Show off your old and retro computer parts

[Bitter]

I need some suggestions, I'd like to get an old PC bootable for someone, anyone know of any installed Windows 98 SE or Windows XP disk images I can just write to a blank drive, pop in the PC, and boot? I don't fancy wasting a CD and doing a long long install if there's a shortcut to be had, or dicking with loading drivers on a floppy or burning a bunch of failed install disks with missing drivers. I want all the win and none of the pain lol.

[Kilrah]

Old Windows doesn't like being moved to hardware it didn't have the chance to detect during install very much. 

 

Assuming you have a suitable adapter take the HDD out, copy the Win CD to it, put it back, boot from floppy, launch install from hdd.

 

 

[Guest]

I have a SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System)

[Bitter]

11 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Old Windows doesn't like being moved to hardware it didn't have the chance to detect during install very much. 

 

Assuming you have a suitable adapter take the HDD out, copy the Win CD to it, put it back, boot from floppy, launch install from hdd.

 

 

I think I can get 32bit Ubuntu 16.04 working on it, I'll try tonight. At least that let's Prime95 run for some basic stability testing. I wish I had a SD to IDE and I could just install to it on a different PC to drop into this one but oh well. One burnt CD won't kill me...if the optical drive works. Either way someone is getting some stuff tomorrow.

 

 

It's not great and it needs caps bad, but it posts and I'd like to see it boot to a desktop because I feel bad about the 3.4E and P4C800 being possibly bad parts. I also found the 4GB of DDR400, 1GB sticks were pretty baller back in the day. It's the good good HyperX stuff too. Also gets my LeadTek Winfast GeForce3 which is some kind of special model or something I think. I'll just be happy to get my car out for a drive and make someone else happy with my old stuff.

 

https://hothardware.com/reviews/leadtek-winfast-geforce3-td

Yeah I think that's the card, it has faster memory than reference designs and better cooling so they would OC more. Oh look, it can do 1080P!

[Kilrah]

Wow those caps are in awful shape...

[Bitter]

15 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Wow those caps are in awful shape...

I'm shocked it POSTs myself! But at least we know it has a working CPU and at least partially functional motherboard for @FakeKGB to use for troubleshooting. I have the tools to recap but not the time or the parts. I'm going to see how much it would cost for the parts, I may just do it before I give it to him so I know I'm not giving him junk. 

 

Do caps on video cards fare better? The GeForce3 is just as old.

[Kilrah]

I don't think there's a general rule, just depends what type of caps they used and whether they were manufactured during the capacitor plague era and an affected type...

I have 35 year old devices that work just fine and the caps don't show any bulging/leaking. 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

5 hours ago, BabyBlueX16 said:

I have a SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System)

man those snes's always yellow

[Kanna]

Just now, HelpfulTechWizard said:

man those snes's always yellow

man those NTSC snes always different

[Helpful Tech Witch]

2 hours ago, Kanna said:

man those NTSC snes always different

Isn't a non ntsc SNES not a SNES?

Weren't they called the super famicom?

[Bitter]

[da na]

3 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Still do.

[Kanna]

17 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Wait y'all stopped doing it?

[WhitetailAni]

@Bitter I checked on all the items I'm hoping to buy and the GPU waterblock got bought.

Thankfully the CPU waterblock is still there, so I'll be getting that ASAP.

[luckybob77]

20 hours ago, Bitter said:

I need some suggestions, I'd like to get an old PC bootable for someone, anyone know of any installed Windows 98 SE or Windows XP disk images I can just write to a blank drive, pop in the PC, and boot? I don't fancy wasting a CD and doing a long long install if there's a shortcut to be had, or dicking with loading drivers on a floppy or burning a bunch of failed install disks with missing drivers. I want all the win and none of the pain lol.

not really, no.

 

You can install 98/2k/xp to a disk and swap said disk into another machine and in 9/10 cases, it should at least boot.  Naturally, the closer the install machine to the target one, the easier the swap is.  Windows is pretty forgiving.  

