I had noticed that days when we didn't get much sun but I used hot water had much more progress than days where I did not use hot water. So that got me thinking that heat might be able to be used as a substitute for UV light.
I cut a small piece...
370forlife
Large Marge
Last Activity: 02-03-2026, 11:12 AM
Joined: 08-23-2008
Location: MI
-
Just wanted to share a retrobright technique I have been messing around with and having success with. Sunlight is not always a guarantee where I live, and even on sunny days you get about 8 hours of good sun to work with. Forget about it in the winter. I have heard not many success stories with UV LEDs or CFLs as a substitute.
I had noticed that days when we didn't get much sun but I used hot water had much more progress than days where I did not use hot water. So that got me thinking that heat might be able to be used as a substitute for UV light.
I cut a small piece... -
The X6DAL-TB2. I wound up finding the latest bios image (I think, couldn't find a version just a date - 12/15/06 for the latest vs 10/06/05 that came on it) attached to a FAQ on Supermicro's website that was tagged for that board. I pulled the bios chip and flashed it with an eprom programmer as I couldn't find a utility from SM . I did wind up finding the manual on theretroweb, and I uploaded that latest bios image there as well. I don't think Paxvilles were ever officially supported, I think just Nocona and Irwindale....Leave a comment:
-
I've lost some faith in supermicro recently after the issues I had with the X6DAL board. I know, its like 20 years old at this point, but to not have any drivers, bios, or documentation available at all and then tell me its because it is EOL despite the fact that they have all that stuff available for socket 7 pentium boards is annoying....Leave a comment:
-
A new (to me) soundblaster PCI512 came in and it worked immediately, so there was some sort of weird low level incompatibility with the X-Fi and the X6DAL-TB2 motherboard.
I also designed and 3D printed a cowl for the two heatsinks to have a single 120mm fan pulling air through both at the same time. That fan ejects straight into the rear 120mm case fan, which I also upgraded to a 38mm thick Nidec TA450DC to help pull more air though the case and especially over the ram and northbridge. Keeping CPU temps around 75C at full chooch now which I am really happy with.
...Leave a comment:
-
I remember seeing those Dell XPS and the similar Precision machines in MaximumPC back in the day and drooling over them. So cool looking....Leave a comment:
-
Supermicro says Nocona or Irwindale only. These things are such a pain to install with the heatsink brackets I made anyway 😅.
I did figure out the bios flashing. I found a utility from AMI to do it. It flashed successfully. The version number is still the same, but the build date is about 2 years newer. Anyway, it didn’t fix the issue with the sound card....Leave a comment:
-
Second CPU finally showed up, popped it in and it booted up no problem.
Had to run a classic 3Dmark06 CPU test and see what kind of improvements we get.
Single CPU installed:
Second CPU installed, CPU-Z action:
Dual CPU result:
Nice. Close to doubling our CPU score there. Watching it run the test, I think this did a little better than my old 64x2 5000+ back in the day.
The amount of heat coming off the processors is monstrous. I think I'm going to have to come up with a better...Leave a comment:
-
I tried both Creative's driver disk and Daniel_K's drivers for this card. Both work fine in the P3 machine, but both fail to detect the card in the supermicro motherboard. This card is an actual Creative card, not an OEM/Dell card.
Bios images are not available for this motherboard, and any I can find are the same version that is already on it. The whole X6DAL series of motherboards is missing from Supermicro's support website, so if there is later bios versions out there, they are long gone....Leave a comment:
-
The sound card showed up today, a Soundblaster X-Fi pci, SB0460. I cannot for the life of me get it to work nice with this motherboard though.
I popped it into another machine, a P3 with XP 32bit installed, drivers installed just fine and it works great.
In this machine, windows detects it, it appears in Device Manager but needs drivers. Any drivers I can find flat out refuse to detect it, though. I read that some Soundblasters had issues with 64bit systems and systems with more than 4GB of ram, so I reinstalled XP 32bit on it and removed half the ram for a total of...Leave a comment:
-
The original Xbox used a supercap. It was a 2.5v 1F cap and they are prone to failure. As long as the xbox was connected to mains, it would keep the cap charged and maintain the date/time. They expected that this would be the case as most people just leave their consoles plugged in all the time. In the event it was unplugged or there was a power failure, the cap would last a few hours or so before completely discharging....Leave a comment:
-
Are others allowed to post builds here too 😁?
I went on a bit of a nostalgia trip and have been building a collection that spans my childhood, starting with a 486 up to the P4/Athlon 64 era.
This is my latest build, I thought Topcat would get a kick out of this. This first part is scarce of pictures, bare with me as I word vomit. Picked up this case at a local auction along with a few other computers. I wasn't too fired up about it as I thought it was just a crap basic Vista-era build by a local computer shop, and it was, but it wound up being the one I...Leave a comment:
-
Re: Power supply build quality pictorial. part 2
Yuelin aren't the worst units I have seen. I would put them below sunpro, though.Leave a comment:
-
Re: Power supply build quality pictorial. part 2
Emacs rolls their own and they are usually quite good quality workstation/server grade units....Leave a comment:
-
Re: Power supply build quality pictorial. part 2
Coolmax uses (or at least use to, been about 10 years since I got into one,) Yuelin. The seemingly now defunct Broadway Comm Corp also used them....Leave a comment:
-
Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project
Ahh the X6DAL board. I had an X6DAL-G when I was in highschool as my main computer. I'm not sure what happened to that machine. I think it fell victim to my Dad's murderous computer recycling after I moved out. Sorry, that just made me really nostalgic.Last edited by 370forlife; 05-15-2018, 07:46 AM.Leave a comment:
-
Re: Gigabyte GA-586DX Retro Goodness
I've been getting really into retro systems lately. The fact that it is ATX is way cool. I have been trying to hunt down a dual socket 7 AT board at a reasonable price.Leave a comment:
-
Re: Power supply build quality pictorial. part 2
I had one of these, except with a dual 80mm fans. It was actually a pretty decent 300W unit. They have OPP that steps in at around 350W....Leave a comment:
-
Re: Power supply build quality pictorial. part 2
The messy but complete design and choice of dodgy components makes me think it is an old Superflower design....Last edited by 370forlife; 04-08-2016, 08:50 AM.Leave a comment:
-
Re: HEC Orion HP585D
Weird, I come back after a while and see one of my old threads resurrected the same day.Leave a comment:
-
Re: did i pull the foil tube out?
If it is the power supply, chances are it is single layer. You most likely just have a blob of solder on the leg of the capacitor shaped like the hole. A picture would be helpful.Leave a comment:
No activity results to display
Leave a comment: