Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

[sam_sam_sam]

You did some very nice surgery work on this computer case and it is looking very nice I keep getting inspired by your handwork
I have one question for you what type of tool did you use for this surgery that you did on this computer case
One more question how did you determine where to cut the opening so that the motherboard would fit on the stand-offs would line up and PIC slots would also line up correctly

[Topcat]

Been a while since I've done one of these where some significant modding was necessary.....so here's a great candidate. This is a Gateway 2000 system from 2001 that had some junky athlon CPU in it, motherboard is a Gateway OEM'd MSI MS-6330. There is absolutely nothing about this that excites me except the heavy iron case....but there are some hurdles....

This system came from the home of a heavy smoker. It stinks to high heaven, it was actually stinkiing up the shop.



The system does work. Booted to WinME. Agonizingly slow with 256mb RAM....



The biggest hurdle is visible in this pic; the IO area is part of the case. To put anything good in there, it will have to be surgically removed so a standard shield can be used.



Now time to disassemble it.







You can see the nicotine stains on the blonde paint where the plastic trim was.... ICK!


Sticker removed the IO area.



Measured & Taped off.




Cut.



Test fitted with some random IO shield.



Everything cleaned up and ready for the next step....picking a system core.







I have ~8 different system cores that I've considered putting in this. Prerequisites are of course full ATX, 2 CPU's, and of course something that would be a significant computing upgrade compared to what was in it; thus the whole 'sleeper build'. The 'significant upgrade' requirement ruled out a couple dual slot 1 & slot 2 options....but there are still quite a few available. I'll have to tinker with a few and see what really 'pops'....

[Topcat]

what chipset is on that board? i tried google and wikipedia but it gave me inconsistent answers as to whether the ram limit is 2 or 4gb. so i guess it depends on what chipset they put on the system in the first place. if its the 850 or 850e chipset the ram limit should indeed be 2gb. but if its the 860 chipset which is multiprocessor capable for xeon cpus which is what i think it is, the ram limit should be 4gb with 2 repeaters whatever that is...

It's an 860.

[Topcat]

what chipset is on that board? i tried google and wikipedia but it gave me inconsistent answers as to whether the ram limit is 2 or 4gb. so i guess it depends on what chipset they put on the system in the first place. if its the 850 or 850e chipset the ram limit should indeed be 2gb. but if its the 860 chipset which is multiprocessor capable for xeon cpus which is what i think it is, the ram limit should be 4gb with 2 repeaters whatever that is...

I'm not sure.....but I'll have a peek when the RAM gets here...but I believe it to be an early 7500 chipset....but it may not be either; those were all for DDR IIRC (I've slept since those days).

[ChaosLegionnaire]

what chipset is on that board? i tried google and wikipedia but it gave me inconsistent answers as to whether the ram limit is 2 or 4gb. so i guess it depends on what chipset they put on the system in the first place. if its the 850 or 850e chipset the ram limit should indeed be 2gb. but if its the 860 chipset which is multiprocessor capable for xeon cpus which is what i think it is, the ram limit should be 4gb with 2 repeaters whatever that is...

[Topcat]

Here's another for the retro fleet. Someone gave me this around 2008, Dell Precision 530 workstation; dual skt603 with failed caps of course, Nichicon HM. At the time it was deemed not worth messing with and it sat on a shelf in the garage since; it was made 2002~2003-ish (datecodes on the caps were 2001, the 'dark era' for Nichicon HM series). It being buried under other stuff is probably the only thing that kept it from being scrapped.... I came across it the other day when I was scrapping the stuff on top of it and thought hmmmm....maybe a little retro status, considering it's a RAMBUS system, and it has a pair of 3GHz Prestonia's (the fastest it could take)...but apparently their values has gone up!! I stole the RAM out of it ages ago, but CPU's are still in it. RAMBUS survivors are becoming less every passing day. Recapped it and it's working.

Blasted with the air hose and wiped down.... The real miracle with this one, the door is still on it and not broken!!





Yup, miracle! In hunting, I looked around for these. The door was almost never there.



Butt shot....



Inside. Stuck an ATI x1600 Pro 512mb AGP GPU in it. Not sure what it originally had, I stole it over a decade ago.



CPU heatsinks & fans had also been robbed.....so I had to rummage through my box of old skt 603/604 parts. This is one of the few times Dell didn't use a proprietary heatsink/fan setup. The originals were really cheesy passives that I tossed ages ago, but the bases that held them were standard for any socket 603/604, thus any compatible heatsink could be used.



