Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

[Topcat]

I built this beast for a friend of mine probably around 2002. He told me around 2006 it quit working, and he moved onto something newer.....yes, I ragged him hard about buying something 'out of the box' with Vista on it....but ohh well...and I completely forgot about it, I never asked what he did with it, and he never told me....and that system faded into a very distant memory.

Anyway, I stopped by to say hi yesterday....and in during the course of conversation, he mentions he's cleaning out a storage room and asked if I wanted that old system back.... Naturally, I said sure!! I'll always take free computers. I get it home...PSU is missing and 3 of the 4 DIMM's. Its pretty filthy, dust + nicotine sludge....and some bad caps. However, the important stuff is still there!!

Enlight full tower eATX
Iwill DVD266u-RN motherboard
2x 1.4GHz Tualatin-S processors
Only 512mb of the 2gb RAM was remaining
Plextor 24x10x40 IDE CDRW
Pioneer slot-load DVDROM
inclose 5.25 bay coolers (I used those in a LOT of systems)
ATI 8500 All-in-Wonder 64mb
SB Audigy
40gb IBM deathstar HDD (still good as if by some miracle)

A few pics...Recapped & testing fine. It would not POST prior to recapping.







Preparing to clean the filth:




Everything hotwashed & dried....







I have 2x 1GB DIMM's in the RAM bin, and a pair of 73gb 15K RPM U320 HDD's & RAID controller to spruce it up a tad, otherwise, it won't be getting much more than what's shown. yay for P3 era oddities!!

[gg1978]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

That's one of the uncommon S370 boards that takes DDR, isn't it??

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

yea thats a fine rare ddr ram board. i wonder if topcat will be keeping it or selling it? a rare ddr s370 board can fetch a nice price if sold... esp since its been recapped.

oh god im totally poisoned by this pentium 3 tualatin goodness!

[Topcat]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

Yes, its one of those one-in-a-million ultra rare boards. Dual Tualatin and DDR memory.... I had one of these when they were new, it replaced my VP6 system. It performed nice when you find its 'sweet spot (Iwill boards were horrible about having 'quirks')! VP6's turn up quite frequently, but lots of luck ever finding one of these!

When I finish it, it'll likely be up for grabs.

[mockingbird]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

Go and showboat that thing at Vogons...

They'll be all over you like gulls on old bread.

[Topcat]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

just scored 4x 1gb reg/ecc pc3200 memory modules for 20 bucks shipped. that will have it maxed out. I am also fitting a better heatsink on the northbridge, and I'll fit the stock one on the southbridge.

[stretch0069]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

give me a month and you'll get two more VP6s....with processors......and memory. One is even in a case!

[Topcat]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

give me a month and you'll get two more VP6s....with processors......and memory. One is even in a case!

Looking forward to it!! The VP6 is the very board BCN was founded on....that could make a cool retroputer!!

Been piddlefarting around with this a little today since its too damn hot to do anything outside.....damn that "climate change"....ohh wait, it's July in Missouri, this is quite normal....darn!

Anyway, I added a heftier fanned sink to the northbridge. I ground the ears off the stock NB sink and put it on the southbridge.



Once those set up a little, I mounted the board in the tray....I think RD and I were admiring the olden days of removable motherboard trays in some AT cases....here's a rare one in an ATX case. Sure makes assembly nice!!





That will need to set laying flat overnight to insure the epoxy is cured, or the sinks will be permanently bonded crooked.... The RAM should be here at the end of the week, so the 2 sticks I used in it found their way back into the bin.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

you gotta love enlight ATX trays.... I have a side saddle one that was a failed repaint. I even added a breakout board that allowed usage of the tray out of the case.

[stretch0069]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

damn it man......now you're gonna make me take pictures.......

[Topcat]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

I'm waiting for the memory to arrive, so in the mean time, I reassembled the majority of the case.

All front panel wiring replaced, along with the 2x 80mm front fans.



Side mount 80mm fans.



Rear 90mm fan



Getting really close.



