TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Apocalypsee]

Talking about Socket 462/A I have one that I kinda afraid to remove the heatsink. Anyone knows the safe way to remove it?

 

[68Olds]

Talking about Socket 462/A I have one that I kinda afraid to remove the heatsink. Anyone knows the safe way to remove it?

If you are sure it is stuck, warm the heatsink with a hair dryer (or something similar) and twist the heatsink back and forth with small movements. You'll feel it become unstuck, then lift it off.

 

[lexluthermiester]

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

Why? That board needs a proper cleaning and recapping, but not an unwise buy. Definitely put a heatsink on that 3DFX chip. Trust me on that one.

 

[MaxiPro800]

There's about a 50% chance the ZX chipset or the 3dfx chip are broken. Or both.

Oh, and the seller's price tag for it is $88.

 

[MaxiPro800]

And to continue the streak - another gem I hope to secure - MSI 850 Pro, MS-6545 VER:1, w/ 1.7GHz 478 Willie, RDRAM sticks and cooler.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Surprise surprise, we have a winner!

I know the pics are kinda blurry and sorry for that. All there was to fix was a bunch of smashed SMDs near the 3dfx chip and a single resistor near the ZX chipset.

 

[68Olds]

I've put together my Intel D850EMV2, 2A (2.0GHz) 400FSB CPU, 4x256 800-45 RDRAM & a GF3 Ti200. Installed Win2k on it & I've managed to run 3DMark 99 Max & 3DMark 2000 on it so far.
I have an assortment of video cards and a few other CPUs I wanna try out with it. I'm also going to break down the tabletop setup & stuff it in a beige box.
There is no overclocking with that Intel mobo (well, maybe with SetFSB), so the only way to get better bench scores is install faster CPUs

.

 

[MaxiPro800]

While I don't have a GF3 of any kind, I would wonder what will the MSI 850 Pro5 "build" I ordered score w/ a GF4 MX460.
I might've read somewhere the closest to perform as a GF3 is the MX460 but always doubted the claim.

 

[68Olds]

While I don't have a GF3 of any kind, I would wonder what will the MSI 850 Pro5 "build" I ordered score w/ a GF4 MX460.
I might've read somewhere the closest to perform as a GF3 is the MX460 but always doubted the claim.

It could be fun to compare some benchmarks. I have a 1.6 or 1.7GHz Willie too, so we can compare the video cards evenly.

What OS are you planning to run?

 

[MaxiPro800]

It could be fun to compare some benchmarks. I have a 1.6 or 1.7GHz Willie too, so we can compare the video cards evenly.

What OS are you planning to run?

2000 Pro SP4. Most of the reviews I've been reading for boards of that era didn't yet dwelve into XP very much, although I do have that one Corporate RTM copy with the famous blacklisted key.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Surprise surprise, we have a winner!

View attachment 362147
View attachment 362150

I know the pics are kinda blurry and sorry for that. All there was to fix was a bunch of smashed SMDs near the 3dfx chip and a single resistor near the ZX chipset.

View attachment 362151

Heatsink & fan that puppy. Seriously!

 

[MaxiPro800]

Heatsink & fan that puppy. Seriously!

Unfortunately it's just heatsinks for both. I don't have any thin heatsinks to cram a fan in there. I did manage to paste a good heatsink on the 3dfx chip, almost similar to the retail V3 2000 card.

 

[68Olds]

2000 Pro SP4. Most of the reviews I've been reading for boards of that era didn't yet dwelve into XP very much, although I do have that one Corporate RTM copy with the famous blacklisted key.

Yes, that's the OS I'm running on the D850 as well. It was either going to be Win2k or WinME & my Athlon 1700+ system is already running WinME.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Pretty much.

I do wonder if my board would have an advantage by having ECC RAM, since the two 256MB sticks it comes with, they explicitly state ECC on their label.
A pair of 4x64MB sticks I had a long time ago, none of them had the ECC tag on there.

 

[KLiKzg]

Pretty much.