The box is about empty.....I don't see or deal with much 603/604 stuff....they're pretty antiquated now and weren't hugely popular back in the day as it was.



I ordered 2gb of ECC RDRAM, the most it can take...I'll wrap this one up then.... This will be a stellar XP box!

[piernov]

No, the SLI bridge is easy to find and it should be optional anyway. The dual PCIe riser contains the Nvidia bridge IC required for SLI support, since the motherboard chipset does not support it. And since the riser does move the graphics cards away from the board, a different back panel is also required in order for the graphics cards bracket to fit.

[ratdude747]

I'd love to get a SLI PCIe riser kit for my T7400 to put 2x Quadro FX 3800 in there. It's already got 2x X5482 and 64GB of RAM now, that exceeds 500W under load and 250W idle, would be fun to see what happens with a couple graphics cards on top.
I guess it'd be much easier to put a couple of AMD cards in CrossFire but I don't have anything decent.

You mean the SLI bridge?

Just get one the correct height, or use and fold a flexible one. Nothing brand-specific about these.

[piernov]

I'd love to get a SLI PCIe riser kit for my T7400 to put 2x Quadro FX 3800 in there. It's already got 2x X5482 and 64GB of RAM now, that exceeds 500W under load and 250W idle, would be fun to see what happens with a couple graphics cards on top.
I guess it'd be much easier to put a couple of AMD cards in CrossFire but I don't have anything decent.

[Topcat]

Revisiting the T7400 because I found a couple Radeon HD 7870's for literally peanuts.





Windoze worthless assessment maxed for GPU now...

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Alrighty... MEGAPOST time (right on the char limit again ), as I had a little bit of time to catch up on this thread and read it "in peace".

I knew you'd eventually show up....

The only thing is... how many XP boxes can you restore and still sell? I'm guessing the answer is none to hardly any. Seems like no one wants desktops anymore - not even newer stuff. And the retro PC market is quite niche with inconsistent demand. So yeah, kinda sad to see all this stuff go to waste, but it is what it is.

I hang onto some of the more unusual stuff; IMHO it will gain some value (even if its small) in time....but the better vintage gaming stuff will continue to go up. If someone told me 20 years ago when I was dumping 3DFX stuff that a voodoo5 would be bringing in 400+, I'd have asked how big are the rocks they're smokin'!!

Wrong image?

Yea...caught it in proofing....I wondered if I'd slip it by anyone.... That PS was the donor of the replacement +12v EPS cable.

I do the same with smaller/720p LCD TVs - I still pick them up if I see them on trash day, as some of them are still perfectly working, despite being very old. I just give them a quick wipe and out they go to a donation center. Some places price them right, like $10 and under, so they do seem to sell occasionally. I just wish people would remember to throw them away with the remotes. Haven't found a single one with a remote so far.

I've been doing that with a lot of 1080's as well. Seems nobody wants those used anymore either.

I wonder what Dell was thinking at the time.
Seriously, of all of the features/hardware they can cut back on to lower the price, WiFi shouldn't have been one of them.

That one still boggles my mind....it's not like it was their low-end AIO either....and yet they skimp on wifi....unless perhaps it was at the customer's request when they ordered it....but even then, that seems strange too...

Not bad at all!
4th gen i7's are still very good performers and hold decent value, even today.

I don't think I'm even running anything that new. My office system is a Westmere; which is basically a first-gen I7 with a bigger L3.... My house system isn't much newer.... Xeon E5-2687W v2 8-core....which is IIRC about the equal of a 4th gen....maybe a 5th.

I hope you didn't do all of this work just to make me shut up
I do like it, though.

Let me know if you run into any more of these by the end of the month and you don't want them (even the low-profile ones.) I have two more Optiplex mini towers and one Dimension that could use 'em. I know they can be had on eBay, but spending $45 for three of them for what is worthless PCs seems ridiculous. I'd rather buy scrap motherboards with PS/2 connectors or KVM PS/2 extenders and make my own.

If you need the header, I have one....minus the ribbon of course. You're welcome to it.

Nice save!

It actually has some value!
.
.
.
... for its aluminum heatsink (scrap).

