There is a win - win for everyone!

Play Space Quest 1 and Kings Quest 1 on a Apple II and you can play games AND enjoy really good music. The music used in these games is fantastic! It's in Stereo and Space Quest 1 even has recorded voice right at the beginning...

It is a really good example just how far ahead the Apple II when it came to music...

I have a hard time remembering what Apple II was even like anymore. 😀

But back then I had a Tandy 1000 TX, which has 16-color graphics and rather amazing audio too. Especially with Sierra games. Now if I'd had a IBM XT like one of my friends had, Apple II would have seemed mind blowing by comparison. I remember putting some of my games on that box and seeing the 4 color CGA and hearing IBM bleeps was kinda jarring 🤣

I remember playing Online Systems' (aka Sierra) Cranston Manor on an Apple II at the public library. 😁 How's that for retro? That was the best thing at the library, I thought, heh heh.

@swaaye, Mau1wurf1977

Kind of missed the whole early Apple, Tandy era back in my youth 🙁

But I think it's because only a a tiny percent of the population had these computers, we were flooded with Commodore's offerings and the rest of the folks owned a NES, or Sega console for their gaming needs

Amigaz wrote:

swaaye wrote:

All AGP Pro is is another way to give the card more power. It became pretty redundant as soon as they started adding aux power connectors to the cards themselves.

It's crazy how much Mac people will pay for a 6 year old graphics card. 😁

This card can do wonders in a Mac since it doesn't run a bloated OS that needs one zillion ghz etc to run stuff 😉 but it's nothing for the gamer that's why I own a ton of PC's too 😎

Exactly. Mac OS is so fast that it doesn't really need powerful hardware to get a lot done. I laugh at the Windows guys who brag about the zillion video card options they can upgrade to while Macs usually only only have a handful spread over a few generations of Macs but the Macs don't NEED the top of the line video cards. Just look back at any old performance comparison between a Mac and a PC of the day and you'll see the video card in the Mac is usually a lot slower than the one in the PC but the Mac almost always wins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtaKZ-vZhQs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmTAsHed6c8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzxz3k2zQJI

😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁 😁

That one button hockey puck mouse spells out Apple's desire to be a serious player in computer gaming. 😐

Same here...

We had a C64 and then one day my Dad got a 286. He "gave up" using it after a while so I started reading that fat MS-DOS book (which was in english and that was a challenge for me back then) and started learning how to create directories, copy files and format stuff 😁

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

We had a C64 and then one day my Dad got a 286. He "gave up" using it after a while so I started reading that fat MS-DOS book (which was in english and that was a challenge for me back then) and started learning how to create directories, copy files and format stuff 😁

It's something how some kids have brains that go nuts for this kind of thing. What is the deal with us anyway? 😁

Yea it's pretty cool. Figuring things out for yourself was a lot of fun. I remember that my dad also got us some games and it took me like half a year to figure out that one game was split over two disks. Then I worked out how to copy both disks into a directory and I could finally play Space Quest 2 😀

I also remember once deleting by mistake the first disk from Wing Commander 🙁 My dad got the disk to work and they "undeleted it" 😀

Finally got a chance to try the card some days ago in my newly aquired dual G5 2ghz Power Mac.

The card was defect..showed alot of artifacts on the screen.

I comtacted the seller about a refund but he refused and just said all sales are final even though the card wasn't sold as defective or untested etc.

I've read with alot of sceptisism that you can bake a gfx card in the oven to solve these sort of problems so I though it was worth a shot before I threw the card in the recycle bin.

According to most guides on the net you place the card with the GPU facing down so I did.
After circa 5-6 mins in the oven set at 200C I hear something fall from the card on the oven plate! it was a solid state cap...shortly after a couple of more square components fall too *DOH!* 😵

I take out the card from the oven and turn it around an put these components back on the card so they can use Newtons law and solder themselves back...10 mins later and it worked! 😁

Was very sceptic when I fired up the machine with the newly baked Radeon X800XT....but it worked!! 😀

Now I can enjoy some Doom 3, Quake 4 etc omn my Mac which crawled with the Radeon 9600

Hehe the oven trick...

Never done it myself, but I heard heaps of good reports.

Ouch, solder melts usually around 200C.

Retro gaming, it is an adventure!

samudra wrote:

Ouch, solder melts usually around 200C.

That's exactly how it works!

It's meant to cure "cold solder joints" or whatever it's called...

I would like to bake a Voodoo 5 5500 video card, because it artifacts and seems to be beyond conventional rescue. However before I cook it, I wonder if it's a good idea to remove its heatsinks? I wonder if this approach is a slightly safer way to bake a video card?

retro games 100 wrote:

I would like to bake a Voodoo 5 5500 video card, because it artifacts and seems to be beyond conventional rescue. However before I cook it, I wonder if it's a good idea to remove its heatsinks? I wonder if this approach is a slightly safer way to bake a video card?

Yes, it's recommended to remove the heatsink and card bracket

I put the card on an oven baking plate with a thin sheet of aluminium foil, then put the card on small "balls" made from aluminium foil so that the card was about raised about 1,5cm over the baking plate and level.

I'd try this method on the V5...I mean what do you have to loose?

As long as the capacitors don't blow up you should be ok. 😀 The aluminum electrolytic caps usually can't handle over 250F or so. I blew some up on a GeForce FX when I baked it. The Voodoo5 looks like it uses the more resilient type though.

Absolutely, I've got nothing to lose. I understand how to remove the heatsinks - put the card in to a "food freezer" bag, then freeze it. The heatsinks should just pop off, with a little bit of controlled force. There's just one trivial problem ATM - I've got so much unlabelled boxed retro goodness, that I don't know where the defective V5 is. But I'll find it.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

samudra wrote:

Ouch, solder melts usually around 200C.

That's exactly how it works!

It's meant to cure "cold solder joints" or whatever it's called...

Oh, haha! Makes sense.

A cold solder joint is an apparent solder connection, but the solder hasn't properly bonded with the materials. Reheating of everything and not just the solder (important) will indeed do the trick.

I hear a similar problem is causing all those Xbox 360 problems.

I blew some up on a GeForce FX when I baked it. The Voodoo5 looks like it uses the more resilient type though.

Meh, if you already have the technical inclination to reflow a video card in the oven, soldering on some new caps isn't that big of a deal anyway.

Just want to add that solder contains lead which is carcinogenic and not something you want gasses of in something you cook food in.

Recent electronics use lead free solder. Still there are metals there that are harmful to your health.

If you do these sort of things it is wise to pick up a cheap oven at a recycle center specifically for it. Skillets are also used by some people to reflow pcbs.

Amigaz wrote:

I'd try this method on the V5...I mean what do you have to loose?

A 'sick' V5 i guess 😁 but thanks a lot for the tips...

i'm curious though, how does it smell? Delicious? 😁

samudra wrote:

Just want to add that solder contains lead which is carcinogenic and not something you want gasses of in something you cook food in.

Recent electronics use lead free solder. Still there are metals there that are harmful to your health.

If you do these sort of things it is wise to pick up a cheap oven at a recycle center specifically for it. Skillets are also used by some people to reflow pcbs.

Oh, that's very important, thanks!