Scored some software for my Acorn A4000

ImageMaster with scanner drivers
ANT Internet Suite II
RISC ix
Sleuth
Equasor
ArcScanner
RISC OS printer spooler
SCSI utilities
Atomwide Pocket Ethernet adapter
Replay Compression
CableNews
Splice
Tween
Mogul
Euclid
Orrey
Logo
GraphBox
Acorn Photo CD
SepEd 2
1st Word Plus
Genesis Professional
Twin
ArcWriter
Desktop Database
Schema and Schema 2 to Excel conversion
RISC OS New Look
QuizMaster
LanMan98
MacFS
Risc PC x86 card software
Acorn PC Exchange
Gnome
PC emulator (CGA, EGA, MDA) with MS DOS 3.3
Key Plus Database
Armadeus
EasiWriter
AlphaLock support disc
MagPie
HearSay II
Eureka 2 and 3

Getting annoyed with an MSI 875P Neo FIS2R motherboard. Thinking about throwing it out a window. Old forum discussions from 2003-04 suggest that was a popular course of action.

Got my Soyo P4 board back in a case and the hardware picked out. Should be a fun Voodoo3 system

shamino wrote:

Getting annoyed with an MSI 875P Neo FIS2R motherboard. Thinking about throwing it out a window. Old forum discussions from 2003-04 suggest that was a popular course of action.

Do what I did, overclock a Prescott and see the VRMs burn!
Seriously, do not try that, the VRMs will burn.

This weekend I am investigating how fast of a system makes sense for running Windows XP. I am at the same to trying out the socket 771 to socket 775 XEON mod as the Yorkfield 12M CPUs for socket 775 still cost an arm and a leg. I am also testing if the socket 775 still can keep up with Windows 7 gaming.

The conclusion so far is that you dont really need such a fast system for year 2002 - 2006 gaming. If you for some reason are using such a system as an XP box then at least 3dmark 2003 scales with faster video cards into infinity.

I randomly found the driver CD of my old Duron 1200. At least now I know I must've had a VERY el cheapo board, because there are several grammar errors in the README files and a bunch of drivers for a lot of different hardware (like four different sound chips). Also no PDF manual, though Adobe Acrobat is there. It served me well nevertheless, and the SiS 730S didn't give too much headache... well, besides having to play arround with FastWrites and AGP stuff to get my old MX460 working back then.

ODwilly wrote:

Got my Soyo P4 board back in a case and the hardware picked out. Should be a fun Voodoo3 system

What Soyo Model is it?

alexanrs wrote:

I randomly found the driver CD of my old Duron 1200. At least now I know I must've had a VERY el cheapo board, because there are several grammar errors in the README files and a bunch of drivers for a lot of different hardware (like four different sound chips). Also no PDF manual, though Adobe Acrobat is there. It served me well nevertheless, and the SiS 730S didn't give too much headache... well, besides having to play arround with FastWrites and AGP stuff to get my old MX460 working back then.

I remember the 730S! It was in my first GHz upgrade after my overclocked P200MMX didnt do it anymore 😁
What a crappy chip, I gave the Board a Duron 1200, 256MB PC133 Memory and the Techdemo (Rollercoaster) was still low fps!
Unfortunately I threw it away after the caps went bad. I kinda like it for some weird reason.

It didn't take any 3dfx or Radeon cards I had lying around. It was even incompatible with the Voodoo 3 3000 😀
What a board!

Jedi Knight 2 worked quite well on the onboard chip. If anyone comes across a SiS 730S Board, please let me now 😀

I installed Windows 7 on my dual Pentium 3 700Mhz. Windows update took over 20 hours and finally locked up. Otherwise, the machine was fairly usable. But I decided to wipe it and put Linux on it.

How weird... I remember getting decent performance with my MX... oh, I guess I was remembering my vídeo card wrong. It was a MX440 w/ AGP 8x, not a MX460... but of course the board didn't support 8x. Anyway, it worked as expected after fiddling with bios settings and RivaTuner. I don't recall the onboard video being THAT bad... it was at least able to surpass my P3 700MHz + S3 Savage4 Pro graphics card. The onboard sound was interesting, though. It had DOS drivers, but they were SO weird... A startup utility (no low memory) configured it in a way that apps detected a SoundBlaster, but the speed was completly bonkers (too slow, as if it was playing 44KHz sounds in 11KHz), you needed to load a huge (30KB) TSR to get things working properly.

Now I want one of those too.

AllUrBaseRBelong2Us wrote:

I installed Windows 7 on my dual Pentium 3 700Mhz. Windows update took over 20 hours and finally locked up. Otherwise, the machine was fairly usable. But I decided to wipe it and put Linux on it.

My biggest gripe with Win7 in older machines are graphics drivers. I remember struggling with my Athlon 64 (when I lent it to my brother for him to use it as his main PC) being unable to run stupid things like PS1 emulators or Terraria at somewhat high resolutions... Terraria was barely playable at 800x600 and ePSXe had slowdowns even on 640x480, and this was with a GT 6600. I was getting very frustrated, because I remember playing heavier stuff (including ePSXe) in that machine back in the day, and doing so with a crappy FX5200 (the 64-bit variant, even). Then I tried downgrading it to XP... and installing the same driver version. Suddenly Terraria started running at 1366x768 flawlessly, games like Oblivion were also playable at that resolution and PS1 emulation was great again.

