass off as defects.

The WD-40 makes sense since it is mostly solvent. Despite so many using it as a lubricant. Some of the worst I have encountered is thermal adhesives. Tried everything in my shop to remove, including WD-40. Ineffective except full strength Acetone which melted it like butter. Acetone is like that among solvents. Unique properties. For instance. A good set of nitrile gloves protect against great many things but is near invisible to Acetone. For that butyl rubber gloves is the choice.

 

[Trekkie4]

That is pretty bad. Remembering back when nForce2 and socket A were still top dog there was a huge thread in another forum about bad customer returns. Wish I still had the screenshots. All manner of crazy stuff. From installers thinking the little AMD sticker was a thermal pad, to a huge wood screw used to hold down the NB heatsink, which ended up badly cracking the mainboard. Amazing the things some customers tried to pass off as defects.

The WD-40 makes sense since it is mostly solvent. Despite so many using it as a lubricant. Some of the worst I have encountered is thermal adhesives. Tried everything in my shop to remove, including WD-40. Ineffective except full strength Acetone which melted it like butter. Acetone is like that among solvents. Unique properties. For instance. A good set of nitrile gloves protect against great many things but is near invisible to Acetone. For that butyl rubber gloves is the choice.

Yes, but acetone will dissolve not only the adhesive, but the plastic surface as well ... not sure I'd want to use it on a PCB or any other electronic components, for that matter.

 

[Susquehannock]

Yes, but acetone will dissolve not only the adhesive, but the plastic surface as well ... not sure I'd want to use it on a PCB or any other electronic components, for that matter.

Agreed. And of course not. That is why we are careful to dab onto the chip and/or IHS only.

Parts for the A64 system are coming together. Going to stick with 6800 or 7800 GPU for now because of the extra 12 volt required for the 3850. Looking forward to some tweaking. Knew next to nothing about the platform but found some good YouTube vids which taught me much about socket 939, and building retro systems of many kinds. The video about building a DOS gaming machine from newer more readily available hardware is interesting. Channel has probably been posted before.

PhilsComputerLab

Here we have videos about computers, old and new, with a focus on gaming. We build computers, running DOS, Windows 98, XP or even Windows 10. There are revie...

www.youtube.com

 

[Mr.Scott]

Remembering how dissapointing it was back in the day when discovering they were not compatable with my nForce2. How is the 12 volt load with the 3580 and it's 8pin? Using heavy 5 volt rail PSUs right now.

Mr.Scott`s 3DMark 99 Max score: 21941 marks with a Radeon HD 3850 AGP

The Radeon HD 3850 AGP @ 837/1000MHzscores getScoreFormatted in the 3DMark 99 Max benchmark. Mr.Scottranks #null worldwide and #null in the hardware class. Find out more at HWBOT.

hwbot.org

HD3850 on NF2 bro.

Doesn't load the 12v too bad. You'll be fine on the heavy 5v PSU as long as it's a decent brand.

 

[Susquehannock]

Mr.Scott`s 3DMark 99 Max score: 21941 marks with a Radeon HD 3850 AGP

The Radeon HD 3850 AGP @ 837/1000MHzscores getScoreFormatted in the 3DMark 99 Max benchmark. Mr.Scottranks #null worldwide and #null in the hardware class. Find out more at HWBOT.

hwbot.org

HD3850 on NF2 bro.

Doesn't load the 12v too bad. You'll be fine on the heavy 5v PSU as long as it's a decent brand.

Awesome. Love this forum. Nice OC on that Barton by the way.
Darn. Seems I was mistaken all this time. Thought there was something about the socket 462/A that did not jive with 3850. Or perhaps it was drivers at the time. Good to know it is a viable option. Any particular brand preferred?

The PSU will be an old PCP&C 425w from 2005. Bit long in the tooth yet still holds within about 2% on all rails under load. Best testing I can muster with equipment at hand.

 

[Mr.Scott]

It's a Turbo Cool.
You'll be fine. I still bench with a Turbo Cool 1200. 10 or 11 years old now. Still crankin out good clean Seasonic power.
Sapphire is the preferred and probably the most common.
Core clocks the same in pretty much all of them. VMem doesn't clock worth a damn in any of them.
Ignore the above line if you don't care about overclocking.

