Athlon 64 Adventures and Mishaps

[Crunchy Dragon]

Welcome to Athlon 64 Adventures and Mishaps, the multi-part tale of a dragon and his Athlon 64(s).

This is the story of my struggles, troubles, rejoicing, problems, and various other things related to reviving an Athlon 64 machine in 2018.

I should first mention that this wasn't completely a 2018 thing, my love for retro hardware really built around mid/late 2017. I managed to get my hands on two different Athlon 64 X2 systems, and naturally swapped parts between the two so I could get the best machine from both parts.

 

It should also be noted that I'm going mostly from recollection here since I don't want to dig through my last Athlon 64 related build log(feel free to go look for it though) or my many status updates related to this topic.

 

 

My first problem was when the PSU I planned on using crapped out on me. It was nothing special, but it was a 500W Anteq unit that featured all the connectors I wanted, including 6 pin PCIe which could have powered two of the GPUs I got from a friend. The death of this unit was unexpected and happened pretty quickly. I had finished building the system and booted up into Windows XP(since that's what was installed at the time) to see if everything worked and was detected properly. Seeing that it was, I shut down the system to throw my Radeon HD 4850 in the machine for a better GPU. Upon restarting, I was greeted with: nothing. Fans spun, but nothing worked. Peripherals were dead, screen stayed black. I had seen this before on my Diablotek 400W unit. I had to retire this PSU. I was forced to use my 350W unit, which featured every connector I needed except for PCIe. I plan on replacing it with a CX450M in the future, but this unit is still going strong.

 

I decided after my third reinstall of Windows XP to try and install Lubuntu instead on this system and maybe use it as a media device. In this time I had obtained a 2x1Gb kit of G.Skill DDR-400 for this system from a house I was cleaning out. I attempted to install said Lubuntu, only to meet more difficulty.

It wouldn't install. It would just keep on loading, but never actually do anything.

After much Googling, I found that my SATA controller was most likely dead. Shoot. I didn't want to use IDE if I could help it, but my other board, being an OEM board, would have been more trouble. So I sucked it up and installed one of my IDE drives. Lubuntu installed, no problem. Yay, right?

 

Wrong.

Upon restarting, it would throw me into grub rescue with no way out. No big deal, I'll just reinstall and hope it doesn't happen again. Yeah, no. This time it wouldn't install at all and would take me to another screen that wasn't grub rescue, but still more or less trapped me there.

 

 

My new and current plan is to use my OEM board to try and see if the SATA controller on that still works. Hopefully that does, and I can live in peace with my first gen SATA drive.

 

Stay tuned for more, I have a feeling there is no way that this build log will be ending any time soon.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Quick reminder to myself that PS/2 is not plug and play.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Booting the machine with the necessities(overdid RAM a little, I still have all 4 sticks installed) to see if everything works and is detected in the BIOS properly.

 

If that turns out to work, I'll throw in a SATA drive and see what happens.

[Crunchy Dragon]

UPDATE: 1 POST beep, vBIOS and BIOS screen are normal.

 

All seems well, going to double check the BIOS and make sure everything is normal in there just to be sure.

[Crunchy Dragon]

UPDATE: SATA drive installed, Lubuntu boots without trouble.

 

The only problem I have now is that I can't remember the password I set so it looks like I'll have to reinstall anyway...

[Crunchy Dragon]

Actually getting Lubuntu to reinstall proved difficult, this thing boots really quickly so it took a few tried to get into the BIOS.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Once I've finished installing, I'm going to try and figure out how to share my main rig's internet connection with this machine, hopefully that works out.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Install worked, currently messing around with internet settings and whatnot.

 

If you have any questions, recommendations, observations, etc now might be a good time to mention them

[Guest]

good luck my dude

[Crunchy Dragon]

21 minutes ago, NovaMan01 said:

good luck my dude

Thanks! Still not 100% sure what I'm gonna do with this system now that it's fully working.

 

I might reinstall Windows XP and have Microsoft activate it for me and keep it around for retro gaming.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Specs because I haven't mentioned those yet:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+

MSI MS-7207 v1.0 motherboard

2x512MB DDR-266 + 2x1GB G.Skill DDR-400 memory

Nvidia GeForce 6200 PCI

Western Digital 250GB SATA1 HDD

Lubuntu 18.04 LTS

Molex powered fan, NZXT 120mm fan(from my S340).

Unknown 350W non-modular power supply.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Cable management surprisingly on point:

 

Should be noted that this picture does nowhere near full justice as to how tight of a stretch it is for the ATX and CPU power connectors.

[Guest]

26 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Specs because I haven't mentioned those yet:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+

MSI MS-7207 v1.0 motherboard

2x512MB DDR-266 + 2x1GB G.Skill DDR-400 memory

Nvidia GeForce 6200 PCI

Western Digital 250GB SATA1 HDD

Lubuntu 18.04 LTS

Molex powered fan, NZXT 120mm fan(from my S340).

Unknown 350W non-modular power supply.

oh my god those specs are ???