Re: From your experience, what have you found to be the most robust, reliable hardware to date?

Posted on 2018-12-04, 20:33

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Whatever I buy cheaply, treat badly and push to its limits. Not the stuff I research, track down and pay decent money for! For me it's my ECS L4S8A2 Pentium 4 motherboard - I threw it in the bin, left it in my sub zero car over night, put dozens of CPUs, sticks of RAM and AGP/PCI cards in it, had a …

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Re: Unboxing a new old Windows 98 PC!

Posted on 2018-12-01, 11:27

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It is most probably from 1998 or 1999. The Y2K compliance craze was before the year 2000. I'm jealous! Why can't I find such a treasure? Everybody seems to find old hardware in dumpsters etc. Only I have to pay hard €€€ if I want this stuff. :depressed: ;) Oh yeah I didn't see it was a Y2k sticker, …

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Re: Unboxing a new old Windows 98 PC!

Posted on 2018-12-01, 11:12

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well I turned it on this morning. It needed a couple of presses of the power button as it was stiff. It went straight to the final stages of a W98 install with a CD key needed (none provided!) and user name / password. The software it has preinstalled are: Software Value Pack: Need for Speed 2 Plane …

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Re: Unboxing a new old Windows 98 PC!

Posted on 2018-12-01, 09:32

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That is the typical 1998 configuration: 350 MHz, 64 MB and a hideous ATI Rage card. Lovely to see Comic Sans again and this super-cheap Windows 98 sticker. Except this PC is from 2000 or 2001 if you see the Computer of the Year sticker on it! Is the graphics card horrible because of its slow or for …

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Unboxing a new old Windows 98 PC!

Posted on 2018-11-30, 23:11

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I browse eBay, like I'm sure we all do, for retro PC's that people have shoved on eBay for 99p just to get rid of it, collection only. In the UK the number of these old PC's are quite low (even if there are quite a few "who know what they got" basic Slot 1 systems for £100 or so). I've been widening …

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Recommend Games that have downloadable demos

Posted on 2018-11-28, 11:15

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by Almoststew1990

in Milliways

in Milliways

I would like to try out some game demos on my DOS and Windows 98 PC before I take the time to hunt down these games. What are some great demos for 1990 to 2001? This also includes shareware games - anything legally downloadable (and still available online). In particular can someone recommend some …

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Does my motherboard support Coppermine

Posted on 2018-11-28, 09:24

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have an MSI MS-6119 with a 440BX chipset. The website states that, if it has a blue sticker with a "c" on it on the Winbond chip, it will support coppermine (once on the latest bios). Mine doesn't have the sticker. However, it came with "a P3 CPU" and it turns out this is a 650MHz coppermine, …

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Re: Benchmarking: Apples vs Oranges

Posted on 2018-11-26, 17:07

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I did use setmul for quite a while with it before I got my real 386 PC. It works well and makes games like The Secret of Monkey Island and Jill of the Jungle playable. However I wouldn't say comparing it to a 300MHz Katmai CPU is "top end" performance in 2001! I was just expecting a bit more from it …

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Benchmarking: Apples vs Oranges

Posted on 2018-11-26, 16:11

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Hi everyone. Today is my day off from work. What shall I do today? I’ll go outside and fly my remote control plane. https://i.imgur.com/CgUHrLzl.jpg This is what outside looks like https://i.imgur.com/bAAX5ckl.jpg My remote control plane *6 to 8 minutes of battery life later* Ok now what? Go home …

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

Posted on 2018-11-24, 15:06

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today my £5 478 board arrived that I mistakenly bought thinking mine was dead. hmm https://i.imgur.com/2rL42FRh.jpg oh ok! https://i.imgur.com/DEhR8jMh.jpg Also, I tried out Realms of the Haunting! My first FMV game. The acting and voice over is slightly better than I expected I'm already stuck in …

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Re: Upgrading a dead-end(?) system - PCI in the DX7 era

Posted on 2018-11-23, 10:09

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

How do you handle drivers for an i810 plus GPU? Is the intel graphics driver different to the intel chipset driver? I had lots of issues trying to install the chipset drivers and then the nvidia drivers. Do you need to uninstall the i810 before installing the GPU?

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Re: Geforce 6600 cooling

Posted on 2018-11-22, 19:04

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

If it is of interest I have an Inno3D 6600 (le) that doesn't need a power connector. As you can see it doesn't need much cooling; I'd imagine the case fan cools it much better than the stock fan. https://i.imgur.com/5yy6cOIh.jpg https://i.imgur.com/pxbKwLdh.jpg It is a bit lacking at 1024 *768 when …

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Re: How many computer do you have and use?

Posted on 2018-11-22, 17:48

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by Almoststew1990

in Milliways

in Milliways

I guess it depends on what counts as a computer. I have 4 retro cases but about 8 motherboard / CPU / Ram bundles. So I could that as 8 PCs that I can get up and running in about 2 hours. I only ever have one retro PC plugged in though, alongside my main PC.

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2018-11-17, 11:31

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

pretty sure it's a Avermedia Gamebroadcaster HD https://shop.avermedia-usa.com/products/game-broadcaster-hd?variant=996694345 They're quite old. Yeah I know it's old (it can only do 1080i) but I am not planning on doing anything serious with it and I am only going to use 640*480 60Hz (Dreamcast) up …

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2018-11-17, 10:41

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

ruthan wrote: What is exact card model / name? C199-B near the PCI-E slot and C199AF on a sticker on the back. It doesn't show up in the Avermedia porduct pages and a current or discontinued product so I guess it had a "brand name" that is missing from it.

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2018-11-16, 21:27

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Today I dabbled with capturing for the first time. I got a "Live View" capture card with a junk PC a while back and finally put it in a PC. The PC in question is a Pentium 4, as the software for the card requires XP! Anyway I captured some Dreamcast S-video and PS3 composite footage and I've "edited …

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Jill of the Jungle from GoG onto DOS

Posted on 2018-11-12, 10:13

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Hi I got Jill of the Jungle when it was free on GoG. I see that it uses DOSBox. I assume it will work on my DOS PC just fine, which already has the Shareware version. Can I just copy over the GoG version of the game and delete any reference to GoG to save some disk space?

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

Posted on 2018-11-07, 18:17

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Egh... My old trusty S478 motherboard wouldn't post. Swapping RAM around, CPUs around, GPUs around... I get frustrated and decide it's dead, literally scrape the PCB with a screwdriver to get the chipset heatsink and cooler mount off, and *throw* it into the bin-BANG! I see a board on ebay for £6. …

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Re: Slot A - with a mix of old and new

Posted on 2018-11-06, 18:56

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yes I was a bit sad when he said he was dumping his Athlon in that Windows 98 PC build! I thought I'd found a fellow believer :D To be fair I haven't had any problems with my board other than it not supporting my 700MHz thunderbird CPU which in theory it should. Its been my go-go build, not really …

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Re: TNT vs TNT2 M64

Posted on 2018-11-06, 07:14

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by Almoststew1990

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

There is also an Anandtech review which compares the M64 to the proper TNT2. https://www.anandtech.com/show/393

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