dormcat wrote on 2021-10-15, 03:16:

Just tested my all eight SDR SDRAM with MemTest86 for the first time yesterday and found three of them were quite faulty. 😿 Will test EDO RAM x5 and DDR SDRAM x13 later today.

F

Good luck with the other sticks

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-10-15, 03:25:

Learnt the hard way with my SIMM-30 RAM on my 3/486WB board that had faults (either didn't POST or would boot, but everything crashed).

Similar situation here: the two PC133 256 MB sticks could boot into "Safe mode command prompt only" of Win98SE, but entering GUI would crash. OTOH the PC100 64 MB stick tested on Gigabyte GA-6VXC7-4X-P with AMI BIOS would give me a strange 6-beep Gate A20 error code (yet the keyboard is perfectly fine, of course); wouldn't POST anyway.

Yeah, I had a similar issue in the past with my Socket 7 (non-AGP) one time and I took the faulty RAM out and put in a spare I had.

Thankfully, after replacing it, the system ran fine.

My main Windows 10 desktop was the opposite: random BSoD/STOP codes and the 4GB stick I had installed was defective.

I stripped and thoroughly cleaned up my most recently acquired Core2Duo tower and power supply. Left all the parts out so I can clean them all with some electronics cleaner tomorrow before putting it back together, apply new thermal paste to the CPU heatsink, all that jazz. I'll post pictures with everything cleaned up.

In other news I finished 5 PS2-Serial adapters by @scorp

I'll program the SBCs over the weekend.

I had an interesting journey... not. Win95 wouldn't boot anymore. Tried a clean install, sincer the error was some vxd error. Nothing. Replaced HDD and another clean install - nothing. Ran a memory test everything ok and was detected as 128 MB so i wasn't even looking at it. Well it turned out that one of the sticks just needed a change of slot., joys of retro pcs I guess.

sirotkaslo wrote on 2021-10-15, 06:09:

I had an interesting journey... not. Win95 wouldn't boot anymore. Tried a clean install, sincer the error was some vxd error. Nothing. Replaced HDD and another clean install - nothing. Ran a memory test everything ok and was detected as 128 MB so i wasn't even looking at it. Well it turned out that one of the sticks just needed a change of slot., joys of retro pcs I guess.

I've ran into stuff like that before. Was a PITA.

I inherited a Toshiba Tecra 8100. Apparently a decent sound chip, a S3 Virge, and a 600mhz or so p3. It turns on, the screen back light turns on, but no nothing.

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-10-13, 18:58:

Today I was trying to go on a test run with one of my Trio3D/2X 8MB and I found it unusually troublesome. I've been planning on […]
Show full quote

Today I was trying to go on a test run with one of my Trio3D/2X 8MB and I found it unusually troublesome.
I've been planning on experiencing the true potential of this beast, but games either won't launch or only run in software mode.

So far the only games I had a modest amount of luck with are:
GLQuake with 8.8fps on Demo1 in 640x480@16 which is slower than expected
Tomb Raider 2 with 12fps
International Rally Championship with 10fps
Thief: The Dark Project with 8fps (though none of the textures loaded, some grey objects in a white void)
Gorky 17 with 32fps, the game claims to be running with 3d accelerated, but it's oddly fast
Need for Speed 4 starts in Direct3D the menus are all glitchy, which is not unexpected, and freezes the system on the loading screen

Yesterday I've continued torturing the Trio3D.
It looks like it has "better" support for later 3D titles. Prince of Persia 3D is really a unique experience with this card.

Baldur's Gate 2 is actually displays correctly and I need both my hand to count the frame rate. Even on heavier areas it puts out 6fps.

ODwilly wrote on 2021-10-15, 06:35:

I inherited a Toshiba Tecra 8100. Apparently a decent sound chip, a S3 Virge, and a 600mhz or so p3. It turns on, the screen back light turns on, but no nothing.

Weird question, but are mobile p2 and 3's interchangeable between laptops? My Dell with a Rage 128 and 300mhz p2 could utilize a better CPU.

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-10-15, 07:09:

Yesterday I've continued torturing the Trio3D. It looks like it has "better" support for later 3D titles. Prince of Persia 3D is […]
Show full quote

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-10-13, 18:58:

Today I was trying to go on a test run with one of my Trio3D/2X 8MB and I found it unusually troublesome. I've been planning on […]
Show full quote

Today I was trying to go on a test run with one of my Trio3D/2X 8MB and I found it unusually troublesome.
I've been planning on experiencing the true potential of this beast, but games either won't launch or only run in software mode.

So far the only games I had a modest amount of luck with are:
GLQuake with 8.8fps on Demo1 in 640x480@16 which is slower than expected
Tomb Raider 2 with 12fps
International Rally Championship with 10fps
Thief: The Dark Project with 8fps (though none of the textures loaded, some grey objects in a white void)
Gorky 17 with 32fps, the game claims to be running with 3d accelerated, but it's oddly fast
Need for Speed 4 starts in Direct3D the menus are all glitchy, which is not unexpected, and freezes the system on the loading screen

Yesterday I've continued torturing the Trio3D.
It looks like it has "better" support for later 3D titles. Prince of Persia 3D is really a unique experience with this card.

