Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

[Topcat]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

I think I have a Voodoo3 AGP if you have trouble locating something.

I'm interested.

[Logistics]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

The XA says it's a D6731T. I cant seem to find an XA manual that lists specs like I did for the XM.

[ratdude747]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

I love being the inspiration!!! ...and now I feel accomplished knowing that you rescued a couple Kayak systems! I need to get the single CPU one finished up, but I still haven't found the GPU I want for it (something 3DFX no less). I did find a Katmai 600MHz CPU for the single CPU Kayak, the fastest one of these could take (they won't run Coppermines, even with the latest firmware).

It's not a 3DFX card, but you have an old radeon AGP card coming in your next ratdude loot shipment .

I think it's a 9000 or something of that vintage.

[Logistics]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

I was going to say the same thing. I have a 128MB Radeon 9200, which I believe can run on a AGP 1x/2x board, but its obviously, a totally different era than the Voodoo3. Back then you weren't meant to have an equal amount of video ram to your system ram. XD

[Topcat]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

I was going to say the same thing. I have a 128MB Radeon 9200, which I believe can run on a AGP 1x/2x board, but its obviously, a totally different era than the Voodoo3. Back then you weren't meant to have an equal amount of video ram to your system ram. XD

I'm still interested in that voodoo3.

[ratdude747]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

It's not a 3DFX card, but you have an old radeon AGP card coming in your next ratdude loot shipment .

I think it's a 9000 or something of that vintage.

Just checked, it's a 9000pro.

[rascao]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

It is beautiful truly beautiful that find

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

yupp the radeon 9000 pro is a good card to have for posterity as it was known as the geforce 4 mx killer back in the day! definitely worth saving and bringing it to a better home for better use! thumbs up to ratdude and topcat!

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

yupp the radeon 9000 pro is a good card to have for posterity as it was known as the geforce 4 mx killer back in the day! definitely worth saving and bringing it to a better home for better use! thumbs up to ratdude and topcat!

That's what I got on July 1, 2003 and then I found out that it was pretty much a crippled Radeon 8500, but a newer chip manufacturing process, IIRC. It was pretty much only better than a GeForce 4 MX, because of pixel shader 1x support.
It would get killed by a GeForce 4 Ti 4200, especially the 64 MB GeForce 4 Ti 4200s.

But even the Radeon 9000 Pro did anisotropic filtering well. Unlike anti-aliasing, no major performance hit.

[Topcat]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

yupp the radeon 9000 pro is a good card to have for posterity as it was known as the geforce 4 mx killer back in the day! definitely worth saving and bringing it to a better home for better use! thumbs up to ratdude and topcat!

RD is road trippin' tomorrow...so we'll find out soon enough!

[Topcat]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

Awakening my HP Kayak thread to introduce one of the first Kayak systems made when HP began to phase out the Vectra line and replaced it with the Kayak for high-end workstations. This one is the model XU 6/300; which is a dual Pentium2 supporting only Klamath cores; which in this case were the 300MHz, as per the model number. This one was local to ratdude; oddly enough from Purdue (his Alma mater)....but this one didn't work....



PSU was already removed by the seller, but included. PSU would not power up, no standby.



PSU is a Delta 260w model DPS-260EB A. 24-pin ATX connector, but it's not pinned out standard ATX. It's proprietary. A standard ATX could be modified to work, voltages are standard, but it would take major surgery to get the pinout right...



...SO lets see if I can fix this one...



It has no standby. No blown fuses. I did find a schematic for it, which helped.... Narrowed down to a bad TOP200YAI TO220 IC and an open 1ohm resistor.



This PSU was caked with dust...maybe it overheated.... Just to be on the safe side, I added a heatsink....but from what I gather, these IC's are prone to failure. I had to track down new-old-stock, as they're discontinued.





...and TADA!! Success!!





Booted Win2k. This was last used in 2003 by an instructor that taught a telecommunications class at Purdue; according to the data I found. I won't go into anymore detail than that.



I did wipe it and reload Win2k.... I also added 512mb RAM, the max it can take (LX Chipset).





Shazam!



I'll build this out a little more later on. Mission one was to get it working to make sure it was even buildable. I don't think I'll upgrade the CPU's, even if it's upgradeable... The HDD is a 4.3gb 68-pin SCSI that doesn't sound very healthy, but does work. GPU is Matrox Millennium2 4mb. This system is complete; with 19" CRT monitor, KB and MS....so I won't deviate it too far from stock save for maybe a healthier HDD and a period specific GPU upgrade....things that can be undone if necessary.....but for now, this rescue is alive again after twenty years!!

[ratdude747]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

Always happy to help out. Good work!

[TechGeek]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

Have you ever thought of getting female ATX connectors, pins, and a crimp tool and pinning up a custom adapter cable to go from $proprietary to ATX so a standard ATX power supply will just plug in (through the adapter cable) and work?

[Topcat]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

Have you ever thought of getting female ATX connectors, pins, and a crimp tool and pinning up a custom adapter cable to go from $proprietary to ATX so a standard ATX power supply will just plug in (through the adapter cable) and work?

I hadn't thought of that....Had I not been able to fix this one, I'd have probably pulled the entire harness from the bad one and transferred it to a standard ATX....which would have been a real pain.... Finding an OEM replacement for this PSU would be difficult and expensive.

Always happy to help out. Good work!

Thanks and thanks! This old Purdue relic being local to you was just fate!

[TechGeek]

Re: Went Kayaking....and it's not what you're thinking! HP XAs Restoration!

Food for thought, and maybe you could build yourself a nice collection of adapter cables.
Then comes the moment of someone digging through 300 adapter cables and muttering "I know I have that XA's adapter around here somewhere, but HERE is not it!"

[Topcat]

Another Kayak to add to the fleet. This was a dropoff from the same source that the Dual P-Pro Vectra came from. I didn't make a big to-do out of this one, as it's only a single slot board. It came with a bad 9.1gb SCSI HDD. The only uniqueness about it, it has the max CPU that can be utilized in it, rare for a couple reasons; as a factory option from the big box systems, the fastest CPU typically wasn't installed....and rareness # 2 is that this CPU is getting very difficult to find and pricey. It's running a 600/100 Katmai. It won't run Coppermines. I didn't try, but research on this model (Kayak 7/600) revealed that it won't. It has 512mb RAM, max it could take is 768mb; only has 3 slots. BX chipset. I just left the RAM as it was; 2x 128mb and 1x 256mb.

...and a few pics...








I just cleaned it up and installed another SCSI HDD (18.2gb) and reinstalled Windows 2000. The OS sticker on the front was missing....but I'm guessing it had 9x or NT on it originally.


Just another one for the Retro Fleet. Nothing really all that special about it other than it's not in a scrap bin.