[Bitter]

Compaq board has 11 6.3V 2200uf caps on it that are all leaking or bulged or both.

https://www.amazon.com/pcs-Panasonic-FM-Capacitors-2200uf/dp/B073YQZJ3S/

Would these be the correct parts? If so I think I'll just order them and recap this board myself before I hand it off to @FakeKGB cause I want to make sure he's got a solid base to troubleshoot socket 478 stuff. It looks like this 845G chipset should support Willamette, Northwood, and Prescott according to what I'm seeing online.

Currently burning Lubuntu 14.04.5 alternate install disc, cross fingers please!

[da na]

4 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Compaq board has 11 6.3V 2200uf caps on it that are all leaking or bulged or both.

https://www.amazon.com/pcs-Panasonic-FM-Capacitors-2200uf/dp/B073YQZJ3S/

Would these be the correct parts? If so I think I'll just order them and recap this board myself before I hand it off to @FakeKGB cause I want to make sure he's got a solid base to troubleshoot socket 478 stuff. It looks like this 845G chipset should support Willamette, Northwood, and Prescott according to what I'm seeing online.

Currently burning Lubuntu 14.04.5 alternate install disc, cross fingers please!

Those caps look right. Just make sure they're not physically too big.

[da na]

It just hit me that I could probably post either of my daily driver PCs here and it would count as old/retro.. Maybe not the FX one as much as the Xeon one, it's a good 6 years younger.

 

Side note on recaps, do you think my Game Boy board needs a recap? All the caps seem to not be bulging but I tested them today and a couple of them are no longer within the 10% margin of error.

[Bitter]

Ok, so @FakeKGB 2 of the DDR are 1GB and 2 are 512MB for a total of 3GB which makes more sense cause yeah 32bit system max 3GB.

 

 

I burned a CD, then I was in BIOS looking at boot options and IT BOOTS FROM USB. Of course it does, if I hadn't burnt the CD first it wouldn't boot from USB. So that's pretty awesome. Currently booting up Lubuntu 16.04 to run an install on the 200GB Maxtor DiamonMax 10 HDD. It's a somewhat modern flavor of Ubuntu so it should be easy to use. I'm just gonna nuke the drive and make this the only OS on it.

 

Named the PC Bulge-y.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

23 minutes ago, Bitter said:

cause yeah 32bit system max 3GB.

 

Incorrect. It's 4gb of memory

[Bitter]

1 hour ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Incorrect. It's 4gb of memory

No?

 

*When speaking of Retail flavors of Windows, XP and 7 32 bit 3.25GB is the max memory they can address because of limits placed in the kernel by MS. Something like Windows Server and Windows NT were able to use all 4GB. I went through this with XP back in the day for a long time with my 775 system.

[Bitter]

4 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

He actually is partially correct--some 32-bit systems (like earlier Core Duo-era Thinkpads) would only support 3 GB of memory, with any additional memory not being utilised by the system. 

I clarified, it's an OS limitation on some systems and others a CPU/motherboard limit upto 3.5GB for most 32 bit Pentium 4 due to 32 bit address space they just couldn't count high enough. 64 bit CPU's did exist back then but they were limited to niche use or commercial/research uses due to their high costs and generally unobtanium status for us mere mortals at the time.

 

XP 32 bit could do 3.25GB with some boot options and stuff, PAE had to be supported and enabled. My 775 board could see all 4GB or 6GB of memory but XP32 could only let me use 3.25 of it. Win7 64 used all of it.

[da na]

7 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

He actually is partially correct--some 32-bit systems (like earlier Core Duo-era Thinkpads) would only support 3 GB of memory, with any additional memory not being utilised by the system. 

Yeah, I have some older systems that only support 3gb on 32bit.

[da na]

1 hour ago, Bitter said:

Named the PC Bulge-y.

uwu

[Dabombinable]

21 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

He actually is partially correct--some 32-bit systems (like earlier Core Duo-era Thinkpads) would only support 3 GB of memory, with any additional memory not being utilised by the system. 

I've got a Core 2 Duo laptop from 2008 that only supports 2GB max (more=no post), just like my 2006 Celeron/Pentium M laptop. Funnily enough however my old 2006 Core Duo and my Grandmother's current 45nm Pentium/C2D laptop from 2008 both support 4GB flawlessly. The extra amount with 32bit Win XP, Vista & Win 7 was actually still useable - just only for the iGPU if set manually in the BIOS.