Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Just a goofy one....I wasn't going to waste any bandwidth posting this one, there's a lot of weird little builds that I simply don't post about....but someone expressed that the board in this one be sent to e-waste heaven!! I did it before the suggestion.....but here it is....A HP Pavilion 515x with a complete craptastic board in it.... No AGP but has a blank, celeron D @ forgotWTFspeedit was....and who cares about the rest.....but the system was complete.....so hmmmm...





I have an Asus P5KPL-AM SE that I have no clue where it came from, I'm sure it was a dropoff in a scrap case, but I kept the board. It has a Pentium-D @ 3GHz w/ 4mb L2, 2gb RAM, and a GeForce 7300GT 256mb GPU. Now that will go nice in this case! I know, not the greatest GPU, but for this, it's perfect!





The old turd....



The little shorty PSU. This one was a Delta, and good. I did recap it....just didn't take any pics.



Installed.



160gb SATA Velociraptor.



Much cleaner look!



Begging for XP!



...even a little Q3A!!



Yea, I know....lame build.....but I couldn't scrap one this complete on account of a junktastic useless system core.

[TechGeek]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

The USB/FPAUDIO board and the lighting control board are two separate boards, unless he's got a different model....there were a few revisions of this system.

Oh ok. I may be (mis)-remembering. It's been a while since I last had the case open, and it got mothballed several months ago when I moved the guts to my old main workstation system's case to cure a heat-related issue that caused the system to eat hard drives (after it ate a 3TB Seagate and 2x 2TB WD Black drives). It's also an early-2010 system.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

The board at the top of the case also connects up the USB ports on the case and the headphone jacks.

The USB/FPAUDIO board and the lighting control board are two separate boards, unless he's got a different model....there were a few revisions of this system.

[TechGeek]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

My dad has one of these systems. The board at the top of the case also connects up the USB ports on the case and the headphone jacks.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

I tinkered around with the Gateway FX6831-03 I was given; posted in the Cheap/Free Scores thread... I wanted to see what it could do and see if it was going to be a solid runner.

I did a quick test when I first got it, seemed fine....but I noticed most everything was unplugged from the power supply inside it. I'm guessing the original went bad and someone installed this one; perhaps just to get it running well enough to recover data...not real sure....the wires were a rat's nest and all the hardware except the power supply is original....and I don't see Gateway shipping it looking like that....but I'll get back to this in a few....bear in mind, this isn't the finish build....it was just some experimenting....so ignore the rat's nest of wires....

The only functional issue I noticed was the GPU fan was making all kinds of racket, so that had to be addressed.....

Disassembled....a bazillion screws later!



Thermal paste wasn't terrible....but it wasn't good either...



Now for the fan....caked bad with dust, so my guess was it was horribly out of balance....likely a contributing factor for a lot of the racket it was making.



I hate the way these fans come apart.....internal pressure snap/clasp....and prying on them always makes me nervous!! ...but I didn't break it!



Cleaned off the GPU die and sink.



Fan washed, repacked with grease, some fresh AS5, and everything reassembled.





Funny, according to M$, this GPU I just wasted an hour on is the slowest thing in the system (Radeon HD5850)....it is now quiet as a mouse though...



Now back to all the stuff unplugged from power; both opticals were unplugged, the HDD was missing (so obviously unplugged) and there was a strange looking board up in the ceiling of the case that I didn't recognize, with a bunch of other wires coming out of it going to various places in the case....hmmmm...I have a hunch what it might be, but lets plug it in and see....

Sure enough, just as I suspected....lighting!







Some mild red LED lighting.... Pretty tastefully done I must say, not overdone. I still lol at 'SuperComputer' being on the case badge from Gateway....but I bet that lighting increases the FPS by atleast 2.77 FPS in any game just because of the cool points!!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

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

About ~15yrs ago (yea, really), I was given an Abit IC7 Max3 that didn't work that had a CPU & RAM in it. The board was still under warranty from Abit, so I RMA'd it and they sent me a brand spankin new one in the box. I sold it on ebay, as new/unused. I don't remember whatever happened to the CPU or RAM....but one thing that was left over that I forgot about as well made a reappearance in the world last month when I was trashing some stuff in the attic.... 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; I always wondered how that little plastic bracket could hold it....