Anyway, my retro activity today has been reading about home-made XT-compatible systems, this one, to be more specific:
Xi 8088
Going as far as trying to read some of the ASM bios code... and starting to consider building one.

alexanrs wrote:

How weird... I remember getting decent performance with my MX... oh, I guess I was remembering my vídeo card wrong. It was a MX440 w/ AGP 8x, not a MX460... but of course the board didn't support 8x. Anyway, it worked as expected after fiddling with bios settings and RivaTuner. I don't recall the onboard video being THAT bad... it was at least able to surpass my P3 700MHz + S3 Savage4 Pro graphics card. The onboard sound was interesting, though. It had DOS drivers, but they were SO weird... A startup utility (no low memory) configured it in a way that apps detected a SoundBlaster, but the speed was completly bonkers (too slow, as if it was playing 44KHz sounds in 11KHz), you needed to load a huge (30KB) TSR to get things working properly.

Now I want one of those too.

Good luck! I have seen them being trashed like moldy bread everywhere 😁

I finally got my Audigy 2 to work in my clawhammer system (driver version 11 instead of 17! / kxDriver didnt work for me) :

Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2GHz (Clawhammer-512)
2048MB DDR333 (4x512MB mixed manufacturers)
Radeon X800 Pro PCIe16x (last "smartshader" compatible drivers)
Audigy 2 PCI + Gameport Bracket
80GB SATA HDD
Windows XP SP1 😁

I just played GTA Vice City in 1280x1024x32 @ max @ vsync on / 6xFSAA / 16x anistropic filtering / Catalyst A.I. - Advanced / High Quality mip mapping / DXT enabled

Absolutely smooth! This PC goes like a rocket now
I wish I had this system back then 😁

Arctic: Soyo P4S Dragon Ultra. Universal AGP Pro slot FTW 😀 that alone makes the years of headaches trying to fix it worth while.

ODwilly wrote:

Arctic: Soyo P4S Dragon Ultra. Universal AGP Pro slot FTW 😀 that alone makes the years of headaches trying to fix it worth while.

What a nice SiS Board 😀 I wish my P4S333 was that colorful. Are they rare?
Which driver are you using? What CPU? I recently upgraded from 2.4 to 2.8 but I should make a separate Thread 😁

Arctic wrote:

ODwilly wrote:

Arctic: Soyo P4S Dragon Ultra. Universal AGP Pro slot FTW 😀 that alone makes the years of headaches trying to fix it worth while.

What a nice SiS Board 😀 I wish my P4S333 was that colorful. Are they rare?
Which driver are you using? What CPU? I recently upgraded from 2.4 to 2.8 but I should make a separate Thread 😁

Haha thanks! I have found a few of these around online, but they suffered from TERRIBLE Wendell caps that go bad. Not set up yet, but in the past Windows XP has worked out of the box with the SIS chipset. I have a 1.4 Willamette in it for now but in the past it ran with a 2.4 then a 2.8 Northwood.

Dragged this out;

Wonder if I can find drivers that will work with it. Holding no real hopes to be honest.

Wonder if drivers for stand-alone DVD Decoder cards would work with the ZiVA on here or not. Guess I can only try it and see. Problem is, I have yet to find any for Windows 3.11 so I may have to move the machine to Windows 95 a bit earlier than expected.

Edit:
> Forgets AnyDrive is installed on the CF Card used for testing.
> Ignores SCANDISK's warnings.
> Installs Windows 95 and reboots.
> Invalid System Disk... 🙁 Good job that my mobo has a quick drive controller, won't take more than 30 minutes to get back where I was.

Not really computer related although it has a control port on the back so I presume it can be computer operated. 🤣

Bought this at a small thrift store I almost never go into but am quite glad I did this time! I got this awesome bit of retro tech for the whopping price of 10$. 🤣

Ooooh, LaserDisc! 😎

You know, without proper perspective, the proportional dimensions almost make you think it's the size of an internal optical drive at first (especially that last picture).

🤣 that's true I didn't even notice until you mentioned it. 🤣

Started putting "Hooker's big sister" into its case.

Floppy drive is on loan from a Facit N1050E and will be returned to its home once I get one of my white ones painted - I can't be bothered to buy a black one and I don't want to trash the Facit.

I still need a new overkill video card for this thing, eying a few up. Also have to get a SCSI CD-ROM drive as I want all four IDE ports and the MediaFX CD interfaces are absolutely useless.

Excuse the kerosene lamp, power has been unstable as of late and parts of my house are without working light bulbs. I refuse to buy more because I know I have a box of about 50 100Watt bulbs somewhere.

HighTreason wrote:

Started putting "Hooker's big sister" into its case.

Is it the black machine? A Pentium 100?
What else did you use?