I do wonder if my board would have an advantage by having ECC RAM, since the two 256MB sticks it comes with, they explicitly state ECC on their label.
A pair of 4x64MB sticks I had a long time ago, none of them had the ECC tag on there.

Congrids on a clean build. You really make a good job!

& no I do not think ECC will benefit from ZX chipset...but you can check it out on Intel web pages.

 

[wolf]

While I don't have a GF3 of any kind, I would wonder what will the MSI 850 Pro5 "build" I ordered score w/ a GF4 MX460.
I might've read somewhere the closest to perform as a GF3 is the MX460 but always doubted the claim.

From memory and recent research I think the MX 460 should be a match for the OG GF3/Ti200-ish in games around the GF4 release, but the gap may widen in the GF3's favour in newer DX8 titles as the MX GF4 line stripped out the DX8/programmable shader functionality. So I suppose you might either expect better performance in newer titles, or the GF4 MX to run games using the DX7 render path and perform similarly but lack visual features. Luckily I doubt that there are a boatload of games where this will be much of an issue.

When I finally dedicate more time to my AGP rig, I can test this too with an MX440 and GF3 Ti200, and potentially broaden the result samples with GF2 MX and Ultra, and GF4 Ti 4800 among others.

 

[MaxiPro800]

@wolf
It wasn't the ZX I was talking about - it was the Tehama (850) chipset. Two of the RDRAM sticks included with the board I bought (which, according to the post office app, should be here today ) are ECC RIMMs.

 

[68Olds]

I swapped the 2.0GHz for the 1.6GHz Willamette, ran a 3DMark 99 bench and lost about 100 points.

I forgot to mention the CPU cooler I'm using. It's a Cooler Master Hyper 48 - a serious chunk of copper. lol
Here's an old review of it.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Quite the sad news - MSI 850 board arrived. It POSTs but no AGP card works - any AGP card I insert flat out plays the "no video" beep sequence for AwardBIOS. (1 long 2 short)

 

[68Olds]

Quite the sad news - MSI 850 board arrived. It POSTs but no AGP card works - any AGP card I insert flat out plays the "no video" beep sequence for AwardBIOS. (1 long 2 short)

Well that is a bummer.

Have you tried spraying electronics cleaner &/or canned air into the AGP slot?

 

[MaxiPro800]

Anything I could think of, including electronics cleaner.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Unfortunately it's just heatsinks for both.

That's still a good thing!

 

[wolf]

Spent some time working on the FX card, memory heatsinks and sticker removal / cleaning up of the heatsink. I have an aftermarket cooler ready to put on but I really dig the stock look.

 

[MaxiPro800]

That's still a good thing!

Yeah, the heatsink I used for the V3 seems to do a great job at cooling, coming close to the actual card version of the V3 2000.

I hope to get some Banshee cards from the same guy later this month. One's an ELSA Victory IIRC, and the other is a Gainward Dragon. I have a LX board coming thru as well as a BX mobo in my stash that would absolutely love these over the oh-so-generic TNT2 M64 and Savage 4 Pro cards I have around, and the Banshees are a nice thing to have IMO. The only thing I might encounter trouble with is the way I have to mount the heatsinks over the chips. IIRC neither cards have spaces for push-pin heatsinks.

 

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

I have a question about a system in the past we had.
It was around 1987/88 i quess

The system was a 8086/88 or similar. 8 MHz turbo to 12 MHz
The monitor showed 2 colors. Normal was Black screen with Amber letters. At the back from the monitor there was a switch, that made the screen amber, and then the letters were black

When we played games where was asked to select the videocard adapter, we had to select "CGA". When we select Hercules, the monitor was not showing anything or weird stripes all over the screen.
The monitor &videocard had a 9-pin connector.

Can anyone tell what setup it was? I would say CGA, but why didn't the monitor show more colors, since it was able to show 16 colors? Or was it maybe a CGA videocard with Hercules monitor...is that possible to connect to each other??