Geeky1 had this to say The Orbs are the best heatsinks ever!*
However, the Orb is still a decent cooler, for a P3. The design itself is such that the ones Thermaltake released for the P4/Athlon are basically worthless, except as paperweights, since Orb coolers generally have very little fin area. However, considering the relatively tiny heat output of the P3, it's a decent cooler. Admittedly, a decent aluminum hsf would be fine, too, but as a replacement for a spectacularly crappy heatsink, the Orb apparently is just fine.
speaking of one of these.....?
i bought one of these back when i got my first socket A chips, cause it was the only thing there, and i had to have one to run it....
damn thing is so sad it wont cool an tbird 800@900mhz.
SimGuy had this to say Easy to pick up and toss
They get more air when thrown in a fit of rage compared to a socket processor
Yep, I collect old Slot processors. People collect coins, I collect proc's
This is only a few that I had handy at the time... there are about 20 others in service/in cold storage.
Xeon Slot 2's are the Brontosaurus of processors.....
the old Slot A Athlons bring back memories.... going to computer shows, armed with knowledge of serial numbers, buying one, taking it home to crack it open, see if it had a higher rated core in it.
then moving SMD resistors to change multipliers and core voltage....
They work quite well for older Socket 7 & Super 7 CPU's. This Gold Orb is installed on the precursor to the Athlon: AMD's K6-III 400. Damn dust...
polarys425 had this to say
Geeky1 had this to say The Orbs are the best heatsinks ever!*
However, the Orb is still a decent cooler, for a P3. The design itself is such that the ones Thermaltake released for the P4/Athlon are basically worthless, except as paperweights, since Orb coolers generally have very little fin area. However, considering the relatively tiny heat output of the P3, it's a decent cooler. Admittedly, a decent aluminum hsf would be fine, too, but as a replacement for a spectacularly crappy heatsink, the Orb apparently is just fine.
speaking of one of these.....?
i bought one of these back when i got my first socket A chips, cause it was the only thing there, and i had to have one to run it....
damn thing is so sad it wont cool an tbird 800@900mhz.
Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited November 2003
Do you guys actually USE this stuff? Yeesh! My SLOWEST computer is 1.5GHz, and it's just a print server/internet machine. The slowest machine I actually use for stuff is 2.4GHz...
I do. That old VIA MVP3-based motherboard was removed from my now defunct K6-III 400 Internet Server (the old P233 MMX died about 4 months ago, RIP). For Internet/DHCP/WINS/DNS services, I ran Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition on that comp with an uptime of nearly 60 days before a power glitch took her out (damned blackout).
However, I have to say that my pride and joy is the old workhorse system which I owned for nearly 2 years. Now, it is my Dad's day-to-day machine for the last 18 months:
The slowest machine I use for daily services are my new Windows 2000 domain controllers (to replace those old Compaq 486/66 WinNT Server 4.0 systems). My new IBM IntelliStation's: Dual P2-400's with 256 MB ECC SDRAM.
1.5 GHz for a print server? Wow... that's.. um.. crazy. I have no need for that much power in a print server, let alone a domain controller. A maximum of 5 people (each family member) can print at the same time, all to my Corona system that has the local HP DeskJet 920C shared across a USB port, or to the aforementioned Inspire system, which has a *shudder* Lexmark Z25 *shudder* (hey, it was $15.00 brand new, I couldn't turn it down).
However that will change in a couple days, when I get my HP LaserJet 4000TN that has a JetDirect card... mmmm.... network printing
I suppose it just goes to show that older technology, while not as fast or advanced as today's items, still can find useful areas to be utilized.
//Edit: The fastest machine that I do daily work on is my P4 2.4C...
Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited November 2003
You're scaring me.
That 1.5GHz (Overclocked Celeron 1.3) machine isn't a domain controller. I just use it for surfing since it's on all the time anyhow. It's got a Rage 128/32MB AGP, 512MB of DDR, a Firewire PCI card, a 52/32/52 LiteOn burner, a floppy (big whoop!) and an 80gb/8mb/7200rpm Maxtor DiamondMax 9.
I'm just waiting for the P3 to come way down in price... it's in an MSI Pro266TD-LR dual p3/ddr board, and when the P3-1.4S is <$75/cpu, I'll buy two and drop them in.
