TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[dorsetknob]

have to dig out my Pioneer VHS (very high end for the Time )
and have a Tinker as it stopped working and i put it into storage (Attic)

 

[Trekkie4]

Pioneer made some high-end units back in a day, so it would definitely be worth the repairs IMHO, as long as you don't have to pay (too) much for the actual repairs, aka "hands" Let us know if you work out anything!

 

[biffzinker]

Random pop quiz

Whats interesting about this then?

View attachment 89449

The VRM heatsinks? There awfully big even for a Socket 478 motherboard.

 

[Bungz]

It's prob a bit niche so will explain.

Pentium 4 motherboards with cheap and nasty SIS chipsets were nothing special until you look into trying to shove old things like AGP 1x and 2x cards into one.

Socket A solutions and P3 options are common but P4 is a bit of a challenge.

Intel chipsets would be a no go with 478 Pentium 4's but there are some old Via and SIS chipset boards that have 4x universal slots which support 3.3v AGP cards, just not super easy to find the right one.



P4 2.6Ghz 533FSB Northwood with a Voodoo 3 currently SIS 645DX chipset. There are boards that support HT USB 2.0 and Prescotts but this is enough for me as it was more or less free.


More reading:

http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/agp.html#universalagpmotherboard

 

[Trekkie4]

It's prob a bit niche so will explain.

Pentium 4 motherboards with cheap and nasty SIS chipsets were nothing special until you look into trying to shove old things like AGP 1x and 2x cards into one.

Socket A solutions and P3 options are common but P4 is a bit of a challenge.

Intel chipsets would be a no go with 478 Pentium 4's but there are some old Via and SIS chipset boards that have 4x universal slots which support 3.3v AGP cards, just not super easy to find the right one.

View attachment 89457

P4 2.6Ghz 533FSB Northwood with a Voodoo 3 currently SIS 645DX chipset. There are boards that support HT USB 2.0 and Prescotts but this is enough for me as it was more or less free.


More reading:

http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/agp.html#universalagpmotherboard

Hmm, IDK... I had that Asus S478 board which had Intel chipset... Believe the model number was P4P800 SE. Gave the board to a friend who needed a working system, so it's not here any longer, but I might actually get it back some day

 

[Bungz]

That has a 865 chipset, limited to 1.5 V/ 0.8 V.

Nice board though all the same

 

[5DVX0130]

Random pop quiz

Whats interesting about this then?

View attachment 89449

All caps still looking healthy. Which is AMAZING, if still original, but I'm guessing it's been recaped at some point.
Also it being SiS chipset. Which could mean all sorts of horrors.

 

[Trekkie4]

Time for some more nostalgic (PC) hardware...

Earlier today, I've decided to re-visit one of my projects which never quite worked out the way I wanted (and expected). Long story short, I wanted a S3 Savage4 card for playing Unreal games in MeTaL mode (with full S3TC support!) You might remember me pairing that S3 card with ALi chipset motherboard, which for some odd reason didn't work. In fact, I had far more better results with nVidia's Vanta & M64 cards than with Savage.

So the entire idea got lost & forgotten until few days ago, when I found S3 card & decided to give it another go. However, this time (instead of building a new, dedicated system) I've decided to use one of my older, existing builds instead.


So yeah, here it is guys, it's a Celeron 333 running Windows 98. The chipset is 440BX, and comes with 64MB of SD-RAM.


It was originally designed for Voodoo Rush card (which obviously used the PCI slot), so the AGP port was left empty. However, since I don't have ANY other decent PCI cards, I've decided to pull this one out & re-purpose it for another build, more about that later on!


Honestly, I was kinda hesitating to use Savage again, especially after my previous experience with this card, but overall it does seem to be working so much better than with ALi chipset, AMD Duron system. That Celeron is indeed a bottleneck for the GPU (not to mention 64MB of RAM), and of course I could have easily upgraded the entire thing to something better, 500MHz Pentium III & 256MB of RAM, but I wanted it to remain original, the way I originally designed it. Which is cheap, simple & effective system for playing nostalgic games

As you can probably see from the pics below, most of the games are running smoothly, and I'm getting up to 2514 3DMarks, which is roughly twice as higher than what I had with Voodoo Rush. Come to think of it, I BARELY scored 1242 points on that ALi board, and the CPU was twice the speed of this one (and it had 4x more memory than THIS system here!)


Previous S3 results, under 3DMark 2000 v1.1 with ALi chipset, AMD Duron 950 & 256MB of DDR RAM...
Savage4 Pro

Vanta/M64

 

[Trekkie4]

Sooo yeah, not bad... Not bad at all, looks like I FINALLY have my S3TC MeTaL system up & running Meanwhile, I also started yet another project. You guys remember that Pentium Pro I wrote about? Yeah well, this particular system has all the bells & whistles integrated into the motherboard, but it doesn't have AGP slot. And since the onboard graphics was provided by Matrox Mystique, I couldn't run anything better than a Doom 2, Duke Nukem and/or games like Need For Speed II & Quake in software mode.


