Kinda drifted away from this forum for a while due to school and other stuff with life, but I though I'd share this. I'm feeling rather good right now.
Over the weekend, I managed to get the first computer I ever owned up and running again. Now, it was only a Pentium, but this thing got me all through middle school, so doing a rebuild on this thing was a trip down nostalgia lane. I remember playing the old X-Wing and TIE Fighter games on this thing, and I remember being ****ed that a lot the classic games stopped working in Windows 2000.
Anyway, this machine was a Packard Bell with a semi-proprietary LPX motherboard ("Hillary" http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/8774/hillary.html ). When I got it it came in this configuration:
Pentium 75mhz
0kb L2 Cache
8mb Fast Page RAM
850mb Maxtor Hard Disk
4x NEC CD-ROM
1mb VRAM
Windows 95
It looked like this, though the case is flatter and only has one 5.25" drive bay:
http://www.recycledgoods.com/zoom_s_p_33471_1.jpg
This thing got shelved when the CD drive broke and I got my new computer. That was a decade ago, and just over the past few weeks, I finally got down to rebuilding it.
Fortunately, I had 128mb of EDO SIMMs lying around, so those went in. I also had a spare 20gb Seagate Barracuda IV which I also put in. A spare 12x CD-ROM I picked up from a friend replaced the broken drive. Those were obvious upgrades...
But why stop there? The great thing about the socket 5/7 format is just the sheer amount of upgrades that are compatible with it. From ebay I bought a power adapter socket mounted with a K6-3 for $60--a bit pricey, but a damn good price given the rarity of these parts.
This particular motherboard had a riser card of three slots: 2 ISA and 1 shared PCI/ISA. That gave me only one PCI slot to play with. I thought long and hard about whether to get a PCI vga card for it, but in the end I opted for one of my spare USB cards. The added functionality of the USB would make things a lot easier to install, and it's not like this computer can actually play 3d games well anyway. For the two ISA slots I inserted a Soundblaster AWE64 and a 3com LAN card. I upgraded the video memory to 2mb with a couple of SOJ chips.
A number of issues I ran into:
1. The original bios would only detect the 20gb hard disk as an 8gb hard disk. This was resolved with the BIOS upgrade, after which the motherboard could see the full 20.
2. A slew of IRQ conflicts were reported in the POST when I stuck the USB card in and started this computer with the original BIOS. I was afraid that I might have had to ditch any hope of getting this computer USB-ready, but I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the third-party BIOS upgrade supplied by Evergreen (the manufacturer of the K6-3 socket adapter). Whereas the supplied Packard Bell BIOS did not allow the user to change any of the system settings, Evergreen's own "Mr. Bios" BIOS offered many new advanced tweaking features like PCI latency, memory timing, and (yes!) manual PCI IRQ assignment. PROBLEM SOLVED.
3. The Triton 430FX is apparently incapable of booting off the CD, so I had to work with boot floppies. Not every boot floppy, though, allows for DOS-based detection of the CD drive, so I ended up making Win98se boot disks. However, the 98se diskette which had booted up on the old BIOS ran into problems on the new one. It would hang loading the file aspi2dos.sys (Adaptec AIC-6260/6360/6370 ASPI Manager). I removed this from the config.sys, and this issue seems to have been fixed.
4. Unfortunately, the BIOS update also killed the PS/2 mouse port for some reason. It could be more IRQ crap from maxing out the expansion cards on this machine. Consequently I had to use a serial mouse for the Win98se install. Once Windows was up and running, I upgraded this to a Logitech optical USB mouse, which runs flawlessly.
5. The first installation of Windows 98 loaded, but for some reason it did not recognize the CD drive. My only guess is (again)some IRQ conflict, since the USB card takes up multiple IRQs. I resolved this problem by moving the CD-ROM to the same cable as the hard drive. I reinstalled, and everything went without a hitch.
The final configuration, after all the hassle:
K6-3 380@400mhz
256kb L2 cache
128mb EDO RAM
20gb Seagate Hard Disk
12x Takaya CD-ROM
2mb VRAM
Windows 98se w/sp2.1a
Overall, I am quite happy with how this has turned out. Although Firefox and IE6 are a bit too heavy for this machine, it is running the efficient K-meleon browser. It is also running older versions of Adobe Acrobat and Open Office, which seem just about right for the hardware. I can do almost all basic tasks with this computer with the exception of graphical work and playing flash-intensive internet video.
I am most impressed, however, with the upgrade package from Evergreen--and especially the BIOS. It really reflects how much overclocking has changed over the years, from back when everyone was using Socket 5/7. These days you really don't see third party companies releasing alternative tweakers' BIOSes, especially not for specific, proprietary motherboards from individual manufacturers. These days, computers are much more disposable items, which is probably why the age of these upgrade solutions has long passed. The el-cheapo Dells and all get dumped now before anyone feels like upgrading them.