I use it to share my printer (HP CP1160) on my network, which consists of 3 other computers- the 2.4GHz 1800/NF7-S, the dual 1.9GHz 2500/K7D-L, and my 2.4GHz P4 laptop.
polarys425 had this to say the old Slot A Athlons bring back memories.... going to computer shows, armed with knowledge of serial numbers, buying one, taking it home to crack it open, see if it had a higher rated core in it.
then moving SMD resistors to change multipliers and core voltage....
much easier nowadays......
So I'm guessing you've used a GFD on your Athlon K7's before?
Gold Fingers Device?
I find a way to always use old technology. If it can do the job up to the standards I need it to, why replace it with something faster at more expense? There's 2 of these bad boy IBM systems tearing it up as Win2K DC's down here on my domain.
Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited November 2003
//EDIT
I don't think that's an NLX board. NLX boards have no onboard slots, except for an AGP slot (when present) and a PCI/ISA riser slot. That board looks like an E-ATX to me.
I use old technology, too. It's just that since I only started accumulating computer parts when I bought my 1.4GHz T-Bird system, I haven't got any antiques sitting around. I did have a bunch of athlon boards I could've used for a print server, but these things are all in my room, so I wanted something that was dead silent on air cooling (parents won't let me use water), and the athlons just won't do that. By silent, I mean SILENT. as in, I can't hear it with nothing else in my room on. No air-cooled athlon system is going to be that quiet. The p3, on the other hand, is.
I've actually been trying to talk my dad into giving me my original board + CPUs back... I gave it to him for a server in exchange for a CUV4X-E and a p3-700... what I'd do with a dual P3/500 system, I don't know, but it's got two CPU slots, so I want it
I'd probably stick it in my motherboard/CPU/card/Drive junk drawer (underneath my fan/power supply junk drawer, which is underneath my heatsink junk drawer and my cable junk drawer, which are under my nuts and bolts junk drawers, which are under...) right next to the A7N8X-Deluxe, the K7S5A, the KX7-333, the A7M-266, the 3 unused Athlons (1700 Palomino, 1700 TBred B, 2200 TBred A), the 2 10,000rpm SCSI drives, the 4 ATA-133 controllers, etc.
so, it's not so much that I don't use old stuff, as it is that I consider a 1700+ outdated. Admittedly, the TBred B 1700 will hit 2.3GHz+, but my 1800 does 2.5, so... the 1700 got chucked into the junk drawer...
0
Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited November 2003
Come to think of it... I should put some of this crap I have sitting around to use... although my parents probably won't appreciate it, since they threw a fit when I bought my cube case, and they haven't even realized that I've got the Celeron system yet... (it's only been 3 months...). It's not like I've hidden it from them... it's sitting on top of my desk, for christ's sake. They come in my room on occasion... if they'd been looking for a computer, they'd have seen it. However, they've given up on keeping track of what I buy...
I'm thinking that I may wait until I go to college next summer, buy myself a nice 15-20 unit enclosed rack, and just rackmount everything. Then I'll get the extra systems folding...
I suppose I eat humble pie. Being used to the speed of a 550 MHz P3 for the majority of the time (I did dabble in the Slot A Athlon's and other speeds of P3's, but I ended up buring a lot of chips up due to overclocking), so I had to settle for the only thing I had left: The P3 550E.
The jump to my original P4 2266 from that 550E was amazing, so I'm still amazed at the speed of today's technology. But on the same hand, I see no point in relegating something that's a little slower to the junk drawer. It can be put to use.
I don't have the luxury of having a bunch of P4 2.4C's kicking around to OC and choosing the best one. I learned my lesson through the "school of hard knocks" when I fried multiple Athlon 650's, 700's, 750's, 800's, 900's & 1000's (all Slot A) when I pushed their core & L2 way too far on air cooling, in search of that holy grail 3DMark2000 high score with my older Geforce 2 Ultra 64 MB.
I'm not experienced at all when it comes to Socket 462 Athlon's, but I know you could cool a stock Athlon K7 Slot A with their retail heatsink at near no-noise volumes.
As for my junk shelf... it contains older collectables.... such as the Slot CPU collection, miscellaneous fans, older motherboards... some of my original video cards (Voodoo 1) and old full-length 8-bit ISA sound cards (my Gravis UltraSound)
I can't consider an A7M-266, SCSI drives, ATA Controllers or unused Athlon processors junk, as it's faster than what I've got in some day-to-day workhorse systems.
