Re: Subtle differences between Cyrix and IBM 6x86s

Posted on 2014-12-24, 02:03

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's quite interesting. I have both the "L" PR166+ and the non "L" But I've never gone farther than Win98SE on them. How long does WinXP take to boot on one of these? How responsive could it possibly be? I assume it was the release version of XP or at least no later than SP 1?

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Re: New Dual Pentium Pro build. PCI graphics card options

Posted on 2014-08-12, 23:06

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi vetz, I have a dual PPro 200 system that I've had since 1998. I've changed it's setup many times, but what I ended up with for the last few years is this: TMC motherboard 2 PPro 200's 192 megs EDO 72 pin RAM Plextor 8X SCSI drive caddy style 8.4 GB IDE drive for WIN98SE 9.1 GB UWSCSI drive w/ …

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Re: Top 90's machine

Posted on 2014-08-10, 21:28

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

well, my early 90's to 97-98 machine I built to do "all the rest" so to speak: Gigabyte GA-5AX super socket 7 AMD K6-2+ 578 (ebay special) 256 mb RAM Savage 4 32 mb AGP primary (S3 Metal) ATI Rage pro turbo secondary (for CIF games) 2 Voodoo 2 in SLI (Glide etc.) Matrox M3D (SGL) SB AWE64 These 2 …

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Re: 386DX is it a good one ?

Posted on 2014-08-10, 20:27

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

to switch which floppy to boot from, swap the ribbon cable connectors, the connector after the cable twist is the drive A: one. You can also do it by swapping the a:/b: jumpers on the drives themselves but swapping the connectors is easiest usually.

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Re: Top 90's machine

Posted on 2014-08-10, 18:39

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well for those of us who do build period correct machines, we have our reasons, So I guess what I am trying to say is if all you are doing is trying to cover the last few years of the 90's and the beginning of the 2000's, why limit yourself to the hardware of that era? Pentium 4 parts are probably …

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Re: Top 90's machine

Posted on 2014-08-10, 17:13

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For me 1998 was the big year, the release of the Voodoo 2, the TNT, the 100 mhz FSB, the Aureal vortex 2 and Windows 98. Have I missed anything? That is the year I wanted to have it all but I couldn't afford it. So that is why I built the only period-correct system I have for that year: BX slot 1 …

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Re: From 9 retro boxes to 2

Posted on 2014-03-27, 21:53

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Ok, most of box 2 had to be replaced, it was just far too unstable. I replaced most of it with this: Asus P4B motherboard with a P4 northwood 2.8/512/400 and 512Mb PC133 SDRAM. It originally had a P4 1.5/256/400 in it but I salvaged the 2.8 out of a dead RAMBUS system, I had tried the 2.8 in the P4B …

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Re: vista 64 not so bad?

Posted on 2014-03-27, 21:17

by

by retrofool

in Milliways

in Milliways

I run vista 64 sp2 on my main machine at home. I hated it when it first came out but now I like it because I find it's like an amalgam of the good stuff I like in XP and Win 7 without the stuff that bugs me.

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Re: Which was the first Voodoo?

Posted on 2014-03-19, 00:25

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I am in Nova Scotia, Canada, and although the hype was in all the magazines, I had to order an Orchid Righteous 3D directly from Orchid in early December 1996 for $299 because there were no Orchid dealers here and the Diamond Monster 3D was vaporware until it finally showed up in the stores here in …

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Re: From 9 retro boxes to 2

Posted on 2014-03-11, 00:13

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Thanks Hatta, I just spit chocolate milk on my keyboard, LMFAO!!

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Re: From 9 retro boxes to 2

Posted on 2014-03-08, 22:26

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Without going into too much wall-of-text detail: A socket A athlon 1700+ system that I stole the Obsidian 2 SBi out of and one of the M3D's and the S3 ViRGE. It still has it's Radeon 9600 pro, awe64 and drives. A socket 478 1.5 northwood SDRAM system with a Radeon 9600 standard, SB live and IDE …

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Re: From 9 retro boxes to 2

Posted on 2014-03-08, 18:29

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

On box 2, I decided to try to run all the Mechwarrior games I have from Mech2 PVR all the way to Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries. I only like to use my ancient Microsoft Sidewinder Pro 3D with these games so I attempted to use it on this system. I have the unofficial sidewinder fix files which have served …

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Re: From 9 retro boxes to 2

Posted on 2014-03-06, 22:52

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Bjt, I do in fact switch the primary card from AGP to PCI and vice versa in the BIOS depending on which one I want to use and win98 handles it without any trouble. Of course since I only use one monitor, I have to change the monitor plug from one to the other though. And Carlostex, I also had that …

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From 9 retro boxes to 2

Posted on 2014-03-06, 00:20

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Well after tripping over my retro machines too many times, I thought long and hard about how many machines I really need. Realizing I only really play games from DOOM on up I finally settled on 2. The choices I made were based on utilizing only what I had and not having to buy anything: Box one; …

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Re: Movies 80's and 90's and Computers

Posted on 2014-02-17, 21:56

by

by retrofool

in Milliways

in Milliways

Real Genius. It has a bunch of XT sort of stuff, an SGI workstation, eprom programmers, etc, and of course, big ass LASERS!

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Re: POLL: What is your favorite vintage processor?

Posted on 2014-02-17, 00:36

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Pentium Pro here as well. I used a PPro 200 machine O/C'ed to 233 with a PCI Voodoo 3 2000 in 1999 because of, uh, cash flow problems and I played Janes WW2 fighters on it constantly. I was quite amazed at how capable it was even then.

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Re: DOS VESA mode for Rage Turbo

Posted on 2013-10-16, 20:46

by

by retrofool

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm going by memory here, but didn't you have to load a vesa driver called vvesa.com or vvesa.exe from ATI for the old ATI cards to support all the dos vesa modes?

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Re: So what do you guys do... you know, in real life?

Posted on 2013-07-29, 00:32

by

by retrofool

in Milliways

in Milliways

Well, I'm an electrical engineer and that is my current job, but I also have a chemistry degree. I was in the airforce for awhile but didn't much like it. I've been an auto mechanic for longer than I liked and I was a welder for a time as well. Electronics and computers have been my hobby since …

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Re: do you remember when.......

Posted on 2013-06-27, 00:15

by

by retrofool

in Milliways

in Milliways

Having to use DEBUG to choose your interleave and low level format your XT clone`s hard disk.

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Re: do you remember when.......

Posted on 2013-06-24, 20:27

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by retrofool

in Milliways

in Milliways

When cd-rom drives all had their own interfaces. Also, when they started becoming common, we had a store open up here that only sold cd-rom apps and games, it only lasted a couple years IIRC.

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