Andy1979 wrote:

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Talked my 2002 Sony Vaio WinME laptop into playing DVDs. I had to hunt down CyberLink PowerDVD 3.0 in order to get a software decoder for InterActual 2.0 to use.

Worked fine. Didn't look that bad either when watching a 4:3 movie on a 4:3 display.

I actually got DVDs to play on my Celeron-433 Windows 95 build by using InterVideo WinDVD 1.3.5c, Pretty good for 1999 hardware. actually got some of my older systems to play DVDs just fine as well, especially my Dell Inspiron 8000 which came with a Dell OEM copy of InterVideo WinDVD 3.0.

Yep - put a Creative 2x DVD drive in the 64mb Pentium II 333 system I built to take to University back in 1998. They played just fine using Power DVD (version 2 I think). Anyone else remember those double-sided DVDs that were 4:3 on one side and 16:9 on the other?

It was only when I discovered DivX that I felt the need to upgrade that system.

I'm assuming you discovered DivX about the same time you discovered broadband and a certain website from Sweden?..... 😀

I wonder what the absolute slowest acceptable CPU for DVD playback is though? I would think either the fastest Pentium MMXs or the Slowest Pentium IIs would be minimum.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

I'm assuming you discovered DivX about the same time you discovered broadband and a certain website from Sweden?..... 😀

I wonder what the absolute slowest acceptable CPU for DVD playback is though? I would think either the fastest Pentium MMXs or the Slowest Pentium IIs would be minimum.

Not quite. A shared drive appeared on the university LAN with an extensive movie collection. We were all rather impressed until the LAN began to slow to a crawl...

Not sure on minimum specs - there were dedicated MPEG2 decoder PCI cards, but without one of those I suspect at least a fast Pentium MMX would be needed - CPU usage was pretty high on my P2 and I remember that being a big step up performance-wise from my previous K6-200.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

I wonder what the absolute slowest acceptable CPU for DVD playback is though? I would think either the fastest Pentium MMXs or the Slowest Pentium IIs would be minimum.

Definitely not a P1 MMX. You can "play" a movie on slow PIIs but from what I remember perfect playback without small pauses here and there needs something like a PII 400-450MHz.

konc wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

I wonder what the absolute slowest acceptable CPU for DVD playback is though? I would think either the fastest Pentium MMXs or the Slowest Pentium IIs would be minimum.

Definitely not a P1 MMX. You can "play" a movie on slow PIIs but from what I remember perfect playback without small pauses here and there needs something like a PII 400-450MHz.

PII 350 does the job I can tell from memory.

konc wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

I wonder what the absolute slowest acceptable CPU for DVD playback is though? I would think either the fastest Pentium MMXs or the Slowest Pentium IIs would be minimum.

Definitely not a P1 MMX. You can "play" a movie on slow PIIs but from what I remember perfect playback without small pauses here and there needs something like a PII 400-450MHz.

Never tried it with anything slower than a PII 333 but that did work perfectly.

Remember the most important thing was to enable DMA on the drive otherwise it would stutter like mad.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Talked my 2002 Sony Vaio WinME laptop into playing DVDs. I had to hunt down CyberLink PowerDVD 3.0 in order to get a software decoder for InterActual 2.0 to use.

Worked fine. Didn't look that bad either when watching a 4:3 movie on a 4:3 display.

I have an HP Pavilion N3350 that has a K6-2+ 550 in it, 64MB RAM (getting another 64MB for it), a DVD drive from the ThinkPad R40 which now has a slot loading DVD burner in it (still have a tray loading one), Windows 98SE, and has the CyberPower PowerDVD software on it, and S3 graphics (not the best) and it does playback DVDs to some extent, and the software requires the following for better playback experience:

1MMX
23D-NOW
3SSE
4SSE2

Other than that, it does playback DVDs OK, but not very well. My ThinkPad R40 can playback DVDs without issues, but I have to image the HDD that's in it right now (4.6GB isn't enough for Windows XP), restore it to the 20GB that was in it, and 256MB RAM isn't enough (getting a 256MB RAM in the mail sometime). And the GPU in it is a Radeon Mobility 7500 (not bad at all, but gaming requires more than 16MB VRAM, but does play some games without issues).