All last year, I slept approximately 18" away from my old P4 2266 system... which contained an SLK900 & 92mm Vantec Tornado running at full bore. Noise doesn't bother me.
//Edit: Manual says NLX... although it's IBM so they could be wrong
0
Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited November 2003
I dunno... I may be wrong. I got my info out of maximumpc, so it very well may be an NLX board, actually. Have to get Ageek or someone to answer that one...
Anyhow, I just throw stuff like the A7N8X in the "junk drawer" because I have trouble using 2 computers at once as it is, and I've got 4, and because I don't want to spend the money on another case, ps, hd, ram, optical drive, video card, etc.
Eventually I'll get around to either selling them or using them...
However, truly old equipment does have some use. A good number of the machines on the shop floor @ my grandparent's business are Pentium 133s or older. The oldest one is a 386, in fact.
They're used for DNC work, and they simply don't need to be any faster.
And our office machines are still mostly P2-400s w/64MB of ram and Win95. Hell, some of our CAD machines are still P2-400s w/512MB and GF256s, but they're slowly being replaced by faster stuff, as the projects they're used for get more complex and we need more powerful hardware. Our last CAD system was a 2800/9800 Pro system with a gig of DDR400 in an A7N8X, and our last server was a P4C-2.8 with a gig of DDR400 (dual channel), a gf2mx, and a mirrored RAID array. But it replaced the server with my old board in it, which had the 2 P3-500s, so we tend to use hardware for a long time.
But I upgrade my personal systems so often that since I don't throw anything away unless it's well and truly beyond repair or of no use whatsoever, I tend to accumulate stuff. Like A7N8X Deluxes.
0
Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited November 2003
I can say, however, that taking that 386 apart was an experience.
NO PCI slots. Lotsa ISA slots, some other slots that I couldn't recognize (either most of them were 8-bit ISA with a few 16-bits, or the other way around, plus what may have been VESA slots... I can't remember now), Ti Math coprocessor and everything. Hell, the CMOS battery on the board was dead, and since it was soldered on, there was actually a connector for a AA battery pack, which was installed. The CPU didn't even have a HEATSINK, let alone a fan.
The machine was (for lack of a better term) totally alien... very little of it was familiar stuff. Hard drives, floppies, etc. are pretty easy to identify, but this thing didn't even have any I/O ports on the board, except for the AT KB port. It had some kind of ISA IDE/PS-2 controller board or something.
polarys425 had this to say the old Slot A Athlons bring back memories.... going to computer shows, armed with knowledge of serial numbers, buying one, taking it home to crack it open, see if it had a higher rated core in it.
then moving SMD resistors to change multipliers and core voltage....
much easier nowadays......
So I'm guessing you've used a GFD on your Athlon K7's before?
Gold Fingers Device?
yep, sure have. i still even have one around here somewhere. still have a slot A 750 floating around too, if i remember right it has a 900 or 950 core.
0
Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited November 2003
I remember when the slot athlons came out... I wanted one sooo bad, along with a GF2 GTS. But I didn't have the money for either one.
As for my junk shelf... it contains older collectables.... such as the Slot CPU collection, miscellaneous fans, older motherboards... some of my original video cards (Voodoo 1) and old full-length 8-bit ISA sound cards (my Gravis UltraSound)
I can't consider an A7M-266, SCSI drives, ATA Controllers or unused Athlon processors junk, as it's faster than what I've got in some day-to-day workhorse systems.
//Edit: Manual says NLX... although it's IBM so they could be wrong
i think this is the oldest thing i have lying around......
Geeky1 had this to say I remember when the slot athlons came out... I wanted one sooo bad, along with a GF2 GTS. But I didn't have the money for either one.
wish i could say the same.....it woulda saved me alot of money.....
I nearly fell of my chair when watching AMD release the first batch of K7 Athlon's at 500, 550, 600 & 650 in August of 1999. So much power in the package... it mopped the floor with the P3.