On that note, I know there is an unofficial "SP4" package for 32-bit XP, which is basically SP3 + all of the updates after + some extra tweaks. But I wonder if the same thing exists for x64 XP Pro. If so, that would be very neat, particularly for using the latest Quantum-based Mypal browser - it should basically make the PC browse the internet like any modern system without any hitches.

I've used the USP4 for XP.....didn't really notice any difference between it and SP3...but it was also amost a gig in size....so it must have done something!!

Nah, I'm still back in the US for a little longer.

You should probably just go ahead and stay then.

Not gonna be mad at you for doing Crossfire/SLI... but man! - Those GPUs are totally suffocating the way they are installed. And they are XFX's, which is even worse (XFX tend to have lousy cooler designs, IMO.) I can't imagine these not running super-hot under load.

Yea, they do get warm....but not scary... The saving grace, unless someone buys this, it's just a toy anyway....and I don't think anyone wants windows 7 on a gigantic older tower anymore.

Kinda curious... if you have the time, could you try running the CPU-Z benchmark and post a screenshot? Would like to see how this compares in terms of numbers to a modern rig. I get pretty low single-core numbers from the E5649 CPUs in my T7500 (lower than a single core from a Core 2 Duo E8500.) But multi-core, I'm up and slightly better than a 6th/7th gen i7, which is not bad.

Here you go, I dragged this beast out of the closet to get this (as a matter of fact, this post created on it):

Yeah, it's definitely only a "PC enthusiast" machine at this point, even if it is still perfectly usable today. Shipping is indeed the killer here. That's how I got my T7500 for so cheap - shipping was separate from the listing price/bidding, so most people weren't willing to bid a lot. When I noticed the seller was located in MD and not too far of a drive from here (approx. 45 minutes without traffic), I had way more leeway with how much I could bid. Even with a more gas-guzzling car (which mine is not, it's an old Focus ), I figured I'd be $20 in for gas at the very worst (and I wasn't - the cheap gas prices back in 2020 set me back maybe $5-6 for the trip, LOL! )

Another reason why I wasn't too worried about the space heater GPU's..... Sure fills out the case nice though. I was never a big fanboy of SLI / Crossfire....but its a thing of the past now....and will eventually fade away. Just gonna keep a few oddballs around as a reminder.

[momaka]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Alrighty... MEGAPOST time (right on the char limit again ), as I had a little bit of time to catch up on this thread and read it "in peace".

RE: Gateway FX400S:

I decided to run with 2gb RAM....plenty for an XP box and a nice number versus 3.24GB

I still haven't been able to roll over 1.5 GB on any of my XP machines, even with daily browsing. So yeah, 2GB is plenty.

...but I had to dig through the scrap box of small DIMM's to find 4 matching sticks.....I don't keep anything DDR2 that's smaller than 1GB....

Well, there isn't that much below 1 GB anyways. I find 256 MB DDR2 to be very rare. 512 MB is probably the most common... but like whatimdoing suggested, using these in XP boxes to get 2 GB (provided the mobo has 4 slots) is a good way to get a little more use of them.

The only thing is... how many XP boxes can you restore and still sell? I'm guessing the answer is none to hardly any. Seems like no one wants desktops anymore - not even newer stuff. And the retro PC market is quite niche with inconsistent demand. So yeah, kinda sad to see all this stuff go to waste, but it is what it is.

Next up is the power supply.
...
On top of the bad caps, I wasn't real dazzled with the build quality for its rating of 400W.

It's OK.
Probably a 2-transistor forward design. Output inductor seems a bit on the small size, though maybe it's from the image I can't tell. If it's a T106... yeah, way too small for 400W, even if it is a -52 core material (light green with blue on one side).

Apart.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1696044668

Wrong image?

The GPU that came with it did not work and even after running the numbers it remains unidentified. This system came with a plethora of GPU's; nvidia 6600GT seemed to be the most common. I used a 7600GT. I had a single-slot 9800GT here somewhere, but I seem to have misplaced it;

7600 GT is probably a perfect match for a PC from that era, especially a Netburst CPU. And it's low TDP, so less stress on the PSU and less heat n the system.
Otherwise, a Quadro FX1500, 7800 GT/GTX or 7900 GS/GT should gain it considerably more performance in older games, if you have one around, and still be period-specific. Certainly not worth going out of your way and shopping for one, though. The prices of those older cards are getting somewhat ridiculous now, even though they are PCI-E and really worthless. And they are bound to die due to undersized GPU coolers (particularly the 7900 series.)

