So here's a bit of a challenge. I'm running on a 12 year old computer ever since my labby exploded and a new one is two months away. First let's get these specs down:



Alright, I know I'm one crazy nutjob, but the surprising bit is the power I can squeeze out of this system to play games from ~2003/2004. Anyway, it makes for a fun project while waiting for my new labby.

This compy's best feature is its sound, which I recently obtained from a friend of mine who is a huge sound/computer guy. We're talking about sound that literally melts my ears, and makes me drool when I think about the audio that will come from an audiophile card. Needless to say, I'm keeping this compy even with my laptop for merely a glorified music device. At least until I build a new tower.

It's worst feature, as many would guess, is its processor, which holds many of its components back. A 1 GHz processor is hardly worth mentioning; it struggles with some basic windows tasks on Microsoft's most streamlined OS (save windows 2000). Even overclocked to 1.2, while a significant improvement, cannot meet the needs of the tasks required. I cannot play online videos or run games this computer should obliterate. It's the only component save the mobo that I have not upgraded since first receiving it, and I'm damn well sick of the thing.

So, as my first step in this project I'm going to purchase a new processor. My budget for it is <$30, which should be on ebay easily. The fastest I can pull off is a 2.2 GHz (the Athlon XP 3200+, the fastest socket A proc). If I can find one I'll jump on it. This will nearly double my processing power, which has some wonderful implications. Overclocking to get it up to 2.6 will be terrific.

Future miniprojects include rewiring and cleaning.

Pictars coming soon.

LOL OCed AT 1.2 GHz! That's really funny lol. I wish I had a dedicated sound card. If you're willing to put in a couple bucks into this computer, you could just buy a 1 gb RAM stick and replace the malfunctioning one. I think that could help. ;o

Quote from Dem0nS1ayer

LOL OCed AT 1.2 GHz! That's really funny lol. I wish I had a dedicated sound card. If you're willing to put in a couple bucks into this computer, you could just buy a 1 gb RAM stick and replace the malfunctioning one. I think that could help. ;o

Memory isn't too high on my priority list. My computer consistently runs at 50% use peak, so I don't see the need to invest money into it.

Another good adventure from that era is Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

So today I decided to take apart and clean my buried treasure ARRRR! First a few pics of it:





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Now let's see the nightmare I have unleahsed:





Professional wiring at its finest

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I did manage to clean a lot of components though:



Mmm dusty.



Looks new now wheee

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Now for my card line up:







Those pics were after I cleaned them. That gpu fan was a bitch.

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Look what I found! A mythical floppy disk drive. And you thought they didn't exist



This picture kinda makes me feel old. Turns out 1998 had lasers, who knew.

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My processor, can't wait until I get a new one. Bastards...

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And apparently the other pics I took went MIA. I'll get a pic of the finished product up when I install my new processor, I guess.

Lol 1998 had lasers

Quote from Sacrieur

Look what I found! A mythical floppy disk drive. And you thought they didn't exist

I don't know exactly where it went, but I had one of these laying around here somewhere ...

Quote from O)FaRTy1billion

I don't know exactly where it went, but I had one of these laying around here somewhere ...

I have two black ones around here that only support disks up to 360KB. The end of the cable that plugs into the computer is the same, but it has a different connector on the other end that they no longer supply on newer cables.

Holy cow, the back of your computer looks like the back of my old computer. My old computer was manufactured by Soyo though

work at a computer store. I have access to almost infinite floppy drives. We recycle most of them.

The real gems are the 5" hard drives and floppy drives or slot processors.

I wish I could work at a compy store, that'd be neat.

Anyway, so I finally purchased a processor. I know I could have gotten for $10 less, but didn't feel like putting it in the hands of a non-confirmed seller, not when I want this part pretty badly.

In other news I'm overclocked to 1.3 GHz, stable. Looks like cleaning my PC did it a favor. I'm also going to give the RAM a boost, turns out it has 256 MB being donated to video. Don't need that with a 512 MB video card.