They were insanely expensive. I remember paying $1150 for my 650 when it first came out, getting rid of my old 500 Mhz P3 Slot 1 for it. Damn that was a fast beast. Asus K7M motherboard with the ol' Via KX133 chipset and the Alpha P3125 heatsink (later changed to the VOS-32). Some Mushkin PC100 CAS 2 SDRAM and I was away to the races. True, with that GFD, I didn't want to crack the case on my new CPU, but it was worth it. Those 650's scaled as high as 850 by the time I finished with it. Of course, I had removed the external plastic clam-shell, thermal pasted the P3125 heatsink to it and used dual 60mm 7K Delta's along with the assistance of a couple larger fans (don't have those anymore). Coupled with my original GeForce 256 DDR (Shorty knows this one, the Creative Labs Annihilator Pro), I was pushing the poly's like mad in 3DMark2000.
Worked my way up through each Athlon Slot A I could get my hands on (was making decent scratch at the time), so I could afford it. Then... the GeForce 2 GTS came out and I had to have the bloody thing. Man, amazing frame-rates in Myst III with an Athlon K7 700 (512 KB L2) and Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS 32 MB.
Anytime I crack a customer's system open and I see a nice black CPU cartridge with the words "AMD Athlon Processor" staring back at me, it brings a tear to my eye, thinking of those golden years of computing: AMD putting the burn on Intel, NVidia climbing the ranks, SDR, DDR & RDRAM slugging it out. It was a turning point and I'm glad I was able to experience it some-how.
During the scaling wars & race to 1 GHz between Intel & AMD, I probably easily spent over $10K CDN in damned processors, video cards, motherboards, heatsinks and RAM. When it all finally died down after the 1 GHz Slot A K7 & T-Birds were available, I stopped scaling. I suppose secretly I wanted the Slot CPU's to continue to live, but it made no logical sense to keep manufacturing them.
My final triumph was the Asus K7N (T-Bird supporting Asus K7M re-make), an Athlon K7 1000 (2/5 Cache divisor) Slot A and 1 GB of Mushkin 150 MHz CAS 2 SDRAM. Coupled with a brand new Hercules 3D Prophet III 64 MB (GeForce 3 original), 3DMark2000 & 2001 was amazing at the time... until I burnt the damned CPU up. Pushed that 1000 a little too far and pop. I could smell the $1300 CDN burning as I raced to unplug the computer.
0
Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited November 2003
If you nearly fell out of your chair, I must've actually done it. I don't know what your reaction was, but mine was essentially "Hah! An AMD cpu. Yeah, right. Gotta be a piece of crap." (I was in 7th/8th grade at the time... I knew basically nothing about computers). Then I saw benchmarks. And more benchmarks. And more benchmarks. And I didn't find it funny. Because it was faster than my P3-700, and I didn't have one. Didn't have a job at the time, couldn't talk my parents into buying me one, so I was SOL. Hell, the only reason I got the 1.4GHz TBird is because I talked my grandparents into it...
Oh, and polarys... WTF is that thing?!?!? Looks like a HDD, but it's got to be the funniest looking drive I've ever seen.
Top: Full-Length ISA Gravis Ultrasound.. complete with OPL-3 onboard FM Synthesis processor (MIDI) and a game-port.
Bottom: 3/4 Length ISA Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 with Yamaha XG-MIDI Daughterboard. The MIDI sound quality out of this add-on board is better than today's Sound Blaster Audigy 2 DS card, only matched by Roland's high-end professional MIDI cards.
Oh, and polarys... WTF is that thing?!?!? Looks like a HDD, but it's got to be the funniest looking drive I've ever seen.
as best ive ever found out, its the VERY FIRST hard drive to carry the Western Digital name. Western Digital had some ideas for hard drives, and no manufacturer at the time would build on those ideas, so WD bought out a drive manufacturer. this drive was one in current production at that time, and was just labeled with the WD name. those that followed i gather were drives that WD invisioned.
SimGuy had this to say I think these are my oldest beasties...
Top: Full-Length ISA Gravis Ultrasound.. complete with OPL-3 onboard FM Synthesis processor (MIDI) and a game-port.
Bottom: 3/4 Length ISA Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 with Yamaha XG-MIDI Daughterboard. The MIDI sound quality out of this add-on board is better than today's Sound Blaster Audigy 2 DS card, only matched by Roland's high-end professional MIDI cards.
wonderful things, digital cameras are.....a few seconds time and one can share so much....