Anymore, I toss monitors into a gaylord bound for the recycle center; as they're just so worthless....even the bigger ones....really sad... Anything under 24" I don't keep unless it's blonde or a larger (20"+) 4:3 A/R.

Yeah, they are a dime a dozen here (in VA, USA) too. Seems like a few locals buy them off of scrappers / recycling places and sell them for around $20-25 on Craigslist... but it doesn't seem like they go quickly even then. Drop to $15 and MAYBE it would take a month or two to sell... maybe more.

If they work, I donate them to Goodwill if I have time to check them.

I do the same with smaller/720p LCD TVs - I still pick them up if I see them on trash day, as some of them are still perfectly working, despite being very old. I just give them a quick wipe and out they go to a donation center. Some places price them right, like $10 and under, so they do seem to sell occasionally. I just wish people would remember to throw them away with the remotes. Haven't found a single one with a remote so far.

Cage removed around the motherboard. The first thing I noticed was there was no wifi adapter....in an AIO....unreal!! It never had one, the little clear plastic sleeves were on the ends for the antenna coaxial cables (left side of pic they're visible).

I wonder what Dell was thinking at the time.
Seriously, of all of the features/hardware they can cut back on to lower the price, WiFi shouldn't have been one of them.

This is the first modern AIO I've seen that had PS2 keyboard & mouse ports though!

Not too surprised, though. Most Optiplexes from the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gen Intel i-series have PS/2 and Serial ports. An interesting comeback for sure, as the socket 775 era Optiplexes didn't have them (at least PS/2 ports), unless ordered with a special bracket card.

...but lets experiment...this had a 4th gen I5 in it @ 2.9GHz....hmmmm... I had a HP Pro die on me that had an I7-4590K @ 4GHz...lets just see if it'll play nice with it....

Yeah baby!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1697596087

Not bad at all!
4th gen i7's are still very good performers and hold decent value, even today.

Yes, I added a wifi adapter....for crying out loud!!

This made me LOL!
Dell

We're doing a quick revisit of the Dell XPS 410 build that had the mishap with the rear PS/2 header ribbon:
...
Since Momaka seemed annoyed by my blunder of tearing the ribbon (it aggravated me too), I hung onto the header....I just stuck it in the case, it was floating around loose on the case floor.....

Well I was scrapping computers today that were trash and there was a GX620 SFF slimline that was all beat to hell, PSU was bad and of course the motherboard had bad caps. Not fixing this....and as I'm taking it apart, I notice it has a PS/2 low profile rear header, which won't work in mine....but I also noticed that the ribbon is the same as the one I tore.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1698289608

Hot dog!! Same part number and same connector configuration!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1698289608

Good cable swapped over.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1698289608

Installing....

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1698289608

Buttoned up.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1698289608

Perfect!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1698289608

Much better!!

I hope you didn't do all of this work just to make me shut up
I do like it, though.
Let me know if you run into any more of these by the end of the month and you don't want them (even the low-profile ones.) I have two more Optiplex mini towers and one Dimension that could use 'em. I know they can be had on eBay, but spending $45 for three of them for what is worthless PCs seems ridiculous. I'd rather buy scrap motherboards with PS/2 connectors or KVM PS/2 extenders and make my own.

Here's to another one I couldn't bring myself to scrap. This one came with a bunch of other pretty worthless things from the estate of a deceased local surveyor. This one is literally 'the elephant in the room' just because of its sheer size. It's an absolute beast of a system! Build quality is stellar; very heavy iron workstation....I almost called it 'old world workstation'...but it's got a little more aging to do before it earns that title.....but time will take care of that.... Modern Dell 'workstations' are thin, light, and flimsy like everything else these days.

...and the mystery system is a Precision T7400 Workstation... Datestamp on the case says May 2009; which fits the era for the CPU that is in it and DDR2 FB...and lets say hello!

Nice save!

I bought a T7400 off of Craigslist about 2 years ago for literally just a little more than scrap money ($30). Guy said HDD was bad. Turns out PSU is bad and the 5V rail drops to 3-4V when ANY load is connected to the 5V rail. Still haven't figured out what's wrong with the PSU, as the other rails are fine. It's a 1 KW Delta/Newton PSU, IIRC. No bad caps. 5V rail is mag-amp regulated rather than the 3.3V, which is a very strange design. If I don't figure it out, I'll probably just kludge it and add a 2nd PSU in that system to feed 5V back into the 1 KW PSU. The 1 KW PSU is modular & not too easy to find a replacement for.

