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

Posted on 2024-02-25, 23:26

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have ripped so many music CDs over the years, with EAC in picky mode, to be able to give a simple test. Hold the CD up to a light, and any pin points of light are regions of lost data-carrying layer. No amount of polishing can fix that. But as for polishing out scratches, yes. I have had good …

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

Posted on 2024-02-25, 05:05

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I went ahead and hooked up my Windows 98 gaming PC again. I recently got an original copy of Baldur's Gate 1 and wanted to install it, only to not be able to install due to the CD-ROM drive not being able to read certain files. I looked at the first disc and of course, it has lots of minor use …

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Re: Water-cooling Windows 7 Gaming Rig

Posted on 2022-05-03, 01:09

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Parts already arrived today. That was awfully fast. I got the 12 compression fittings, the 4-way, the temp sensor, the drain plug, and the 3m of soft tubing. I should get the straight connectors tomorrow. After that, I can begin mock-ups of the system and begin cutting, but I also still need the two …

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Re: Water-cooling Windows 7 Gaming Rig

Posted on 2022-04-30, 14:33

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yeah, I was thinking about having a ball-valve with one of those push-on fittings in front to hook up a drain hose, but then I saw that EK had that push-pull valve. I can still put a fitting on it with a hose because I ended up buying 12 fittings and really only need 10. It's good to have extras, …

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Re: Water-cooling Windows 7 Gaming Rig

Posted on 2022-04-29, 23:53

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I pulled the trigger on some items today. 3x EKWB EK-Quantum Torque STC-10/16 Compression Fitting for Soft Tubing (4 fittings per package, 12 fittings total) EKWB EK-DuraClear Soft Tubing, 10/16mm (3/8" ID, 5/8" OD), 3 Meter, Clear EKWB EK-AF G1/4" X-Splitter Fitting, 4X Female Ports, Black Nickel …

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Re: Favorite 4:3 games from the XP-era?

Posted on 2022-04-25, 18:55

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Hah! No one's yet mentioned F.E.A.R., one of my favorite FPS from the Windows XP era, also limited to 4:3 resolutions without INI hacks or other patches. Other games I enjoyed from this era include Doom 3, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Half-Life 2, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare... not all of …

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Re: Water-cooling Windows 7 Gaming Rig

Posted on 2022-04-25, 15:40

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I don't remember exactly, but I knew that I wanted a PAIR of identical waterblocks so I could do the cooling loop in Parallel (water splits and goes through both cards equally). If the two waterblocks had been different, I'd have been forced to do Series on them (through one card, then through the …

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Re: Water-cooling Windows 7 Gaming Rig

Posted on 2022-04-25, 13:27

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I did a full dis-assemble and cleaning of my two GTX 480s a few years ago, including de-lidding the GPUs. I cleaned all of the old thermal paste off and used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut (12.5 w/mk thermal transfer) on the naked GPU die before re-attaching the IHS down with some high-temp liquid gasket …

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Re: Water-cooling Windows 7 Gaming Rig

Posted on 2022-04-25, 13:04

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Oh that thing looks sweet. I was considering doing GTX 480 SLI on my Windows XP/7 rig but that would've required me to drop either my USB 3 card or my Wifi Card. Funny that you mention that... one of the primary reasons for water-cooling my 480s is to make them single-slot cards. I even got single- …

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Re: Water-cooling Windows 7 Gaming Rig

Posted on 2022-04-24, 22:34

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

More pics, since I'm limited to 5 per post. IMG_0440.JPG IMG_0439.JPG These are my video card heatsinks now. https://www.nexthardware.com/forum/attachments/vendite-hardware-software/8396d1274252831-vendo-waterblock-ek-per-geforce-480-gtx-fc480gtx_front.jpg And this is the CPU block https://compx.com …

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Re: Water-cooling Windows 7 Gaming Rig