SimGuy had this to say I think these are my oldest beasties...
Top: Full-Length ISA Gravis Ultrasound.. complete with OPL-3 onboard FM Synthesis processor (MIDI) and a game-port.
Bottom: 3/4 Length ISA Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 with Yamaha XG-MIDI Daughterboard. The MIDI sound quality out of this add-on board is better than today's Sound Blaster Audigy 2 DS card, only matched by Roland's high-end professional MIDI cards.
wonderful things, digital cameras are.....a few seconds time and one can share so much....
Digital Cameras have made so many things possible...
Here's another relic I found. My old, blown up Hercules 3D Prophet III 64 MB (the GeForce 3), of course after a few modifications.
First off, I removed the dinky-assed little blue-orb cooler they installed on that card and the ram-sinks. I used the factory default ramsinks, lapped them and the tops of the memory modules and thermal epoxied them to the card.
Next, I carefully measured the portion of the NV20 GPU that was actually raised (the darker grey part in the centre with writing) and ordered a piece of rippled copper sheeting from the local hardware store. It basically was like a thin copper heatsink. I thermal-epoxied that to the GPU and attached a Vantec Tornado to the card by epoxying small pieces of plastic to the top left and center-right portions of the fan's chassis, which were designed to lock right into the grooves of the memory heatsinks. Then, to keep it from sliding off when you turned the card vertical, a small piece of plastic was epoxied overtop of the plastic runners attached to the Tornado. It wasn't a pretty mounting system, but it worked (as long as you didn't shake it too much). I've broke the mounting system a few times... and ever since the card died, I just left them broken (and used the Copper heatsink elsewhere and the Tornado fan elsewhere).
As for my junk shelf... it contains older collectables.... such as the Slot CPU collection, miscellaneous fans, older motherboards... some of my original video cards (Voodoo 1) and old full-length 8-bit ISA sound cards (my Gravis UltraSound)
I have a GUS lying around somewhere.
I remember that is was quite expensive.
But a great card.
Lacked driver support and support in games though.
But great MIDI capabilities.
It is a shame Gravis doesn't make soundcards anymore.
That means that there are no official drivers for an OS above Win98.
Comments
No removal of the HSF, thermal goop, etc. You just retract the retention flaps and bam... lift the thing out
They get more air when thrown in a fit of rage compared to a socket processor
Yep, I collect old Slot processors. People collect coins, I collect proc's
This is only a few that I had handy at the time... there are about 20 others in service/in cold storage.
Xeon Slot 2's are the Brontosaurus of processors.....
speaking of one of these.....?
i bought one of these back when i got my first socket A chips, cause it was the only thing there, and i had to have one to run it....
damn thing is so sad it wont cool an tbird 800@900mhz.
it now resides in my cabinet of puter parts.
the old Slot A Athlons bring back memories.... going to computer shows, armed with knowledge of serial numbers, buying one, taking it home to crack it open, see if it had a higher rated core in it.
then moving SMD resistors to change multipliers and core voltage....
much easier nowadays......
However, I have to say that my pride and joy is the old workhorse system which I owned for nearly 2 years. Now, it is my Dad's day-to-day machine for the last 18 months:
The "Inspire" P3-550E Coppermine system.
Intel Pentium 3 550E Coppermine (256 KB L2, Slot 1, Retail Cooler)
MyComp TI6NBD+ Slot 1 Motherboard (i440BX Chipset)
512 MB's PC133 SDRAM
NVidia Engineering Sample Riva TNT2 M64 32 MB SDR, AGP2x
40.0 GB Maxtor DiamondMax D740X-6L
27.2 GB Maxtor DiamondMax 6800 5400 RPM
Asus E608 8x DVD-ROM
Plextor PlexWriter 16x10x40a
Intel Pro/1000 MT Gigabit LAN Controller
Sound Blaster Live! Value Sound Card
US Robotics 56K Sportster PCI Hardware Modem
RealTek Slot Case Exhaust Blower (dying)
Custom Green Rope Case Lighting & Switch
Custom 80mm Blowhole (top)
HEC 250W PSU (surprisingly good quality, AMD & Intel approved)
The slowest machine I use for daily services are my new Windows 2000 domain controllers (to replace those old Compaq 486/66 WinNT Server 4.0 systems). My new IBM IntelliStation's: Dual P2-400's with 256 MB ECC SDRAM.
