Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-10-14, 14:49

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I love these late-era 486 boards - they cram so much into them. My first one was an Abit PB4 (not to be confused with the P4B!), a very similar looking socket 3 PCI board. Not much space for cache chips though.

---

Big(ish) Test of AGP Cards

Posted on 2015-10-14, 14:45

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi folks. From what I can tell, a large proportion of the retro gaming is done on PCI- and ISA-based systems. I don't have many PCI or ISA graphics cards. What I do have a lot of is AGP cards (25-30). What bugs me about most graphics cards group tests is the number of other variables that change in …

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-10-14, 14:00

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Bought Radeon 9100 128 MB card for replacing of my old trusty Manli Radeon 8500LE I can't remember what model it was exactly, but I purchased a replacement for my 8500 when it started to struggle and made the mistake of going 'cheap'. When I benchmarked, whatever I had bought (must have been a 9000 …

---

Re: Rare CPUs

Posted on 2015-10-13, 22:21

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm curious: while synthetic benchmarks may indeed indicate no instruction-level benefit from a 50Mhz FSB, isn't that a bit of a crude measurement? Surely a more rounded, real world test would show clear benefits from components such as a cached controller, graphics card and RAM running faster in …

---

Re: Surviving the late 90's without 3Dfx

Posted on 2015-10-13, 14:47

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Any idea if they have a store in London? The original Computer Exchange was on Tottenham Court Road - I don't know if it's still there now as this was in 1993 before they knocked a load of older buildings down. There is one on almost every high street in England now. The store was constantly …

---

Re: Interesting links

Posted on 2015-10-11, 07:26

by

by brassicGamer

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Found this place today: https://th99.bl4ckb0x.de/ Could have some useful obscure info for some people?

---

Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2015-10-10, 11:06

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Turns out it's a 16MHz Intel 386SX with a C&T Super Math copro: Acumos AVGA1 onboard video with 256KB DRAM (and yes, it seems to be an Acer motherboard): And these empty sockets labeled "DOS ROM" and "SHELL ROM" really caught my attention: This is great - I have the exact same system but in an Acer …

---

Re: Rare CPUs

Posted on 2015-10-10, 10:51

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Never heard of the Blue Lightning before or the i960 part - that one's got an interesting place in history. Are we going to see an epic benchmark project out of this?

---

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

Posted on 2015-10-04, 10:24

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

HighTreason wrote: 2004 mode enabled... Editing a video on the 486SX, just like I had to in 2004 though now I am doing it by choice. What software and capture card are you using?

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-10-03, 07:43

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I saw 5.25" hard disks back in the late 90s but I've never seen a full height one!

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-10-03, 00:04

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

yeah that was an impressive bit of rescue work!

---

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

Posted on 2015-10-02, 23:59

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had an epically retro day. Took delivery this morning of a batch of 7 motherboards I won for a fiver on eBay. Not so happy about having to then pay £15 to the same seller a week later for a bunch of ISA boards that I needed in order to test the motherboards. Three of the seven were ropey-looking …

---

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

Posted on 2015-10-02, 07:32

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Standard Def Steve wrote: King_Corduroy wrote: Standard Def Steve wrote: I went back to Windows 7. From what? Windows 10. Should've waited for Win 10.1. 🙄 I always used to say "never buy a 1st gen Apple product" but I'm inclined to include any major software release now as they all seem to ship in …

---

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

Posted on 2015-10-01, 16:51

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Standard Def Steve wrote: I went back to Windows 7. This made me laugh.

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-09-30, 17:35

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Skyscraper wrote: The CPUs which I was pretty sure would be 200MHz 256KB ones turned out to be 180MHz 256KB CPUs but I have two spare 200MHz CPUs so it dosnt matter. I have never heard of a 180Mhz CPU before. I thought it jumped from 166 to 200. So would that be a 60Mhz FSB?

---

Re: Old Laser 486 - Treasure or Trash?

Posted on 2015-09-30, 14:20

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This may be frowned upon, but I would ditch the case and hang onto the mobo and parts until you can find a standard AT replacement (which may also have a more standard PSU in it). VLB boards do have a unique place in history (mostly due to being quirky) and are an interesting addition to any …

---

Re: A Long Time Ago, In a Galaxy Where Windows Doesn't Exist Yet...

Posted on 2015-09-30, 05:47

by

by brassicGamer

in Milliways

in Milliways

Caluser2000 wrote: From what I understand programing for Macs wasn't a task to be taken lightly either. Assuming they wrote in assembler, that's a while different architecture to learn. Plus, Motorola CPUs are big endian so maybe they just wanted a challenge.

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-09-29, 22:33

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Indrid Cold wrote: € 29 + Shipping, not bad isn't that? That's a result - I am mostly jealous 😀

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-09-29, 17:01

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finally... http://i858.photobucket.com/albums/ab148/citydrone/Mobile%20Uploads/rps20150929_175707.jpg Took a frigging week to arrive but, as the shipping was free I cannot, by definition, complain. Not on eBay at least. It sounds even better than I thought it would (my MIDI keyboard is no longer …

---

Re: Ideas for Future 6.22 DOS Build

Posted on 2015-09-29, 14:49

by

by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

An ISA machine built with hardware that is 100% compatible with each other. Simple enough? Seriously though, compatibility and stability are the key word here. Stay away from things like VLB, but if you consider a Pentium to be the natural choice, that's not an issue. The CPU choice is almost by-the …

---