Got started on putting together a server. Lost all of the drive bay rails for my main pc case and just got given a bunch of good 250-320gb sata hard drives for free. Thinking 3 250's and a 320gb, maybe throw a 400gb and a 200gb IDE drive in there as well. Should be more than enough storage seeing as how I am currently happy with nothing but a single 250gb SSD.

Going to start work on a new song. Had two ideas rattling around for a while and have decided what to do. I'd like to use all synths in this one if possible, quite an undertaking I am certain but I may as well try.

That means I will be playing with the following today;
Windows 98 SE
Cakewalk Pro Audio 9
Sound Forge 4.0
Casio RZ-1
Casio CZ-5000
Casio CZ-1000
Yamaha MU90R
Korg 01R/W
Maybe try some of the sounds on the YM3812, haven't used that in anything for years.

Whatever happens, I think this track will wind up being primarily for the Korg and Casio gear.

Organized my computer storage room a bit and began to set up a small LAN for retro gaming with friends and family. 😁

Another shot of the LAN to be. 😜

There are more computers stored on a shelf on the opposite wall but the wall was a little grimy so I figured I'd hold off and snapping pics of that. 🤣

a little self-promotey, but I started writing about retro workarounds for my game - a thing I haven't even thought about for months, and there's obvious gaps (i haven't looked into NT4/5 or 95 solutions yet). especially with where i'm experimenting with effects, i'm afraid what torture this would bring to a Rage Pro. 😖

King_Corduroy wrote:

Organized my computer storage room a bit and began to set up a small LAN for retro gaming with friends and family. 😁

There are more computers stored on a shelf on the opposite wall but the wall was a little grimy so I figured I'd hold off and snapping pics of that. 🤣

Oh my. That is beautiful. Reminds of this cozy little computer shop/Internet "cafe" I used to buy software from back in the 90s. 😁

Standard Def Steve wrote:

King_Corduroy wrote:

Organized my computer storage room a bit and began to set up a small LAN for retro gaming with friends and family. 😁

There are more computers stored on a shelf on the opposite wall but the wall was a little grimy so I figured I'd hold off and snapping pics of that. 🤣

Oh my. That is beautiful. Reminds of this cozy little computer shop/Internet "cafe" I used to buy software from back in the 90s. 😁

Thanks, I just finished (2am) getting the PCI ethernet cards installed and the computers all functional. Turns out I had forgot to reinstall Windows 98 on the Compaq and the Dell had a bad video card and RAM. 🤣

Hopefully tomorrow I will have the hub set up and have them filesharing pretty quickly. 😁

Very nice king corduroy. ..i like the setup...what games are you thinking of running on the LAN?

Working on a web application to store my various benchmarks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6c4y85zPX4

Lots of work to go 😀

mwdmeyer wrote:

Working on a web application to store my various benchmarks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6c4y85zPX4

Lots of work to go 😀

Taking inspiration from the old OCAU PCDB? 😁

Yep 😀 But I want to track benchmarks and graph them nicely too. Mmmm I wonder if my computers are still on PCDB....

EDIT: Oh it is gone 🙁

retrofanatic wrote:

Very nice king corduroy. ..i like the setup...what games are you thinking of running on the LAN?

Mainly Warcraft II and Starcraft but also Blood, Heretic, Hexen, ROTT, Doom, Duke3d, Earth 2140, and basically anything else that can run on a Super Socket 7 machine (since that is the lowest denominator of the bunch). My father also has a hard time typing so I'm going to pop Typing Tutor 7 and Mavis Beacon on them so he can try them and see if that helps. Personally I used TT7 and it really helps if you follow what they say, I used to be a hunt and peck typist and now I am almost touch typing. 😁

Went through my GOG catalog and decided to play The Longest Journey. Since it is a 1999 game I thought about running it in my Duron 950.... but reading through the manual it seems the recommended system requirements call for a Pentium II 266MHz and a 4MB DirectX video card... now I wonder if I shouldn't just run it on my K6-2 500 and call it a day.

LAN is fun! 😀

I setup my minimal Roland configuration today. Only GM and LA: no GS. 😀

Went through my 'games' folder on the server and put them in folders according to which year they were published. I could have categorised them by system but I would find that too restrictive. For example, I'm looking forward to playing F117a on my 486. If I were to categorise by system, this would be excluded from 486 territory and would be firmly in the 386 era.

alexanrs wrote:

Went through my GOG catalog and decided to play The Longest Journey. Since it is a 1999 game I thought about running it in my Duron 950.... but reading through the manual it seems the recommended system requirements call for a Pentium II 266MHz and a 4MB DirectX video card... now I wonder if I shouldn't just run it on my K6-2 500 and call it a day.

Depends more on the video card - it's much nicer with anti-aliasing. The 3D models against the 2D background look way better with AA.

oerk wrote:

alexanrs wrote:

Went through my GOG catalog and decided to play The Longest Journey. Since it is a 1999 game I thought about running it in my Duron 950.... but reading through the manual it seems the recommended system requirements call for a Pentium II 266MHz and a 4MB DirectX video card... now I wonder if I shouldn't just run it on my K6-2 500 and call it a day.

Depends more on the video card - it's much nicer with anti-aliasing. The 3D models against the 2D background look way better with AA.

I think I'll go with the Duron... the GeForce in there can do 32-bit and AA. I don't think the Voodoo3 in the K6-2 would be able to match the image quality here.

After having 5 or 6 pc builds part way done and on hiatus I finally sat down and figured out the exact hardware configurations/OS I wanted for each system and got the parts together for each one. Feels pretty good!

ODwilly wrote:

After having 5 or 6 pc builds part way done and on hiatus I finally sat down and figured out the exact hardware configurations/OS I wanted for each system and got the parts together for each one. Feels pretty good!

Sounds like quite a big job, well done.

PeterLI wrote:

LAN is fun! 😀

I setup my minimal Roland configuration today. Only GM and LA: no GS. 😀

Nice, simplicity is often underrated.

Thanks! I have a bad habit of getting distracted and never finishing these projects.

alexanrs wrote:

Went through my GOG catalog and decided to play The Longest Journey. Since it is a 1999 game I thought about running it in my Duron 950.... but reading through the manual it seems the recommended system requirements call for a Pentium II 266MHz and a 4MB DirectX video card... now I wonder if I shouldn't just run it on my K6-2 500 and call it a day.

I have to say, as soon as games support DirectX, I mostly don't see the point of going retro. Run it on the latest, fastest system, as it will normally still work and probably support higher resolutions to boot.

Admittedly, it might be wise to run it under a copy of XP, for the EAX games where Alchemy doesn't work. Then there's a few games that are sub-par on later drivers (looking at you, Infinity Engine games that need a patch to work on modern graphics cards), but when the game is indistinguishable from the original, I'm less fussed about maintaining a retro PC (I don't think I can tell when Commander Keen is emulated now, for instance).