Re: Pentium 3 Tualatin heatsink

Posted on 2017-10-09, 14:13

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've taken a clip from an Athlon cooler which uses all 3 of the hooks, and just bent it and kept bending it until it was loose enough to feel safe on the Tualatin. I definitely err on the side of too loose, because I don't think it takes much to do the job and socket breakage is what I really fear. …

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Re: SBPro1 CT1330A, lets solve the Reversed Stereo myth!

Posted on 2017-10-09, 02:03

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well you replied exactly what I would have said if I had made a longer post :) So yes, we agree completely. I also recall that the general mantra that keeps repeating is that they put smaller caps to make cheaper products and I also think it comes from the fact that they really did put smaller caps …

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Re: Cleaning a CPU socket?

Posted on 2017-10-07, 06:29

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not sure if it would do any good, but while it's still dry, I'd be tempted to run a vacuum with the smallest available nozzle over it while the latch is open. If you can get enough pressure then maybe it will pull some tiny bits of dust out of it, but probably not. Granted it's generally considered …

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Re: best windows 98 agp card

Posted on 2017-10-05, 15:06

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I've seen several people talk about Ti4600 cards failing due to overheating over the years. Has anybody actually ever experienced this happening? If the cooling stays intact, then I don't know if any of the cards in this family run particularly hot. It's hard to tell since they don't have sensors. …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2017-10-01, 16:38

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

About the RAM: This board only supports two(!) memory modules according to the manual. The third slot is for a termination module that is needed. Another type of "dummy" module shipped with the board is needed for the second slot if not populated. That sounds familiar. I never had a RAMBUS board …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2017-10-01, 08:08

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Picked up an Epson 3590 scanner at Goodwill. It can scan PCBs. It also has better specs (it's from the mid-2000s) and much better OS support than the late 90s scanner I already had. I played with it a bit, scanning a video card at a stupidly ridiculous resolution, just because I could. Unfortunately …

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Re: Modern PC vs PS4, Xbox..

Posted on 2017-09-30, 09:37

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

* Consoles are cheaper to develop for, as they stay unchanged mostly for the a decade. * Games on the console are also more stable due to that. * It is a defineable market game companies can aim for. * They lose very little, if anything, due to piracy I agree with these points that publishers have …

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Re: Faster Socket 478 cpu

Posted on 2017-09-29, 14:50

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Benchmarks from the time of release largely showed the Northwood (512KB) being faster than the Prescott. However, I don't know if that's true with later software. I have found that the Prescott is faster at H.264 video decoding. It could also be faster at later games that may be more tailored for …

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Re: Modern PC vs PS4, Xbox..

Posted on 2017-09-29, 06:25

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

I have no use for modern consoles. If anything, I resent them for the influence they've had on many PC games, which have shifted from being designed for the PC to being designed for the console market and then ported back. But there's no shortage of good games to play regardless, with more added to …

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Re: Why is the Diamond Monster MX300 so expensive?

Posted on 2017-09-28, 04:42

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I don't know anything about the card, but I see 3 completed sales searching from US eBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/112528246297 $34 + 3.80 ship (auction) http://www.ebay.com/itm/162565111841 $55 + "free" ship (fixed price, sale was 2wks after the only revision date, don't know if it was posted long …

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Re: Visiontek Geforce 3 AGP Compatibility

Posted on 2017-09-27, 05:14

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

It's safe. I've used Geforce2 cards in at least two different late AGP boards which are keyed the same way (no 3.3v support).

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

Posted on 2017-09-26, 14:41

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

While logged into an ssh session on my file server, I had an interesting set of error messages pop up. [Hardware Error]: CPU:0 MC4_STATUS[Over|CE|-|-|AddrV|CECC]: 0xd47c4001e3080813 [Hardware Error]: MC4_ADDR: 0x000000008d76fb18 [Hardware Error]: Northbridge Error (node 0): DRAM ECC error detected …

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Re: Differences in Geforce2 Ultra and Quadro 2 Pro

Posted on 2017-09-23, 15:28

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

So Reputator's R121/R122 distinction isn't definitive enough for folks? The difference is between finding a card that will act like a Geforce, vs one that is actually originally built as a Geforce. Resistors can be moved but looking at the GPU confirms the latter. I suppose there might be some …

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Re: I want to run Windows 10 on a PIII

Posted on 2017-09-22, 07:18

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Lack off SSE2 has been the source of some compatibility breakage with Pentium 3 and Athlon CPUs. Most notably and unnecessarily with Steam, whose developers have a habit of compiling the launcher frontend with legacy hostile flags set. An ability to emulate SSE2 just to bypass such requirements …

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Re: Retro Games Played by Release Year

Posted on 2017-09-22, 02:05

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

1993 was a bad year for me. I was still trudging along with a 386SX, which was a whole two years old. I would look at the game boxes in Babbage's, but just got frustrated by their insane 25MHz CPU requirements. Upgrading wasn't cheap back then, especially when your computer had a soldered CPU. : …

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Re: ATI TruForm

Posted on 2017-09-19, 16:49

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

From what I remember reading about this feature, I think there was supposed to be a way of flagging the geometry so the driver would know when to apply TruForm and when to bypass it. It seems that games didn't utilize this though, resulting in some problems like you showed. I guess the few games …

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Re: 3dfx Voodoo 1 Framebuffer Single vs Double 3D Mark '99

Posted on 2017-09-19, 02:59

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I tried single buffering on a Riva 128 and had garbage output also. From what little I read, it appeared that this is normal behavior, and single buffering is useless. My presumption has been that this would be the same on any card, but I don't think I actually ever tried it again with any other …

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Re: Differences in Geforce2 Ultra and Quadro 2 Pro

Posted on 2017-09-18, 01:48

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I don't think it's meant to report the full amount of memory on the card. I just tried that command on a system with a 1GB GT430 in it, and it reported the same 16MB "32-bit non-prefetchable" block that your Quadro2 reported. It also had a couple 64-bit ranges, but none of it added up to 1GB. I …

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Re: ATI TruForm

Posted on 2017-09-17, 16:54

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

What does the lack of hardware support mean for the otherwise more capable Radeon cards? Several years ago when I tried TruForm in Morrowind on a Radeon 9800 Pro, it looked nice but the slowness was bothersome. I didn't measure it but it felt like the frame rate was cut in half. This was at …

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Re: Trying to save a piece of history.. A voodoo 3 PCI card

Posted on 2017-09-17, 06:02

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't know any specific measuring points, but try to find some sign of appropriate voltage(s) coming in and out of the heatsinked regulator, and maybe that 5 pinned component. If you can find a datasheet for those components you might also get more of an idea of what they should be doing. SDRAM …

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