1.5 GHz for a print server? Wow... that's.. um.. crazy. I have no need for that much power in a print server, let alone a domain controller. A maximum of 5 people (each family member) can print at the same time, all to my Corona system that has the local HP DeskJet 920C shared across a USB port, or to the aforementioned Inspire system, which has a *shudder* Lexmark Z25 *shudder* (hey, it was $15.00 brand new, I couldn't turn it down).
However that will change in a couple days, when I get my HP LaserJet 4000TN that has a JetDirect card... mmmm.... network printing
I suppose it just goes to show that older technology, while not as fast or advanced as today's items, still can find useful areas to be utilized.
//Edit: The fastest machine that I do daily work on is my P4 2.4C...
That 1.5GHz (Overclocked Celeron 1.3) machine isn't a domain controller. I just use it for surfing since it's on all the time anyhow. It's got a Rage 128/32MB AGP, 512MB of DDR, a Firewire PCI card, a 52/32/52 LiteOn burner, a floppy (big whoop!) and an 80gb/8mb/7200rpm Maxtor DiamondMax 9.
I'm just waiting for the P3 to come way down in price... it's in an MSI Pro266TD-LR dual p3/ddr board, and when the P3-1.4S is <$75/cpu, I'll buy two and drop them in.
I use it to share my printer (HP CP1160) on my network, which consists of 3 other computers- the 2.4GHz 1800/NF7-S, the dual 1.9GHz 2500/K7D-L, and my 2.4GHz P4 laptop.
So I'm guessing you've used a GFD on your Athlon K7's before?
Gold Fingers Device?
Dual Pentium 2 400 MHz (Slot 1, 512 KB L2, SECC2)
IBM i440BX Dual-Slot 1 NLX Motherboard
256 MB PC100 ECC SDRAM
4.3GB IBM DeskStar Wide Ultra SCSI-2 Drive
Onboard Adaptec AH142.. something Wide Ultra SCSI-2 Controller
32x Toshiba CD-ROM (SCSI)
External SCSI ports
Integrated 3Com 10/100 NIC
Matrox Millennium G200 16 MB AGP2x Graphics Cards
92mm cooling fan (Sunon!)
400W Astec AA20230 Power Supply (standard ATX)
Not bad for $75.00 CDN a piece ($58 USD).
I find a way to always use old technology. If it can do the job up to the standards I need it to, why replace it with something faster at more expense? There's 2 of these bad boy IBM systems tearing it up as Win2K DC's down here on my domain.
I don't think that's an NLX board. NLX boards have no onboard slots, except for an AGP slot (when present) and a PCI/ISA riser slot. That board looks like an E-ATX to me.
I use old technology, too. It's just that since I only started accumulating computer parts when I bought my 1.4GHz T-Bird system, I haven't got any antiques sitting around. I did have a bunch of athlon boards I could've used for a print server, but these things are all in my room, so I wanted something that was dead silent on air cooling (parents won't let me use water), and the athlons just won't do that. By silent, I mean SILENT. as in, I can't hear it with nothing else in my room on. No air-cooled athlon system is going to be that quiet. The p3, on the other hand, is.
I've actually been trying to talk my dad into giving me my original board + CPUs back... I gave it to him for a server in exchange for a CUV4X-E and a p3-700... what I'd do with a dual P3/500 system, I don't know, but it's got two CPU slots, so I want it
I'd probably stick it in my motherboard/CPU/card/Drive junk drawer (underneath my fan/power supply junk drawer, which is underneath my heatsink junk drawer and my cable junk drawer, which are under my nuts and bolts junk drawers, which are under...) right next to the A7N8X-Deluxe, the K7S5A, the KX7-333, the A7M-266, the 3 unused Athlons (1700 Palomino, 1700 TBred B, 2200 TBred A), the 2 10,000rpm SCSI drives, the 4 ATA-133 controllers, etc.
so, it's not so much that I don't use old stuff, as it is that I consider a 1700+ outdated. Admittedly, the TBred B 1700 will hit 2.3GHz+, but my 1800 does 2.5, so... the 1700 got chucked into the junk drawer...