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Edit: ran in to a bit of a snafu (emphasis on the f). When I tried to restart my computer I accidentally hit the reset button, and it wouldn't restart. Me, being a clever cookie, tried to fix it, but only ended up with invalid boot partition error. So now I put in the windows installation disc and say, "oh well I'll just reinstall the whole thing." Hahaha .

I get this ill-fated message:



Of course, it has little to do with the CD/DVD drivers and more to do a ton of other shit it won't tell me. I'm glad the monkeys at microsoft can communicate well . THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU RUSH A PRODUCT. Take a note from Blizzard and don't push so hard to get it out on schedule. Damn.

Anyway, the issue IS something with the DVD drive, so I attempted to install XP from the drive and then install windows from that installation. Feasible, except that every time I try to install windows XP I get a bluescreen. Used two different installation discs (no they're not cloned), two different HDDs, and two different DVD/CD drives. And since I don't care enough to sort out the fubar happening there I said fuck that shit I'll just boot from USB.

Of course, booting from USB on a mobo from 1998 (with bios software from 2001, yay!) is no easy task. So I must use this program to enable a USB boot installation on a bios that doesn't have USB boot abilities. I just finished making the USB flash drive ready for booting, so all that's left now is to create the boot CD for booting from USB.

Wish me luck

Might be the overclock.

Quote from ShadowFlare

Might be the overclock.

Nah, it wasn't the overclock. I've adjusted by adding 0.275 volts (the max allowed by my bios) into the processor. I can run 1.3 GHz very stable at a respectable 60 C peak and 45 C idle. I wasn't the only one to have the problem either, it had to do with the IDE connections and Windows 7 being unable to handle something. I fixed it by installing from the USB (on USB 1.1, ick -- need to upgrade in the future).

So yeah, I'm running 1.3 GHz stable on a very cool system with 4 MB AGP aperture size (down from 256 MB). Needless to say I've squeezed very nearly all I can out of this system. I have some master/slave readjusting to take care of, but for the most part it's all fixed. Once I get my new processor I'll see how it performs (Excited for it ). Upgrading my CPU fan so I can OC it would be neat.

Maybe putting in a USB 3.0 card to rid myself of the USB 1.1 issue would be nice.

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Edit: I am having video card issues after the installation and receive this error:


I've re-installed and played with the drivers, that's not it. My next instinct is to check around my computer guts to see if I didn't knock anything loose. If not that then idk, because everything else is working correctly. The OC may be affecting it, I'll decrease the frequency to 1.2 GHz and see how that goes, but I hate to lose 100 MHz of processing power because one component is slightly malfunctioning.

So I've known for awhile that ATI continued making AGP cards until the 4xxx series (for what reason I honestly have no clue). So that makes this card the fastest AGP gpu money can buy. For some reason my mainboard doesn't run AGP 8x. I wish it did though, I could get a lot more performance out of it then. Maybe I should get a new mobo (of course, why stop with AGP when I could get PCI-E).

Edit2: I've managed to fix the gpu error, all I had to do was increase the AGP aperture size, I have it set at a measly 64 MB. Also, I've OC'd to 1333 MHz, which seems to be very near the limit of my computer's abilities. Any more and the system becomes unstable. New processor is said to come in 7 to 14 days, so that's about 5-12 days left now. I'm getting it from China apparently, so whee.

Edit3:

So I got my new processor. But I'm having issues with the clock speed. It runs at 1.1 GHz at 100%, despite the fact I know it should be running at 2.2 GHz. AHA! The error is with the bios, I tell myself. So hunting down my old manual to figure out wtf my mobo is doing to underclock this work of art.

Turns out my mobo doesn't support processors at this speed, so I'm stuck using it 1474 MHz. A marginal improvement over 1333, but seriously underclocked. Need new mobo.

