On a whim, I've decided to make a rough compilation of sorts to keep as a personal reference while renovating all of these old machines for re-"employment". Actually putting it all in perspective, it's made me realize how practically useful even 25-year-old plus hardware could be as long as it's in the right hands.
Trailing off of the recent consensus in the eBay thread, I figured you guys might enjoy scanning over it too, if at least as a recap for the basics of what we know for making old hardware usable. And it's all relevant seeing as how everything, PPC included, falls under the same overall retro computing category.
There's certainly room for improvement (mainly legibility, among others), but we're all here to learn and educate anyway.
Hardware
Thermal Management
Heatsinks
Reapply thermal paste if last application dates back to over 10 years from current date, or if heatsink is too hot to touch. The recommended cost effective and non-electrically conductive brand is Arctic MX-4 ... When reapplying thermal paste, it is suggested to ensure that the new amount is about the size of a small pea (or around 30% to 40% of the chip size), then to allow the newly cleaned heatsink or its replacement to naturally spread out the paste as the surfaces make contact.
Replace heatsink if the OEM selection is not sufficient for particular chip (i.e., when surface is too hot to touch after heatsink has been cleaned and repasted). Favor copper heatsinks over aluminum-based ones for superior thermal conductivity, or at least heatsinks with copper chip contact surfaces. When replacing, ensure sink-to-chip attachment is sound and highly unlikely to come apart.
For overheating motherboard chips or graphics card VRAM chips, a small SoC-sized heatsink may be used to marginally lower temperatures by applying a small amount of school glue from a gluestick using a small flathead screwdriver, and then firmly seating in place. Otherwise, if an alternative securing method is available (screws, zip ties, clamps), an appropriately-thick thermal pad may be used for thinly-gapped spaces, while an appropriately-sized application of thermal paste may also be used for very thinly-gapped spaces.
Airflow
Relubricate fan bearings (usually hidden under branding sticker) with silicone spray for smoother operation, enhanced reliability, and a longer lifespan. Do not use standard WD-40. Otherwise, add a fan to an accommodating location if one is necessary and not present. Common mounting materials may include: rubber grommets, zip ties, twist ties, screws, etc.
Reorientate machine thermal management system if necessary, provided the default case cooling model is demonstratively insufficient to properly cool internal components. The golden rule is that cool air comes in, hot air goes out, and heatsinks dilute heat concentration.
Performance
Chipset Delegation
Install PCI cards to replace all corresponding integrated chips in order to offload specific jobs (storage, audio, networking, etc.) to dedicated cards rather than the CPU. However, this is only an effective method if the BIOS has been set to disable integrated chipsets, and defer to PCI devices instead (therefore this will not be as effective on a Mac). Use this opportunity for expanded capability. Ex. SATA PCI card, ATA-133 PCI card, Gigabit Ethernet PCI card, HD Audio PCI card, etc.
Do not overcrowd the PCI bus if the machine is PCI-based, or even partially so (PCIe slots occupy their own separate buses to the northbridge and therefore are not affected by this limitation). For maximum throughput, a good rule of thumb is to only have one card installed that displays a full array of connector pins, like a Gigabit Ethernet card, on 33 MHz PCI buses, and two fully-pinned cards on faster buses, such as 100 MHz PCI buses. Other cards that do not possess a full array of connector pins, an Audigy or X-Fi sound card for instance, do not use as much bandwidth as fully-pinned cards, and as a result can be installed in multiple slots without hampering the maximum throughput of the PCI bus to the same degree.
However, even when in accordance with this rule, ensure that the system power supply can reliably sustain all populated PCI / PCIe slots throughout all possible scenarios, as freezing, crashing, and other general instabilities can occur if there are more PCI / PCIe cards installed than the system power supply can handle.
Motherboard Expansion
Max out the CPU(s) to chipset limits, provided the BIOS can support it. To avoid potential issues, a good rule of thumb is to not install CPUs with a newer release date than the last motherboard BIOS revision, or with a significantly higher TDP than the stock CPU (Ex. ~ 50W).
Max out the system RAM to chipset limits within reason (Ex. 8 GB, if the system can handle it, is usually an ideal amount for most all general tasks and operations).
