KallvorMUD

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last mod: June 10th 2001

Steve's Computers

Alas, you have stumbled into this strange place where you can see just what it is that Steve is ranting about all the time. Computers. You know them, you love them, you hate them--you just can't escape them.

Neither can I, quite obviously.

For the record, all of the date herein is accurate as far as I know and can update in a meaningful manner. Yes, I actually do own this many machines. No, I don't really know what to do with them all. I've got even more than are represented here. No, I'm not joking.

I've made the difficult decision of selling off/giving away some of my (vast) collection. If you or someone you know can find a good home for one or more of these machines (the slower ones perferably) please let me know.

Machine Name	Processor	Usage	Condition
Twin Towers	AMD Tbird 1.33GHz	main workstation/gaming rig	running fast and hot
Drakklan	P-III 733	backup workstation/gaming rig	preparing for a wipe
Argorath	P-III 550	gaming rig	on loan
Palasade	Kingston Turbochip 400MHz	Windows Server	running sporadically to save power
Dantelle	Celeron 366 laptop	Mobile computing	preparing for a wipe
Silva Sublustris	P2-300	Gaming	in parts
Sol Oriens	P2-300	Gaming	on loan
Taramath	Pentium 233 MMX	Gateway/MUD/Web Server	preparing for an upgrade and a wipe
Fiyeste	Pentium Pro 200/256K	--	in parts
Ellondale	Pentium 54c 166	--	On Loan
Falcon	AMD K5-133	in parts	for sale
Boral	Intel 63MHz p54c Overdrive	--	for sale
SpeedRacer	Varies, currently AMD 486 DX4/100	Overclocking	in parts
Silverleaf	486 DX2/80	--	for sale
Larconia	486 DX2/66	--	for sale
Sador	486 SX/33 Compaq Contura Aero	Travel machine	mothballed
Celbengoa	386 DX/33 IV	legacy gaming machine	in parts

Details

Ellondale
Processor:	Pentium 54c 166 non-mmx
Memory:	64M 60ns EDO
Operating System:	OpenBSD 2.6
Storage:	Adaptec 2940 SCSI-I Narrow Segate Medalist 8G full height 5.25" drive
Motherboard:	???
Video Card:	Matrox Millenium I pci 4M WRAM
Usage:	was 582 hacking; now idle
Plans:	This machine has fallen to the wayside in all the commotion of moving to a different state. It's damned heavy (thanks to the full height seagate) so I don't like to move it. I'm not entirely sure what to do with it at this point. It does have enough firepower to be dangerous on some task but god only knows what that might be. I may fix it up some and liquidate it. The new plan is for this to be a loaner. A friend has a group of buddies that comes over to play old games and could use another machine. I thought this would be a good machine for them but it turns out to be non-mmx. It's already slow, minus mmx it's almost useless for games. I'll probably sell it off.

Boral
Processor:	Pentium 63 Overdrive of a 486 DX/25
Memory:	20M
Operating System:	none
Storage:	Quantum Maverick 270M
Motherboard:	???
Video Card:	Cirrus Logic 5424
Usage:	For sale
Plans:	Recently gutted for its two hard drives and 3c509 for evenia and pallasade. Haven't decided what to do with this thing ultimately yet. I may take out the overdrive chip since it can do 83MHz or more but is only outputting 63 right now. If you count this one I've got two spares. Otherwise I'll see if I can't get the mobo to clock at 33 or higher (would be 100MHz at 40MHz clock). If this machine is to live out its life as a linux machine I will need to put the 850 seagate in here or at least get a bigger drive. The problem remains that the bios will only go to 340 or so. I may convert this back into a 486, gut the interesting parts and leave it with a monochrome monitor and a 210 meg hard drive. It will very likely need more memory as a linux machine.

Larconia
Processor:	486 DX2/66
Memory:	32M 60ns
Operating System:	OpenBSD 2.7
Storage:	Adaptec 2842A (VLB) SCSI controller 2G IBM 0664 AlleyCat
Motherboard:	?abit?
Video Card:	Diamond Stealth 24 VLB 1M
Usage:	Non-production Hacky machine (not to be confused with a hacky-sack).
Plans:	This is where I've been trying stuff out. It's a non-production machine which means that I can break stuff and still be in business. That counts for a lot. I did get more memory into it (a good 4x as much as it used to have now) but the video memory is still low. Being a hacky machine, this one was the first to get OpenBSD 2.7 installed, and thus, the first one to be devoid of pico, my favorite command line text editor (I don't like vi and emacs eats up far too much memory on a slow machine). There is a better than passing chance that I replace the guts with a faster mobo/proc (keep the case its a baby taramath) and sell off the rest of it.

