Re: Advice on an early 2000s gaming rig

Posted on 2017-06-07, 07:17

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hmmm, I just quickly read through this thread, and was slightly surprised by people finding XP to be sluggish on sub P4 hardware. I run XP on my Tualatin-S 1.4GHz with 512MB RAM and Adaptec Ultra160-SCSI and Seagate Cheetah HDD and I'm actually finding it surprisingly usable. The system it self is …

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Re: Matrox G200 questions

Posted on 2017-04-05, 13:17

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

G200 finally got a real OpenGL ICD around the same time as G400 got one. I think it was in early 2000. Prior to that it did indeed use a D3D-to-GL wrapper. G400 at least had a Quake 1/2/3-optimized miniGL for awhile (called TurboGL). It could very well be slower than Banshee. They are in about the …

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Re: DreamBlaster X1 : a rare card

Posted on 2016-10-31, 13:03

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm happy enough with my DreamBlaster S1, seeing as it's only for fun in Dos games that don't want to use my GUS. I do however, find it immensely cool that people actually make these kind of things. Keep up the good work 😀

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Re: My 486 Build

Posted on 2016-10-07, 12:08

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Fantastic choice of graphics card. For some really old titles, an ET4000 might be as good, perhaps marginally better, but for the slightly more modern DOS games, the S3 Vision 868 should make mincemeat out of the ET4000.

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Re: Post your 'current' PC

Posted on 2016-09-29, 08:38

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Strangely enough Speccy doesn't show my overclock. The CPU is running at 4.5GHz (good compromise between speed and temperature under 100% load). The small speakers are actually just for my DJ console. I'm using Alesis studio monitors on stands above the PC (barely visible in the picture) for actual …

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Re: Post your 'current' PC

Posted on 2016-09-29, 08:37

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Oh wow. I've forgotten all about this thread. I was going to post my "new" system here back when it was actually new, but oh well, it doesn't matter. It is still my current PC. Leak testing.jpg Testing the system for leaks. Side View.jpg How the system looked in the end. DSC_0030.JPG How the setup …

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Re: "Intel Inside" logo, 486 question

Posted on 2016-08-24, 19:06

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had an AST Advantage! 486SX/33 back in the days, and it had a blue "Intel Inside" sticker.

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Re: Matrox Roundup G200, G400, G400 MAX, G450 and G550

Posted on 2016-07-17, 06:41

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There is also the G550 :) If I remember correctly, in OpenGL it shows an improvement, but otherwise it's not really improved compared to the G400. That card also has DVI, which is nice. I thought the difference in OpenGL performance was due to the OpenGL ICD for the G400 wasn't finished until ages …

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Re: Matrox Roundup G200, G400, G400 MAX, G450 and G550

Posted on 2016-07-17, 06:36

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Have here some games that were bundled whit a Matrox card (think it was a Mystique), didn't test those jet. When I remember right also Toy Story. They were in a bundle whit "Dragons Lair" in the RealMagic version. Gonna test those sometimes. I own some Matrox cards here, maybe even a mystique, I …

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Re: The 486DX 33 MHZ Retro Gamer - Or The Adventure Games MIDI Master

Posted on 2016-06-07, 21:16

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Looks really nice :) Very cool and authentic build. I love the VESA localbus. When I get time and energy, I will rebuild my main retro rig and try to get my VESA stuff working. It's always been the penultimate 486-era bus in my opinion. And I totally support your idea of a system for adventure games …

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Re: post up pics of your "computing area"

Posted on 2016-06-07, 20:43

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Seeing as my computing area is continually changing, and as I haven't posted anything on here in absolute ages, I'm going to risk posting a new computing area pic. My retro boxes aren't really visible in this pic though, and for that I apologise, but as I'm trying to be mostly productive these days, …

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Re: My new Apple iMac! Bondi Blue 233mhz! :D

Posted on 2015-07-23, 07:28

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

That's a really nice little system. Grats :) I actually think the iMacs from that era (especially the blue and purple) were really pretty systems. I much prefer Macs from pre-LCD times, and pre-Intel Macs especially were so much cooler than todays glorified "PC"s. My dream Mac would be a 68040 based …

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Re: Best os for G4 350 mhz Agp?

Posted on 2015-07-23, 07:10

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I know what I'd use a G4 for: MorphOS 😀

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Re: Unusual 486 Chipset?

Posted on 2015-07-23, 07:07

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Mut wrote: - Efar was a true chip manufaturer bought by smsc in 1996. And now SMSC has been bought by (or merged with) Microchip Technologies. It's incredible how these companies change over time. I wonder if Microchip Tech. still have the specs for that chipset.

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Re: Showing-off my 486 :-)

Posted on 2015-06-28, 20:49

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Also think the CPU is a strange choice, but nice to see it getting some love. Most jump straight to a DX2/66, DX4/100 or 586. Indeed Doom, NFS 1 will work happily on any DOS/Win9x PC so if you have a faster dos machine then you'll be fine. A SB Pro is more period correct for 386 games with the …

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Re: VLB Graphics recommendation

Posted on 2015-05-28, 14:04

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

HAH! My QDI motherboard arrived today, it works, my S3 Vision 864 card works, my E-IDE VLB controller works, it autodetects my CF card and the system boots perfectly with the test CPU (486 DX2 66). Next step, rebuild the system to swap from PCI to VLB and then do some tweaking. Can't wait to see how …

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Re: DOSBox 0.74 CPU Benchmark (Quake)

Posted on 2015-05-19, 20:07

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by LunarG

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

My i7 has all cpu features enabled, including boost. It boosts with 100% load and 8 threads in hyper pi, so not sure why it doesn't want to in dosbox. It's weird.

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Re: DOSBox 0.74 CPU Benchmark (Quake)

Posted on 2015-05-19, 15:04

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by LunarG

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.78GHz (dosbox didn't seen to want to make it boost), 12GB RAM, Radeon R9 280X 3GB, Windows 7 64-bit: 39.8 - 44.7 - 39.6. Seeing as I was in the middle of doing stuff, I didn't actually bother shutting down stuff just for this test, especially as the system is overkill for …

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Re: If you could play any game for the first time ever again...

Posted on 2015-05-12, 07:03

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by LunarG

in Milliways

in Milliways

As somebody says, some games are too old to have the same kind of impact today. I suspect that the person who originally came up with this question may be somewhat younger, at least enough so as to not be too subject to this issue as much. But let's imagine I could play it again and it would have …

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Re: My First MEGA Copyright Notice

Posted on 2015-05-11, 15:58

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by LunarG

in Milliways

in Milliways

The subject of what is "Abandonware" isn't so straight forward though. Sure, legally, the copyright has to expire, but how about this scenario: A game is 15 years old, it hasn't been sold new from the publisher in 9 years, and you've trawled shops both physically and online for 3 years trying to …

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