TBH while the Virge is useful for DOS stuff, I remember it as being pretty awful for OpenGL or DirectX stuff. The original VGA Decelerator. 😀

stamasd wrote:

TBH while the Virge is useful for DOS stuff, I remember it as being pretty awful for OpenGL or DirectX stuff. The original VGA Decelerator. 😀

I don't think it even had OpenGL support. I had a Virge GX2 in my second PC ever (Pentium II 266MHz) and when using Direct3D it was either slower than software rendering or about the same speed but worse image quality. Awesome 2D performance though.

And the GX2 is the top of range Virge.

Been tinkering around trying to get some socket 3 boards back to life and gotten a Saturn 2 board posting only to find it has a password still saved to it. Looked over the board and no way to clear the cmos and it uses a dallas RTC. Board is stalling with this error "previous boot incomplete default configuration used" 😒

If I do manage to get it working fully it will make for a awesome build as it posts with the DV4 and my Cyrix 5x86, the cherry on top is that it has ps2 ports.

Edit: Fixed it 🤣

Anyway it feels great having scored the intel DV4 for almost nothing 😎
SKO51 ,does both 2x and 3x multipliers so maybe I can toss it on a 50mhz board someday 😈

Bought this machine locally last week. Commodore PC30-III with original keyboard and mouse. Apparently the seller bought a flat and found the pc left inside. Whovever owned this before took good care of it or didn't use it much... it's in very good condition and there is no trace of dust inside. Seems completely original with the two floppy drives and the hard disk (which I assume doesn't work as I can't hear it spin).

The machine posts but will refuse to boot from any floppy so I suppose it needs a new battery. From what I've read online it's a soldered RTC chip so I'll set this project aside for a later date, if ever! 😵

All is not lost though as the machine came with a nice ATI EGA Wonder 800+ which I've tested and works.

Very cool buy this Commodore!

I have already posted it in separate thread, but yesterday I got this sealed i486 DX4 Overdrive:

MMaximus wrote:

Bought this machine locally last week. Commodore PC30-III with original keyboard and mouse. Apparently the seller bought a flat […]
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Bought this machine locally last week. Commodore PC30-III with original keyboard and mouse. Apparently the seller bought a flat and found the pc left inside. Whovever owned this before took good care of it or didn't use it much... it's in very good condition and there is no trace of dust inside. Seems completely original with the two floppy drives and the hard disk (which I assume doesn't work as I can't hear it spin).

The machine posts but will refuse to boot from any floppy so I suppose it needs a new battery. From what I've read online it's a soldered RTC chip so I'll set this project aside for a later date, if ever! 😵

Great find! This is on my must own list of old PCs, one of these older Commodore PCs. 😀

tikoellner wrote:

I have already posted it in separate thread, but yesterday I got this sealed i486 DX4 Overdrive:

Wow. Marketing that doesn't lie and is as simple to understand as possible: "Makes PCs run faster" 🤣 Can't argue with that!

devius wrote:

stamasd wrote:

TBH while the Virge is useful for DOS stuff, I remember it as being pretty awful for OpenGL or DirectX stuff. The original VGA Decelerator. 😀

I don't think it even had OpenGL support. I had a Virge GX2 in my second PC ever (Pentium II 266MHz) and when using Direct3D it was either slower than software rendering or about the same speed but worse image quality. Awesome 2D performance though.

And the GX2 is the top of range Virge.

Huh, I never thought of the ViRGE as being a good 2D card. Everyone just talked about it at the time as "the 3D decelerator" and generally being a piece of crap when you could instead spend your money on a 3dfx card, maybe with a Matrox for 2D if you could afford it.

Meanwhile, I noticed something similar with the GeForce FX line around here - a series generally panned for being late to market with awful DX9/Shader Model 2.0 performance while ATI curbstomped them the whole time with the Radeon 9700/9800, which only served to make the succeeding GeForce 6 Series all the more impressive. (Hey, I would've hated to be the guy who spent $500 on a Radeon 9800 XT the moment before the GeForce 6800 Ultra showed up and wiped the floor with it at the same price while boasting DX9c/Shader Model 3.0 support on top!)

But here, the FX cards are revered for DX8/SM1.4 and OpenGL performance and compatibility alongside being the last line of cards with hardware paletted texture support. The notion is that if you need DX9/SM 2.0 performance, you're going to step up to later, faster cards anyway, possibly even DX10/SM 4.0-era stuff.

It's remarkable what qualities people find in much-maligned hardware years after the fact.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

Huh, I never thought of the ViRGE as being a good 2D card. Everyone just talked about it at the time as "the 3D decelerator" and generally being a piece of crap when you could instead spend your money on a 3dfx card, maybe with a Matrox for 2D if you could afford it.
...
It's remarkable what qualities people find in much-maligned hardware years after the fact.

The focus always seems to be on the new technologies of each era. S3 cards were a bit better than the Matrox cards compatibility-wise (albeit with varying output quality), but the craze was all about that new 3D thing, for which they sucked. For DOS-era games, for example, the older Cirrus Logic chipsets were already perfect, which made no real need to get a new card if not for the all-new sparkling 3D features (which the ViRGE wasn't up to the task).

Here in vogons, we can see their merits after so many years 😈

On another (ironic) note, I've seen a sh!tload more almost-10-year-old 8800GT(S) cards going bad than ol' crappy S3 cards, nearly twice their age 🤣 So get your facts straight guys: for socket7 builds S3 is a good choice, especially combined with a 3dfx if you want something like that. S3 supports 3D (theoretically), you can opt not to use it though. S3 doesn't overheat. S3 is durable. Go S3!

