Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

[TechGeek]

Very nice! Seems that a lot of the OGs packed their bags and went home when the forum software was upgraded. Also, Jasc PSP8? Crikey that's old! And does Windows like to eat LM's bootloader on you?

[Topcat]

Very nice! Seems that a lot of the OGs packed their bags and went home when the forum software was upgraded. Also, Jasc PSP8? Crikey that's old! And does Windows like to eat LM's bootloader on you?

PSP8 = oldie but simple....and a goodie.

It's UEFI booting with grub, Quite a few updates and never hosed the bootloader.

[370forlife]

Are others allowed to post builds here too 😁?

I went on a bit of a nostalgia trip and have been building a collection that spans my childhood, starting with a 486 up to the P4/Athlon 64 era.



This is my latest build, I thought Topcat would get a kick out of this. This first part is scarce of pictures, bare with me as I word vomit. Picked up this case at a local auction along with a few other computers. I wasn't too fired up about it as I thought it was just a crap basic Vista-era build by a local computer shop, and it was, but it wound up being the one I was most excited about. Cracking it open revealed a somewhat unusual Biostar K8M800 board, a socket AM2 board with SATA and DDR2 but still rocking AGP with a VIA chipset and an Athlon 64 3500+. I thought this would make an ideal XP era build. One of the computers in the lot had a name tag with an unusual last name that I recognized, and it turns out all these computers belonged to my wife's uncle's parents, a bit of a small world I guess.

I had an AGP 7600GT on the shelf, but it would not post with it installed. It was filthy, so I gave it a bath in hot water and simple green and scrubbed it down, blew it out with compressed air and let it dry overnight. It would now post, but with terrible artifacts. This era of AGP cards are notorious for crapping out like this, so I gambled on another one from eBay that was sold as working. It was better, at least no artifacting, but Nvidia drivers refused to detect it, and in windows it was running in VGAsave mode. I also had a PCI Radeon 9000 card laying around, also unknown condition, but it had some classic blown Sacon FZ caps on it. I recapped it, however it exhibited the same behavior, windows drivers and ATI drivers refused to recognize it and it was too running in VGAsave. I gave up on this board, I don't know if it was the VIA chipset and onboard graphics interfering or if all these video cards were bad. I also noticed that AGP versions of cards from this era are fetching a huge premium over their PCI-E counterparts ($100+ compared to $20), so I decided on a different route.

In highschool I had built a supermicro X6DAL-G board and I really liked that thing as it was a dual 604 board with PCI-E that would fit in a regular ATX case. A quick search on eBay showed a few results, I fired off a few offers for reasonable amounts, but was rebuffed. I looked around at similar boards, and found the X6DAL-TB2 which appeared to be the identical board but with the Adaptec SATA Raid controller populated. I sent what I thought was an insultingly low offer, but it was accepted. I also bought the fastest Irwindale Xeon 3.8GHz and some DDR-333 registered/ECC sticks.

When it showed up, I threw it together on a test bench and ran into an issue with the ram. It turns out the X6DAL-G uses DDR-266/333, however, the X6DAL-TB2, despite being identical with the same Tumwater E7525 chipset, uses DDR2-400. I had some registered/ECC DDR2-533 sticks on the shelf I threw in there thinking they will just run at the lower DDR2-400 speed, but the system wouldn't post. Fans would spin, CPU would get hot, but no beep codes, no display, keyboard was dead. My first thought was the bios was too old to support this CPU. Supermicro's website says it supports Nocona/Irwindale, but the manual only mentions Nocona. Supermicro is of absolutely no help as well, they do not have any drivers or bios images for this series of boards on their website anymore. I put in a support ticket and was told its just too old, go pound sand, despite the fact they have still have bios images for ancient Socket 7 boards. So thinking this has a very old BIOS version that only supports Nocona, I bought a Nocona 2.8 just for testing (can I just say how nice it is how cheap hardware is from this era? I think I paid $4 shipped for this CPU). I also ordered 2x2GB of the correct DDR2-400 registered/ECC sticks just in case.

I popped in the Nocona and same deal, no dice. Swapped in the DDR2-400 and presto, it posts! Swapped that Irwindale back in, and there we go, posts just fine, recognized in the bios.

