Am I asking too much for my socket 939 motherboards and such?

Im going to have to start another thread! I’m so stoked right now! I just found in my attic an almost complete Dell 440BX system sealed in a box! It has to have been sealed up there for almost 20 years! I have to find a way to get this thing up and running.! However, 4 wires are cut off the PSU.
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Starfalcon said:
Its the same as why would people like old muscle cars, they handle poorly and get bad gas milage. New cars run better, handle well, and get good gas milage. But people still pay a lot of money for old cars, same as for old computers :)
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Yes that may be true but those old cars were easy to fix and work on by pretty much anyone which can be seen as good or bad (as in your Uncle Frank can "fix" it) the newer cars have a computer module for practically every function (or the trend now it one module for everything that fails the car is scrap) I mean you can't even replace the radio head unit (I had a friend with a 2010 Chevrolet HHR the factory head unit died got a working one from Facebook market place I saw it work in the donor HHR before it was removed put in my friends HHR and was greeted with "Locked" $79 later and we had music again) and everything is now one large block so a standard DIN unit will not work granted factory head units are way better then 10-15 years ago.

If I want to play with old software and games I use a Virtual Machine but I do keep an old PIV Windows XP machine for things that don't do well in a virtual enviorment. I got my Dell OptiPlex 7010 as an off lease PC for the only $40 you also have to be vigilant with these as some sellers buy these by the pallet slap in a GPU (Usually a low end GT1030 or 50) mark them up 120% and sell them as a "Gaming PC" that they are not. A lot of the old DOS games and to an extent some general software works in DOSBox.
I just need to figure out AMD virtualization for my Ryzen 7 3700X.
 
Rob94hawk said:
Ugh looks like a few caps are blown near the cpu. Did not even notice. Repairable or garbage?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Gigabyte-K8NSNXP-939-Motherboard/143739130943
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I recapped a board like that for Erek a few years ago. You just gotta hope that the electrolyte hasn't been left on the board too long to damage traces, or that the board was run too long with the bad caps, since bad caps are very hard on other components both upstream and downstream of them.

The caps near the CPU can be a pain to remove due to the large power planes inside the board soaking up heat, a decent hot air tool to pre-heat the board under the capacitors helps out a lot.
 
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Got a nice Epox S939 mobo a while ago, and realised it only had an Athlon 64 X2 3000 attached to it. So I did what a retro enthusiast would do - look for a CPU to max out the motherboard potential.

By now I must have some 5-6 S939 CPUs (some boxed), including X2 4800, Athlon 64 FX-60 and Opteron 185.

Still looking for Operon 190 :)
 
keke said:
Got a nice Epox S939 mobo a while ago, and realised it only had an Athlon 64 X2 3000 attached to it. So I did what a retro enthusiast would do - look for a CPU to max out the motherboard potential.

By now I must have some 5-6 S939 CPUs (some boxed), including X2 4800, Athlon 64 FX-60 and Opteron 185.

Still looking for Operon 190 :)
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Because everyone wants to 'max' out, the highest tier parts go for absurd amount of money compared to even the 2nd or 3rd highest.

Things like the Tualatin adapter, CT-479, and other random tidbits are just icing on the cake.
 
MY first build was in 2000 I had an Abit KT7A 1GHZ AMD Athlon Soundblaster 16 PCI Yamaha CRW2424E and some random DVD-Rom the only part I miss is the case In-Win Q500N I would love to find another one of those.
I got about 50 pictures (back when pictures were expensive and each shot was actually planed). I should dig them up and scan them.
 
It is happening faster and faster. I bought a cheap celey G3930 and a MB for some mining a ways back. The board needed a bios update to use the chip (Z170) so I sent it back to the retailer NCIX. It came back borked and they were out of business. So the other day I thought I would upgrade my arcade machine from my Phenom II and grab a board to do so thinking I could get one crazy cheap these days. Nope. All over priced or crap from China. Used on Ebay was the same game.
 
