TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[stinger608]

Wow, I guess I didn't realize that this thread has been up just over 15 years!!!!!!!!

Just happen to notice that. LOL

Just doesn't seem like it's been that long. Jesus, I'm getting old.

 

[cal5582]

Thought this was kind of interesting.

PCI IDE Caching Controller TEKRAM DC-690C with Harris 80C286 20 MHz CPU + RAM | eBay

Microprocessor: 80C286. Itscaching capability is to relieve the bottleneck between slow I/O interfaces and IDE disk subsystems. Maximum 4 hard drives (plus 2 ATAPI IDE CD-ROMs with CD version). Bus Standard: 32-bit PCI Bus.

www.ebay.com

its a disk cache card, with a full 286 with its own bios onboard on a pci bus.

 

[LabRat 891]

Thought this was kind of interesting.

PCI IDE Caching Controller TEKRAM DC-690C with Harris 80C286 20 MHz CPU + RAM | eBay

Microprocessor: 80C286. Itscaching capability is to relieve the bottleneck between slow I/O interfaces and IDE disk subsystems. Maximum 4 hard drives (plus 2 ATAPI IDE CD-ROMs with CD version). Bus Standard: 32-bit PCI Bus.

www.ebay.com

its a disk cache card, with a full 286 with its own bios onboard on a pci bus.

I wonder if there'd be a way to access it like a SBC connected to another PC via PCI?
Kinda like those Sega AICs, could someone run DOS *on* the card (in a more-modern system)?

Also, looks like LSI made some EISA controllers w/ a TI 486 on-board.

Pardon Our Interruption...

 

[lexluthermiester]

Thought this was kind of interesting.

PCI IDE Caching Controller TEKRAM DC-690C with Harris 80C286 20 MHz CPU + RAM | eBay

Microprocessor: 80C286. Itscaching capability is to relieve the bottleneck between slow I/O interfaces and IDE disk subsystems. Maximum 4 hard drives (plus 2 ATAPI IDE CD-ROMs with CD version). Bus Standard: 32-bit PCI Bus.

www.ebay.com

its a disk cache card, with a full 286 with its own bios onboard on a pci bus.

Oh yeah! Fill those SIMM slots with 16MB each and you've got a very nice consumer level drive accelerator. Too bad it never caught on..

Wow, I guess I didn't realize that this thread has been up just over 15 years!!!!!!!!

Just happen to notice that. LOL

Just doesn't seem like it's been that long. Jesus, I'm getting old.

And it is still consistently excellent!

 

[cal5582]

honestly i love the idea of "accelerator/cpu on a board"
like how cool was it back in the day when you could just slot an entire pc in your mac and make it run dos. id love to see someone throw an arm cpu and ram on a board and write a driver that just shunts windows on arm binaries to it or something stupid like that..

 

[MaxiPro800]

One of the recycling center chaps I keep in touch with has prepared these for me:

- Soyo 5EMA+ v1.1
- FIC PA-2013 2MB
- Commate S7AX (yay, my first SS7 ALi board lol)
- Matrox Parhelia 128MB AGP

About all of the boards will need a good clean-n-recap but hey, I can't complain.

 

[jak_2456]

One of the recycling center chaps I keep in touch with has prepared these for me:

- Soyo 5EMA+ v1.1
- FIC PA-2013 2MB
- Commate S7AX (yay, my first SS7 ALi board lol)
- Matrox Parhelia 128MB AGP

About all of the boards will need a good clean-n-recap but hey, I can't complain.

Ah, if only everyone in my area properly dealt with old tech instead of throwing it on the curb to go to the landfill...

 

[stinger608]

Ah, if only everyone in my area properly dealt with old tech instead of throwing it on the curb to go to the landfill...

Oh man, I hear ya there!!!

 

[QuietBob]

XP really needs 128mb otherwise is sluggish

A fully updated (April 2019) 32-bit WinXP Home stripped of all unnecessary services uses about 330 MB of RAM on its own. How would I know? I'm posting from it right now

Browsing the interwebz is already a PITA with a Core2 Duo, so I wouldn't even try with a Pentium M, even with a supported OS.

Recently I spent close to two weeks using only a 17 year old laptop for the internet. It has a Turion X2 Ultra ZM-85 (essentially an Athlon 64 X2 4400+) with 4 GB of DDR2-800 and a Crucial BX500 SSD. Totally usable for browsing, though watching videos was limited to 480p because of the crappy GF 8200M G.

But yeah, using an old 1c/1t CPU for browsing is an exercise in patience. Speaking from own experience with a Celeron D 326 and a socket 754 Sempron 2500+

 

[lexluthermiester]

A fully updated (April 2019) 32-bit WinXP Home stripped of all unnecessary services uses about 330 MB of RAM on its own. How would I know? I'm posting from it right now

That is when XP has more than the minimum required system RAM to use. For XP SP3, the minimum required for install is 128MB. Anything that XP needs beyond that will end up in the virtual memory. IS it ideal? Hell no! 1GB of RAM with a DGPU, or 1.5GB with IGP is needed for a reasonable experience on XP SP3. Ideally, you just want to max out the RAM to the 4GB limit.

with 4 GB of DDR2-800

Like that!

 

[Ruru]

That is when XP has more than the minimum required system RAM to use. For XP SP3, the minimum required for install is 128MB. Anything that XP needs beyond that will end up in the virtual memory. IS it ideal? Hell no! 1GB of RAM with a DGPU, or 1.5GB with IGP is needed for a reasonable experience on XP SP3. Ideally, you just want to max out the RAM to the 4GB limit.

