Category Archives: PC hardware

Detecting an Empty Drive… Or Not

Posted on August 3, 2013 by Michal Necasek

Detecting an empty drive with a NEC uPD765A or compatible FDC is theoretically easy using the ‘drive ready’ signal. In practice, the drive ready mechanism is completely unusable on IBM PCs and compatibles due to the way the FDC is … Continue reading →

Posted in OS/2, PC hardware | 16 Comments

ISA bus 8514/A?

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Michal Necasek

During the development of the 8514/A, IBM clearly had ISA-based adapters. A proof of this may be found in the source code for the Windows 2.x setup program (part of the Binary Adaptation Kit, or BAK), which among other things … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics, IBM, PC hardware, Windows | 7 Comments

S3 Graphics Accelerators and the 8514/A

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Michal Necasek

The previous article about the IBM 8514/A graphics accelerator and clones did not mention S3’s chips because S3-based graphics cards were never 8514/A compatible, unlike the ATI Mach 8 and Mach 32 chips and others. However, the relationship between S3 … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics, PC hardware | Leave a comment

The 8514/A Graphics Accelerator

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Michal Necasek

On April 2, 1987, when IBM rolled out the PS/2 line of personal computers, one of the hardware announcements was the VGA display chip, a standard that has lasted for 25 years and counting. While the VGA was an incremental … Continue reading →

Posted in ATi, Graphics, IBM, PC hardware | 29 Comments

VIA Apollo vs. AGP 4x

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Michal Necasek

Because there can never be enough Dualatins, I obtained a Supermicro P3TDDE board. This is one of the relatively few boards which support dual Socket 370 Pentium III processors (including Tualatins) and at the same time sport an AGP 4x … Continue reading →

Posted in ATi, PC hardware | 3 Comments

The Pin N33 Mystery and the History of Slockets

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Michal Necasek

The Ultimate Museum PC (UMPC) is a dual Slot 1 based system. Fast Slot 1 based Pentium III processors turned out to be extremely difficult to find (especially at non-ridiculous prices like $200 per CPU). The current 850MHz processors are … Continue reading →

Posted in Intel, PC hardware | 4 Comments

R360 Correction

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Michal Necasek

In a previous post, I wrote that a Radeon 9800 XT can’t be used with a 440BX chipset because it’s based on a R360 chip, newer than the R350 used in Radeon 9800 Pros. The reality turns out to be … Continue reading →

Posted in ATi, PC hardware | 2 Comments

The Tualatin Story

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Michal Necasek

While researching the Ultimate Museum PC it was hard to avoid the Tualatin, the final 0.13-micron incarnation of the Pentium III. With speeds up to 1.4GHz and 512KB on-chip L2 cache, a pair of PIII-S Tualatins should provide decent oomph. … Continue reading →

Posted in Intel, PC hardware | 15 Comments

The Ultimate Museum PC Update

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Michal Necasek

A quick update on the Ultimate Museum PC (should it be called simply the UMPC?). The system is currently using a Supermicro P6DBE board with 2x Pentium 850MHz (Coppermine, 100MHz FSB) processors, 1GB RAM, a 120GB IDE disk, an ATAPI … Continue reading →

Posted in PC hardware | 21 Comments

The Ultimate Museum PC, Continued

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Michal Necasek

Two weeks after discussing the Ultimate Museum PC, the first “new” hardware components arrived (nearly all on the same day). Chief among these are two motherboards: Supermicro P6DBE and ASUS P2B-DS. The boards are very similar, yet quite different. Just … Continue reading →

Posted in Intel, PC hardware | 12 Comments