Autochthon said:
I guess this means it's time to pull my old boxed up opteron 185 out of the garage and sell it. Better yet trade it for a 5900x ;p
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No kidding. I have a pair of them in an ole MSI Master 2FAR.
I should put the combo up for sale. :eek:
 
I was given an old "dinosaur" as my sister called it it has an ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB AGP!
I think the motherboard is dying I could not get it to power on at all by the power button (or a screw driver on the right pins) however it will power on when "jump started" and will then post and power on/off with the button until unplugged and I have to do the "jump start" procedure again. Is the ATI card worth any $?
I was also given a EVGA 760 GTX SC! That I'm keeping.
 
Format _C: said:
I was given an old "dinosaur" as my sister called it it has an ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB AGP!
I think the motherboard is dying I could not get it to power on at all by the power button (or a screw driver on the right pins) however it will power on when "jump started" and will then post and power on/off with the button until unplugged and I have to do the "jump start" procedure again. Is the ATI card worth any $?
I was also given a EVGA 760 GTX SC! That I'm keeping.
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A 9800 Pro will fetch between $60 to $80 on eBay, and more with original box/accessories. You could get about the same for the GTX 760, a card that would nuke the 9800 Pro from orbit.
 
I still have a DFI Lanparty SLI-DR with 2x512MB OCZ Gold VX DDR500 I believe they were called specced for 2-2-2-5 at 3.3v I believe it was that required adjusting to the PSU pot 3.3v rail and Opteron 165 with a Big Typhoon cooler. collecting dust in a drawer. I will probably save it as that was about the golden years for overclocking imo when overclocking made such a noticeable difference for such cheap CPUs too. Too bad I sold the PowerStream 520W PSU.

I might buy back the PSU though if my boss I sold it to still has it xD
 
keke said:
Got a nice Epox S939 mobo a while ago, and realised it only had an Athlon 64 X2 3000 attached to it. So I did what a retro enthusiast would do - look for a CPU to max out the motherboard potential.

By now I must have some 5-6 S939 CPUs (some boxed), including X2 4800, Athlon 64 FX-60 and Opteron 185.

Still looking for Operon 190 :)
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Most of the Opterons OC'd the same if you had a good stepping. My 165 hit ~2.9GHz
 
Format _C: said:
I was given an old "dinosaur" as my sister called it it has an ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB AGP!
I think the motherboard is dying I could not get it to power on at all by the power button (or a screw driver on the right pins) however it will power on when "jump started" and will then post and power on/off with the button until unplugged and I have to do the "jump start" procedure again. Is the ATI card worth any $?
I was also given a EVGA 760 GTX SC! That I'm keeping.
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9800 Pro is worth a bit. What else is in the computer? Mobo/cpu?
 
dexvx said:
Uh... DDR SDRAM had a default voltage of 2.5V. I have some Corsair DDR-500 and its rated at like 2.8V
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Yes I know but these OCZ RAM were a whole different beast, even required active cooling of some sort (I just zip-tied some dual 80mm fans on mine) :)

That's some extreme RAM when you even have to raise the 3.3v rail, they recommended like 0.2V above whatever you ran the RAM at, I didn't really push mine to the limit and settled for like 3.45v on the rail and 3.25v or so on the RAM, was good for 1T 2-2-2-5 above DDR500 speeds something (believe it was something 520'ish).

The Northbridge on the motherboard also got very hot so had to swap out the default cooler vs some third party one which worked significantly better. Ahh those were the time when you had fun with your overclocks and required some out of box thinkering here and there. Also ran the CPU naked with barely any additional support (did add some foam pieces to the corners but doubt they helped a lot), it was a bit nerv-wrecking to have this massive cpu cooler Big Typhoon at its time (still kinda is) standing on top of a naked CPU (had to use some custom screws to get around the height difference when running it naked) but hey it worked!
 
