TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[MaxiPro800]

Yeah HYTE's cases are high priced but worth it. I know there's the Kronii version here but the price is almost as high as a older gen fully decked out Core i5 build (somewhere in the Skylake - Coffee Lake range usually.).

(my build idea for it would've been something along the lines of ABIT IP35 Pro or ASUS RoG Maximus Formula lol)

Back to retro stuff - I wonder... would it be worth giving an ABIT BX133-RAID a shot? I'm still trying to find anything the BE6-II + slotket combo can't do that BX133 can.

 

[GreiverBlade]

Yeah HYTE's cases are high priced but worth it. I know there's the Kronii version here but the price is almost as high as a older gen fully decked out Core i5 build (somewhere in the Skylake - Coffee Lake range usually.).

(my build idea for it would've been something along the lines of ABIT IP35 Pro or ASUS RoG Maximus Formula lol)

i still have a MSI KT6V, a couple of Athlon (Tbird/Barton) and a Duron (Morgan) i could use for my retro build (well not only that ofc ... )
but almost 300chf hehe ... a bit too high, even if worth it

my current Cougar Panzer Max i rock for my main build is half that price hehe.

 

[lexluthermiester]

IIRC taking the PCI bus 12% over spec is generally considered safe. The 150/37 option just happens to be 12% increase over 133/33.
Years ago I had a Piii Celeron running F@H (CPU only) with a 12% overclock, with 112/37 settings, and never had an issue with it.

Yeah, I'll agree with Lex here though. Someone told me that Deskstars of that period (the GXP series specifically) didn't really like OC'd PCI bus. Even if the one I use (34GXP) uses metal platters (and I think the 60GXP I have off an Netvista 6578 does as well.)

I agree with your point and I guess there is always an * with anything. Let's say a 12% PCI overclock is generally fine provided you are not using a DeathStar hard drive.

This falls into that "it depends" kinds of situations. Results can vary based on the components being used together.

IMHO, no LCD panel ever will be able to truly emulate CRT

Why? An LCD panel is fast enough and can easily be made to emulate scanline dynamics. It would just take a bit of clever reprogramming and retooling. It's more than doable though.

but the flicker & refresh rate will always appear different on LCD no matter what.

This is what I mean by reprogramming and retooling.

 

[Voodoo Rufus]

Spending the night playing motocross madness 2 on my Socket 462 retro rig. mobile barton OC'd to 2.167MHz - Geforce 4 Ti4600

View attachment 337252View attachment 337254

Now that's a game I haven't heard of in a long time. That's solid hardware setup, and what I ran the last year of university in 2005.

Next time I get to my parents place I should get out my father's old Asus P5As and K6-IIIs. He doesn't use them any more but the stuff he collected for his Win98 engineering machines is pretty valuable now and interesting. I think he has a K6-III 550 somewhere. Was dirt cheap when he bought it.

 

[Greenslade]

Heres another rather old video ,from our fav Aussie YouTuber

I like it because he is using a SD card which i have yet to get up and running A nice piece of heavy rock

 

[remixedcat]

My frutiger aero rig.. an old dell inspiron E1505 with windows vista business!

frutiger aero is the glossy look of the vista era that a lot of ppl miss... it's a whole aesthetic!!

This take that I have is the darker version of it!

I even made the song to go with this too! It fits it so well!

here's some more pics of it too

 

[MaxiPro800]

Rebuilt my 1156 based i7.

PSU: recapped Raidmax RX-700AC, Andyson OEM
MB - Gigabyte P55A-UD3
RAM - 12GB DDR3
CPU - i7 860
GPU - XFX HD7970 2GB GDDR5 w/ VTX3D HSF
ODD - Samsung SH-216 DVDRW
HDD - Samsung HD321KJ
Misc: LSI MegaRAID SAS controller + Pixelview CX23881 TV tuner PCI
OS - Windows 10 Enterprise IoT for now (skinned as XP)

To do: SFF8087 to standard SAS adapter and some SAS drives, of course.

Case is an Chieftec LBX-03B-B-SL.

