Re: Troubleshooting odd Compaq i440Bx board

Posted on 2022-11-30, 17:00

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Technically not proprietary (it's NLX), though I'm not sure if any third party chassis manufacturers ever made NLX cases. Wonder if it needs the front case fan (which also cools the CPU in Deskpro cases) to be plugged in. Could also try a PCI video card, if you have one. If the board has an onboard …

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Re: Entirely questionable Digital Trends article: "The 5 worst Nvidia GPUs, ranked".

Posted on 2022-11-30, 07:25

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Obviously missing from this list is the 8300 GS, G100, and G205 group of lightly accelerated framebuffers.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2022-11-29, 01:48

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I picked up a Dimension 8250 on my way home today. Now truly, I need another old Dell like I need a hole in the head, but as the 8250 was their last Rambus based system, I couldn't just leave it there. I fully intend to put this machine back into circulation after having my fun with it; after all, …

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Re: What games did you become really good at?

Posted on 2022-11-20, 19:31

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Pinball. I've even crafted entire pinball playlists carefully optimized to help me power through 1hr+ games and rack up insane new high scores. But I suck at Doom. The game itself even agrees: IMG_0029.jpg I don't know if my CRT is getting weak or I just happen to be a Doom Numbskull, but it took me …

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Re: Nvidia adaptergate

Posted on 2022-11-17, 17:14

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Space heaters are meant to radiate... heat. That's their sole purpose in life. :-) But, more importantly, space heaters are preassembled (and they are really not that complex to begin with), so there is nothing "DIY" about them. Even your average grandma can go to the store, buy one, come home, …

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Re: Games don't feel as exciting as they used to

Posted on 2022-11-17, 05:08

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Au contraire. I played Spider-Man Remastered for hours last night. And the night before. And even during lunch a few days ago. It's exhilarating . Actually, I find myself enjoying new games just a skosh more than the older ones as of late! But hey - I still love the classics! Grew up playing them, …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2022-11-15, 23:30

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had a wonderful time with Windows ME. As with all OSes, it's primarly a matter of good driver support. Especially on old Windows. I've been to paradise--Windows 2000--but I've never been to ME. One of these days I'll have to sit down and spend some quality time with it. Really liked Vista, so …

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Re: your last purchased retro graphics card or any of your collection

Posted on 2022-11-15, 16:25

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Retro only? Pre DX10? Separate card that didn't come with a machine? I believe that would be the Quadro FX 4500 for my PowerMac G5 Quad, over a year ago.

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Re: Christmas 1999 build - What's under YOUR tree?

Posted on 2022-11-07, 04:00

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Very, very nice! I would've loved a 733MHz P3 or Athlon in 1999! Hell, a K6-2 with a decent tailwind would've been a substantial upgrade over the Toshiba Pentium 100 (or was it a P75?) laptop I used in my first year of university. That thing could barely whip the llama's ass and run Word at the same …

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Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Posted on 2022-11-06, 03:38

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

CwF wrote on 2022-11-04, 14:01: Standard Def Steve wrote on 2022-10-25, 23:16: But what really makes this 8c/16t CPU special is the unlocked multiplier. Guess Intel thought that Mac owners would never sell their old processors to PC users eager to overclock the snot out of them. All E5's are …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2022-11-06, 03:30

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The cloud infrastructure directly above my house dumped a ton of snow on us today, so I stayed inside and did cozy computer stuff. My greatest accomplishment? Why, the yearly backup of my 486, of course! An up-to-date copy of both hard drives--that's 1.1GB of DOS gaming goodness--now safely resides …

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Re: Nvidia adaptergate

Posted on 2022-11-02, 17:30

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Yeah, AMD's drivers are fine these days. Which is why I'm hoping & praying that the RX 7000 delivers at least RTX 3090 level ray-tracing performance. If it does, I will totally be picking one up! Ah hell, even if it's a little below the 3090 in RT, I'll still pick one up, assuming stellar …

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Re: 98 Beige box time capsule - unlocked Pentium II Klamath or odd Motherboard? What do you think?

Posted on 2022-10-27, 16:04

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Aren't most Klamath CPUs unlocked? I have an unlocked 233 and 300. The 300 will do 333 (and heat a room). If I remember correctly, Intel started locking all of their CPUs with the Deschutes core. To answer your question, multiplier control is entirely dependent on the CPU. No motherboard will ever …

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Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Posted on 2022-10-25, 23:16

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Picked up the PIII-S of LGA2011 today: a Xeon E5-1680 v2. Got it from a guy who was selling a bunch of his old Mac gear because the latest OS wouldn't run on it. What is it, Venturi? Ventura? Nine out of ten pet detectives recommend it? Anyway, really nice (and knowledgeable!) fellow. I even learned …

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Re: Newest possible systems for Windows XP and Windows 7

Posted on 2022-10-23, 17:19

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm a fan of XP on Haswell. The CPUs have AVX2, which no XP app ever uses, but ...Intel did have to turbo-charge the L1 caches to keep its 256-bit single-cycle FMA unit fed. Haswell's L1s are roughly twice as fast as Ivy's when measured in AIDA64! That makes for some silly high frame rates in XP …

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Re: post up pics of your "computing area"

Posted on 2022-10-12, 18:02

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Now that is a perfect back drop for some DOS gaming. You have quite the beautiful yard. That is a sweet spot, from one "buckeye" to another. I'm in Bama these days tho but still migrate up north to see family couple times a year. Hey thanks guys! But man, the upkeep is almost like a second full …

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Re: post up pics of your "computing area"

Posted on 2022-10-10, 18:48

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

My favourite spot for fall DOS gaming is right under this Ohio Buckeye, especially on a holiday morning like today. I always get a kind of neat feeling bringing out a mug of cocoa & playing DOS games out here as the sun rises. This morning, the tree happened to shed half its weight; the golden …

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Re: 478 vs 775 insurrection

Posted on 2022-10-06, 22:06

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

🙋‍♂️ Tualatin DDR owner here. Yeah, going from 694T (SDR) to Apollo Pro 266T, I saw a quite significant boost in system performance across the board. However, I believe most of the extra performance comes from a more refined memory and AGP controller, rather than the raw bandwidth of DDR itself. …

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Re: How many builds adequately covers the DOS-era of gaming?

Posted on 2022-10-02, 03:41

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I play all of my DOS and Win9x games on two machines: A 486-80 running DOS 6.22 and a Celeron-1400/A3D/V3-3500 running Win98SE. The two machines handle my DOS/9X games splendidly. The 486 runs the 1984-1994 DOS games, while the Celeron takes on tough SVGA DOS and Windows games up to around 2000.

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Re: Windows XP on pentium II 300(66)mhz, 256MB?

Posted on 2022-09-30, 18:10

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

XP RTM or SP1, use the classic/2K theme, and don't connect it to the Internet. It'll run just fine on your machine. Better than 98, even.

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