Tonight....3 hours worth of 486 EISA SCSI RAID fun! I finally get time to enjoy the hobby for a bit!

creepingnet wrote:

With the Drive sleds - I slapped the 20GB into it's own sled, and thank god I prepped it already for use as a master complete with DDO! I just had to install Windows 95 on it - and let me tell you something - if anyone says you CANNOT run Diablo on a 486, that's a lie - I'm running it on a 486 DX2-66 with no L2 Cache and 64MB of RAM and a 2MB Video Card, seems to stick around full frame rate as I remember it for the most part, and this time, it actually has full audio. Might need to see if Battle.Net is still up - hehehe - 486 on broadband internet gaming here I come.

The main problem with that is 99.99% of people that play Diablo1 online on battle.net are hackers that cheat gold/items. And blizzard never would and stopped caring about policing it. Or implemented any way to police it. So that's the main reason I stopped playing it online. I've been considering getting it working again myself and playing once more if I ever finish resurrecting my windows 98 system. I've used the old battle.net system for Starcraft Broodwars in december 2016 and it worked fine.. I got in a game and downloaded a custom map and everything. So if that old bnet system still works, the bnet system for Diablo should. Maybe we should start a small group of Diablo-1 vogons people to play together with us respectable non-cheaters or something.

Picked up these (which were in danger to get dumpstered):

IBM 5162
2x IBM 5170 (one with a replacement board that needs care)
+ EGA capable monitor
+ Robotron KC85/2
+ 2 more quite rare Robotron pieces of hardware

Best thing for me ... those 3 IBM machines came with their original Model M keyboards - which increases the number to 6 in my possession.

I am extremely envious of your little collection there!

Trying to figure out if I "upgrade" some of my retro machines to an all-in-one configuration.

478 motherboard , i875 chipset, SATA and 2 ISA slots.

sprcorreia wrote:

Trying to figure out if I "upgrade" some of my retro machines to an all-in-one configuration.

478 motherboard , i875 chipset, SATA and 2 ISA slots.

<snip>

If I remember right I -think- that was the I-Will Industrial motherboard I looked up years ago... specifically.. the last one with Intel ICH5R chipset... as in the last / fastest system to take ISA sound cards natively in ms-dos complete with DMA mapping for wavetable and up to the 3ghz P4 northwood 800-FSB chips and DDR ram.

kithylin wrote:

sprcorreia wrote:

Trying to figure out if I "upgrade" some of my retro machines to an all-in-one configuration.

478 motherboard , i875 chipset, SATA and 2 ISA slots.

<snip>

If I remember right I -think- that was the I-Will Industrial motherboard I looked up years ago... specifically.. the last one with Intel ICH5R chipset... as in the last / fastest system to take ISA sound cards natively in ms-dos complete with DMA mapping for wavetable and up to the 3ghz P4 northwood 800-FSB chips and DDR ram.

This one is an iBASE MB820. ISA soundcards work just fine, wavetable included.
I'm now playing Wolfenstein 3D with a P4 2,4GHz, 2GB DDR400, Riva TNT and an Aztech soundcard with wavetable.

dogchainx wrote:

Tonight....3 hours worth of 486 EISA SCSI RAID fun! I finally get time to enjoy the hobby for a bit!

Awesome 😀

shock__ wrote:

Picked up these (which were in danger to get dumpstered):

Awesome :-0

sprcorreia wrote:

I'm now playing Wolfenstein 3D with a P4 2,4GHz, 2GB DDR400, Riva TNT and an Aztech soundcard with wavetable.

Awesome 😈

shock__ wrote:

Picked up these (which were in danger to get dumpstered):

Nice XT 286! Those are pretty uncommon.

brassicGamer wrote:

Awesome 😀

Awesome :-0

Awesome 😈

This is just a suggestion.. but you may want to consider expanding your vocabulary.. at least one other word.. 🤣

aww ye, testin' these guys http://i.imgur.com/ftDbU5E.jpg

Finally managed to find a bit more info on the NEC system I won a while back...Pentium 166 with 32 Mb RAM, 8 speed CD-ROM, onboard ATI Rage II w/ 2 Mb of SGRAM and onboard Creative Labs Vibra 16.

Adjusted the focus on the NEC MultiSync last night - that monitor is now sharp as a tack, even after running 40 minutes, I'm thinking the problem was heat related, some dirt or something in the focus pot on the flyback.

shock__ wrote:

Picked up these (which were in danger to get dumpstered): IBM 5162 2x IBM 5170 (one with a replacement board that needs care) + […]
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Picked up these (which were in danger to get dumpstered):
IBM 5162
2x IBM 5170 (one with a replacement board that needs care)
+ EGA capable monitor
+ Robotron KC85/2
+ 2 more quite rare Robotron pieces of hardware

Best thing for me ... those 3 IBM machines came with their original Model M keyboards - which increases the number to 6 in my possession.