Max out the system GPU according to the PCI, AGP, or PCIe version. For instance, Radeon 9000 Pro (RV250) for PCI / AGP 1x bus, Radeon 9800 Pro (RV350) for AGP 2x bus, Radeon HD 3850 (RV670) for AGP 4x / 8x bus, etc.
Replace the stock HDD with an SSD or otherwise sufficiently capable newer HDD to max out the IDE or SATA bus. The feature targets to accomplish this include: large cache, high RPM, and a deep capacity (denser sector count). IDE to SATA adapters in conjunction with newer SATA drives can greatly assist this goal. To prevent inadvertently bottlenecking the bus interface and / or the drive itself, be aware that ATA-33 cables have slightly thicker ribbons with less wires, while ATA-66/100/133 cables have slightly thinner ribbons with more wires.
BIOS Optimization
Boot Order
Remove inapplicable devices from the boot order list, and prioritize commonly used devices to reduce boot times. (Ex. Remove Network, HD-1, etc., and raise priority of HD-0, USB, etc.)
Chipset Disabling
As previously mentioned in the Chipset Delegation subdirectory, integrated chipsets can be disabled via the BIOS to decrease boot times and lessen strain on the system CPU, and then be optionally replaced with equivalent or upgraded PCI / PCIe expansion card-based chipsets, at the cost of increased southbridge, and therefore northbridge traffic and generated heat rather than increased CPU traffic and integrated chipset heat. (Ex. Serial Interfaces, Parallel Port Interfaces, PS/2 Interfaces, IDE Interfaces if SATA is in use, etc.)
ROM Shadowing
Enable ROM shadowing (ROM gets stored in RAM) wherever applicable to increase general operative performance.
ECC Control
ECC functionality, although more stable than non-ECC cache or RAM, operates at a slight performance penalty. Disable ECC caching to increase general operative performance.
Software
Setting Up The Operating System
OS Selection
Choose a decently modern, minimal Linux for software support, practical usability, and general configurability. Optimal choices may include Debian, Void, Alpine, and Tiny Core, in order from heaviest to lightest. Alternatively, a choice of BSD can also be used as well.
Optimizing The Partition Tables on Linux Systems
Consult your chosen operating system's partitioning tool documentation for details on navigating its UI.
1. Create a first partition 1 GB in size, formatted as Ext2, mounted at /boot. This will give the OS a faster filesystem to parse through while initializing, effectively lessening boot times.
2. Create a second larger partition at least 10 GB in size, formatted as Ext4 journaled, mounted at /. This is the standard root partition configuration, being where all files, documents, and data will live.
3. Create a third 8.8 GB partition formatted as swap space. This will allow for plenty of swap space should the system run out of RAM, be it during heavy usage, compiling a package, or other demanding tasks.
Optimizing The Operating System
On Linux systems, add vm.swappiness=5 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50 to /etc/sysctl.conf. This will economize the system's memory and caching management upon the next reboot.
On APT-based Linux distributions, such as Debian, add Acquire::Languages "none"; to /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00aptitude. This will configure the package manager to only update, download, and install packages pertaining to the main system language, saving time.
On APT-based Linux distributions, add contrib non-free to the end of the distribution's main repository address (ex. deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free). Update the repositories, then install intel-microcode or amd64-microcode, depending on the system CPU. In addition to the CPU microcode, install firmware-amd-graphics if an AMD GPU is installed. Refer to (https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/) for nVIDIA firmware. With the CPU microcode and GPU firmware installed, the user is ensured a stable and more responsive computing experience.
Use XDM for the lightest display manager. Accompany with the i3 or Openbox window managers. The latter depending on if mouse has scroll wheel and machine has > 1 GB RAM.
Install lightweight applications for the best return on performance (Ex. LXDE / Xfce suite, AbiWord and Gnumeric, etc.). Alternatively, utilize text-class, or featherweight applications if necessary (Ex. Links2, htop, nano, mc, bc ... ).
Browser Selection
Choose a browser that supports hardware compositing and leverages the system GPU (about:support to confirm on Mozilla browsers). Whenever possible, use custom-compiled browsers with level 3 GCC optimization for targeted CPU (pentium3, pentium-m, core ... ) For Mozilla browsers, install foxPEP for the greatest operational performance.
Downloads
Pale Moon 27.9.4 SSE, Pale Moon 28.6.0 i686
drive.google.com
(proudly) Made on a DP Pentium !!! workstation.