The only problem was to fit the card inside the case, with all those SCSI cables, terminators, sound & ethernet leads going from one end to another, without flexing (or damaging) the card too much


I removed the old Matrox drivers & swapped them over for 3dfx ones, everything worked OK ... for a while!


I even got the Quake (in GL mode) started, just to confirm that the card is indeed working as it should.


But this is where things started to go downhill... My old SCSI drive(s) inside this thing (which already developed bad sectors, from god knows when) got completely corrupted, and kept trying to read data from the platter, but obviously couldn't, so I ended up with tons of random errors & read-problems. Still not quite sure what to do with it, I might even go for a standard IDE drive, but one way or another, it HAS to be replaced, otherwise the entire unit is completely worthless Stay tuned for updates, in the words of Star Trek, it's "To be continued..."

 

[MaxiPro800]

Since I just upgraded my main PC again (from dual-core to quad-core), I had some parts left and with them I built a PC with these:

Allied AL-A400ATX (120mm fan)
ASUS K8N4-E nForce 4
512MB RAM (will replace with Kingston Value 1GB stick)
WDC WD800JB 80GB IDE HDD
LG GSA-4167B (white bezel version)
Sapphire Radeon HD3450 1GB PCI-E
JNC RJA-FQ-70 case
AMD Sempron 2800+
Windows Codename "Longhorn" Build 5048

 

[Trekkie4]

Well... This took me longer than I expected, but at least I've done it the RIGHT way (as in, from scratch)

So yeah, just like I expected ... the old SCSI drive, one of the two drives to be exact got to the point where every single read or write cycle would result with I/O errors and repeated clicking over & over (until the system would either crash or report random problem)

It's a shame really, as much as I dislike SCSI technology, these old SCSI drives have that old charm ... especially the spin-up & spin-down cycles, it sounds almost like the jet engine on a 747! However, with that being said, this unit here was overheating (among other problems), to the point where I burned my hand just from touching the outer cage, case support frame. It had to be AT LEAST 131F, which means the actual drive(s) inside the cage had to be even higher, I would say around 140, 150F which is pretty bizarre for a hard drive IMHO.


Either way, I replaced it with standard IDE ATA unit from IBM. Not only it doesn't run as hot, but it's also a LOT more quieter, and holds 7GB more storage than Seagate, so it was definitely a perfect choice. Best of all, I didn't even have to add (or remove) any cables, since I already have IDE CD-ROM inside, so all I had to do was to make CD "slave" and hook the IBM as "master". Meanwhile, the other Seagate SCSI drive is still inside, and it's been remapped through both Adaptec SCSI integrated utility and Windows 95 itself, so that all the bad sectors are removed. Ironically, I converted it into a backup drive, which now holds the entire Acronis True Image restore image, of the IBM drive.


Once I took care of the storage solutions, I resumed with all the games & testing the Pentium Pro in action. Games such as Tomb Raider 2 & 3 for example, along with both "Gold" additions


Despite using Voodoo Rush on a Pentium Pro system I didn't have much problems with recognizing the hardware most of the time. As you can tell from the pic, Need For Speed II SE immediately recognized 3dfx hardware, along with Need For Speed III Hot Pursuit, which seems to be working perfectly OK even on maximum settings! (even though recommended values were all set to low by default)


However, not all the games worked straight out of the box, some of them didn't work at all! Quake 2 was one of them, no matter which driver I picked from the menu it either showed garbled image or crashed the entire game. I even tried with newer title Unreal Gold, just to see if it would work. Everything installed properly, and it even detected Glide hardware, but 1st it warned me about "Not having MMX-supported CPU", and then it crashed the entire game. The actual crash was due to graphics, Voodoo Rush not being recognized or configured properly, where the MMX message was just a warning. Apparently Pentium Pro was either not recognized and/or supported by the game, so I removed it.

 

[agent_x007]

PCI GPU vs. Windows 10 x64 :

Card :

It can run 3DMark 01 SE on Windows Basic Driver

 

[dorsetknob]

Its not a pioneer VHS But a Panasonic

It powers up and shows a Display

 

[Trekkie4]

@agent_x007 Diamond Multimedia?! I never realized they produced video cards that long, this had to be one of their last models before Diamond disappeared.

Its not a pioneer VHS But a Panasonic

You /do/ realize the full potential of this thing, right? This S-VHS unit is capable of reproducing sound quality which is equal (if not better) to a digital source such as CD. In fact, that's what most ppl did back then, they used their HiFi VHS machines as stereo tape decks, which are capable of storing up to 4hrs of music Is it fully functional, is everything working OK?