Now for cooling, we all know about Netburst and this one was running at 3.8GHz so I knew keeping these cool in a regular ATX sized case would be a challenge. Socket 604 coolers are expensive and hard to find, and when you do find them, they are often made for low profile systems like 1U or 2U servers, not ideal for a workstation. I had a pair of old Coolermaster 212 Evos on the shelf that were missing all their mounting hardware. No matter, as I was going to have to make hardware from scratch. I took some measurements and designed some brackets to mount to socket 604, printed them out in PLA to test and then in ABS. Here are how they look.

Base that goes under the motherboard. This is the first version I made in PLA to test fitment, PLA is no good for this as it will begin to soften around 60C which as we know is no problem for an old Netburst to well exceed:


Brackets for the cooler itself. They are 2 pieces that have to be bolted together on the heatsink as the bracket will not fit in one piece.


How they fit on the heatsink:


All together:


These seem to work great so far. I threaded the bosses on the bottom plate in 8-32. It seems to provide good clamping without too much pressure bending the board or anything. Time will tell how they hold up as the plastic relaxes, ABS is more resilient and should do fine, but I may need to come back and make the heatsink brackets out of something more springy and metal.

I printed a 2.5 to 3.5" adapter and threw in a 120GB SATA SSD, an old 512mb 9800GT I had bought new way back when and powered it with an appropriate 420w Ablecom tank of a power supply that appears to be made exactly for this motherboard based on the cable lengths. Ablecom being Supermicro themselves and this being the exact wattage Supermicro recommends for this board. Man I realize how spoiled we are now-a-days with cable management. Optical drives being almost non-existent and M.2 drives really clean up the interior of a build. It is now running great and boots up XP 64bit no problem. CPU temps are hanging around 70C max, but this is with a single CPU installed. A second one is on the way, along with a Soundblaster X-Fi. I have nicknamed this one the spaceheater, as the amount of hot air that comes out of it when you push it is pretty amazing. An intake fan and a beefier 120mm exhaust fan are in order.

[sam_sam_sam]

Very nice restoration of this computer and one less thing in the landfill

[Topcat]

370forlife, very nice work! No worries posting it in this thread.

[Dan81]

I have a retro build in the works as well... waiting on my friend to send the board and CPU my way.

Topcat, how's KG7-RAID and an AXIA steppin' Athlon sound for such a build? 😎

That, and I also sniped a MSI ZX bugger w/ onboard V3 2000 8MB, the MS-6168. Fun times ahead, it's full of Chhsi.

[Topcat]

Dan81 👍

Ask and ye shall receive. Had another red bezel XPS 630i dropped off last week (same customer that dropped off the other one). PSU bad; heard something *snap* in it when I plugged it in, no powerup and no STBY. I was not able to identify what snapped. Fuse good....all sink'd transistors good (not shorted at least, no smoke, no stink, nothing visibly burnt). Not going waste much more time on it, they can be had all day long for ~$30. This case can also take a standard ATX PSU....but anyway, retested the board with another PSU, and it works....but I'm not going to restore this one to original condition. This one did not come with the liquid cooler....and I can't seem to find another one.... Just going to store it away until I figure out what I want to do with it. Case is in fabulous condition, just the usual dirty for something approaching 20yrs old.

I think I found a good candidate for this extra case. It'll be liquid cooled but not by the stock cooler....had to improvise.....but it'll be a neat one.

[Dan81]

Just for fun I found a BIOS that works and is retail on the Micron board you sent me. It's a Freetech branded AMI BIOS, chipset SiS 460.

The only small downside - it's DX2 only. DX4 boots as well but only at 66MHz.

[370forlife]

The sound card showed up today, a Soundblaster X-Fi pci, SB0460. I cannot for the life of me get it to work nice with this motherboard though.

I popped it into another machine, a P3 with XP 32bit installed, drivers installed just fine and it works great.

In this machine, windows detects it, it appears in Device Manager but needs drivers. Any drivers I can find flat out refuse to detect it, though. I read that some Soundblasters had issues with 64bit systems and systems with more than 4GB of ram, so I reinstalled XP 32bit on it and removed half the ram for a total of 2GB, still no dice.