This is a public Wiki -
Please contribute if you know something about making vintage computing better that can make people's lives easier.
Thank you.
Trailing off of the recent consensus in the eBay thread, I figured you guys might enjoy scanning over it too, if at least as a recap for the basics of what we know for making old hardware usable. And it's all relevant seeing as how everything, PPC included, falls under the same overall retro computing category.
There's certainly room for improvement (mainly legibility, among others), but we're all here to learn and educate anyway.
Hardware
Thermal Management
Heatsinks
Reapply thermal paste if last application dates back to over 10 years from current date, or if heatsink is too hot to touch. The recommended cost effective and non-electrically conductive brand is Arctic MX-4 ... When reapplying thermal paste, it is suggested to ensure that the new amount is about the size of a small pea (or around 30% to 40% of the chip size), then to allow the newly cleaned heatsink or its replacement to naturally spread out the paste as the surfaces make contact.
Replace heatsink if the OEM selection is not sufficient for particular chip (i.e., when surface is too hot to touch after heatsink has been cleaned and repasted). Favor copper heatsinks over aluminum-based ones for superior thermal conductivity, or at least heatsinks with copper chip contact surfaces. When replacing, ensure sink-to-chip attachment is sound and highly unlikely to come apart.
For overheating motherboard chips or graphics card VRAM chips, a small SoC-sized heatsink may be used to marginally lower temperatures by applying a small amount of school glue from a gluestick using a small flathead screwdriver, and then firmly seating in place. Otherwise, if an alternative securing method is available (screws, zip ties, clamps), an appropriately-thick thermal pad may be used for thinly-gapped spaces, while an appropriately-sized application of thermal paste may also be used for very thinly-gapped spaces.
Airflow
Relubricate fan bearings (usually hidden under branding sticker) with silicone spray for smoother operation, enhanced reliability, and a longer lifespan. Do not use standard WD-40. Otherwise, add a fan to an accommodating location if one is necessary and not present. Common mounting materials may include: rubber grommets, zip ties, twist ties, screws, etc.
Reorientate machine thermal management system if necessary, provided the default case cooling model is demonstratively insufficient to properly cool internal components. The golden rule is that cool air comes in, hot air goes out, and heatsinks dilute heat concentration.
Performance
Chipset Delegation
Install PCI cards to replace all corresponding integrated chips in order to offload specific jobs (storage, audio, networking, etc.) to dedicated cards rather than the CPU. However, this is only an effective method if the BIOS has been set to disable integrated chipsets, and defer to PCI devices instead (therefore this will not be as effective on a Mac). Use this opportunity for expanded capability. Ex. SATA PCI card, ATA-133 PCI card, Gigabit Ethernet PCI card, HD Audio PCI card, etc.
Do not overcrowd the PCI bus if the machine is PCI-based, or even partially so (PCIe slots occupy their own separate buses to the northbridge and therefore are not affected by this limitation). For maximum throughput, a good rule of thumb is to only have one card installed that displays a full array of connector pins, like a Gigabit Ethernet card, on 33 MHz PCI buses, and two fully-pinned cards on faster buses, such as 100 MHz PCI buses. Other cards that do not possess a full array of connector pins, an Audigy or X-Fi sound card for instance, do not use as much bandwidth as fully-pinned cards, and as a result can be installed in multiple slots without hampering the maximum throughput of the PCI bus to the same degree.
However, even when in accordance with this rule, ensure that the system power supply can reliably sustain all populated PCI / PCIe slots throughout all possible scenarios, as freezing, crashing, and other general instabilities can occur if there are more PCI / PCIe cards installed than the system power supply can handle.
Motherboard Expansion
Max out the CPU(s) to chipset limits, provided the BIOS can support it. To avoid potential issues, a good rule of thumb is to not install CPUs with a newer release date than the last motherboard BIOS revision, or with a significantly higher TDP than the stock CPU (Ex. ~ 50W).
Max out the system RAM to chipset limits within reason (Ex. 8 GB, if the system can handle it, is usually an ideal amount for most all general tasks and operations).
Max out the system GPU according to the PCI, AGP, or PCIe version. For instance, Radeon 9000 Pro (RV250) for PCI / AGP 1x bus, Radeon 9800 Pro (RV350) for AGP 2x bus, Radeon HD 3850 (RV670) for AGP 4x / 8x bus, etc.
Replace the stock HDD with an SSD or otherwise sufficiently capable newer HDD to max out the IDE or SATA bus. The feature targets to accomplish this include: large cache, high RPM, and a deep capacity (denser sector count). IDE to SATA adapters in conjunction with newer SATA drives can greatly assist this goal. To prevent inadvertently bottlenecking the bus interface and / or the drive itself, be aware that ATA-33 cables have slightly thicker ribbons with less wires, while ATA-66/100/133 cables have slightly thinner ribbons with more wires.
BIOS Optimization
Boot Order
Remove inapplicable devices from the boot order list, and prioritize commonly used devices to reduce boot times. (Ex. Remove Network, HD-1, etc., and raise priority of HD-0, USB, etc.)
Chipset Disabling
As previously mentioned in the Chipset Delegation subdirectory, integrated chipsets can be disabled via the BIOS to decrease boot times and lessen strain on the system CPU, and then be optionally replaced with equivalent or upgraded PCI / PCIe expansion card-based chipsets, at the cost of increased southbridge, and therefore northbridge traffic and generated heat rather than increased CPU traffic and integrated chipset heat. (Ex. Serial Interfaces, Parallel Port Interfaces, PS/2 Interfaces, IDE Interfaces if SATA is in use, etc.)
ROM Shadowing
Enable ROM shadowing (ROM gets stored in RAM) wherever applicable to increase general operative performance.
ECC Control
ECC functionality, although more stable than non-ECC cache or RAM, operates at a slight performance penalty. Disable ECC caching to increase general operative performance.
Software
Setting Up The Operating System
OS Selection
Choose a decently modern, minimal Linux for software support, practical usability, and general configurability. Optimal choices may include Debian, Void, Alpine, and Tiny Core, in order from heaviest to lightest. Alternatively, a choice of BSD can also be used as well.
Optimizing The Partition Tables on Linux Systems
Consult your chosen operating system's partitioning tool documentation for details on navigating its UI.
1. Create a first partition 1 GB in size, formatted as Ext2, mounted at /boot. This will give the OS a faster filesystem to parse through while initializing, effectively lessening boot times.
2. Create a second larger partition at least 10 GB in size, formatted as Ext4 journaled, mounted at /. This is the standard root partition configuration, being where all files, documents, and data will live.
3. Create a third 8.8 GB partition formatted as swap space. This will allow for plenty of swap space should the system run out of RAM, be it during heavy usage, compiling a package, or other demanding tasks.
Optimizing The Operating System
On Linux systems, add vm.swappiness=5 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50 to /etc/sysctl.conf. This will economize the system's memory and caching management upon the next reboot.
On APT-based Linux distributions, such as Debian, add Acquire::Languages "none"; to /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00aptitude. This will configure the package manager to only update, download, and install packages pertaining to the main system language, saving time.
On APT-based Linux distributions, add contrib non-free to the end of the distribution's main repository address (ex. deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free). Update the repositories, then install intel-microcode or amd64-microcode, depending on the system CPU. In addition to the CPU microcode, install firmware-amd-graphics if an AMD GPU is installed. Refer to (https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/) for nVIDIA firmware. With the CPU microcode and GPU firmware installed, the user is ensured a stable and more responsive computing experience.
Use XDM for the lightest display manager. Accompany with the i3 or Openbox window managers. The latter depending on if mouse has scroll wheel and machine has > 1 GB RAM.
Install lightweight applications for the best return on performance (Ex. LXDE / Xfce suite, AbiWord and Gnumeric, etc.). Alternatively, utilize text-class, or featherweight applications if necessary (Ex. Links2, htop, nano, mc, bc ... ).
Browser Selection
Choose a browser that supports hardware compositing and leverages the system GPU (about:support to confirm on Mozilla browsers). Whenever possible, use custom-compiled browsers with level 3 GCC optimization for targeted CPU (pentium3, pentium-m, core ... ) For Mozilla browsers, install foxPEP for the greatest operational performance.
Downloads
Pale Moon 27.9.4 SSE, Pale Moon 28.6.0 i686
Portables - Google Drive
(proudly) Made on a DP Pentium !!! workstation.
This is a public Wiki -
Please contribute if you know something about making vintage computing better that can make people's lives easier.
Thank you.
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