Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

I did notice that the onboard GPU has 1mb RAM and 2 sockets for another 1mb in RAM chips; 2mb total... Makes me want to pull the millennium, add another 1mb to the onboard and then toss a voodoo1 card in the PCI slot that the millennium once used... That would even play quake 1 smoothly.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Naturally, I started with the P-Classic IBM 300GL. It's sporting a Pentium166 & 128mb RAM; the max RAM it can take. The P-166 was an absolute workhorse of its era....definitely worthy of a little resto work.

That's all for today....chalk up a win for the retro fleet!

not a bad rig to play half-life 1 on. hl1 should be cutting edge for this system!

Half-Life
Version 1.1.1.0
Readme File
6/12/02

********************************************************************
About This Document:

This document contains last-minute information about Half-Life, including questions you may have concerning the game or your computer. If you have a question, check to see if it is addressed here first: you may save yourself a call to Technical Support.
********************************************************************

I. MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
II. GENERAL TECHNICAL ISSUES
III. GENERAL GAME ISSUES
IV. 3D HARDWARE ISSUES
V. CONTACTING SIERRA

I. MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
Windows(r) 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT 4.0
Pentium 133+, 24 MB RAM
SVGA, high color (16-bit)
2x CD-ROM drive
Windows-compatible sound card
Mouse, keyboard

[Uranium-235]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

We had similar ones in high school, but without the 5 1/4 disks. Win98 se

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Today's weird build arrived yesterday in a pile of old systems that were dropped off.... 3x 486's (2x IBM PS/2's and a custom built) and a pentium classic; IBM PC 300GL type 6282.



Naturally, I started with the P-Classic IBM 300GL. It's sporting a Pentium166 & 128mb RAM; the max RAM it can take. The P-166 was an absolute workhorse of its era....definitely worthy of a little resto work.

Filthy but in good physical condition.



Cracked it open. Somoene upgraded the video from the useless 1mb onboard cirrus logic to a 8mb Matrox Millennium....big bucks for the time! It had a dialup modem as well....I yanked that and added the NIC (period-specific 1997 3com). The modem was tossed into the e-waste bin.

Both the 1.44 3.5" floppy drive and the 2.5gb western digital HDD were bad. The 1.2mb 5.25 floppy is good. I replaced the 1.44mb and the failed HDD with a 6.4gb WD I had on hand....smallest HDD of the period I had that wasn't in use.



I won't go into all the gory details....but it cleaned up nicely and functions as well as can be expected for as old as it is with a fresh install of NT4.



Butt shot....as if by some miracle, I even got the case keys with it....a first for any IBM I've ever gotten.



Web browsing on this is no treat....but BCN still displays on old junk!!



That's all for today....chalk up a win for the retro fleet!

[Per Hansson]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

I bought a Sigma DP2 second hand for around $100 a few years ago.
I don't regret doing so, because I now cherish my Canon EOS 40D even more
That said it is a pretty cool camera once you get the right situation.
The flaws are way too many to list though.
I'm sure the newer models are much improved though.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

You know there is supposed to be no funding limit for your photography passion right?
Just go out a buy any of the Sigma DP range of compact DSLR's, they have some amazing tech to resolve complex light situations.
Just don't blame me when you find out it is useless for anything else bar that though

LOL...not as expensive as I thought it would be!!

[Per Hansson]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

...and now the real test...and again bear in mind that these pics look like shit.....I guess I don't know the secret to correctly photograph something like this with no flash....

You know there is supposed to be no funding limit for your photography passion right?
Just go out a buy any of the Sigma DP range of compact DSLR's, they have some amazing tech to resolve complex light situations.
Just don't blame me when you find out it is useless for anything else bar that though

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Well this was critiqued today by none other than my 24yr old daughter who said it looked awesome, but the blue was a bit overbearing. Add a little more red if you can....so I pondered....and pondered....and didn't come up with much until I inadvertently realized there was a plastic air guide on top of the CPU heatsinks that basically allowed a 70mm fan to be used on a sink intended for 60mm.... THis raised the fan off the sink a good 30mm; leaving plenty of room between the fan & sink.....and BAM!! The light bulb...err, LED lit up!

I had to be a little careful with these plastic risers....with age, they're a little brittle....but I didn't break them.....but here we go!



One segment of LED.



Attached to the fan, note the orientation....I arranged them both so they'll be horizontal when mounted in their holders....even though each fan is clocked differently due to the location of their power connectors.



Tested; not bad.