I tried every PCI and PCI-X slot on the motherboard, no dice. I popped in a generic PCI NIC I had laying around, and it was detected and drivers installed no problem for that, so I think all the slots are working as they should.

There are jumpers on the motherboard to enable or disable the SMBus and SMClock to the PCI slots, tried with both enabled/disabled/one enabled one disabled, etc... no change. Tried changing the PCI latency timer in the bios, makes no difference (and from what I read, it doesn't matter as XP will set the latency for PCI devices itself).

Stumped, I need to get a different PCI sound card to see if its some sort of compatibility issue with this card. Anyone have a crappy PCI sound card laying around that will work with XP?

[Dan81]

Technical difficulties on the seller's side (a friend of mine) with the KG7 so it may be delayed.

In the meantime, the MSI 6168 w/ the 440ZX chipset showed up. Clearly off the scrappers as the whole bunch of SMD resistors on the 3dfx chip's side were absolutely OBLITERATED .

Unfortunately, the pic I have is after I managed to rebuild the whole side of resistors.



Finally, the "rebirth" of the Voodoo board







And a 3dmark99 score w/ the onboard V3 2000.

[sam_sam_sam]

When I use to use XP I ran into issues finding the right drivers for certain devices either it was not the right version or it would not be recognized correctly or just plain did not work correctly at all and even if you had the install disk unless you allow the software/firmware install the driver it would not work correctly why it was that way who knows

One thing to check do you have the right drivers for the motherboard because I have had issues with some motherboard to find the right motherboard driver package do you have any other device driver issues that have not been resolved

See if there are any bios updates for this motherboard if so see if it mentions anything about fixing driver issues with sound cards or just device compatibility issues

Did you see this when searching for drivers for this sound card

https://support.creative.com/downloa...b0460&nPage=2#

Here is a case in point I have several HP elite 8200 and 8300 with different generation versions and if you try to use the wrong factory recovery disk it might let you reinstall the system but when you look in the device manger it has devices that are not installed correctly and will not even let you install it if you have the driver for the device

Now if it is totally wrong it will have a message saying that it is not compatible with this install disk a good thing that I have both 8200 and the 8300 factory recovery disk for both versions so also be aware of this issue as well

[370forlife]

When I use to use XP I ran into issues finding the right drivers for certain devices either it was not the right version or it would not be recognized correctly or just plain did not work correctly at all and even if you had the install disk unless you allow the software/firmware install the driver it would not work correctly why it was that way who knows

One thing to check do you have the right drivers for the motherboard because I have had issues with some motherboard to find the right motherboard driver package do you have any other device driver issues that have not been resolved

See if there are any bios updates for this motherboard if so see if it mentions anything about fixing driver issues with sound cards or just device compatibility issues

Did you see this when searching for drivers for this sound card

https://support.creative.com/downloa...b0460&nPage=2#

Here is a case in point I have several HP elite 8200 and 8300 with different generation versions and if you try to use the wrong factory recovery disk it might let you reinstall the system but when you look in the device manger it has devices that are not installed correctly and will not even let you install it if you have the driver for the device

Now if it is totally wrong it will have a message saying that it is not compatible with this install disk a good thing that I have both 8200 and the 8300 factory recovery disk for both versions so also be aware of this issue as well

I tried both Creative's driver disk and Daniel_K's drivers for this card. Both work fine in the P3 machine, but both fail to detect the card in the supermicro motherboard. This card is an actual Creative card, not an OEM/Dell card.

Bios images are not available for this motherboard, and any I can find are the same version that is already on it. The whole X6DAL series of motherboards is missing from Supermicro's support website, so if there is later bios versions out there, they are long gone.

[sam_sam_sam]

Bios images are not available for this motherboard, and any I can find are the same version that is already on it. The whole X6DAL series of motherboards is missing from Supermicro's support website, so if there is later bios versions out there, they are long gone.

That sucks because that they are no longer available the only hope you might have is if this company send install disk that came with the motherboard when purchased new otherwise however it might be difficult to find someone who might still have them if they were available in the first place otherwise I think your out of luck

One a slight different note I have several old computers that I might see if I can bring them back from the dead but I also realize that I might have difficulty finding the drivers for the motherboard if I can not find them and they still work other than this issue they might end up on eBay and sold for parts

[Topcat]

I took great joy in decrappling another 27" iMac. It aggravates me to no end to see Apple forcefully sunset hardware like this.

