Re: Why I do this

Posted on 2021-04-01, 05:34

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm generally very focused on what I want to build. Rarely deviate and even if I do it's almost never something more modern, rather a different product of the same era. This also makes life hard in its own was. It often drives me to overpay for parts because it's just the exact model I was looking …

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

Posted on 2021-03-31, 18:09

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Now finally one of the most influential graphics card of PC history I bought last Friday have arrived. And also an 8800GT. https://i.ibb.co/B216KwL/3dimage-8800gt.jpg The 3DImage9750 will participate in my early 3D accelerator adventure. When I get home I'll check if it works. It supposed to post, …

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

Posted on 2021-03-30, 22:00

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Now finally one of the most influential graphics card of PC history I bought last Friday have arrived. And also an 8800GT. https://i.ibb.co/B216KwL/3dimage-8800gt.jpg The 3DImage9750 will participate in my early 3D accelerator adventure. When I get home I'll check if it works. It supposed to post, …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-03-30, 11:30

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Now finally one of the most influential graphics card of PC history I bought last Friday have arrived. And also an 8800GT. https://i.ibb.co/B216KwL/3dimage-8800gt.jpg The 3DImage9750 will participate in my early 3D accelerator adventure. When I get home I'll check if it works. It supposed to post, …

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Re: How often do you buy a brand new computer ?

Posted on 2021-03-29, 17:08

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by RandomStranger

in Milliways

in Milliways

Absolutely brand new, fairly rarely. About every 5-8 years. In between I just upgrade what I have. I prefer platforms with good upgrade paths. Also, the last about 15 years was really generous. For web browsing one can still get by with a Core2 Quad or Phenom 2 X4. Same with gaming. Between 2007- …

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

Posted on 2021-03-28, 12:34

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm just about to finalize my XP/Vista dual boot build. I added the CMR-225 docking bay and a 320GB Hitachi hard drive of my dead then reanimated then dead again G565G laptop I used during college. The XP SP3 installation I had on it didn't really care. Booted up without any issue and after …

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

Posted on 2021-03-27, 15:53

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by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

liqmat wrote on 2021-03-27, 15:23: Don't be so sure about it being dead. For some odd reason the graphic card planets have been aligning with me lately resulting in graphic card incompatibilities. My main suspicion is still the vendor lock and that this specific Permedia 2 won't work in anything …

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

Posted on 2021-03-27, 12:24

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I remembered I had a Permedia 2 ( Tech Source Raptor GFX ) PCI and as I'm looking to benchmark some early (non ati-nvidia-3dfx) 3D accelerators and I never tried this, I thought I at least check if it works. Turns out, my universal AGP motherboard doesn't boot with it. Tried having it alongside an …

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Re: What were your defining moments in computer history?

Posted on 2021-03-27, 10:18

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by RandomStranger

in Milliways

in Milliways

My first encounter with a PC was at a friend's house back in maybe first grade elementary. It was a Videoton XT type machine. It looked like a VT180, but it had a 286 CPU manufactured by AMD. It was severely outdated, but the only PC in our class. This is the best I could find about it (page 6): …

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

Posted on 2021-03-26, 11:53

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Can you upload a photo of the back of the card? Sure. I also checked if it posts. If HWiNFO gives correct data about the card, then it seems to be underclocked. It seems it should run at 125/125MHz. That should be a massive performance loss. I added some thermal paste since there was none under the …

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Re: Could you build a retro PC right now?

Posted on 2021-03-25, 12:59

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by RandomStranger

in Milliways

in Milliways

If you mean fully build, I don't have a free PC case to use. If I had, I'd already built something in it. If you mean putting something together on the desk that works, I could build maybe 3. For the 4th I don't have a PSU.

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Re: Radeon AGP card for retro gaming. 8500 and later.

Posted on 2021-03-25, 12:46

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by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Depends on what OS you are planning on using it with, but in the early 2000s ATI was really killing it. Both the Radeon 8500 and 9800 Pro are very good cards (I myself have an 8500LE, 9800 Pro and an X800XT AGP). The R400 is also an awesome series, the last and fastest graphics cards with proper W98 …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-03-25, 12:00

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I got 2 of my recent orders: https://i.ibb.co/BCBkcwj/todays-purchase.jpg The CMR-225 is hardly retro, but I'm planning on using it on my XP/Vista or 7, but probably Vista build. The point is, I can slot in two 2.25" drives into one 3.5" bay and physically disconnect the one I'm not planning …

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Re: Retro confessions. What are yours?

Posted on 2021-03-24, 21:03

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by RandomStranger

in Milliways

in Milliways

LCDs are indeed much more convenient. Back in the 2000s I had a 19" Belinea CRT. It almost broke my desk in half. And I mean literally. It bent so bad I needed to add a support beam. I know the advantages of a good CRT, I'm trying to convince myself about getting a SyncMaster 997MB I found on a …

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

Posted on 2021-03-21, 19:51

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sure, I used to have a HD3450 in it, this is a low profile PC. I took it out because it's a DMS-59 card and I didn't like the adapter cable, but it's still my only low profile PCI-e graphics card and it isn't a speed beast either. Still infinitely better than the X3100 I'm sure of it. But the X3100 …

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

Posted on 2021-03-21, 17:43

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have an Optiplex 330. As remarkable as it gets, but it served me well as a utility and testing PC in the past couple of years. Lately it was acting up. I don't know if it was because of the busted caps on the motherboard, the C2Q Q8200S I wanted to upgrade it with or the new BIOS, but it was …

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Re: Lara Croft like games list

Posted on 2021-03-21, 14:52

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by RandomStranger

in Milliways

in Milliways

You mean some spin-off Tomb Raider or games that were inspired by Tomb Raider? If the latter, then I think the developers of Bloodrayne explicitly said Tomb Raider, which was on the decline both in quality and popularity at the time it released, was their inspiration. There is also K.Hawk: Survival …

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Re: How to install and run vanilla Half-Life 2 without Steam

Posted on 2021-03-21, 14:10

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by RandomStranger

in Milliways

in Milliways

mihai wrote on 2021-03-21, 14:03: I can't imagine why Valve killed the Steam XP client, even for offline access. Probably security reasons. It'd be great though if they made a legacy client which could do nothing more than install and run games through something like family sharing.

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Re: How to install and run vanilla Half-Life 2 without Steam

Posted on 2021-03-21, 13:51

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by RandomStranger

in Milliways

in Milliways

It's good and all, but why not just use the Vengeance crack or something? It's just crippling the DRM either way and using a crack is just easier.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-03-20, 18:15

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Never cease to amaze me how people throw machines like that away. It isnt hard to do one google search and find out they could easily make 100 euro or more from them, even if they know nothing about the machines. They just don't care enough to do a basic search for them old=worthless. And there are …

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