That's because it requires a special bios to function.

I could go on for hours about my trials and tribulations, but suffice to say, I can't get it to work.

I went through my network connectivity box and found I have 7x PCI modems (most winmodews), 4x ISA modems, 1x CNR and 1x AMR modem, whoooole bunch of Realtek 8136x cards, some intel cards, a bunch of NE2000 cards and a handful of 3com cards, 3x wifi cards, handful of laptop NICs (mini PCI and few PCMCIA) and couple PCI based oddities... I am not sure where all these came from, only some have got from lots of stuff I have bought and there's been very few of those... I will have to try to thin things out, maybe I manage to sell a few.

Also mucked around with a HDD from a computer that had been outside for years, not even in a shed 🤣
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVIV2mWjhfI

Bypasses the power switch on my MDA monitor because it's broken and doesn't make good enough contact to switch it on and off anymore.

The little Samsung seems to work great now, despite some dirty pots and a few obvious screen burns... I suspect this monitor was used in an industrial environment for most of it's life.

I also stuffed my 286-20 into an IBM AT case. The original AT power supply was completely dead (Even with load), and the motherboard was totally unresponsive. Now I've got a motherboard that boots and works, albeit one with a slew of minor issues...

I bought an EGA monitor for it, but it's not even shipped yet. It'll be a while, since it's coming from across the country, but I got it at an amazing price, so hopefully it gets here safely!

Replaced the Tyan S5173 (430TX) motherboard in my K6-2 system with a TMC MI5VP4 to enjoy some 100MHz FSB and 128MB RAM goodness, and was thrilled to see it POST without an issue.. until it hanged at HDD detecetion. Apparently 40GB was too much for this board? I will continue trying to find a fix. The BIOS on the board is from May 1999, the newest I could find is from December 1999 so I will try flashing that to see if that helps. Otherwise, there is no patched BIOS on WIMSBIOS so I am kind of stumped.. I'll probably have to downgrade to a smaller Hard Drive. Anyone have an idea what the limitation here could be? 32GB?

appiah4 wrote:

Replaced the Tyan S5173 (430TX) motherboard in my K6-2 system with a TMC MI5VP4 to enjoy some 100MHz FSB and 128MB RAM goodness, and was thrilled to see it POST without an issue.. until it hanged at HDD detecetion. Apparently 40GB was too much for this board? I will continue trying to find a fix. The BIOS on the board is from May 1999, the newest I could find is from December 1999 so I will try flashing that to see if that helps. Otherwise, there is no patched BIOS on WIMSBIOS so I am kind of stumped.. I'll probably have to downgrade to a smaller Hard Drive. Anyone have an idea what the limitation here could be? 32GB?

My guess would be that it's the 32Gb limit. You could try and modify your BIOS yourself, or find someone to do it for you. http://www.ryston.cz/petr/bios/award.html

Cyrix200+ wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Replaced the Tyan S5173 (430TX) motherboard in my K6-2 system with a TMC MI5VP4 to enjoy some 100MHz FSB and 128MB RAM goodness, and was thrilled to see it POST without an issue.. until it hanged at HDD detecetion. Apparently 40GB was too much for this board? I will continue trying to find a fix. The BIOS on the board is from May 1999, the newest I could find is from December 1999 so I will try flashing that to see if that helps. Otherwise, there is no patched BIOS on WIMSBIOS so I am kind of stumped.. I'll probably have to downgrade to a smaller Hard Drive. Anyone have an idea what the limitation here could be? 32GB?

My guess would be that it's the 32Gb limit. You could try and modify your BIOS yourself, or find someone to do it for you. http://www.ryston.cz/petr/bios/award.html

Oh wow.. That's fascinating and scary at the same time. Maybe I should post in WimsBIOS forums and someone can help me out with it.

appiah4 wrote:

Cyrix200+ wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Replaced the Tyan S5173 (430TX) motherboard in my K6-2 system with a TMC MI5VP4 to enjoy some 100MHz FSB and 128MB RAM goodness, and was thrilled to see it POST without an issue.. until it hanged at HDD detecetion. Apparently 40GB was too much for this board? I will continue trying to find a fix. The BIOS on the board is from May 1999, the newest I could find is from December 1999 so I will try flashing that to see if that helps. Otherwise, there is no patched BIOS on WIMSBIOS so I am kind of stumped.. I'll probably have to downgrade to a smaller Hard Drive. Anyone have an idea what the limitation here could be? 32GB?

My guess would be that it's the 32Gb limit. You could try and modify your BIOS yourself, or find someone to do it for you. http://www.ryston.cz/petr/bios/award.html

Oh wow.. That's fascinating and scary at the same time. Maybe I should post in WimsBIOS forums and someone can help me out with it.

That would be a good idea. I think it's pretty routine if you have done it before.

Cyrix200+ wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Cyrix200+ wrote:

My guess would be that it's the 32Gb limit. You could try and modify your BIOS yourself, or find someone to do it for you. http://www.ryston.cz/petr/bios/award.html

Oh wow.. That's fascinating and scary at the same time. Maybe I should post in WimsBIOS forums and someone can help me out with it.

That would be a good idea. I think it's pretty routine if you have done it before.

I can't seem to get AWDHACK to work in DOSBOX, or I'm doing something wrong, I just failed to uncompress and edit the ROM 🙁

Maybe someone more knowledgable here can help me patch this BIOS for 32GB+ support?

FAMICOMASTER wrote:

What's different between a normal TNT2 and a TNT2 M64? I have several of both but I've never been sure.

At first I thought it was memory sizes, but then I realized that I have TNT2s with 16MB and 32MB, and TNT M64s with 16MB and 32MB.

The TNT2 M64 only has a 64 bit data buss, making it very slow.

