So far today I have been replacing CMOS/BIOS battery's in old retro IBM laptops that I'm trying to get working - more recently I've been installing Windows XP on some of my retro laptops ready to SysPrep and use Ghost to create 'golden images' to deploy on any duplicates I have so I can test and document them 😀

clueless1 wrote on 2020-01-29, 10:05:

I've taken a few days off of playing Wizardry 7 to do some DOS VGA benchmarks on my various PCI graphics cards. So far I'm limiting the platform to P75 and since SVGA games are largely unplayable at that speed, not doing an SVGA benchmarks. The plan is to eventually re-run all the benchmarks with my POD200 and include SVGA results there. I'm testing 14 different chipsets, but I'm bummed that I still don't have an ET4000 or ET6000 based card. They're just too pricey whenever I look.

Are you including oddball chipsets such as ARK1000/2000, MX86200 etc? A list of the 14 chipsets would be nice.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-01-29, 10:10:

Are you including oddball chipsets such as ARK1000/2000, MX86200 etc? A list of the 14 chipsets would be nice.

I'm including the chipsets I've been able to get my hands on at a reasonable price. 😀 I'm actually open to someone loaning me graphics cards to test together with my bunch. We'd each pay shipping to the other. Assuming they live in the US and are interested and trust me. Anyhow, here's the chipsets I'm testing at the moment:
TNT2 M64 32MB (VBE3.0)
ARK2000PV 1MB (VBE1.2)
ARK1000PV 1MB (VBE1.2)
VOODOO3 2000 16MB (VBE3.0)
MILLENNIUM II 4MB (VBE2.0)
CL-GD5446 1MB (VBE1.2)
S3 Virge GX 4MB (VBE1.2)
ATI Rage 128 GL 16MB (VBE2.0)
S3 Virge 325 2MB (VBE1.2)
S3 Virge DX 4MB (VBE2.0)
S3 Trio64V+ 1MB (VBE1.2)
S3 Trio64 V2/DX 2MB (VBE1.2)
Avance Logic AVL2301 1MB (VBE1.2)
CL-GD5430 2MB (VBE1.2)

Bruninho wrote on 2020-01-28, 02:07:

My retro activity of the day: watching Apollo 13 movie, straight from the year 1995.

A few months ago I watched The Shining. Pretty good movie considering how old it is. Does anyone here watch retro cartoons too? Such as Tom and Jerry, old Simpsons episodes, Biskitts, old cartoon intro's on YouTube, etc.?

clueless1 wrote on 2020-01-29, 10:25:

I'm including the chipsets I've been able to get my hands on at a reasonable price. :) I'm actually open to someone loaning me […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote on 2020-01-29, 10:10:

Are you including oddball chipsets such as ARK1000/2000, MX86200 etc? A list of the 14 chipsets would be nice.

I'm including the chipsets I've been able to get my hands on at a reasonable price. 😀 I'm actually open to someone loaning me graphics cards to test together with my bunch. We'd each pay shipping to the other. Assuming they live in the US and are interested and trust me. Anyhow, here's the chipsets I'm testing at the moment:
TNT2 M64 32MB (VBE3.0)
ARK2000PV 1MB (VBE1.2)
ARK1000PV 1MB (VBE1.2)
VOODOO3 2000 16MB (VBE3.0)
MILLENNIUM II 4MB (VBE2.0)
CL-GD5446 1MB (VBE1.2)
S3 Virge GX 4MB (VBE1.2)
ATI Rage 128 GL 16MB (VBE2.0)
S3 Virge 325 2MB (VBE1.2)
S3 Virge DX 4MB (VBE2.0)
S3 Trio64V+ 1MB (VBE1.2)
S3 Trio64 V2/DX 2MB (VBE1.2)
Avance Logic AVL2301 1MB (VBE1.2)
CL-GD5430 2MB (VBE1.2)

Nice list overall, a lot of cards on that list are of interest to me.. I would have loved to see the following as well but I'm not sure how expensive these are:

ATI 264VT2 (Mach64 VT2)
ATI RagePro
Macronix MX86200FC
Matrox Millennium
S3 Trio64
SiS 6326

If you were using a CPU I had (no P75 here.. Though I guess I could run my P100 at 50MHz x 1.5 to emulate one?) I can contribute by testing these cards with the same suite of benchmarks

Nearly forgot, does trying to fit a ten year old Geforce 550 in a seven year old pc count as retro? To get a four year old game called Ori and the Blind Forest running?