I'm thinking that I may wait until I go to college next summer, buy myself a nice 15-20 unit enclosed rack, and just rackmount everything. Then I'll get the extra systems folding...
The jump to my original P4 2266 from that 550E was amazing, so I'm still amazed at the speed of today's technology. But on the same hand, I see no point in relegating something that's a little slower to the junk drawer. It can be put to use.
I don't have the luxury of having a bunch of P4 2.4C's kicking around to OC and choosing the best one. I learned my lesson through the "school of hard knocks" when I fried multiple Athlon 650's, 700's, 750's, 800's, 900's & 1000's (all Slot A) when I pushed their core & L2 way too far on air cooling, in search of that holy grail 3DMark2000 high score with my older Geforce 2 Ultra 64 MB.
I'm not experienced at all when it comes to Socket 462 Athlon's, but I know you could cool a stock Athlon K7 Slot A with their retail heatsink at near no-noise volumes.
As for my junk shelf... it contains older collectables.... such as the Slot CPU collection, miscellaneous fans, older motherboards... some of my original video cards (Voodoo 1) and old full-length 8-bit ISA sound cards (my Gravis UltraSound)
I can't consider an A7M-266, SCSI drives, ATA Controllers or unused Athlon processors junk, as it's faster than what I've got in some day-to-day workhorse systems.
All last year, I slept approximately 18" away from my old P4 2266 system... which contained an SLK900 & 92mm Vantec Tornado running at full bore. Noise doesn't bother me.
//Edit: Manual says NLX... although it's IBM so they could be wrong
Anyhow, I just throw stuff like the A7N8X in the "junk drawer" because I have trouble using 2 computers at once as it is, and I've got 4, and because I don't want to spend the money on another case, ps, hd, ram, optical drive, video card, etc.
Eventually I'll get around to either selling them or using them...
However, truly old equipment does have some use. A good number of the machines on the shop floor @ my grandparent's business are Pentium 133s or older. The oldest one is a 386, in fact.
They're used for DNC work, and they simply don't need to be any faster.
And our office machines are still mostly P2-400s w/64MB of ram and Win95. Hell, some of our CAD machines are still P2-400s w/512MB and GF256s, but they're slowly being replaced by faster stuff, as the projects they're used for get more complex and we need more powerful hardware. Our last CAD system was a 2800/9800 Pro system with a gig of DDR400 in an A7N8X, and our last server was a P4C-2.8 with a gig of DDR400 (dual channel), a gf2mx, and a mirrored RAID array. But it replaced the server with my old board in it, which had the 2 P3-500s, so we tend to use hardware for a long time.
But I upgrade my personal systems so often that since I don't throw anything away unless it's well and truly beyond repair or of no use whatsoever, I tend to accumulate stuff. Like A7N8X Deluxes.
NO PCI slots. Lotsa ISA slots, some other slots that I couldn't recognize (either most of them were 8-bit ISA with a few 16-bits, or the other way around, plus what may have been VESA slots... I can't remember now), Ti Math coprocessor and everything. Hell, the CMOS battery on the board was dead, and since it was soldered on, there was actually a connector for a AA battery pack, which was installed. The CPU didn't even have a HEATSINK, let alone a fan.
The machine was (for lack of a better term) totally alien... very little of it was familiar stuff. Hard drives, floppies, etc. are pretty easy to identify, but this thing didn't even have any I/O ports on the board, except for the AT KB port. It had some kind of ISA IDE/PS-2 controller board or something.
yep, sure have. i still even have one around here somewhere. still have a slot A 750 floating around too, if i remember right it has a 900 or 950 core.
i think this is the oldest thing i have lying around......
wish i could say the same.....it woulda saved me alot of money.....
Asus v7700 Geforce2 GTS, and several slot Athlons
They were insanely expensive. I remember paying $1150 for my 650 when it first came out, getting rid of my old 500 Mhz P3 Slot 1 for it. Damn that was a fast beast. Asus K7M motherboard with the ol' Via KX133 chipset and the Alpha P3125 heatsink (later changed to the VOS-32). Some Mushkin PC100 CAS 2 SDRAM and I was away to the races. True, with that GFD, I didn't want to crack the case on my new CPU, but it was worth it. Those 650's scaled as high as 850 by the time I finished with it. Of course, I had removed the external plastic clam-shell, thermal pasted the P3125 heatsink to it and used dual 60mm 7K Delta's along with the assistance of a couple larger fans (don't have those anymore). Coupled with my original GeForce 256 DDR (Shorty knows this one, the Creative Labs Annihilator Pro), I was pushing the poly's like mad in 3DMark2000.
