Re: Retro Rig Photo Thread

Posted on 2015-03-12, 20:53

by

by devius

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Retro is getting more and more of a grey term lol. What is "retro" meant to be? A specific set of hardware? Or a specific age-range? Or what? :confused: :blush: I think it's something very personal, although we* can all agree that a PC-XT is definitely retro. For me a Pentium 4 is not retro, mainly …

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Re: Old hard drives - value

Posted on 2015-03-11, 20:51

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

kixs wrote: I only use CF cards for retro machines (pre-Pentiums). I like the speed increase factor. Like SSD's now-a-days 😁 That and the silence 😁 If there was one thing I always hated about computers it's the mechanical HDD.

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Re: Old hard drives - value

Posted on 2015-03-11, 20:47

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by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

smeezekitty wrote: I have one...in working condition! That's interesting. The only chance for that to happen is if you never used it much. Either that or not all of them have the defect that cause them to malfunction.

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Re: Planning a retro PC build

Posted on 2015-03-11, 20:14

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by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

MasterM wrote: What was the standard in, let's say, 98-99? 4x, 8x? In mid-1998 my PC came with a 32X CD-ROM which I think was the fastest available at that time. In 1999 probably 40X or 48X was common. 4X came out about late 1994 IIRC and 8X probably in 1995.

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Re: Old hard drives - value

Posted on 2015-03-11, 17:16

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Half-Saint wrote: - IBM Deskstar IC35L040AVVN07-0 40GB Isn't that the infamous "DeathStar"? I had one of those and it died a couple of years after I bought it exactly like it was supposed to. 😢

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Re: Planning a retro PC build

Posted on 2015-03-10, 10:28

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by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Funny you should talk about old linux distros. I just got an old Compaq laptop and it came with Red Hat 5.2. The interesting thing about that is that I got to see what an old Linux distro was like in terms of system resources usage. It barely used any RAM. This machine has 16MB and it still had …

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Re: most hardware demanding dos game?

Posted on 2015-03-07, 12:49

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by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

carlostex wrote: Grand Prix 2 I remember playing that on my 486 DX2-66. In my memory it ran ok, but 15FPS was acceptable back then, so I don't trust my memory that much in this regard 😀

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Re: How to clean 3.5" floppy disks (not drives)?

Posted on 2015-03-06, 11:38

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

blowing disks may introduce moisture to the disc so do this at your own risk I wonder if that's how these disks ended up like this. I did used to use that method 17 years ago to "clean" them, when I was trying to unzip the last floppy of a set of 10 and there were read errors at 99%. I know your …

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How to clean 3.5" floppy disks (not drives)?

Posted on 2015-03-05, 21:20

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a bunch of 3.5" floppy disks from when that was a suitable storage medium, but some of them have developed mold and other nasty things on the actual disk's surface. Even some of the disks where there is no visible mold, there are some read errors. Is it possible to clean these disks somehow? …

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Re: CF Card on a 486

Posted on 2015-02-09, 11:26

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does anyone know any substance that will remove rust and restore the original look of computer case metal. How can I remove the yellowing on the case? If the rust is only superficial you may be able to remove it, but if it's been rusty for many years it will have eaten into the metal by now, which …

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Re: Retro Rig Photo Thread

Posted on 2015-02-07, 20:39

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by devius

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Backfire wrote: http://abload.de/thumb/slotaqgunc.jpg […] Show full quote What do you think? Dat cooler!

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Re: PLEASE HELP ME FIND THIS CASE!!! :D

Posted on 2015-02-05, 14:51

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you have any idea how much those Yamaha YST M20DSP speakers cost when they were new? Those were actually the speakers I wanted back in 1998, but ended up getting a pair of crap "240W" speakers instead, since the Yamaha were expensive, but I don't really remember how much they cost.

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Re: Retro main pc: Athlon 1000 vs XP 2000+

Posted on 2015-01-25, 16:33

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I would be concerned about automatically download a hosts file from a server like that. It is a security exploit risk as the IP address could be routed to something malicious. It's just a text file. You can look at it and verify that indeed all the listed domains are being redirected to 0.0.0.0, …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-01-25, 16:29

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by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I would add the the list S3 Virge DX 3D "decelerator" made the games slower with direct 3D enabled. The ATI Rage Mobility M1 graphics chip does that in some games with my Sony Vaio laptop, and its 1.1 GHz Duron... that's more a case of the GPU being well past its sell-by date when compared to the …

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Re: Retro Rig Photo Thread

Posted on 2015-01-22, 20:51

by

by devius

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Wow! That laptop actually looks like a semi-modern laptop. Not bad 😀 And a Pentium 100Mhz! What a beast 🤣 It should actually be a very good PC for playing just about any (non-3D accelerated) DOS game ever made.

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Re: Retro main pc: Athlon 1000 vs XP 2000+

Posted on 2015-01-22, 16:15

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Modern websites are horrendously inefficient, and it makes me wonder why they are coded in such a way with the proliferation of lower-power devices like tablets and smartphones. Because more and more websites are owned by big companies that want to gather as much information about their users as …

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Re: PLEASE HELP ME FIND THIS CASE!!! :D

Posted on 2015-01-21, 20:59

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

relink2013 I see quite a few of those cases where I live. They come with the whole computer inside usually, but they are usually pretty cheap even complete. I don't know if the shipping costs would be worth it though.

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Re: Retro Rig Photo Thread

Posted on 2015-01-14, 15:35

by

by devius

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I think that case has space for a Flex ATX PSU, which sucks because those are expensive and noisy.

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Re: Retro Rig Photo Thread

Posted on 2015-01-13, 18:18

by

by devius

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Nice! What an improvement :) My PC from 1998 was also based on a QDI motherboard, but the it was the Legend V, and the CPU was a Pentium II 266MHz. The 333MHz version was my dream CPU back then, but it was super expensive. I have to get one of those now that they are cheap :) BTW, the cooler on your …

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Re: weird DOS install issue on my 486 DX2-66

Posted on 2015-01-04, 22:09

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by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In my experience Samsung HDDs never last long, so I would say your disk is dying. Unless it works perfectly fine in another computer that is...

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