Plenty of room for exit routing the wire in the fan's power wire channel.



Now for the other side, and you can see the difference in the LED orientation from the other one.



Bench supply test, no problem!



Now to wire them into power....and the reason I used such long wires... I routed these down to the lower right corner where the unused 4-pin +12v connector was tied out of the way (the board uses the larger 8-pin). I then stole the 4-pin connector off a junk motehrboard.



Soldered & heatshrunk.



Now that Gentlemen is how we do that!!



...and now the real test...and again bear in mind that these pics look like shit.....I guess I don't know the secret to correctly photograph something like this with no flash....







That solved the overwhelmingly blue issue!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Forgive me computer gods, for I have sinned....but keep in mind, this was done to mock someone that bragged about spending $100 on RGB fans & lighting! I found that to be absurd. My 'mock' cost less than $10. The point of this post isn't the build itself, it's one I did many years ago but just never posted about.....but it was a good lab rat for this because of the Antec DF-30 case....which had LED fans and the window.... This was a stellar system in its day.....but was 'expendable' enough to do this to:

The 'specimen':

Antec DF-30 tower in mint condition
Asus KFN5-D workstation board
2x Barcelona core Opteron 2360SE @ 2.5GHz (max it can take)
64gb PC2-5300E
2x Quadro 4000 2gb in SLI
2x 160 Velociraptors in a RAID0



Momaka is going to disown BCN over this one!! Red & Blue 12v LED tape. The stock Antec fans have blue, so I went with more blue, and some red to create a little contrast.





Now time to start attaching things....







Yea, there's enough clearance under the PSU!!



Test fired using the bench supply.









All this pulls about ~900mA



Tying it all together & hiding wiring.





Sides reinstalled.





Live test! This is hard to photograph. In person, the light is a lot more crisp....but you get the idea...













With the case closed, at no angle looking in the window can you actually see any of the LED's; which is critical for making this look half way decent....for as ricey & ghetto as it already looks!! Yes, this project aggravated the 'intended target' (not a member here). I spent $10 shipped for the two 10' reels of LED tape, and I used very little....maybe 3 feet combined, so at $0.50 per foot it cost ~$1.50 compared to his ridiculous $100....but here's where the sin mentioned in the opening paragraph came into play...I actually enjoyed this!!!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Today's weird one comes in the form of some old HP Pentium-D system with a board full of bad caps..... Not really worth the effort to recap....but the case is immaculate.....good for a mild sleeper. There were several different config's tested with this one, but I'm not going to dwell on that, just post the final config and outcome.

I don't even remember what model this was....



The bad board:



Enter in the new board a Pegatron IMPTB-TK "Truckee" out of some HP workstation, I don't know where it came from....I've had it for years.



The power supply removed from the case.... Yikes! Not reusing this thing...flimsy body and weighs less than a couple slices of bread. Looks to be a deer or L & C, but never heard of the 'OKIA' brand.



Case emptied out.



The Pegatron board installed.



128gb Sandisk SSD.



Replacement PSU is an Antec 650w, recapped of course.





Now here's where it gets fun! The board has two 16x PCIe slots....so I did some homework....but all claims state it absolutely does not support SLI or crossfire.....ohh lets just see about that!!

The SLI test was indeed a failure....however, the crossfire test was a success! I won an auction (high bid of $11) for an identical HD5850 to go along with THIS ONE that I swiped from my FX6831-03. Don't worry, I have a replacement for the FX6831, but that's for later on....but now I have a matching pair of HD5850's for the test!!



Every rear slot filled with GPU action!



Incase you were wondering what CPU is in this, it's a Xeon W3580 @ 3.33GHz. CPU-Z says it's a Bloomfield, but the S-Spec says Nehalem.....but it's running @ the correct speeds and all instruction sets are present. Yes, the board has the latest BIOS on it. This board will not run a Westmere. There's 12gb RAM.



The results:







It's not a bad system at all and was fun doing the tinkering with..... No official crossfire support, but it will do it. I've seen this on many board with multiple 16x slots... I guess AMD figured if you could afford the two cards and a board with 2 slots, you didn't need any hardware licenses embedded in the motherboard to run like this; like nvidia and SLI.... The single HD5850 scored a '6.0', and '7.7' in crossfire according to the insignificant windows assessment....

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

just to add a name to that cooler so people can find it and get it if they like it and wanna use it also, that is the zalman cnps7700-cu cpu cooler. there is also an al-cu hybrid aluminum copper version of that cooler as well. frostytech still has a review of the zalman cnps7700-cu heatsink here.

the copper version is 918 grams which is nearly 1 kg. thats also slightly over 2 pounds for those still using imperial units. definitely a hefty cooler indeed!

