• Tag Archives Pentium III

  • Maximum PC (December 2001)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Source: Maximum PC – December 2001

    Maximum PC was by far my favorite computer magazine. It also survived longer than most with publication only ceasing a couple of years ago. When it was first introduced (in 1998 I believe) it was called boot. It was a magazine for enthusiasts and it reminded me a bit of MacAddict which was a similar sort of thing for Mac users. The December 2001 issue includes:

    Regulars

    • In/Out – Letters from readers about Hot Tamales (the candy), teen stereotypes, overclocking videocards, the G550, Windows XP, online privacy, gaming as a driver of the PC industry, and more.
    • Quick Start – How September 11th changed PC gaming; IBM’s CPU of the Future, the dual core POWER4; Windows XP optimization tips; Intel’s plans for a 20 GHz chip; new Treo phones; wireless print server device that turns HP printers into wireless printers; mobile Pentium 4 to be introduced at 1.5 GHz and use DDR RAM; and more.
    • Head2Head – A detailed comparison of the Pentium 4 2GHz and Athlon XP 1800+.
    • Watchdog – IBM 75GXP hard drives seem to experience a high rate of failure; MaxGate stops responding to customers; some vendors refuse to support existing hardware with Windows XP drivers; Compaq recalls notebook power adapters; and more.
    • Ask the Doctor – Troubleshooting a supposed Thunderbird Athlon identified as a Palomino; compatibility questions with the Asus A7V motherboard, Elsa Gladian 920 and Sound Blaster Live 5.1; troubleshooting vertical green lines on the screen; intermittent DSL disconnections; overclocking a Pentium III; and more.
    • How To… – A guide to hosting a LAN party. Includes steps for insuring you have enough power, preparing ethernet cables and other networking gear, setting up a server, and more.
    • Rig of the Month – A custom built machine featuring a Chinese “air” theme built around an ASUS CUV4X motherboard, Pentium III 733 (overclocked to 854 MHz), and AOpen GTS Pro PA256 Deluxe II 32MB video card (also overclocked).

    Reviews

    • Dell Dimension 8200 desktop system – A highly rated $3000 system from Dell that includes a 2GHz Pentium 4, 256 MB RDRAM, nVidia GeForce3 Ti 500, and more.
    • Falcon Northwest Mach V system – A nearly $4000 gaming machine featuring an Athlon XP 1800+, 512 MB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce3 Ti 500 64MB DDR, and more.
    • TDK veloCD 16/10/40 external CD-RW drive – If you needed an external CD writer then this one was a good one to have.
    • VisionTek Xtacy 6964 videocard – A highly rated video card using the GeForce3 Ti 500 chipset.
    • OCZ Titan 3 videocard – Also highly rated but using the original GeForce 3 chipset.
    • ATI Radeon 7500 videocard – A great card if you were looking for something on a budget.
    • Sony DSC-S85 4.1 megapixel digi-cam – Digital snapshot cameras aren’t as popular as they once were but at the time they were far superior to phone cameras which barely existed.
    • Olympus C-4040 4.1 megapixel digi-cam – Both this camera and the Sony model above were pretty average examples of what was available.
    • Cambridge Soundworks Megaworks 210D 2.1 speakers – A decent set of 2.1 PC speakers.
    • Philips MMS305 4.1 speakers – Another decent set of speakers but this one has a rear channel too.
    • 3Com Bluetooth Wireless PC Card – A way to add bluetooth capability to your laptop which was not yet a common built-in feature.
    • APC Back-UPS CS 500VA UPS – A highly rated UPS battery backup. APC is probably still the biggest name in UPSes today.
    • Allen KEYKatcher device – A PS/2 passthrough device that captures keystrokes.
    • Pocket Pyro PyroPro MP3 player – An MP3 expansion device for Palm devices that apparently was not well implemented.
    • Red Faction – A pretty average first person shooter.

    Features

    • Gear of the Year – Some winners include the AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (CPU), Cooler Master ATC-101 (case), nVidia GeForce 3 (3D accelerator), Tyan Tiger MP S2460 (motherboard), Plextor PlexWriter 24/10/40 (CD-RW Drive), Pioneer DVR-A03 Recordable DVD/CD Combo (DVD Recorder), Creative Labs Nomad II MG (MP3 Player), Sony Clie PEG-N760C (PDA), Falcon Northwest Mach V (desktop system), Dell Inspiron i8000 (desktop replacement notebook), Sony F520 (monitor), May Payne (game of the year), and lots more.
    • Rigs of the Year – A look at 15 machines custom built by readers with case mods.
    • PC Gadget Guide – A look at some of the latest gadgets including the Microsoft Sidewinder Strategic Commander, DM2 Digital Music Mixer, Homer Simpson Dot-Pal Desktop Sidekick, Pentax Optio 430 Digital Camera, AfterBurner CD Labeling System, and more.

    …and more!


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  • PC World (May 2001)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Source: PC World – May 2001

    PC World was one of the main PC magazines throughout much of the 1980s, all of the 1990s, and into the 2000s. Like most magazines, especially computer related ones, this one died off as the Internet matured. The May 2001 issue includes:

    Top of the News

    • Notebooks Reach 1 Gigahertz – A look at some of the first laptops on the market to feature a 1 GHz processor. Thse include the Toshiba Tecra 8200, Dell Inspiron 8000, Gateway Solo 9500, and Hewlett Packard OmniBook 6000. They all feature 128MB of RAM and hard drives in the 32GB range. Prices range from around $3000 to around $4500. I wouldn’t buy a laptop until prices came down significantly in the Pentium M era, however, I was a fan of Gateway so the Solo may have been my choice here. However, the Dell would have tempted me as it offers a little more bang for the buck.
    • Record More, Pay Less – Less is relative here. Recordable DVD drives were still relatively new. The newly released and “cheap” Pioneer DVR-A03 would only set you back $1000 and discs were $10 each.
    • Great Xpectations: Next Windows – A preview of Windows XP. The version examined here is Beta version 2. While Windows 2000 and Windows ME were being put on new computers, most people were using Windows 98SE at this time.
    • A Lovelier Linux – A look at Linux kernel 2.4 and new distributions using it including SuSE Linux 7.1.
    • Palms Gain Expansion Options – Palm releases the new Palm M500 which includes an expansion slot for SD/MMC cards.
    • Rambus Lawsuits – Rambus sues SDRAM and DDR makers for patent infringement. This was the beginning of a very litigious time period for RAMBUS lasting more than a decade.
    • Quickbooks Opens Up – New QuickBooks add-ons for specific industries.

    New Products

    • New Products – New products previewed here include the Dell OptiPlex GX1505SD which is a small form factor business oriented PC with a Pentium III-933, Easy CD cReator 5, the Digital Relay CRX10U-A2 portable CD burner, GoToMyPC, PCAnywhere 10, Photoshop Elements, Kodak MC3 digital camera and mp3 player, the Apple PowerBook G4 featuring a 500 MHz G4 processor and 256MB of SDRAM for $3499, DriveWorks (hard drive utility), and more.

    Here’s How

    • Windows Tips – Customizing system properties plus viewing your desktop files in a folder.
    • Answer Line – Transferring old drivers to a new computer, removing uninstalled app information from the registry, networking two PCs without a hub, getting a list of file associations and more.
    • Internet Tips – Finding the source of attacks reported by Zone Alarm, synchronizing bookmarks, disabling Encompass, branding Internet Explorer, and more.
    • Hardware Tips – Creating your own emergency boot disk (sounds like a software tip to me).
    • Upgrade Guide – A guide to upgrading your PC’s sound system.

    Top 100

    • Top 10 Power PCs – Coming in at the top spot this month is the Gateway Professional S 1500 featuring a 1.5 GHz Pentium 4, 128MB of RDRAM, a 40GB hard drive, and an ATI Radeon SDR graphics card. I still want a Gateway machine with this case to add to my collection. It was the last one by them I liked.
    • Top 10 Value PCs – At the top of this list is the Dell Dimension 4100 featuring a Pentium III-1000, 128MB of SDRAM and a 20GB hard drive, and an ATI Radeon card with 32MB. Second placye features a Gateway E-3400XL Deluxe with a Pentium III-933, 128MB of SDRAM, a 40 GB hard drive, and an ATI Rage Fury Pro graphics card with 16MB. There are also machines with Athlon and Duron processors in this list. This was probably not long after I built my first PC which was Duron based.
    • Top 15 Notebook PCs – In this list, the IBM Thinkpad A21p gets the top spot for power notebook, the Gateway Solo 5300 gets the top spot for midrange notebook, and the Dell Inspiron 3800 gets the top spot for budget notebook.
    • Top 15 Home PCs – Top Power System = Dell Dimension 8100, Top Midrange System = Dell Dimension 4100/1GHz, Top Budget System = Dell Dimension L866r. Gateway gets the second and third spots in the Power System category with the Gateway Select 1200 and Gateway Performance 1500.
    • Top 10 Color Laser Printers – Coming in at the top spot is the Minolta-QMS Magicolor 2200 GN for a mere $1895.
    • Top 10 19-inch Monitors – Back in the day, if you had a budget system you were probably rocking a 15-inch monitor (or maybe even 14-inch a little earlier on). The average decent system had a 17-inch monitor. If you could afford the latest and greatest then you had a 19-inch monitor…maybe even a 21-inch if you could afford it and you could somehow transport it without killing yourself. The Samsung SyncMaster 950p comes in at the top of this list for $309.
    • Top 10 Graphics Boards – The best you could get was the ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon for $299. If you wanted nVidia then the CardExpert GeForce2 MX comes in at second place.
    • Top 10 Scanners – At the top of the SOHO list is the Epson Perfection 1240U Photo for $299. The best corporate scanner was the Microtek ScanMaker 8700 for $1000.
    • Top 10 Digital Cameras – Digital cameras were really still in their infancy at this time. At the top of the list is the Epson PhotoPC 3000Z featuring a 3.3 megapixel resolution and including a 16MB compact flash card.

