Re: What is good puzzle design in adventure games?

Posted on 18 minutes ago

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by TheMobRules

in Milliways

in Milliways

Good puzzle design would be things that are not easy to solve but when you find the actual solution you go “How didn’t I think of that before, it makes perfect sense!”. Bad puzzles would be ones where the solution still doesn’t make much sense even after looking them up on a walkthrough or solving …

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Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on Yesterday, 18:14

by

by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Cut that poisonous (for the board) battery as FAST as you can! Hopefully it hasn't do still any damage... Doesn't look like is leaking. Judging by the colors, that is a Tadiran Lithium 3.6V battery. I have seen them occasionally on 486 motherboards, the nice thing about them is that they are not …

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Re: Floppy drive 3.5

Posted on Yesterday, 13:50

by

by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So the NES power supply is basically a step down transformer? Why would they do that? Yes, if you open an original NES AC adapter you can see that it is just a transformer. As Mister Xiado says, the rectifier and smoothing cap is in the little RF modulator metal box on the side of the console. From …

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Re: Pentium 90 @ 120Mhz

Posted on 2020-12-01, 05:28

by

by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe something like this could work? https://www.ebay.com/itm/270818967936 Don't take my word for it, perhaps someone else can confirm. EDIT: seems like you edited your post, but I'll leave the link there in case it's useful.

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Re: Pentium 90 @ 120Mhz

Posted on 2020-11-30, 22:21

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If the CPU does not get overly hot and is running at stock voltage then it should be fine, Pentiums are known to be good overclockers, though you may want to perform additional stability tests. Regarding the 120MHz CPU, maybe it's one of those that requires additional voltage to run properly? What …

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Re: Is this PSU any good?

Posted on 2020-11-30, 20:54

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

From a design point of view, it seems that the 300W rating for that unit is adequate, and the manufacturer did not skimp on components such as EMI filtering, fan controller, and so on. That transformer should be able to do 300W without issue, and even though it's not possible to see the switching …

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Re: Testing an AT PSU?

Posted on 2020-11-30, 19:21

by

by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Minebea made good quality power supplies, but I think they abandoned that line of business in the early 00's. Yours probably comes from an OEM system. Did the seller know if it was working or did you buy it untested? You can pop the cover and take some pics in case there are any components with …

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Re: AT motherboard but with PS/2 mouse and Keyboard instead of 5-pin?

Posted on 2020-11-30, 04:06

by

by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some later AT cases had 2 holes in the back, a larger one for the common 5-pin DIN keyboard connector and a smaller one below for the PS/2 mouse port. When using a motherboard like yours, the PS/2 keyboard connector should line up with the larger hole. That motherboard is Batman's Revenge from Intel …

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Re: Worst adventure game ever made?

Posted on 2020-11-29, 23:27

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by TheMobRules

in Milliways

in Milliways

Some games are probably worse, but stuff like Harvester or Mystery of the Druids always comes to my mind when I think about the decline of the graphic adventure genre about 20 years ago.

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Re: PC100 M747 - The bane of my existence

Posted on 2020-11-28, 20:56

by

by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, as long as it's working that M577 should be a decent performer. Looking back, maybe I was overly harsh in my judgement of the M747 in the first post, and probably the conditions under which I ran it back then (100MHz FSB, Celeron 300A overclocked to 450, on a really crappy AT PSU) are the …

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Re: Retro confessions. What are yours?

Posted on 2020-11-19, 21:00

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by TheMobRules

in Milliways

in Milliways

- Folks on this forum who want to repair sticky old Thinkpad laptops and damaged undocumented motherboards, inhaling solder fumes, removing battery acid, asking a million questions about obscure broken hardware: I just don't understand them, sorry. Been there, done that. I much rather spend moar …

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Re: 8-Bit Guy video's are becoming a chore!

Posted on 2020-11-19, 20:37

by

by TheMobRules

in Milliways

in Milliways

Yeah, we discussed some of this on the IBM Prototype debacle thread. In a way he is in need to pop out these videos as this is his full time job now. But in my opinion he fails to understand that part of that job is to show some passion for what he's doing, otherwise the video is no better than a …

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Re: Socket A Motherboards That Have 12V-Centric VRMs?

Posted on 2020-11-18, 07:59

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

FIC K7MNF-64 is an nForce2 mATX motherboard that uses the 4-pin +12V connector, I believe it was used on certain models of eMachines PCs. It is really bare bones but very reliable in my experience.

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Re: [WIP] 486 build with NEW and NOS parts

Posted on 2020-11-17, 17:36

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Going from a 486dx2-66 to 486dx4-100 is not much of a performance gain. Maybe 10% at best. But going to an Intel pentium overdrive at 83 is a BIG performance gain over the 486dx4-100. But then it’s NO longer a 486 computer. So it depends on if you want a 486 computer or best DOS gaming computer in …

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

Posted on 2020-11-14, 01:01

by

by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Okay. And what brand of AT-type Power Supply should I go with for a 486 build? Are there any good ones, or any way to recognize the good-quality ones? Seasonic, Enermax... Actually I would go with anything that works and is in the 'shiny' case (the later, in the dull/matte one are usually crap). …

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Re: Were VLB video cards ever good?

Posted on 2020-11-12, 19:21

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, the original intent of the forum is about "Very Old GAMES On New Systems" after all... even if the Marvin sub-forum seems kind of detached from the rest. In that sense I would expect most people here to have at least a passing interest in retro games, as opposed to something like VCF. But back …

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Re: Help to identify this 486 motherboard with PCI ISA and VLB slots

Posted on 2020-11-11, 21:34

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Looks like your motherboard was made in Hyrule 🤣 : Filename triforce.png File size 587.55 KiB Views 58 views More seriously, it looks like the old American Megatrends logo, so maybe it was made by AMI? Though I don't know if they were still making motherboards by that point.

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Re: Are there any DIP-40 KBC ICs still in production?

Posted on 2020-11-10, 18:29

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by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think Utsource could be an option for getting these: https://www.utsource.net/sch/80c42.html Either that or scavenging them off of dead boards.

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Re: Can someone help me identify this socket 7 mobo?

Posted on 2020-11-10, 15:12

by

by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

ok so i figured out that I just need to move the atx connector to the other side and delete the other dell connector for the psu side. Where is the pin headers for power switch, reset, hdd led etc? The power on pin out does not exist unless the proprietary dell connector can just be used.. If you …

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Re: Can someone help me identify this socket 7 mobo?

Posted on 2020-11-09, 19:40

by

by TheMobRules

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's a board made by Intel for DELL (and probably other OEMs such as Gateway), you should be able to easily identify it based on the layout. No, it's just socket 7, the Pentium II would not be supported by that chipset. The brown slot is for a cache module (COAST) to add more L2 cache to the board. …

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