Each graphics card generation was also a huge leap forward. The earliest 3D accelerators used proprietary APIs, then early 3D DirectX with poor and abandoned drivers, then a bit better but incomplete or buggy DirectX and OpenGL, before finally maturing.

The DirectX 5 and OpenGL 1.1 era was the beginning of what I would consider relatively stable, but often with edge cases. Once we started seeing DirectX 6 and OpenGL 1.2 class cards and drivers (Rage 128, TNT2), I think that things were more or less consistent and fast, and general compatibility could be expected, as long as you met the graphics API feature set.

I bought a spare Sega Mega Drive recently for the purposes of region modding it, as I didn't want to butcher my childhood original console. So today I set about performing the mod using 2 switches.

The hardest part was soldering the switches. I made 1 small wiring mistake on the right hand switch and what should have been a simple case of desoldering and swapping around the wires, ended up damaging the switch by accidentally melting the plastic instead. Luckily I had a bunch of spare switches, so no big deal just frustrating.

All in all it turned out well and I can now switch between 50Hz/60Hz and English/Japanese.

Picked up this mystery PC, the seller doesn’t know anything about it other than it powers up.

Here’s what we can see from the pics.

Front:

- Turbo button and LED display
- 3.5” floppy drive
- CD rom is 8x

Rear:

- Passthrough on PSU
- Baby AT form factor
- Full size DIN keyboard port
- Parallel port on top add-on card
- RS 232 further down
- Looks like a VGA card
- Sound card in bottom slot

Anybody like to make any guesses. Late 486?

I’ve not seen a Pentium with a turbo button and full DIN, but the CD drive makes 386 a bit less likely.

I’ll be sure to update once I’ve got my hands on it. First thing I’ll want to do is straighten the loose sound card.

VGA position can be a telltale.... unless it's in a middle slot like that... VLB is usually bottom 3 ... ISA might be anywhere, PCI is highly likely in top 3.... but, is 3rd slot down the end of an actual I/O card and not a bracket which you'd think they'd crowd toward the end if it wasn't actually blocking 7th slot.... if it is, then it's ISA, or VLB with a "middle board" VLB arrangement.... in short, IDK, maybe a Mac? 🤣

Edit: Date by CD speed isn't super reliable, because CD drives weren't super reliable, so can have been replaced during the working life of the system, or it even that if never had one when new, and got the 8x out of the MMX system when there was a sale on 16x.... optical drives were never really fast enough through the 90s, so it wasn't like you could overwhelm an older CPU by getting one "too fast" by a few speed grades, though probably need a faster 386 to cope with a 52x to full benefit.

Dan386DX wrote on 2024-03-21, 17:22:

I’ve not seen a Pentium with a turbo button and full DIN

Assuming it works and doesn't only change the display! But yeah I believe you are approximating it correctly, it looks like a late 486 or an early pentium. My bet is on the Pentium, because of the case.

Dan386DX wrote on 2024-03-21, 17:22:

I’ve not seen a Pentium with a turbo button and full DIN, but the CD drive makes 386 a bit less likely.

There are some Pentium-era motherboards (including Socket 7) that had turbo button functionality. I have one such motherboard/build with a Pentium 133.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-03-21, 18:51:

VGA position can be a telltale.... unless it's in a middle slot like that... VLB is usually bottom 3 ... ISA might be anywhere, PCI is highly likely in top 3.... but, is 3rd slot down the end of an actual I/O card and not a bracket which you'd think they'd crowd toward the end if it wasn't actually blocking 7th slot.... if it is, then it's ISA, or VLB with a "middle board" VLB arrangement.... in short, IDK, maybe a Mac? 🤣

Edit: Date by CD speed isn't super reliable, because CD drives weren't super reliable, so can have been replaced during the working life of the system, or it even that if never had one when new, and got the 8x out of the MMX system when there was a sale on 16x.... optical drives were never really fast enough through the 90s, so it wasn't like you could overwhelm an older CPU by getting one "too fast" by a few speed grades, though probably need a faster 386 to cope with a 52x to full benefit.

Good call regarding the CD drive failure rate, its presence doesn't tell us much at all - most of us had to swap out the ODD at least once in the 90s with enough usage.

🤣 I know you jest but if it was somehow an elaborate Mac sleeper I'd be both triggered and very impressed 😂

konc wrote on 2024-03-21, 19:22:

Assuming it works and doesn't only change the display! But yeah I believe you are approximating it correctly, it looks like a late 486 or an early pentium. My bet is on the Pentium, because of the case.