Baldur's Gate 2 is actually displays correctly and I need both my hand to count the frame rate. Even on heavier areas it puts out 6fps.

Oh my God ! 🤣

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-10-15, 07:09:

Yesterday I've continued torturing the Trio3D. It looks like it has "better" support for later 3D titles. Prince of Persia 3D is […]
Show full quote

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-10-13, 18:58:

Today I was trying to go on a test run with one of my Trio3D/2X 8MB and I found it unusually troublesome. I've been planning on […]
Show full quote

Today I was trying to go on a test run with one of my Trio3D/2X 8MB and I found it unusually troublesome.
I've been planning on experiencing the true potential of this beast, but games either won't launch or only run in software mode.

So far the only games I had a modest amount of luck with are:
GLQuake with 8.8fps on Demo1 in 640x480@16 which is slower than expected
Tomb Raider 2 with 12fps
International Rally Championship with 10fps
Thief: The Dark Project with 8fps (though none of the textures loaded, some grey objects in a white void)
Gorky 17 with 32fps, the game claims to be running with 3d accelerated, but it's oddly fast
Need for Speed 4 starts in Direct3D the menus are all glitchy, which is not unexpected, and freezes the system on the loading screen

Yesterday I've continued torturing the Trio3D.
It looks like it has "better" support for later 3D titles. Prince of Persia 3D is really a unique experience with this card.

Baldur's Gate 2 is actually displays correctly and I need both my hand to count the frame rate. Even on heavier areas it puts out 6fps.

Immediate flashpacks of early days of Radeon 8500. Though I did get slightly better fps with it 🤣

The Radeon 8500 was really a good card.

oh look, a 486 with an MFM hard drive in it running Windows 95

And if you're wondering, yes, the case's HDD LED is connected to the MFM controller in a display of redundancy.

I bought a Voodoo Graphics card again recently for development/testing purposes (finally figured out that Glide2x needs to have its vertex positions snapped to multiples of 0.0625 units, so it doesn't lock up -- obviously didn't happen with any Glide Wrappers or Emulation), but since it didn't come with the passthrough cable (it has the non-standard Mini-DIN-9 port for VGA In), I used the pinout document available online and used jumper cables (the ones that are used e.g. to hook up Arduino pins to a breadboard) to make a ghetto pass-through "cable", as unplugging and re-plugging the monitor became tedious quite quickly. It works for now (VGA signal passed through nicely from the primary video card), and will eventually be replaced once a proper Mini-DIN-9 plug arrives.

ST251 wrote on 2021-10-15, 16:02:

oh look, a 486 with an MFM hard drive in it running Windows 95

And if you're wondering, yes, the case's HDD LED is connected to the MFM controller in a display of redundancy.

IMG_20211015_120047.jpg

Heh, I seem to remember doing that in the mid-late 90s, think it was very much "for the lulz" though as a) it only just fit on there and b) it was as bad as 9x can be on limited hardware, only somehow more so. It was only the floppy version too, lightest version around, mind you I think I only had 5MB and a dx33 in the box along with it. (5Mb because it's marginally better than 4MB and the 256k SIMMs keep dust out of the empty 30 pin sockets. 🤣 )

ST251 wrote on 2021-10-15, 16:02:

oh look, a 486 with an MFM hard drive in it running Windows 95

And if you're wondering, yes, the case's HDD LED is connected to the MFM controller in a display of redundancy.

IMG_20211015_120047.jpg

That's cool - what MFM drive do you have in there?

Now you just need a beige drive bay faceplate 😄

MMaximus wrote on 2021-10-15, 19:38:

Now you just need a beige drive bay faceplate 😄

wink

liqmat wrote on 2021-10-15, 19:41:

MMaximus wrote on 2021-10-15, 19:38:

Now you just need a beige drive bay faceplate 😄

wink

Do any of you have one? 🤣

MMaximus: it's an ST-251

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-10-15, 18:20:

ST251 wrote on 2021-10-15, 16:02:

oh look, a 486 with an MFM hard drive in it running Windows 95

And if you're wondering, yes, the case's HDD LED is connected to the MFM controller in a display of redundancy.

IMG_20211015_120047.jpg

Heh, I seem to remember doing that in the mid-late 90s, think it was very much "for the lulz" though as a) it only just fit on there and b) it was as bad as 9x can be on limited hardware, only somehow more so. It was only the floppy version too, lightest version around, mind you I think I only had 5MB and a dx33 in the box along with it. (5Mb because it's marginally better than 4MB and the 256k SIMMs keep dust out of the empty 30 pin sockets. 🤣 )

Yep, I installed the 21-disk B version of Windows 95. Technically this machine is sort of a cheater. It has 16MB of RAM and an Am5x86-P75. Not as slow as I thought.