TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Greenslade]

Fuck, if you could visit Finland, I could assemble u a good retro setup for free.

But for now, ur in UK? I want you to come with me to take few beers when I visit UK.

I have just noticed it is missing the green shroud over the Cpu as in this photo,i will give that a miss.

Can anyone tell me what these cards are in the back of the PC
I asked the seller what the specs were he said they were just the ones it came with. I tried to work it out with it coming with VISTA hoping that it was a Q6700 CORE2DUO.Is that a sound card in there?

 

[Aaron_Henderson]

I have just noticed it is missing the green shroud over the Cpu as in this photo,i will give that a miss.

Can anyone tell me what these cards are in the back of the PC
I asked the seller what the specs were he said they were just the ones it came with. I tried to work it out with it coming with VISTA hoping that it was a Q6700 CORE2DUO.Is that a sound card in there?

Looks like a GPU and a capture card! Does it have the white side panels? I had a similar Dell Dimension awhile back...think it was the same model. I liked the case and wanted to do a custom build of it, but I don't think I ever got around to it.

 

[NotHereMan]

I wouldn't bother with an old HDD. These days I go with a CompctFlash to IDE adapter and a 16GB, 32GB or 64GB CompactFlash card.

Compact Flash CF to 3.5 Female 40 Pin IDE Bootable Adapter Converter Card | eBay

1 Compact Flash CF to 3.5 Female 40 Pin IDE Bootable Adapter. Bootable from CF. Support CF-!, also support IBM micro-driver with CF- ! IDE: 40 pin female. This adapter does NOT support hot insertion of CF cards.

www.ebay.com

and

SanDisk 32GB 64GB 128G CF Extreme 120MB/s Compact Flash Memory Card SDCFXSB | eBay

Professional-Grade Video Capture VPG-20 lets you capture smooth Full HD video without interruption. USB Flash Drives. Will call available in Santa Clara CA.

www.ebay.com

Together you're talking about $45 to $50 shipped at the most.

Is it possible to make these yourself? Notice there is no brand for the items on eBay.

 

[Greenslade]

Looks like a GPU and a capture card! Does it have the white side panels? I had a similar Dell Dimension awhile back...think it was the same model. I liked the case and wanted to do a custom build of it, but I don't think I ever got around to it.

Thanks for that, If is that modal does it have an Q6700 i would buy it,but why is the seller so vage about it?There are so many versions of it.Plus the fact it is a dodge area of London,as i would have to collect Not that the area i live in is a good area,but at least i know it.Why would you not know your own system ,as he said it worked when he last used it. I got back to the seller asking him if he could take the cover off and take a photo of the inside of the PC.This is his reply
*Hi it’s not worth the grief, it’s a buck standard model so you can find all that on a google search*
with that attatude if his too lazy to take the cover off and take a photo of it he can shove it. It would be over 30 with shipping anyway.

 

[Mussels]

Is it possible to make these yourself? Notice there is no brand for the items on eBay.

You cant make a CD to IDE adaptor yourself, no.

Can you buy a CF card and IDE adaptor seperately and combine them yourself? Yes.

 

[MachineLearning]

It worked before. And it's a native LGA775 chip, just has a BSEL mod on its LGA pads.

My P5Q Turbo will POST even with an X5470 (LGA771) and unedited BIOS, so unfortunately your CPU may indeed be dead Have you cleaned the contacts with isopropyl?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Dells are poor in that respect it seems .What do you think of this one
Dell dimension 8300 Old pc unused working but no hard drive installed on facebook but i would have to ask what the specs are.£20 his had ot on there for 14 weeks.
Just that one photo of it.There is this one on there to 3000 £15 make an offer also on Facebook.Currently it has no OS, so the new owner will need to install there desired OS It has a 80GB PETA HDD It has 512MB RAM Open to any offers or questions.This one is out of my area but not to far out ,i would have to get a train there.Train fares in the uk are exspencive. If it was maximun of 10 pounds return it could be worth while ,that is if it is near the station, as i should think it is a heavy bugger to carry..

Which is the better modal ?

Which one is a newer modal?
It seems the train fare is under 10 pounds.
The one i have to get a train to see has put more photos up it it looks very spass in there with no cards in there. But dust free.The 8300 one is a very grainey crap photo. View attachment 248029View attachment 248028
View attachment 248027


View attachment 248023View attachment 248022

There is no AGP slot on that system. Avoid it.