I did some research on the chipset; which is the Intel 5400 Seaburg; a chipset I'm already familiar with. It was the only one for the LGA771 & Harpertown platform that supports 1600FSB....hmmmm...and look what's in the bin! A pair of E5472's @ 3GHz / 1600FSB.
...
That did indeed cure it. Put an E5472 CPU0 socket and it POST'd right up....so now for the virgin CPU socket! I don't have the heatsink....I found one on ebay for $18, so one is on the way....but for testing purposes, this will do.

Nice!

Makes me wonder what CPU model mine has. When I booted it (without an HDD so the 5V rail won't drop... and even when it did, the system still POSTed fine), it said there were 2x 3GHz quad core CPUs in both sockets. Considering the original CPU heatsinks were also included, I think that alone was totally worth the $30 I paid for it. Nice heavy metal system!

1000W PSU. Caps are good. Strange modular with a single connector.

Yup, looks like mine.
The T7500 also uses the same (or very similar) PSU with same type of connector.

This was the GPU that was it.... No idea what it is, nor do I really care....gonna be a piece of shit.

It actually has some value!
.
.
.
... for its aluminum heatsink (scrap).

Yeah, I think these were some of the lowest Quadro NVS models one can find with DMS-59 connector. "Display Adapter" is the correct term, I think. Their 3D capabilities are about null. Low power cards, though.

This is as far as I can go for now.....I have to wait on the second heatsink. I also scored 64gb of Fully Buffered DDR2 for 30 bucks....wow it has gotten cheap!

That is indeed surprising. I was left with the impression DDR2 FBDIMs were a lot more. I stuffed 8 GB in mine, IIRC, with 4x 2 GB modules. Couldn't fit more as the 2 GB modules had really thick heatsinks and I could install the RAM only in every other slot. But that's better than the 4 GB it came with (4x1 GB), which had even bigger heatsinks on two of the modules.

I also found someone selling 8x 8GB DDR3 PC3R memory (64 GB total) on my local CL for $25 and wonder I should upgrade the T7500 to 48 GB (2 x 3 x 8 GB to run tripple channel.) I kind of want to, but have heard that larger size registered memory modules have much slower latency response as size increases... so in my case, that would be a downgrade in performance, at least for gaming, I think. Plus, not like I've ever been able to take a nick at the 24 GB already installed in there ATM.

I also removed the Vista COA & front badge..... What OS will be on this is to be determined. Win7 would keep it period-specific, but this would run 11 with no strain....something to ponder.

Could also do Windows XP Pro (x64)
IIRC, mine came with an XP Pro COA.

On that note, I know there is an unofficial "SP4" package for 32-bit XP, which is basically SP3 + all of the updates after + some extra tweaks. But I wonder if the same thing exists for x64 XP Pro. If so, that would be very neat, particularly for using the latest Quantum-based Mypal browser - it should basically make the PC browse the internet like any modern system without any hitches.

I finished off the T7400 today.
...
I can hear Momaka's gnashing teeth all the way from Bulgaria over this one though; which brings us to the 'experimental' portion of this build. Since it had 2x 16x PCIe slots, what the heck. Many times crossfire will work even if not 'advertised' as so. SLI will not; idiotic nvidia licensing thing....even though the chipset theoretically does support it. I didn't go overboard with the GPU's as I wasn't sure it would work, but was confident it would. These were filthy cheap and period-specific to the build.

Nah, I'm still back in the US for a little longer.

Not gonna be mad at you for doing Crossfire/SLI... but man! - Those GPUs are totally suffocating the way they are installed. And they are XFX's, which is even worse (XFX tend to have lousy cooler designs, IMO.) I can't imagine these not running super-hot under load.

But I've gotta give it to you, they do make for a pretty cool setup, at least in terms of how over-built it looks. If there ever was a prize for an over-built T7400 workstation where no money was spared, I think this one would certainly qualify.

Trusty old CPU-Z

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1699141779

Kinda curious... if you have the time, could you try running the CPU-Z benchmark and post a screenshot? Would like to see how this compares in terms of numbers to a modern rig. I get pretty low single-core numbers from the E5649 CPUs in my T7500 (lower than a single core from a Core 2 Duo E8500.) But multi-core, I'm up and slightly better than a 6th/7th gen i7, which is not bad.