I was going to use it in THIS BUILD, but it would not clear the VRM or the RAM....however, I got to thinking of what other P4 system I had around here I could use this on....and well...yea! It fit this one like a glove!!









This is just a nifty old build for a 'big box' system!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Finished the Chenbro build today....the controller got here Monday.

Installed and updated the firmware.



Now for the drive. A Sandisk Lightning, 800gb. Funny story....I bought a pair of these to finish another project. One of the two sent to me was bad. I contacted the company, and they replaced the bad one and were kind enough to send an extra for the inconvenience....nice of them for sure! ...but I had no immediate use for the spare, its been sitting on my desk for a while now....but here we go!!



In the Chenbro SAS tray.



Config'd as a single drive...obviously....



Installing S2K12.



...and done!



I still would like a better GPU; preferably a kickass quadro over this old 560ti.....but this is as good as it gets for now.... GPU prices are still astronomical!!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Another interruption in the Chenbro build, since it's on hold pending a SAS controller.....

A portion of this post was copypasta'd from the cheap/free thread.

Today's dropoff was a Gateway ESX-500X, complete with tower, monitor, KB & mouse, and the manuals.



The GPU appears to be a LeadTek GeForce 6800 128mb. The heatsink on this thing is a solid copper monster!



It would not POST....this is why. Piece of junk power supply someone added. The brand name on it is "COLORSIT", I've never heard of it. The original obviously went bad, hence this....





Has an 'alienware-ish' look with the fold-up door....kind of neat actually.



The rest of it...



The motehrboard is bad, partially. Caps are ok. NIC doesn't work, and it's not stable for some reason. RAM and GPU have been tested in another board, they're fine. The board is an Intel OEM; 845G/GL with a P4 @ 2.66/533 in it. I'll do a freebie resto on this, I have an Intel D865GLC which works, full featured BIOS, has 2gb RAM + P4 3GHz/800 Prescott in it, and best of all it fits the IO area of this case. The IO area of this case is not removable.....and I just don't want to cut this one out..... The untrained eye would never know this isn't the original board anyway.....ohh, and it came with an upgraded Audigy sound card....

Everything below here is new info

...so here's the completion of this one... The seat of my pants wanted to make a hell of a sleeper out of this...cutting the IO area certainly would be little challenge and would look factory-done.... The reason I didn't is because of how complete this is; IE, the monitor, KB, mouse, and manuals & disks. I put this one back to as close to original as possible with only minor subtle upgrades. I wasn't even going to bother trying to track down a replacement for the motherboard, I had an Intel D865GLC that was a perfect match. Not to mention can take a little more RAM and supports 800FSB....and already had 2gb RAM and a 3GHz/800 Prescott in it.....so here we go!

Old board removed.



Replacement board in.





Now for a small mod. The original power supply is long dead & done.... The above-mentioned bad one is what was in it when I got it; which also failed. The original supply had some kind of latches on the body to hold it into place. If you look at this pic you can see them on the roof of the case behind the optical.



The problem this created was no 3rd party PSU would stay in place, there was nothing to fasten it to, no screw holes in the back of the case. The PSU that was in it was being held into place by a small chunk of wood between it and the optical drive; pinning it into place...clever I guess, but not up to my standards!



Easy enough to fix.....made a template of the screw hole pattern.....



Marked off on the case....



Drilled. Now the PSU now mounts like it's supposed to. Becase of clearance issues on the upper left screw, I only drilled 3 holes.... Three screws will be more than adequate.



Now time to light this thing.





Tidied up inside. I upgraded the HDD to a 160gb Velociraptor SATA from the original 80gb IDE.



Installing WinXP. Yea, that top drive is a DVD-RAM....



Up & running...and here you see it with all its original hardware, minus the speakers.....I can live without those. This is a 2002 timewarp, XP, office 2003, and tons of software that would have been on a system back at time....as well as some good games of the era.





I'm sure this isn't worth a whole lot....but it was fun to put together & revive! ...and at the end of all this, I have absolutely nothing in it.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

I have a spare LSI card if you have sourcing issues. An 8708 EM2. Needs a new batt I think? Not that these cards are hard to obtain usually... they used to be dirt cheap.

