H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-05-13, 11:36:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-05-11, 16:35:

I'm sure the difference between a 2.8 512/533 P4 and a 3.06 512/533 CPU isn't much, but I wanted to max out the CPU in my P4 Win98 system. It seems that the 2.8 GHz CPU that I wanted to replace with the 3.06 is the highest speed CPU this very basic motherboard can use. I was hoping that the Ebay seller had sent me a bad CPU, but it POSTed in my P4P 800, so the CPU is fine. Bummer.

Well, the 3.06 has Hyperthreading, which the 2.8 doesn't. Might very well be why the motherboard doesn't like it?

Could be. This board can use the BIOS for the first revision of the P4S5A and I know that there were modified BIOS ("Cheepo") available back then that had some overclocking options; I'd love to try again with such a modified BIOS, but despite a diligent search I haven't been able to find anything but dead links.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-05-13, 14:00:

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-05-13, 11:36:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-05-11, 16:35:

I'm sure the difference between a 2.8 512/533 P4 and a 3.06 512/533 CPU isn't much, but I wanted to max out the CPU in my P4 Win98 system. It seems that the 2.8 GHz CPU that I wanted to replace with the 3.06 is the highest speed CPU this very basic motherboard can use. I was hoping that the Ebay seller had sent me a bad CPU, but it POSTed in my P4P 800, so the CPU is fine. Bummer.

Well, the 3.06 has Hyperthreading, which the 2.8 doesn't. Might very well be why the motherboard doesn't like it?

Could be. This board can use the BIOS for the first revision of the P4S5A and I know that there were modified BIOS ("Cheepo") available back then that had some overclocking options; I'd love to try again with such a modified BIOS, but despite a diligent search I haven't been able to find anything but dead links.

Boy, you aren't kidding. I was curious and took a brief look for it myself and it seems to be totally gone from the internet. It blows my mind how places like ocworkbench just vanish and no one had ever thought to backup their files. Like... how? How does that happen?

My ECS K7S5A was updated with a Cheepo Bios back in the day to support later Athlon XP chips and it worked perfectly. It might be worth posting about this in a dedicated thread here as well as some other forums that have been around a long time to see if anyone had bothered doing a personal backup of the site or know of anyone who does.

Those old third party BIOS files are amazingly useful for getting old boards working their best, so it's a big loss when the sources of them seemingly dry up overnight.

EDIT: It seems it disappeared as far back as 2010, or even 2003...
https://forums.ocworkbench.com/showthread.php?t=48272

There are tons of BIOS files listed for this board (rebadged under different names) but I don't think any of them are third party...
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/?page=1& … es=0&name=p4s5a

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-05-13, 16:20:

Boy, you aren't kidding. I was curious and took a brief look for it myself and it seems to be totally gone from the internet. It […]
Show full quote

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-05-13, 14:00:

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-05-13, 11:36:

Well, the 3.06 has Hyperthreading, which the 2.8 doesn't. Might very well be why the motherboard doesn't like it?

Could be. This board can use the BIOS for the first revision of the P4S5A and I know that there were modified BIOS ("Cheepo") available back then that had some overclocking options; I'd love to try again with such a modified BIOS, but despite a diligent search I haven't been able to find anything but dead links.

Boy, you aren't kidding. I was curious and took a brief look for it myself and it seems to be totally gone from the internet. It blows my mind how places like ocworkbench just vanish and no one had ever thought to backup their files. Like... how? How does that happen?

My ECS K7S5A was updated with a Cheepo Bios back in the day to support later Athlon XP chips and it worked perfectly. It might be worth posting about this in a dedicated thread here as well as some other forums that have been around a long time to see if anyone had bothered doing a personal backup of the site or know of anyone who does.

Those old third party BIOS files are amazingly useful for getting old boards working their best, so it's a big loss when the sources of them seemingly dry up overnight.

EDIT: It seems it disappeared as far back as 2010, or even 2003...
https://forums.ocworkbench.com/showthread.php?t=48272

There are tons of BIOS files listed for this board (rebadged under different names) but I don't think any of them are third party...
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/?page=1& … es=0&name=p4s5a

I've been down this path before when I was looking for a BIOS that would allow FSB/RAM speeds of 133/166 on this board; you can set the 100 MHz FSB CPUs to 100/166 and they actually beat the 133 chips in memory bandwidth as a result. I did find a BIOS for a later P4S5A that had this setting, and at first I thought I had found just what I was looking for. But I then discovered that because of some other difference in the hardware/chipset that it didn't detect the CPU properly when POSTing, so on every reboot the FSB/RAM speed had to be manually set.

