Upgrading (and repairing) my Retro PC was PAINFUL!

[@homelate1306]

The joy of vintage x86-compatibles 😂 Been there, done that many times. Great video Tony!

[@tony359]

Thank you for watching!

[@valparaisosting]

Welcome to Via's world,the good thing is that you learn a lot with this kind of issues. Similar things happened to me with Ali 1621 working with a pentium 3 800 and a mx400. The ram also play an important role in stability because many times only a specific brand,chip,side and mhz works as it should

[@tony359]

We don’t realise how lucky we are these days 😂 (not that things are perfect but…)

[@valparaisosting]

​@@tony359 yeah, but also the best ever chipset i440bx has issues with ram,video card even power supply (i prefer the old Oem ones).sometimes isn't the chipset fault,the bios implementation by the motherboard manufacturer couldn't be the best. An i440 would be faster and stable on a Asus,etc or Oem motherboard than on a pcchips for example

[@Roadkill7878]

Sounds like you had a real mission there. A processor failing is a real rarity. I can feel your pain, I have been tinkering with numerous retro PCs over the last five years and met my fair share of problems. The Retro Web and Vogons have been a real help

[@tony359]

We couldn't do much without TRW and Vogons indeed! It's amazing someone created them! Thanks for watching!

[@R4dm1n]

I love how basically everything was causing issues left and right.

[@tony359]

yes, I've recently installed Windows on a Pentium 4, 30 minutes later it was done. I was like "what, already done?" :D

[@bakkus82]

Oh man. This illustrates so well the painful part of this hobby. You're a more meticulous and patient man than I am, Tony!

[@tony359]

eheh yes, when those "2 hours projects" turn into a 7 seasons series :) Thanks for watching!

[@barrybpl]

That was an adventure, well done for keeping going I would have been tempted to give up.

[@tony359]

Believe me, I was tempted on several occasions!! Thanks for watching!

[@LuisGuzmanJr]

What a great video and repair! Happy to see you use the Shuttle for your retro PC! Now i want to upgrade my shuttle motherboard from a Pentium 133 to an AMD K6II!

[@tony359]

"It's going to take a couple of hours" :) I hope your upgrade goes smoothly! Thank you for watching!

[@HelgeMdS]

What a journey… Thumbs up for your persistence.

[@tony359]

Cheers!

[@Epictronics1]

Omg. what a stubborn project! Well done!

[@tony359]

This was the next level of Stubbornness :) Almost as your IBM motherboard!

[@philscomputerlab]

What an epic journey 😊 These old machines need a lot of care 😂

[@tony359]

or a Hammer. Thanks for making all those files available on your website, Phil! It helps a lot!

[@asanjuas]

@@tony359 Hammer not, patience. All of us suffering from this problems. For example back in those i had (as it so happens) a mainboard with the infamous ALI M1541 M1530. And my problem begun with a TNT2 a K6/500 Mhz and a front side bus of 100 MHz. The long story short, believe it or not it's the problem is caused by the chipset not supporting 100 MHz front side bus with an AGP using the characteristics propers of an AGP Slot. 3DFx cards of course work because does not use AGP characteristics like the TNT2 / Radeon. The fails are hangs during the playing of any game. At the restart not restarting and some confusing things(not a problem on the processor) this seems to get fixed when you put 66 MHz FSB.

[@tony359]

Sometimes I forget how lucky we are with modern systems - they're not perfect but hey! :)

[@asanjuas]

@@tony359 That was to remember and share some histories of the nightmares of hardware back then. Yes today is more easy , but even today amd ryzen 7 7800x explodes with the mainboard!!!

[@tony359]

Oh yes I saw that! Well, components are becoming very power hungry nowadays...

[@bitsundbolts]

The UK must be out of bad memory modules after you collected all of them. But seriously, from where did you get the patience with this system! Congrats on getting it to work finally. Having multiple components playing bad is not fun!

[@tony359]

ahah - I am known for purchasing bad components though! It's a gift! Not fun at all particularly when the faults are intermittent/not obvious! Thanks for watching!

[@ramagdehz9400]

This is a retro PC builder nightmare. Watched your vid like a good thriller.

[@tony359]

eheh, cool! It's really a weird sequence of events! Thanks for watching!

[@shanemshort]

the second I saw the MVP3, I knew this was gonna be a ride

[@tony359]

:D

[@phillycheesetake]

This hasn't been my experience of SS7 MVP3/4. Everything I've used (Asus, FIC, Gigabyte, MSI, DFI, Shuttle) has worked without incident. Anecdotally, I've bought three MVP3 motherboards which the sellers swore did not work, and all were simple jumper settings being wrong.

[@tony359]

@@phillycheesetake I've got mixed comments online about the MVP3, someone saying they work fine, others saying they're a disaster. Who knows...

[@lloydieization]

Yeah, the YT Retro guys are seemingly lucky, as I have used PCI SATA controllers with SSDs and had problems, SATA to IDE converters had problems, Compact Flash to IDE and you guessed it, had problems... all these option are seemingly dependent on BIOS, Chipset, Speed and even seemingly electronic (buffer) circuit design etc. Named boards (DFI, ASUS etc..) seem to behave better ... I was an IT field engineer back in the day, so I also did PC repair... Maybe unfairly I hated anything with Shuttle in the name, as similar to the issues your experiencing ... I would replace multiple parts, do multiple OS installs and still had unexplainable, unsolvable (four hours was usually beyond economic repair) random behavior (crashes, lockups etc..) on many a Shuttle related system, not to mention at the time the VIA chipset BIOS tweaks/bugs etc were generally unknown. Retrospectively these system were always cheap.. so poor quality RAM, PSUs, Cards, BIOS implementation etc all probably helped sour the name in my eyes. Lastly while being an AMD fanboy (boy at 50?)... I virtually can't recall bad Intel CPU (maybe due to a known power surge) from this era, whereas at least a hand full of dead AMD K (Higher Clocked) series crossed my path, again probably related to Cheaply built systems e.g. heat sinks with no compound, poorly fitting etc...

[@tony359]

Well, equipment and software back then were unreliable by definition! But I thought CF was the best option, 100% compatible. It's not, now I know. I guess I'll try the SD-IDE adapter again but I might just want to use HDDs from now on. Thanks for watching!