9260's are obtainable new-old-stock for not very much with new BBU's in them....but they're always from China....so they take a little bit to get here.

[ratdude747]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

The other end of the miniSAS cables tied off out of the way....I thought I had another LSI 9260....but turns out it got used on something else.....so I've got to get another one.....which will cause a delay in completion of this.....

I have a spare LSI card if you have sourcing issues. An 8708 EM2. Needs a new batt I think? Not that these cards are hard to obtain usually... they used to be dirt cheap.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Back to the Chenbro.....

The Intel server board removed. I put it in an anti-static bag and put it away. Too good to scrap....would make a great NAS or something along those lines.





Coming apart....





Power supply removed.



Test fitting the new innards....and the secret revealed. The motherboard is X8DAL-I w/ 2x X5672 @ 3.2 24gb RAM. These are the fastest Quadcores this board can run based on the TDP specified for it (nothing more than 95w).



Now for the power supply. This is a 350w 'poweman' PSU. With a +12v rail rated @ 16a, I don't think it's going to cut the mustard for this build. The +5v rail is rated @ 30a, which is strong. Modern stuff is 12v heavy. This PSU would be better suited for a retro build with older hardware that like hefty 5v rails.



...but what to replace it with....hmmmm How about a Supermicro PWS-903-PQ 900w PSU! This one will carry any load that this system can dish out!



Now for a little mod!! What fun would a build be if there wasn't a few!! Apparently there were 2 versions of this specific X8DAL-I (not talking about the X8DAL-3, that model has an onboard SAS controller)....most have this passive heatsink on the northbridge and a few had a smaller active heatsink/fan. The passive version, the northbridge gets miserably hot....like barely able to touch hot! These boards aren't known for them failing....but it still makes me nervous with them running so hot....so I remedied it.

The passive.



A couple of the needed actives from a junk board.



Now for the next problem....there's no plug on this version of the board....but the markings & passives are there....so easy fix.



Just pulled the plug from the scrap board.



Easy Peasy!!



Success! Buttered up with some fresh AS5.



Now to start putting this thing together.... The GPU for now is a GTX560 TI, It's period-specific for the system....but all I had on hand....I'd rather have done something faster....but this is all I have for now.





Connecting the backplane for the SAS.



Also pulled the floppy and replaced it with a card reader. This board does not have a floppy header.



Things tied up.



The other end of the miniSAS cables tied off out of the way....I thought I had another LSI 9260....but turns out it got used on something else.....so I've got to get another one.....which will cause a delay in completion of this.....



Front back on.





Fired up.





Booted to Hiren's......and life is good...just have to track down a SAS controller.



The conclusion to come.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Interrupting the above build for just a quickie one-day 'sleeper' build that I finally found the right core for......

The donor system for the core parts was a drop off a few weeks ago that honestly I didn't pay much attention to because of the poor condition of the case.....but it was time to do something with it..... So here it is:

Sadly, this case wasn't a bad one at one point....it was made of nice thick steel...but it had a hard life. Top all dented in and scratched down to the metal in many places.



USB & front panel audio connectors broken.



No, I didn't just have the side off it, the side is missing.



...but after full testing and an install of Mint 20.3, it's not a bad system. 2nd gen I5 @ 2.9GHz 8gb RAM.



That's far too nice to send to the scrapper, but in this case it is in unacceptable condition....so enter in the new house it will live in!!

Now for the donor case; an Inspiron 531S. I've always liked these cases by Dell. Well built & well laid out slimlines. These were made for a very short time. This one has some rather worthless old single core Sempron in it w/ 2gb RAM.....I couldn't give that away....but this case is quite nice.





Here's what I mean by well laid out. Everything is accessible; tool-less for basic servicing. I've always wanted to build something modern into one of these cases....today was the day!



Now time to strip the innards out.







...but here's the problem with these cases! The IO area is part of the case.....perhaps to most; a deal-breaker.....but this is me!!





After being carefully measured & marked, then masked off....you know what's next!!



Cut & test fitted with some random board & IO plate. Perfect fit!







The old piece...



Deburre.......well, you know....


Now time to debadge the case.....removed all the ID stickers, COA, and the service tag placard.





Now time to strip this junk case....



...that was easy! The motherboard is an Intel DH61CR.