Heh, it's not out of the question that the turbo button and LED don't actually do anything; usually in systems that have the board swapped out. I'd be pretty happy with an early Pentium or late 486 for the collection though.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-21, 20:09:

There are some Pentium-era motherboards (including Socket 7) that had turbo button functionality. I have one such motherboard/build with a Pentium 133.

Glorious build, and thank you for pointing that out. Last time I saw a working a turbo button was no a 486DX2-66, looks like they survived much longer than I thought!

Hmm, it'll be interesting to see what that system is when you get it. My guess is pentium with a turbo button that switches between hi/li but does nothing, since it's got the 8x cd-rom drive. That's a nice drive actually, it's a Goldstar GCD-R580B - the one I've got to hand was manufactured in December 1996.

According to retrospector's video here, the VGA port facing the other way up would be ISA / VLB: https://youtu.be/IB6n-QgdXcc?t=76

Today I've been testing out my FIC VA-503+ which I don't think I've actually used since I received it just under 2 years ago - I needed to test out a K6-2+ CPU from my Sony PCG-F801 that was working nicely then just stopped booting entirely. I thought that perhaps the CPU had failed but...
Just getting this board working was a challenge, first it would only boot with a regular K6-2 400 and only sometimes. That was because the BIOS is soldered down so I can't just upgrade it to one that support K6-2/3+ CPUs. And the board is all corroded so some of the jumpers weren't working - I still don't know exactly which one but since they were re-seated a couple of times the board has worked reliably. Also pushed the tip of the ceramic tweezer into each jumper to improve the contact of each jumper and stop them from being loose / poor contacts.

Then there was lots of trouble with RAM - hanging in memtest, rebooting spontaneously in memtest, finally found a Kingston ValueRAM with no-name brand chips works nicely in it. Really I think all the insertions and removals have cleared the corrosion or oxidation on the DIMM slots.

Then I recapped the power supply sections of the board only to find that the original I.Q. brand caps were still very much in spec, though one of the two S.I. branded caps did have high ESR so it was kinda worth it.
At last the BIOS was updated and the K6-2+ was installed to find that it is working, which means the motherboard on the Vaio F801 has failed and not the CPU - this isn't terrible because now I have another K6-2+ CPU!
And the mainboard has been tested out at last, there's still lots of quirks because of the corrosion on pins like the PS/2 mouse not always working - but it's a cool Super Socket 7 board with 1MB of L2 cache

Also it gave me an opportunity to test out this dual CF to IDE adapter that I found - they're like the regular black ones but actually have the secondary slot populated and it works 😀 I got 2 of them and I think they were manufactured a bunch of years ago since I got them with an 8MB CF card. The quality of the soldermask and gold plating on the pins is somewhat nicer than the cheap ones we get now.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-21, 20:09:

There are some Pentium-era motherboards (including Socket 7) that had turbo button functionality. I have one such motherboard/build with a Pentium 133.

That case looks so nice and in great condition.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-03-21, 21:03:

Hmm, it'll be interesting to see what that system is when you get it. My guess is pentium with a turbo button that switches between hi/li but does nothing, since it's got the 8x cd-rom drive. That's a nice drive actually, it's a Goldstar GCD-R580B - the one I've got to hand was manufactured in December 1996.

First of all I am dumbfounded that you were able to correctly identify the ODD from that one crappy picture; to most people, that's a generic looking CD drive, so thank you - and the plot thickens! While it's true that the drive doesn't necessarily date the PC, it is worth noting that the model number you referenced appears to be a mid-90s, post-486 drive. All of the units I can find on eBay are from 1996 like yours. Could be that it's a Pentium after all, or just as somebody pointed out, the drive was put in there as a replacement at some point.

I'm actually enjoying this detective work, it's fun a buying a mystery PC. Seller was just one of those eBay shops that do house clearances and flip anything and everything, they didn't have a monitor to test it so there's a strong chance it's faulty - but we'll find out when it arrives, ETA Saturday to Monday.

Also, tidy work on your part today and the dual CF card is cool, haven't seen one of those before.

zuldan wrote on 2024-03-21, 21:14:

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-21, 20:09:

There are some Pentium-era motherboards (including Socket 7) that had turbo button functionality. I have one such motherboard/build with a Pentium 133.

That case looks so nice and in great condition.

Thank you, I was quite pleased when I got it. 😀

Did a CPU swap on my Pentium 4 build-in-progress.

When I originally bought this motherboard, the CPU came preinstalled and I hadn't removed the heatsink yet.