 

[MachineLearning]

Got around to restoring my PowerColor HD 5970 that I've been sitting on for a few months. The first GPU that I ever restored was actually an ATI HD 5970, just last October - it was extremely nerve-wracking being dual-gpu. This time I got to do it with much more confidence and relative skill, and I get to do quad-CrossFire in the end.

The decal sticker was peeling slightly at one end. Rather than peeling it all off, it's now kept down with electrical tape.

Blower designs are my absolute favorite in terms of aesthetics, and this card takes the cake. This whole generation from ATi was beautiful, and very well-built.

Vapor-chamber cooler, which according to AMD was built to dissipate ~ 400W. This card has a 300W TDP, and so AMD in marketing was saying it's "meant to be overclocked." The only kicker is that the VRM cooling is a bit lackluster - it will overheat at high voltages (which is possible via software control thanks to Volterra ) and is the real limiter for OC on this card. The GPU cores are binned for lower power leakage than the average Cypress, and as expected they often will OC higher on lower voltages than say a HD 5870.

In my experience with my reference ATi HD 5970, if I set the GPU voltage to > 1.200v, the VRM knocks against 124⁰, thermal throttles and overall tries to self-immolate. The GPUs, however, will run at a very reasonable temp for a multi-GPU card, at or below 78⁰c on either GPU IIRC. This is with the fan manually maxxed out in Afterburner. I've yet to stress the PowerColor card, but I'm hoping it fares a bit better with the thicker pads.

That reference one was done with 0.5mm APT2560 (slowly being rebranded as Arctic TP-2) pads only, as well as MX-4 for the GPUs. This PowerColor card received 1.0mm TP-2 pads for the entire front side (GPU MX-4), and the rear memory modules received 0.5mm TP-2 pads. The backplate of these cards gets massively hot without reasonable airflow - those 8 GDDR5 modules can really get up there when overclocked.

Stunner.

21 screws total for disassembly. This is including the 3 that hold the fan in place, and excluding the two PCIe baffle screws + DVI nuts.

1GB per GPU (1GB usable b/c CF) of Hynix AFR GDDR5.

PLX chip dated Wk46/2009.

Both GPUs are dated Wk23/2010.

If I recall correctly, my first reference HD 5970 had the PLX dated 44/09, one GPU was 40/09, and the other was 39/09. I did not notice the PCB date code on that GPU when I restored it.

This PowerColor card has a PCB date of Wk20/2010.

Me like ATi.

edit: Since when goes this GPU have a little green LED?!

 

[Ruru]

My P5Q Turbo will POST even with an X5470 (LGA771) and unedited BIOS, so unfortunately your CPU may indeed be dead Have you cleaned the contacts with isopropyl?

Nope, but the socket looks fine.... well, I can live with 2x3MB cache. :/

 

[Greenslade]

This is true. But here's the details: WinME still has a DOS mode, but you have to reboot to get into it, which is something Win98 didn't have to do. But once in DOS mode, it's smooth as silk. When you take into account the fact that WinME can use more RAM and is in general more stable, the inconvinience of having to reboot into DOS is far over shadowed by the benefits and WinME becomes the clear choice for Win9X kernel based OSes.

I do not use Win95 or Win98 at all anymore for retro systems. It's always: install WinME, set some post install tweaks, install drivers, removal of IE and Bob's your uncle.


I wouldn't bother with an old HDD. These days I go with a CompctFlash to IDE adapter and a 16GB, 32GB or 64GB CompactFlash card.

Compact Flash CF to 3.5 Female 40 Pin IDE Bootable Adapter Converter Card | eBay

1 Compact Flash CF to 3.5 Female 40 Pin IDE Bootable Adapter. Bootable from CF. Support CF-!, also support IBM micro-driver with CF- ! IDE: 40 pin female. This adapter does NOT support hot insertion of CF cards.

www.ebay.com

and

SanDisk 32GB 64GB 128G CF Extreme 120MB/s Compact Flash Memory Card SDCFXSB | eBay

Professional-Grade Video Capture VPG-20 lets you capture smooth Full HD video without interruption. USB Flash Drives. Will call available in Santa Clara CA.

www.ebay.com

Together you're talking about $45 to $50 shipped at the most.

This will vary depending on location in the world, but you get the idea.


That will not run a Win9X OS at all. No driver support for multiCPU or PCIe. Look for an AGP based system for Win9X support. However, that does look like a solid buy for $25.


