That's pretty cool! I know SGI had some systems with multiple AGP slots too, but afaik nothing that you could load up Windows on, and I think they used somewhat customized cards (at least with flashed BIOS for SGI, if not modified hardware) from ATi. I just wish it could work like PCIe or PCI - I don't need multi-GPU SMP or whatever, just the ability to drop a few cards in a single system when needed. 😊

obobskivich wrote:

That's pretty cool! I know SGI had some systems with multiple AGP slots too, but afaik nothing that you could load up Windows on, and I think they used somewhat customized cards (at least with flashed BIOS for SGI, if not modified hardware) from ATi. I just wish it could work like PCIe or PCI - I don't need multi-GPU SMP or whatever, just the ability to drop a few cards in a single system when needed. 😊

Oh, if only such multiple AGP slots allow multiple Voodoo5 in SLI... 🙁

DDR and dual AGP on a slot 2 board? 😮

How does that even work? From that diagram it looks like you have two individual computers on a single mainboard.

jwt27 wrote:

DDR and dual AGP on a slot 2 board? 😮

How does that even work? From that diagram it looks like you have two individual computers on a single mainboard.

It's using the Micron Samurai chipset. It's a DDR chipset for P3 (I don't know if it was ever released for wide production), Tom's benchmarked it at least:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/micron,152-4.html
And some news blurbs about it:
http://techreport.com/news/1527/micron-dual-s … rai-ddr-chipset
A bit more from Anand:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/492

So basically the chipsets themselves are interlinking somehow, and I would assume the machine is likely NUMA as a result (there isn't a common memory pool for all processors, but they aren't entirely separated from each other's memory). It will very likely hinge on driver and OS support to achieve good performance, similar to AMD's QuadFX platform, as the memory and I/O isn't centralized (but it does look like CPU A can access CPU B's memory and vice versa). It'd be interesting to know if it's a ring or point to point between the Samurai chips, and how much bandwidth they actually have to deal with for interlinking.

I don't know exactly how SGI did it, but they had multiple AGP Pro slots in the Itanium-based Prism workstations. AFAIK those machines only work with the SGI specified AGP Pro cards, and won't run Windows - so I don't know how fair it is to consider such a machine "standardized." It's not exactly what I'm wanting with multiple AGP slots - the ability to just plug in multiple GeForce or Voodoo or whatever cards and go; like you can with PCI. I don't know if the Micron could or could not have accomplished that either - but it looks like it was probably closer than the SGI machine.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Wait, it just came into my mind. How about a....

...a speed-adjustable Windows version that is fully, perfectly, and completely backward compatible with virtually any DOS and Windows 9x applications?

Why do we build vintage system, if not for the lack of backward compatibility with older apps, which in turn primarily caused by the O/S? Consider this: if Windows XP is fully backward compatible with all Win9x games, why bother building a Windows 98 legacy system? I play MDK - an early Windows 95 game - flawlessly on Windows XP, with nVidia Tesla-generation GPU and i5 processor. If XP is backward compatible with all Windows 9x games, not just MDK, then I'll have little incentive to build a Win9x legacy system.

Ability to use old hardware, especially early 3D accelerators. From what I understand 3dfx cards mostly work in newer systems, but

• PowerVR PCX1/PCX2 only has drivers for Win9x
• Rendition V2200 has a beta driver for Win2k, no 3D though (IIRC)
• ATI Rage Pro has support in Win2k/XP, but no ATI CIF
• S3 Virge only has 2D support in Win2k/XP (though there seems to be a driver in the Win2k DDK which seems to have D3D and OpenGL MCD support, but no S3D so this is quite useless. Anyone has experience with that driver?)
• I didn't do any research about other proprietary APIs, but I don't think support will be better.
• Riva 128 only has 3D in Win9x. I have read that it's possible to install an NT 4.0 driver in Win2k to get accelerated OpenGL at least.

A Romeo sound card that can hold "whole YAMAHA FM" things. Does anyone have this? I search google but there's no pics about it.

A PCI card with a programmable OPL3 synthesizer AND wavetable compatible with Windows 7. I guess many people dream of this.

obobskivich wrote:

It's using the Micron Samurai chipset. It's a DDR chipset for P3 (I don't know if it was ever released for wide production), Tom […]
Show full quote

jwt27 wrote:

DDR and dual AGP on a slot 2 board? 😮

How does that even work? From that diagram it looks like you have two individual computers on a single mainboard.

It's using the Micron Samurai chipset. It's a DDR chipset for P3 (I don't know if it was ever released for wide production), Tom's benchmarked it at least:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/micron,152-4.html
And some news blurbs about it:
http://techreport.com/news/1527/micron-dual-s … rai-ddr-chipset
A bit more from Anand:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/492

So basically the chipsets themselves are interlinking somehow, and I would assume the machine is likely NUMA as a result (there isn't a common memory pool for all processors, but they aren't entirely separated from each other's memory). It will very likely hinge on driver and OS support to achieve good performance, similar to AMD's QuadFX platform, as the memory and I/O isn't centralized (but it does look like CPU A can access CPU B's memory and vice versa). It'd be interesting to know if it's a ring or point to point between the Samurai chips, and how much bandwidth they actually have to deal with for interlinking.

I don't know exactly how SGI did it, but they had multiple AGP Pro slots in the Itanium-based Prism workstations. AFAIK those machines only work with the SGI specified AGP Pro cards, and won't run Windows - so I don't know how fair it is to consider such a machine "standardized." It's not exactly what I'm wanting with multiple AGP slots - the ability to just plug in multiple GeForce or Voodoo or whatever cards and go; like you can with PCI. I don't know if the Micron could or could not have accomplished that either - but it looks like it was probably closer than the SGI machine.