Peter Swinkels wrote on 2020-01-29, 13:20:

Nearly forgot, does trying to fit a ten year old Geforce 550 in a seven year old pc count as retro? To get a four year old game called Ori and the Blind Forest running?

That game runs fine on modern hardware though?

appiah4 wrote on 2020-01-29, 13:34:

Peter Swinkels wrote on 2020-01-29, 13:20:

Nearly forgot, does trying to fit a ten year old Geforce 550 in a seven year old pc count as retro? To get a four year old game called Ori and the Blind Forest running?

That game runs fine on modern hardware though?

Yes, it does. But my relatively modern pc has a basic graphics card. It's a Radeon 7450. Imagine seeing it next to that Geforce: one very small card with a heatsink and the other a giant with a huge connector backplate and fans.

Replaced the caps on a recently acquired 386 pc that instantly turned off. Works fine now!

Just need to clean it up and fit a coin cell battery holder to replace the barrel that had just started to leak.

Ooh, a 1991 386 SX. Nice! Back then my parents had a 80386 SX 25mhz (10mhz turbo) with a VGA card, 80meg hdd (removable tray), 2mb expansion card, 5.25 inch floppy drive, 3.5 inch diskette drive, MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0. The brand was called High Screen.

This one is 33mhz with 8mhz turbo (according to the display on the case!)

I actually am not familiar with anything pre 486 so it has been a learning adventure too.
It only has 1.5mb of ram. Should I look to expand this?

The ebay seller actually requested that I preserve his data if possible and now I have confirmed the HDD to be working I need to find a way to move it.

Peter Swinkels wrote on 2020-01-29, 13:20:

Nearly forgot, does trying to fit a ten year old Geforce 550 in a seven year old pc count as retro? To get a four year old game called Ori and the Blind Forest running?

No, not really retro. Ori and the blind forest doesn't even run properly on windows XP. That said, it is a great game, so you should definitely give it a go!

canthearu wrote on 2020-01-29, 22:19:

No, not really retro. Ori and the blind forest doesn't even run properly on windows XP. That said, it is a great game, so you should definitely give it a go!

Agreed. Great game to play.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-01-29, 12:08:

Nice list overall, a lot of cards on that list are of interest to me.. I would have loved to see the following as well but I'm […]
Show full quote

clueless1 wrote on 2020-01-29, 10:25:

I'm including the chipsets I've been able to get my hands on at a reasonable price. :) I'm actually open to someone loaning me […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote on 2020-01-29, 10:10:

Are you including oddball chipsets such as ARK1000/2000, MX86200 etc? A list of the 14 chipsets would be nice.

I'm including the chipsets I've been able to get my hands on at a reasonable price. 😀 I'm actually open to someone loaning me graphics cards to test together with my bunch. We'd each pay shipping to the other. Assuming they live in the US and are interested and trust me. Anyhow, here's the chipsets I'm testing at the moment:
TNT2 M64 32MB (VBE3.0)
ARK2000PV 1MB (VBE1.2)
ARK1000PV 1MB (VBE1.2)
VOODOO3 2000 16MB (VBE3.0)
MILLENNIUM II 4MB (VBE2.0)
CL-GD5446 1MB (VBE1.2)
S3 Virge GX 4MB (VBE1.2)
ATI Rage 128 GL 16MB (VBE2.0)
S3 Virge 325 2MB (VBE1.2)
S3 Virge DX 4MB (VBE2.0)
S3 Trio64V+ 1MB (VBE1.2)
S3 Trio64 V2/DX 2MB (VBE1.2)
Avance Logic AVL2301 1MB (VBE1.2)
CL-GD5430 2MB (VBE1.2)

