songoffall wrote on 2023-11-26, 10:36:

Realtek RTVGA V21 004 ISA VGA

RTG3105 is only in very bad category, unlike its purely terrible RTG3103 predecessor 😀

songoffall wrote on 2023-11-26, 10:36:

This hobby seems to be a gift that keeps on giving. Got donated another bunch of old parts by a friend who was digging through h […]
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This hobby seems to be a gift that keeps on giving. Got donated another bunch of old parts by a friend who was digging through his old stuff. Here's what he found.
...
And these are 500MHz Katmai Pentium IIIs. SL37D and SL35E, to be exact. I'm not sure what their difference is, except one is the OEM version and the other is the boxed version. But I think these will fit my planned TNT2 M64 builds well enough.

I have no experience with the Realtek VGA card and 500MHz Katmai PIII, so I'd be happy to hear what you have to say about those.

well i do like those katmai P3, kings of mid 1999 they were - that just shows how quick things moved, by end 1999 coppermine was out

i had a 500mhz Katmai and noted it to be pretty good all round compared to earlier p2s but then that's obvious - honestly i think i just liked the cool slot 1 with all that pentium 3 power flowing though it 😀

pair it with a TNT2 and 128mb ram and you will have more than enough to enjoy 9x era games

time wise its a great match for win98 and win2000 and actually more than equal to win xp given enough ram (just not for many later xp games of course!)

songoffall wrote on 2023-11-26, 10:36:

Conner CFS270A 270Mb, 3400RPM ATA HDD

Looks like the Seagate disks when they got past 1 GB. No wonder. Seagate aquired Conner.

songoffall wrote on 2023-11-26, 10:36:

It's a Mitsumi 3.5 FDD, and I have a very good experience with these and even have a few of them laying around. Always nice to have spares.

I hope its heads won't scratch the surface of disks.

songoffall wrote on 2023-11-26, 10:36:

140133-001 is a Compaq part number for 128MB PC133 133MHz non-ECC unbuffered CL3 168-Pin SDRAM DIMM modules. I have a few SDRAM DIMMs laying around, but it's always nice to have more.
This one should be self-explanatory. PC100 SDRAM, non-ECC, unbuffered, I don't know about the CL values.
I'm using 3x Micron 128MB PC100 CL2 ECC SDRAM modules on my 440LX PII system, and those have been extremely reliable and fast. So these would be more of a project or backup option.

Run MemTest

songoffall wrote on 2023-11-26, 10:36:

Realtek RTVGA V21 004 ISA VGA 16bit ISA card. I think this one was some ultra-budget option from early 90s, 512kb memory. It looks cute but I would expect the performance to be horrible, but I don't have any other ISA VGA card at the moment and for certain builds this is better than nothing.

I have no experience with the Realtek VGA card and 500MHz Katmai PIII, so I'd be happy to hear what you have to say about those.

What a sweet Realtek. Can I have it? Just for the sweetness. But it still is a Realtek. At those days you had to remember to avoid Realtek, Oak and Trident ISA VGA cards. You'd better took Tseng Labs, S3 or Cirrus Logic cards.
However, no ISA graphics card is a good match to a LX chipset. Get one of the older AGP cards, up to GeForce 2 MX. If you want to run Windows 3.1x, go with a TNT/TNT2, or give ATI or Matrox a chance.

Disruptor wrote on 2023-11-28, 02:07:

What a sweet Realtek. Can I have it? Just for the sweetness. But it still is a Realtek. At those days you had to remember to avoid Realtek, Oak and Trident ISA VGA cards. You'd better took Tseng Labs, S3 or Cirrus Logic cards.
However, no ISA graphics card is a good match to a LX chipset. Get one of the older AGP cards, up to GeForce 2 MX. If you want to run Windows 3.1x, go with a TNT/TNT2, or give ATI or Matrox a chance.

You can have it for free (+shipping) 😀)

I have a bunch of AGP cards - S3 Virge/GX, S3 Savage4, Matrox G550, TNT2 M64, Geforce2 MX200, Geforce4 MX440 and so on 😀) but my 440LX Compaq doesn't have an AGP port, so I used a Matrox Millennium 2 PCI for 2D and plan to add a Voodoo2 for 3D later.

As for ISA cards, I was thinking IBM PC/AT class computers, before VLB and PCI were a thing.

About the only good thing about those realteks as seen here is how short they are, can try for a really low profile pizza box build. The chipset is meant to have some special CGA emulation modes too, needs a driver I think. With a couple of right angle ISA risers and only "normally" low profile I/O and sound, you could probably put a 286 or 386 baby AT board in a large footprint, low height, DVD player shell. 486 too if you kept to the passively cooled ones.