 

[Trekkie4]

When having a turbo button on your computer isn't good enough & you HAVE to upgrade it with turbo-cool to the next level...

Sorry, just couldn't resit...

 

[kiriakost]

When having a turbo button on your computer isn't good enough & you HAVE to upgrade it with turbo-cool to the next level...

Sorry, just couldn't resit...

My 486 DX 100 never had one.
This was an afterburner function for 386 CPUs

 

[Trekkie4]

My 486 DX 100 never had one.
This was an afterburner function for 386 CPUs

Your system definitely had a turbo button, there's no doubt about it. However, your case apparently did not have a turbo button/switch, meaning that the motherboard was most likely permanently shorted (through a jumper) to "Turbo" mode.

This seems to be a popular mod on these things, you'd be surprised how many 486 & 5x86 systems had a jumper cap across the turbo switch & all the related hardware components (switch, speed indicator screen, Turbo LED) unplugged or even entirely removed. What I don't understand is why would anyone bother with removing the Turbo components, can't you simply press the turbo button & leave it like that?!

 

[Massdeth]

It's a Turbo Cool.
You'll be fine. I still bench with a Turbo Cool 1200. 10 or 11 years old now. Still crankin out good clean Seasonic power.
Sapphire is the preferred and probably the most common.
Core clocks the same in pretty much all of them. VMem doesn't clock worth a damn in any of them.
Ignore the above line if you don't care about overclocking.

YES! I have a old 750 from back in 07-ish that is a tank, itll run anything still. That was back when they sold them in giant brown cardboard boxes and you thought you were gonna have some crazy bonus gifts in the box, lol. I might even have the box still.

 

[kiriakost]

Your system definitely had a turbo button, there's no doubt about it. However, your case apparently did not have a turbo button/switch, meaning that the motherboard was most likely permanently shorted (through a jumper) to "Turbo" mode.

This seems to be a popular mod on these things, you'd be surprised how many 486 & 5x86 systems had a jumper cap across the turbo switch & all the related hardware components (switch, speed indicator screen, Turbo LED) unplugged or even entirely removed. What I don't understand is why would anyone bother with removing the Turbo components, can't you simply press the turbo button & leave it like that?!

I am fully aware that a turbo button this was not increasing anything, instead it was slashing down a portion of MHz from the named CPU clock.
I never gave any thought of why some one to do that as product design, but my guesswork this is that has something to do with compatibility with applications designed to run for 286 CPU.

 

[Trekkie4]

I am fully aware that a turbo button this was not increasing anything, instead it was slashing down a portion of MHz from the named CPU clock.
I never gave any thought of why some one to do that as product design, but my guesswork this is that has something to do with compatibility with applications designed to run for 286 CPU.

Yes, deactivating turbo feature will decrease the processing speed, thus making the hardware compatible with older software - specifically programmed for 286 machines (and older).

But I wasn't talking about that, what I said is that your system definitely had a "Turbo" switch option, because EVERY x86 sytem from back in a day had Turbo feature. So, chances are that your case didn't have a turbo button, but it had a turbo switch pinout inside, which can be easily shorted through a jumper, to allow the system to operate in normal (Turbo) mode. If not & pins are left open, the motherboard would interpret this as having a turbo switch in "OFF" position, and it would slow the speed down.

Oddly enough, some motherboards also seem to have the turbo function controlled through the BIOS. That latest 486 DX2 of mine, with the Soyo board from the previous page had a Turbo entry in BIOS, allowing me to deactivate it entirely, regardless of the hardware state & switch/jumper position.

 

[biffzinker]

Yes, deactivating turbo feature will decrease the processing speed, thus making the hardware compatible with older software - specifically programmed for 286 machines (and older).

The turbo Was for software coded with timings tied to the clockspeed of the main CPU (8086.) That’s the way I understood he meaning of turbo.

 

[Trekkie4]

The turbo Was for software coded with timings tied to the clockspeed of the main CPU (8086.) That’s the way I understood he meaning of turbo.

