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Resurrecting a 1999-Vintage Win98SE Machine


TELVM

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I know the flag here is similar but I'm not in Belgium (unfortunately). I'm not even sure we're allowed on eBay.
Here's an unconventional solution for replacing the HDD in old IDE comps (aka 'The Poor Man's SSD'): <snip>

Works like a charm in my dino.

You don't know what 'poor' means (and I hope you never find out). <sigh>

Nevertheless, thank you for the suggestions - it's good to know the available options, in case the opportunity comes up. For now, I'll stick with what works and leave drastic measures for later, when time comes.

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Oh, no need to apologyze, it's a fairly common confusion, happened to me too, a few times. :)

Don't worry, I know my place in the world is somewhere down the line. But let's not make it off-topic. ;)

Anyway, it's good info and someone might find it useful. :thumbupMuchas gracias! B)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi guys,

the other day I have gotten some 'old' hardware and one was a HP Compac d530 with a Intel 865 chipset.

First I thought cool but then ran into the usb-issues as well.

So I tried the ACPIoption registry patch but after reboot there was now an exclamation mark on plug'n'play bios

and almost none of the hardware was found.

When looking into the BIOS I was shocked because I have never seen such a weird one.

I also installed the latest BIOS but there was no progress.

I think (!) I found were to disbale ACPI but nothing for APM and PNP OS.

Does anyone maybe know what to do ?

If possible I would prefer to not deactivate any hardware with the device manager.

Best,

Mikl

Edit: I have unpacked NUSB 5.3 and let Windows grab the USB drivers.

Cool and thanks for all the great stuff and knowledge that can be found here !!!

Edited by MiKl
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  • 2 weeks later...

Wow. You managed to run a Tualatin on an old 440BX. Not even my newer 815 can do that. Coppermine is as far as it can go.

How much performance overhead is lost to the slotcket? Does it actually run as fast as a native 1GHz Coppermine or better?

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How much performance overhead is lost to the slotcket?

Honestly no idea.

Does it actually run as fast as a native 1GHz Coppermine or better?

I'd say it runs a bit better. Kicks the buttocks of a P4 2400 in some Aida64 tests as a matter of fact.

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I really hope it holds up... you're pushing it overclocking to 150mhz. The life of the RAM and CPU will shorten (but you know that already). I imagine you have great cooling too...

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I see the thermal performance of the case is much improved. You've cut out the rear grill, modded a hole towards the bottom front of the case, added vented drive covers, and pointed the CPU heatsink fan to blow into the motherboard. All the fans appear to be moderately slow fans though. The slotcket looks like a solid windproof wall, preventing horizontal airflow and creating a pocket of heated air underneath the heastsink fan. The PSU should help facilitate vertical airflow along the wall, but on the other side of it, the exhaust fan could be fighting with the PSU fan, perhaps breaking up the flow. I wouldn't imagine an overclocked 440BX producing much heat, unlike todays systems where TDP can exceed 400 watts or more, so it's probably running comfortably.

I'm amazed that a slot board with a slotcket and a Tualatin can outperform a P4 running natively. Makes me wonder if I should try to find an FCPGA2 Tualatin adapter for my 815 board... but then I might as well buy a whole mobo instead.

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Cool, I love educated discussion on cooling :w00t: .

... All the fans appear to be moderately slow fans though ...

In fact all the fans are throttled down to reduce noise (hate noisy comps).

The slotcket looks like a solid windproof wall, preventing horizontal airflow and creating a pocket of heated air underneath the heastsink fan.

You've touched it with a needle, Slot-1 is not good for cooling (the slotcket acts as a wall in the flow path, conventional Slot-1 heatsinks tipically obstruct northbridge chip cooling, etc).

To secure the correct flow path (low front to high rear) I sealed every other opening in the case (sides, floor, top, and every opening in the rear unless extractor fans). After that it's just a matter of tuning the fans RPM to get the required total cfm with minimun noise.

The PSU should help facilitate vertical airflow along the wall, but on the other side of it, the exhaust fan could be fighting with the PSU fan, perhaps breaking up the flow.

I drilled as low as possible, but the new rear 120 fan had to be relatively close to the PSU fan. I worried too about both fans 'fighting for air' in detriment of total flow, and considered drilling the top and flippng the PSU upside down.

In the end empirically they work OK together and as you say the PSU fan helps with 'turning the wall'.

I wouldn't imagine an overclocked 440BX producing much heat, unlike todays systems where TDP can exceed 400 watts or more, so it's probably running comfortably.

Yeah, at 33W TDP a Tualatin 1400-S is really small game, just with the minimal gadgets posted above you can keep it at 48C / 118F under torture while at 29C / 84F ambient. Notice I didn't even bother with intake fans, no real need.

The 440BX VRM 8.4 mosfets can be more of a problem however. They were designed for Coppermines, get extra stress with the Tualatin, and can fry if we don't take extra cooling measures.

I'm amazed that a slot board with a slotcket and a Tualatin can outperform a P4 running natively. Makes me wonder if I should try to find an FCPGA2 Tualatin adapter for my 815 board... but then I might as well buy a whole mobo instead.

Man this board has me astonished :blink: . Good ol' 440BX is truly a legend :thumbup .

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Changing subjects a little, you're aware it's quite easy to do away or change the "Fabricado y con soporte de:" for another phrase not exceeding the number of characters of the original, with a simple hexedit in sysdm.cpl, right?

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It's funny, I modify the text in sysdm.cpl and the first time I right click sys properties it shows OK, but afterwards it comes back again to the original text. Some Windows file integrity policing I guess?

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Try replacing it in C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUPS (if it's not there put a copy of the modded one there), then in C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS, and last in C:\WINDOWS. Does it still get back?

And, BTW, when hexediting it, take care to replace any unwanted character (for me that meant all of them -- I just wanted to remove the string) by hexadecimal 20 (which is <space>), so as not to change the size of the string. If the size changes windows will see the file as corrupt.

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Since your PC is 1999, you might want to consider instead of XP some Basic Linux 3.5, MicroLinux, TinyCore which reqire no separate partition and run off an image file. These use abot 20 MB RAM, and Sindi Keeson and others have the very best drivers -- all this being freeware. From within this you can run even win9x, 3.x, 2.x, 200x, XP, Vista and 7withe Wine or QEMU. And since it's all UMSDOS, you can simply delete it if you do not like it. You can load it even from two 1.44 floppies. The drivers are MUCH easier on old hardware and give MUCH better performance. IT WILL EXTEND THE LIFE OF THE PC BY SEVERAL YEARS. And with win emulators, you don't have to spend any time with LINUX.

Just a tho't on keeping the good ole hardware and even new hardware running as long as possible, And no more searching for hardware drivers since a great deal of SlackWare works.

Best,

Dave

Edited by dw2108
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