Finished installing all 98/99 games I'm interested in on my PIII system; it can now be moved to storage until my retirement, which I plan to spend going through my PC builds and the games installed on them in a chronological order.

Can you spot any major games I may have missed from those years?

appiah4 wrote:

Finished installing all 98/99 games I'm interested in on my PIII system; it can now be moved to storage until my retirement, whi […]
Show full quote

Finished installing all 98/99 games I'm interested in on my PIII system; it can now be moved to storage until my retirement, which I plan to spend going through my PC builds and the games installed on them in a chronological order.

Can you spot any major games I may have missed from those years?

Quake/GLQuake and Quake II?

What about Unreal tournament, Blood and the latest adventure games ?

Heroes of Might and Magic I - III.
RollerCoaster Tycoon.

Installed the VooDoo3 3000 PCI card in my K6-2 system with a "mod" on the heatsink: I installed a big CPU fan on the heatsink to keep the card cooled down without it to get overheated and it's going on strong.

Specs of the card:

1Core: 166MHz
2RAMDAC: 350MHz
316MB SDRAM
4DVD Playback capable
532-bit color maximum

lazibayer wrote:

Tried to get Quake3A running on Rage Pro under Windows XP. The stock XP driver uses OpenGL -> D3D wrapper. It supports 16bit col […]
Show full quote

Tried to get Quake3A running on Rage Pro under Windows XP.
The stock XP driver uses OpenGL -> D3D wrapper. It supports 16bit color at 1024x768 but not 32bit.
The latest ATI driver for XP, version 5.10.2600.6010, won't start Q3A at all. Its OpenGL module has version of 4.0.0.1119.
The latest ATI driver for 2000, version 5.0.2195.5013, works with Q3A. It supports 32bit color at 1024x768 but with extreme lag. Its OpenGL module has a higher version of 4.0.0.1120.
"Big Z" driver, based on ATI's 5.0.2195.5011 driver for 2000, is not stable. It has 4.0.0.1104 OpenGL module.
"SCC" driver, based on 5.0.2296.1000, uses D3D wrapper as well. It has 4.0.0.1104 OpenGL module.

Now it's cross mating time.
5.0.2195.5013 + 4.0.0.1119: unstable
5.0.2195.5013 + 4.0.0.1104: unstable

Then my CPU fan caught some cable and one blade snapped. Dang.

Found a replacement fan today and the journey continues.
The stock XP driver doesn't care about the OpenGL module at all. Q3A always picks up D3D wrapper even if I set r_glDriver to the different DLLs.
The 5.10.2600.6010 driver doesn't work with any OpenGL module.
That concludes the cross mating test.
Next I did some benchmarks with Q3A. Everything is set in accordance with havli's thread except in 16bit color.
5.10.2600.6010 - 2.7 FPS at AGP 2x and 1.9FPS at 1x. The image quality made my eyes bleed.
5.0.2195.5013 - 2.4FPS at AGP 2x and 1.7FPS at 1x. The IQ made my eyes sour, but much better than bleeding.
Then I installed ALI's AGP driver instead of the one came with XP. I got 1.7 and 1.8 FPS with 5.0.2195.5013 at AGP 2x and 1x, respectively. 5.10.2600.6010 scored 1.9FPS in both cases.
Conclusion: stock XP Rage Pro driver, despite using a D3D -> OpenGL wrapper, is faster than ATI's implementation. Stock AGP driver is also better than ALI's implementation, and the latter seems unable to benefit from 2x bus.

So, I found out the Amptron PM-8800A motherboard's BIOS version in one of the towers I have today has a bug where it refuses to detect any CD-ROM drive. I spent an hour or so googling and found a BIOS update, and lo and behold, it actually worked. The CD drive is detected now.

Yay. 😁

Interestingly enough, a few forums I encountered also said the BIOS version I had was "illegal." Must be some sort of hacked BIOS, not sure, but not complaining. CD functionality works now.

cj_reha wrote:

So, I found out the Amptron PM-8800A motherboard's BIOS version in one of the towers I have today has a bug where it refuses to detect any CD-ROM drive. I spent an hour or so googling and found a BIOS update, and lo and behold, it actually worked. The CD drive is detected now.

Yay. 😁

Interestingly enough, a few forums I encountered also said the BIOS version I had was "illegal." Must be some sort of hacked BIOS, not sure, but not complaining. CD functionality works now.