[@laurencejohnson4106]

You got there!👍👍👍👍 I have an HP 8000 USDT PC., which worked sometimes, but it was very temperamental and I eventually found out what the problem was when I fitted a new cmos battery and it's socket broke off from the MB., it must have been loose for quite a while and because of that the contact was intermittent, it's still not fixed because I need to obtain a screwdriver which fits those peculiar HP MB., screws.

[@tony359]

Sounds like Apple special screws :) CMOS batteries can definitely cause weird issues! Thanks for watching!

[@laurencejohnson4106]

@@tony359 Hello Tony, yes, those proprietary screws are a pain, but one of my mates has a well equipped workshop, so when the weather warms up I shall take the PC., there, I kept the cmos battery socket which broke off just in case it can be reused. There is still snow on the highest hill here in Shetland.

[@mogwaay]

Wow, I would've totally chucked it all in the back of the cupboard after all those failures! Well done for percevering!

[@tony359]

I showed the system a big hammer on a few occasions! :D

[@tiagomdute]

In short, the problem was in the old and untested parts. I recently got an Asus p3b-f with 4 memory modules, 2 pc133 and 2 pc100, I only used the 128mb pc133s each. I installed 98se and ran some tests, 2 or 3 days later it stopped booting. In short, one of the modules stopped working too.

[@tony359]

I guess those things don't get better with age? :) Thanks for watching!

[@canaldrive_r]

Gosto desse canal pois o Tony é o cara mais realista desse youtube. Nada é tão perfeito como os outros canais desse tipo costumam mostrar. É assim que é e sempre foi. Parabéns pela sinceridade e pelo excelente conteúdo! Grande abraço de seu seguidor do Brasil. (I like this channel because Tony is the most realistic guy on KZbin. Nothing is as perfect as other channels of this type usually show. That's how it is and always has been. Congratulations on your sincerity and excellent content! Big hug from your follower in Brazil.)

[@tony359]

Bom dia! Muito Obrigado! I am learning Portuguese and I could understand what you wrote before I read the translation but to write a reply it will take a bit more time! :) Thanks for your kind words!

[@efpcvintageplanet3406]

Una costanza encomiabile contro tutta questa serie di guasti e incompatibilità. Complimenti per il video ma soprattutto per la pazienza e la competenza tecnica davvero invidiabile.

[@tony359]

Ti ringrazio! Il lavoro per farlo funzionare era quasi divertente - anche se dopo 2 settimane ne avevo anche abbastanza! Ma il lavoro di montaggio del video e' stato "painful", non sapevo da che parte cominciare! Grazie e a presto!

[@harvaldi]

Extremely challenging machine. I'm full of admiration for your determination. With so many bad parts and so few option to test them on other PC's. Tip: Beside memtest use Prime95. I found that sometimes with unstable ram memtest could detect problems only after many hours, but with Prime95 after dozen of minutes. In such difficult scenarios I also test battery and potential bios corruption. Not very likely failures, but those are fast checks. Windows XP was a good idea, but also Linux could give some answers, because it inner workings are very different, so he provides different information's and tools.

[@tony359]

Thanks for that! Is Prime95 available for Windows 98 as well?

[@1pcfred]

I've seen memtest pass dodgy RAM. My favorite RAM test is GCC. It catches every memory error. The first time every time. The stuff is an absolute stickler. One bit is out of place and it's not happy. I found that out after RAM passed memtest86.

[@tony359]

Thanks, appreciated! I'll take a look!

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

I have the same motherboard in a similar case, this will be an interesting build video! I had fun / work for weeks building mine 😂

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

Great video, I had so much fun and many laughs watching it! ❤

[@tony359]

Thank you! I'm happy it's in the past, that system was cursed! :D

[@davidp4456]

This reminds me of some of the problems I’ve had, but you persisted and fixed it. Well done. I think you started with too many exotic parts that proved unreliable. I would have started at a more basic level so that I could focus on any problems much more easily. I can’t believe you have been getting so much bad ram, maybe that’s all that’s left on the market. PC133 should be OK ,but I would have started with a single stick of 32MB or 64 Mb PC100 or PC66. Once stability has been found it is easier to move on to improving performance. Great video. Thx.

[@tony359]

Thank you! Well, I thought that a few hours of memtest meant a "stable system". I also switched to PC66 at some point but I think the CF and the CPU were already acting up. Too many variables and really I don't use those systems every day so it was hard to say "this is known good" :) Thanks for watching!

[@CXensation]

I seem to recognize your ordeals from my own experiences. Replacing too much hardware at one time often leads to many problems. Take one thing at a time and solve any problems. Then replace next piece of hardware - same procedure. It will save you time in hopeless fault tracing. Very nice video showing the troubles you can run into when upgrading - thanks for sharing 😀

[@tony359]

Ah yes - I do remember when I bought a new PC - each component coming from a different shop to save money - and the computer did not post. "What now?" :) Thanks for watching!

[@michaelturner2806]

At first with the sound thing my immediate thought was -5v rail. But it wasn't a Sound Blaster, and you're using the same power supply anyway... My thoughts on the crashing were maybe somehow the AGP/PCI divider got set wrong, or was left mis-set from a previous 66MHz bus, thus trying to run AGP at 100MHz and PCI at 50, instead of setting it to 2/3. But I don't know if the system would be stable enough to get as far as it did. I was thinking maybe when you mentioned the IDE cable and showed an old 40 conductor one, that maybe it needed a 80-conductor cable since this board supported ATA-66/100 and trying to do that on an old DMA-33 cable might introduce errors. I'm one of those people who encounter a lot of weird stability issues with these VIA chipsets back in the day of building and supporting them in a PC shop, and one of the things that cemented my love for the Slot 1 systems running 440BX. I've avoided VIA products ever since.

[@tony359]

To be honest I think I used to have a VIA based system and it was very unstable, yes... :) It's been a while but I think I also tested the 80-conductor cable and it was still misbehaving. That system has been off for a while, I wonder if it still turns on LOL!