So let's see what's up today, also new pics of processor =D. First some current status system specs:
















Look at that cpu. WTF IS UP WITH THAT. Yes I've OC'd it by 34% =3. But that's an irrelevant power boost, I'm interested in the RAM, which is showing up as 166 MHz when it should be 266 MHz. Looks like something is guilty of slowing my system down. I'm eyeing that 133 MHz RAM. Yes I'll lose RAM, but possibly gain serious performance in DRAM speed and processor capabilities (I hope).

Oh, and my new processor is so perty (it's the green one):

Double Data Rate RAM. Yes they run at a 166MHz clock but they can be read / written 2 times per cycle (on falling and rising edge).

My old computer adventures were more epic I think (you can compare):

1) 1993-2001

My PC Was next:

486 DX2 66 MHz
8 MB RAM
256 MB HDD
15 inches monitor (Samsung as I remember), 1024x768x85Hz max
1 MB VideoCard, integrated to motherboard (cirrus logis, as I remember), 75HZ max (which killed my eyes totally - I will never forget this mistake).
3.5 and 5 inch floppy drives

In 1995 parents bought me:

- soundblaster (media magic) with cheap stereo sound speakers
- CDROM (Sony, 2x, which plugged to PC via slot on the sound card)
- 1200 MB HDD (WD)
- 36 MB RAM (32 MB as 4x8MB and additional 4 MB on moherboard - I dont remember the details, but total displayed MB in bios was 35840 KB, and I sucessfully loaded 33MB SMKs to RAM (using smackply.exe), so it was more than 32MB )


Most epic things I did on this PC:

- finished singleplayer of dungeon keeper 1, duke3d, quake 1, quake 2, starcraft, starcraft broodwar. Played quake 1 with bots.

I had average 10 fps in Quake 1 (20 max, 3 min), average 7 fps in Quake 2 (15 max, 1 min).
Also I tried to play Hexen 2 on this PC, and FPS, which was 0,2 (1 frame per 5 seconds) killed my mind and I decided not to play Hexen 2 on this PC:)

The loading time of Quake 2, as I remember, was approximately 3 minutes for main game and 3-5 minutes for ingame levels or "load game".

About Starcraft - It had approximately 20 fps, if you dont scroll screen, and 3 fps if you scroll screen. The main menu had also 3 fps.
About SMK - read below. Game speed was "slower" (on complex maps) or "normal" (on easy maps, like terran tutorial), if I set it to "fastest" (because of slow PC). Speed of replays was also divided - It was "slower" if I set it to "fastest x1", and "fastext x2", if I set it to "fastest x16". The melee computer AI was even worse, than in original SC, but on normal PC.

The loading time of Starcraft/BroodWar, as I remember, was approximately 7 minutes for main game (main menu) and 5-20 seconds for ingame levels or "load game".


- browsed Internet via Netscape Communicator, because Internet Explorer worked too slow, but, even in Netscape, page with 25 photos in it (starcraft battle report for eample) loaded during 5 minutes or even more, ans this is not because of slow interned speed - even if I try to open HTM file from HDD (without connection to the internet), it loaded duting 5 minutes.

- played MP3 files in 22khz mono quality, because this PC cannot run stereo 22 khz or mono 44hkz - too slow processor for that. The main fun was, that playing 22kz mono WAV files doesnt need a fast processor, so sometimes I played Starcraft with ingame music - and it really did not big influence to the fps! The influence was like "3-5 fps lower" (scrolling FPS was the same (3 fps), and non-scrolling FPS was 15-17 fps).

- wrote personal software for unpacking music from Red Alert 2, unpacked it, played it and and recorded it to the audio tape

- created my first version of Crazy CPU map (if you want - I can create topic about that map on SEN, but think I dont need it, because most of people know this map) and tested some balance (first ver was 1x1 only, designed for ZvP only, without air attacks after 15 minutes of the start of the game). I should say, that I created Crazy CPU without any internet tutorial - I just read the blizzard's staredit help, opened Blizzard maps and campaign missions (for example bunker command or terran05) and watched how they did triggers. This is only tutorial I had till June 2008.

