Show off your old and retro computer parts

[luckybob77]

@BrianTheElectrician

 

Ahh, the original Voodoo card.

The progenitor of ALL consumer 3d accelerated video cards.

 

What games did you have planned?

[da na]

7 hours ago, BrianTheElectrician said:

Well... I traded a 486 motherboard for a thing tonight...

 

 

Traded a couple soundcards for a good condition Compaq Presario 1685 too, fully working just a couple scuffs here and there.

Wow, nice Voodoo card! 

Does the original HDD work in the Presario as well? 

[WhitetailAni]

Ok so I was moving my 250GB WD Caviar to the basement and noticed that if I shook it it sounds like a muffled egg shaker thing...?
Did one of the platters disintegrate on me, or is the drive supposed to sound like it has crushed bean bits inside?

[adarw]

22 hours ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

A 1030 might not be retro by age, but it’s sure as hell retro by performance. 

i mean your comparing raw performance tho, a 1030 is much better in terms of electricity saving. 

[Bitter]

23 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

Ok so I was moving my 250GB WD Caviar to the basement and noticed that if I shook it it sounds like a muffled egg shaker thing...?
Did one of the platters disintegrate on me, or is the drive supposed to sound like it has crushed bean bits inside?

I have many drives and none have sounded like that before. Desktop drives have metal platters. More likely a head is not parked and is just slappin round? Plug it in and see what happens, or if you have somewhere clean you can open the cover and look inside.

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, Schnoz said:

By the way, is this drive one of the problematic ones you have?

Yes, this is the drive I recently replaced with a WD Blue 1TB. It didn't seem to suffer from bad sectors; rather some files no longer existed.

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, Schnoz said:

I see. If you still plan to use the drive, run some sort of testing program to make it read and write every sector to check that they aren't defective. That is some weird drive behavior.

It's currently down in the basement and I'm only going to use it to transfer files that are larger than 32GB (at least until I set up my FireWire network). It has lived a long life and is now going to my hard drive retirement home, where I have 4 hard drives (Seagate ST33232A Compaq one from Rhapsody, WD 80GB from a C2D machine, random Hitachi IDE drive with unknown capacity, and now the WD Caviar 250GB) all stacked on top of each other next to my dead Power Mac G4 logic board.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

1 hour ago, adarw said:

i mean your comparing raw performance tho, a 1030 is much better in terms of electricity saving. 

You read a bit to hard into the joke

[adarw]

13 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

You read a bit to hard into the joke

yea i did.... lol

[da na]

8 hours ago, FakeKGB said:

Ok so I was moving my 250GB WD Caviar to the basement and noticed that if I shook it it sounds like a muffled egg shaker thing...?
Did one of the platters disintegrate on me, or is the drive supposed to sound like it has crushed bean bits inside?

Try shaking another drive, it probably sounds the same

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

Try shaking another drive, it probably sounds the same

If not, drop it on the floor a couple of times. That should get it sounding like a maraca!! 

[Guest]

Just now, Schnoz said:

Funny enough, that's almost exactly how I destroy dead 2.5" drives. I throw them face-flat onto concrete as hard as I can, and bam, maracas!

I rip the magnets out of them. Great for having around at work. Gave a few to the old timer, he uses them to hold body panels together for welding actually.

[da na]

Just now, ShrimpBrime said:

I rip the magnets out of them. Great for having around at work. Gave a few to the old timer, he uses them to hold body panels together for welding actually.

I'd take the magnets out of them but the only screwdrivers I have are ifixit kits so most just end up disassembling my screwdriver when I get it close to the magnet to unscrew it

[da na]

Thought I might as well post some pics of my HD 5870 ES teardown.

Look at this huge cooler! 4 heatpipes (5 counting the tiny one for VRMs under the fan)...

[da na]

And also today I did a test of an early Core 2 Duo, the E6400, versus a late Pentium 4, the 631.

Not full res becuase I haven't rendered the video yet but after a little under 2 minutes the Core 2 Duo was way ahead. Just goes to show how much that new architecture did. (Both are 2 threads and 65nm as well... but Pentium 4 has way longer pipeline and 100 kb less l1 cache despite higher clocks)

Amazing that with 65w and 2.13 ghz (achieving 101 CB points), the Core 2 can beat soundly the 3 ghz 86w P4 (achieving 42 CB points)

[BrianTheElectrician]

8 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

Amazing that with 65w and 2.13 ghz (achieving 101 CB points), the Core 2 can beat soundly the 3 ghz 86w P4 (achieving 42 CB points)

That is quite the difference. Remember though that the late p4 would be a hyperthreaded single core as opposed to the core 2's true 2 cores. Still, even core for core the core 2 is a clear winner, drastically better ipc.

 

I've been looking for drivers for the presario 1685 on its original hard disk too but while I can find the driver's I can't find the inf files for them. I think I've found most everything online though, and I'm trying to find the backgrounds on the drive still.

