Re: How much RAM do you need ?

Posted on 2020-08-10, 16:13

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's really a tough question. To give you some perspective: my 486DX33 was exceptionally well equipped with 32 MB RAM but to be honest: no game I had could possibly utilize so much memory, nor could Windows 3.11. It would have probably been the same experience with "only" 16 MB RAM. The Pentium 90 …

---

Re: Low performance with PCChips 599 mlr: just curious

Posted on 2020-08-08, 14:04

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sorry for bringing this old topic back to life again but this might help others: I had flashed the latest available BIOS for that board (2K0930s) because I wanted to test how it would work with an AMD K6-2+. As I used a Pentium 133 to do the flash I did a quick dosbench run and noticed that the …

---

Re: Has any one delidded a Pentium 3 Tualatin?

Posted on 2020-08-08, 11:33

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

To be fair, temperature *can* limit your overclocking capacities if the CPU either gets damaged, unstable or - as more modern CPUs do - starts throttling to prevent damage. Then again, I wouldn't overclock older systems because that puts extra stress on components with very limited supply and modern …

---

Re: Has any one delidded a Pentium 3 Tualatin?

Posted on 2020-08-08, 06:52

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It depends on what you want to do with it. I'm assuming this is about overclocking? In that case it would probably be a good idea to know how hot your CPUs run currently to see if it might give you any benefit in that regard as there's always a risk in doing so. Here another overclocker has delidded …

---

Please help me to properly identify this board (socket 3 mainboard with pci slots and 3.3v support)

Posted on 2020-08-05, 14:50

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This mainboard presents itself as "Terminator II" on the bios screen but I can find no information online about this specific variant. There's information about a Terminator PCI 486 mainboard but all other motherboards I found have at maximum 2 RAM slots and the jumpers are always totally different. …

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-08-05, 14:45

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I got this 486 mainboard with PCI and 3.3V support. BUT I found no manual. It identifies itself as Terminator II upon boot but all information I could find online was for a mainboard with only two ram slots and different jumper layouts. I will make a separate thread hoping that somebody might know …

---

Re: 386 hard disk and scandisk errors

Posted on 2020-08-01, 12:29

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There are two places where handling of bad sectors can happen: 1) I'm not sure how many or even if old hard drives had spare sectors, somebody else might know for sure. But when a drive has spare sectors it does the following: the drive's controller remaps a logical location to a spare physical …

---

Re: 386 hard disk and scandisk errors

Posted on 2020-08-01, 09:50

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'll try to answer in order: 1) My hdd back in the days had bad sectors, too. That's even common (as in: they come with a few bad sectors from the factory, nothing to worry about) with today's SSDs, such sectors are simply not used. So that's not a problem, at all. Caveat: if defective sectors are …

---

Re: Help with old Pentium Board

Posted on 2020-07-31, 15:17

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That the fan doesn't spin worries me. Do you have a pc speaker at hand?

---

Re: Where do I start?

Posted on 2020-07-31, 12:45

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If it is not about period correctness I can also recommend an Asus A8V Deluxe (The K8V Deluxe works, too). There are drivers for Windows 98SE and I have in fact made such a build for fun. The build I have had (I only have so much space so my current builds are a socket 1 and 7 system) is an Athlon …

---

Re: The VOGONS Experience

Posted on 2020-07-28, 18:11

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah Dosbox is awesome but I agree that Win9x is a different beast. Many games have patches (in fact all I play) either official or unofficial but there are still some games left which simply won't run on new platforms or operating systems. And in my case it is really just nostalgia and collecting. …

---

Re: The VOGONS Experience

Posted on 2020-07-28, 15:46

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Awesome topic, I wholeheartedly agree. I didn't take the exact same route but a quite similar one.

---

Re: Is this Seasonic SS-350SFE 350W PSU worth purchasing?

Posted on 2020-07-27, 18:25

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I agree with the tier comment as even good brands have some bad stuff, too but such a high failure rate is indeed insane. Your mains should get checked.

---

Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-07-27, 17:11

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, on CPUs I can agree with you but that's true for most CPUs. You can easily buy 486s, Pentiums, K6s, Pentium IIs, IIIs, Durons, Athlons, etc... Usually only the top of the line chips of a certain generation (K6-III+) or with strange quirks (looking at you, FDIV bug) will be quite expensive. But …

---

Re: Is this Seasonic SS-350SFE 350W PSU worth purchasing?

Posted on 2020-07-27, 14:49

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I only buy Seasonic or Corsair and even my 10+ years old PSUs aren't causing any issues whatsoever. In fact my go to strategy is to replace my main rigs PSU with major upgrades (platform switching) and then pass the old PSU down to my retro systems. This leads to a kinda silly situation where 800+W …

---

Re: Gotek emulator and Ms-Dos 6.22 setup

Posted on 2020-07-27, 06:24

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm using Philscomputerlab's tool (afaik from Ipcas Gmbh) and it works in different ways: 1) You simply select an image to write to the corresponding slot, this will also work with the dos floppies and any boot disk etc... 2) You can mount the corresponding slot as a directory and can then manually …

---

Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-07-26, 15:17

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, good point actually. I mean we all think that X might happen in the future but we rarely look back if what we thought would happen at this point in time actually did happen. That reminds me: a friend's father was absolutely sure that GPUs would become as cheap as chocolate bars one day. Well …

---

Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-07-26, 14:55

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I kinda agree with what you're saying but if it was only about compatibility and not that "nostalgic feeling" people probably would only use Dosbox for DOS games. It does a very good job for most games from the DOS era and Dosbox is arguably infinitely better when you have only one mainboard, cpu …

---

Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-07-26, 14:11

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I find it kinda interesting that five years ago a seller in Germany was selling K6-3 CPUs like crazy (8 Euros a piece or so?) with several hundred available in the offering. Now it's very hard to find one. Same goes for K6-2+ CPUs. I've got a K6-2+ but I had to pay € 45 with shipping and the only K6 …

---

Re: Replace LGA socket with bent\broken pins

Posted on 2020-07-26, 09:39

by

by Marentis

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some pins are redundant and others could be bent back with tweezers. So you might want to check for a socket diagram as you might be lucky. Personally I wouldn't pay any money to get that board repaired by third parties as it seems it had been abused in the past and before that socket is fixed it is …

---