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thebufenator said:
9800 Pro is worth a bit. What else is in the computer? Mobo/cpu?
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MSI K7N2-V AMD Socket A (not sure what chip) Volcano 6 CU HSF Antec SL400 WD 120GB EIDE Hard Disk and a Maxtor 30GB Drive 3 GB 3x 1GB DDR ram
CD-ROM drive 1.44 MB Floppy Drive I built this for my Sister 18 years ago I put in a basic GeForce 440 MX or similar but I guess She upgraded to the 9800 Pro I got her files off So I'm going to sell that card I don't need it or even have a use for it.
 
Format _C: said:
MSI K7N2-V AMD Socket A (not sure what chip) Volcano 6 CU HSF Antec SL400 WD 120GB EIDE Hard Disk and a Maxtor 30GB Drive 3 GB 3x 1GB DDR ram
CD-ROM drive 1.44 MB Floppy Drive I built this for my Sister 18 years ago I put in a basic GeForce 440 MX or similar but I guess She upgraded to the 9800 Pro I got her files off So I'm going to sell that card I don't need it or even have a use for it.
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sell it all together and you can probably get $350 for it from some retro guy. that was some good stuff from back then.
 
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If you're ever wondering how much something is really worth - put it on ebay for auction with a $1 start bid and no reserve.
 
pendragon1 said:
sell it all together and you can probably get $350 for it from some retro guy. that was some good stuff from back then.
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I said this is post #60 also but I think the motherboard is dying I could not get it to power on at all by the power button (or a screw driver on the right pins) however it will power on when "jump started" and will then post and power on/off with the button until unplugged and I have to do the "jump start" procedure again.
I found a bulged capacitor near the BIOS battery socket I may try a repair as I bought a lot of various capacitors to fix an old Video-Hi8 MM camera and a few Samsung TVs if I have the correct one I'll give it a try
Also the V in the K7N2-V means Value so this was the budget striped down model but still an Nforce 2 chipset which do sell for insane amounts now! I looked up Asus A7N8X-Deluxe (I had one when socket A/462 was still a current platform) the cheapest one is $150!
 
N4CR said:
Most of the Opterons OC'd the same if you had a good stepping. My 165 hit ~2.9GHz
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Yes - these were pretty good chips. My Opteron 170 ran fairly cool at over 3GHz with stock voltage for years (I don't recall how much over). I'd probably still be using it for backup if my DFI lanparty board hadn't given out.
 
keke said:
Got a nice Epox S939 mobo a while ago, and realised it only had an Athlon 64 X2 3000 attached to it. So I did what a retro enthusiast would do - look for a CPU to max out the motherboard potential.

By now I must have some 5-6 S939 CPUs (some boxed), including X2 4800, Athlon 64 FX-60 and Opteron 185.

Still looking for Operon 190 :)
Click to expand...
Whoa! You just took me back in time. I had an Epox 8kha+ that I ran with an Opteron 165 @2.8. That was when I joined [H] in fact. Played the original Bioshock on it. One of my favorite computers ever. Upgraded to a Q9550 afterwards.
 
CruisD64 said:
Upgraded to a Q9550 afterwards.
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LOL, I'm still running essentially a Q9550 and it does everything I ask of it........;) I literally built this whole system for less then $100 and it amazes me what it can do. On my third playthrough of Metro Exodus at the moment, runs fine at 768p medium settings.

But yeah, it's crazy what retro hardware is selling for. Especially things like 3dfx cards, rare ISA sound cards, etc. Sure wish I would have kept all my old hardware from back in the day! Below is one of my favorite systems from way back in like 2004. DFI LanParty UT nF3 250GB, Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 754, 512MB, Radeon 9600XT, Samsung 160GB HDD, running Windows XP. I built it in an old PIII HP case......forgive the L&C Power Supply LOL, guess I didn't realize those were crap yet though never had a problem with it.
 

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Format _C: said:
I was given an old "dinosaur" as my sister called it it has an ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB AGP!
I think the motherboard is dying I could not get it to power on at all by the power button (or a screw driver on the right pins) however it will power on when "jump started" and will then post and power on/off with the button until unplugged and I have to do the "jump start" procedure again. Is the ATI card worth any $?
I was also given a EVGA 760 GTX SC! That I'm keeping.
Click to expand...