HDD's mounted in their trays.



opticals mounted and gaps set.



When the memory arrives, I'll finish this one off.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

Found this by a coincidence yesterday, check the thread ID number!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=22

[Topcat]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

...and this one draws to a close... It still has only 2GB ECC memory in it (bench modules), the ECC modules I ordered didn't seem to play nice with it....but worked fine in another system...but in this system just beep codes. If I use non-ECC modules, 4GB runs fine. Ohh well....2gb is plenty for XP and testing stuff.

Modified Specs:
Enlight full tower eATX
Antec HE550 PSU (recapped)
Iwill DVD266u-RN motherboard (recapped)
2x 1.4GHz Tualatin-S processors
2GB ECC Memory
Sony IDE CDRW (nicotine sludge killed the Plextor)
Pioneer slot-load DVDROM
inclose 5.25 bay coolers (I used those in a LOT of systems)
ATI 8500 All-in-Wonder 64mb
C-Media onboard audio (Audigy used in VP6 system)
Adaptec 39320 U320 SCSI Controller
2x 73GB Seagate Cheetah 15K RPM in a 147GB RAID-0
WinXP Pro


Assembled...



Found a use for an old supermicro USB header...



...and done...



Novabench:





GPU scored '0', the test spit out an error saying "pixel shader test failed".... too old I guess.

crystaldisk test also crashes....and that sucked, I really wanted to see the results of a pair of 73gb 15k RPM cheetah SCSI320 HDD's in a stripe on an adaptec 39320 controller. local file transfers were quite snappy, I wish I had the numbers to post, but I don't....I might diddle with it later on. FF47 runs pretty nice, well until you install ABP...that slows it to a crawl at startup....once you sit there for about 30 second waiting for it to load, its runs nice. With ABP removed, FF47 loads in about 6 seconds.

I haven't been ambitious enough to try W7 on this machine yet...but 7 runs nice on the P3TDDE dual 1.4GHz Tualatin system, so it'd probably be ok....

Of course, this is posted from it.

[Logistics]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

Yes, its one of those one-in-a-million ultra rare boards. Dual Tualatin and DDR memory.... I had one of these when they were new, it replaced my VP6 system. It performed nice! VP6's turn up quite frequently, but lots of luck ever finding one of these!

When I finish it, it'll likely be up for grabs.

Well, I remember reading about Supermicro's decision to use PC133 ECC in dual-channel, on their Dual Tualatin boards (HE-SL, etc.) rather than move to SDRAM because at the time, it was simply faster since SDRAM controller tech just wasn't evolved, enough. At least, that's the way I remember it--I'm guessing that's why SDRAM Tualatin boards were rare.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

You need a video card with pixel shader 2 support.

[momaka]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

Another awesome retro system TC!

The old AIW Radeon 8500 is a nice video card, but only supports DirectX 8.1, IIRC. I know you don't use your PC for games, but if you did, you'd be limited to very early 2000's games - maybe up to 2003-2004 or so. But if you to upgraded that video card to match the performance of the two Tualatin CPUs... something like Radeon 9700/9800 or better, that would open your system to a lot more newer games.

At the same time, though, that AIW Radeon 8500 is a fairly low-power video card, so it should last a long while - much longer than a hot Radeon 9700/9800 or GeForce FX5900/6800. A GeForce 7600GS AGP or Radeon HD2400/2600 AGP would be a nice upgrade, though. And those newer low/mid range cards run decently cool.

[Topcat]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

Just a slight addendum to this build....I found an ATI x1600 512mb GPU in the closet.....nice for a system of this era.....and it added 37 points to the novabench score!! we're cookin' now!! It also freed up the 8500AiW for one of Mikey's VP6's!

[stretch0069]

Re: Ghost of Christmas Past Retro Resto - Iwill DVD266u-RN!

AIW....all in wonder.....more flashbacks.

That ATI card on that one VP6 was from my "there is no video card other than ATI" days. Now I won't touch ATI. EVGA nVidias are all I have now.