DEC PDP-11 J-11 arrived

I have received my DEC PDP-11 J-11 CPU today. It is really big (for DIP package) and beautiful CPU. Photo shows comparison between DEC PDP-11 J-11 and AMD P8085-2. As always, you can watch my photos here.

Sun, C-Port, NEC, Godson, Intel i960

My cpu collection updated. There are Sun UltraSparc IIi, Nec VR12000, Godson 2-C, C-Port network processor (ES) and Intel i960. So quite a big update :). The number of chips reached more than 30. I'll get one more exception - DEC J-11 PDP-11 in the near future. It's DIP CPU, however, quite big and very beautiful. There will be and more updates (IBM PowerPC, some MIPS CPU, maybe XBox cpus and one HP PA-RISC).

P.S. My new computer with Intel Core i7 920 delayed because of some problems with the motherboard.

Reverse action

I ordered Intel Nehalem platform today. It will consist of Gigabyte GA-EX58-DS4 motherboard, Intel Core i7-920 CPU, PQI 3GB DDR3 1066 RAM and Radeon 4830 video card. The other parts will be taken from my current computer (hdds, dvd-rw). It is probably one of the cheapest solutions if you want to create computer with this new platform.

Intel finally released a cpu without FSB and I finally can jump into their platform once again. I considered to buy some new mini-itx solution or Phenom II, however, Intel showed that they could deliver their products fast. Just after an official release I was able to find their cpus and motherboard for sale in Lithuania. After some more time I could choose between five or six motherboards from different manufacturers. In contrast VIA released their VIA Nano long time ago, however, there is only one product announced by them recently (VB8001) which is based on it. And this mini-itx motherboard is still not in volume so it is difficult to buy (if it is possible at all). Phenom II looks quite promising is still several months away. I decided not to wait.

I think that I'll have parts in several days, maybe, even tomorrow. This platform should be main computer for 4-5 years (some updates during this time is possible).

VIA VB8001 - first board with VIA Nano

I was eagerly waiting for the first product based on new VIA Nano CPU. VIA had promised to deliver it in the third quarter of this year, however, until now you couldn't find anyone. VIA showed the first one at the ESC (Embedded Systems Conference) Boston 2008, 27 October 2008. It's VIA VB8001 with 1.6GHz VIA Nano CPU, VIA CN896 north bridge and VT8237S south bridge. Board has PCIe 16x and mini-PCI expansion slots, hdds and optical storage can be attached to two SATA ports or one EIDE port. There are two DDR2 DIMM sockets where you can insert up to 4GB of memory. The disappointing point for me was a back panel i/o. You can find PS2 ports for mouse and keyboard, 1 serial port, 1 RJ-45 (VIA VT6130 Gb ethernet controller), 2 USB 2.0 ports and three audio phone jacks. It is quite minimal set of expansion ports. It would be much more interesting if back panel was similar to VIA EPIA-M700 board (I want at least DVI and two RJ-45 ports). However, everything else is probably ok. I don't know when they will be available in the market but I may consider to buy this to replace my current VT310-DP. Still I hope more products will come in several months (though I am not very optimistic).

My current computer

I've added one more photo of my computer where you could see how it looked now. Yes, I am still using VIA VT-310DP. Yes, sometimes it seems slow like a hell :). However, I can't find anything interesting enough for me to change it. I can still do almost everything on it except watching some heavy HD videos. Fedora 9 showed that it could manage much more videos than in Windows. Anyway, this thread is not about performance.



You can see how it is assembled now. Two CPUs are under the default heatsink, however, default cpu fan is changed with Titan TFD-4020M12B 40x40mm cooler. I also changed cooler in a PSU (an old one became very loud), so you can see black, red and white wires coming from it and attached to motherboard. Though motherboard does not support SATA II hard drives I bought WD Caviar GP 750GB where were two pins for changing mode to SATA I. One more 160 GB HD is hidden on the bottom of the case. I still use discrete GeForce 6200 PCI video, however, sometimes I am thinking that it does not have any advantages against integrated one for my current purposes. DVD optical drive is LG GSA-4163B. Creative Sound Blaster Connect serves for sound (you can't see it in this picture). This is it. Enjoy and wait for new processors in my collection (they should arrive soon).


Current specifications:
VIA VT-310DP 2x1GHz VIA Eden-N (C5P Nehemiah) CPUs, CN400+VT8237R
Changed Titan TFD-4020M12B cooler for cpu
Club 3D GeForce 6200 128MB PCI
Apacer AM1 2x1GB DDR400 RAM
Samsung HD160JJ 160GB
WD CAVIAR GP 750GB (WD7500AACS)
LG GSA-4163B DVD-RW
Q-TEC ADT-300 300W PSU (with changed Zalman fan)
Creative Sound Blaster Connect
Compucase 7628BS-25UG enclosure

More CPU photos finally!

I have made and uploaded new photos to my CPU collection gallery finally. Since last time I have received six new collectable by me items. You can look at them here. I haven't done photos of not collectible ones (some DIP CPUs and one AMD Am486) and I probably won't do them in the future. No time, no motivation :).

Windows XP 64 bit and D-Link DWL-510G is possible

I installed Windows XP x64 edition on my Athlon X2 computer today. Everything went fine except one thing. I use D-Link DWL-510G rev. 3 wireless adapter which has not official drivers from manufacturer. I tried to install Windows XP 32-bit drivers, however, they didn't work at all. Later I tried Vista 64-bit drivers. After installation Windows recognized the adapter, however, it remained with error status and could not be started. I used google search but there was no particular solution. Nevertheless I found some hints which helped me to solve the problem.

D-Link DWL-510G rev. 3 is based on Ralink RT61 chip. So, I downloaded PCI/mPCI/CB(RT256x/RT266x) drivers from their website. They installed successfully. After that I went to device manager (right click on my computer->properties->hardware->device manager), selected networking (or network) adapter and chose "update driver". Then the answers were "No, not this time", "Install from a list of specific location (Advanced)", "Don't search. I will choose the driver to install.". From the list of manufacturers I found Ralink Technology Corp. and chose "802.11 a/g Wireless LAN PCI". After a short installation you will see "802.11a/g Wireless LAN PCI" in device manager with no exclamation mark. I successfully connected to wireless network and it works well. So, you don't need to buy a new wireless adapter for Windows XP 64 bit (as some people did after no solution had been found).

Intel Itanium 2 photos

I have bought Intel Itanium 1.3GHz CPU some time ago (Madison core). I have finally uploaded two photos of it to my CPU collection. Last week I bought some more CPUs from famous polish CPU collector ABC-CPU too, so wait for more photos in next several weeks. Collectable ones include Hitachi SH2 from Sega Saturn and Motorola MC68EC030RP25B. The other CPUs are not collectable by me, however, they are included in one set, so I'll show them too.

VIA VT310-DP usage

I used VIA VT310-DP every day for more than a week now. As expected a performance is not very good, however, it is suitable for most every day tasks. However, there is one exception that it is difficult to ignore. It is video. Most videos don't run smoothly on this computer. Like I said earlier, HD rip works very slow or don't work at all. Other videos run with troubles too. The most common problem is that audio runs faster than a video.

I figured out that this motherboard did not work with those PSUs which didn't have a -5 volt feed. It is optional by today ATX standard and it is needed only by legacy ISA add-in cards (I found this statement in wikipedia), because of this most PSU's do not have this white wire. I think it is a main reason why this motherboard is not supported by VIA anymore and they are difficult to find. Why does it need that -5V feed or was it a design bug? I don't know, there is no information on it and I didn't find any people complaining about this problem. Probably, this motherboard is not used that widely for somebody to notice it and complain in forums. Update 2012-04-30: Currently I can tell that it was wrong assumption. Motherboard perfectly works will all ATX PSU but screen blackout sometimes occur (usually on cold boot, more rarely on restart). I couldn't find the reason of the problem, but if you boot your system with VT-310DP motherboard and nothing appears on the screen (but motherboard works), there are several ways to bring it back to life. Try to attach other PSU, remove one RAM stick, clear CMOS, just leave it alone for some time and try again. I had such blackouts about from 10 to 20 times in 5 years but it always had returned into working condition once again. Actually it still works well for me and serves as testing platform for various purposes.

I have already bought an external audio card for it (Creative Sound Blaster Connect. After I connected it I had got a BSOD (blue screen of death) window. However, after I disabled integrated audio, everything worked perfectly until I tried to overclock a CPUs. I changed multiplier from 7.5 to 8. This small change was quite noticeable on overall system performance. However, some strange things began to appear with sound. The sound worked ok only with mono output. Stereo sound became to fast and I didn't find how to solve this.

VIA VT310-DP

I received my VIA VT310-DP motherboard on Wednesday (March 12). However, I had some problems with booting it. I probably don't have any computers which worked flawlessly from the start. This motherboard was no exception. After I assembled my computer, it booted (fans were working), however, there was no view in the monitor. Firstly I thought that it was a RAM issue but in the end it appeared that PSU of the small case couldn't deliver enough power (Update: see a post above. A reason is not the power shortage but -5V feed). It is quite strange because the motherboard requires only 90-120W PSU. That case has 250W PSU. So, I have to use a full PSU now that it is not good for power usage. This was not the only problem with this motherboard. Then I was assembling it I noticed that I can't connect front panel audio connector because it is not compatible with pins on the motherboard. I perhaps will buy external audio card to solve this problem...