Installed.





Now for a PSU with some teapo & crapxon caps.....visibly they were ok, but I don't trust 'em.... I only recapped the secondary.



Cured. I didn't replace the mains, they were still good....





Going together.







Damn, that turned out stellar! I haven't lost my touch!



I hate these intel heatsinks....but this one actually wasn't broken.....so I just left it alone.



Everything lit up and worked.



I used the 500gb HDD that I had already loaded Mint 20.3 on. Mint runs fine on an old slow spinner....but if I were to put 10 on it, it would get a SSD upgrade... Side buttoned up as well.



BCN from Waterfox 4.0.7.



The junk.....the board is good, but it's worthless....if I can't rehome it somewhere, it'll end up at the shredder. I'll bilk the PSU out of this case, it's good....but the rest will go into my case crusher.



....and that's that... Here's to a nifty little sleeper in one of Dell's better quality slimline cases!

The Chenbro build will now continue!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

...and here's another weird build... While this one will be super cool, as mine always are, I don't think this one is quite deserving of its own thread; no case modding or anything really radical going on with this.

This will be as per my usual; a dual CPU system....that will come out a little later....but for now, lets start with the house it'll live in.

The case is a black Chenbro SR209. I have used these before, they're fabulous to work with; for a budget-friendly mid-range to higher end build. This one was real budget-friendly, as it was a freebie dropped off to be recycled.



There was a problem though...the entire HDD cage was removed....which could obviously cause some issues.





Now for the cure for that.... These cases came with a removable internal HDD cage by default....but as an upgrade option, there were a couple removable SATA & SAS hotswap cages made. I found a new 2.5" SAS cage in the box for $30.....so I grabbed it....and here it is:







It uses minisas to minisas cables, which I have a bunch of.



The cavity where it goes....



Like a glove!!!!!







Closed up for now.



I still have to strip the old guts out of this and thoroughly clean the case, and debadge it of course.... The new guts will be my trademark 2-CPU and Supermicro. GPU is still not set in stone, I'll have to rummage and see what I've got around that would be befitting of this....so stay tuned!!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

This was a drop-off yeaterday. Been sitting in a barn since about the turn of the century. It's custom-built based on the legendary super-7 board; the Asus P5A-B. This was the K6-2 & K6-3 lover's dream because of its overclocking abilities plus having an AGP; a rare combo at the time.

It's filthy, and smells.....not as bad as the 'goat barn rescue', but it definitely needed a cleaning....but first things first....lets see if anything even works at all.... Obviously the CDROM is bad.



It fired up and booted to WinME. It's a 233MMX with 64mb RAM.....agonizing with Millennium Edition! ...but this revealed the first problem... Video card is bad. I did snoop...a lot of rental agreements for houses on the drive....apparently this once belonged to a property manager/owner... Rents were cheap ~20yrs ago compared to today!!





After a few minutes, it froze..... Here's why. CPU fan completely frozen. It was so clogged with dust, the louvers in the aluminum were not visible. THis photo was taken after a blast from the air compressor.





CPU...



Replacement fan from the junk drawer...



Now for the bad GPU, which was a Cirrus Logic 1mb IIRC. Yea, this went to the scrap bin.



I added a Hercules Prophet 4000 64mb AGP GPU. I also pulled the 33.6 modem and added a NIC. Sound is a Yamaha PCI card, not sure what model....



4.3gb Seagate HDD is still good; as if by some miracle....not even any bad sectors! Installing Win2k. I'd have done NT.....but I was being lazy and didn't feel like tracking down the drivers for everything.... Win2k had embedded for all except the video, which I already had.



Now to clean it up and put it back together....



...and done!



Nice rescue if I do say so myself!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

I Thought I shoved them in the case?

Maybe I didn't... heck I dunno. On the road for work so I won't be able to work.

No, there was nothing of the sort in there. No worries, have a safe trip!

[ratdude747]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

I could have sworn you said you forgot those...and I don't seem to have any SKT478 stuff here of unknown origins (every unused 478 CPU is in a bin of its own)....but I'll keep looking.

I Thought I shoved them in the case?

Maybe I didn't... heck I dunno. On the road for work so I won't be able to work.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

I'm sure there are other threads about it on here... but don't have time to dig them up. I'll post links if/when I have time later.