Worked my way up through each Athlon Slot A I could get my hands on (was making decent scratch at the time), so I could afford it. Then... the GeForce 2 GTS came out and I had to have the bloody thing. Man, amazing frame-rates in Myst III with an Athlon K7 700 (512 KB L2) and Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS 32 MB.
Anytime I crack a customer's system open and I see a nice black CPU cartridge with the words "AMD Athlon Processor" staring back at me, it brings a tear to my eye, thinking of those golden years of computing: AMD putting the burn on Intel, NVidia climbing the ranks, SDR, DDR & RDRAM slugging it out. It was a turning point and I'm glad I was able to experience it some-how.
During the scaling wars & race to 1 GHz between Intel & AMD, I probably easily spent over $10K CDN in damned processors, video cards, motherboards, heatsinks and RAM. When it all finally died down after the 1 GHz Slot A K7 & T-Birds were available, I stopped scaling. I suppose secretly I wanted the Slot CPU's to continue to live, but it made no logical sense to keep manufacturing them.
My final triumph was the Asus K7N (T-Bird supporting Asus K7M re-make), an Athlon K7 1000 (2/5 Cache divisor) Slot A and 1 GB of Mushkin 150 MHz CAS 2 SDRAM. Coupled with a brand new Hercules 3D Prophet III 64 MB (GeForce 3 original), 3DMark2000 & 2001 was amazing at the time... until I burnt the damned CPU up. Pushed that 1000 a little too far and pop. I could smell the $1300 CDN burning as I raced to unplug the computer.
Oh, and polarys... WTF is that thing?!?!? Looks like a HDD, but it's got to be the funniest looking drive I've ever seen.
Top: Full-Length ISA Gravis Ultrasound.. complete with OPL-3 onboard FM Synthesis processor (MIDI) and a game-port.
Bottom: 3/4 Length ISA Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 with Yamaha XG-MIDI Daughterboard. The MIDI sound quality out of this add-on board is better than today's Sound Blaster Audigy 2 DS card, only matched by Roland's high-end professional MIDI cards.
as best ive ever found out, its the VERY FIRST hard drive to carry the Western Digital name. Western Digital had some ideas for hard drives, and no manufacturer at the time would build on those ideas, so WD bought out a drive manufacturer. this drive was one in current production at that time, and was just labeled with the WD name. those that followed i gather were drives that WD invisioned.
its a whole 20mb by the way, still works too.
wonderful things, digital cameras are.....a few seconds time and one can share so much....
Digital Cameras have made so many things possible...
Here's another relic I found. My old, blown up Hercules 3D Prophet III 64 MB (the GeForce 3), of course after a few modifications.
First off, I removed the dinky-assed little blue-orb cooler they installed on that card and the ram-sinks. I used the factory default ramsinks, lapped them and the tops of the memory modules and thermal epoxied them to the card.
Next, I carefully measured the portion of the NV20 GPU that was actually raised (the darker grey part in the centre with writing) and ordered a piece of rippled copper sheeting from the local hardware store. It basically was like a thin copper heatsink. I thermal-epoxied that to the GPU and attached a Vantec Tornado to the card by epoxying small pieces of plastic to the top left and center-right portions of the fan's chassis, which were designed to lock right into the grooves of the memory heatsinks. Then, to keep it from sliding off when you turned the card vertical, a small piece of plastic was epoxied overtop of the plastic runners attached to the Tornado. It wasn't a pretty mounting system, but it worked (as long as you didn't shake it too much). I've broke the mounting system a few times... and ever since the card died, I just left them broken (and used the Copper heatsink elsewhere and the Tornado fan elsewhere).
Got damned good cooling out of that card too
I have a GUS lying around somewhere.
I remember that is was quite expensive.
But a great card.
Lacked driver support and support in games though.
But great MIDI capabilities.
It is a shame Gravis doesn't make soundcards anymore.
That means that there are no official drivers for an OS above Win98.
The oldest stuff I have lying around is 386-era junk. ISA Video Card, buddy. :woowoo: