exxos blog - random goings on

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Steve
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Re: exxos blog - random goings on

Post by Steve »

@exxos Sorry man but you have an 'old man' attitude to these things ;D I mean in the nicest possible way! You know as best as the next man that you can't run on rapidly aging hardware for too long, for so many reasons.

Half the reason I like 'newer' hardware (Even my PC isn't 'new', it's an i7-4790 z97 based machine) Is that they just seem to 'just work' way more than old computers ever did, they're basically so easy to put together you could be brain dead and do it in your sleep.

In regards to floppy drives - I personally (I know this is the opposite argument) would run a retro-pc running win2k or winxp just so that you have the ability to do what you need with a floppy (that usb floppies cannot do etc) It's not like you're using a floppy every day is it? Just have it on your LAN for easy file transfer and only use it for that purpose.

In regards to your audigy - all modern motherboards have built-in sound cards that outperform the old audigy. if you *really* wanted to use the audigy (there are no good reasons for it though) Daniel-K makes Windows-10 based *working* driver packs. https://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/
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Re: exxos blog - random goings on

Post by exxos »

Don't hate :D :lol: :hide:

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Managed to port my system over to a new machine. Will keep me going for a bit longer :twisted:

:girldance: :girldance: :girldance:


Also pi$$ed off my Smasun 870 QVO died after only a few months. Sooo... Invested in a "cheap" NAS for backups. Now theres 2 backups internal and external to the PC.

I also setup a small fileshare area for me to swap files easily without carting USB sticks about or emailing myself etc.

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Still sorting out all this crap. Gonna be another week or 2 as super back-logged with stuff now :roll: My room now looks like a 1980, 2012, 2020 PC shop has exploded :lol: :roll: Lots of rare vintage dust all over the place as well.

My old 990FX.. Oh the epic drama.. TL;DR version, it would work fine in 2 core mode, anything more and crashville. I found the 12V connector burnt.. so hacked in some new power cables but didn't solve the problem :( The voltage is rock solid stable on the CPU. Its not overheating.. changing voltages, speeds, no odds at all. Its not the RAM.. Changed the CPU.. Very perplexing :( I can only assume some of the power phases have crapped out despite the voltages looking good.

Not given up on the old girl just yet.. But this Ryzen 5 stuff is just sooooooo much faster. Got some floppy options in the post as well.
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
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JezC
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Re: exxos blog - random goings on

Post by JezC »

Looking good @exxos - glad to hear you've got a system up & running again!

:thumbup:
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PhilC
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Re: exxos blog - random goings on

Post by PhilC »

I built myself a Ruben 5 PC a couple of months ago after my last one died, an AM3+ over clocked to 5Ghz and this is so much faster.
If it ain't broke, test it to Destruction.
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exxos
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Re: exxos blog - random goings on

Post by exxos »

I emailed ASROCK about it. Surprised they replied, but support always seems to have been good. Not much help other than clear CMOS. I did use the jumper, but not sure it did anything. But they can't fix a bugged board anyway.

Interesting thing is, they asked if I knew anyone who was interested in such stuff. Seems they looking to clear their old test machines out. I've asked for a basic list and prices etc. But also said about the crazy eBay prices for such stuff.

Its frustrating as I hate chucking out old stuff when there's nothing wrong with it. Its not a bad PC really. Yeah its no ryzen that's for sure. But most of the time my CPU was down clocked to about 1.8ghz. Just don't need anything fast for replying to emails, using eagle etc. It runs games fine, maybe not the latest titles but I don't care about that anyway. But I'm sure I could find a home for such tech. If its going to be cheap enough to bother doing that in :roll:
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
Steve
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Re: exxos blog - random goings on

Post by Steve »

@exxos glad you're back up and running! (ps Win7 still is my favourite ever Windows OS so I don't blame you for wanting it!)
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exxos
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Re: exxos blog - random goings on

Post by exxos »

Steve wrote: Sat Aug 20, 2022 4:16 pm @exxos glad you're back up and running! (ps Win7 still is my favourite ever Windows OS so I don't blame you for wanting it!)
Indeed. I held off upgrading from XP for a long time. But chrome stopped working and others. Plus I wanted to use faster hard drives etc. Win7 wasn't much of a jump. I hate win7s control panel, XP was better IMO, just stuff was neater and easier to find. But aside from that I was OK with win7 overall. I think I read there are no plans for chrome to die on win7 just yet.

At some point stuff will stop working in win7. But as said before, it really depends on how sales pan out over the next couple years. If people are not buying stuff and my win7 rig dies.. It just wouldn't be worth the effort of going to win10 or whatever.