I guess since these were basic motherboards that everyone wanted to ditch as quickly as possible (once they had the money for an upgrade), no one cared about saving them or any modified BIOS. Technically these boards didn't support any 533 MHz FSB chips, so upgrading to a 2.8 is already a lucky thing. It performs pretty well as is, and it's far beyond how it was when I got it - it had a 2.53 MHz 512/533 CPU, 512 megabytes of SDRAM and a GeForce MX440 (now it has the 2.8, 512 DDR and a 9800 SE unlocked with Omega drivers). But like many others here, I'm addicted to upgrading things as far as possible, and if I can find a way to shoehorn a faster CPU into a motherboard I'll do my darnedest to make it happen.

Edit: I did find a site that has the K7S5A modified BIOS collection. http://k7jo.de/start.htm

kingcake wrote on 2024-05-12, 03:24:

Dan386DX wrote on 2024-05-07, 02:26:

So today I received a P60 system listed as not working on eBay.

As soon as I plugged the power lead into it, before I even had a chance to switch the system on, the PSU went bang and released a little magic smoke.

Anybody seen this before?

Probably the filter cap. They are hot all the time and will blow if the system is off.

Appreciate the reply. Haven't inspected inside the dead PSU yet, interestingly, it actually ruined the power cable too.

After using past 5 years 32GB Sandisk Extreme PRO SDHC card as main disk in my main Asus P3B-F Win98/DOS box I decided to treat it with proper IDE SSD from reputable manufacturer TRANSCEND. I looked into SATA2IDE adapters but they felt somewhat sketchy with wobbly exposed PCB potentially shorting stuff...

I also used first time Norton Ghost from ~2004 in DOS. Amazing cloning tool. It expanded nicely my logical drives structure filling nicely full disk. Result was so that I did not have to run FDISK /MBR
Main benefit now is disk space since BX chipset is restricted to UDMA 2 speeds. Still I gained some performance based on Atto disk benchmark below

Dan386DX wrote on 2024-05-13, 19:30:

kingcake wrote on 2024-05-12, 03:24:

Dan386DX wrote on 2024-05-07, 02:26:

So today I received a P60 system listed as not working on eBay.

As soon as I plugged the power lead into it, before I even had a chance to switch the system on, the PSU went bang and released a little magic smoke.

Anybody seen this before?

Probably the filter cap. They are hot all the time and will blow if the system is off.

Appreciate the reply. Haven't inspected inside the dead PSU yet, interestingly, it actually ruined the power cable too.

You're in the UK right? Maybe think about changing the plug fuses on the cables for old AT supplies down to 3A or if you can find them 2A or 1.5A that way if they start to go wrong, they might take out the fuse before they go wronger and burn more stuff.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-05-13, 21:16:

Dan386DX wrote on 2024-05-13, 19:30:

kingcake wrote on 2024-05-12, 03:24:

Probably the filter cap. They are hot all the time and will blow if the system is off.

Appreciate the reply. Haven't inspected inside the dead PSU yet, interestingly, it actually ruined the power cable too.

You're in the UK right? Maybe think about changing the plug fuses on the cables for old AT supplies down to 3A or if you can find them 2A or 1.5A that way if they start to go wrong, they might take out the fuse before they go wronger and burn more stuff.

Yeah UK.

This is sage advice actually, it *was* a 13A fuse after all. Appreciate the tip, I'll see if I've got some smaller fuses in the toolbox.

Well, I managed to update the BIOS on my PPro board, and even managed to overclock it by setting the jumpers correctly. This in turn lets me load in to NT4 with a bit more speed than I ever expected. Sure, it ain't truly fast, but it probably blows of era speeds out of the water.

Now it's time to toss the board in to storage until I find a reason to use it over my current S7 system.

My Torx bits arrived a while ago, so I finally decided to open up and clean the PSU of my Xbox 360 Slim. While the console itself is reasonably quiet, the PSU was producing an irritating whirring/grinding noise. It wasn't that perceptible while gaming, but you could notice it during the quieter moments like watching in-game cutscenes. Nonetheless, the noise had to go, so I grabbed a T10 Torx security bit and used my power screwdriver to remove the four main screws. These things were screwed in very tightly from the factory, so I don't think I could have removed them by hand without striping them. But with a power tool and the appropriate bit, it was almost effortless.

