That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Got a box of goodies off an old acquaintance of mine. Most of the stuff is what i gave him 3 years ago, along with some new (to me) boards S478, 754 and 939, a couple of which did POST, no further testing done.

Among these was a cute little board that i remember taking a look at back then, and declared it dead. Indeed, it did nothing. However, sharp eyes noticed a jumper labeled "JBAT1" missing, and that was likely the CMOS clear jumper. Installed a jumper cap on pins 1-2 and whadd'ya know... We got power. And video. Yay!

The board is one of those: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813185043 Dog slow even back then, but heck, it cost $50 for a complete computer minus PSU and case, so they sold a few...

It needs some minor repairs: CPU temp sensor broken (missing), one of the RAM slots has a missing clip, a diode that's been bodged, and the heatsink that was on it doesn't fit quite perfectly, but other than that it looks good.

I challenge you to find an use for this thing. Actually, if anyone in Europe wants it, you can have it if you pay postage.

[SuperDuty]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

I remember finding a PCChips motherboard like that except it had a Duron 850.
I think the board didn't work anymore, and when I removed the heatsink, a chunk of the CPU die stayed on it...ouch. The good thing its that it was a standard chip with the pins through the motherboard. So I removed the CPU with my hot air gun, plugged it in another board and it ran fine !

Do you have some old or dead graphics cards in decent condition you would throw in the package ?

[Nitro468]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

PcChips boards are bottom of the barrel stuff. My brother in law gave a computer to my mom with one, I got it to run but my old 486 was way faster. It took me 3 days to find out who made the board to get drivers. It was a private branded MB made by PcChips.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

This particular CPU is a BGA chip with a metal casing. I don't know how anyone in their right mind could label a 800MHz chip "2000+"... Dunno what the guys at VIA were smoking at the time.

Anyway, here's the current state of the board:
Bodge diode has been fixed.
Flexible thermal sensor installed for the CPU.
Suitable heatsink found and installed, complete with cheap crappy thermal paste.

And yes i have some more stuff, i'll post about it tomorrow.

The heatsink is a bit on the small side though (it's from a 440BX chipset) and i put a 40mm fan over it to keep the CPU from burning up. It does a good job, but it's fairly loud... Ahem. Who am i bullshitting here. That little whizzer is just plain annoying. You might want to find a better solution. Anyway, this thing is fairly low power so a passive cooling solution may very well be possible, with a reasonably sized heatsink.

The even better news is that i got Win XP installed on it and all devices work. Board supports booting from USB btw.

But lemme tell you this: it's SLOW. And i mean it. I've used my share of slow computers, but this one runs at the pace of a snail. And the maximum resolution of the integrated UniChrome GPU seems to be 1280x1024, which is just lame.

[shovenose]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

This particular CPU is a BGA chip with a metal casing. I don't know how anyone in their right mind could label a 800MHz chip "2000+"... Dunno what the guys at VIA were smoking at the time.

Anyway, here's the current state of the board:
Bodge diode has been fixed.
Flexible thermal sensor installed for the CPU.
Suitable heatsink found and installed, complete with cheap crappy thermal paste.

And yes i have some more stuff, i'll post about it tomorrow.

The heatsink is a bit on the small side though (it's from a 440BX chipset) and i put a 40mm fan over it to keep the CPU from burning up. It does a good job, but it's fairly loud... Ahem. Who am i bullshitting here. That little whizzer is just plain annoying. You might want to find a better solution. Anyway, this thing is fairly low power so a passive cooling solution may very well be possible, with a reasonably sized heatsink.

The even better news is that i got Win XP installed on it and all devices work. Board supports booting from USB btw.

But lemme tell you this: it's SLOW. And i mean it. I've used my share of slow computers, but this one runs at the pace of a snail. And the maximum resolution of the integrated UniChrome GPU seems to be 1280x1024, which is just lame.

Back when that thing was at least somewhat modern I'm sure that was fine. Besides, that's not any worse than the 1366x768 most modern laptops have.

[mockingbird]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

You might want to try Windows 2000 on the thing. You'd be surprised at the amount of hacks still being developed, that available for Win2K. If you're interested I can post some links.

[lti]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

I would guess that it runs as well as my old Compaq with a K6-2. It will handle really basic stuff and a few DOS games, but that's it. Hopefully it doesn't have as much trouble booting on a cold day as that old Compaq does.

I don't know how anyone in their right mind could label a 800MHz chip "2000+"... Dunno what the guys at VIA were smoking at the time.

I think that was actually a PCChips thing.

And the maximum resolution of the integrated UniChrome GPU seems to be 1280x1024, which is just lame.

Even SiS onboard video from the 1990s supports 1280x1024 and probably performs better too.

Back when that thing was at least somewhat modern I'm sure that was fine. Besides, that's not any worse than the 1366x768 most modern laptops have.

It's a lot better than 1366x768.

[Heihachi_73]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

1366x768 LCDs don't even make sense. It's not compatible with anything whatsoever unless specifically written for it, it isn't a native resolution for DVD or a multiple of such values (480p or 576p standard definition), therefore making it utterly useless in its 16:9 configuration, which is primarily designed just to watch movies. The 1366 width is nothing more than four thirds of 1024x768, and everyone abandoned 1024x768 when 15" CRTs went out of fashion.