Nice list overall, a lot of cards on that list are of interest to me.. I would have loved to see the following as well but I'm not sure how expensive these are:

ATI 264VT2 (Mach64 VT2)
ATI RagePro
Macronix MX86200FC
Matrox Millennium
S3 Trio64
SiS 6326

If you were using a CPU I had (no P75 here.. Though I guess I could run my P100 at 50MHz x 1.5 to emulate one?) I can contribute by testing these cards with the same suite of benchmarks

I'm running my P120 at 50x1.5, so no worries there. Do you have any of the same chipsets I do? Maybe if you ran some benchmarks and they lined up with mine, we could do a limited comparison.

clueless1 wrote on 2020-01-29, 23:15:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-01-29, 12:08:

Nice list overall, a lot of cards on that list are of interest to me.. I would have loved to see the following as well but I'm […]
Show full quote

clueless1 wrote on 2020-01-29, 10:25:

I'm including the chipsets I've been able to get my hands on at a reasonable price. :) I'm actually open to someone loaning me […]
Show full quote

I'm including the chipsets I've been able to get my hands on at a reasonable price. 😀 I'm actually open to someone loaning me graphics cards to test together with my bunch. We'd each pay shipping to the other. Assuming they live in the US and are interested and trust me. Anyhow, here's the chipsets I'm testing at the moment:
TNT2 M64 32MB (VBE3.0)
ARK2000PV 1MB (VBE1.2)
ARK1000PV 1MB (VBE1.2)
VOODOO3 2000 16MB (VBE3.0)
MILLENNIUM II 4MB (VBE2.0)
CL-GD5446 1MB (VBE1.2)
S3 Virge GX 4MB (VBE1.2)
ATI Rage 128 GL 16MB (VBE2.0)
S3 Virge 325 2MB (VBE1.2)
S3 Virge DX 4MB (VBE2.0)
S3 Trio64V+ 1MB (VBE1.2)
S3 Trio64 V2/DX 2MB (VBE1.2)
Avance Logic AVL2301 1MB (VBE1.2)
CL-GD5430 2MB (VBE1.2)

Nice list overall, a lot of cards on that list are of interest to me.. I would have loved to see the following as well but I'm not sure how expensive these are:

ATI 264VT2 (Mach64 VT2)
ATI RagePro
Macronix MX86200FC
Matrox Millennium
S3 Trio64
SiS 6326

If you were using a CPU I had (no P75 here.. Though I guess I could run my P100 at 50MHz x 1.5 to emulate one?) I can contribute by testing these cards with the same suite of benchmarks

I'm running my P120 at 50x1.5, so no worries there. Do you have any of the same chipsets I do? Maybe if you ran some benchmarks and they lined up with mine, we could do a limited comparison.

I have the following at hand:

TNT2 M64 32MB
ARK1000PV 1MB
MILLENNIUM II 4MB
ATI Rage 128 GL 16MB
S3 Virge DX 4MB
S3 Trio64V+ 1MB
S3 Trio64 V2/DX 2MB
CL-GD5430 2MB

I do not know the VBE versions obviously.

I can use the P100 on a 430TX motherboard for this purpose.

The 430TX will probably make this not feasible. I'm testing on a 430FX with no L2 cache. It's what I have. But, if you're curious (I know I am) and want to run a few benchmarks on some of those cards to see how the numbers compare to mine, here's part of my benchmark suite:
Phil's DOS Benchmark Pack:
Speedsys Video Memory Speed
3D Bench 1.0c
Chris' 3D 320x200
PC Player 320x200
Doom max details
Quake 320x200
Quake 360x480

In addition, I test Duke3D and Descent2 with their built-in framerate display, showing fps at the start of level 1 in the default start position. I don't want to influence you, so I won't share my numbers til you share some of yours.