Following one of the disassembly videos on YouTube, I opened up the casing and easily got to the fan. Yeah, there were a lot of dust bunnies inside. After blowing out the dust from the casing, I removed the fan (which was surprisingly easy) and cleaned its fins with isopropyl alcohol. Before setting it back, I added a tiny bit of lubricant to the center pin hole. I tested that it spins properly, then closed everything up and switched on the console.

The difference was night and day, and the PSU is nearly silent now. I fired up Halo 3 and smashed up a bunch of Flood enemies with the Gravity Hammer to put some stress on the system. Still blissfully quiet. Needless to say, I'm extremely happy with the end result!

Dan386DX wrote on 2024-05-14, 01:07:

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-05-13, 21:16:

Dan386DX wrote on 2024-05-13, 19:30:

Appreciate the reply. Haven't inspected inside the dead PSU yet, interestingly, it actually ruined the power cable too.

You're in the UK right? Maybe think about changing the plug fuses on the cables for old AT supplies down to 3A or if you can find them 2A or 1.5A that way if they start to go wrong, they might take out the fuse before they go wronger and burn more stuff.

Yeah UK.

This is sage advice actually, it *was* a 13A fuse after all. Appreciate the tip, I'll see if I've got some smaller fuses in the toolbox.

Back in the 80s, everyone used to be more conscious about matching their plug fuses near to load of appliance. But as many countries had standards that didn't specify fused plugs or outlets, various bodies and standards orgs began to insist on more safeties inside things. As products globalised in the 90s, stuff sold in the UK would be CE, TUV, UL etc approved for those Euro and other markets and ppl just got used to leaving the "default" 13A in there. But we can be messing with stuff that was never tested to those standards, or met a much more lax version of the standard of the past. Plus age brings on failure modes the standards didn't account for.... or failed to specify what happens when the test parameters are exceeded in use, like a filter capacitor being specified to endure 50,000 voltage spikes, and what happens come the day it gets way past that.... or maybe, what happens when it dries out for 30 years first.

It used to worry me more on moving to a 115V country that fuses were not so ubiquitous, but for a start our wattage cap is half that in the UK, so that's a lot less power that can misbehave, but I try to remember to keep my old stuff on fused or breakered power bars.

I have been in Canada for 24 years now, and yet "Absolute Weak Sauce" is still my first thought when I plug in a flimsy 120v device. 😜

Though, it seems that some kitchen appliances are finally taking advantage of 20A outlets, kind of. When I was randomly measuring the power draw of various things around the house last year, I was pleasantly surprised to find the toaster oven pull something like 1830w, which equates to 15.25a @ 120v. Sure, they could've pushed it to ~2400w for the ultimate in bagel warming performance, but hey - it's a solid step up from the usual 1500. I'll take it! I just wish I could find a 20A kettle.

In the UK at least, it doesn't help that most plugs sold now, are usually only found with 13amp fuses fitted. I sold consumer electronics in the 80s/90s, initially retail, and back then, most equipment didn't come with a fitted plug, so as part of the sales process we'd also fit the correct fused plug for the customer, if nothing else to stop them blowing themselves up when they got home! I'm always amazed when I've bought vintage equipment from the pre-fitted plug days, at how badly some people wired their plugs (A recent Amstrad computer purchase as an example), so always the first thing I check before getting it anywhere near a socket. Then again, I guess most people were never taught how, and certainly a great many then, and probably now, didn't realise that you could even get fuses other than 13amp.
Ignorance is bliss, except where electricity is concerned, it needs respect.

BigDave wrote on 2024-05-14, 17:15:

In the UK at least, it doesn't help that most plugs sold now, are usually only found with 13amp fuses fitted. I sold consumer electronics in the 80s/90s, initially retail, and back then, most equipment didn't come with a fitted plug, so as part of the sales process we'd also fit the correct fused plug for the customer, if nothing else to stop them blowing themselves up when they got home! I'm always amazed when I've bought vintage equipment from the pre-fitted plug days, at how badly some people wired their plugs (A recent Amstrad computer purchase as an example), so always the first thing I check before getting it anywhere near a socket. Then again, I guess most people were never taught how, and certainly a great many then, and probably now, didn't realise that you could even get fuses other than 13amp.
Ignorance is bliss, except where electricity is concerned, it needs respect.

