Classic Rigs?

[Widjaja]

Oldest rig I have is:-

P4 3.0E Prescott
2x1GB ADATA PC3200
ASUS P4P800 SE
2x80GB WD caviar
Sapphire X1950Pro 512mb AGP

 

[rodneyhchef]

Tried to run superPI on it last night and it said something like 'square root error'

 

[rodneyhchef]

Woop woop! Just acquired a geforce4 mx420 pci for it now to see how badly my system bottlenecks it...

 

[Frick]

Oldest rig I have is:-

P4 3.0E Prescott
2x1GB ADATA PC3200
ASUS P4P800 SE
2x80GB WD caviar
Sapphire X1950Pro 512mb AGP

Dude that is actually pretty good even today.

 

[rodneyhchef]

Dude that is actually pretty good even today.

Yeah, I've played crysis on worse!

 

[xBruce88x]

me too... not a bad rig at all. could probably play fallout 3 and such on that still

 

[Widjaja]

Dude that is actually pretty good even today.

Yeah it was a nice machine when I was using it.
The card had some performance issues in certain game for some reason.
Texture loading issues which caused a half a second pause.

I've been wanting to integrate it into my desk for some time now.

 

[Jstn7477]

I found a Dell Dimension B110, complete with original monitor, speakers, and peripherals at the end of someone's driveway in my neighborhood just 2 days ago. Still works perfectly, but the hard drive was removed. It was all packed up in an iMac 21.5" box so I assume that is what replaced it. It has a Celeron 2.53/533, 512MB PC2700, no AGP slot and an 865GV chipset. We also have an HP s754 machine with a crappy SiS chipset, AGP, 2.4/256K AMD64 and 2GB DDR400, a Dell Dimension E520 w/ E6400 and 6GB DDR2, the rigs in my specs and an additional AMD 965BE system (mother's).

3 years ago I had a lot more elderly hardware: AM386-DX40 w/ 8MB board, 486DX2 66 w/ 32MB, and a few Socket 370/462(A)/478/754/939 boards. Much of the stuff eventually failed or was gotten rid of.

 

[rodneyhchef]

I find it hard to throw stuff away. I threw out an aladdin V mobo about a month ago cos the caps were way past it (although board still worked when I tested it) turns out they are worth quite a bit now!

Don't think my pcchips m571 will be worth anything anytime soon though, it has support for plenty of cpus, but memory performance is truly diabolical and even though I have a suitable k6-2 400 and 128mb sd ram for it I'm loathed to use it. The onboard sound clashes with my awe32 as well

 

[rodneyhchef]

This has turned into a bit of an 'overclocking adventure' thread for me and I am not sure if I should start a new one, but I've had some considerable success with this setup over the last few days.

I was playing about with the PCChips M571 board I mentioned earlier to compare how badly the i430VX system was being bottlenecked running a much slower CPU, with a view to maybe putting the M571 board into the rig instead, even though I hate it for the reasons I mentioned in my previous post.

The multiplier setting details for the M571 revealed some interesting info, the 1.5x multiplier is interpreted as 3.5x with some CPUs and the 2x multiplier is interpreted as 6x with the K6-2. I tried the 1.5x setting on my i430VX board with the Pentium 233MMX cpu an hey presto! 233MHz

I then thought I'd try a spare K6-2 450 I had in there, even though it should not work at all (K6-2 was never supported by intel chipsets) And it works!! at 400MHz!! Bios reports it as a 486 at 66MHz but sandra/CPU-Z etc correctly identifies it as a K6-2 @ 400MHz with a 6x multi and with the appropriate speed boost. Only slight issue is the voltage is a bit high (2.5 vs stock of 2.4) but I've managed to fit a socket A cooler on it, which should provide more than enough cooling. The TDP for it is around the same as it is for the 233MMX, so I'm hoping it won't put too much strain on the boards antiquated PWM circuits. Time will tell.

In other news, my new graphics card for it arrived today. So more benching tonight.

Only thing I've had no luck with is the USB card I bought for it which refuses to detect anything without a system restart. Plug 'n' Play bios my eye!

I've been keeping an eye on AWE32/AWE64 prices on ebay lately, an AWE32 sold yesterday for £47! Need to get mine on there, AWE64s can be had for a fraction of that.

I love my classic rig!

 

[Red_Machine]

Your USB problem would be related to the CPU. I know a guy who bought an MMX CPU for a Win95 machine and it broke his USB ports. He got a non-MMX CPU and they worked fine again. Though personally I'd rather have the MMX...

 

[rodneyhchef]

You could be right it did specify in the manual that I needed a minimum of a Pentium 2 266 for the card to work. I haven't tried it with the K6 cpu yet.

