Played a little Elite II : Frontiers on my main vintage computer.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

I watched Toy Story on blu-ray. What a fantastic movie!
The razor sharp picture. The reflections in Buzz's helmet. The realistic shadows. What Pixar was able to accomplish in 1995 with a bunch of 100MHz SPARC processors still amazes the hell out of me.

They went back and got the original data files to make the 3D version (the original was ~720P or so) - and they probably used that re-render for the Blu-Ray.

stamasd wrote:

The magnetic material used to make floppies, HDDs etc is high-coercivity; it takes a lot more than a speaker magnet to corrupt it. If it becomes corrupt from such a weak magnetic field, the floppy had problems to begin with.

I agree, only approaching a magnet to a floppy won't corrupt data right away.
But it doesn't take more than a speaker magnet for prolonged periods. Famous for this is the case of the Amstrad CPC 6128: Above the floppy drive it was the perfect place to keep a couple of floppy disks handy. Little did we know back then that behind the drive there was the speaker. Disks were becoming suddenly unusable and it took some time until magazines and BBSs brought up the issue and made the connection (no internet!)

King_Corduroy wrote:

Played a little Elite II : Frontiers on my main vintage computer.

Lovely!

King_Corduroy wrote:

Played a little Elite II : Frontiers on my main vintage computer.

Holly COW!
I had one of these monitors along with the speakers, diskette case and mic, they were my first back it 1994.
It was a Pentium 133 with Arklogic 1MB and 16MB of RAM.
The volume is on the right side with a toothed scroll wheel, right?
Oh the memories.

I remember we used a funky CRT anti-radiation filter for years with this setup:

James-F wrote:

Holly COW! I had one of these monitors along with the speakers, diskette case and mic, they were my first back it 1994. It was a […]
Show full quote

King_Corduroy wrote:

Played a little Elite II : Frontiers on my main vintage computer.

Holly COW!
I had one of these monitors along with the speakers, diskette case and mic, they were my first back it 1994.
It was a Pentium 133 with Arklogic 1MB and 16MB of RAM.
The volume is on the right side with a toothed scroll wheel, right?
Oh the memories.

I remember we used a funky CRT anti-radiation filter for years with this setup:

Yup!

Dunno if you can see the make in the photo but it's a Packard Bell computer, I've pieced together a full matching setup. Took a while to find the monitor but man now that I finally have one I couldn't be happier. 🤣

The computer the monitor is attached to is this guy:

It's a Packard Bell Platinum 55 from 1996, Packards usually generally suck for 3d games from the late 90's but it runs everything else awesomely. I grew up on a couple Packard Bell computers also and they are very nostalgic for me as well. I've gone a little crazy about it now and I own seven unique Packard Bell computers, I only have two monitors and one mouse but more than enough matching keyboards to go around. 🤣

In fact to make a little addendum to what retro stuff I did today I just rescued another Packard Bell and some other stuff from the trash today. 😁

King_Corduroy wrote:

Played a little Elite II : Frontiers on my main vintage computer. […]
Show full quote

Played a little Elite II : Frontiers on my main vintage computer.

One of my favorite games. What patches are you using?

I used the Frontierverse version, worked right away with no fiddeling around. 😁

Btw the Packard Bell Legend 155 works flawlessly!

Currently attempting to update Windows 7. . .what a freaking nightmare. Word of advice, if you want a day-to-day machine using slightly older hardware just use Linux at this point. Windows 7 updates are broken as heck on a fresh install.

-

I'm still testing retro PC stuff I got from FreeGeeks as well as stuff from ebay.

Found out while the cheapo USB-to-MIDI cable works, it introduced a clicking sound. Maybe not grounded correctly? Thankfully I purchased a Roland One-UM USB-to-MIDI cable as soon as I was informed the cheapo may have issues (I wish I new before I bought it). That said, I was playing with my Roland SC-55 with MIDI files (games MIDI, music MIDI) on my Windows 10 machine (can't wait to try it on actual DOS games on my retro PCs once finished building). That thing sounds great! Need RCA to headphone mini jack adapter now (was using the headphone jack on the Sound Canvas). Oh, also removed battery from the SC-55.

Tested out the Asus P5A mobo with the included K6-2 350 MHz (ebay), a K6-III 450 MHz (ebay), and a Pentium MMX 233 Mhz (FreeGeeks). All working! Also in the process cleaned up the CPUs, straightened some pins (grr!), and cleaned/tested some Socket 7 HSF (wow, no thermal paste makes it easier to swap - also re-amazed they were so tiny and don't have as much force as today's HSFs mounts).

Cleaned up some old beige speakers (and tested).