If I'm not mistaken, that was one of the golden Athlon A's that could OC without any additional voltage and a change to the FSB(100->133) and a multiplier drop(5.5 or 6). For $25 that's a score!

Lex or anyone else on here that Acer Aspire M3640 Desktop PC with Intel Core 2 Q6600 he is offrting it for 15 pounds are you sure i want be able to put Windows me on it?
Tested with Windows 10 32-bit version and in working order. I was not able to get the 64 bit version to work, but didn't invest much time in this so not certain if it's possible.

Details of components listed below:

Acer Aspire M3640 DDR2-SDRAM Q6600 Tower Intel® Core™2 Quad 4 GB 640 GB Windows Vista Home Premium PC​

• Acer Motherboard for Aspire M3640, mATX MSI N1996 LGA775
• Q6600 quad core processer - although this is old (from 2008) it still works fine
• 3GB DDR2 RAM - a 2GB stick and a 1 GB stick
• DVD-RW Drive
• Card Reader - great if you have old camera equipment for example
• 
• 

 

[Audioave10]

Something that old may have a weak or faulty DVD-Drive. Otherwise, I would just leave Vista 32bit on it and clean the heck out of that OS.
That is because I have all those 2005-2011 games I could play on it. Your situation might be different.

 

[Trekkie4]

Tech Quiz!

Can you tell me what's wrong in this photo, here?


What I can tell you is that you're looking at the CD-ROM drive main PCB, and the unit doesn't work. Or rather sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't. There, should be more than enough to pinpoint the culprit

 

[P4-630]

My i7 6700K, nostalgic hardware soon to retire......

 

[Audioave10]

My W10 best hardware is older than your retirement and Nostalgic hardware (I7 2700k)

 

[Greenslade]

There is no AGP slot on that system. Avoid it.

I have thanks.

 

[Ruru]

My W10 best hardware is older than your retirement and Nostalgic hardware (I7 2700k)

And I have Win11 in a Braswell (practically Atom) notebook..

 

[Greenslade]

Something that old may have a weak or faulty DVD-Drive. Otherwise, I would just leave Vista 32bit on it and clean the heck out of that OS.
That is because I have all those 2005-2011 games I could play on it. Your situation might be different.

Is that to me or someine else? I have spare DVD Drives. And HDD drives to and they are all fine according to the app you check the health of drives

 

[Trekkie4]

And I have Win11 in a Braswell (practically Atom) notebook..

More-less the same here. Running Core i5 (Socket 1156) & Windows 7 Home Premium

 

[Audioave10]

Is that to me or someine else? I have spare DVD Drives.

you ...sorry Its good if you have extra drives.

 

[68Olds]

Tech Quiz!

Can you tell me what's wrong in this photo, here?


What I can tell you is that you're looking at the CD-ROM drive main PCB, and the unit doesn't work. Or rather sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't. There, should be more than enough to pinpoint the culprit

Looks like at least 3 of the 4 large solder joints need to be reflowed. Is there a molex plug on the other side of the board right there?

 

[Trekkie4]

Looks like at least 3 of the 4 large solder joints need to be reflowed. Is there a molex plug on the other side of the board right there?

Yup ... and yup!


Sorry, I realize that it looks kinda blurry, but for some reason I couldn't focus on all those solder pads. Happy to report, it seems to be working OK now What happened (and I'm guessing) is that over time solder joints cracked, eventually causing the molex connector to lose power entirely which obviously resulted with the CD-ROM drive not getting recognized and/or working entirely.

 

[Audioave10]

More old goodies to look at...

 

[Ruru]

Got a Sandy i5 from my friend, need a board for it tho.

 

[Aaron_Henderson]

snip

 

[Ruru]

I do believe you can use a dual core CPU for Win9x, but it'll only recognize one thread. I believe I also remember some PCIe GPU working, but can't remember how or what needed to be done, if anything. I am sure some google fu will get you some answers. But I do believe Win98 could be installed on that system if that is something you really wanted to do. In my area, actual Win98 era hardware is really tough to come by, so if you're in a similar position, it might be worth it to look into a bit more.

Here's a thread - https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=44407 - I found almost immediately talking about PCIe cards on Win98 SE. There is also a "hack" for running more RAM, if I remember correctly as well...up to almost 4GB. This is all from memory though, so grain of salt or whatever.

GF6 series should work IIRC. a 6600 GT is something which is great for that era of games.