No such thing as an illegal bios. I'd assume it falls under the same category as jailbreaking which has been declared legal by the US supreme Court. Ill be happy when bios hacking becomes a thing again so we can OC modern low end processors.

cj_reha wrote:

Quake/GLQuake and Quake II?

Technically those are 96-97 but.. Damn, it's Quake and Quake II. Added to the list.

Deksor wrote:

What about Unreal tournament, Blood and the latest adventure games ?

Unreal Tournament added to list of games to install. I never played Blood and it holds no nostalgia for me. What adventure games were released in 98-99 that I may be missing? I know Grim Fandango should be there (Doh!) but otherwise it wasn't a great time to be an adventure gamer..

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Heroes of Might and Magic I - III.
RollerCoaster Tycoon.

Heroes games were never my thing but RollerCoaster Tycoon added to list.

appiah4 wrote:

Finished installing all 98/99 games I'm interested in on my PIII system; it can now be moved to storage until my retirement, which I plan to spend going through my PC builds and the games installed on them in a chronological order.

Amen brother! 😊

lazibayer wrote:

Then my CPU fan caught some cable and one blade snapped. Dang.

thats some really bad drivers right there :>

Well there are the sequels to monkey island, to myst, if that's your thing, there are also the humongous games ... there's also a 1996 point'n click game that I like a lot which is called Toonstruck

You also forgot the Tomb Raider games, Rayman 2, MDK, Carmageddon 1 and 2, Heretic 2 ^^

Checked 3 Socket A systems from my collection, mostly to ensure they're still working and to record their specs for my records. These boards/systems were all given to me for free over the past few years:

Asus A7V600-X Motherboard, VIA Chipset, AMD Athlon XP 1900+, 1.2GB PC2700 DDR RAM. This one is set up in a case so has: 80GB IDE HDD, Nvidia GeForce4 MX 4000 128MB AGP & runs Windows XP Home (barely).

ASRock K7S41GX Motherboard, SIS Chipset, AMD Athlon XP 2600+, 256MB PC2100 DDR RAM. Has onboard graphics, but also used with spare Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB AGP.

MSI K7N2 Motherboard, Nvidia nForce2 Chipset, AMD Athlon XP 3200+, 512MB PC2700 DDR RAM. Uses ATI Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB AGP Graphics.

I might mix and match parts from these to build a decent Athlon XP system at some point, but not a priority as I already have another Athlon XP 3200+ system built that isn't really being used as my Socket 754 systems are much more useful.

I also stripped down an old broken Socket 370 laptop, to remove it's CPU - a Coppermine Pentium III 1000/256/100. I might try it out in a spare Socket 370 board that I have.

PTherapist wrote:

Checked 3 Socket A systems from my collection, mostly to ensure they're still working and to record their specs for my records. […]
Show full quote

Checked 3 Socket A systems from my collection, mostly to ensure they're still working and to record their specs for my records. These boards/systems were all given to me for free over the past few years:

Asus A7V600-X Motherboard, VIA Chipset, AMD Athlon XP 1900+, 1.2GB PC2700 DDR RAM. This one is set up in a case so has: 80GB IDE HDD, Nvidia GeForce4 MX 4000 128MB AGP & runs Windows XP Home (barely).

ASRock K7S41GX Motherboard, SIS Chipset, AMD Athlon XP 2600+, 256MB PC2100 DDR RAM. Has onboard graphics, but also used with spare Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB AGP.

MSI K7N2 Motherboard, Nvidia nForce2 Chipset, AMD Athlon XP 3200+, 512MB PC2700 DDR RAM. Uses ATI Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB AGP Graphics.

I might mix and match parts from these to build a decent Athlon XP system at some point, but not a priority as I already have another Athlon XP 3200+ system built that isn't really being used as my Socket 754 systems are much more useful.

I also stripped down an old broken Socket 370 laptop, to remove it's CPU - a Coppermine Pentium III 1000/256/100. I might try it out in a spare Socket 370 board that I have.

Interesting boards. I had an ASUS A7N8X Socket A motherboard that had an AMD Athlon XP 1700+ in it and it was stable, but the AGP bridge driver was buggy and the Ethernet stopped working, but OpenSUSE didn't complain since it did work, just not in Windows.