- copied a lot of games like redalert, starcraft quake 2 and so on - fully on hard drive (for faster work). The total time for copy of 500MB starcraft's install.exe file was approximately 1 hour.

- Had Win95, but played most of games (Quake 1 for example) in DOS because DOS was faster on that PC.

- SMKs of starcraft was unwatchable under windows and from starcraft engine, but I can watch unpacked (by MPQView) versions of them in DOS, if I load them fully to the RAM (using smackply.exe). The fun part was, that zerg2.smk take 64 MB of space, so I cut it to two 32 MB files using "rad game tools" and then watched it in DOS using smackply.exe. The cutting process took, as I remember, 2 hours (1 hour per each 32MB part). Also I watched Dungeon Keeper's and Wrestle Mania's SMKs in the same way.

- Created a mixcut of the best fragments of the Wrestle Mania's SMKs in a single SMK file. The rendering process took 3 hours as I remember


And top1 most epic thing on that PC: as you read above, the Starcraft's melee speed was "normal" at start of the game, and "slower" after 2 mins of the game. And I learned staredit.exe via help and Blizzard maps.

What I did: I created the map (changed bloodbath), where all speed things like "building time", "research time" were 4x faster, and all costs were 4x lower. I placed 3 enemy computers in it (zerg, terran and toss). It was very nice for me to play "fastest" speed on my slow PC, even with slow movement speed of units and projectiles. Also I experimented with 2x2 (1 PC was set to ally by triggers).


This PC was most epic PC in my life lol:)



2) 2001-2008

Summer of 2001: parents told me, that if I will sussessfully enter the best university in my city as "non payable student" (will not be forced to pay for study) - they will bought me a PC with approximately $1200 cost.

So here is my PC for 2001-2008:

AMD Athlon 1133 MHz
256 MB RAM
Geforce 2 GTS 32 MB
Via KT 266 chipset
IBM 40GB HDD
Sony CD-RW 32x/12x/8x
Monitor 17 Inch Samsung 700 ift (CRT one) with 1600x1200x60Hz max (most of the time I used 1024x768x100Hz)
Creative SBLive 5.1 Sound Card with 5.1 sound speakers which cost $300 in that time


Can you imagine the difference between

486 DX2 66 / 36 MB RAM / 1200 MB HDD / 1 MB VideoCard 75HZ max /15 inches monitor with 1024x768x85Hz max / non-writable 2x CD-ROM / stereo sound card with cheap stereo sound speakers

and

Athlon 1133 / 256 RAM / Geforce 2 with 32 MB video / 40 GB HDD / rewritable 32x/12x/8x CD-RW / SBLive 5.1 with good speakers / 17 Inch Monitor with possibilities to 1024x768x100Hz or 1600x1200x60Hz

in 2001 ?

And please read again, what I did with old PC, and how it will fly on a new PC! I mostly impressed, how starcraft loading time can take only 1 second, how SMK rendering can take less than 1 minute and how Hexen 2 can show 120 fps. It is unforgettable feeling!
Another good impressions were possibility to watch movies, collect installed games on HDD wihtout deletion and so on.

In 2001 I thought that it is powerful PC, but today, as you understand better than me:), this is slow PC.

So - what epic things I did from 2001 till 2008 in that PC:

- Had WinXP, but played most of games (Doom3 for example) in Win98 because Win98 was faster on that PC.

- Finished Warcraft 3 RoC (maxed graphics), 30% of Doom3 (on minimal graphics settings), Need for Speed Underground 1, 2 (on maxed graphics settings) and Most Wanted (on minimal graphics settings, but in 1024x768), Painkiller and Painkiller BOOH (on maxed graphics)

Doom3 had approximately 20 fps, minimum 5 fps. NFSU1 and NFSU2 had playable FPS. NFSMW had unplayable FPS, so I ran it in Win98 and deleted all sounds from the game for reduce the RAM usage, so FPS became playable (I ran Doom3 also in Win98). Painkiller's FPS was playable on minimal ghraphics settings, and sometimes was "unplayable" on maxed graphics, but the developers of Painkiler created a special algorithms, which slowing the game speed (like "faster" "normal" "slower" in BW) if processor cannot make playable FPS, so the game was playable even if FPS is slow. Warcraft 3 RoC, as I remember, was playable on maxed graphics most of the time (except last missions).

