Tall Boy update! *and questions*
Posted by Dr_Discette@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 20 comments
Hey y’all! So I started working with the new-old stock case! Many cuts and scrapes later she’s booting and ready for windows!
She’s currently has:
Intel MMX 100hz
32MB “going to def put more just have to find more pairs of ram”
3D rage Pro 8mb PCI
QDI-p51430vx mobo
Sound blaster live!
It also has an 60GB HDD and a IDE to SD card reader.
Here’s some of my questions to make sure I do this all right!!
Should I have the SD and HDD on the same cable? Or should the Cd drive be? At the moment the CD drive is on a secondary cable
Will the above hardware work with win 3.1 , 95 , 98? I want to have it able to boot all 3 OS’s if chosen
The Mobo is currently saying that the CMOS is dead even with a new battery, could there be a dead cap causing that?
And finally what should I name it? I want to give it a name
Thanks y’all love this community
Gr8fulFox@reddit
With a "power tower" like that, I'd recommend adding a SCSI card and using that for as many peripherals, internal and external, as possible!
MrKrueger666@reddit
And don't forget a pair of Voodoo cards in SLI.
Dr_Discette@reddit (OP)
Once it’s working I have a tape drive and a zip100 I wanna test out
Gr8fulFox@reddit
Neat! I've never been able to use a tape drive, and my only experience with ZIP (circa 2010, so) was a failure, so I'd love to see you being able to get them working on this build. Are the drives you're using SCSI, or IDE?
Dr_Discette@reddit (OP)
One is scsi and other is IDE
MrKrueger666@reddit
Pentium MMX 100Mhz (not hz) doesn't exist. The MMX models started at 166Mhz and went up to 233Mhz. You likely have the bus speed and/or multiplier jumpers set incorrectly.
Take off the heatsink and check what model it really is and set the jumpers accordingly.
As for the CMOS battery, either the new battery is a cheap piece of junk or the Clear CMOS jumper is enabled. Disable that to get rid of the error.
60GB HDD is nice, but you will not be able to use the full capacity. Biosses on these older machines usually go up to 8.4GB.
To use it fully, you will need BIOS overlay software or an XTIDE add-on BIOS.
What cable to use for what is dependent on use case, but most people put primary storage on the Master of each channel and use the Slave on the cable for removable media. IDE channels share the bandwidth between the two attached devices. Disk to disk copy will be faster this way.
For the memory, don't get those pairs you mentioned. The white slots take 72pin EDO SIMM modules which are slower than the single SDRAM stick you have installed. Get a larger SDRAM stick if you want more memory. Leave the white slots empty.
Do keep in mind, 32MB of RAM is a lot for such an old machine. There won't be a lot of software that actually makes use of that.
Sadly, the board has provisions for a CoaST module, but the slot isn't installed. CoaST (Cache on a STick) adds level2 cache memory, which can boost performance significantly.
Choice of operating system is up to you. Period accurate would be Windows98SE or Windows95OSR2. It'll definitely also run Win3.1, NT3.51 and NT4.0. If enough memory, and preferably enough level2 cache, is installed, Windows2000 and even Windows XP will run on it.
Dr_Discette@reddit (OP)
Hi thanks for all the info! And I made a gaff it is in fact at 166
SteveusChrist@reddit
Board does have L2 on board, you can see the Winbond chips near the SIMM ram, some boards had a COAST slot and deleted on board SRAM, and some had both!
i430VX can support up to 128 MB RAM but only 64 MB will be cacheable.
Good luck and pay attention with that case, the tail end of AT cases were very cheaply made and will easily cut you very badly.
MrKrueger666@reddit
Yeah, this thing can be pretty sharp. I had the ATX version of it.
It has been produced into the Pentium4 era. Mine had a KT133 board with a Duron 800Mhz on it.
taggat@reddit
This just screams out to me on a tower that big
Dr_Discette@reddit (OP)
Oh my god yes
HereComesTheLastWave@reddit
What's the actual error reporting the dead CMOS? It can be possible for a mobo to keep reporting a "CMOS checksum error" after changing the battery - you would then need to go into the BIOS and reset to original settings. If not, while a hardware fault on the mobo is possible, it's also possible that the battery isn't fully in place (push harder and it will click down and make contact). It's also possible that the "new" battery isn't as new as you hoped - do you have a voltmeter that could test it? (You may also be able to see the voltage in the BIOS, under "PC Health" or something like that.)
Dr_Discette@reddit (OP)
I tried a brand new battery, and clearing cmos, still same errors
Dr_Discette@reddit (OP)
It says cmos checksum and cmos battery failed
Dr_Discette@reddit (OP)
I think that is what it’s saying but I’ll confirm when I get home in a few hrs
grimeywelsh@reddit
Mannnnnnnnn I had that case way back when. Dremeled holes for fans in the side and top. Added some switches to control the fans. I wish I still had a picture of it.
hotlavatube@reddit
That's a big-un. I'm reminded of a somewhat tall computer I had back in the day. It had a big red on-off switch mounted left-right at the top front of the case. One day I was spinning my chair and the edge of the chair caught the tip of the switch and flicked it off/on. What a horrible place for a switch.
GraphiteBlue@reddit
> Should I have the SD and HDD on the same cable? Or should the Cd drive be? At the moment the CD drive is on a secondary cable
Sounds good as it is.
> Will the above hardware work with win 3.1 , 95 , 98? I want to have it able to boot all 3 OS’s if chosen
Sure. You can find some drivers and other info about the motherboard here:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/qdi-p5i430vx-250dm-v3-0-s3-1-explorer-ii-sp
> The Mobo is currently saying that the CMOS is dead even with a new battery, could there be a dead cap causing that?
Try setting a jumper for the CMOS clear to the NORMAL position (pins 1 & 2, the top two pins). It's located just below the CMOS battery.
DrNick42@reddit
Nice tower! Loved how they always looked mega expensive... which the PC's inside usually were! Regarding the CPU, I expect it's a P-100 without MMX - the MMX CPU's started at 166Mhz on the desktop and 133Mhz for laptops. Still, with 32MB RAM that's a great spec for Windows 95 OSR2 which is what I'd put on there. You don't need DOS separately with Win95 as it includes actual DOS, so all your DOS games and software will work just fine too.
You might find the SD card reader doesn't have any master/slave jumpers so might need to be on its own cable, in which case run the CD-ROM as slave on the cable with the HDD. Otherwise it's fine for the SD-card to share a cable with the HDD.
Be aware though that whilst 60GB doesn't seem like hardly anything these days, it's far too big for Win95 to deal with properly - and also very probably too big for the BIOS of that motherboard to recognise properly. Boards from this era typically topped out at around 32GB. I'd recommend putting a smaller drive in if you can find one. Bear in mind that when Windows 95 came out 1GB was considered large and 4GB was considered huge! If you can find a drive of 30GB or less that would be good, then what I'd do is partition drive C: no larger than 8GB, and allocate the rest of the space for drive D:. That way you'll get an efficient cluster size for the OS drive, and also having 2 partitions means you can back things up for when you need to format the C: drive and re-install.
Lastly name, hmm, Bertha?
bio4m@reddit
Ha, my friend had a similarly massive case back in the day
He ended up with multiple 5.25 floppies, zip drives, cd-roms to fill it all up (pretty sure it was originally a DX2-66 system and then a P166 eventually