That said, not many LCD resolutions make sense anyway. What were they thinking with 1050p when true HD is 1080p? That's right, 1680x1050, like the above 1366x768 example, is nothing more than the 4:3 1400x1050 mode stretched a bit - in this case, it's 20% wider.

Even the classic 1280x1024 doesn't make much sense, it might have been easier to make a 5:4 mode in software as it is literally 500x400 in hex, but in a time where everything was 4:3, what was the point? Especially when people used this mode on 4:3 CRT monitors! Granted, 1280x960 seemed to be missing on a number of graphics card drivers despite being the new 640x480...

That leaves 1920x1080, a resolution unheard of in 2000 and would probably send even the best GPU of the late 1990s to a crawl in 3D! 640x3=1920, so we're still hanging onto that classic VGA 640 mode this many years on! Thus, we have 16:9 aspect ratio, designed primarily to fit "full HD" video onto a computer screen. Not 1.85:1 (which is 16.65:9) like the cinema, but 16:9, which is why you still get a letterboxed image while watching a full HD video on a full HD monitor! In fact, a flat 2000x1080 may have been better suited for TVs, but this would break any compatibility they were trying to achieve with the multiples of 640 when the same panel is used for a computer.

[ratdude747]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

This particular CPU is a BGA chip with a metal casing. I don't know how anyone in their right mind could label a 800MHz chip "2000+"... Dunno what the guys at VIA were smoking at the time.

PR rating, like AMD uses/used. It's a reference to the original core of the CPU; a newer "2000+" would perform like the first generation's 2Ghz chip... even if the new chip is an 800MHz. How accurate the ratings are is a different argument...

[SuperDuty]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

The first review of this board dates back as 2004, I seriously doubt a 800Mhz C3 processor could compete with a two years older 2Ghz Pentium 4 or XP2000+.
So in that case, the PR rating is likely to fool consumers.

[eccerr0r]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

I've never had a Via CPU, but have tried a Cyrix/NS/AMD Geode GX1, at 266MHz this thing is SLOW... It's on a dev board so I have a full ATX board with this thing, but I doubt anyone would use this thing in a real PC. I was trying a simple benchmark and this thing was slower than the CPU in a WRT54G 3.0 ...

[lti]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

An 800MHz VIA C3 is more like 400-. VIA doesn't mess with performance ratings at all (Cyrix did, but that was a long time before the C3). Actually, VIA might have had a part in it since it's exaggerated almost as much as the Cyrix performance ratings.

1366x768 LCDs don't even make sense. It's not compatible with anything whatsoever unless specifically written for it, it isn't a native resolution for DVD or a multiple of such values (480p or 576p standard definition), therefore making it utterly useless in its 16:9 configuration, which is primarily designed just to watch movies. The 1366 width is nothing more than four thirds of 1024x768, and everyone abandoned 1024x768 when 15" CRTs went out of fashion.

It is actually close to 720p. 720p TVs have a native resolution of 1366x768. They use it instead of a resolution that is high enough to use for other stuff so they can say their monitor is HD capable. They can't use 1600x900 because it isn't one of the HD resolutions (1280x720 or 1920x1080), even though I wouldn't have to use an external monitor with my laptop if they did. Going from 1366x768 to 1280x1024 is a huge upgrade, but people think 1366x768 is better because it's widescreen.

[eccerr0r]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

Going from 1366x768 to 1280x1024 is a huge upgrade, but people think 1366x768 is better because it's widescreen.

I can't believe how true this is... 1280x1024 is indeed better than 1366x768 but people would rather the not have the black bars watching letterbox movies, which I suppose is the main reason for the shift for these awful monitor aspect ratios...

I need to go locate and get the remaining 5x4 and 4x3 monitors remaining on the market. The typical 16x9 and 16x10 monitors, unless they are true HD (1920x1080), don't hold a candle to the 1280x1024 monitors...

[Uranium-235]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.



@ passmark.com, C3 Samual 2 is listed at the VERY bottom of the list

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/low_end_cpus.html

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

It's interesting to note that the good ole Pentium M is still almost at the very top...

[lti]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

Those benchmarks don't look right. The CPUs I own don't perform as well as those benchmarks would seem to indicate.

[dood]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

Back when I was in Highschool, I worked on a BookPC that had one of these turds in it. The Via C3 processor was dog slow compared to everything else available at the time. Its only redeeming factor (and the reason it was in a BookPC) was that it ran cool.

[Pentium4]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

Back in 2010 I actually used a similar one of these I got for free with a 800MHz P3 on it to do some folding, after 30 hours the chipset overheated even with good cooling and it was gone forever. Poor thing. I thought it was cool though how it had one PC133 slot and one DDR333 slot.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

7 or so years ago, i sold one that had two slots of each. Two SDRAM, two DDR. It was a Socket A board. Funny thing about it was that it ran better and overclocked higher with SDRAM.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: That's a board so cute... but utterly pointless.

Gonna snap some pics of the whole affair tomorrow.

I just got my main computer back yesterday as it's been borrowed to a friend of mine for the past 2 years and i decided to take it back because i haven't been working anything with him for a good 6 months or so. With that back, i'll no longer have use for a lot of stuff so i'll put it up for grabs.