    Departments

    • Up Front – An editorial on the dangers of the Internet.
    • Letters – Letters from readers about wireless services for PDAs, video downloads, tax software, price matching, and more.
    • Consumer Watch – Some ISPs are getting too aggressive with their spam filtering.
    • Web Savvy – Tips for searching the web and when using search engines other than Google is useful.
    • Home Office – Using Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum and Diamond Cut Audio Restoration Tool 32 to transfer music from records to CD.
    • Bugs and Fixes – Tons of bugs in Windows ME, Netscape 6.01 is released, and more.
    • Full Disclosure – How searching for the best deals online might lead you to grey market items.

    …and more!


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  • Digital Archaeology: Dell PowerEdge 2550

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    While out patrolling my neighborhood…really just taking a walk after dinner, I spotted something interesting by the curb. There were what appeared to be several rack mounted servers (well, they weren’t currently mounted…). Either our neighborhood was built on some ancient computer server burial ground and they were rising from the dead, or less likely, someone was throwing them out. Either way, I grabbed them…or at least hauled them off the ground with great force…these things were heavy…or they just didn’t want to let go…

    Double doors opened up to see inside this rather large 2U server.

    All in all there were 5 different machines. Here I’ll cover the first…what turned out to be a Dell PowerEdge 2550. This computer was made in the early 2000s. The PowerEdge 2550 was introduced on March 27th 2001 according to this article at a base price of $2499. While the article mentions CPUs ranging from 700 MHz to 1 GHz, I believe the lowest end PowerEdge models came with a 933 MHz CPU and they supported up to 1.4 GHz CPUs. ServerWorks Corp.’s HE-SL chipset also supported up to 4 GB of RAM (most desktops of the era only supported 512 MB to 2 GB if you were lucky), a dual channel raid with battery backup and 3 PCI buses (2 64-bit and 1 32-bit). This one seemed to have 2 CPUs in it. At least I could see two heatsinks and two voltage regulator modules (VRMs). The previous caretaker had wisely removed the hard drives. These would have been SCSI drives with particular hot swap caddies for this dell model (and maybe others) so it wasn’t something I just had lying around. Nevertheless, I hooked up a monitor, keyboard and mouse and turned it on to see what would happen…

    The VRMs and processor heatsinks can be seen at the bottom. The RAM is hidden by the metal cover next to one of the two power supplies. The SIMM next to the metal cover is for the RAID

    To my surprise, it posted and even though it had nothing to boot, I could enter the BIOS and see what was here. It reported 1 933 MHz Pentium III CPU and 1.5 GB of RAM. Why it cannot see the other CPU I have not figured out yet. There are no error beeps or messages displayed, it’s just as if that 2nd CPU which I can clearly see is not really there. I tried reseating the VRMs with no effect. The processor in the #1 spot must be the one working because otherwise the machine wouldn’t boot at all. At some point I’ll remove the CPU and heatsink of the 2nd CPU and maybe try reseating it.

    You can see the two power supplies at the top along with the CD-ROM drive at the bottom. The battery backup for the RAID can be seen attached to the door at the top right of the image.

    Unfortunately, this machine will not boot from USB. I guess there were a few options at this point. I could try to grab an appropriate drive off of eBay or elsewhere, stick in a SATA PCI card and drive (which I do happen to have around), or, since it did have a CD-ROM drive, burn a Linux live cd of some flavor. I chose the last option. Being an old machine with what is an apparently poorly supported graphics chip in Linux (it has a Rage XL chip on the motherboard) made this task more difficult than it should have been. Sadly, major Linux distributions seem to be ending 32-bit support which doesn’t help things either.

    A more angled view showing the riser card with 3 64-bit PCI slots.

