k6-2 550 vs k6-3 450 ; which is the faster Super Socket 7?

Posted on 2010-08-24, 06:44

by

by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a retro K6-2 450 Mhz system I use to play games with sometimes. I can get a 550 Mhz k6-2 for a 550/450 = +22% CPU boost I could also get a 450 Mhz k6-3, which I hear is twenty-ish percent faster because of the extra level of cache. Suggestions? Maybe overclock a k6-3 450 to 500? This machine …

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Re: Worst video card ever

Posted on 2010-08-20, 16:48

by

by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes, seriously, that machine was garbage. They only bought a Compaq because the last PC, they bought, which was a very well-made 486, was from Compaq. But, wow, the quality of the Compaq brand totally went from awesome clone to garbage-machine in only 4 or 5 years. But since the CPU was so much …

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Re: Worst video card ever

Posted on 2010-08-20, 00:55

by

by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

SiS 530, yeah, it must have been. I almost wrote SiS 530 because that's the number that popped in my head, but I didn't put it because I wasn't sure.

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Re: Worst video card ever

Posted on 2010-08-19, 20:34

by

by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The worst video 'card' I've ever seen was a SiS chipset integrated video on a 500 Mhz Compaq K6-2 my parents bought. That was marketed at being 'good for games', since it supported AGP, and the amd chip had 3dNow. But it totally sucked! The graphics performance was horrible! Try playing a simple …

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Re: cleaning old computers

Posted on 2010-08-09, 22:55

by

by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I used to assemble and repair PC boards at one of my previous jobs, and I can tell you that it is perfectly safe to wash boards in water. In fact, durint manufacturing, right after the components are soldered on, the next step is to wash in warm water (and sometimes a special soap) to get the solder …

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Re: Smallest PC that runs Win98?

Posted on 2010-07-13, 17:04

by

by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you want something compact, I would go with an old pentium 3 laptop. Most of those have win 98 drivers available, and some have decent graphics ability. I have a 900 mhz p3 laptop sitting on my desk with a geforce2go, and i use the thing all the time. I keep it plugged into a kvm and just pretend …

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Re: Dos application for mining pit monitoring system -- URGENT --

Posted on 2010-05-21, 22:44

by

by carangil

in DOS

in DOS

You are running a mining pit monitoring system in DOSBOX? DOSBOX is meant for games, and well its great that it runs lots of DOS software, do you want to trust your mining operations to an emulator? I'm not trying to speak bad of DOSBOX, I think its a great piece of software, but using it for mining …

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Re: Random Thoughts - Modern 3D Graphics in DOS?

Posted on 2010-05-03, 20:03

by

by carangil

in Milliways

in Milliways

and Glide had a DOS port. My two favorite Glide games (Descent II and Tomb Raider) were DOS glide games. I think today's equivalent 'feel' to the old DOS systems, would be a stripped-down linux booting into single-user mode text mode. Its not DOS, but it's command line, and can use proprietary …

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Re: PIII laptop rebuild; flexing daughterboard causes crash

Posted on 2010-04-18, 18:03

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by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In case anyone cares, I found a replacement video board for my laptop from a place called pchub ( http://pchub.com/uph/ ) . It finally came in the mail, and now this laptop is (electrically) perfect. (I still kept in my 'fix' for the previous board by shimming some plastic between the video board …

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Re: New arrival: Sound Blaster 1.5, boxed, sealed.

Posted on 2010-04-14, 20:05

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by carangil

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I had this exact card when I was a kid. It was awesome! My favorite apps were the talking parrot and Dr. Sbaitso.

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Re: kernelex any good?

Posted on 2010-04-02, 19:54

by

by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Awesome, MSFN does have a lot of stuff! I'm also surprised there's this many diehard win98 users. I suppose that if you're running win98, have an old antivirus program (to block old viruses), and are sitting behind a firewall/router, it might even be safer than XP, just because new viruses don't …

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kernelex any good?

Posted on 2010-03-31, 17:55

by

by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hey, I was wondering if anyone here has tried kernelEx? I have a couple old win98 PCs, that COULD run 2000/xp, but I choose not to for performance reasons. I don't intend to run newer games on them, but they could benefit from a newer web browser. Does KernelEx REALLY work? I mostly intend to update …

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Re: PIII laptop rebuild; flexing daughterboard causes crash

Posted on 2010-03-30, 20:02

by

by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, the k6-2 is not a speed demon. I think the mobo I have supports k6-3; I hear those have a bigger cache. The k6-2 is sort of a nightmare system. It's VIA, K6-2, voodoo 3, SB 16. But just about everything pre-Quake 3 runs OK. Quake 3 is sluggy but playable; Quake 2 is ultra-smooth. I was able to …

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Re: PIII laptop rebuild; flexing daughterboard causes crash

Posted on 2010-03-30, 05:52

by

by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Pentium III 900Mhz Geforce 2 16MB dedicated It's nothing really fast/special, but its something I've had a long time, that still mostly works, and fills a gap in my PC collection: I have a k6-2 450 running win98, and thats good for a lot of games, but the next step up I have is an athlon 64 running …

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Re: PIII laptop rebuild; flexing daughterboard causes crash

Posted on 2010-03-29, 23:09

by

by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, I pretty much intend on doing that; I'll leave the board alone until it has serious trouble. While I have the whole case open, it's also time to sand off the old finish, fill any case cracks (there's a few, near the hinge), and then repaint the whole exterior. I'm gonna make this thing look …

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PIII laptop rebuild; flexing daughterboard causes crash

Posted on 2010-03-29, 19:27

by

by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi. I'm rebuilding an old Toshiba p3 laptop I've had in the closet for a few years. The screen intermittently blanks out when you type on the keyboard; it turns out the support for the keyboard is a little worn and flexes much more than it should; as a result the 'daughterboard' right under the …

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Re: Anyone knows of a *good* (free) HEX editor for DOS?

Posted on 2010-02-18, 21:10

by

by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Cool, I'll have to try it too. I always just used diskedit too... not having cut is annoying. For small files I used debug a lot too, but after NOT doing anything like that for years, and now being spoiled by GUIs, I find debug completely insane to try to use.

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Re: DOS, Windows and Glide in one retro machine

Posted on 2010-01-22, 20:53

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by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My 'gap' machine isn't quite as powerful, but it's also Voodoo 3 powered. I think the '3' was the best in balance for performance and compatibility for the late 90's. Voodoo 4/5 I hear breaks some older stuff. I'm running: -AMD K6-2 450 Mhz (I might want to get a k6-III 550 if I can find one) - …

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Re: Voodoo2 vs. Voodoo3/5

Posted on 2009-12-03, 22:43

by

by carangil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a Voodoo 3, and love it. If mine burns out, I will replace it with the same. It had good DOS & Windows support, and no passthrough cable. DOS glide stuff works great (tomb raider, descent, etc), and I hear voodoo 5 is less compatible. It also has really good 2D performance, VESA games run …

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Re: Windows 7 - which version ?

Posted on 2009-11-04, 21:17

by

by carangil

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'm not worried about lack of DOS support in Win7... it's not like XP DOS support was great either, unless you use something 3rd party like VDMSound. I run DOSBOX under Windows 7... Runs great! It is emulated, so, slower than a native CPU, but do you need DOS apps at 'modern' cpu speeds? As for the …

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