Falcon
Processor:	AMD K5-133
Memory:	64M 60ns EDO
Operating System:	OpenBSD 2.6
Storage:	???
Motherboard:	???
Video Card:	???
Usage:	Stowed
Plans:	Well, it looks like it's dead. I need to play with bios settings but right now it's having all sorts of I/O errors even with the built-in IDE. Not sure what that means but I seem to be spoiled on good bios's like amibios and award. Need to find someone good with AMD's to give me a hand; either that or I sell it off. If I keep it it will need a video card which seem to be in short supply.

Evenia
Processor:	Intel 83MHz p54c Overdrive
Memory:	40M 70ns FPM
Operating System:	OpenBSD 2.6
Storage:	340M Conner CP30344
Motherboard:	AST Bravo LC 4/33
Video Card:	onboard Cirrus Logic 5428
Usage:	For sale
Plans:	The 83MHz upgrade finally found its way in and I bumped the RAM to 40M (2x16 + 2x8). The overdrives seem to be working fine even though the online docs for these machines say that they've been found by Intel to not work. OpenBSD likes them just fine. No go on the scsi, the 1540's woudln't cooperate. Instead I gutted Boral for it's two drives (and the ethernet card) to bump evenia and palasade to 340 and 420 respectively. They've both got X installed now.

Sador
Processor:	Intel 486 SX/33 (slc)
Model:	Compaq Contura Aero 4/33c
Memory:	20M
Operating System:	Windows 95 osr2 and OpenBSD 2.6
Storage:	6G Fujitsu 9.5mm 2.5" IDE
Motherboard:	Contura Aero Special
Video Card:	512K internal (only 256K addressable)
Usage:	Mobile computing; documentation machine; terminal
Plans:	Wow, where to start? This is a truly amazing machine. It is one of the slowest intel-based machines I have. It's also the smallest machine I have weighing in at just over 3.5 pounds without the battery (about 4.5 with) and with a footprint smaller than a sheet of paper (7.5"x10"). I had inteneded on using it solely with BSD and getting a 1G drive to replace the 250M it came with (slow and loud with poor power consumption) but due to the wonderful world wide web I came across the 6G fujitsu under my price point (and a much greater value than I'd expected). The fujitsu is installed with chewing gum and duct tape; no one who designed either could have imagined the bizarre mix of the two. It's now upgraded to 20M and sees it all due to a flashed bios. Eventually that will be the machine I play on most often. I need to get stuff installed on it on the windows side (MSVC would be horribly slow but still very nice) or at least a set of gnu tools and textpad but there's no CD ROM on the thing which makes it rather difficult. I've got it hooked up to one of my 16 color EGA monitors adapted to VGA which is convenient since the aero can only do 16 colors in 640x480. I now have a mobile port expander and BSD installed so it is the ultimate power in the universe. That and my 56K modem and my DFE-650 makes it unstoppable!

SpeedRacer
Processor:	Varies, but currently AMD 486 DX/4 100
Memory:	16M 70ns FPM
Operating System:	Windows 95 osr2
Storage:	Western Digital Caviar 720M
Motherboard:	Gemlight something or other
Video Card:	Matrox Millenium 4Mb
Usage:	Overclocking and hacking
Plans:	Wahaha. This is a fun machine. It's a socket 3 that has pretty good control over fsb speed (20, 25, 33, 40), clock multipliers (1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3), and voltage. It also has some PCI slots which makes it a fine candidate for some serious overclocking. The bad thing about overclocking 486's is that, well, they're 486's. The (very) good thing about overclocking 486's is that if you fry 'em, you're only out like $5 :) Seriously though, it's nice not worrying about replacing stuff when overclocking goes awry and no one really uses these things anyway (for the record, I've never lost a processor due to overclocking . . . yet). It would be fun to run some benchmarks to see how much things changed over the multiple different families. Amusing, yes. Useful, probably not.

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