VOGONS


Reply 602 of 781, by mrau

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

you did not explain why you stopped at these values - 400/100 mhz - doesnt it take more? especially the fsb would help with fast memory; are they multiplier locked? there were no mobos that tried to alleviate the missing cache related slowdown?

Reply 603 of 781, by Great Hierophant

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Celerons of the Pentium II era don't really go much higher than 100MHz. Phil would rather find a part rated for that speed than overclock a slower-rated part.

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/ - Nerdly Pleasures - My Retro Gaming, Computing & Tech Blog

Reply 604 of 781, by vetz

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Nice video, but from what I remember back then (and also what you can read from reviews back then, the 266 was not that common to overclock. The frenzyness really started with the Celeron 300a, which had 128kbit cache. Less then the P2s, but it was running at full speed. So when you overclocked it to 450mhz, it beat the P2 450 in many benchmarks. I would say the Celeron 300a was the CPU that made overclocking mainstream, and drove implementation of overclocking features in motherboards.

I hope you get around to a Celeron 300a review as well 😀

3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)
3D Acceleration Comparison Episodes

Reply 605 of 781, by mrau

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

the 300a is a totally different beast - the cache was fast enough to take some 450 mhz and was liked for that alone, no other celeron, except the covington, could repeat that at least until the next generation came in ; the 233, 266 and 300 non A were cacheless and should be able to do a lot more - i just don' t remember the figures anymore; also no cache -> better price usually;

Reply 606 of 781, by PhilsComputerLab

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

So over the last few days my viewers voted on parts to go into a 1 GHz Retro Gaming PC.

It ended up with these parts:

AMD Athlon 1 GHz
Axper motherboard with VIA KT600 chipset
512 MB DDR
120 GB BlitzWolf SSD
Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 (PowerVR Kyro II)
PROMISE SATA150 TX4 PCI controller
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Deepcool D-Shield case
FSP 500 W PSU
Windows Millennium

So yea, quite an interesting combination.

Here is the build video covering the hardware side of things. I still have to benchmark the box, capture footage and so on...

Building a 1 GHz AMD Athlon Retro Gaming PC with PowerVR Kyro II and 120 GB SSD

YouTube, Facebook, Website

Reply 608 of 781, by Tetrium

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
James-F wrote:

For some strange reason back then I used WinME way into the life of WinXP... It was leaner and faster on my P3-933MHz machine.

I think I was actually using ME basically as default OS till Vista was around the corner 🤣
ME definitely ran much faster compared to XP on my P3 rigs. But of course it's still a 9x OS so XP has its own benefits.

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 609 of 781, by PhilsComputerLab

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Believe it or not, I only now finally got around to try out Windows ME 😁

Running it on the Athlon 1 GHz, 512 MB, PowerVR Kyro II, Audigy 2 ZS Retro Gaming PC we interactively built recently.

So how did I go?

Find out: https://youtu.be/bDBWuEI7YF0

YouTube, Facebook, Website

Reply 610 of 781, by dr.zeissler

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
Great Hierophant wrote:

300A - The King of the Celerons, one of the greatest CPUs ever made.

That's right if your target is overclocking for a good price/performance ratio.
My favorite CPU is the A-Stepping of the PII 333, it can be clocked from 133 to 333 Mhz 😀 so no pentium(mmx) system is needed.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 611 of 781, by gdjacobs

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I'd be interested to see a build for fastest DOS machine including an examination of DOS PCI sound cards (maybe as a second part).

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 612 of 781, by Tetrium

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
PhilsComputerLab wrote:
Believe it or not, I only now finally got around to try out Windows ME :D […]
Show full quote

Believe it or not, I only now finally got around to try out Windows ME 😁

Running it on the Athlon 1 GHz, 512 MB, PowerVR Kyro II, Audigy 2 ZS Retro Gaming PC we interactively built recently.

So how did I go?

Find out: https://youtu.be/bDBWuEI7YF0

Already watched it yesterday I think, I liked it! 😀
I also liked how you immediately compared it with your experiences with 98 (I presume 98SE?) and which subtle differences you noticed.
Btw, when you were at the part with the Windows key, there is a trick where you don't actually need to have a key to be able to get to the desktop, but I can't remember how it went exactly. I vaguely remember it working only on either OEM or retail (one of the 2) and it involved changing something in the registry. Funny thing is that iirc (instead of the Windows key) you could put any 25-long sting in there (like for instance "PHILSCOMPUTERLABVOGONSORG" or something) or no key at all 🤣.

The comments below the vid are also much fun to read.

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 613 of 781, by PhilsComputerLab

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Thanks!

There will be another video going into a bit more detail about any differences I noticed 😁

When I switched back to 98 it most certainly felt like a bit of a downgrade 😲

YouTube, Facebook, Website

Reply 614 of 781, by Kodai

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Well ME is great until the registry collapses in on itself like a dead tree. Trying to repair/rebuild ME is a major pain. Back when it was released, that was a normal thing. Nowadays, we only use it for games in retro rigs, so a reinstall isn't a big deal. But back in the day, it was a fragile as glass, limited DOS access, and all to gain some performance that really didn't equal it's downsides.

It's a neat OS, and I suggest running it with frequent installs and uninstalls of common apps and games. Also use the resources that were common back than, like adding in a winmodem and enable the parallel and serial ports. Then watch it cave like a sink hole after a half year. That's why it got such a terrible rap.

It didn't help matters that it was released when cheaply designed and manufactured PSU's and ram were coming in all name brand rigs and leaking into custom built rigs as well. It just added to a massive mess of reasons for BSOD's and system failure.

I've often thought about building a rig with ME, similar to yours. Quality parts and controlled/limited resources will make a huge difference in how long the OS doesn't fall apart. Also aided with only using it for games instead of everyday tasks. It might last years under those conditions.

I have enough extra P-III parts to build one up. I might do it with my TUSL-2. Let us know after a few months of use how it's working. I'm curious about the SSD and Promise combo over time. Could you also test out the USB 2 card with whatever you can plug into it. USB id tags build up in the registry and were known to cause issues on older Windows. I haven't run into that on 98se, but maybe it's a thing on ME.

Anyway another great series, thanks for all the effort.

Last edited by Kodai on 2017-04-21, 08:20. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 615 of 781, by PhilsComputerLab

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Some called it the Troll PC, let's see what it can do. The 1 GHz Athlon with Kyro II and Windows ME is getting benchmarked: https://youtu.be/0Q18nk84ILQ

YouTube, Facebook, Website

Reply 616 of 781, by appiah4

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Some called it the Troll PC, let's see what it can do. The 1 GHz Athlon with Kyro II and Windows ME is getting benchmarked: https://youtu.be/0Q18nk84ILQ

This PC is probably the biggest waste of an Athlon 1GHz CPU ever.. 😀

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 617 of 781, by Tetrium

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
appiah4 wrote:
PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Some called it the Troll PC, let's see what it can do. The 1 GHz Athlon with Kyro II and Windows ME is getting benchmarked: https://youtu.be/0Q18nk84ILQ

This PC is probably the biggest waste of an Athlon 1GHz CPU ever.. 😀

Why is that?

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 618 of 781, by appiah4

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
Tetrium wrote:
appiah4 wrote:
PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Some called it the Troll PC, let's see what it can do. The 1 GHz Athlon with Kyro II and Windows ME is getting benchmarked: https://youtu.be/0Q18nk84ILQ

This PC is probably the biggest waste of an Athlon 1GHz CPU ever.. 😀

Why is that?

The Kyro II alone makes it weird enough, but then we have Windows Me; it's really like something my clueless friends would probably have bought from a similarly clueless computer builder circa 2000.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.