Also I should say, that I patched Doom3 and NFSMW for run them in Win98 (because they had Win98 protection, designed for for XP-play only).


3) Nowadays

Today I have good PC (it run hard SC2 scenes on best graphics settings without any fps lags), and it's fun to remember about what I did on old slow ones. That's realy - really nostalgy:) Those games in "3 fps mode" and "minimal graphic settings" in that time made more pleasure for me, than current games with normal fps now.

most of the things theleo_ua just said.
I had a crap pc that I would play starcraft on and now I have an ultra gaming computer that can play starcraft 2 on the best settings, even on maps like Desert Strike.
mind you my computer I had awhile back wasn't nearly as bad as theleo_ua's pc, but it was worse than sacrier's old PC. I still have it sitting like 5 feet away.

Quote from NudeRaider

Double Data Rate RAM. Yes they run at a 166MHz clock but they can be read / written 2 times per cycle (on falling and rising edge).

This explains much.

And zomg theleo, I feel for you =(. Using only 1133 MHz until 2007? Must be so terrible.

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So the issue is definitely not with the RAM, but my mobo. My mobo is at the end of its life cycle, I believe. It doesn't support my loverly athlon xp 3200+ at its proper speeds. So I must consider a new one, socket A. The notable upgrades will include a bios that doesn't suck balls, faster RAM speeds, 8x AGP (not that it is much better than 4x), and support for my athlon xp 3200+. This may be the last investment into this machine before I start setting aside cash for a newer, grander computer.

You know, something that will melt my face.

Quote from Sacrieur

And zomg theleo, I feel for you =(. Using only 1133 MHz until 2007? Must be so terrible

One small mistake (I fixed my post): I used this 1133 MHz until 2008.

And for me it was not so terrible (because it satisfyed most of my needs even in 2008) - the most "terrible" PC was 66 MHz, because it cannot run for example tiberian sun, red alert 2, dungeon keeper 2, normal starcraft multiplayer via modem and other games I wanted to play that time.

The most terrible thing of my second PC was "256 RAM" - even firefox (with extensions like "adblock") took 300 MB of ram, so it was a lot of annoying hdd swap usage.

And motherboard with ram and processor crashed (forever) during making of Castle Fight (the mother of desert strike) map in 2008, so I forced to buy a new MB\processor\RAM.

P.S. Now I really - really cannot imagine, how I can play that games on that crappy FPS and long loading time

UPDATE

Forgot to say: I cannot watch VODS on my 66MHz cpu, so I forced to watch "replays only" till 2001

Last attempt to breathe new life into this machine. By completely gutting most of it. I've grown a bit attached to the retro feel of the whole thing, so I'm not too worried about it. Call me sentimental. I don't really want to upgrade to newer technology. When I go off to college I'll build a new machine. Until then...

Mobo - ASUS A7N8X Rev 2.02
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Clearly the base I need to build it up from the dark ages, this is regarded by many as the best mobo that you can buy for this interface. It is actually designed to work with my current processor, also AGP 8x from AGP 4x.
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$55

GPU - XFX Radeon HD 4650 AGP 8x 1GB
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Pretty much the newest and greatest card for AGP. It won't run Crysis at five billion FPS, but it will run minecraft just fine. And that's really all I want from this machine.
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< $50

Memory - 2x Corsair 1 GB 400 MHz DDR
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$50


Cooling suggestions are welcome. I thought it would be fun to work with old technology. And it is somewhat satisfying. I have had this computer for a very, very long time, and I've grown a bit attached.