Holy crap, i can't even decide what is more awesome in tht lot. Lucky dog!

Inventory time:

After retiring my Packard Bell for a couple of weeks (I migrated my high-end DOS gaming to a SS7 platform), I brought it back as a benchmarking system and tertiary machine. So my lineup now is:
-HP OEM-based SiS530 SS7 with K6-2 550, 64MB 100Mhz SDRAM, TNT2 M64, Audician 32/DreamBlaster X2, Fireball lct20
-Packard Bell Triton Socket 5 with POD200MMX, 32MB 72-pin edo, ARK2000PV, SB16 Vibra CT2800, Fireball CR 6.4
-Genoa SiS 461 Socket 3 with i486DX2-66, 8MB 30-pin, CL-GD5428 VLB, Audician 32/DreamBlaster S1, Seagate ST51080A

SVGA and newer VGA games will be played on SS7
Older (<1994) games will be played on the 486

Also reran my PCI graphics card benchmarks on a P3-933 to see how the cards perform without CPU bottlenecks.

Lastly, finished Ultima 7: Serpent Isle last night after about 2.5 months of play.

Put an aftermarket cooler on my new-in-box Gainward GeForce FX 5950 Ultra.

Says 5950 Ultra on the back.

5900 Ultra components on the front.

The operation went fine, but for some reason I now hear Jeremy Clarkson's voice whenever I look in its direction.

Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 4 Rev. 2

Setup Windows 95 on the 486 and installed Office 97, Diablo (which works GReat), and managed to pull all the DOS Games from when that machine was dual boot W31/w95 over to the modern box

Used mTCP with the Tandy 1000a to toss some more games on it's hard disk. WIll need to fix my hard disk activity LED - for some reason it's stopped working. Also tweaked the MultiSync's focus and voltage, now after it warms up, it's crisp and clear - exactly how I like it. I think it may even be better than new now.

I know it seems like I'm spamming the heck out of this thread, but have been so busy hot rodding the heck out of everything in sight this past month....that's why activity is high here.

Just fixed the last few pre-CPU/L2 Cache upgrade issues on the 486...

- I found out that I had a device conflict between the 2 game ports, I disabled the one on the Multi I/O Since I use MIDI with my keyboard and a Rock Band Fender Mustang Pro guitar controller once in awhile.

- Found out that the port on the SOundBlaster Vibra 16 was weak-sauce after trying 3 different controllers and fighting with a uncooperative Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad (or two actually)

- I took the AWE64 ISA I had from the Gateway 2000 Pentium system I have (It's got a Live 5.1 LS with LiveDrive in it now) and put that in the 486 instead, holy freakin' heck, I might be able to multitrack on this - might be time to make a CD and title it "486" - 🤣..am I Kidding on that or not, we'll see. Either way, that one sends enough juice to the Microsoft SIdewinder to wake it up - NESTICLE runs like a breeze on this setup so my old NES ROM Hacking setup is back up and ready to go.

- Last thing was getting the Multi I/O VLB PTI-255W card's Winbond Disk Access drivers going - which has been slowing the poor thing down for awhile now, time to unleash the speed of that 8GB Maxtor drive - and unleash it did, everything in Windows For Workgroups pops up hecka-faster in 32-bit with that driver now.

The only thing software-wise to fix is the incorrect DOS version problem I keep getting in WFWG when trying to use DOS prompt, which is probably because I used w3xstart on it when there was a drive with FAT-32 partitions on it and was dual-booting with 95. Might have to reinstall windows but considering the fact that only takes about...umm......15 minutes on this computer, not a problem.

Next things for the 486
- 486 DX4-100 CPU or faster, I'm thinking Intel DX4 since that's my favorite
- 512K L2 Cache
- bump the RAM up to 128MB and throw in a newer version of HIMEM.SYS To open up that full 128MB to DOS - yes, this board supports that much RAM, kind of ludicrious for a 486, but I also am doing this because one of my "Scrap" Drive modules is being used for a LInux install.

After all that's done this thing will be staying the way it is until something breaks...if something does, systems last a stupid long time with me for some reason.

One thing that shocked me was running my Windows 95 Drive module with this thing - I installed Diablo on it and it runs quite decently on a 486 DX2-66 with 64MB of RAM - kind of shocking considering the manual and the installer both begged and pleaded me NOT to install Diablo on this thing - it impressed the heck out of my wife too 🤣.

Played around with QEMM for MS-DOS. Got 635K conventional free. Before that I was able to get 615K free, so that's quite a jump.

https://www.hastebin.com/raw/ojedamagak