Re: Questions about ye olde XGI Volari cards
Posted on 2021-12-08, 23:17
I was asking about capability, not availability.
Questions about ye olde XGI Volari cards
Posted on 2021-12-07, 21:08
Ye olde relevant article: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a-graphics-kid-block,707.html Does anyone remember these cards? I've recently been wondering whether or not there was ever a GPU that supported DirectX 9.0, table fog, and 8-bit paletted textures, and which didn't suffer a certain bug …
Re: Revisiting an x86-based alternative to the Raspberry Pi, optimized for retro gaming
Posted on 2021-12-07, 20:53
See now THAT'S the kind of detailed analysis that I was hoping to provoke with this thread. I didn't understand half of it, but I'm very glad you provided it :) I'll look into the XGI Volari situation for a while and then probably mull things over for another few weeks. That means supporting all the …
Re: Revisiting an x86-based alternative to the Raspberry Pi, optimized for retro gaming
Posted on 2021-12-07, 20:00
I've been asking myself recently, "wasn't there also a Radeon IGP at around this time, before the X200 chipset?" It took me a few days to confirm but yes, there was a Radeon 9100 IGP. It comes with two pieces of bad news: one, it only existed for Intel sockets, not AMD. Second, it didn't support …
Re: Revisiting an x86-based alternative to the Raspberry Pi, optimized for retro gaming
Posted on 2021-12-06, 12:03
I don't think a "Win98 mini" makes sense right now. You can easily run Windows 98 on a Pentium 4 system. People are still unloading those for $50. After God knows how much electromigration they've already suffered? They could burn out at any moment. There is a need for fresh silicon. I doubt you …
Re: Best web browsing for Win 9x? (Mozilla, etc.)
Posted on 2021-12-06, 11:48
Officially, Firefox 2.0 is the last version that'll run on Win9x; unofficially, people have gotten version 3.0 working. Chrome didn't begin development until after MS had pulled the plug on Win98 so that's probably a dead end.
Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?
Posted on 2021-12-06, 02:11
I played 1993 Holiday Lemmings yesterday.
Re: Revisiting an x86-based alternative to the Raspberry Pi, optimized for retro gaming
Posted on 2021-12-06, 01:15
But if you are going for ease of use, why wouldn't you just solder the RAM directly to the board. That's... exactly what I'm asking? Additionally, an ISA, PCI, or AGP slot just blows away the ability to have a small system due to the size of the cards you'd want to install in them. I suppose that …
Revisiting an x86-based alternative to the Raspberry Pi, optimized for retro gaming
Posted on 2021-12-05, 13:19
Some of you may remember that, a while back, I posted a thread asking how much interest there was in making new hardware that replicated ye olde Win98-compatible hardware, so that people wouldn't have to dick around with emulators, virtual machines, third-party hacks, that sort of thing. It got …
Re: 32-Bit is dead
Posted on 2021-07-03, 19:03
Jo22 wrote on 2021-06-06, 17:36: Windows.. Sounds like bad news for OEMs and anyone who uses Radeon cards. The rest of us will have no problem staying on 32-bit.
Re: Marathon is the game that System Shock wanted to be
Posted on 2021-07-03, 18:58
zirkoni wrote on 2021-07-03, 14:12: The control scheme System Shock uses is very similar to many RPGs of the time. Then they were also unplayable garbage.
Re: Did you ever have a realisation that your retro memories or assumptions weren't quite accurate?
Posted on 2021-07-01, 10:21
Most DOS games are a LOT harder than I remember them being, especially platform games where you can only save your game between levels rather than mid-level. And I have no idea how I ever played first-person shooters before WASD + mouselook came along.
Marathon is the game that System Shock wanted to be
Posted on 2021-07-01, 10:10
You wake up alone on a spaceship/station. Something has obviously gone wrong but you don't know what. As you explore, receiving instructions from someone who doesn't know much more than you do, you come across text messages that reveal a backstory involving a hostile AI being responsible for wiping …
Re: Red Alert on a Win98 virtual machine
Posted on 2021-07-01, 08:58
Not on multithread CPUs. And not without downloading DLL files and doing a bunch of other workarounds. And when you get to the "using a half-dozen workarounds" stage, then you've already lost whatever benefits you thought you were going to get by running the game on the OS it was designed for. I'm …
Re: After 23 years, I can finally cross Blood II off my bucket list
Posted on 2021-06-28, 23:02
Hahaha. Oh my sweet summer child. This was a '90s game. Back then, you could never finish a shooter in one day... you might be able to do it in one sitting, but only if you stayed awake for several days straight hopped up on Adderall. Oh, I didn't mean in one go! That's not something I would even …
Re: Would you be interested in an x86-based alternative to the Raspberry Pi, optimized for retro gaming?
Posted on 2021-06-28, 22:42
EDIT: You might also want to talk with Intel BTW, they made a "die shrink" a while back. As I read the article, it becomes clear that their goals went FAR beyond merely shrinking the Pentium to a 32nm process. yes, shrinking process nodes are done all the time, but they are at most 2 steps within …
Re: Red Alert on a Win98 virtual machine
Posted on 2021-06-28, 22:27
I haven't tried it yet but nyerguds has a patch called "TFD DOS C&C addon" that that'll give you a dos version out of a install of C&C the First Decade. I don't have The First Decade. I have the original release. That game has been running on Wine flawlessly for quite some time. Several testers …
Re: Red Alert on a Win98 virtual machine
Posted on 2021-06-28, 11:19
zirkoni wrote on 2021-06-26, 06:31: Since you're running Linux, why not try using Wine? I did try, years ago. No dice.
Re: Is Vista now Retro
Posted on 2021-06-28, 11:18
while everyone knows about the issues with SSDs under Windows 98, etc; Vista was built for the era of spinning platters too. Windows 7 may only be NT 6.1 to Vista's 6.0, but it supports SSDs out of the box. Vista is vintage at least in that usability regard. Windows XP has no problem seeing my …
Re: 8k
Posted on 2021-06-28, 11:09
- CRTs do not have native resolutions and were typically 4:3 (were there any 5:4 ones ?). No. 5:4 was originally a SAR intended to be displayed with rectangular pixels on 4:3 DAR monitors. The idea of displaying a 5:4 SAR image with square pixels on a 5:4 DAR monitor did not come about until after …
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