 

[Greenslade]

Does anyone on here still buy Vinyl ? As i rthought i would have a look to see what i could buy.As i have not been in a record shop for years.I was shocked to see the cheapest records at £20 I am taking about normal crap chart stuff. The stuff i am instrested in is 60,s psych and garage 60,s music and the prog stuff.Most of the ones i am after are £25 and up.Records are sure back in vogue,you can,t beat vinyl.

he could be right there with the crap turntables they were selling in the UK number one record store HMV. when i went there yesterday.I know Lex is not in to them as he thinks there to big. He prefers Cassettes

 

[The Egg]

HP Vectra XA5/233DT

Pentium 233Mhz MMX
Intel 430HX Chipset
512k Pipeline Burst Cache
64MB EDO 72-pin SIMMS 60ns (2x32MB)
Matrox Millennium 2 PCI 4MB (MIL2P/4/HP)
Sound Blaster 16 - ISA (CT2970)
AMD PCnet Fast Ethernet AM79C971KC
Quantum Fireball SE 2.5GB HDD
3.5" 1.44MB FDD
No Optical Drive
2x USB Ports on Motherboard
Proprietary PSU (Baby AT style connections, but OS can power down like an ATX)


Picked up that guy over the weekend for 70 bucks. Everything is fully functional including the HDD (bearings are noisy though). The previous owner seems to have installed a fresh copy of Win95 4.00.950B. Could use some retro-brighting, but would likely damage some of the stickers, so I'll probably leave for now (I already damaged a paper sticker on the top that read "Y2K Ready")

Disconnected the HDD and left in place, then installed a CompactFlash to IDE/PATA adapter with a 16GB card into an expansion slot. Installed and briefly messed around with Win98SE. Not having an optical drive in a PC of this era is a major annoyance (and kindof weird TBH). I have one temporarily rigged up with the case open. Unfortunately I don't have the side rails which are required to install a drive in the front 5.25" bay.

I did install another 32MB of EDO I had laying around for 96MB total, but I read something about the L2 cacheable size being only 64MB due to some sort of setting I don't have access to (even though the HX chipset should be able to do 512MB). I'll have to look into that more later.

 

[Canned Noodles]

HP Vectra XA5/233DT

Pentium 233Mhz MMX
Intel 430HX Chipset
512k Pipeline Burst Cache
64MB EDO 72-pin SIMMS 60ns (2x32MB)
Matrox Millennium 2 PCI 4MB (MIL2P/4/HP)
Sound Blaster 16 - ISA (CT2970)
AMD PCnet Fast Ethernet AM79C971KC
Quantum Fireball SE 2.5GB HDD
3.5" 1.44MB FDD
No Optical Drive
2x USB Ports on Motherboard
Proprietary PSU (Baby AT style connections, but OS can power down like an ATX)


Picked up that guy over the weekend for 70 bucks. Everything is fully functional including the HDD (bearings are noisy though). The previous owner seems to have installed a fresh copy of Win95 4.00.950B. Could use some retro-brighting, but would likely damage some of the stickers, so I'll probably leave for now (I already damaged a paper sticker on the top that read "Y2K Ready")

Disconnected the HDD and left in place, then installed a CompactFlash to IDE/PATA adapter with a 16GB card into an expansion slot. Installed and briefly messed around with Win98SE. Not having an optical drive in a PC of this era is a major annoyance (and kindof weird TBH). I have one temporarily rigged up with the case open. Unfortunately I don't have the side rails which are required to install a drive in the front 5.25" bay.

I did install another 32MB of EDO I had laying around for 96MB total, but I read something about the L2 cacheable size being only 64MB due to some sort of setting I don't have access to (even though the HX chipset should be able to do 512MB). I'll have to look into that more later.

It’s beautiful! And it even has USB! I’ve never seen a LAN activity light on the front of a PC, so that’s pretty neat

 

[The Egg]

A bit of strangeness with the Matrox card at low resolutions such as in DOS or in the BIOS. Patches of the display area are slightly blurry. I'd say it might be the cable or the DE-15 VGA connection, but it seems to go away at higher resolutions in Windows.

Speaking of, Matrox still has the Win9x drivers on their site for download. They're buried a bit, but still cool. The card detects and can actually run the native 1920x1200 of my test monitor, albeit at only 256 colors. Was very surprised to see a 16:10 res available.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Another PS3 Work-in-Progress. Sniped another "UK-exclusive-but-somehow-ended-up-outside-UK" model, a CECHM03. Supposedly it has bad caps (which I have since confirmed with the seller).