 

For my new voodoo, I can't decide which system I want to put it in. I think I've narrowed it to 2 systems though... the micron millennia that was Colin's sleeper build that I put back to (mostly) original. It has a p200mmx and an ATI card or my ibm pc365 which has a ppro 200 (256k) in which I'd pair the Voodoo with a matrox millenium. I'm running windows 95 on both (though if I ever put a second ppro in the ibm I'd go to nt4)

[XLer8or]

I hope not to derail this topic… just leave it here and don’t reply if I do please.  Things have come along way in graphics in the last several years.  This ATI Radeon 850XT PE is even capable of analizing scanned and photographed data.  I mean it could run and agitate the SOURCE engine very easily.  It would do all kinds of scientific foreignsic analysis.  It could tell Oak, Pine or Elm in paper. Textures and light fragmenting properties.  I mean all kinds of properties about it.  100 strips could be seen superbly. Peroxide or chlorine to give it that ink/toner character only seen per region of earth. If the wood was green. Toner/ink texture and die.  What wax etc.  all kinds of things. With intel and amd doing IGP much more.

 

The Radeon 850 XT PE had this feature of zero risk overclocking.  I knicked-named it “cushion stepping overclocking” Overdrive.  Just step up the clock with no worries. Its like in the clouds for those standing in low income. I think everyone thought they could get it up to pre-2k Hz.

 

Yeah.  This and the voodoo2 could easily run Kingpin – Life of Crime either on individually too.  There is an newer all copper edition EVGA that blasts through that.  “F*** that homie!” The properties in art is superb in that fowl-mouthed wonder. All for the SOURCE.

 

Edit: Thanks to MSI Afterburner I can use my today's GPU on lend.  It'll render for others.  In this pic I hear Christian hackers and book worm hackers have been active.

[XLer8or]

Very Rare RD ram. Intels flop? who knows... expensive though.  Samsung was major fab for very much whole stick. It made it way into consoles and was found in a defecting(i think) North Korean Submarine along with console parts.

 

Notice the slot spacer.  Had to be there to fill the slot.  Just a completing-circuit board. Another RD would be there too. Snagged this for a deal and budgeting back when.

 

 

Edit: Remembering more.  bought at launch whole platform budgeted cash.  only 20$ over similar size.  remaind so for a bit.  I could be wrong but social scare scared it away Partially.

 

It was patented and AMD Athlon was there a bit of compition too. DDR was widely accepted.

 

DDR standard.

[XLer8or]

Why I say a bit of fear.   Its about economics and CONTROL.  The main MB for RD ram was P4T.  It was the defining board of the X86 rare an pricless.  Intentionally or not it risk complication With RD.  Mainily being patented.  Proof it performed excellently is in it slip from atx and back.  The north bridge getting really hot.  The bracket in the pic(s) Ill upload is actullay a heat spreader for the MB and manly reconfig of NB.  This cost in big to redo, imagine AMD and others even with signal converters.  There has to be Standards and certifications to systems like this.  AMD NV has Pattents but this influenced then to "interconnect" with system.  Here are the pics.

  edit: Spent 15 min looking over.  they moved it to 2.03 ATX which isnt anything today I think.  That version was for RDram being hotter and could be converted based on boughten.  It went back to ATX then added +12 for cpu connector (4-12pin) (ATX+12).  RD RAM was spaced a bit for example snf significant stuff for North Bridge HSF ect. 100 - 133 Bus too. 

 

[luckybob77]

RD ram would have worked, if it was better than DDR.

 

1st gen P4's were the literal laughing stock of the world.  Coupled with expensive ram, that was inferior in most respects to cheap DDR.  The entire platform, from stem to stern, was an unmitigated failure.

*HOWEVER*

If the first gen1 p4 chips performed like the marketing department sold them as, history would have been much more kind to RDram.  RD ram was being compared to DDR, a product that already had ~ a year in the market and the cost was dropping quick.  RDram would have had the same price reductions if it hadn't been tied to the albatross of 1st gen P4 chips.

 

I'm glad ddr won out.  Rdram throughput was as good as ddr! but, the serial nature of RDram was horrible for memory latency.  In some cases it took 2x as long to get data from the ram to cpu.

[XLer8or]

 

IS this GDDR(1)?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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self sig.

The Redhill team. Our propegative goal: Fighting to fix your devices so you ca live in modern world.  To monument us post BS about RDram and filth you used to steal. Ittl be Great and evidencual (word?).

[WhitetailAni]

16 minutes ago, XLer8or said:

 

IS this GDDR(1)?

No idea, I can't read any markings off the chip.

[da na]

32 minutes ago, XLer8or said:

 

IS this GDDR(1)?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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self sig.

The Redhill team. Our propegative goal: Fighting to fix your devices so you ca live in modern world.  To monument us post BS about RDram and filth you used to steal. Ittl be Great and evidencual (word?).

That doesn't look like any RAM I've seen. 

[RigPa]

From my first job...

[Bitter]

Infineon, now that's a name I haven't heard in years.