wiretap wrote on 2020-02-01, 04:06:

The beast tower lives. […]
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The beast tower lives.

It's glorious, but I gotta say, RPM = 0 is fairly anticlimatic.

Yea, I gotta hook up some fans to that controller. 😜

wiretap wrote on 2020-02-01, 04:06:

The beast tower lives. […]
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The beast tower lives.

oh my all those drive bay goodies :3c nice.

Had a chance to try out the CRT that came with the 386 this evening. Still in its OG box with inserts. Also inside the box were 2 beige kettle leads to match although I opted to use my known safe ones instead...

It does work but with some problems, the brightness is stuck on max and in lower resolutions there are lines at an angle almost horizontal to the screen. Appears that this is caused by dead caps but I do not feel thats a job for me to be trying.

LewisRaz wrote on 2020-02-01, 19:27:

and in lower resolutions there are lines at an angle almost horizontal to the screen.

These are the retract lines and are always visible when the brightness is way too high. Once you fix the brightness, the lines are gone as well.

Just found a CM3 cdrom! That will work for me, no Mercosul Cup bug (found on CM 99/00) so I can play my favorite 1998/1999 era team! Yippee Kay Yay, Motherf.... !!!

I tried out a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PRO (Virge/DX) card tonight.. It has a weird quirk, at the POST screen text that should be grey looks light green (white/bold text still looks white) and when I enter the BIOS all the colors look fine. Wtf? Dodgy BIOS? The BIOS chip does look a bit suspect..

appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-01, 20:56:

I tried out a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PRO (Virge/DX) card tonight.. It has a weird quirk, at the PST screen text that should be […]
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I tried out a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PRO (Virge/DX) card tonight.. It has a weird quirk, at the PST screen text that should be grey looks light green (white/bold text still looks white) and when I enter the BIOS all the colors look fine. Wtf? Dodgy BIOS? The BIOS chip does look a bit suspect..

That was my first ever GPU!

appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-01, 20:56:

I tried out a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PRO (Virge/DX) card tonight.. It has a weird quirk, at the POST screen text that should be grey looks light green (white/bold text still looks white) and when I enter the BIOS all the colors look fine. Wtf? Dodgy BIOS? The BIOS chip does look a bit suspect..

Any indication from the POST screen if it's an actual Diamond card? Sometimes the VGA BIOS shows some text just prior to the motherboard BIOS. You can also use some DOS utilities to see if they see a Diamond brand in the VGA. My Stealth 3D 2000 Pro has a different layout then yours. And it's also one of the few cards of its time that has VBE2.0 built in (though SciTech Display Doctor still improves performance).

appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-01, 20:56:

I tried out a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PRO (Virge/DX) card tonight..

does it has the black pedestal problem ?
btw if you want replacement eeprom with other version I got a burner and some compatible prom here

one post away from being an oldbie, is that retro enough for you ?

here is a picture of my sega megadrive edit to have it stereo output. This will be my 500th's post, it's a retro-activity, although I'm now not so sure the megadrive really need an stereo output.

Revisited some 2012 benchmarking on my Chaintech 7NJS

I'm actually recreating my Windows 98SE virtual machine from scratch. I'd rather try Windows 95, but let's see the state of the things in Windows 98 as of now...

Edit: waste of time.

clueless1 wrote on 2020-02-01, 23:36:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-01, 20:56:

I tried out a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PRO (Virge/DX) card tonight.. It has a weird quirk, at the POST screen text that should be grey looks light green (white/bold text still looks white) and when I enter the BIOS all the colors look fine. Wtf? Dodgy BIOS? The BIOS chip does look a bit suspect..

Any indication from the POST screen if it's an actual Diamond card? Sometimes the VGA BIOS shows some text just prior to the motherboard BIOS. You can also use some DOS utilities to see if they see a Diamond brand in the VGA. My Stealth 3D 2000 Pro has a different layout then yours. And it's also one of the few cards of its time that has VBE2.0 built in (though SciTech Display Doctor still improves performance).

Yes right before the POST I get a very normal Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 Pro splash screen informinh me 4MB of VRAM was found. It is strange, I will make a video..

ElBrunzy wrote on 2020-02-01, 23:52:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-01, 20:56:

I tried out a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PRO (Virge/DX) card tonight..

does it has the black pedestal problem ?
btw if you want replacement eeprom with other version I got a burner and some compatible prom here

Well.. I would sure like one if I can confirm BIOS is the issue. I have another non-Diamond Virge/DX, maybe I ought to try the BIOS from that first?

appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-02, 07:33:

clueless1 wrote on 2020-02-01, 23:36:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-01, 20:56:

I tried out a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PRO (Virge/DX) card tonight.. It has a weird quirk, at the POST screen text that should be grey looks light green (white/bold text still looks white) and when I enter the BIOS all the colors look fine. Wtf? Dodgy BIOS? The BIOS chip does look a bit suspect..

Any indication from the POST screen if it's an actual Diamond card? Sometimes the VGA BIOS shows some text just prior to the motherboard BIOS. You can also use some DOS utilities to see if they see a Diamond brand in the VGA. My Stealth 3D 2000 Pro has a different layout then yours. And it's also one of the few cards of its time that has VBE2.0 built in (though SciTech Display Doctor still improves performance).

Yes right before the POST I get a very normal Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 Pro splash screen informinh me 4MB of VRAM was found. It is strange, I will make a video..

Here's what mine looks like:

Warning, picture heavy post, for dial-up users out there. Click on the thumbnails to watch the pictures in full size glory.

Some days ago, this little creature followed me. Couldn't do anything else other than taking it home with me.