I found a demo by some presumably Russian dude trying SC on the Realtek. The results are, as expected, hilarious, but I wonder how it would perform as a 2d DOS card on a PC/AT or 386 class computer, pre-VLB.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhSekAogUIc

songoffall wrote on 2023-11-28, 09:49:

I found a demo by some presumably Russian dude trying SC on the Realtek. The results are, as expected, hilarious, but I wonder how it would perform as a 2d DOS card on a PC/AT or 386 class computer, pre-VLB.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhSekAogUIc

As a StarCraft player since 1998 I got tears in my eyes.
Even my 486/160 with a Matrox G450 beats this Realtek 😀

Disruptor wrote on 2023-11-28, 10:03:

songoffall wrote on 2023-11-28, 09:49:

I found a demo by some presumably Russian dude trying SC on the Realtek. The results are, as expected, hilarious, but I wonder how it would perform as a 2d DOS card on a PC/AT or 386 class computer, pre-VLB.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhSekAogUIc

As a StarCraft player since 1998 I got tears in my eyes.
Even my 486/160 with a Matrox G450 beats this Realtek 😀

Even my 486DX4/100 with Compaq QVISION 1024/1Mb was better than this 😁

songoffall wrote on 2023-11-28, 10:09:

Disruptor wrote on 2023-11-28, 10:03:

Even my 486/160 with a Matrox G450 beats this Realtek 😀

Even my 486DX4/100 with Compaq QVISION 1024/1Mb was better than this 😁

But could it stand a zergling rush?
StarCraft was rated Pentium 90.

https://elgoog.im/zergrush/

So Realtek made a Video chip: RTG3105iEH

Disruptor wrote on 2023-11-28, 12:08:

But could it stand a zergling rush? StarCraft was rated Pentium 90. […]
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songoffall wrote on 2023-11-28, 10:09:

Disruptor wrote on 2023-11-28, 10:03:

Even my 486/160 with a Matrox G450 beats this Realtek 😀

Even my 486DX4/100 with Compaq QVISION 1024/1Mb was better than this 😁

But could it stand a zergling rush?
StarCraft was rated Pentium 90.

https://elgoog.im/zergrush/

Back then I was only playing the campaign. I started playing multiplayer (Brood War) in 2000s.

StarCraft was one of my favorite games. I remember in elementary and middle School doing direct dialup multiplayer games with friends. Those were some good times.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2023-11-28, 14:17:

StarCraft was one of my favorite games. I remember in elementary and middle School doing direct dialup multiplayer games with friends. Those were some good times.

That game had me at the campaign selection screen 😀) some of the best atmosphere in gaming. Also, the first Blizzard RPG I actually liked. Warcraft 1 & 2 weren't really my thing, I preferred Dune II, Red Alert and Age of Empires.

Grzyb wrote on 2023-11-28, 12:17:

So Realtek made a Video chip: RTG3105iEH

The 1994 video card in the link is very different from a 1996-1997 one, even with a 1994 chip.

I tested two 16-bit ISA cards, a Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429, and a Trident 8900D-R, both 1997 PCB, 1994 chip, 1996+ RAM. They were the same speed in DOS and 1.8x faster than a 1991 Tseng ET4000.

To sell an ISA card in 1996-1997 successfully it needs to do something... eg "good DOS performance" or is a basic 2D accelerator at least...

Disruptor wrote on 2023-11-28, 10:03:

songoffall wrote on 2023-11-28, 09:49:

I found a demo by some presumably Russian dude trying SC on the Realtek. The results are, as expected, hilarious, but I wonder how it would perform as a 2d DOS card on a PC/AT or 386 class computer, pre-VLB.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhSekAogUIc

As a StarCraft player since 1998 I got tears in my eyes.
Even my 486/160 with a Matrox G450 beats this Realtek 😀

Indeed. I ran starcraft on a 486 back in the day. I think it was one of those 120 or 133mhz cyrix chips. But at least it had a pci or vlb video board. Probably pci. It actually didn't have the minimum ram for the game. It played smoothly, even if it was a bit slow, but if too many units, it could lock up due to lack of memory. I actually brought it to a lan party one time. I have no idea why, maybe another machine? I tried strange things all the time. It played multiplayer fine until too much started happening 😀 Now you can find ram pretty easily, so I wish I never got rid of that one.

Yeah, so for that video, that pentium 133 with that isa realtek is a dog. It shouldn't play like that at all. I guess it's the card & bus.

MikeSG wrote on 2023-11-28, 16:06:

To sell an ISA card in 1996-1997 successfully it needs to do something... eg "good DOS performance" or is a basic 2D accelerator at least...

By 1996 it was small noname mom&pop/fly by night manufacturers using up fully depreciated parts meant for landfill. Think recently build PCI sound cards A very strange Yamaha XG YMF744B-R sound card

So the biggest surprise from this batch - the Connor HDD, while cosmetically does show some wear, functionally is perfect. I did not expect that; many HDDs from that era are dead because of the liquifying rubber stopper issue.

And the sound this drive makes - like a tamer version of a SCSI HDD I have - a bunch of less angry cicadas on a summer evening - and all the clicks - this is absolutely charming. Especially on my Compaq, which is virtually silent by itself. I'm also quite surprised how far HDDs have come over the years - the relatively modern IDE Seagate sounds more like a SATA drive and it is a whole lot faster.

But this cute thing, I'll be keeping for a pure MSDOS build, 286 or maybe 386. 270Mb should be enough.