Even 256 was too low for XP if you ask me (still remember those school PCs...)

I always used the Win2000 PC in school which had 128 RAM, ran hella better than those machines with XP and 256MB... Even with that P4 1.5

 

[Veseleil]

A fully updated (April 2019) 32-bit WinXP Home stripped of all unnecessary services uses about 330 MB of RAM on its own. How would I know? I'm posting from it right now


Recently I spent close to two weeks using only a 17 year old laptop for the internet. It has a Turion X2 Ultra ZM-85 (essentially an Athlon 64 X2 4400+) with 4 GB of DDR2-800 and a Crucial BX500 SSD. Totally usable for browsing, though watching videos was limited to 480p because of the crappy GF 8200M G.

But yeah, using an old 1c/1t CPU for browsing is an exercise in patience. Speaking from own experience with a Celeron D 326 and a socket 754 Sempron 2500+

My fully tweaked XP SP3 system with a Celeron 900 and an NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440-SE (that one didn't need any RAM allocation for itself) used less than 60MB of RAM (54MB IIRC). Later when I put a more powerful Radeon GPU it needed 200MB more. Unfortunately I've lost the proof for that in the form of a task manager SS. But I still do have an SS from my not-so-much tweaked Win 7 system from a few couple of years ago:



Edit: I've found the TXT with list of XP enabled services from that time. Since most of the time I was struggling with the outdated systems always needing more performance, I tweaked the hell out of everything back then.

Cryptographic Services - manu
DHCP Client - auto
Event Log - auto
Plug and Play - auto
Remote Procedure Call (RPC) - auto
System Event Notification - auto
Windows Audio - auto
Windows Installer - manu
Windows Management Instrumentation - auto
Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions - manu

Oh well, while I'm at it, I'll share some other tweaking I was playing with (also saved in the text form):

"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop"

- MenuShowDelay 100
- WaitToKillAppTimeout 1000
- HungAppTimeout 1000


"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer"

- NoRecentDocsHistory 1

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

NoDrives
A: 1
B: 2
C: 4
D: 8
E: 16
F: 32
G: 64
H: 128
I: 256

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

NoLowDiskSpaceChecks 1

“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction”

- enable Y

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer"

- AlwaysUnloadDLL 1


"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control"

- WaitToKillServiceTimeout 1000


“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem”

- NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation to 1
- NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate 1

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\
DisablePagingExecutive to 1 to disable paging and have the kernel run in RAM


Can't remember I used the last one though, maybe.

 

[TheKingGamerBr]

Talking about windows ram usage, i installed in my thinkpad t61 a windows 7 super lite edition that i found in archive org, i think it uses something like 300mb of ram, i don't really know, because it doesnt show numbers or letters, only symbols, yeah, they even deleted numbers lol.

Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 SuperLite X64 : Microsoft : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Download and Install the most fastest and secure browser with built-in ad and tracker blocker and support content producers: https://bit.ly/3b8BIhakanyos...

archive.org

 

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

Bought a new (NOS) Case for my Athlon 600

Asus T5-AB (Elan Vital T5)

I have the same case for my Pentium II-400 Rig


The Athlon build:

 

[stinger608]

Bought a new (NOS) Case for my Athlon 600

Asus T5-AB (Elan Vital T5)

I have the same case for my Pentium II-400 Rig


The Athlon build:
View attachment 375835

That's f'n badass man!!!!!!

 

[wolf]

Did something what you all retro guys should do from time to time.
...bought some spare CR2032 batteries

I do this with some regularity, between the multiple clones of XP retro boxes, all the other boards, and car key fobs, 2032's end up being needed fairly often.

 

[Ruru]

I do this with some regularity, between the multiple clones of XP retro boxes, all the other boards, and car key fobs, 2032's end up being needed fairly often.

I had a dead battery on PS2 as well, now it remembers the clock settings.

Disassembling a fat PS2 sucks but you don't need to do that more than once in a decade...

 

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

Bought a new (NOS) Case for my Athlon 600

Asus T5-AB (Elan Vital T5)

I have the same case for my Pentium II-400 Rig


The Athlon build:
View attachment 375835

I have my Slot A Athlon in here

.

 

[68Olds]

I'm gonna guess that the reactions are for the Thermaltake fan (& its dust accumulation) in your side panel, because I looked at the picture & my reaction was !

BTW, I have one of those Logi Wingman joysticks & still use it. Does yours have the game port connector with a USB adapter too?

 

[jak_2456]

BTW, I have one of those Logi Wingman joysticks & still use it. Does yours have the game port connector with a USB adapter too?

I have one of those joysticks too. Weird thing is that I can't seem to get it to work with the game port connection, but the USB works fine.

 

[Greenslade]

Ah, if only everyone in my area properly dealt with old tech instead of throwing it on the curb to go to the landfill...

Sadly i dont see any old tech thrown out in my area.I have only seen one old pc many years ago when i did not know much about them.Another time i saw one of thouse cheese greater Mac,s,i did not pick that up because i have even less knowledge of there workings.

 

[JackOO7]

Cleaned up our attick and came across this old hardware.

 

[Greenslade]

I'm gonna guess that the reactions are for the Thermaltake fan (& its dust accumulation) in your side panel, because I looked at the picture & my reaction was !

BTW, I have one of those Logi Wingman joysticks & still use it. Does yours have the game port connector with a USB adapter too?

I noticed that toNice colour green cool

 

[de.das.dude]

i used to love them wacky zalman coolers. Specially the GPU ones!

 

[RyzenMaster.sys]

Finally got me some X79