Just plain marveling at the stuff I got. 😁 Especially the beige mid tower ATX case and various cards. Although, I am swearing off ebay now - shit just cost too much! Going free, cheap, or nothing at all.

Made a few tests with my Voodoo SLI setup - tested how well cards with 90MHz and 100MHz memory perform in Quake 2 and Unreal (SLI 90+100 vs 100+100; Single 90 vs 100).

In a single card setup both performed identically.
When in SLI mode, Q2 performed nearly identically, however Unreal got a 10% boost when both cards had 100MHz memory.
It seems its a good idea to match up your cards 😀

PeterLI wrote:

A few weeks ago I installed Windows 7 on a SSD. It required 100s of updates over the course of a few days. No issues though.

It is odd, that is typically what I have run into updating 7 but 50% of the time update breaks and requires a reinstall of 7 to fix lately. THEN it works again. The rollup seems to help

Not sure if it counts, but I just rewrote my FAT12 boot sector code (for booting from a 1.44 MB floppy disk). I write everything in x86 assembly language. Might write FAT16 and FAT32 versions next, then a small app that will automatically generate the correct data for any FAT drive. I hope to write a basic DOS compatible OS to run on 386 and later PCs in my collection 😀

ODwilly wrote:

PeterLI wrote:

A few weeks ago I installed Windows 7 on a SSD. It required 100s of updates over the course of a few days. No issues though.

It is odd, that is typically what I have run into updating 7 but 50% of the time update breaks and requires a reinstall of 7 to fix lately. THEN it works again. The rollup seems to help

Of course the ultimate solution to all of this is just do a bare install and disable and -NEVER INSTALL- updates. I haven't installed any windows updates on any of my machines (retro XP or Win7 or my modern Win8.1) in over 5 years now. I've never once had a single issue so far. I usually do install the service packs though but offline installer versions only.

Unorthodox way of transferring files to an old machine with no USB and a SCSI HD http://i.imgur.com/h3jQpob.jpg

oeuvre wrote:

Unorthodox way of transferring files to an old machine with no USB and a SCSI HD http://i.imgur.com/h3jQpob.jpg

Don't feel bad. I've done worse (similar?) ways of moving about data before.

Temporary setup 2 years ago to rebuild a raid array from a failed raid controller using a second motherboard and spare hard drive:

Tried making a DIY SLI bridge for my Voodoo 2 and failed, miserably. I followed this instruction.

1. The FDD sleeves are extremely fragile to the point where they simply aren't meant to be tampered with. It took me about three sleeves till I figured how to loosen the locks. Otherwise they would just break no matter what I did.
2. When you try to remove the sleeve from the pins they tend to just stay inside of it and jump out of the connector
3. The instruction says to use a hammer to set the pins into places. The problem is that the pins easily bend during this process

Eventually I managed to assemble the bridge. The fastest machine I have right now is a Pentium 233 MMX with a Matrox Millenium (4 MB VRAM), 64 MB RAM. I made a clean Win98SE install, got the FastVoodoo drivers and DX7. Then proceeded to install Quake and Quake 2.

1. Quake 2 only launched in software mode. Whenever I try to switch to 1024x768 the game just hangs
2. Tried starting Quake 1, it looked interlaced. So I figured the bridge isn't working even if the 3DFX tab in Display Properties said "SLI detected"

So I figured maybe I've put the SLI bridge in the wrong direction or something. And of course as soon as I try to disconnect it from the Voodoo it just breaks apart. The pins and the connector stays in the port of the Voodoo, the lock just came apart (because it was loose) and the sleeve came off too.

At this point I'm incredibly mad at myself. I guess, I'll just try to find a real SLI bridge (they aren't too expensive on Ebay) or someone who can do the DIY mod for me. My hands are probably growing from the wrong place, after all.

Prepping a new take on the PC I had built for me in 2007. The original build sported a Core 2 Duo E6420 on an ASUS P5B-VM motherboard with 2GB of DDR2 RAM, GeForce 7600GT and 320GB SATA hard drive on which Windows XP was installed.

Now, I'm building a PC that may even be overkill for that time period (some parts may be too recent, but I'd like someone to confirm this), and this is what I plan to use:

-Core 2 Quad Q6600
-ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP motherboard
-8GB of DDR2-800 RAM
-GeForce 8800GTX
-320GB hard drive
-DVD burner & floppy drive
-Windows XP

A build like this would likely have cost a fortune in 2007, I'm sure. It's almost ready to go, however, the power supply I want to use for this build (rated for 550W) is missing a 6-pin auxiliary power connector for the 8800GTX, so I will need to sort that out first before I can get this computer put together.