Yea, that's the one. This one is all copper....and ~2lbs feels about right. It works well though.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

It's in the form of a massive Zalman SKT478 cooler. I always called it 'the copper flower'....thats what it always reminded me of. It's very heavy;

just to add a name to that cooler so people can find it and get it if they like it and wanna use it also, that is the zalman cnps7700-cu cpu cooler. there is also an al-cu hybrid aluminum copper version of that cooler as well. frostytech still has a review of the zalman cnps7700-cu heatsink here.

the copper version is 918 grams which is nearly 1 kg. thats also slightly over 2 pounds for those still using imperial units. definitely a hefty cooler indeed!

[TechGeek]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

I'd hate to know what this system cost new. The GPU & audio upgrades were from gateway, not customer upgrades; he bought it this way. The motherboard has onboard audio, but its blocked off by the sticker spanning the entire IO area....kind of a weird way of doing that....definitely not something a customer would have done....a view of it:

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1645674848

I really think the case sets it off; alienware clone that so many manufactures were doing at the time. With the exception of the GPU, the system isn't too terribly valuable....but a nice addition to the collection all the same!

The case on my mom's Gateway wasn't anything like that one. It was an older design. I can't remember if it had a sound card added (it's been ~10 years since that system got recycled). Cost? IIRC, it was somewhere around $2500 or so.
EDIT: Found what it was. Looks like a Gateway 510XL or 510SE.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Something else that I'd figure that I'd mention:

Back around 2002, my mom bought a fully loaded Gateway computer (Pentium 4 HT, AGP ATi GPU of some sorts, 80GB or 160GB WD Caviar Black IDE HDD ($$$!), and I think ~1GB of RAM.) Talk about a pretty penny.
Anyways, it ran for 10 faithful years until a presumed power supply failure ate the motherboard, and it never ran again. I don't remember what PSU it had, but given that it went down with a power failure and never came up again, it could have possibly been one of those infamous Bestec ATX-250-12E PSUs with the 2-transistor 5VSB that relied on a capacitor for voltage regulation. (Not to be confused with the ATX-250-12Z which fixed this problem.)

I'd hate to know what this system cost new. The GPU & audio upgrades were from gateway, not customer upgrades; he bought it this way. The motherboard has onboard audio, but its blocked off by the sticker spanning the entire IO area....kind of a weird way of doing that....definitely not something a customer would have done....a view of it:

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1645674848

I really think the case sets it off; alienware clone that so many manufactures were doing at the time. With the exception of the GPU, the system isn't too terribly valuable....but a nice addition to the collection all the same!

[TechGeek]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Something else that I'd figure that I'd mention:

Back around 2002, my mom bought a fully loaded Gateway computer (Pentium 4 HT, AGP ATi GPU of some sorts, 80GB or 160GB WD Caviar Black IDE HDD ($$$!), and I think ~1GB of RAM.) Talk about a pretty penny.
Anyways, it ran for 10 faithful years until a presumed power supply failure ate the motherboard, and it never ran again. I don't remember what PSU it had, but given that it went down with a power failure and never came up again, it could have possibly been one of those infamous Bestec ATX-250-12E PSUs with the 2-transistor 5VSB that relied on a capacitor for voltage regulation. (Not to be confused with the ATX-250-12Z which fixed this problem.)

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Ok, just a little addendum to the Gateway P4 build.....

Ok, one more addendum to this build..... The fella that gave it to me came by today and said the speakers turned up!





It is now officially complete!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

You're the one that got rid of the FD Trinitron... which I do still use as my Garage bench (Main w/ KVM) monitor...

Ohh believe me, it's all good; given the girth of that thing! Glad you're using it!

[ratdude747]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Resolutions arent great either, will do 1280x960 or 1280x1024 @ 60Hz refresh....ick. 1024x768 @ 80Hz refresh....no flicker, but eww.....

You're the one that got rid of the FD Trinitron... which I do still use as my Garage bench (Main w/ KVM) monitor...

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Dang that is one ugly monitor! "Something only a mother could love"

Resolutions arent great either, will do 1280x960 or 1280x1024 @ 60Hz refresh....ick. 1024x768 @ 80Hz refresh....no flicker, but eww.....

[Per Hansson]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Just a goofy one....

Dang that is one ugly monitor! "Something only a mother could love"