Re: CPU collectors: do you collect each and every revision or just one?

Posted on 2021-01-13, 08:18

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

so if you have some 1000+ cpu's do you also have 1000+ boards they work on or are you just buying and hoarding cpu's because you can and are trying to make some museum ? Must be the latter. I only need one (okay, two) working board per platform. It's enough to test everything. I have a board for, I …

---

Re: p3 500mhz benchmarks

Posted on 2021-01-13, 03:15

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Whhat I find it the most interesting is how the Vanta pulls ahead in Doom benchmarks. Does it like planar trickery? If so, why?

---

Re: CPU collectors: do you collect each and every revision or just one?

Posted on 2021-01-12, 18:26

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So CPU collectors: do you want them all or just on of each type? P4/2.4 is at least 5 models to me: 2.4/400/512, 2.4/533/512, 2.4/800/512, 2.4/533/1M, 2.4/800/1M (does the latest exist?). But they're quite boring to me, I don't need more than one per model. Ppro , that's another question. I grab …

---

Re: Dallas DS12887 longevity

Posted on 2021-01-09, 19:19

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Generally, no - they just forget their settings. What usually happens is someone discovers their Dallas is dead and removes it, then can't figure out why the board won't boot (it has no RTC/CMOS). Then I really hope that this is what happened to my Shuttle 486. I routinely go through BIOS settings …

---

Re: Dallas DS12887 longevity

Posted on 2021-01-09, 18:50

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

a dallas is the literal opposite of a time bomb, when they fail they fail gracefully and do no harm I beg to differ. They really do no physical harm, that's fine. This is why they're still better than typical barrel batteties. But if I get it cofrectly they're designed in an utterly stupid way that …

---

Re: Dallas DS12887 longevity

Posted on 2021-01-09, 13:23

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My lucky Dallas pieces are Shuttle HOT-433 and Asus P6NP5 (anyone? :D). The HOT-433 is especially interesting: after long hybernation in the motherboard cupboard it said it forgot the settings yet it could remdmber them after I set up everything. Interesting (and fortunate) behavior on a Dallas' …

---

Re: When did you purchase your first 386 / 486 Computer? Availability vs the early 90's affordability norm.

Posted on 2020-12-31, 16:27

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As a poor student in Eastern Europe I played catch-up with technology in the 90s. I had a (very local) 8-bit micro until late '93 when I got my first XT from parts. Then came a 286 (board from a classmate) then a 386sx-33 (also from a classmate) in, maybe '95? First with 2 megs of RAM then I saved …

---

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

Posted on 2020-12-31, 15:15

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[You may want to try older versions of PQmagic, like 5 or 4. ... It seems you're right. My version is 7 so what you say is completely plausible. Btw I tried pcchips m919 at 180mhz today and it was very underwhelming. I think I'm better off running it at 160mhz, at least with this cache/ram …

---

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

Posted on 2020-12-30, 16:40

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Which version? How old the system is? What error it sent? For starters, PQMagic and some trackers will not run in anything older that 386, as them use DOS extenders to work. At the moment I can only answer that it died without any error, just switched to graph mode, filled the background with teal …

---

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

Posted on 2020-12-30, 13:34

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I tried if my PCChips M919 can do what my M912 is surely capable of, but it just didn't want to run at 180MHz with two of the Am5x86-133s I've already tested at that speed. And now I realized that I forgot to jumper the multiplier back to 3x so who knows. I'll give it another try. Plus I made a few …

---

Re: Collection of science and technology - Computer hardware collection

Posted on 2020-12-30, 03:01

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

And I found this introduction often lacking. I wanted to read why things are interesting. Instead, I just found ultra rare items, underlined why they're rare. But I came for intersting details or stories and not for something that's indistinguishable from empty bragging.

---

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

Posted on 2020-12-25, 08:54

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finally, I could test the 720k 5.25" drive I mentioned earlier... I had gone through a bunch of test systems (all of them failed to read even from my tested should-be-ok Teac 720k drive) before it finally dawned on me to try another FDC card. OMG. So I installed my 8-bit HD card with its own BIOS in …

---

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

Posted on 2020-12-18, 07:48

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The FDD experiment wasn't a success but the 386SX board is fine and faster than any other 386SX I've ever met. So it's a keeper. This morning I tried another one aginst it, but it didn't start, sometimes gave me a 8042 A20 error, and never gave me keyboard control... So I got a bit angry and I know …

---

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

Posted on 2020-12-17, 08:07

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, if the frame isn't bent, it should be fixable. Worst case scenario, you might salvage some spare parts from it. It's folded into a new, bizarre shape, the front fork completely bent under the rest of the bike and the grips bent... I can't even grip what they did. The driver offered some other …

---

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

Posted on 2020-12-16, 19:53

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The bike is completely done for. Unfortunately. But thanks anyway, everyone. And today I finished with the 20-120GB HDDs so I continued my tests with FDDs and CFs. Storage days, I say.

---

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

Posted on 2020-12-15, 18:53

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I met a Volkswagen Golf, frontally. All I had was a bicycle.

---

Re: Socket 370 with ISA best motherboard

Posted on 2020-12-15, 11:49

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The majority of GF4 cards I tried did well @100MHz AGP, but not all of them.

---

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

Posted on 2020-12-15, 07:52

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Since I have a lot of time at home (the spoils of 14 broken ribs, ha-ha) I decided to go through the piled up 20-120GB PATA HDDs. After some trial and error I ended up using an Asus P5A with a patched BIOS. To my surprise, this one can understand the souls of these metal plated Barracudas much …

---

Re: Recommendations for overkill Win 98 build for mid DOS to late 9X games

Posted on 2020-12-15, 04:09

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just my 2 cents, of all the ISA systems I tried Blood in 1600x1200 on, I found only one really playable: a Soyo p4i845PEISA with DDR333 and a Northwood 3.06. Even my KT7A with a ~2GHz Barton (+SDRAM) couldn't cut it. This is already an anomalous system. Of course I could make it run even better with …

---

Re: Asus VL/I-486SVGOX4 Amd 5x86-133 with 30 pin simms

Posted on 2020-12-13, 05:14

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In a different mothrboard (with opti895 chipset) I found that 33MHz FSB at the tightest timings is not too far fetched, not even with 30-pin SIMMs.. The dividing parameter set was 40MHz/fastest. Hardly any 4x4MiB sets could do a problem-free Goldmemory at this height, but strangely it seemed much …

---