My girlfriends mum uses win10. I can't find anything in there anymore. Last time I looked windows were just totally plain white boxes. It looked worse than win 3.11. Was no rounded windows, shading, nothing. I don't know if that's still the case. But each time I used win10 I was just put off every time.

Oddly girlfriends mum got tricked into a fake DHL payment , AGAIN. yeah stupid people as normal. But win10 didn't do anything to help her there. With companies selling your data , getting hacked anyway. I think what OS is running is pretty secondary these days. Probably get flamed for saying that but I doubt hackers would bother trying to hack me when they can hack some company and gets millions of users data. Or just buy it.

Unless there was some serious flaw in win7 which would make it super simple to hack and get data. But I think most hacks come from idiots clicking links which install malware etc these days. If there was, I'll just unplug win7 from the net and have done with it all anyway.
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
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exxos
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Re: exxos blog - random goings on

Post by exxos »

Just a "conclusion" to this thread viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5725

Where My Ryzen 5 5500 CPU was stuttering very bad in games. In case anyone comes from popular search engines, I am running Windows 7 64bit pro on a 570X MSI PRO motherboard.

Looking around the Internet people were blaming the TPM module for the stuttering and AMD were supposed to be doing a fix for this. However I gave up looking into that because I'm not even sure win 7 even supports TPM. There seemed to be some debate about exactly how often this stutter would happen. Long story short, I turned it off anyway and it made no difference at all.

I was going through the BIOS basically changing every setting one by one which was tediously boring. The game starter would not happen if I did a fixed CPU speed. X36 multiplier with a 100MHz FSB. But running the CPU flat out all the time was not really a great solution.

The option which was causing the was actually "Global C-state control". Which seems to be a AMD power saving feature. Though I'm not really sure what the point of it is as the CPU down clocks and under volts under light loads anyway. But anyway, stuttering is completely gone now.

Previously when running gas guzzlers even the intro sequences were stuttering. As soon as the game started it would just be constantly stuttering. But then oddly it would seem to work fine sometimes for maybe 30 seconds and then go for a stuttering fit again. It was difficult to work out exactly when the stuttering would happen but it generally seem to be worse when things like explosions happened. I did wonder if it's something to do with the NVME hard drive, but changing to a SATA drive made no odds whatsoever anyway.

TL;DR - Just turn off this option and to me least it solved all the stuttering in games.

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So now the CPU down clocks to about 1400MHz automatically and voltage drops to somewhere around 0.725V. Top speed was Ultimately 4445MHz at 1.375V. The CPU was overclocked 200MHz in the Advanced CPU options *somewhere*. Oddly it would not let me put a higher number and even though I fiddled with a lot of other settings as well. A lot of people on the Internet seem to have been complaining about this also. But at the end of the day it is still a 3.6GHz CPU being overclocked to almost 4.5GHz anyway.

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https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
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Re: exxos blog - random goings on

Post by exxos »

I now have one of these boards on the way courtesy of ASROCK. https://www.asrock.com/MB/AMD/890FX%20Deluxe5/index.asp It is a slightly older board than my 990FX. But for all intents and purposes it really does not matter.

I was casually chatting to them about the design choice about covering up the VRM heatsink which I mentioned previously (I think?). You can actually see it in the above link anyway.

exxos wrote: I am slightly puzzled why half the finns were blocked by this plate in the first place.
asrock wrote: Guess it is supposed to be a nice-looking placeholder for a 40mm fan that you can place there. Different engineers/designers. Some focus on functionality. Some on design. They have to work together. Design choices are made… managers wanting to have some say… ;)

Personally, I am 100% for function over form for whatever in inside a case. But nowadays looks do count, whether we like it or not.
Just thought it was mildly amusing and sounds pretty legitimate as well :lol:
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
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exxos
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Re: exxos blog - random goings on

Post by exxos »

Does anyone know of any micro-ATX motherboards which have a floppy connector ?

I built a very small PC years ago which never got used. Thinking I could swap the motherboard in that something which has a floppy port and used as a slave machine.

The USB floppy drive arrived earlier does not work with 720K :( No surprise, but ironically the TECH drives datasheet does say it supports 1MB and 2MB modes. So it has to be the controller at fault :( Pretty bonkers that someone would go to the effort of designing a chip not build in 720K support as well.

I have my 890FX motherboard on the way. I can build that up as a slave PC. But considering the power requirements and the physical size of the whole thing..
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
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