Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-02-06, 08:26

by

by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I got a really good deal on one of those 286 LCD Portable clones. It won't ship until Friday but I'm excited to see what it can do, or rather, whether it works at all. It would be really cool to swap the lcd screen for one of those VGA lcd panels. At least, if the screen compartment could fit a …

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Re: Windows 95 or 98 for 66mhz 486?

Posted on 2019-02-05, 13:12

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by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've been running Win95c on a 50 MHz DX2 (mobile) with 20 Mb of RAM and it was just fine imho -- it's not the fastest experience in the world but totally acceptable. I upgraded to a 75 MHz DX4 recently and now those few slowdowns that did occur before have basically gone.

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

Posted on 2019-01-25, 14:05

by

by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ugh... there's a Compaq Portable available here that I really want, but it's 180 yuros... Maybe I'll see how low they'll go *_*

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Re: Party like it's 1999 with a 6x86

Posted on 2019-01-16, 11:54

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by henryVK

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

As someone who had a Cyrix P120+ in 1999, I definitely feel this one!

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

Posted on 2019-01-15, 08:22

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by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Messing around with virtual drives on my laptops. I eventually figured out that you can't run CD-audio on Windows 95 via cue/bin images, because, apparently, you need a WDM sound driver. So I got CD-audio to play on my Windows 98 machine, but that's the one with the annoyingly loud fan that won't …

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Re: Old laptops with joystick ports?

Posted on 2019-01-15, 08:03

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by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, apparently the Thinkpad 365CD, CSD and ED had a gameport and the 365X's port replicator also has one.

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Re: Toshiba 400cdt..NO floppy drive works and CD-ROM dead?

Posted on 2019-01-11, 10:00

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by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hm, I understand wanting the drives to "just work". However, using a CF would also make the CD-Rom obsolete because you'd have enough room for disk images. I can't tell you anything about the Toshiba disk drives, because I don't have one for my Satellite/Tecra. The CD-Drives are Toshiba made 10x and …

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Re: Toshiba 400cdt..NO floppy drive works and CD-ROM dead?

Posted on 2019-01-10, 10:09

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by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do the drives give you a read error then, or does the laptop just plain not recognize the drive to begin with? Remember that the floppy disks themselves have a failure rate of, like, 80%, so make sure that you have lots of disks to test too. Lastly, as long as you have a working CF, you don't really …

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Re: Replacing Vintage Compaq LTE Lite 4/25 Hard Drive & Compact Flash Card Problems

Posted on 2019-01-09, 15:22

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by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Have you tried using a the USB-IDE interface with a different operating system? I've had drives that Win7 recognized without a hitch and some that it just didn't like. Maybe try Windows XP, if that's an option at all. Also, some machines apparently just don't recognize CF adapters. I've tested a …

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Re: Best laptop for DOS/Win9x gaming?

Posted on 2019-01-09, 15:10

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by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ah, I was waiting for you to chime in, Oldcat :-) I can definitely second most of your sentiments. My wife is generally more accepting of things that can be stowed away! Also, having a desk job, I've taken to playing games sitting on the couch in our living room, rather than sitting at my desk. Or …

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Re: Best laptop for DOS/Win9x gaming?

Posted on 2019-01-09, 13:10

by

by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's not nearly as bad, if you know what to look for. There are lots of models that make perfectly adequate gaming platforms, but, as with desktop PCs, there is no perfect machine. With a little patience, though, anyone should be able to find a laptop that runs 90% of all DOS/Win9x games. Besides, …

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Re: Best laptop for DOS/Win9x gaming?

Posted on 2019-01-09, 11:55

by

by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just how (or whether) they stretch VGA (320*2xx) to fullscreen. The aspect ratio might be weird and the image stretched unevenly because the scaling just adds lines here and there, or the aspect ratio might be correct but there are artefacts, like some pixels are larger than others. But since this …

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Re: Best laptop for DOS/Win9x gaming?

Posted on 2019-01-09, 10:05

by

by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

dr_st wrote: Relevant Thinkpads would be A20, A21, A22 and T20, T21, T22 (but not T23!). Any input on what the VGA scaling for older DOS games looks like with the ATI Rage mobility/S3Savage graphics on these?

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Re: Best laptop for DOS/Win9x gaming?

Posted on 2019-01-09, 08:50

by

by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

DotC with a gamepad? :-D Yeah, it's a good looking machine. I briefly owned a Thinkpad 770, but what kind of put me off most was the stickyness of the coating. Do the 486 Thinkpads have the same rubbery coating? It's hard to tell from just looking at pictures. Anyway, these guys are nearly …

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Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2019-01-07, 16:19

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by henryVK

in Milliways

in Milliways

I started playing Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games in December and I'm currently between missions 13 and 14. The former is the sneaky one, where you can't mess around with the 4 or 5 enemies, or they blow up the house with the mission goal in it. I managed to complete it, but accidentally overspent …

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Re: Best laptop for DOS/Win9x gaming?

Posted on 2019-01-07, 10:26

by

by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Presumably it's a 755C with a somewhat rare PCMCIA Roland SC-55 card http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:755C Very, very nice, especially the speakers, but isn't it a bit uncomfortable to rest your hands on the keyboard when the laptop is so damn tall?

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

Posted on 2018-12-11, 09:57

by

by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ugh, I had to let a 486 Siemens Multimedia PC slide, even though it was just a few bucks and practically around the corner from me. Maybe it's better that way, in case the monstrous black hulk had turned out to be a giant feature-overloaded chore with a terrible built-in screen... Also, curse …

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Re: Scariest pc game you played

Posted on 2018-11-27, 15:30

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by henryVK

in Milliways

in Milliways

I played Project Zomboid when it was still alpha.. the game played this violin stab sound when a zombie unexpectedly showed up in close proximity, and, holy smokes, if it wasn't the mother of all jump scares. For an isometric game it also did very well in creating a forboding and brooding atmosphere …

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

Posted on 2018-11-23, 10:23

by

by henryVK

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just window shopping some 486... I'm looking at an IBM Valuepoint that's supposed to have an "Intel Pentium 66 MHz, Socket 4". Wouldn't this rather be an Pentium Overdrive upgrade, than a Pentium 1? Otherwise, it has 64 Mb of RAM and a ATI Mach32, so might be quite a nice machine there. More icons. …

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Re: What are your plans for Thanksgiving?

Posted on 2018-11-22, 08:08

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by henryVK

in Milliways

in Milliways

My wife is American, but we live in Europe, so we're not exactly celebrating Thanksgiving at least this year. We'll go to dinner at a friend's house on Saturday and have some friends over for breakfast the next day, so it's sort of an ad-hoc Friendsgiving situation. They did Thanksgiving at my …

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