Did you see this? http://www.asrock.com/mb/ULi/939Dual-SATA2/

Stojke wrote:

Did you see this? http://www.asrock.com/mb/ULi/939Dual-SATA2/

I've seen that in person before, it's really goofy - between the "Future CPU Port" slot and the AGP and PCI-E support of the ULi 1695 chipset (ULi® M1695/ ULi® M1567), pretty crazy stuff. The two slots will work, but not simultaneously, if I recall correctly.

I want to find one of these

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/news/222

Has both socket 939 and 775 at the same time. 😲

Or this one

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Re … /aopenax4btube/

Has a vacuum tube as part of the onboard audio system.

sliderider wrote:

I want to find one of these

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/news/222

Has both socket 939 and 775 at the same time. 😲

look at the date of the article 😀

MMaximus wrote:

sliderider wrote:

I want to find one of these

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/news/222

Has both socket 939 and 775 at the same time. 😲

look at the date of the article 😀

No, that was real too. Never seen one though.
http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Product/Prod … nuID=24&LanID=0
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16813135202
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1829
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/

"At the same time" is again a bit of a misnomer. It has sockets for both via the SIMA card slot, but it does not allow you to use them both simultaneously.

Jepael wrote:

An ISA FPGA card. For 16-bit socket, but with 8-bit compatibility. […]
Show full quote

An ISA FPGA card. For 16-bit socket, but with 8-bit compatibility.

For emulating whatever you like in hardware. Sound cards, video cards, with Flash memory for video/disk/network
BIOSes. It could have SD card or CF card slot as well, in addition to analog and digital audio and video outputs. And you guys just gave the idea it could have a socket for DDR memory to emulate EMS.

Does anyone know this kind of beast exists?

Yes it does...... but for the Apple II!

http://www.applelogic.org/CarteBlanche.html

It can be done with an 8-bit system, so 16-bit shouldn't be too much of a problem.

A new revision of the board is in development with exciting new features too. http://www.applefritter.com/content/carte-blanche-20-anyone

I'm actually surprised an ISA variant doesn't exist.

sliderider wrote:

I want to find one of these

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/news/222

Has both socket 939 and 775 at the same time. 😲

It can do more than that - there were cards that could do 754 and 479 too. You can see more about it here: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/7.html

They claim you can swap CPUs without re-installing Windows too, but I'm not sure how useful a feature that would be in real-life. 😲

Or this one

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Re … /aopenax4btube/

Has a vacuum tube as part of the onboard audio system.

Never seen that one before, but I remember an MSI (K8N Diamond Plus Hi-Fi Edition) that had a 5.25" bay which added a tubed output to the onboard audio. See here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/msi-k8n-d … amond,1209.html

Asus XG-DLS based board with support for 100 and 133Mhz Xeons. Overclocking options for up to or over 150Mhz FSB, along with appropriate dividers to keep the AGP bus speed within usable limits. This would probably be some kind of i840 based board, but it could 440GX based.

And to go with that board: Tualatin-based Slot-2 Xeons.

MMaximus wrote:

sliderider wrote:

I want to find one of these

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/news/222

Has both socket 939 and 775 at the same time. 😲

look at the date of the article 😀

Look at the entry from the ECS website.

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Product/Prod … nuID=24&LanID=0

sliderider wrote:

MMaximus wrote:

sliderider wrote:

I want to find one of these

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/news/222

Has both socket 939 and 775 at the same time. 😲

look at the date of the article 😀

Look at the entry from the ECS website.

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Product/Prod … nuID=24&LanID=0

I think I came across one of those boards on ebay a while back.

I'd just want an old CPU built on a new process. Tell me to my face that none of you would want a 486 or Pentium that could clock in the 3-4 GHz range.

And speaking of a new process, I'd like a 76 core Pentium III. The Coppermine P3s took up around 21 million transistors, as compared to my 32nm FX 8350 @ 1.6 bn transistors. Ooh, and how about a Pentium Q: A quad core, hyperthreaded Pentium 4, just to see how high Netburst could do with new tech (my guess is 5-6 GHz)

Meh, since I'm unconstrained by reality: mayhaps a slotket for Athlons is in order. That'd be pretty cool. On a more practical note, I would also quite like an ISA USB card that could also act as a mass storage driver for legacy BIOSes (being able to dd a Windows 98 image into a flash drive would be very convenient).

meisterister wrote:

And speaking of a new process, I'd like a 76 core Pentium III. The Coppermine P3s took up around 21 million transistors, as compared to my 32nm FX 8350 @ 1.6 bn transistors. Ooh, and how about a Pentium Q: A quad core, hyperthreaded Pentium 4, just to see how high Netburst could do with new tech (my guess is 5-6 GHz)

Honestly I'm guessing as a single-core, on modern 22nm or 18nm, NetBurst would laugh right past 6GHz, and settle somewhere in the 15+ GHz range. And I'm not exaggerating here - supposedly they were talking about 4GHz+ SKUs for Cedar Mill, and Tejas (which was originally intended to be "next in line" before the massive about-face to SMP) was supposed to clear 7GHz, on the road to their original marketing schtick for "10GHz 2010."

1. An SC-55 (or 88) and MT-32 (but with uploadable instrument support) on one PCI-E card. For under $100.
2. Same deal for an OPL-3 Adlib card, with drivers for modern OSes to support it.
3. A dedicated MIDI editing program that works on 64-bit OSes that doesn't suck