[@aleksandardjurovic9203]

A great video. Thank you for doing it! ❤ In my case I learned that Memtest86+ will not detect RAM issue while Macrium Reflect daily backup (of the whole drive) with verification will brake because of RAM issues. When I reduced the RAM speed from 3200 to 2400, Macrium started working flawlessly. This is a modern system tough. Not a first time that Macrium detected a RAM issue.

[@tony359]

Very interesting! Yes I had a feeling that memtest was not squeezing the RAM at 100%. But never again "random" RAM :) Thanks for watching!

[@roasthunter]

Wow that was a mission, I don't miss the troubles of compatibility with these older systems.

[@tony359]

Neither do I! We are so spoiled these days, things just work (usually)!

[@pentiummmx2294]

my VIA MVP3 seems to have 2x BGA packages like the SB is literally one i have seen on a VIA Apollo Pro board (686B). it is some Tyan that was made in 1999

[@matthewday7565]

Using MTRRLFBE might help the DOS mode performance for Quake

[@tony359]

For AMD it should be k6wcx - but I watched Phil's video about that and Quake does not gain 50%! I didn't try though, let's say I've got enough of this project for now! Maybe in the future! :) Thanks for watching!

[@thesmokingcap]

Those Apollo chipsets are a right pain! At least you have some pointers if come across some issues in the future! I've got a motherboard that uses such a chipset, AGP is almost unusable on it, lots of system crashes. But will try some of those BIOS Settings

[@tony359]

Yes, many have reported that. I must admit I haven't tested the system for long to say it's fully stable though! :)

[@chrisrudi7162]

Great video and you've really achieved a lot... I also had huge ISA sound problems with KT133A on my Athlon Thunderbird 1.4 GHz... the sound was extremely distorted and warbled. After I set the PCI latency timer to 128 it worked. And all Radeon cards in the 9800 series reported a video memory error on the board even though they were intact... It's all pretty crazy sometimes.

[@tony359]

sometimes it's fun to have to deal with those quickness - sometimes it's not :)

[@asanjuas]

For me It was vía kt600 which doesn't detect correctly AGP 4x and uses and AGP 4x as and AGP 8x. Why failed? Because AGP 8x is 1.5v and AGP 4x IS 3.3v on my Radeon 9250 the system hangs running unreal tournament at 1.5v. Solution after read on forums IS to change AGP 8x to AGP 4x and well curiosly that was the sugestión of AMD.

[@ABRetroCollections]

I was not a fan of the HOT-591P. It was definitely not the most stable SS7 motherboard out there. I also learned the quirks of using the VIA Apollo chipsets with Windows 98. First off, 98SE is required for the timing bug issue that existed in the former 98 FE version. Second off, the VIA 4-In-1 pack is required for VIA chipsets so that DMA works properly. I went with an ALi chipset based board for my SS7 build to avoid those issues. The FPU also runs every 2 clock cycles on the K6-2 instead 1 clock cycle on the Pentium MMX. The missing Pentium instruction set also causes Quake to run even worse on K6-2.

[@dabombinablemi6188]

Apparently the K6-2+ 570ACZ is the best candidate for the L2 cache mod. I bought one as a replacement for the K6-2 500 that came with my board (primarily due to only 128MB RAM being cache-able), and so far it has been flawless run at 600MHz 2.3V (board runs exactly 0.1V higher than set) with 256MB SDRAM. Immense performance improvement over th K6-2, though it was run with the same RAM, so only half cached. Only issue is that enabling AGP 2x with my TNT2 Vanta causes the second IDE channel to stop working under Windows (and the card still runs at 1x - Ali Aladdin V and its AGP bug).

[@tony359]

Thanks! If I think of that system I get shivers :D

[@MikesArcadeMonitorRepair]

Man, great job on fixing the sound card issue and everything else. Was a fun watch.

[@tony359]

Glad you enjoyed, thanks for watching!

[@pete8475]

I had a similar experience with one of those modded k6-2+ processors, it was working for a while and eventually just quit posting. Other processors work in the same board.

[@tony359]

I'd say that maybe there is a reason if they were born "unmodded" :)

[@catriona_drummond]

Whenever I want to throw everything against the wall and quit the hobby I will remind myself of this video. Thanks for your endurance. I use to say: in retro there is no such thing as a known good part.

[@tony359]

ahah thank you! YES, Many have suggested I should start with a known good system and I thought exactly what you said: "is there such a thing"? :)

[@catriona_drummond]

@@tony359 I had stuff die overnight from lying on the desk...

[@Birdman_in_CLE]

I have been using Disk On Module devices rather than CF cards for about 5 years now. They are much more stable than CF cards on all systems, especially Pentium and above. I know that isn't the root of the problems here, but 40 pin disk on modules are extremely durable and incredibly compatible. I even buy old used 512mb units for old 386 and 486 units. They almost always work long term. For those curious, DOM are solid state hard drives for industrial used. They have been made since the early 1990s and are very reliable for decades of use in harsh conditions. You will pay $35-$50 for a new 16GB drive, but they work and will work for a long time. Edited to change to units of 16MB to 16GB

[@tony359]

I hope you meant 16GB? :) Thanks for that! I'll definitely stop using those CFs! Thanks for watching!

[@Birdman_in_CLE]

@@tony359 MB, GB, It is only 1000x difference. That not much difference, right? ;) Thanks for catching that. Edited and noted.

[@tony359]

LOL :D I do that all the time :)

[@michaeldemel4934]

I've heard of some people having issues with CF cards, like not being able to format them correctly, they don't boot or weird crashing etc. I must be lucky, as I've not had any issues with them. I've used them on 386s up to Pentium III machines. Its bizarre how some people can use something and never have any issues while others use the exact same thing and have nothing but trouble. 🤷‍♂ Glad you have it sorted out.👍

[@tony359]

Weird indeed! Well, I thought CFs were 100% reliable. They're not so I won't use them anymore, at least not for anything serious. Thanks for watching!

[@simontay4851]

Yeah, even though ive not personally ever had any problems with using my CF card, ive always had that thought at the back of my mind that they're not fully compatible as IDE devices. I have a really old 8MB CF card with a bootable minimal DOS install on it that i sometimes use for BIOS updates on old boards. I also have an 8GB CF card. For anything more complicated, I always use a proper HDD or SSD. It just WORKS!

[@tony359]

I never had an issue in DOS, I feel that with Windows, where drivers use 100% of the IDE protocol, things get a bit sour. Well, I still have an SD to IDE adaptor around, I'll try that! Thanks for watching!

[@rodhester2166]

One thing about spinning drives is you can hear usually hear trouble vs the solid state drives. and for dos, win 95, win98 it really does not matter that much for game playing. IMO.

[@tony359]

Oh absolutely. It was just the convenience of unplugging the CF from the back, plug it into my Windows 10 computer and transfer files :) Or swap the CF from the W98 one to the MSDOS one. But if it doesn't work... Thanks for watching!

[@rodhester2166]

I totally understand the ease of use. cheers.@@tony359

[@VargaKen]

Amazing story. What dedication to the project!

[@tony359]

Thank you! I admit I was very close to just give up on multiple occasions! :D

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

For this board you would want a voodoo3 or a GeForce2mx for the oldest possible drivers that require the lowest cpu overhead. V3 has around 30fps in UT99 with k2-450

[@AlejandroRodolfoMendez]

Media player needs audio codecs to work, that's why most people used winamp and Vlc. A good fix is using the cccodec pack.

[@tony359]

But then windows media player started working out of the box with no extra codecs installed! So something was wrong with the HW!

[@AlejandroRodolfoMendez]

@@tony359 still try before changing the gpu, the other thing is that not enough gpu for that video format. Also try with Vlc to see what does. In the past I remember having to install all sort of codecs like divx and more to get it working. In the end I seetle with media player classic a open source alternative and their codecs.

[@AlejandroRodolfoMendez]

@@tony359 also the cpu does some work too so it could be related too.

[@andrewlittleboy8532]

Apart from Amiga and Acorn machines, I've had nothing but trouble with cf cards for anything other than Dos. I always use a spinning drive or SSD, both with a SATA to IDE from Startech. Windows 95 or later will ruin a cf card very quickly, even on boot up many writes and rewrites are made and they don't use the same system to avoid the individual cells being written over and over again.

[@tony359]

Yes, the TRIM feature. Yep, I now understand that. Too bad as I was on an SD adaptor and I thought someone told me that CF were the best choice. Clearly not true! :) Thanks for watching!

[@bahadoromid3554]

AMD K6-2 & K6-3 They performed very well. They were also a great upgrade for socket 7 motherboards.(true legends)

[@tony359]

I still have bad dreams about that upgrade! :D Who knows if it's still working! Thanks for watching!

[@bahadoromid3554]

@@tony359 GBT GA-5AA , As I remember, it was the best motherboard that was compatible with K6-2.

[@khachaturian100]

Welcome to the money pit of trying to build a retro PC! Congratulations on finally getting it to work!

[@tony359]

I don't spend much on those things (besides RAM sticks apparently!) - most of my boards were faulty which I repaired (not too well, apparently!!) :D Thanks for watching!

[@itstheweirdguy]

I never repair motherboards. I credit you for doing so though. For example, I clone computers hard drives and put them in different computers, even though most advice says don't do it...they're wrong.

[@tony359]

Wellll... it's not ideal! Unless we talk about Windows 10 and newer, those OS are much happier to switch hardware! Thanks for watching!

[@itstheweirdguy]

@@tony359 you’re welcome! I just love going against the grain when I can. Keep up the good work.

[@tiagomdute]

Without considering the issue of the motherboard, I prefer to use an IDE to SD card or an SSD with an adapter. CF cards from Ali Express are unreliable and only work well with DOS in my experience.

[@tony359]

I do have an SD to IDE adaptor which I put away when I decided (somehow) that CF was a better idea. Clearly mistaken! :)

[@SobieRobie]

It was very bumpy road but you were able to reach the end finally :D I'm happy that K6-2 500 is working as it wasn't tested by me :D BTW it's important which drivers are installed first and i think VIS 4in1 should be the first one installed.

[@tony359]

Yes, finally I got to your K6-2 :) Thanks again! I'd normally install the VIA first but if Windows installation crashes, then there is something more wrong going on!

[@SobieRobie]

Yes, you are right installation of Windows was first real hardware test back in the days :D@@tony359

[@izzatullahkhoyratty7381]

Hi Tony dealing with old hardwares is very fun & challenging. But the problem is that these old computers wears out & would have lot of issues. i like messing with old computers but have headache in building one that works fine. so many problems like in your case - windows would crash, games won't run, sound issue & so on. Thanks for this great video.

[@tony359]

The thing is that those computers had issues 30 years ago when brand new! 30 years later they can only be worse! :D Thanks for watching!

[@samio3907]

I have never seen so many faults in one system 😨 sometimes hard work and dedication is really needed to get old hardware reliably running again. Great job!

[@tony359]

Yes! It wasn't fun to put this video together but I wanted to finish it because I knew it would be an incredible sequence of weird events! Thanks for watching!

[@1pcfred]

That's why when you build a system you don't throw everything at it at once. You get a minimal configuration going then add to it one piece at a time. Otherwise you're just dealing with too many variables at once.

[@tony359]

@@1pcfred Yes but when you have so many faults all intermittent and all at the same time it's difficult! Also, I did not have an alternative system to test AGP cards. Unfortunately I don't use those systems on a daily basis so I cannot say 100% that something is properly working. Think about those memtests for example: in my mind that was a good starting point telling me that CPU and RAM were working but no... Thanks for watching!

[@1pcfred]

@@tony359 You would think a memory testing program would catch faults. But I've seen memtest miss them. Or maybe the memory died after it was tested? That is possible. It has to die some time.

[@tony359]

One module definitely died after testing - I feel the other ones were borderline as I believe even the second "failed" one worked on my Pentium board. That's why I wanted a good branded module for that board in the end.

[@minombredepila1580]

Another amazing video Tony. Quite a long journey but an excellent outcome. All those extra video hours would be a pain to edit, but in the future, on a second channel could show your methods, tools and tricks.... just saying....

[@tony359]

Second channel! :) I struggle to keep one alive :) But yes, it's an idea. A "second channel" with more "unedited" stuff. I don't know, I am getting better at this. I used to cut so many things, now my recorded content is much more polished. One day I'll be like Dave Jones who said he doesn't do any editing at all, he just splices parts together.... Thanks for watching!

[@minombredepila1580]

@@tony359 Definitely, you are getting better at this, on each video you deliver.

[@tony359]

Cheers!

[@general23cmp]

Enjoyed watching the video.

[@tony359]

Thank you for watching!

[@joetheman74]

A socket 7 system if running something like a K6-II or III is in no way too slow for XP. I ran a K6-II 500 with 256 megs of ram Geforce 2 and an Aureal Vortex 2 back in the day. Upgraded it from 98SE to XP and it was fine. The only down side was that there were never official drivers for the Vortex2 Chipset under XP so my awesome full featured Positional audio sound card became a generic sound card. After a few months I went back to 98SE on that machine and built a new machine for XP.

[@tony359]

I moved to XP on a Sempron I think. From Windows ME. With ME the system was so unstable I was about to replace the whole PC as I thought it was an HW issue.. XP fixed it 100%! :D Thanks for watching!

[@agsel]

So much excitement and suspense in one video! You have a new subscriber :)

[@tony359]

Thank you and welcome! :)

[@Bergi2000]

Wow, what a bumpy ride …! 🤯😱 ❤

[@tony359]

Almost painful :)

[@shanemshort]

the VIA MVP3 was notorious for DMA issues. I had so many dramas with CD burners etc on that platform, turning DMA off fixed it every time.

[@tony359]

During the tests I did try disabling DMA but that didn't help either unfortunately! But thanks for the pointer!

[@shanemshort]

@@tony359 it's one of those things etched into my brain. PTSD I think. I sold a PC to someone with a brand new HP 2x IDE based CD burner, only for it to constantly get a buffer under-run about 80% through the the CD burn and turn it into a coaster. I wasted so many CDs and hours on that, eventually HP was like "oh, VIA MVP3? Disable DMA!"

[@tony359]

You're not the first one recommending that. It's clear that the MVP3 was a special thing :)

[@eduardoavila646]

I don't know how much this is true, but usually i'm unlucky enough for all my failed memory sticks to only fail after tons of memtest passes (7 or more, usually 10 or more tbh) with stress tests on both the ram and CPU's, or the rams don't even fail at all until the board stops posting. And that happened with my DDR400 ram, DDR2, DDR3, DDR3L (laptop ram), and even my recent DDR5 system, i really think ram modules just like playing with me. First time i see someone having issues like mines

[@tony359]

when it comes to old RAM, I blame the age. Particularly if an IC has been unused for decades. But yes, components can slowly fail over time...

[@ted-b]

Nice job Tony, what a rabbit hole! 🤣

[@tony359]

yes, a deep one but we got out! Thanks for watching!

[@SomeAngryGuy1997]

Can't believe I have to say this to a seasoned technician who probably has more years of experience than my age: ALWAYS USE 80-WIRE IDE CABLES FOR HDDS WHEN DEALING WITH PENTIUM AND NEWER SYSTEMS. ESPECIALLY WITH COMPACT FLASH OR SATA ADAPTERS. Seriously, while it's not going to solve every issue, it will help avoid many, and allow higher data throughput on the IDE bus.

[@tony359]

Nobody is perfect of course and I don’t pretend to be perfect! That said I did try an 80-wire cable but that didn’t help. It just didn’t make it in the Final Cut! Also, the 591P only supports ATA-33 as maximum speed so an 80-wire cable should not be required. Won’t hurt of course! Thanks for your comment!

[@davidp4456]

I can’t remember, did you swap out the power supply? These can be the source of many problems and are often the last thing people think of. There are so many cheap and awful power supplies out there and to have at least one good power supply from someone like Seasonic is a good thing to have when troubleshooting.

[@tony359]

I did it but didn't mention that in the video. I showed it for the sound issue but that was unrelated. The "twin" motherboard was being run by a small ATX->AT power supply I use for testing. Indeed the PSU is an important element. What puzzled me was that the twin board more or less all different components - but not all the time and that was probably my mistake. Re-using the CF between the two boards was probably one issue.

[@charonunderground8596]

I know it :) 23 years I work in a computer store. And there were cases where everything went wrong :)

[@tony359]

You must have some stories... :)

[@charonunderground8596]

@@tony359 Yes there would be many stories to tell, but well... it was and gone :) By the way Unreal Tournament and 3DMark run quite slowly at your place.... At the beginning of 2000 in February that is exactly 24 years ago I bought a new computer with Celeron 466Mhz, Voodoo 3 2000 16MB AGP, 64MB RAM PC133, Abit BE6-II, Sound Blaster Live and CRT 17 inch AOC 7Glr monitor. All the games at the time worked just fine. If I did a good search I could find the results of the tests I ran back then. In general, combining cards like FX5500 or even GF2 with old boards on MVP3 is not a good idea. A Voodoo 3 or Banshee or Riva TNT would be a much better fit.

[@tony359]

I have the feeling that a voodoo wouldn't cost £11 though :) I am running Quake in 2D mode though, am I not? I am not testing 3D. That's why I am a bit puzzled!

[@Argoon1981]

Oh man the Nvidia FX 5200 GPU... was a trash GPU, it was just a Geforce 2 MX renamed, me and few of my friends bought one, only to latter discover that it wouldn't run games or effects that the "older" Geforce 2 ti was able to run. It was the main reason I latter bought a ATI GPU, the ATI 9800 pro and no regrets on that, was a fantastic GPU. One of the best ATI ever produced.

[@tony359]

That's why it was so cheap :D

[@deepmaze1]

If MB sees only 128 out of 256 then......if you are going to use 128 then it will work with a significant performance drop. You need to use one 65mb module in order to get a full performance from that MB.

[@tony359]

Of course, my RAM was too "dense" indeed" Thanks!

[@K10driver]

What a trip! Nice that you got it running :) If you want another similarly demanding task, I can send you my Asus CUV4X-D (with two 1.4GHZ Tualatin's). The success occurs when you get 4x AGP permanently activated. It only took me 2 months - of course with the usual interruptions due to work, family and free time.

[@tony359]

I've enough of AGP for the next 12 months :D Thanks for watching!

[@ruevs]

ATA/ATAPI-4 (published by ANSI in 1998 as NCITS 317-1998), which both of your motherboards probably support, has up to UDMA-2. ATA/ATAPI-5 (NCITS 340-2000) ha UDMA-3 and 4 and requires mandatory 80-Conductor IDE Cable use. Your CmpachFlash card probably supports UDMA-7 (166MB/s), while IDE hard disks only went up to UDMA-6 (133MB/s). My guess is that your problems with the CF card come from the 40 conductor IDE cable. You should have used an 80 conductor UDMA one.

[@tony359]

from the user manual of the 591P, only UDMA33 (UDMA Mode 2) is supported and that was confirmed by the POST screen before boot (might not be obvious on the video as I sometimes re-use footage from different moments). UDMA33 does not require an 80-conductor cable. I did try it though and did not help. I also tried disabling UDMA entirely and that did not help either! That would have been too easy! Thanks for your comment!

[@ruevs]

Well it was "worth a try" :-)

[@tony359]

Ideas are always welcome! :)

[@DxDeksor]

Great to finally see this coming together :D This was quite the journey. I don't know if you give names to computers, but if you do, you should definitely name this one "murphy", especially for that board. Everything that could fail, has failed :D This makes me think of a VIA MVP3 board I had which kept glitching like yours, for me it was basically crashing randomly and then failing to POST to a video card error. I tried to clean the AGP connectors thoroughly after that, but every now and then it kept failing. Turns out the CASE was causing the issues, because it was a cheap piece of sh*t that bent itself as I plugged the video card, which also bent the motherboard slightly which caused issues with the solder joints on the AGP slot ...

[@tony359]

Interesting, I saw the "video card" error on that system very often during that time. A name? uhm... "Hammer" as in "I've almost been smashed with a hammer"? :) Thanks for your help Monsieur, it was really helpful!

[@Chriva]

I find it slightly amusing that your DELL monitor has the same problem as mine. Almost in the same spot, too! It's not a U2709W?

[@tony359]

Yes, 2709W - not sure it's the "U" version, those were later models I think. I disassembled it ages ago but the fault seems to be INSIDE one of those kapton-tape-coloured ribbon cables. So not much I can do I'm afraid. It started with one line, it would go away when warm. Now it's bad :)

[@pepealexandre]

Great job, sir!

[@tony359]

Thank you!

[@asanjuas]

One question. There we're a video on to the abused shuttle hot 591p , to try if definitively works okay :)

[@tony359]

Sorry I'm not sure I understand you. Are you suggesting I could make another video and swap the "twin" board with the "abused" one to see if it works ok? I thought about that. Maybe. Not now :) I still need to recover from those 2 weeks! But I'd be curious too!

[@asanjuas]

@@tony359 Testing the abused mainboard if It works of what did that failed.

[@tony359]

Yes, all I need to do is to swap the two boards and test. I might do it at some point - even just to know whether the board works or not! Thanks for watching!

[@asanjuas]

@@tony359Test it on the bench your retro computer is working. As the GNU/Linux people says if it works don't touch it. Test with another componentes with the 8 gb flash card, and well see if it works. Is nice to see how you obtains new hardware for your enthusiasm. I have 9 computers one of them a power pc g4 mac with the graphics card with some defects i think it needs a reflow on the memory. All of the rest of my retro computers need a suitable case . But that's the things i have in my house.

[@tony359]

ahah good point. Yes but that means to introduce a bunch of "unknown" hardware again! Another CPU, different RAM, a different HDD etc. But I am curious, I'll definitely do that sooner or later!

[@Senux-Video]

I remember this pain in the late 90s. especially with win95. hardware compatibility was like lottery, And more of practice and lucky, it was success. I named it "cold contact". btw, make working system was need make as fast as possible.

[@tony359]

Windows 95! Yes, it was a lottery! :)

[@CaelThunderwing]

the HDD vs CF card issue, not all i've come to find out CF Cards conform to the full IDE Spec. you have a MUCH better chance w/ industrial grade cards vs late generation CF Cards.

[@tony359]

Great to know! I had no idea! I'll dig out my SD to IDE adaptor I put away some time ago because I thought "CF is better"... Thanks for watching!

[@collectingretrotech]

Great video

[@tony359]

Thanks!

[@asanjuas]

oh yeahh i think apart from the south bridge , the cpu was the problem all the time. I think there's no problem with cf cards(only the cable, maybe but i doubt.) Changing the CPU fixes something. At the least motherboards of this time period with simm and sdram requires a specific SDRAM module type to work.

[@tony359]

It was more than the CPU as the twin board had a different one! Definitely the CPU played a role into this but definitely it wasn't just that or my tests would have worked on the other board! Thanks for watching!

[@asanjuas]

@@tony359 I see a lot of cpu protection errors during the loading of unreal tournament in 2D mode ( i believe) and this gave me the confidence that something wrong was in the cpu. I don't now if you test yet the cf card connected as a slave of the primary ide. But it 's worth it. Take in account that not all of CF Cards work, it's a combination of CF card and BIOS , but i suppose the speed of the card doesn't have an impact on an older ATA33 ide.

[@tony359]

I'm done with CF cards! I thought they were 100% compatible, well they're not. Too bad I recently bought a small batch of CF's. I'll go back to SD cards (or spinning drives!). Yes that Unreal error was probably the CPU - the CPU was definitely dying!

[@samuraidriver4x4]

As a former K6 user, quake sucks on AMD and i have no clue why exactly. But this has to be one of the most painfull upgrade videos i have ever watched.

[@tony359]

Interesting about Quake indeed! There is a video from PhilComputerLab where he explains how to enable some instructions on AMDs but his benchmarks don't gain 50% on Quake so I am at a loss! Thanks for watching!