Posted on 2022-04-24, 22:32

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Well, my plan is to do something like this. Filename 750dblank.png File size 692.29 KiB Views 1892 views File comment Loop Plan That's an image I threw together. Filename IMG_0438.JPG File size 872.63 KiB Views 1892 views File comment Front of the case Filename IMG_0437.JPG File size 650.76 KiB …

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Water-cooling Windows 7 Gaming Rig

Posted on 2022-04-24, 17:59

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Gonna document what I've been doing with my Windows 7 rig. Since the internal PC components are effectively 11 years old at this point, they're getting along in age, yet still work. Specs CPU: Intel Core i7-860 2.8GHz stock (4c/8t) Socket: LGA 1156 Motherboard: MSI Big Bang Trinergy Video: 2x …

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Re: [Solved] Windows XP SP2 - Half-Life 2 not launching

Posted on 2022-04-24, 12:46

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Now that I've seen this thread.... (turns on XP gaming PC and tries to open Half-Life 2) ...Damn. Same here. Gotta install older versions of this game now. Maybe this will fix my Athlon XP based system to play one of the original versions of this game. All of my CD/DVD-based copies of this game are …

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Re: Ultimate Windows XP Build (Intel E8400 / GTX 980Ti / X-Fi Titanium)

Posted on 2022-04-14, 02:39

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Well, the games for XP are going to literally be the games for XP. Games too advanced for Windows 98 but still very basic-looking compared to the Windows 7 era circa 2010. Games like... The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind Doom 3 Half-Life 2 F.E.A.R. (1) FarCry (1) Call of Duty 1 & 2 Vampire the …

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Re: Ultimate Windows XP Build (Intel E8400 / GTX 980Ti / X-Fi Titanium)

Posted on 2022-04-06, 17:51

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Well I definitely wanna do a Windows XP Gaming machine very much like you're doing here. When I bought pieces in 2010 to build my Windows 7 gaming rig, I ended up buying a Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium Fatality PCIe card, but when I found out that Windows 7 didn't support EAX audio and the …

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Re: Ultimate Windows XP Build (Intel E8400 / GTX 980Ti / X-Fi Titanium)

Posted on 2022-04-06, 17:01

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I'm interested to know how the SSDs fare under Windows XP without direct TRIM support. I'm debating going SSD in my future Windows XP build myself. I was going to use a similar speed Core 2 Duo and also trying to decide on a graphics card, probably a used 750Ti or something.

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Re: What are some good music software for Windows 9x?

Posted on 2022-01-09, 05:23

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by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Back in the Windows 9x days I used to have a piece of software called Cakewalk Express Gold and I would sit there for hours building MIDI files note by note, track by track. I used to really enjoy trying to get MIDI music files to sound good. I guess most people would laugh at someone messing with …

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Re: ATI Rage II mis-reporting

Posted on 2022-01-02, 22:02

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I'm not sure how to improve performance. The PC specs for the entire system are as follows: Motherboard: Micronics M55Hi+ Rev. 2 BIOS: Phoenix Version 4.05 CPU: Intel Pentium P54C @200 MHz Cache: 512KB on-motherboard Level-2 Chipset: Intel i430HX RAM: 64MB EDO 72-pin SIMMs (4 sticks or 16MB) CPU-z …

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Re: ATI Rage II mis-reporting

Posted on 2022-01-01, 19:19

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Ok, so the results for the ATI card are in. Unfortunately, I cannot successfully test the Voodoo card right now because I keep getting this error: 3DMark could not initialize your 3D Accelerator. Try to downgrade your display settings. DirectX Error Message: DirectDrawSurface4->Blt : DDERR_NOBLTHW …

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Re: ATI Rage II mis-reporting

Posted on 2022-01-01, 18:16

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

OK, after a hard restart (the few times I like having a reset button on the case), I got 3DMax99 up. It's reporting the following for the ATI card Total Video Memory: 4074 KB Texture Memory Available: 2538 KB Running the tests at 640x480, 16-bit color, 16-bit Z-Buffer Depth, and Double Frame Buffer …

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