If you do want to try, I'd start with TNT2 M64 and ARK1000. Thanks for considering this.

clueless1 wrote on 2020-01-30, 10:54:

The 430TX will probably make this not feasible. I'm testing on a 430FX with no L2 cache. It's what I have. But, if you're cur […]
Show full quote

The 430TX will probably make this not feasible. I'm testing on a 430FX with no L2 cache. It's what I have. But, if you're curious (I know I am) and want to run a few benchmarks on some of those cards to see how the numbers compare to mine, here's part of my benchmark suite:
Phil's DOS Benchmark Pack:
Speedsys Video Memory Speed
3D Bench 1.0c
Chris' 3D 320x200
PC Player 320x200
Doom max details
Quake 320x200
Quake 360x480

In addition, I test Duke3D and Descent2 with their built-in framerate display, showing fps at the start of level 1 in the default start position. I don't want to influence you, so I won't share my numbers til you share some of yours.

If you do want to try, I'd start with TNT2 M64 and ARK1000. Thanks for considering this.

I will definitely get around to this soon. I am having difficulties with getting this build to work currently, as soon as it is up and running this will be my new pet project. 😁

RetroLizard wrote on 2020-01-29, 23:05:

canthearu wrote on 2020-01-29, 22:19:

No, not really retro. Ori and the blind forest doesn't even run properly on windows XP. That said, it is a great game, so you should definitely give it a go!

Agreed. Great game to play.

I actually played it several times over. My poor Radeon can just barely handle the graphics at 66% resolution. 😀 The whole power supply thread I started and Geforce 550 comments here were the result of a clumsy attempt to upgrade my pc which I gave up on. Decided to get rid of it and get a new pc. When Ori and the Will of the Wisps is released.

LewisRaz wrote on 2020-01-29, 21:23:

This one is 33mhz with 8mhz turbo (according to the display on the case!) […]
Show full quote

This one is 33mhz with 8mhz turbo (according to the display on the case!)

I actually am not familiar with anything pre 486 so it has been a learning adventure too.
It only has 1.5mb of ram. Should I look to expand this?

The ebay seller actually requested that I preserve his data if possible and now I have confirmed the HDD to be working I need to find a way to move it.

Yes, upgrade it. Especially when you use Windows and post 1989 games on it. Even our 25mhz bennefitted from extra memory.

I've been getting my pc collection organized a bit. i got a few socket 370 Celeron machines for free, but i recently acquired some better machines - so i saved the ram and hdds, and put the machines into storage.

Anyone have bad luck with "infineon" ram?
I've now had 2 sticks in 2 different machines, both so bad they refused to fully POST.

Took my gateway g6-266 and turned it into a file server, with 4 120GB hdds. Took a fan from a junk PSU and added it to the case to push air in, in addition to the PSU fan pulling air across the CPU out.
I also set up my G6-400 into a machine built for scanning photos right next to it. Dual monitors for the first time ever!
Then I added the netgear 24+4 switch and networked the two. After a minor bit of configuring the Tcp/ip and adapters, theyre now networked together.
The other bench has my G7-500 with wheel and pedals for Nascar Racing, and my IBM PC340. The P3 seems to run Nascar great with the tnt2m64 and the SB16Vibra. The IBM is running win95c/plus since it it has no USB ports, but i am starting to like the idea of downclocking the 100mhz and making it into a 486- equivalent with dos/win 3.11wfw. I have enough win9x machines the way it is.

And I have enough NICs that i put one in every machine. in a pinch i could just string a line and transfer anything i need. all.my larger HDDs have a backup partition that has a copy of OS install discs, so i can rebuild at will.

I swear the 3 boards I need to recap are going to get done someday. 🤣
At least its cleaner and morr organized. The Mrs. appreciates it.