Well, some FX cards couldn't outperform the old GeForce 4 cards of a similar stature, which is part of the reason they got such a bad rep - and ATI comfortably winning in DX9 benchmarks didn't help either.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

It's remarkable what qualities people find in much-maligned hardware years after the fact.

You know what's even more mind boggling? That the Trident 3DImage9750 is one of the graphics chips with the best DOS compatibility according to gona's DOS game compatibility matrix.

Bought this vintage 486 today for 20USD:

Inside: Shuttle vlb mobo, dx4-100, mb ram, trident 512kb graphics and some lousy ESS Audiodrive.

But the case is sweet and so fresh! My cousin used to have one like this with 386 inside. So many hours of Prehistorik, UGH!, Blues Brothers or Titus the Fox!

Lots to upgrade. I will stuff it with some of my best soundcards 😀

Got this beauty today. A Compaq Professional Workstation SP700 in very good condition. Has one slot 2 Xeon 550mhz cpu and an Elsa Gloria 8mb AGP.
Now i just have to get another CPU and VRMs. Strangely a second CPU needs two VRMs. Never seen that before.
Payed £31.68 included shipping in a big box from UK to Norway 😊

Met her in a new city: -

This picture is from the album I uploaded.

EXTREMELY frustrated and disappointed right now! That beautiful PS/2 I purchased was severely damaged as the seller neglected to provide sufficient packing material on the bottom of the box. The sides and top had some cushioning. The case was barely wrapped in bubble wrap, the small bubbles too, not the large ones, and so was the bottom of the box. Probably only about 1/4" worth of packing. The floppy drive looks like it was damaged as well. Everything else looks ok, but this is unacceptable! I'll be lucky if I can find another bezel for this thing. GRRRRRR. 😠 😠 😠 😠 😠 😠 😠

Brickpad wrote:

EXTREMELY frustrated and disappointed right now! That beautiful PS/2 I purchased was severely damaged as the seller neglected to provided sufficient packing material on the bottom of the box. The sides and top had some cushioning. The case was barely wrapped in bubble wrap, the small bubbles too, not the large ones, and so was the bottom of the box. Probably only about 1/4" worth of packing. The floppy drive looks like it was damaged as well. Everything else looks ok, but this is unacceptable! I'll be lucky if I can find another bezel for this thing. GRRRRRR. 😠 😠 😠 😠 😠 😠 😠

Yep some sellers are real fuck jobs when it comes to packing and shipping! It is getting worse and have been cutting back because of that. Honestly I would be full triggelypuff on that seller big time and definitely file a claim!

Wish there was a site somewhere dedicated to shaming sellers the world over, even newegg has pulled this crap on me in the past.

nforce4max wrote:

Brickpad wrote:

EXTREMELY frustrated and disappointed right now! That beautiful PS/2 I purchased was severely damaged as the seller neglected to provided sufficient packing material on the bottom of the box. The sides and top had some cushioning. The case was barely wrapped in bubble wrap, the small bubbles too, not the large ones, and so was the bottom of the box. Probably only about 1/4" worth of packing. The floppy drive looks like it was damaged as well. Everything else looks ok, but this is unacceptable! I'll be lucky if I can find another bezel for this thing. GRRRRRR. 😠 😠 😠 😠 😠 😠 😠

Yep some sellers are real fuck jobs when it comes to packing and shipping! It is getting worse and have been cutting back because of that. Honestly I would be full triggelypuff on that seller big time and definitely file a claim!

Wish there was a site somewhere dedicated to shaming sellers the world over, even newegg has pulled this crap on me in the past.

Yeah, really. I mean what the shit? How hard was it to put some extra packing on the BOTTOM of the box, of all places?! Thankfully, and by some miracle, nothing else is damaged. Just the front bezel. The floppy drive looks ok, and it boots right up to error 162 and 1780. If I can find another bezel, this will be ok. But dammit, whenever I sell computers or cases, I always, ALWAYS sufficiently pack everything with peanuts, foam, bubble wrap, and at least 2-3 inches worth of cushioning.

Really sorry to hear that. I'll have to replace the bezel on my HP Vectra as some of the clips are bust and it's now held on with parcel tape, but that wasn't due to a crappy seller. Hope the chassis itself isn't too badly damaged and that everything in the PS/2 still works!

Lukeno94 wrote:

Really sorry to hear that. I'll have to replace the bezel on my HP Vectra as some of the clips are bust and it's now held on with parcel tape, but that wasn't due to a crappy seller. Hope the chassis itself isn't too badly damaged and that everything in the PS/2 still works!

Thanks. By some miracle nothing else is damaged. Not even the plastic base. The computer booted right up without a problem, minus the typical error codes. It's just the bezel itself that is broken. The floppy bezel and secondary drive blank is fine too.

Brickpad wrote:

Lukeno94 wrote:

Really sorry to hear that. I'll have to replace the bezel on my HP Vectra as some of the clips are bust and it's now held on with parcel tape, but that wasn't due to a crappy seller. Hope the chassis itself isn't too badly damaged and that everything in the PS/2 still works!

Thanks. By some miracle nothing else is damaged. Not even the plastic base. The computer booted right up without a problem, minus the typical error codes. It's just the bezel itself that is broken. The floppy bezel and secondary drive blank is fine too.

Still inexcusable. You need to get at least a partial refund if the seller has any integrity.