I'm just now getting back into retro PCs, so this will be a good memory exercise for me. I grew up with an original IBM 5150 (4.77 MHz 8088) and various AT clones until I went to college. What's interesting is where I lost interest in gaming. I switched from a Radeon Pro 9500 to a Radeon 9600 for …

any recommendations would be nice. Although it isn't currently in stock, I have found these to work quite well: Rosewill RV350 350W This one looks nice but is a little too big for the case I have. I tried my only other card of the same era as the Banshee: a Diamond Viper II (Savage 2000). Wouldn't …

Well, I did a little experiment with the Kill-A-Watt. The computer with the Diamond Monster Fusion was using 39W at idle in Win98SE. I removed the board and used the onboard PCI graphics (ATI Rage IIC), and it is idling at about 25W. I'm not sure how much power the Rage IIC draws, but it is right to …

I appreciate all of the good advice. I believe that a new micro ATX PS is in my future because the stock one makes me nervous. I've attached a photo of it. I'm off to Newegg to check out replacements, but any recommendations would be nice. The PS is 5" x 4" x 3". I like the look and size of this era …

I was wondering whether anyone had a good idea of how much power older video cards draw. The reason I ask is that I have an OEM box (HP Pavilion 4550z with Win98SE) that came with only a 100W power supply. I'm sourcing parts for another, more powerful rig, but I'd like to keep this one with the …

I just fixed this problem with my Hitachi Microdrive twenty minutes ago. It was driving me crazy. In the BIOS, I turned off the "auto" settings for the hard drive (highlight the hard drive model and click enter) and then disabled Ultra DMA in the following menu. Was able to use FDISK and format.

Sorry ... just found this thread that addresses the question. I tried searching but the terms were too common. Which DOS?

I'm starting a new build and was wondering whether there's any need to go above MS-DOS 5.0. It seems as though 6.0, 6.2, and 6.22 just use more memory and add now-useless features such as disk compression. Is Scandisk any better than Chkdsk? Are there any games that require anything above 5.0?

Thanks to both of you for the help. I didn't know that Windows 98 had its own card and socket services. I think my Cardworks software was for Win95 versions before OSR2, which also had card and socket services built in, I learned. I did discover that to enable DOS-level card and socket services, I …

I have a Toshiba Tecra 550CDT with Windows 98SE. I bought it at a thrift, so I don't have any of the software to go along with it. However, I'd like to get a PCMCIA card working at the DOS and Windows 98SE level. It's a New Media Basics Gameport card. I know that I need to install card and socket …

I discovered that Google Books also has many old issues of PC Magazine. It isn't included in the list of magazines as Maximum PC is, but you can use the advanced search function to find it. You'll just need to search for a specific term and include "pc magazine" in the title box. I was reading an …

This may be old news to some, but I just discovered that Google Books archives back issues of Maximum PC, from 1998 (when it changed names from boot) through 2008. The Maximum PC website only archives the past several years. Even better is that you can search these issues for keywords. I owned most …

Thanks to both of you for your replies. I'm pretty sure that the eight-pin header was fit correctly, largely because a missing pin on the MB corresponds to a solid part on the header. I forgot to mention that I had used a jumper to short the two power pins with no success. Sounds like a dead MB, …

I have an HP Pavilion 4445 that won't power up. This one belonged to my parents, who sent it to me to fix many years ago. I couldn't figure out the problem then, and I'm stumped again now. It's been about 14 years since I was building my own PCs, so I've forgotten a lot about the process. I was …

Does anyone else have one of these? It's a programmable gamepad controller that plugs into the PS/2 port and whose buttons mimic keyboard keys. Your PS/2 keyboard plugs into a splitter cable attached to the controller. Because it is seen as a keyboard, it can be used in all DOS games (it's good for …

Problem solved, I believe. The Tecra came loaded with 96MB of RAM, so I removed the 64MB expansion card. Jazz ran with MoSlo before patching, ran without it after using CTBPAT. Just doesn't play well with lots of memory, I guess.

Hi. First post here and a bump for an unresolved issue, it seems. I have the exact same problem with those two games. I tried TPPATCH and CTBPPAT to no avail as well as MoSlo. The Jazz Jackrabbit CD comes with shareware versions of Tyrian, One Must Fall, and Epic Pinball. The weird thing is that the …