It's a USB 2.0 hub as well and I can't help but think now a USB 1.1/1.0 hub would have been more suitable. The damn thing uses 3IRQs as well!

 

[sonnytiger]

Mystery Oldie Rig

I've got this old motherboard here, I can't for the likes of me figure out what it is, it has no serial or product numbers on it, I've tried the chipset but just got data sheets. I want to find a diagram of it to figure out what a particular connector is on it. I know its not serial or parallel, so I have no clue. It's got a Pentium-S Processor @ 133MHz in it, 32 Megs of RAM and usually (I took out everything to take a picture of it) a 100Mbit PCI network card in it, A sound Blaster 16 on the ISA and a 3D rage 2 + DVD. As for storage, I've got a 4GB CF Card in it, it runs perfectly silent if i turn off the fans! Also sorry for the sudden butting in with my huge post. Pics below, after all, pics or it didn't happen...:

The whole motherboard:

A closer look at the connector in question:

Very close look at the connector:

The chipset:

 

[rodneyhchef]

Not at all this is great!

I have a similar connector on my board, it says it is USB in the brief manual I found for my board online, but there are no options in the bios to enable or disable it and there is no sign of it in device manager.

It took me years to figure out the board I have. I have owned it for 14 years and I am still discovering things about it

 

[sonnytiger]

awesome, I don't know if you can tell me, but what is the jumper in between th cache and the cpu for? also, i just put a pentium mmx in her and it still says that it is a pentium-s.

 

[rodneyhchef]

To be perfectly honest. I am amazed I didn't blow my board years ago 'cos when I didn't have the manual I tried all sorts of combinations of jumpers. I have the extra cache mem in the slot like you have, enabling that was a real trial. There are 4 jumpers on different parts of the board for that alone. My fsb jumpers are quite near the cpu. The voltage and multipliers are near pinouts for the front of the case.

here is the link to my motherboad manual, maybe your manual is also on the same website?

http://www.elhvb.com/mboards/fullyes/82430VX.html

based on the age of the chipest, it may not support P55C Pentium MMX cpus. I really thought mine didn't for years as I had a P166 classic for it.

My new video card is installed now. BIOS is only displaying 32MB of ram though. Very strange.

 

[qubit]

I have several classic rigs.

My favourite one has twin Celeron 300A CPU's on an Abit mobo and a gig of RAM!! Yes, a true dual CPU system.

This is of course an AGP mobo, remember them?

 

[sonnytiger]

dual celerons? ick, why not dual another much better processor in the same slot, its like sticking two Geforce GT 210 in SLI...

 

[Frick]

dual celerons? ick, why not dual another much better processor in the same slot, its like sticking two Geforce GT 210 in SLI...

Well depends on the chipset what it can handle. A Pentium 2 would be better maybe.

And 1GB RAM? That's sick on that system.

 

[rodneyhchef]

My usb is finally working properly, so thanks again for the tip, Red_Machine.

That's the good news. The bad news is I don't think this video card is gonna work. It seems to be using way too much system ram. I currently have about 2mb free and just about nothing will run.

 

[qubit]

dual celerons? ick, why not dual another much better processor in the same slot, its like sticking two Geforce GT 210 in SLI...

Oh yeah sure, that's pretty craptastic. Only, I didn't buy it new. I got it for £15 from a computer enthusiast friend. The mobo is an Abit BP6:

And believe it or not, Abit may be long gone, but the website is still going. Here's the BP6 product page.

Those Celerys are the ones that overcklock from 300MHz to 450 I believe...

Well depends on the chipset what it can handle. A Pentium 2 would be better maybe.

And 1GB RAM? That's sick on that system.

Yeah.

 

[Frick]

Ohh one of the good mobos. I had the BE6 (slot1) and it took my Pentium 3 from 400Mhz to 600Mhz. It made the difference in a playable BF1942. I had that system up to 2003 I think.

 

[rodneyhchef]

awesome, I don't know if you can tell me, but what is the jumper in between th cache and the cpu for? also, i just put a pentium mmx in her and it still says that it is a pentium-s.

another page that may be useful

http://www.kva.kursk.ru/bios1/numbers.shtml

 

[qubit]

Ohh one of the good mobos. I had the BE6 (slot1) and it took my Pentium 3 from 400Mhz to 600Mhz. It made the difference in a playable BF1942. I had that system up to 2003 I think.

Yeah, it is and it sounds like yours was too. That's a 50% overclock you had there.

However, I put XP on my rig at one point and it was still really slow. Not surprising really, lol. I might try it with Windows 7, if I get round to it, for a laugh. I'm betting that driver/chipset problems will prevent 7 from working properly on it.

 

[Hayder_Master]

I am not sure but i am think there is an club or thread like this.