[@boam2943]

All that trouble is the reason I rarely upgrade old computers. I just get the parts to make a new system. This way I have a know good running system to try things on. It is like the saying goes "If it works don't break it". You probably already figured this but I am going to say it anyway. Never use flash drives/memory when writes are involved. It is always unreliable, specially on older systems that knew nothing of the technology and will attempt to use it wrong. In the best of chances you end up with a corrupt drive. They are ok to use if they are only going to be read (example: live boot CD emulator) but even then you must be careful with the size. Some motherboards do not like boot drives bigger than 4GB even if they claim they support hard drives of bigger sizes. In my opinion, Memtest does not stress the memory. Only tests if the memory can be written/read reliably by writing and reading patterns one memory position at a time. To truly stress the RAM you need to write/read concurrent multi-block chunks of data like it is done with HDDs. That does not happen in Memtest and that is why it passed Memtest and failed in the OS. Still, you should run Memtest several times as it might catch small timing glitches on a latter run that are not caught on the first few runs. As for the bad benchmark performance on quake my guess (and it is just a guess as I never even installed quake) would be that the graphics card has bad performance on whatever hardware acceleration was selected for the benchmark, either 3D or opengl. Or the benchmarking software did not detect hardware acceleration and used software. In 1999 I had a similar performance problem trying to run Unreal Tournament in my S3 Virge. One final thought. I do not know if you do this, it is not clear from the video, but always change only one part at a time and test it thoroughly before moving on. I know it is more time consuming to start but it will save a lot of time not having to debug random crashes. I usually go in this order: motherboard, CPU, test (power, beeps), RAM, test, HDD, test, floppy, test, GPU, test, CD-ROM, test, other boards, test. Good luck.

[@tony359]

Thanks for your comment! Quake was running in 2D of course, there was no 3D involved under DOS. I was comparing with a 2D only card. I'd expect a much newer card, also capable of 3D, to have better 2D performances? No idea! Thanks for watching!

[@boam2943]

@@tony359 First, let me start by warning you (and anyone that reads this) about something I forgot in my previous comment and you might not know. Beware what AGP version your motherboard and graphics card support. AGP versions are *not* backward compatible. See the wikipedia entry for compatibility on the AGP page. Some motherboards have "universal" AGP slots but only support a specific version and some graphics cards lack the correct notch. I have a motherboard that has a warning next to the AGP slot that reads "AGP v1.1 only". That alone might explain the graphics corruption you were getting. There was 3D acceleration for DOS but usually you had to have the right game/graphics card combination. Glide, 3DFx and openGL are some of the 3D technologies supported in DOS. As an example, Voodoo graphics cards supported only 3DFx and only some games were available in a version that implemented 3DFx. Usually there were different executables for different rendering engines. I believe Mechwarrior had a version for 3DFx. A newer card does not mean better. Just like today, manufacturers remove features to add something else on the chip. An 2023 example would be manufacturers removing or not increasing as much the count of shader units to make space for AI and upscaling (let's not even mention reducing bandwidth). If you do not intend to game a lot in quake, I would leave it as is. Thank you for sharing your upgrading experience.

[@tony359]

You're welcome. The Quake thing was just a curiosity as I was comparing 2D with 2D and I'd hope a newer card would do better - or identically - in 2D! For the AGP versions, thanks, I was not aware. Well in the end those cards (both) worked on that motherboard so they were clearly compatible! Thanks again!

[@ominence9761]

So replacing parts can fix a broken PC🤔 And a bit of handy work doesn't hurt😎 Reminds me of my Athlon 64!

[@tony359]

Considering how many parts I replaced, I'd say that replacing a PC might fix some parts :) Thanks for watching!

[@ominence9761]

​@@tony359 Hey T, firstly I wasn't trying to be a smarty pants (Hard to tell, lol). I know only too well how the hobby is changing. We lose literal tonnes of parts to e-waste every year and with that comes the ever inflating prices of the scraps that are still left around. The most basic of demand and supply graphs at work. So disgustingly true. Applaud your passion and dedication to investigative and repair work. It never comes easy. I hope you get interested in reviving and restoring more ATX 1.x and

[@tony359]

No worries, I didn't see your comment as such! Thank you!

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

Haha after watching this video i was very lucky to buy this board as a working bundle with 1 128mb stick of ram 😂

[@clintcolombin]

You think the MVP3 chipset is buggy? which version is it? ;) Also, I have an ALi Aladdin 5 SS7 AT board that only works with pci & 3DFx cards . . .

[@tony359]

How can I find out the version?

[@clintcolombin]

@@tony359 the exact revision on the chip should be a guide. There are 3 versions I know of, A B & C. The C revision was where most / all bugs were worked out. The later revisions were quite reliable, but the A version had . . . issues

[@tony359]

Where do I see the revision of the chipset? I don't see anything on the IC itself

[@clintcolombin]

@@tony359 a long-ish google tells me the HOT-591P uses the CE revision. The newest for 1998 and fixes most if not all bugs. Just not the memory limitations

[@tony359]

@@clintcolombin So you're telling me I am using a GOOD one? :D Imagine the bad one! :D

[@FoxMulder78]

Wow, this was a nightmare. Great video.

[@tony359]

Thank you! I'm kind of scared of the idea it might refuse to post next time I'm powering it up! :D

[@asanjuas]

Now nowadays is working everything well ,right?

[@tony359]

@@asanjuas Everything :)

[@Constantin314]

well, that was strange. when things go bad, you can bet they'll go worse :) nice video, Tony!

[@tony359]

eheh Mr. Murphy :) Thanks for watching!

[@morejiggawatts4992]

Did you note any chips on the k6-+ die? Did you confirm that the vcc2 was 2.2v or less. Via mvp3 likes 128mb single sided 8/9 chip modules usually. It almost never likes 256mb on one side In general, it just seems to like single sided sticks Try a promise sata II tx4 300 they are cheap and speed up The system. There is a driver that will let windows 98 recognize it. But doesn’t seem to load any software or something. Basically point windows 98 at the windows xp driver folder and it will load it. A reliable pci video card is a green slim profile radeon 7500 Radeon 7500s and 92x0 series seem to work very well in these on agp and pci. Watch out for a radeon card that has a mobile chipset. It has a L shaped heat sink, seller touts no overheating. It isn’t a desktop 7500 chip. And not what I am talking about. Another good one is a quadro 2 for agp using 7.76 drivers. This will set records, but not as reliable as 7500/9250

[@tony359]

If I overvolted the K6, it wasn't intentional and I didn't realise. I can check if the die is damaged. Thanks for all the other pointers, I'll consider the SATA card, thanks!

[@recnas]

Even Windows 7 runs pretty well on my MVP3 based Super Socket 7 system

[@tony359]

Oh wow! What CPU? 256MB of RAM are enough for W7?

