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

Posted on 2022-03-28, 21:06

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I reflowed the memory chips on a Radeon X850XT (AGP) with my hotair station. The card was giving me issues with black squares randomly popping up on the image. The previous owner had covered almost all of the memory chips with small heatsinks. Except two of them - why this decision was made, I don't …

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Re: Vogons users, how do you deal with anxiety?

Posted on 2022-03-25, 00:05

by

by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

Take up road cycling. 3-4 hours at a time out in the sun, empty your mind and keep your heart over 130bpm. Does wonders for your mental health. I second that. I'm riding to work 90 minutes every day and I feel in tip-top shape. Since I've started doing that my stamina has increased immensely and I …

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Re: Members of Vogons, what shows do you currently watch?

Posted on 2022-03-24, 23:51

by

by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

Last fictional show was "The Expanse" - highly recommended. Same. I just finished it and I will really miss this show - especially for all the various ways Shohreh Aghdashloo can say the word "Fuck". I also started watching "Star Trek: Picard" again. The first season was riding the nostalgia wave, …

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

Posted on 2022-02-12, 11:23

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've upgraded my Asus P2B-S from a 500MHZ Katmai to a 900MHz Coppermine with a Slocket adapter. The performance difference is very noticeable. No One Lives Forever was a slideshow before and UT99 was barely playable over 800x600 resolution. Now I can run both games at 1600x1200 resolution. Did not …

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Re: How to access HP recovery partition?

Posted on 2021-10-26, 18:13

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by schmatzler

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

You might be able to boot from a Linux Live CD/USB and access the contents of the recovery partition that way. This is good enough if you just want to copy over some stock files like wallpapers, software, etc.

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Re: Change a game's name by one letter, to make it something completely different (just for fun!)

Posted on 2021-08-01, 22:15

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by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

Tachyon - The Cringe: you're playing as the captain of a starship always making dad jokes CarCry: A "fix your car simulator" with exorbitant repair bills. Just like in real life. Aquacox: R-rated version of Aquanox Silent Hunger: Try to make your stomach stay quiet during meetings, interviews and …

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Re: Weird Win98 BSOD during install

Posted on 2021-08-01, 21:45

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Try to install rloew's RAM patch (PATCHMEM) after the first reboot. There's instructions in the readme file (basically just running patchmem.exe and wininit and then reboot to continue the setup). That will at least rule out an issue with too much memory.

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Re: suggestions for windows XP

Posted on 2021-08-01, 21:34

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by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

You can bypass the Windows XP activation with AntiWAT, which is what I am always doing. A while ago I've read somewhere that online activation is still up, but Microsoft switched it to TLS 1.2 which XP doesn't support, so you would need some kind of proxy to downgrade the encryption. No idea if …

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Re: I wish I had discovered Windows ME sooner!

Posted on 2021-06-21, 00:12

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by schmatzler

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Doornkaat wrote on 2021-06-20, 19:38: Would you happen to have the German version of the CD and could you upload an image somewhere? I have been looking for it for some time now. Already did that a while ago, here it is: https://archive.org/details/ms-security-cd-2004-ger

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

Posted on 2021-06-07, 15:41

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Found an IBM 4869 floppy drive. The box has been opened but the drive is completely new and still sealed in its plastic wrap. This is the craziest find I have ever made. I'm basically living in a slum so it's very unusual to find something like this. Filename 16230804526592287253414255380856.jpg …

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Re: Chia cryptocurrency - Mining on HDD and SSD

Posted on 2021-05-13, 19:45

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by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

You can buy 50 Tesla cars with 150 bitcoins. Not anymore, it seems like: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-12/musk-says-tesla-suspending-bitcoin-purchases-citing-energy-use Sometimes I think the success of certain cryptocurrencies solely depends on the endorsement of one crazy …

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

Posted on 2021-04-20, 23:21

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I cleaned up (most of) a really moldy Thinkpad 770 today. It works! Before: Filename IMG_21042021_011651_(1080_x_1200_pixel).jpg File size 178.36 KiB Views 1295 views After: Filename IMG_20210421_011140.jpg File size 178.25 KiB Views 1295 views Tomorrow I'll clean the absolutely horrible keyboard …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2021-04-05, 02:58

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by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So... The laptop that stopped powering up last night was working again this morning. Yeah, that’s the symptom of a failing AD3421 chip - your power circuitry will not fire up after a period of usage, but after a day or 2 it’ll come back to life. Unfortunate the chip will eventually degrade and the …

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Re: How many working computers do you have right now?

Posted on 2021-03-30, 22:53

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by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

- Thinkpad T21 - Thinkpad A22p - ThinkPad R52 - ThinkPad X201 - Thinkpad L390 Yoga - Fujitsu Stylistic 2300 Windows 98 Tablet PC - Windows 98SE desktop machine (Tualatin 1.4GHz, Radeon 9600XT) - Windows XP desktop machine (Q9550, 2x GTX570 SLI) - Windows 10 main gaming machine (dual Xeon 24 cores, …

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

Posted on 2021-03-26, 18:44

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I finally got my 1000 watt power supply and tried to run two GTX570's in SLI mode on Windows XP (32bit) and 7 (64bit). Since I own a board with an X38 chipset (Asus P5E3 WS) the NVidia drivers need to be hacked to display the SLI option. NVidia and their "certified chipsets" nonsense...it's all just …

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

Posted on 2021-03-14, 18:13

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have two GTX570's here and want to do something with them. So I spent an awful lot of time today researching what I would need to run them in SLI - just for fun. Turns out that the official way is getting an nForce motherboard, but the chipsets are supposed to be buggy garbage and running very hot …

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Re: Problems Getting AGP and PCI Ports To Be Recognized In Windows 98 SE

Posted on 2021-02-23, 01:45

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

According to the manual the board uses a "Springdale-PE" chipset, which is the Intel 865PE. There are drivers for that one here: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/intel-chipset-drivers.html (2003 and 2004 drivers). Maybe installing those will get those cards recognized properly.

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Re: What made you join VOGONS?

Posted on 2021-02-23, 01:28

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by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

found vogons while deliberately searching for forums about old pcs and lurked for several years on and off Same for me. I had known this forum for quite a while, because I was always interested in retro hardware. When I finally decided to build a full Windows 98 PC and needed some help, I joined. I …

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Re: Retro confessions. What are yours?

Posted on 2021-02-21, 11:51

by

by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

I also despise the XP theme, I always turn it back to classic when I have to use one. The "Toys'R'Us" theme has aged horribly, that's true. Many years ago I discovered an unofficial dark theme for Windows XP, called "Paint it Black" and I usually install this after patching the uxtheme.dll. I also …

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Re: Wierd Radeon 9800 Pro by Palit - What am I dealing with?

Posted on 2021-02-21, 02:37

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Ah, that makes sense. :) I ran GPU-Z on Windows 10, where you can see the whole version string: r9800-win10.gif Also dumped the BIOS, if someone wants to take a look at it. R350.zip Edit: Ran some more benchmarks on a Core 2 Quad Q9550 - this 9800 Pro is actually quite a bit faster than my 9600XT ( …

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