I upgraded the CPU from an i3 to an i7, it's always a joy getting the 'logic board' out of one of these....





Of course a SSD upgrade....which of course deletes the old HDD's internal temp sensor. This causes the motherboard to think the HDD is overheating and runs the fans up to an obnoxious full speed. Nothing a 1K resistor can't fix.


Some heatshrink and tucked away inside the case.




These will run Win11 natively or Linux. I opted for Linux on this one....but these will run both very nicely.



Forced obsolescence defeated!! This has been one of my favorite hobbies for Mac Pro's, Macbooks, and Intel based iMac's....but it seems anything made past 2014 is just a nightmare to do anything with in this regard....but I'll save what I can....

[Dan81]

Some moar work on the beautiful MSI mobo from my previous post. I just wasn't happy using 16v 1500uF Rubies... so I switched to smaller 1500uG 6.3v Nichicon HN and a lone Panny FJ of same value to complete the count.

The MS-Industrial (Sun Pro) PSU you see was also recapped prior for a MSI 850 Pro5 build (with the AT styled Auxiliary connecto that ultimately fell flat due to the board's AGP being dead I'm in negotiations with two of my friends for Slot A board instead... but if anyone has an ABIT KA7 laying around they'd be willin' to part to, I'm open to offers. I ordered a Pluto Athlon @ 700MHz thay should be here next week... it's one of those monsters with TWO fans.

[Topcat]

If anyone remembers the C7X99 from THIS POST, keep that in mind for the next few weeks.....a build is developing! 🙊

[lti]

There's a lot of cool stuff here. I haven't had a chance to mess around with computer stuff for a while. I would need to buy more stuff (starting with a spare power supply for testing), find a place to store it, and answer questions from people who just want to scrap everything that won't officially run Windows 11.

In the meantime, the MSI 6168 w/ the 440ZX chipset showed up. Clearly off the scrappers as the whole bunch of SMD resistors on the 3dfx chip's side were absolutely OBLITERATED .

Unfortunately, the pic I have is after I managed to rebuild the whole side of resistors.

I see some damage on the side of the Voodoo 3 chip, so it's good that it still works.

[Dan81]

Thankfully the 3dfx chip didn't take much damage. Just a bit of small dents that don't affect the chip.

[370forlife]

Second CPU finally showed up, popped it in and it booted up no problem.

Had to run a classic 3Dmark06 CPU test and see what kind of improvements we get.

Single CPU installed:



Second CPU installed, CPU-Z action:



Dual CPU result:



Nice. Close to doubling our CPU score there. Watching it run the test, I think this did a little better than my old 64x2 5000+ back in the day.

The amount of heat coming off the processors is monstrous. I think I'm going to have to come up with a better solution to pull air across both heatsinks. Right now, there is a single 120mm fan sandwiched between them, so one of the CPU's is effectively huffing the other's (hot) farts.

Still waiting on a new PCI sound card to come in to try. In the mean time, I did by total luck find what seems to be an updated bios image for this board. I was looking at the supermicro FAQ pages that were tagged with this board (basically, resolved support tickets), and one of them had an updated bios image attached that appears to be dated to 2006, and my bios is dated 2004.

I don't know the actual way supermicro wants you to update the bios, though. I cannot find any utility from supermicro to do it. This board has a feature to recover from a corrupted bios by inserting a floppy disk with the bios image on it, and then holding CTRL+HOME while powering on the system until the floppy drive begins to seek. If successful, it will reboot itself, however, I don't think I could get it to successfully run. It would seek the floppy, beep a few times, seek the floppy, beep a few times, and then eventually just sit there spinning the fans and not rebooting itself. If I manually powered it off and back on, it reboots but the bios is still the old version. I verified the floppy drive and the floppy itself were good. Looking online it seems this feature is very hit-or-miss with supermicro, and many people just wind up having to remove their bios chip and flashing it manually. I bought an EEPROM programmer and I will try to update it that way.

[Topcat]

Irwindales, nice!! It might run Paxvilles if it can do Irwindales!