Microsoft Windows XP installed in less than 30 minutes (into SATA hard drive). Almost all hardware (chipset, network, video and so on) wasn't recognized by Windows, I needed to install drivers. Another day appeared that USB was working only 1.1 speed. I needed to change some option in BIOS. If I make shared memory disabled than motherboard hangs on POST test (I installed PCI video card). The only way to escape that reset the BIOS. USB mouse and keyboard support is disabled in BIOS by default. CPUs temperatures are quite high from the start (48-50 Celsius). They rise to 57-64 on full load. But it can be due to their small size. CPU's cooling system consists of a small heat sink (54,5x40mm) and 40x40mm fan on it. I changed default loud fan with the fan made by Titan which is much more quieter, however, I noticed that temperatures was 1-3 degrees higher on idle. Eden-N processors support PowerSaver 3.0 (something like AMD Cool'n'Quiet and Intel SpeedStep) feature, however, I didn't find any driver for it. There is only PowerSaver utility which changes CPU frequency for the second CPU only. What is more, Windows hangs after multiplier reaches 4.5 (default is 7.5). It also hangs after multiplier starts to go up again. So this utility wasn't useful at all and I couldn't use PowerSaver feature.

What about performance? Yes, it is much slower that my Athlon 3400+ system but it is not terrible. The system is usable and quite responsive. I can watch films, do office tasks, browsing, watching photos and and so on without any problems. And the system is almost silent. However, I can't watch HDTV video rips at all. I hoped that GeForce 6200 would solve this, however, I probably need something like HD2400Pro with UVD. I don't know if I'll manage to get it (and need PCI version) and if it really helps (though, CPUs usage don't go higher 80%, so I think that hardware acceleration from video card should help). I changed quite slow Adobe Acrobat Reader with Foxit Reader and it works very well and fast. I will try to change Mozilla Firefox with K-Meleon, however, Firefox is not very slow too, just K-Meleon seems more responsive and less memory hungry right now. If you use Skype, you need to install it without extras support or otherwise SkypePM.exe will use about 50% of all your CPU resources (one CPU) all the time. My e-mail client for a long time is Sylpheed and it works fast too. There is one application where you will see that this processors are much slower. It is Folding@home distributed computing project. While my Athlon64 system working on 70% of its computing power makes one percent in about 28 minutes this system (each CPU) needs several hours and more at least using all 100% of its power. I still need more time to test some other resource hungry applications (for example, java based ones). CPU and memory tests showed very slow FPU performance and quite slow memory system bandwidth (these are known problems with C3 CPUs).

That's all for now. I will write more about it in other posts in the future.
You can find more photos here.

Photos for all my CPUs

I finally have uploaded photos with all CPUs in my collection. You'll find at least two for each one. You can find them here. There are 18 CPUs at all. You can read about what I am collecting in my previous post.

Intel Itanium 733 MHz

New hardware and focus shift

I didn't wrote for a long time, however I had a lot of changes during this period in my hardware.

Firstly my secondary computers were updated to dual-core Athlon X2 systems. The first one uses Asus M2A-VM HDMI motherboard and AMD Athlon X2 4000+ 65nm CPU, other one MSI K9AGM3-F motherboard this older revision AMD Athlon X2 4200+ 90nm CPU. So, secondary computers (which are used by my sister and mother) now are faster than mine :). And a gap will be even more bigger soon. I decided to make a focus shift and I bought VIA VT-310DP Mini-ITX motherboard. It should arrive in one or two weeks. There are two tiny VIA Eden-N 1 GHz (based on Nehemiah C5P core) processors on it those max TDP is 7W. This motherboard fits more for small server purposes, however, I want to try to use it on desktop. Primary reason for this is energy saving and a wish to see if it has enough power for every day purposes (I'm sure that it will).



I had several other options for my new computer too. The range of them started from powerful and power consuming quad-core workstations and terminal servers (Fujitsu Primergy TX150 S6) to quite small dual-core energy saving computers (like industrial KINO-690S1 mini-itx motherboard with any AMD Turion X2 processor). Price range was between 800-2200$. However, at the last second I remembered about VIA motherboard and decided to go with it. I hardly found it, however, a transaction is already completed and I am waiting for arrival. Yes, it is a big step backwards in performance even if we compare it with my current system, however, it wasn't that the reason to buy it. I'm going to add PCI video card to boost video content performance.

IEI KINO-690S1

If we go back to my AlphaPC topic, I tried to install Linux on it, however, my multiply attempts were unsuccessful. I left it for some period without doing nothing.

There are some interesting news too. Firstly, VIA (or Centaur Technology) announced their 64-bit 65 nm Isaiah architecture and Intel branded their very small and ultra-low power 45 nm Silverthorne CPUs to Intel Atom (dumb name IMHO). These two processor families aimed for the similar purposes: small factor computers and appliances. I think they are strong contenders to replace my new motherboard (if it will meet my expectations) after one or two years. We will see. Interesting times are coming.