3dfx Archive - Workin' on something cool...

Obi-Wan_Kenobi Ex Member	Re: Workin' on something cool... Reply #60 - 01.10.06 at 01:01:51 Hey Paul give him a B52 that should do it haha Crikey!! I had like 2 of them this night plus loads of beer w00t!! hehe I rekon it is an AAlchemy 4116 sys, since it is 4.xxx based
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gdonovan YaBB Administrator Offline Infernal Collector Posts: 2361	Re: Workin' on something cool... Reply #61 - 02.10.06 at 23:12:05 Motherboard came in today, so far so good! Still need to find the right CPU's
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paulpsomiadis God Member Offline -=3Dfx still rox!=- Posts: 2011 Newcastle U.K. Gender:	Re: Workin' on something cool... Reply #62 - 03.10.06 at 00:50:42 My secret project will be revealed by next week... I have the final components on the way from eBay... ...stay tuned!
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gdonovan YaBB Administrator Offline Infernal Collector Posts: 2361	Re: Workin' on something cool... Reply #63 - 03.10.06 at 03:08:06 Quote: My secret project will be revealed by next week... Most excellent! I still have a few odds and ends to obtain. Motherboard seems to be working nicely- A bit of a stress test with OpenGVS demo running with one copy of toast at the same time. 100% CPU usage!
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Obi-Wan_Kenobi

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Re: Workin' on something cool...
Reply #64 - 03.10.06 at 03:59:05

I sense a greatness in The Force from your side Jedi Master Gary.

The graphics card you are useing is deffintely a 3dfx Voodoo4 4800 AGP 64MB + TV-out & DVI,inless it's a normal 4500 AGP ofcourse hehe, But I have a feeling since it's so speacial it would be a greater chance that it is the 4800 AGP.

Why and how could I see that it's 4800, I will show you

sorry for my crappy writing, but it should be clear enough on what I mean, 2 places for 32MB of ram each place devided bay 4 SDRAM chips Wink

the place for the VSA-100, the DVI, the TV-Out, even the VESA connector is visable also on the same place as everyother 4500 AGP, since a 4800 has exactly the same PCB layout, it only houses the extra 32MB ram, which consist of 4 SDRAM modules, it also has the DVI and the TV-Out as extra.

Your second screenshot Gary reviels a 3dfx logo in the taskmanager, rather obvious you installed 3dfx tool right to have that Wink

The back of that card looks im my Jedi Master Eyes exactly looks like this one:

Top View:

Back of a normal 4500 AGP just to get the idea of the layout, just think in the parts of the 4800:

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gamma742 God Member Offline 3Dfx Gamer Posts: 1668 San Diego, CA USA Gender:	Re: Workin' on something cool... Reply #65 - 03.10.06 at 04:57:06 I may have some old PIII 450s if you need them
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gdonovan YaBB Administrator Offline Infernal Collector Posts: 2361	Re: Workin' on something cool... Reply #66 - 03.10.06 at 11:53:52 Quote: I may have some old PIII 450s if you need them Need a pair of 800's They will show up on Ebay, just have to be patient.
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IG88 Full Member Offline Posts: 209 Australia Gender:	Re: Workin' on something cool... Reply #67 - 03.10.06 at 13:19:45 Nice similar to what i`m running Dual 1ghz , v4500 , 768 ram 550 watt power , scsi drives
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Obi-Wan_Kenobi Ex Member	Re: Workin' on something cool... Reply #68 - 04.10.06 at 02:02:47 he well I do have something up my sleeves as well Project Outcast Something powerfull from like the year 2000, it is SMP based.
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gamma742 God Member Offline 3Dfx Gamer Posts: 1668 San Diego, CA USA Gender:	Re: Workin' on something cool... Reply #69 - 04.10.06 at 03:36:36 Quote: Need a pair of 800's They will show up on Ebay, just have to be patient. WooHoo Another hint
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paulpsomiadis

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Re: Workin' on something cool...
Reply #70 - 09.10.06 at 14:01:14

The 'reveal' of my secret project will be this week... Grin

...I have to write up a little 'making of' article so you guys know what went on while I was making 'the project', so it may be either tomorrow or Wednesday. Wink

Pictures will also follow - but it depends on when I can get the film developed... Roll Eyes

==EDIT==

Sorry for the delay guys - I've just had a new 2MB Broadband line installed and have been setting-up my PC. Roll Eyes

I'll try and get some of the article written tonight... Wink

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« Last Edit: 11.10.06 at 21:18:19 by paulpsomiadis »

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paulpsomiadis

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Re: Workin' on something cool...
Reply #71 - 12.10.06 at 02:27:57

Well it's with great pleasure that I finally unveil the 'secret project' I've been working on for the last month.