Now, all I need to do is to find some time to play some TIE Fighter.
Over the weekend, I managed to get the first computer I ever owned up and running again. Now, it was only a Pentium, but this thing got me all through middle school, so doing a rebuild on this thing was a trip down nostalgia lane. I remember playing the old X-Wing and TIE Fighter games on this thing, and I remember being ****ed that a lot the classic games stopped working in Windows 2000.
Anyway, this machine was a Packard Bell with a semi-proprietary LPX motherboard ("Hillary" http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/8774/hillary.html ). When I got it it came in this configuration:
Pentium 75mhz
0kb L2 Cache
8mb Fast Page RAM
850mb Maxtor Hard Disk
4x NEC CD-ROM
1mb VRAM
Windows 95
It looked like this, though the case is flatter and only has one 5.25" drive bay:
http://www.recycledgoods.com/zoom_s_p_33471_1.jpg
This thing got shelved when the CD drive broke and I got my new computer. That was a decade ago, and just over the past few weeks, I finally got down to rebuilding it.
Fortunately, I had 128mb of EDO SIMMs lying around, so those went in. I also had a spare 20gb Seagate Barracuda IV which I also put in. A spare 12x CD-ROM I picked up from a friend replaced the broken drive. Those were obvious upgrades...
But why stop there? The great thing about the socket 5/7 format is just the sheer amount of upgrades that are compatible with it. From ebay I bought a power adapter socket mounted with a K6-3 for $60--a bit pricey, but a damn good price given the rarity of these parts.
This particular motherboard had a riser card of three slots: 2 ISA and 1 shared PCI/ISA. That gave me only one PCI slot to play with. I thought long and hard about whether to get a PCI vga card for it, but in the end I opted for one of my spare USB cards. The added functionality of the USB would make things a lot easier to install, and it's not like this computer can actually play 3d games well anyway. For the two ISA slots I inserted a Soundblaster AWE64 and a 3com LAN card. I upgraded the video memory to 2mb with a couple of SOJ chips.
A number of issues I ran into:
1. The original bios would only detect the 20gb hard disk as an 8gb hard disk. This was resolved with the BIOS upgrade, after which the motherboard could see the full 20.
2. A slew of IRQ conflicts were reported in the POST when I stuck the USB card in and started this computer with the original BIOS. I was afraid that I might have had to ditch any hope of getting this computer USB-ready, but I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the third-party BIOS upgrade supplied by Evergreen (the manufacturer of the K6-3 socket adapter). Whereas the supplied Packard Bell BIOS did not allow the user to change any of the system settings, Evergreen's own "Mr. Bios" BIOS offered many new advanced tweaking features like PCI latency, memory timing, and (yes!) manual PCI IRQ assignment. PROBLEM SOLVED.
3. The Triton 430FX is apparently incapable of booting off the CD, so I had to work with boot floppies. Not every boot floppy, though, allows for DOS-based detection of the CD drive, so I ended up making Win98se boot disks. However, the 98se diskette which had booted up on the old BIOS ran into problems on the new one. It would hang loading the file aspi2dos.sys (Adaptec AIC-6260/6360/6370 ASPI Manager). I removed this from the config.sys, and this issue seems to have been fixed.
4. Unfortunately, the BIOS update also killed the PS/2 mouse port for some reason. It could be more IRQ crap from maxing out the expansion cards on this machine. Consequently I had to use a serial mouse for the Win98se install. Once Windows was up and running, I upgraded this to a Logitech optical USB mouse, which runs flawlessly.
5. The first installation of Windows 98 loaded, but for some reason it did not recognize the CD drive. My only guess is (again)some IRQ conflict, since the USB card takes up multiple IRQs. I resolved this problem by moving the CD-ROM to the same cable as the hard drive. I reinstalled, and everything went without a hitch.
The final configuration, after all the hassle:
K6-3 380@400mhz
256kb L2 cache
128mb EDO RAM
20gb Seagate Hard Disk
12x Takaya CD-ROM
2mb VRAM
Windows 98se w/sp2.1a
Overall, I am quite happy with how this has turned out. Although Firefox and IE6 are a bit too heavy for this machine, it is running the efficient K-meleon browser. It is also running older versions of Adobe Acrobat and Open Office, which seem just about right for the hardware. I can do almost all basic tasks with this computer with the exception of graphical work and playing flash-intensive internet video.
I am most impressed, however, with the upgrade package from Evergreen--and especially the BIOS. It really reflects how much overclocking has changed over the years, from back when everyone was using Socket 5/7. These days you really don't see third party companies releasing alternative tweakers' BIOSes, especially not for specific, proprietary motherboards from individual manufacturers. These days, computers are much more disposable items, which is probably why the age of these upgrade solutions has long passed. The el-cheapo Dells and all get dumped now before anyone feels like upgrading them.
Now, all I need to do is to find some time to play some TIE Fighter.
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