Format _C: said:
I said this is post #60 also but I think the motherboard is dying I could not get it to power on at all by the power button (or a screw driver on the right pins) however it will power on when "jump started" and will then post and power on/off with the button until unplugged and I have to do the "jump start" procedure again.
I found a bulged capacitor near the BIOS battery socket I may try a repair as I bought a lot of various capacitors to fix an old Video-Hi8 MM camera and a few Samsung TVs if I have the correct one I'll give it a try
Also the V in the K7N2-V means Value so this was the budget striped down model but still an Nforce 2 chipset which do sell for insane amounts now! I looked up Asus A7N8X-Deluxe (I had one when socket A/462 was still a current platform) the cheapest one is $150!
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Yay! $2 in capacitors and it works correctly again!
PS: a 30W soldering iron is barely adequate for this! The negative pin was a bitch to get out the positive pin not so much so I broke what was left of the old capacitor off and then pulled each pin out and then heated it up and the new one (nichicon) slipped right in a little more solder to keep it in place and the board works correctly! My guess the old capacitor shorted and would not allow the 5VSB to work as when powered up the old Antec made a horrible whine type noise!
 
dexvx said:
Uh... DDR SDRAM had a default voltage of 2.5V. I have some Corsair DDR-500 and its rated at like 2.8V
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Back then the OCZ Gold series was designed for heavy over-volting, and could definitely do that with said timings.
DDR had the best timings... 2-2-2-5 or 2-3-2-5, those were the days. :cool:
 
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Format _C: said:
PS: a 30W soldering iron is barely adequate for this! The negative pin was a bitch to get out the positive pin not so much so I broke what was left of the old capacitor off and then pulled each pin out and then heated it up and the new one (nichicon) slipped right in a little more solder to keep it in place and the board works correctly! My guess the old capacitor shorted and would not allow the 5VSB to work as when powered up the old Antec made a horrible whine type noise!
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HUE. 30W is a baby iron, you need a 60W iron at minimum to do board level reworks, and better if the iron is a model where the heating element is integrated into the tip. Ground planes will suck the heat right out of low wattage irons. Even higher wattage irons have problems around power plane areas, sometimes you have to preheat the board with a hot air tool.

I have a 60W Weller and a Hakko 551 150W iron, as well as an 80W desoldering gun. The Weller and the desoldering gun are good for most things, the Hakko 551 only comes out when I need to work on massive power planes, like inside switching power supplies. It'll cut through gobs of solder like a hot knife through butter. It actually gets so hot that it glows a dull orange, super spicy.
 
Do you folks running retro systems browse the web with them? Do the old CPUs have the instruction sets needed to run modern browsers and do they choke on common sites like gmail?
 
GiGaBiTe said:
HUE. 30W is a baby iron, you need a 60W iron at minimum to do board level reworks, and better if the iron is a model where the heating element is integrated into the tip. Ground planes will suck the heat right out of low wattage irons. Even higher wattage irons have problems around power plane areas, sometimes you have to preheat the board with a hot air tool.

I have a 60W Weller and a Hakko 551 150W iron, as well as an 80W desoldering gun. The Weller and the desoldering gun are good for most things, the Hakko 551 only comes out when I need to work on massive power planes, like inside switching power supplies. It'll cut through gobs of solder like a hot knife through butter. It actually gets so hot that it glows a dull orange, super spicy.
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I don't know I got it at RadioShack when I was 14 (1998) for installing a new head-unit in my friends Nissan Hardbody (D21?) remember those! it was a 1994 so it was a newer vehicle then! I only soldered 18-14AWG wire so it did that fine electric taped it (did not know about heat-shrink then) yes that is a mess later I got an old head-unit from a dead early 1990's car and yes it makes a mess! It is a dual-wattage iron 15/30W! but yes I got it out but had to destroy the old capacitor which was bad anyway I soldered each leg one by one. Yes I suck at PCB soldering probably because the RS one was also know as a "heated nail" if I had better tools I could probably be better but I don't do board level rework that much.
 