Not a very valuable machine (sadly), I'd guess due to it's size.....it'd be a pain to ship....they sell on ebay, but not for large amounts.....granted this one is definitely a cut above the ebay ones.

Yeah, it's definitely only a "PC enthusiast" machine at this point, even if it is still perfectly usable today. Shipping is indeed the killer here. That's how I got my T7500 for so cheap - shipping was separate from the listing price/bidding, so most people weren't willing to bid a lot. When I noticed the seller was located in MD and not too far of a drive from here (approx. 45 minutes without traffic), I had way more leeway with how much I could bid. Even with a more gas-guzzling car (which mine is not, it's an old Focus ), I figured I'd be $20 in for gas at the very worst (and I wasn't - the cheap gas prices back in 2020 set me back maybe $5-6 for the trip, LOL! )

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

I finished off the T7400 today. I added a Dell SAS 6/iR controller just to make it a little more interesting.....mainly for these:

A pair of 200gb Sandisk Lightnings to be ran in a stripe. These have been here a while....I bought them for something else and went a different route instead....they can be had really cheap for what they are....the bigger ones are pricey though....





I can hear Momaka's gnashing teeth all the way from Bulgaria over this one though; which brings us to the 'experimental' portion of this build. Since it had 2x 16x PCIe slots, what the heck. Many times crossfire will work even if not 'advertised' as so. SLI will not; idiotic nvidia licensing thing....even though the chipset theoretically does support it. I didn't go overboard with the GPU's as I wasn't sure it would work, but was confident it would. These were filthy cheap and period-specific to the build.





Drives installed.



64GB RAM installed. Memory speed is doomed to 667MHz; as it's PC2-5300F. PC2-6400F in 4gb or 8gb modules is stupidly hard to come by and expensive.....all the morons keeping MacPro 3,1's alive gobble it up endlessly.



Buttoned up.





Everything tidied up.



I chose to install Win7; also period-specific for the build....although it came with a Vista COA. Windows seems quite happy with the hardware performance-wide.



Crystaldisk of the 2x Lightnings in a RAID-0. Not bad at all for hardware of the era.



Trusty old CPU-Z



Crossfire on.



Win7 will stay on this unless I ever had a need to use this for something more practical besides a toy; as 10 ran stellar on it (I did test it). Not a very valuable machine (sadly), I'd guess due to it's size.....it'd be a pain to ship....they sell on ebay, but not for large amounts.....granted this one is definitely a cut above the ebay ones.

Specs:

Dell presicion T7400
2x Xeon E5472 CPU's @ 3GHz / 1600FSB
64GB PC2-5300 Fully Buffered
Dell SAS 6/iR (LSI 1068E chipset) SAS controller
2x 200gb Sandisk Lightning in a 400gb raid-0
2x XFX Radeon 6850 HD's in Crossfire
Sound Blaster X-Fi Audio (came as an upgrade from Dell)
1000W PSU

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Seaburg's are as rare as Hen's teeth. Nice find! And I still use the crap out of mine... hard to believe it's a 14 year old platform.

I still have one in use as well; 11 years and counting. Its duties have changed a couple times, but was never taken out of service and there are no plans to retire it. It's the only Win7 system remaining in my fleet other than HTPC's around here. The Harpertown is still active on the interwebs but did have Extended Updates for a couple years following EOL of win7. Even then, Win7 didn't become a cesspool of malware upon EOL.....what's killing it now is lack of browser supprt. The HTPC's have no connection to the outside world....so security isn't a concern with those.

This particular build I have nothing in mind for other than tinkering....but it's certainly a very capable system today. I spent probably ~$50 on whatnots for it....not like I have much in it.

[ratdude747]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Seaburg's are as rare as Hen's teeth. Nice find! And I still use the crap out of mine... hard to believe it's a 14 year old platform.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Here's to another one I couldn't bring myself to scrap. This one came with a bunch of other pretty worthless things from the estate of a deceased local surveyor. This one is literally 'the elephant in the room' just because of its sheer size. It's an absolute beast of a system! Build quality is stellar; very heavy iron workstation....I almost called it 'old world workstation'...but it's got a little more aging to do before it earns that title.....but time will take care of that.... Modern Dell 'workstations' are thin, light, and flimsy like everything else these days.

...and the mystery system is a Precision T7400 Workstation... Datestamp on the case says May 2009; which fits the era for the CPU that is in it and DDR2 FB...and lets say hello!



Unit is complete minus the HDD...no big deal...but it is very very dusty!





Time to fire it up.... POST's and has a single E5405 @ 2GHz / 1333 FSB.... Yawn yawn...



I did some research on the chipset; which is the Intel 5400 Seaburg; a chipset I'm already familiar with. It was the only one for the LGA771 & Harpertown platform that supports 1600FSB....hmmmm...and look what's in the bin! A pair of E5472's @ 3GHz / 1600FSB. The fastest it could take would be the X5492, 3.4GHz.....but those are still ~$75 a pop...so I'll stick with the ones I have. The question was if this particular system would be able to run this....just because the chipset supports it doesn't mean Dell didn't cripple it.



There was a problem though....I installed one CPU and all I got was an amber power LED and full speed fans....well frack... Put the original CPU back in and had a peek at BIOS revisions....and it was A03; an early one....so I'll update it, that usually cures these kinds of issues.



That did indeed cure it. Put an E5472 CPU0 socket and it POST'd right up....so now for the virgin CPU socket! I don't have the heatsink....I found one on ebay for $18, so one is on the way....but for testing purposes, this will do.



Yeah baby! Note the FSB speed.



Now time to clean this up.







Everything blown out. Cleaned up nice. Yes, that is a floppy cable. There's no floppy drive and the blank is there....I'll simply delete that. No need for the clutter.







Empty butt shot...



HDD caddies. One is missing; was removed with the HDD....no biggie...I have a box full of them, they're common ones.



The sound card upgrade is a Sound Blaster SB0460 X-FI; apparently a really good card for the day. No, that big plug on the back is not a joystick port...apparently it's some kind of digital interface, it has a 3rd row of pins unlike a joystick port.



More cleaned.



1000W PSU. Caps are good. Strange modular with a single connector.



...and the motherboard all cleaned off...



The money shot....



Reassembly time...





This was the GPU that was it.... No idea what it is, nor do I really care....gonna be a piece of shit. I have bigger plans.



Has that goofy plug that goes to a dual DVI pigtail.



...getting there....



This is as far as I can go for now.....I have to wait on the second heatsink. I also scored 64gb of Fully Buffered DDR2 for 30 bucks....wow it has gotten cheap! 64gb is the max it can take. The chipset can handle 128gb, but the largest module available is only 8gb....so only some server that has 16 slots could actually get the full 128gb.....but I'm sure 64gb will be just fine....especially considering that even today 8gb is 'entry level'. I also removed the Vista COA & front badge..... What OS will be on this is to be determined. Win7 would keep it period-specific, but this would run 11 with no strain....something to ponder.



...so all closed up for now...



Another butt shot...



The conclusion coming soon.......

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

We're doing a quick revisit of the Dell XPS 410 build that had the mishap with the rear PS/2 header ribbon:

Butt shot... I deleted the rear header for the PS2 & serial ports, as I accidentially tore the ribbon that connected it to the mainboard. It wouldn't release from the plug and the ribbon pulled out of the plug. Oops....ohh well, I always use USB anyway.

Noooooo!!!!! I love PS/2 and it is always my first choice for KB/MS if the mobo has the ports. I wish my E520 & E5150 came with a PS/2 header/bracket, but they didn't When I went to look for one on ebay (some years back), $15-20 just seemed silly to spend on cable for a junk low-end C2D CPU.

Since Momaka seemed annoyed by my blunder of tearing the ribbon (it aggravated me too), I hung onto the header....I just stuck it in the case, it was floating around loose on the case floor.....

Well I was scrapping computers today that were trash and there was a GX620 SFF slimline that was all beat to hell, PSU was bad and of course the motherboard had bad caps. Not fixing this....and as I'm taking it apart, I notice it has a PS/2 low profile rear header, which won't work in mine....but I also noticed that the ribbon is the same as the one I tore.



Hot dog!! Same part number and same connector configuration!



Good cable swapped over.



Installing....



Buttoned up.



Perfect!



Much better!!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Got a massive dropoff of printers & monitors from a local real estate office today; right around 5:15PM today........Anymore, I toss monitors into a gaylord bound for the recycle center; as they're just so worthless....even the bigger ones....really sad... Anything under 24" I don't keep unless it's blonde or a larger (20"+) 4:3 A/R. If they work, I donate them to Goodwill if I have time to check them. Broken ones, I don't even take apart to find out why. I didn't have time to check this bunch, so off to the gaylord they went.....printers too.