Yikes. That paintjob looks awful. Fortunately, as it always happens, I found a spare CECHH04 case from a unit that failed with a lesser known "Green light of death" issue. Given my sources of inspiration seem almost endless, it wasn't long until I ended up with a color scheme that looked fairly nice.

@GreiverBlade will likely figure whose color scheme is this in an instant (small hint: what's the other name of Award BIOS ever since they switched to version 6.00?)

It's still unfinished - the hardest part will be the sliding cover that has to be painted - I fortunately have a spare from a backwards compatible unit, which has embossed chrome lettering that can be popped off. The hardest part is getting the lettering off so I can paint the case.

Will keep y'all updated soon with it.

 

[GreiverBlade]

@GreiverBlade will likely figure whose color scheme is this in an instant (small hint: what's the other name of Award BIOS ever since they switched to version 6.00?)

too easy since the color and BIOS hint

Takanashi Kiara obviously, right?

 

[MaxiPro800]

Bingo! Indeed, it's Kiara.

btw I almost forgot how painful it was to remove all the small details from the PS3 case. Getting them back on is another level of pain. I gotta love how the paint cracked on the small band that goes over the Power and Eject buttons tho, it looks cool. I might be porting the chrome elements from a spare BC case I have, assuming I don't get them to break like crazy.

Once the aesthetic part is done, the HW side will be more fun to deal with - checking the SYSCON logs, replacing the bad caps, setting the fan curve as well as adding some games in there (NFS Hot Pursuit, Yakuza, Watch_Dogs to name a few). Goes on to show you don't necessarily need a backwards compatible unit to have fun.

 

[mtosev]

AGP Graphics card - ASUS AGP-V7100MAGIC/32M - GeForce2 MX 200 - TESTED | eBay

AGP Graphics card - ASUS AGP-V7100MAGIC/32M - GeForce2 MX 200 - TESTED | Computers/Tablets & Networking, Computer Components & Parts, Graphics/Video Cards | eBay!

www.ebay.ie

Just bought this

 

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

AMD Athlon XP3200+
FSB:210MHz
GeForce 4 MX440 64MB (will get better videocard soon)
640GB HDD

 

[MaxiPro800]

Finished the case. Phew, thank god I had a spare unpainted rear piece from another reshelled unit.

 

[MaxiPro800]

And assembled together. All the NEC caps on the bottom side of the board were replaced with tantalums, total 16x 330uF.

For the time being I left the 80GB Toshiba HDD it came with in there. I have to figure out how does it manage to boot PS2 games although I suppose Irisman might be one of the reasons. Then, I'll have to FTP the games off to a spare place on my PC, upgrade the drive (320GB 7200RPM ought to be enough for it) and FTP them back.

 

[The Egg]

HP Vectra XA5/233DT

Pentium 233Mhz MMX
Intel 430HX Chipset
512k Pipeline Burst Cache
64MB EDO 72-pin SIMMS 60ns (2x32MB)
Matrox Millennium 2 PCI 4MB (MIL2P/4/HP)
Sound Blaster 16 - ISA (CT2970)
AMD PCnet Fast Ethernet AM79C971KC
Quantum Fireball SE 2.5GB HDD
3.5" 1.44MB FDD
No Optical Drive
2x USB Ports on Motherboard
Proprietary PSU (Baby AT style connections, but OS can power down like an ATX)


Picked up that guy over the weekend for 70 bucks. Everything is fully functional including the HDD (bearings are noisy though). The previous owner seems to have installed a fresh copy of Win95 4.00.950B. Could use some retro-brighting, but would likely damage some of the stickers, so I'll probably leave for now (I already damaged a paper sticker on the top that read "Y2K Ready")

Disconnected the HDD and left in place, then installed a CompactFlash to IDE/PATA adapter with a 16GB card into an expansion slot. Installed and briefly messed around with Win98SE. Not having an optical drive in a PC of this era is a major annoyance (and kindof weird TBH). I have one temporarily rigged up with the case open. Unfortunately I don't have the side rails which are required to install a drive in the front 5.25" bay.