    I first tried several relatively recent distributions either designed to work well with older machines or just to be lightweight in general. These included Amtix, Xubuntu, and various flavors of Puppy Linux. They all seemed to have more or less the same problem. The boot process would stop when it came to loading the GUI. In some cases the GUI would briefly appear before dropping to a black screen or text logon prompt. I believe the reason for this is the Rage XL graphics chip this thing uses. Finally, I tried an older version of Xubuntu I had lying around (12.04). To my surprise it loaded fine.

    A view inside the first two drive bays. You can see the SCSI connectors at the back.

    Given that I had no hard drive for this machine, I decided to see if I could get persistence working with the live CD and a USB drive. Unfortunately, I could never get that to work. Speed probably would not have been remotely acceptable anyway. That meant any applications I installed or data I created would be lost on shutdown or reboot. I decided to check out eBay to see if I could find a reasonably priced drive. I needed one or more Ultra 3/Ultra 160 or Ultra 320 SCSI drive. At first all I could find were overpriced drives. At least they were prices I wasn’t willing to pay. But in a day or two I found a buy it now auction for 4 drives for around $10 plus shipping and they even included the appropriate caddies for the PowerEdge 2550. That seemed like a pretty good bargain so I grabbed them. When the package showed up at my door, there was even an extra drive so I had a total of five Ultra 160 drives of ~36 GB each of various brands. Since I wasn’t planning to run a raid or anything I only really needed one but including shipping they averaged out to less than $5 each so I’m happy. Maybe I’ll see if I can find an inexpensive SCSI card or few and use these in some other old computers.

    Post screen showing CPU info and the connected SCSI devices.

    I plugged one of the drives in, booted from the Xubuntu 12.04 live CD and was able to install without any problems. The only real oddity is that the boot process seems to timeout. I wind up at an initramfs prompt or a blank screen. Typing ‘exit’ in either case results in the system continuing to boot normally. I’m not sure exactly what causes that and it doesn’t happen when booting from CD but it doesn’t seem to be a hardware problem as everything works as expected from that point on.

    A view of the front

    After the OS was installed, I did what I always do when reviving an old piece of hardware. I installed BOINC on it to see what projects I can get it to run. As with Linux, 32-bit support in BOINC (or at least in the projects that use BOINC) seems to be getting more uncertain. Many times projects will claim to have applications that support 32-bit but don’t work quite right at the end of the day. Work units will error out quickly (if you are lucky) or at the very end (if you are not). Seti@home was the best at supporting old hardware but it has entered “hibernation” and is no longer an option. Rosetta@home also used to do a pretty good job with old hardware and it even adjusts work unit sizes to complete in a certain time on whatever machine you have. However, ever since they added COVID-19 related work units, the memory requirements have gone way up and it doesn’t seem to work well on older systems. I’ve started to see work units arrive on older systems again recently though so all is not lost. I’ve had better luck with Einstein@home, NFS@home and yoyo@home. Not that you will get any great amount of credit using the likes of a Pentium III but if I’m going to have it on playing with it, it might as well be doing something useful.

    Hardware includes the following:

    CPU: 933 MHz Pentium III (two of them but one is non-functional for some reason)
    Memory: 1.5 GB (2 x 256 MB 133 MHz SDRAM and 2 x 512 MB 133 MHz SDRAM)
    Video: Rage XL
    Storeage:
    Hitachi Ultrastar DK32EJ-36NC 36.9 GB SCSI Ultra 160 hard drive
    Floppy: 3.5″ 1.44 MB
    Samsung SN-124 24x slimline CD-ROM drive
    Dell PowerVault 100T DD-4/ARCHIVE Python 06408-XXX tape drive

    As far as Pentium IIIs go, this is a pretty nice one as it must be the Coppermine T model which supports SMP and motherboards designed for Tualatin CPUs but it also supports motherboards designed for the older Coppermine CPUs. This CPU has the same 256K of cache as the Coppermine. Later Tualatin based CPUs eventually raised that to 512k.

    I thought about trying to use that tape drive to back up some stuff but with a capacity of 20 GB (40 GB compressed) and tapes that cost ~$25 each, it doesn’t really seem worth it.

    For more information on the hardware in this specific machine, see the output from lshw or HardInfo. Or you can check out how it is doing in regards to BOINC activity.

    At some point, I’ll take this thing apart for some more maintenance. I still want to try to figure out why the second CPU is invisible to the system. I will also contemplate upgrading the RAM to the max of 4 GB if I can find it cheap enough.

    Dell PowerEdge 2550 specifications: dell-poweredge-2550-spec

    Dell PowerEdge 2550 User’s Guide: poweredge-2550_user’s guide_en-us


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