So how did it come about and what is it?

Read on and find out...

THE INSPIRATION
==============

Rewind to about one year ago and I was walking home after a shopping trip to the local supermarket.

As I got about a couple of feet away from the gate to my house I found something just lying on the pavement - a 1.5 metre length of bright red acrylic (plastic).

So I picked it up and stored it in my downstairs lobby...

...months passed and it gathered dust - my Mum visited from Greece and told me t throw it out...but I didn't.

Something was nagging at me... "I must be able to use this for 'something'!" I thought.

Then it finally dawned on me...

We all use our super high powered PC's to browse the 'net and download TONS of gigabytes of data every year.

But with high speed comes high costs in power - in the case of my gaming rig 450W of power.

So I figured "Wouldn't it be great if I built a ultra-low power PC that uses <50W of power, but I can use it to browse the net and do all my downloads on."

So I decided to use the red acrylic to build a case - and the idea was born!

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paulpsomiadis

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Re: Workin' on something cool...
Reply #72 - 12.10.06 at 02:28:47

THE SEARCH
===========

Everything depended on getting the right mainboard - it had not just to be small, but absolutely TEENY!

I scoured eBay and eventually found an industrial mini board called the WAFER-5820. (233MHz Cyrix 'pentium class' equivalent)

It was being sold by a Guy in Australia for about £40 (turns out that this was a total steal too - as buying one of these NEW for an industrial factory can cost £400 per mainboard - yikes!)

I won the board along with it's metal case and it arrived a fortnight later.

Other components soon followed...

256MB IBM SODIMM RAM PC133 - ironically the mainboard chipset has a 128MB limit, oh well - at least it's IBM RAM.

40 GB Maxtor 3.5" HDD (salvage) - a friend of mine had an old Maxtor with some bad sectors. The cool thing about these drives is that AFTER a low level format, all the bad sectors are gone - so I did that and they were...NICE!

QSI DVD/CDRW combo drive - cheap on eBay, the eject button was broken - so I ripped the plastic front off the drive and put a new access LED and eject switch on. Works perfectly! (even if it looks rough)

Floppy drive - standard fare, nothing to see - please move on!

Keyboard and Laser Mouse - spare ones, had them already.

Monitor - my old gaming monitor, not too great in comparison to my new one - but fine for web browsing.

I had enough to assemble and test the machine...but then came the first problem...

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paulpsomiadis

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Re: Workin' on something cool...
Reply #73 - 12.10.06 at 02:29:34

TEENY BOARD - EVERYTHING TEENY!
==============================

After actually looking at the board I found out that all the pin headers for HDD, Floppy, Sound, USB, etc... all had mini pin headers - the same size as those found on a laptop HDD.

The solution was simple - but painstaking! I had to build all of the leads that attached to the mainboad myself - by hand!

The problem of the mini-pin headers was solved by going to my local Maplin (electronics) store and buying three 2.5" HDD adapter leads. Then I spliced up the leads and soldered them onto various other leads (standard HDD, Floppy, Audio, etc...) to create all of the leads I needed for the project.

All the leads are insulated with heat shrink to stop short-outs (none of that - nasty shorting wires!). I also built a custom audio header to allow sound from the built in AC97 compliant chipset.

So with all the leads built and checked (no crossed wires) I assembled all of the components on my dining table and installed Win XP to test it out. After a LOOOOOONG and boring wait for XP to install - it worked perfectly! (although I had some of the audio wires back to front - a quick re-solder and it was fixed!)

Then comes the case...

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paulpsomiadis

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Re: Workin' on something cool...
Reply #74 - 12.10.06 at 02:30:31

SAW, SAW, GRINDY, FILEY, BANG, CRASH!
==================================

Building the case left absolutely no room for error. I worked out (even more amazingly) that the 1.5m piece of acrylic was 'just' enough for the whole case (I ended up with about 30cm to spare - which was mostly used to space out the drives in the case, leaving just a 10cm long 30cm wide piece remaining).

I used a sideways cutting drill to slice up the acrylic - not very precice, but I've not got a dremmel (I'd like one...but just never got round to buying one...).

Once the four sides were complete, I bought some plastic guttering (for covering wires on a floor) and used it to attach the four sides together withscrews and bolts and measure the two ends. The ends were soon cut and it was time to drill / cut the holes for the mainboard and drives.

This was a pain in the arse - I eventually thought of putting some small screws and bolts onto the mainboard for 'legs'. Then I estimated where the holes for the mainboard ports would go and cut / drilled them out. After a bit of filing - everything eventually fit into the case!

Cutting the holes for the drives was quite easy - two square holes. One for the floppy and one for the combo CDRW/DVD - short and quick!

So it was in the case - but now I needed a PSU that was also teeny AND power efficient!

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