I did install another 32MB of EDO I had laying around for 96MB total, but I read something about the L2 cacheable size being only 64MB due to some sort of setting I don't have access to (even though the HX chipset should be able to do 512MB). I'll have to look into that more later.

Finished the software side of things.
Installed the following (onto 16GB CompactFlash via an adapter):

Windows 98 SE
Microsoft 2004 Security Update CD (from here)
Last official version of Matrox and SB16 drivers for Win98
Last version of DirectX 9.0c for Win98
Unofficial Windows 98 USB Storage Driver (nusb36e)


I previously tried a bunch of unofficial "update rollups" and "service packs", and they were all awful. Did a bunch of funky stuff I didn't want, or just bluescreened. I really just wanted stability patches and OS fixes that were released over the years; I'm not going to connect it to the internet. The Microsoft CD I linked above seems to work well, or at least, it caused no harm. The USB patch I linked also seems to work really well in limited usage. I'm able to use a USB mouse in addition to USB flash drives, which makes transferring files much easier (especially with no optical drive). Haven't messed with any games yet.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Rebuilt one of my Slot 1 machines w/ a Soyo 6BA+IV. While the clockgen isn't the brightest thing on it, it always has been rock stable.

Specs:

- Seasonic SS-350FS PSU
- Soyo 6BA+IV mobo
- Pentium III 650MHz, SL3XK
- 256MB PC133SDR
- Quantum Fireball Plus AS 20GB HDD
- MSI Geforce 2 Pro 64MB
- RTL8139D NIC
- VIA VT6212L USB 2 0 card
- SB Audigy 1394, model SB0090
- Sony DW-G120A DVDRW
- Windows 98 SE w/ Plus!98, KEX4.52, NUSB3.6

Had a bit of issues with the Audigy drivers (Windows would go "headbutt" itself with WDM drivers, when the VxD drivers were the actual right choice.) and currently I am trying to get a gigabit RTL8169SC in place of the actual 8139.

 

[Ruru]

@MaxiPro800 did you delid that fat PS3? Mine needs a CPU delid, but haven't thought what would be the safest method for doing that. Its temps are skyrocketing even after deep cleaning and repasting.

 

[MaxiPro800]

I didn't. Tried doing that on a spare BC unit that was on life support, and while I didn't target the CELL (since the CELL is made to take more thermal abuse than the RSX IIRC), the RSX did not survive the delid, even though took measures to protect it from any scratches. That, and the H04 I've done didn't need it - the unit itself didn't show signs of motherboard tampering (aside from repaste, that is.) and the only issue I had with mine was dead caps on the RSX (and I went a bit overboard and did the CELL caps as well.)

I'd look for someone who can do it locally, and has the tools to do it. Especially for the CELL as it's an royal pain in the arse to remove compared to the RSX IHS.

 

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

Drives i had in the past in my 486DX2-66 and Pentium 200MMX. I had an 426MB Conner, and the same Quantum Bigfoot....


At this photo, bought today:

• Quantum Bigfoot Cyclone 2111AT, 2.1 GB (5,25 inch drive)
• Conner CFS540A, 540MB

 

[Ruru]

I didn't. Tried doing that on a spare BC unit that was on life support, and while I didn't target the CELL (since the CELL is made to take more thermal abuse than the RSX IIRC), the RSX did not survive the delid, even though took measures to protect it from any scratches. That, and the H04 I've done didn't need it - the unit itself didn't show signs of motherboard tampering (aside from repaste, that is.) and the only issue I had with mine was dead caps on the RSX (and I went a bit overboard and did the CELL caps as well.)

I'd look for someone who can do it locally, and has the tools to do it. Especially for the CELL as it's an royal pain in the arse to remove compared to the RSX IHS.

I guess that the temps aren't that bad then, but with those temps, the console sounds like a jet engine.

 

[MaxiPro800]

I guess that the temps aren't that bad then, but with those temps, the console sounds like a jet engine.

If you're getting 70-74 on the CELL they're normal temps and I wouldn't worry, and given your L04 is a 65/65 unit (65nm on both RSX and CELL), it should run far cooler than my H04 which is 90/65. (90nm RSX, 65nm CELL.)