[@recnas]

With all visual effects turned off it's actually quite usable on an AMD K6-III+ with 256 MB. It will need 512 MB during installation though, if I recall correctly.

[@tony359]

But the 591P only supports 256MB?

[@recnas]

The MVP3 chipset supports a total of 756 MB theretroweb.com/chipset/documentation/vt82c598mvp-apollo-mvp3-61f93de7618bc432113548.pdf Two 256 MB DIMMs in a 32MBx64 or x72 configuration should work just fine.

[@tony359]

interesting, the 591P manual says the max is 256!

[@piernov]

I feel like I'm watching myself here. I always waste so much time working on these systems. Lately I've been having a lot of issues with RAM, especially SDRAM, everytime I have to put some in a machine I need to try several sticks, of course there are compatibility issues and bad contact, but also sticks just randomly dying even when not used so I have to remove some from my stock everytime. Sometimes I swap RAM so much that my thumbs start hurting. I know the no POSTs and random crashings all too well. Trying multiple graphics cards, multiple sound cards, installing drivers over and over again and breaking W98 several times in the process… And don't get me started on trying to find a working 3.5" floppy disk and drive…

[@tony359]

Yes those machines were bad 30 years ago - 30 years later they ain't got better! :) THanks for watching!

[@ShrineOfLife]

mate, i am just in at minute 15:xx and I really do ask myself: first, is it worth the effort? but second, and a lot more, why didnt you do the same thing on the northbrigde agpset chip? all ram and bus and ide run through there, I guess it would have been worth a try with your ice and warm-up method! thank you for showing me that, its an awesome way of testing!

[@ShrineOfLife]

nice, glad u made it work in the end! that was quite the hassle! cheers from bavaria!

[@tony359]

Hi - who knows, maybe you're right. It's been a while and I don't remember all the details. But if there was an issue with the Northbridge, I'd expect the system to be much more unstable. If the RAM has a dodgy connection, I'd expect the system to crash at the POST screen. But again, who knows. I didn't think about that. Danke for watching and glad you enjoyed! PS: Totally not worth but I don't normally do things which are worth here :D

[@BladeworksStudio]

wow im surprised you didnt try a atx power supply

[@tony359]

I did, it just didn't make it in the final video! :) Though I did try an ATX with AT adaptor at some point in the video but that was when the sound card misbehaved. Even with ATX though the 3.3V still comes from the regulator on the motherboard. Thanks for watching!

[@BladeworksStudio]

@@tony359 wow ya the single sided sd not a good pair with super socket 7s

[@maxtornogood]

I saw a video title that implied that Retro PC users are masochists. After your wild experience going down this rabbit hole I can see why someone would think that!

[@tony359]

ahah I am the definition of that!

[@romanm.4763]

CPUs hardly ever get broken. But sometimes it happens

[@tony359]

Yes, it's rare indeed!

[@JoãoHenriqueMarchini-j4s]

Nothing to see here, just a regular day in the office for a VIA MVP3 SS7 Board owner. I also spend over 2 weeks troubleshooting mine.

[@tony359]

ahahah, I had no idea!! :D

[@asanjuas]

What happened there?

[@idahofur]

Somebody refresh my memory. Wasn't 72pin sim chips most used on Pentium 200 processors?

[@tony359]

Well, 72 pin was the predecessor of the 168 modules. They were used on anything before the 168 was available I think. Thanks for watching!

[@chainq68k]

I hate Compact Flash with a passion. The amount of times I had to diagnose half-working drives for users, and it turned out to be a dodgy Compact Flash, it's ridiculous. Even the 20 EUR shady IDE 2 SD card adapters from eBay were much more reliable and much more consistent (with good SD cards). The Quake performance decrease: not sure of the stepping of that K6-2, but later K6-2, K6-2+ and K6-III-s have MTRR registers that have to be set up properly for maximum performance. It can really help in some applications. If that CPU supports it, that is.

[@tony359]

No more CF's :) I do have an SD adaptor but I stopped using it because I thought CF were better! MTRR is that thing you can enable with fastvid or the AMD equivalent? I watched Phil's video but he doesn't get 50% uplift! I have two K6-2, I should check whether one is "better" than the other :) Thanks for watching!

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

Quake is worse on the K2 because it has a weaker FPU than the Pentium, it’s known to be the game that is the most dependent on FPU of that era

[@stanokoco6294]

Veľa starostí by ste si ušetrili použitím základnej dosky s Intel chipsetom a procesora Pentium II, III, Celeron.

[@tony359]

Yes, but that's boring! "Retro" is 386, 486 and Socket 7 for me! :) Next video should be a P4 machine, I know what you mean. Windows XP, stable. Working perfectly.... Boring :) Thanks for watching!

[@Max_Mustermann]

Vintage computers are fun, unfortunately reliability isn't the best with 30+ years old hardware.

[@tony359]

They're not like wine, are they? :D

[@StarRise-w1b]

If your using fe it is notorious

[@tony359]

what is FE?

[@StarRise-w1b]

@@tony359 98 first edition. You want 98se or second edition if you want to run 98

[@asanjuas]

okay 533 cpu with 550 mhz is not good, but already is dead and was dead be carefull with the jumpers.

[@tony359]

Ah yes but there is no 533 option! I was assured those CPUs would run at 600MHz - I didn't try. And yes, I might have fried it? If I did, it wasn't intentional. Thanks for watching!

[@asanjuas]

@@tony359 not exactly the Silicon lotery you had a bad luck

[@fft2020]

What is not a disaster are your wonderful videos Tony! Your channel is seriously underrated! Awesome stuff for a guy like me that loves retro computing too ! Please keep them videos coming ! 3..2...1.. GO !

[@tony359]

Thank you so much for your kind words. :)

[@asanjuas]

I agree with that!!

[@asanjuas]

modern power supplies with old mainboards does not work ,because some newer atx modern power supplies does not support -12v.

[@tony359]

It wasn't the power supply unfortunately. The little one I am using and you see on camera does provide -12V. Thanks for watching!

[@dkhl02]

Esa cachanga 😅

[@tharimoose]

17:13 at this point I think this build is cursed

[@tony359]

Yes, on multiple occasions I showed the system a wooden stake while holding a hammer! :) Thanks for watching!