they are the best plugs it seems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q
😀

Good productive day today. Base = Slot A Athlon 600/512 sitting on a Biostar M7MKA (AMD 750/760 chipset) with 128MB Infineon SDRAM.
Using an IDE to SD Adapter with an old SanDisk 32GB card I used the first 2GB for a Ms-dos 6.22 install and activated my Vogon special MK8330 Sound card. This feeds into a Graham Slee Voyager headphone amp giving me volume flexibility as it has a dial 😀 - tested OK with the CMI test utility. I then raided my GOG install on my Win 11 PC and took the following, Lucasarts X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Dark Forces and Wing Commander Privateer. Joystick is a CH Products Mach 3 analog jobbie. X-Wing and Tie Fighter relatively easy to setup and get going (strip out the GOG and DosBox bloatware, run the install, set machine speed and try out the different sound options) - ultimately I'm now using the Unisound driver instead of the CMI as I had big slowdowns using CMI / Roland for Midi. So both of these fully functional and working away happily. Onto WC Privateer - this time I needed to either burn a cdrom or mount an ISO craftily named Game.gog so I again stripped out the Gog / DosBox bloatware and used the SHSUCD set of utilities to mount the image and assign a drive letter for access. The game starts and goes through the intro scenes but the Joystick goes directly to the bottom right and I need to figure that out tomorrow.
Next trick then was to shutdown and install a variant of OS/2 on a 4GB JFS Partition (I had a CD with Arca Noae 5.06) which went surprisingly well and this brought my Intel Pro/1000 GT into play and my retro pc has Internet. Another partition built (2 GB) used a utility to convert it into a boot partition, I dropped the latest and greatest version of Arca Noae, 5.10 in iso format into it, and used that to update the previous version. Tomorrow I'll fix Privateer, and deGog Dark Forces.

Well, I don't know how it happened, but I think my XGA card in my PS/2 died on me. It's detected by the system, but doesn't seem to be working with any of my monitors. The planar VGA is fine, so it's not completely bad, but I'm not going to be finding too many MCA cards any time soon if it's completely dead.

Blew up a Caviar 80MB hard drive, WDAC280.

I can't make anything out of it. Diode or capacitor?

PD2JK wrote on 2024-05-16, 13:56:

Blew up a Caviar 80MB hard drive, WDAC280.

I can't make anything out of it. Diode or capacitor?

It could be a TVS Diode if it's between 12v and ground.

Cleaned up cabling and removed M.2 to SATA in this system:

PROXMOX Test DOS\9x (VESA)/NT4 (VESA)/2000/XP/Vista (Also 7+)

Processor: Intel Core i7 6700k
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9S w/2 Noctua A9 92mm fans
Motherboard: ASUS PRIME Z270-A
Memory: Patriot Viper 4 32GB (4 x 8GB)
NIC: Intel X540-T1 10GB
SSD: Seagate Firecuda 530 1TB (Proxmox)
SSD: Seagate Firecuda 530 2TB (Proxmox VMs)
PSU: Corsair RM850x
Audio: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy PCIe RX 7.1 (9x/2000/XP)
Monitor: Dell Ultrasharp U2410F 24" 1920x1200
Video: Video: Zotac Geforce GTX 980 Ti 6GB AMP! Extreme GDDR5 ZT-90507-10B PCIe (2000/BWC,Windows XP+)
Video: 880GT 512MB (2000 Vanilla)
Video: Geforce FX 5200 128mb (9x-NT) (2k-xp for games that need it)
Case: CoolerMaster ATC-110 w/ 4x Noctua NF-A8 PWM fans
Amebay 5.25 Inch Front Panel USB Hub 2port 3.0, USB 2.0 for Computer Case
DVD: Blu-ray LG UH12LS28

PD2JK wrote on 2024-05-16, 13:56:

Blew up a Caviar 80MB hard drive, WDAC280.

I can't make anything out of it. Diode or capacitor?

DSC_9039.JPG

The black thing (to the left of the yellow thing) between R25 and C43 looks pretty broken?

I installed a Chinese card cooler on my GeForce 3 Ti 200. I had to hacksaw and file portions of the base to make it clear the RAM sinks, and when I tried to install it I discovered that the short fins were preventing me from fully inserting it into the AGP slot so I had to bend some of them in.