Tadaa: https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6569
P.S: There are others, but you must search for "ST61*" or "ST61G4"

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

I take it the Prescott CPUs I included weren't compatible? Supposedly they may have been the only model in 478 that supports x64 (OEM-only, I didn't' have anything else 478 to try them on).

I could have sworn you said you forgot those...and I don't seem to have any SKT478 stuff here of unknown origins (every unused 478 CPU is in a bin of its own)....but I'll keep looking.

[ratdude747]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Kind of a special build, but not special enough for a thread of its own..... This Shuttle ST61 G4 SKT478 P4 system has been a BCN member whore.... If I have the history right, it originated with Kerijane many moons ago, was then passed onto Hondaman, then Ratdude.....and finally me. I don't know where it died.....but it never worked for Ratdude and didn't work when I got it.

I'll clarify the history. I'm sure there are other threads about it on here... but don't have time to dig them up. I'll post links if/when I have time later.

Kerijane acquired it a long time ago... and it was her first recap job ever (for a first recap, actually was pretty good!). But not being a Mac, she never used it much... and gave it to me. I added the ATI TV wonder card and the GPU (and the RAM)... but didn't use it all that much either, having moved on to other projects. Hondaman wanted a HTPC, so I gave it to him... and other than pulling the DVD burner I installed (which had yellowed badly), made no changes, and it probably failed on him where after it sat in his basement for years. Later on he was wanting to downsize his stash, and I rediscovered it when going through such. I reclaimed it, with the intention of giving it to you where I knew it'd get the attention it needed that I wasn't inspired to provide myself.

I take it the Prescott CPUs I included weren't compatible? Supposedly they may have been the only model in 478 that supports x64 (OEM-only, I didn't' have anything else 478 to try them on).

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Kind of a special build, but not special enough for a thread of its own..... This Shuttle ST61 G4 SKT478 P4 system has been a BCN member whore.... If I have the history right, it originated with Kerijane many moons ago, was then passed onto Hondaman, then Ratdude.....and finally me. I don't know where it died.....but it never worked for Ratdude and didn't work when I got it.

These are getting to be quite relics, its circa 2004....and getting harder to come by. Not sure if they'd ever be deemed 'collectable', but I figured I'd see what I could do with it....just because of all the years & travel stickers it has. Despite of their design flaws; crap caps and poor ventilation I've always thought these were neat little toaster boxes....so let the fun begin!

I think it had been sitting in a shed or basement for quite a while....it was filthy, had some sticky brown goop on the case, and had a musty smell about it...not a big deal, but I knew a good cleaning was going to be needed.....

...and here we go! Case open. The Vantec 'Vortex' is something I added instead of an optical...I'll get back to that shortly. The GPU is an ATI HD2400 Pro 512mb, not bad at all for this era of hardware....going to leave that alone.





Time to start taking it apart. It was missing 2 of the 4 feet, so I removed them all.





Getting ready to start cleaning it.....even if I can't make it work, it'll make a nice display piece in my office.





Someone partially recapped it....and the PSU had some bad caps in it. I finished recapping the motehrboard and recapped the power supply. I didn't take any pics of the power supply.



Now time to test it all.





Success!! I do not have any faster P4 CPU's left, I got rid of all the faster ones ages ago when they were actually worth something. THis is a Prescott 1mb cache model.... I'll run with this one until I encounter a faster one; if ever.



All cleaned & tested....and time to reassemble it.





Not too bad.....but it's crammed in there!





Now for the Vantec HDD holder... Nice way to get a little more air flowing through this thing.







All the old foot goop cleaned off and some new feet added.



Of course a butt shot.



Installing XP....I used the onboard Silicon Image 3512 controller; since it's SATA....otherwise I'd have been doomed to an IDE HDD....so I had to loose install a floppy long enough to load the driver for it....and of course a loose optical... Once the OS is alive, I can use the network or USB for the rest.



Buttoned up after the install.





...even a little Q3A... In 1024x768 with all the eye candy enabled, it flies! It will do the same in 1280x1024, but this crap monitor for some reason doesn't display this game right in this resolution. Any other monitor is fine. It does this with any/every system.



A BCN classic restored!!