Halon said:
In my experience these old parts are sought because they can do things new PCs can’t. Haswell and onward Intel chips don’t support Gate A20, which is a death blow for protected mode memory support in DOS. Finding vanilla PCI slots outside of limited run industrial motherboards is no longer possible on new kit. If you have vintage ISA equipment to run for any reason, that same situation is even worse. And serial ports that are implemented natively instead of via USB translation are seriously useful for a lot of equipment.

I wouldn’t trust old gear for production unless I had no other options. But for a huge volume of old software that won’t cooperate with newer hardware, eBay is a godsend. Emulators exist and virtualization is an option, but the only reliable, authentic way to experience a ton of this stuff is with the hardware meant to run it.
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This is why I'm willing to pay a premium for and collect older hardware. I have a FS/FT thread open for 775 stuff because Core 2 is cheap enough to where it's hard not to hoard. The Voodoo 2/ Pentium II box I'm building on the other hand, well, I know I'm getting raped on at least the Voodoo 2, but it's worth it for the early 3dfx stuff. Emulation is great for some things, but for the full authentic experience it sucks. Original hardware FTW.
 
Kalessian said:
Do you folks running retro systems browse the web with them? Do the old CPUs have the instruction sets needed to run modern browsers and do they choke on common sites like gmail?
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It is possible yes, but it's painfully slow on anything but 1990s era websites and impossible on any website that requires SSL/TLS since the browsers don't support modern encryption. There are a couple of projects to backport modern browser technologies to older systems like Clasilla (Firefox tech backported to Mozilla browser for PowerPC Macs), Pale Moon (Firefox compiled without SSE2), K-Meleon (no SSE/SSE2 required), etc.

The oldest machine I've browsed the web on recently was my Macintosh LC III using Netscape Navigator. It has a 33 MHz 68030 and 36 MB of RAM. I currently have my Power Macintosh G3 connected to the internet using Clasilla, it has a 300 MHz G3 and 384 MB of RAM.
 
Kalessian said:
Do you folks running retro systems browse the web with them? Do the old CPUs have the instruction sets needed to run modern browsers and do they choke on common sites like gmail?
Click to expand...
The oldest systems I've recently attempted this on are Athlon 64 X2 and Core 2 Duo/Quad systems running either XP or Vista, and the experience isn't too bad, lots of disk thrashing though on systems with less than 4GB of RAM. An ad blocker is pretty much a must, but with Mozilla pulling plugin support on older versions, this has become difficult to impossible since Google pulled XP and Vista support for Chrome years ago.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
It is possible yes, but it's painfully slow on anything but 1990s era websites and impossible on any website that requires SSL/TLS since the browsers don't support modern encryption. There are a couple of projects to backport modern browser technologies to older systems like Clasilla (Firefox tech backported to Mozilla browser for PowerPC Macs), Pale Moon (Firefox compiled without SSE2), K-Meleon (no SSE/SSE2 required), etc.

The oldest machine I've browsed the web on recently was my Macintosh LC III using Netscape Navigator. It has a 33 MHz 68030 and 36 MB of RAM. I currently have my Power Macintosh G3 connected to the internet using Clasilla, it has a 300 MHz G3 and 384 MB of RA
Mr. Bluntman said:
This is why I'm willing to pay a premium for and collect older hardware. I have a FS/FT thread open for 775 stuff because Core 2 is cheap enough to where it's hard not to hoard. The Voodoo 2/ Pentium II box I'm building on the other hand, well, I know I'm getting raped on at least the Voodoo 2, but it's worth it for the early 3dfx stuff. Emulation is great for some things, but for the full authentic experience it sucks. Original hardware FTW.
Click to expand...
Shot you a DM re Voodoo 2
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