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

Posted on 2015-07-04, 03:01

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's a very nice setup! Got to get myself one of these Intel boards one day. Thanks! I'm going to call this my "No problems" build. In many ways, it is the manifestation of all of the learning I gained from Vogons. The most stable components and drivers. No janky VIA chipset, 3DNow!, or SB Live! …

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Re: Unreal, A3D and sound cards

Posted on 2015-07-04, 01:26

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

One great tweak for Unreal that works with just about any PCI sound card is to open up Unreal.ini and set the audio sample rate to 48000 Hz instead of the default of 22050 Hz. Massive improvement in sound quality. It takes a bit more CPU oomph though. Apparently Unreal does have A3D 2.0 support. …

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Re: A Voodoo 3, Vortex 2, Slot 1 based Glide machine

Posted on 2015-07-04, 01:13

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I stumbled across the solution while researching another question! Aureal Vortex 2 / TB Santa Cruz aka Videologic Sonic Fury unter DOS The trick is to put SET WINBOOTDIR=C:\WINDOWS somewhere in your autoexec.bat. Enjoying the AU8830's so-so SB Pro emulation on Duke Nukem 3D right now...

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Re: Need Help finding ATI drivers

Posted on 2015-07-03, 20:01

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't have it, but I was looking for something similar yesterday. You can find version 3.1 and older on oldapps.com. I finally had to install 6.2 because it was the only 98 version after 3.1 I could find.

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Re: A Voodoo 3, Vortex 2, Slot 1 based Glide machine

Posted on 2015-07-03, 19:13

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

One question: can the Vortex 2 be used as a "pure" DOS card? When I copy the two lines in the autoexec.bat to a DOS bootdisk, I get errors. When I start Quake, the sound is obviously messed up, unlike when I play it after using "Restart in MS-DOS mode" from 98SE. By 'pure DOS' I mean booting into …

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Re: Old Hard Drives

Posted on 2015-07-03, 15:33

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you have a cheap source for those? All I can find are the StarTech units that sell for ~$30 each. No, I bought the StarTech one. I paid about $22 from Amazon, shipped "free" through Prime. It works just fine, although the screw holes in the rails don't line up well with the 3.5" bay, so the …

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Re: Old Hard Drives

Posted on 2015-07-03, 14:40

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a bunch of the Hitachi microdrives that I use with a CF-to-IDE adapter. I like it quite a lot, actually. Like badmojo, I use an adapter that is front-facing so that I can easily swap out drives (like cartridges) without opening the case. I use it with a DOS/Win98SE OEM box (Celeron 466). One …

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

Posted on 2015-07-03, 05:33

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I finally broke out the NOS Intel SE440BX-2 mobo that I'd bought last year. This was going to be the basis of my main DOS/Win98SE rig until I recently picked up a Socket A board with ISA. While I wait for my Athlon XP 2400+ to arrive, I figured that I would put together this original contender. Slot …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-07-02, 13:23

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A WD Protege 20GB remains the only desktop HDD I've ever seen fail in a system of mine. Yeah, this one is on its way to the great platter in the sky. I don't have too many spare IDE drives, so this one will serve until it can't do so anymore. The noise it makes is one of the worst of all the retro …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-07-02, 06:12

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have one of those 20GB WD models. It makes a high-pitched noise as soon as it is powered up, and it never wanes. It sounds like cicadas. I can't stand it for very long, so I use the drive to clone fresh installs only.

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Re: S3 Savage 2000

Posted on 2015-07-02, 05:55

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I noticed that it stuttered during the practice session as soon as you got really close to a wall. I'm sure it was frantically loading high-res textures at that point. Things were fine when you didn't get up close to a wall. However, the stuttering went away after a while so that you could get close …

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Re: S3 Savage 2000

Posted on 2015-07-02, 04:27

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I found the DetailTextures variable in the ini file (it doesn't appear in the GUI). MeTal scores take a hit. 1024x768, intro scene DetailTextures=True ~47 FPS DetailTextures=False ~57 FPS I have to say, though, the detail textures look great with MeTaL. In the screenshots below (taken at 1600x1200), …

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Re: S3 Savage 2000

Posted on 2015-07-01, 22:39

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't know how to run a standard timedemo on this game. Start the game. Set your resolution. Quit the game. Start the game again. At the beginning of the timedemo, open the console (~ key) and enter timedemo 1 . Close the console again and some FPS starts appear on the right hand side. Let it …

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Re: S3 Savage 2000

Posted on 2015-07-01, 22:37

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

leileilol wrote: I have them. They all start with "dmmq3" and run with a special S3 Quake3 build also dating from around Jan/Feb 2000 (note: this version predates the network protocol breakage so incompatibility is guaranteed) Yes, the version of S3Quake3 that is on my Viper II driver CD is dated …

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Re: S3 Savage 2000

Posted on 2015-07-01, 22:35

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Another thing - with UT if you enable detail textures with Metal it causes pauses when the detail textures load as you approach a wall AFAIR. I remember that Unreal has the detail textures option, but I don't see it in UT GOTY. Am I missing it here? http://i1081.photobucket.com/albums/j349/ …

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Re: S3 Savage 2000

Posted on 2015-07-01, 22:34

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

swaaye wrote: UT CD2 installs the S3TC textures. I think that is the case with GOTY as well. Thanks! I never used CD2 until just now. The textures do look different and better. I've only observed the tutorial, but there is a starburst pattern on the stained glass and other parts of the arena now.

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Re: S3 Savage 2000

Posted on 2015-07-01, 21:03

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I did a little research and discovered that the Diamond-branded Unreal came from the Diamond Monster Fusion (Banshee) bundle, not the Viper II (Savage 2000) bundle. Apparently, it has a couple of new deathmatch maps not found in the original. I also discovered that Diamond released seven new …

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Re: S3 Savage 2000

Posted on 2015-07-01, 20:45

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It is a novelty card, to be sure. I suppose if you were part of some kind of period-correct, multiplayer UT99 club, the card could be useful to you. What's funny is that some of the bundled games don't even work quite right, even up with updated Diamond-branded drivers. The menu screens for the …

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Re: S3 Savage 2000

Posted on 2015-07-01, 15:41

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I bought the Diamond Viper II at retail at a closeout price ($30 or $40 maybe) back in the day. It was supposed to replace my Banshee. I never got to play around with the Viper II because it didn't play well with my FIC VA-503+, if I remember. Soon enough, I upgraded to a KT133A board and a Geforce2 …

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Re: Ultimate Windows 98 Box

Posted on 2015-06-30, 13:52

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by boxpressed

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Are there really games that can be bottlenecked by slower CPUs (~1GHz P3), and at the same time not do not work properly under WinXP? Good question. I'm about to build a KT133A Win98SE system with an ISA slot for DOS games. Honestly, the extra power is just for id Tech 2 games like Quake and Build …

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