Was not expecting the thermal paste bukkake I discovered... 😒 There was even small bits of thermal paste in the socket itself (!).

I didn't try cleaning the pins as it doesn't appear to be interfering with anything. I'd probably need to put it under the microscope for that and I couldn't be arsed to take the whole board out.

On the upside, I am impressed with the copper heatsink this board came with. It's surprisingly heavy despite being relatively compact.

edited to add:

Weighed the heatsink. It clocks in at almost 680g. Considering it takes up about the same space as a stock Intel heatsink which weigh less than 200g, there is a lot more metal in this one!

Dan386DX wrote on 2024-03-21, 21:45:

First of all I am dumbfounded that you were able to correctly identify the ODD from that one crappy picture; to most people, that's a generic looking CD drive, so thank you - and the plot thickens! While it's true that the drive doesn't necessarily date the PC, it is worth noting that the model number you referenced appears to be a mid-90s, post-486 drive. All of the units I can find on eBay are from 1996 like yours. Could be that it's a Pentium after all, or just as somebody pointed out, the drive was put in there as a replacement at some point.

Yeah I'd bracket in the range late 386, to early socket 7.... thus far... unless it got an upgrade... P55i T2P4 with a K6-3 at 500, voodoo3 3000 PCI 🤣

(Edit: actually the vid card is probably no later than 97 because it's a black plug not a blue one.)

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-21, 22:45:

On the upside, I am impressed with the copper heatsink this board came with. It's surprisingly heavy despite being relatively compact.

I ordered one of these DFI ITOX G7S620-N motherboards today. I got it for less than other listings with a best offer, but they did not come with these cool, compact heatsinks. I wish I could but one on it's own.

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-03-22, 00:51:

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-21, 22:45:

On the upside, I am impressed with the copper heatsink this board came with. It's surprisingly heavy despite being relatively compact.

I ordered one of these DFI ITOX G7S620-N motherboards today. I got it for less than other listings with a best offer, but they did not come with these cool, compact heatsinks. I wish I could but one on it's own.

My G7S620 came with that copper heatsink. It keeps a Pentium D 945 (D0) pretty cool (although I haven't pushed the processor that hard yet).

The fan is a bit loud and whiney for my taste. I haven't seen a Noctua fan the right size (60mm) that would fit on the cooler, though.

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-03-22, 00:51:

I ordered one of these DFI ITOX G7S620-N motherboards today. I got it for less than other listings with a best offer, but they did not come with these cool, compact heatsinks. I wish I could but one on it's own.

Welcome to the DFI G7S620-N club. 😁 Hope you have fun with the board.

And as solid as the heatsink is, it does have one drawback. The stock fan bracket is for 70mm, fan so it's not quite ideal when it comes to fitting a 60 or 80mm.

fosterwj03 wrote on 2024-03-22, 01:12:

My G7S620 came with that copper heatsink. It keeps a Pentium D 945 (D0) pretty cool (although I haven't pushed the processor that hard yet).

The fan is a bit loud and whiney for my taste. I haven't seen a Noctua fan the right size (60mm) that would fit on the cooler, though.

The stock 70mm fan is horrible.

I replaced it with an 80mm Noctua fan wedging it in place between the existing fan screws. It's held in by friction and seemed reasonably firm so I'm hoping it holds up.

Though a better option would be designing some sort of fan adapter to mount to the existing screws.

I stand corrected on the cooler fan size. I like your ingenuity!

fosterwj03 wrote on 2024-03-22, 01:23:

I stand corrected on the cooler fan size. I like your ingenuity!

Thank you! I'm just happy the 80mm fan fit as well as it did! 😀

PTherapist wrote on 2024-03-21, 17:18:

I bought a spare Sega Mega Drive recently for the purposes of region modding it, as I didn't want to butcher my childhood original console. So today I set about performing the mod using 2 switches.

The hardest part was soldering the switches. I made 1 small wiring mistake on the right hand switch and what should have been a simple case of desoldering and swapping around the wires, ended up damaging the switch by accidentally melting the plastic instead. Luckily I had a bunch of spare switches, so no big deal just frustrating.

All in all it turned out well and I can now switch between 50Hz/60Hz and English/Japanese.

Haven't seen anybody doing switches instead of the now trendy switchless mod in a long time! (those reset button switchless mods always were finicky for me)
You can actually get away with just one switch because the two switches add an impossible region of 50Hz Jap and. I've perfected my switched region mod for the Sega MD/Genesis by using a single slide switch soldered to the ground plane.