 

[dorsetknob]

Have to find lead's and Tape's to connect it to my System ( PC / TV and hi fi ) to Test but the fact it powers on is a good sign

 

[Trekkie4]

Well, it is most certainly a good sign, but it's to be seen (and confirmed) if it works or not. I'll bet it has one of those G or K Decks inside, those were reliable due to using timed toothed belt over the standard, rubber ones, but they were a nightmare to fix when something fell out of alignment Anyhow, look it up, G-Deck VCRs are most certainly a conversation starters in the terms of VHS & S-VHS

Edit
Yup, just confirmed it. It uses G2 deck (info on Panasonic chassis available HERE). You're looking at single motor design (capstan one), which drives EVERYTHING inside the unit. From the tape elevator, cam gears, idlers, etc. The idea behind G-Series was to use solenoids to control the gear switching, so it has that soft clicking sound during the transitions, gear shifting. Like I said, it was a great idea (perhaps on paper lol) but in the real life this thing can be a nightmare to fix, so you'll definitely have to pay someone to do it for you professionally, if necessary :-(

 

[biffzinker]

I even tried with newer title Unreal Gold, just to see if it would work. Everything installed properly, and it even detected Glide hardware, but 1st it warned me about "Not having MMX-supported CPU"

You might have better luck running Unreal Gold on a Pentium MMX in place of the Pentium Pro.

This might sound familiar.

A few months ago Intel gave the power user two options, a Pentium 200 for Windows 95 and a Pentium Pro 200 for Windows NT, nothing in-between and therefore leaving the power hungry user searching for a better processor solution from AMD and Cyrix. Intel satisfied the market's demand by releasing a Pentium Pro-like Pentium successor which boasted a larger L1 cache, a more advanced core, and 57 brand new additions to the x86 instruction set, dubbed MMX.

Source: Anandtech - Intel Pentium MMX

Edit: Found it about the higher clocked Pentium MMX.

although Intel claimed that the Pentium MMX would end at 233MHz they already started working on a fab. shrink for the upcoming 266MHz Pentium MMX, codenamed Tillamook.

 

[Trekkie4]

Oh wow! So the Pro series really doesn't have MMX instructions?! I knew having "Pro" system was considered somewhat rare, as most systems from back in a day were either Pentium, Pentium MMX and/or AMD, but I figured this message was a result of incompatibility between Pentium Pro & Unreal Gold. More specifically, Unreal not being able to properly detect the CPU model...

So, according to this the 233 MMX would kick 200 Pro in the terms of 3D performance..? This would most certainly explain a thing or two! Somehow I thought it would be other way around, as in "Pro" being far more superior to MMX

 

[biffzinker]

Wouldn't the Pentium Pro still have the more performative FPU over the Pentium MMX? After all the Pentium II was a re-work of the Pentium Pro?

The Pentium II featured 32 KB of L1 cache, double that of the Pentium Pro, as well as deeper write buffers for a slight L1 performance increase. The Pentium II was also the first P6-based CPU to implement the Intel MMX integer SIMD instruction set which had already been introduced on the Pentium MMX. The Pentium II was basically a more consumer-oriented version of the Pentium Pro.

Wikipedia - Pentium II

 

[Trekkie4]

Interesting question, that's for sure. I suppose the only decent answer would be to benchmark all 3 CPUs & compare the numbers *shrug*

 

[dorsetknob]

Trekkie4
It lives
With sound and picture ( think its a crap picture but its a very very Old Cheap Tape
Going have to buy a Pre Recorded Tape for further Testing

Crap tape was Bought pre 2001 most probably pre 2000
Explains the quality
pic is of Farscape ep Aired in sept 2001( Recorded)

 

[Trekkie4]

Awesome! My advice would be to take the top cover off & carefully clean the head drum with the piece of (writing/printing) paper that's soaked in rubbing alcohol. Simply put the paper on one side of the drum & rotate the head(s) several times (holding the head from above, where the grounding pin is, along with PCB) until you can no longer see brownish traces on the paper.

Then take some q-tips & do the same for erase head (upper-left corner), along with audio/control head (between the head drum & pinch roller, upper-right corner). Remember, DO NOT use the cotton pads and q-tips on the head drum because you could easily cause serious damage. The actual video (and HiFi audio) heads on a drum are located inside those small notches, cutouts which are visible from the side view. Everything else is just aluminum drum and PCB.

 

[dorsetknob]

Taking it partial apart to give it a good service /clean will be next priority and i expect it needs it
Then Obtaining some good quality tapes for further testing is the next step

remote also works perfectly

 

[Trekkie4]

Cool, let us know if you work anything out And check out my previous post, I've just edited it with more detailed (and hopefully more helpful) description of the drum unit. Normally I'd also recommend that you replace belts &/or pinch roller, but since G-Deck uses toothed belt that's extremely precise (and doesn't slip), you're all good. It might be a good idea to clean the pinch roller though, but don't put too much alcohol otherwise you'll dry out the rubber & cause permanent damage to it, so then you'll have to replace it. Not a huge loss, but it'll cost you some cash and it would be tricky to swap it out.

 

[Red_Machine]

Ahhh, Farscape. Great show.