As I was grabbing monitors, I picked one up that I thought was a bit heavy for a modern monitor.....just as I was about to give it a toss into the bin. Thankfully I had good enough of a grip on it that it didn't get slung........and boy I was glad for that!! I should have known, this was the same place that sent me those two 27" HP AIO's a few months back.

The 'monitor' in question is a Dell Optiplex 9020 AIO 23". I had to toss THIS BUILD off the bench to work on this....fortunately that build was already complete.







It would not boot; no boot device error. I wasn't sure if the drive was removed for data security reasons or if it was just bad....it's hit or miss with this company, sometimes they're pulled sometimes they're not. I couldn't hear it....so apart it came.

Cage removed around the motherboard. The first thing I noticed was there was no wifi adapter....in an AIO....unreal!! It never had one, the little clear plastic sleeves were on the ends for the antenna coaxial cables (left side of pic they're visible).



IO panel. This isn't the usual crap AIO. Socketed CPU, internal PSU (unlike most modern ones that use a brick), HDMI & VGA out for multi displays. This is the first modern AIO I've seen that had PS2 keyboard & mouse ports though!





After realizing how deep the HDD is buried in this, I know they didn't pull it....it was just bad.



...but lets experiment...this had a 4th gen I5 in it @ 2.9GHz....hmmmm... I had a HP Pro die on me that had an I7-4590K @ 4GHz...lets just see if it'll play nice with it....

Yeah baby!



It came with 8GB RAM, but can obviously take 16. I don't have any 8gb modules on hand....so it's 8gb for now....so back to the HDD...

Old one and what will be replacing it!!





Yes, I added a wifi adapter....for crying out loud!!



...and done... Win10Pro activated and away it went.



This shouldn't be too hard to rehome. AIO's still sell...it's towers I can't give away anymore....

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

This post was a real joy to create....in the process, the camera's "odometer" rolled over 10k (again) which goes from 9999 back to 0000, which gets all the numbers out of whack with the software that resizes them all.....but anyway...

I decided to run with 2gb RAM....plenty for an XP box and a nice number versus 3.24GB

...but I had to dig through the scrap box of small DIMM's to find 4 matching sticks.....I don't keep anything DDR2 that's smaller than 1GB....



Finally, 4 matching sticks!



Back in the oven testing.





While the current round of RAM is baking in the oven, time to clean this beast.





I won't go into all the gory details of cleaning....but it was very thorough on this one, it was in a state of absolute filth.... EVERYTHING got washed!

Cleaned parts. The floppy, optical, and card reader were completely disassembled and cleaned. Fortunately they all worked. Had they not, it'd have created some headaches.





Progress.





I won't be using the original 160GB WD HDD. I don't even know if it's good... I have one last remaining 300GB Velociraptor, a beautiful fit for this one.



Getting pretty close.



Next up is the power supply.





On top of the bad caps, I wasn't real dazzled with the build quality for its rating of 400W.



Apart.



Time to replace the melted cable end.



A replacement scavenged from some junk PSU.



Junk one removed.



Recapped.



Cleaned and back in the case.



Assembly completed and cabling tied up.





Install time.





Yay, works!



The GPU that came with it did not work and even after running the numbers it remains unidentified. This system came with a plethora of GPU's; nvidia 6600GT seemed to be the most common. I used a 7600GT. I had a single-slot 9800GT here somewhere, but I seem to have misplaced it; I couldn't find it.....so this is it for now...and the 7600GT is more period-specific for the build anyway. I did play a little Q3A on it....and with FF 24ESR it can browse BCN without any problems..... This one was likely a bit of a waste of time...ok, maybe not....perhaps just a little disappointed I couldn't squeeze a little more performance out of it...but it is restored.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

They would have been wasted anyway. i945 does not support memory remapping, so you'd get 3.something GB usable anyway.
How much the .something is depends on the motherboard and gpu, but I've even seen 150 megs or less, I did sometimes use such machines to "dispose" of useless 512MB DIMMS (2x1 + 2x512)

You are 100% correct; see the memtest pic above.......only seeing 3.24GB of the installed 8GB. I didn't even catch that......

Looks like I bet on the losing horse this time around.... ...but I'm too far down the rabbit hole to scrap the build.....I guess every collection is allowed one turd build.