It's an Asus EeePC 4G 701, the little subnotebook that started the netbook craze in 2007. It was previously used by two kids, so it was in a rather sorry state: very dirty, signs of crayons and dried glue everywhere, the upper frame that was no longer holding up in the hinges area, unidentifiable gunk on the keyboard and something rattling inside, making it sound like a pair of maracas (most likely what was left of the screw holders of the upper frame). So, with a lot of elbow grease and isopropyl alcohol, I finally managed to get it almost squeaky clean, at least without being afraid of getting my hands dirty by just holding it. In the beginning, it came with the atrocious factory Xandros Linux distribution and the original SiS 512MB DDRAM2 667 module. So, I have upgraded the machine to 2GB with a spare Hynix DDRAM2 800 module I had around, added a 32GB TF card with an adapter, wiped out the original Linux installation and replaced it with a nLited version of Windows XP Professional SP3, which snuggly fitted into the 4GB SSD, occupying only 865MB of space after disabling the swap file, and installing all the software into the TF card. I wish I was able to use NTFS junction links in order to move the other folders to the card, but for some reason, Windows does not let me do that.

And here it is, after being cleaned up and doing a test run with Roytam1's Serpent browser and my UOC Patch. Quite usable with it, although not very fast due to the CPU being underclocked to 630MHz and the underclocked Intel GMA 900 IGP, but usable.

Then, this morning, I decided I should fix the rattling issue, because I really don't like using a laptop that sounds like maracas, and I took it apart. Found that the most important screw holders that held the frame in place, were disintegrated. Fortunately, the broken pieces were still in the computer, so I managed to superglue them back, and now the EeePC is finally back in one piece, has a more robust and solid feeling, and no longer rattles when you move it around. I also tried to upgrade the WiFi module, a Qualcomm Atheros 802.11b/g, with an 802.11b/g/n module, but it doesn't post with any other card than the original one, sadly. Does anybody know if there is an 802.11n card, possibly with two antennas, that works with the EeePC 4G? That would be great if I can improve the wireless capabilities of this machine.

But the tale does not end here. After putting it back together, I thought about overclocking the machine. After all, it came underclocked by the factory to save power, but since the original battery no longer holds much juice (and I plan to replace it with an extended battery anyway), thought about giving overclocking a try, and so I have installed EeeCTL and GMAbooster, in order to bring the machine's FSB to 130MHz and overclock the IGP to 400Mhz. And voilà, the EeePC is much, much faster now and luckily, the Hynix module I'm using seem to tolerate the overclock without any issue. World's fastest EeePC 4G? Who knows, but to me, at least, it is!

So I kept optimizing it and configuring the browsers, and found out that the best ones in terms of performance on this netbook are New Moon 27 and K-Meleon Goanna, always patched of course. Managed even to watch Youtube in VLC and through Viewtube:

I must say I'd have never thought that a netbook would be so fun to use, let alone so usable after rightclocking it first, and overclocking it secondly. It's true that the UOC Patch definitely improves the performance on the web, but I think that an EeePC 4G, with a TF card to extend its cramped storage capabilities, can be quite a capable little machine. I still haven't installed games yet, but I plan to do it in future. Nothing incredibly modern and fancy, but I think that 1990s games should run without issues on the Intel GMA, making it the μRDD, to differentiate it from its bigger brother. While it's less powerful than that, it surely can pack a punch. As future upgrades, I plan to replace the original battery with an 8800mAh extended one and get an oldschool Celeron M sticker, because it was the one used in the prototype EeePC 4G I have seen in spring 2007, when me and my father were invited by Asus (as we are an official Asus retailer) at the preview of this little machine. Guess it's a fun way to relive that memory, although the prototype was pearl white, instead of white and teal. But who cares, I like the old Intel logo more than the redesigned one.

I overclocked the two 1.25GHz G4 chips in my PowerMac MDD to 1.5GHz.
With the 7800GS AGP video card, it can now crack 30 fps in Doom 3, which is still lame as balls compared to similarly clocked Athlon XPs and even PIIIs, but I'll take it!
UT2K4 is in the ~40 fps range now, which is pretty decent for an old PPC machine. Still, there's no denying the fact that this slow, hot beast makes the Pentium D look like a model of efficiency.

GigAHerZ wrote on 2020-01-13, 16:23:

Just got this baby for under 22€. https://imgur.com/a/74WkJqg (seller's image) […]
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Just got this baby for under 22€.
https://imgur.com/a/74WkJqg (seller's image)

Only description is that with some random vga card, the picture didn't come up. But we'll see.

It does have Math-co processor also. (Y)

Got this board, and it was in pretty terrible condition.
Keyboard controller and math-co processor were in the socket wrong way around and keyboard controller had some pins crushed and bent into short with neighbouring pins. Terrible.

Keyboard controller seems to be out of it's juice, but i borrowed a kbc from another board, a 386sx one. Got the board working and seems to be fine in general.
I still have to do some more diagnostics but for some reason right now, it doesn't like the 512MB CF card too much to play with. It does boot into DOS with DOS 6.22 install disk 1, exiting out into command prompt.

In general, a nice board. If i'm correct, it has 10MHz 286 and 6MHz 287 (N80L286-10/S and 2C87 -6 respectively), 1MB onboard memory and 4 SIMM slots. (with pins, instead of socket)
I'm so glad it's actually in working condition.
The board is this: https://th99.infania.net/m/U-Z/30473.htm

I'll try to get it running a bit better and can then run some benchmarks and diagnostics. Right now, it just boots into dos with diskette.