Hmm. Could be, I'm really not that much into software & programming... *shrug* Anyhow, there seems to be a lot of confusion regarding turbo, some people claim how turning it on will actually decrease the speed, where on the other hand others (including myself) claim that turning it ON will increase the speed, or at least allow the system to operate at its normal clock. Nothing turbo about it

Thing is, the turbo switch has 3 poles. The middle terminal is common, but 1st and 3rd can be reversed, depending on how you plug the cable. Depending on the orientation, pressing the Turbo switch will either decrease the speed, or increase it to a normal one. But regardless of the switch position, enabling the turbo mode will force the system to operate in normal mode, where having it off (again, regardless of the actual switch state) will decrease the speed to make it compatible with older software

 

[debs3759]

The turbo Was for software coded with timings tied to the clockspeed of the main CPU (8086.) That’s the way I understood he meaning of turbo.

That's right. Weirdly, as I understand it, Turbo mode was introduced to slow the system. Some systems are faster with the turbo pins shorted, but some are the other way round, so shorting the pins on some boards actually slowed the system. I've had both types of board over the years.

Turbo button - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Trekkie4]

That's right. Weirdly, as I understand it, Turbo mode was introduced to slow the system. Some systems are faster with the turbo pins shorted, but some are the other way round, so shorting the pins on some boards actually slowed the system. I've had both types of board over the years.

Turbo button - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Huh... Guess you learn something new every day

And right, see this is exactly where that 3-pin turbo header comes in place. If you rotate the header, it will compensate for the flipped motherboard function, allowing you to operate the Turbo function normally.

 

[kiriakost]

Huh... Guess you learn something new every day

And right, see this is exactly where that 3-pin turbo header comes in place. If you rotate the header, it will compensate for the flipped motherboard function, allowing you to operate the Turbo function normally.

The best way learning computing this is you getting your first PC in a location surrounded by sea water, no local support technicians and neither internet available
I did live for two years such a situation, at my first time business man and Boss of my self.
First use of my computer was of me creating advertising material and documents in favor of my electronics repairs workshop with one HP540C Color Printer.

 

[Trekkie4]

The best way learning computing this is you getting your first PC in a location surrounded by sea water, no local support technicians and neither internet available
I did live for two years such a situation, at my first time business man and Boss of my self.
First use of my computer was of me creating advertising material and documents in favor of my electronics repairs workshop with one HP540C Color Printer.

Oh wow! You know, my first color printer (Ink Jet printer, that is) was HP 610C, very similar to your 540 We had Epson FX85 before HP, but that one was black & white, using dot matrix technology.

 

[kiriakost]

The title this is: Made to Last in time & Be repairable.
This is the PCB board of an unbranded scanner.
Over the scanner there is a sticker Made in China, but entire pack of electronics they are from Taiwan.
In my eyes Taiwan this is No1 Leader as soon Japan this stopped getting involved with consumer electronics (1995) and changed it focus to industry and aerospace.
After the 1990 there is no genuine TEAC headphones, there is no magical Japanese banana plugs for audiophiles.

By a careful inspection you will notice gold plated test points for oscilloscope probes.
If this PCB was made in China? half of the electronic parts they would be missing in the name of highest profitability.
This is RS232 port scanner and slow and incompatible with our times, regarding offered productivity.

Even so all parts over the PCB they are branded and they were imported in Taiwan from their location of production (Japan, USA, other), something that China this is in denial to do those days, this is the reason that 400$ VGA card comes with poor quality DC fans, or their PSU them stops working in 2.5 years.

 

[QuietBob]

Some advanced Reaper technology:

 

[INSTG8R]

Some advanced Reaper technology:

View attachment 171508

I sold my set to a member here actually. Definitely loved those and wished I’d kept them!

 

[Hankieroseman]

I believe I bought these cases in 2001 or 02. Still being used and a third I'm wondering what to do with. Great ATX aluminum cases with the slide-out motherboard tray are still functinal but old.

 

[stinger608]

Some advanced Reaper technology:

View attachment 171508

Had some first gen DDR that was just like them. Hard to find at the time and I F'd up and sent it with a system I sold.