"very slow" is quite exaggerated. Even if video RAM speed would be all that ever counts, the M64 could not be slower than half of what the non-M64 is able to perform. In reality, the impact of video RAM speed is much lower and the M64 even with only 120/125 MHz (slowest TNT2 of all) still has almost the same fillrate as the normal TNT2. Speed only really suffers if you choose higher resolutions. The M64 is by no means a bad card.

derSammler wrote:

"very slow" is quite exaggerated. Even if video RAM speed would be all that ever counts, the M64 could not be slower than half of what the non-M64 is able to perform. In reality, the impact of video RAM speed is much lower and the M64 even with only 120/125 MHz (slowest TNT2 of all) still has almost the same fillrate as the normal TNT2. Speed only really suffers if you choose higher resolutions. The M64 is by no means a bad card.

But... If it's slower, and the normal TNT2s are the same price, and almost as abundant...

Why do people specifically choose the M64? It seems like a lot of people select the card deliberately over other options at the same price.

I can see where in 1999-2000 when the cards were new why you or your OEM might select the M64 for cost reasons (Cheaper to produce and they still get to put nVidia and TNT2 on the box), but I just can't see the advantage of it for a vintage build today.

Or is there something I'm missing here?

You are missing nothing. The main issue is that a proper TNT2 is a lot more expensive than an M64. Also, the PCI version of the M64 is much more abundant than the PCI version of a normal TNT2, and they work very well in Socket 7 systems.

I use a TNT2 M64 as a replacement for a proper TNT in one of my builds, for period correctness purposes. Otherwise it would see no use.

Really? I've got a whole box of TNT2s and TNT2 M64s. They were built into OEM systems all the time, super easy to find.

All AGP though, maybe that's the difference. I have zero PCI TNT2 cards of any kind.

I've been converting a bunch of C64 .tap files to .wav to playback through the cassette adapter to my Commodore 64. Reliving some classic games.

Additionally - another piece of C64 goodness arrived a couple of hours ago, the SD2IEC that I ordered.

Just using a 2GB SD Card at the moment. All seems to be working well

Still need to get a few things for this C64, such as the Epyx Fastload cartridge or I might opt instead for the EasyFlash3 Catridge - haven't researched that properly yet but it might be nice to run some cartridge backups also, assuming Epyx also runs ok on it.

bjwil1991 wrote:

So, the TNT2 is a bit faster than the M64 version, right, or am I incorrect on there?

M64 is right around the speed of the "original" TNT overall, not terribly slower but noticeable at higher resolutions.

Tiido wrote:

I went through my network connectivity box and found I have 7x PCI modems (most winmodews), 4x ISA modems, 1x CNR and 1x AMR modem, whoooole bunch of Realtek 8136x cards, some intel cards, a bunch of NE2000 cards and a handful of 3com cards, 3x wifi cards, handful of laptop NICs (mini PCI and few PCMCIA) and couple PCI based oddities... I am not sure where all these came from, only some have got from lots of stuff I have bought and there's been very few of those... I will have to try to thin things out, maybe I manage to sell a few.

Good luck there... the number of people into vintage networking is tiny and just as with the video stuff, some things are more sought after than others, and ISA/PCI modems, RTL8139 (typo I assume there) and NE2000 are bottom of the pile. I only manage to shift them by making bigger lots and adding that stuff for free. Apart from perhaps 3c509 cards the chance of flogging that stuff is equally tiny (unless that's an ISA WiFi card, in which case PM me 😉 )

Also mucked around with a HDD from a computer that had been outside for years, not even in a shed 🤣
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVIV2mWjhfI

Maybe used as a bird lure given those sounds 😜

Talking about sounds, I got fed up with the noise my Win98 PC makes. Turns out most of that was due to the PSU (an AOpen-branded FSP 350W thing, heavy as a brick and full of big components). Its fan had never been truly quiet, but was definitely worse for wear, so I removed it, installed a fan socket and then plugged in a Noctua 80mm fan I had lying around. MUCH quieter now. I'm not totally sure I trust its airflow, although PSU wasn't even warm after an hour of UT99, but as I used a socket, it's easy enough to replace if I need more.

Also downgraded the cooling on the P3-1400S in that system. I had a Zalman CNPS-3000 on it being very impressive and quiet with a huge 120mm Noctua Redux blowing onto it from the bracket supplied with the heatsink, but as I mess around with this system quite a lot, the bracket was getting in the way badly. So I replaced it with the ThermalTake SuperOrb I picked up recently. Here again I experimented with the fans and everything stays cool under heavy load (UT99 again) with just the top fan running at reduced power.

Now that system is quiet enough to make me happy 😀

Went out to the shed and sorted out some of my old late '80s early '90s motorcycle stuff I'd had for decades. Yeah it's "retro" but some times you just have to say f&%k it get rid of it and move on. While I was there I'd thought I'd check up on Unhappy Mac and make sure he was behaving himself with the neighborhood kids.

Seems to be fine at the moment, but you never know he'll pull some shady move employing the UX/IX card. Him, Andrew Acorn and Ami Amiga have some real nasty discussions on the topic. Of course Pharly 486 just keeps quiet and giggles quietly down stairs.

Just organized some of my towers..

Super Socket 7 build incoming 😁
Updated my newly acquired Tyan Trinity 100AT (S1590S) with BIOS version B1.16c, patched by J. Steunebrink, to accept my (also newly acquired) K6-2+ 450.

I've been having some issues installing certain games lately, getting CRC errors and so forth so I finally ran MemTest86 and yeah, one of the RAM sticks is bad. Removed it and started Windows up again and now KOTOR installs and runs as it should. Performance issues with other games have cleared up as well.

wiretap wrote:

Just organized some of my towers. […]
Show full quote

Just organized some of my towers.

Those are some nice cases in the top middle to top right!