The article wasn't as bad as I feared, but it's not as good as it should be. I think it's just a test to see if the audience is interested. The info is lacking and not very well presented, so I don't think much time was spent on it.

I get the impression that the author's knowledge of late 90s hardware is a bit spotty. I'm not sure why he immediately jumped into a comparison of the 810/815 vs RAMBUS, ignoring the larger galaxy of chipsets and assigning importance to something that hardly matters when RAMBUS is no longer prohibitively expensive. If any chipset needed special mention, it's the 440BX, surely the most famous chipset of the late 90s and the closest thing to an industry standard for that period. Everything on it works well, and that's a big deal.
He made a short comment that AMD motherboards didn't have any notable issues in the late 90s.. really? If nothing else, they are famous for the AGP headaches suffered at the hands of their 2nd rate chipsets. He had already said AGP was desirable yet didn't seem to know how broken AGP support was on non-Intel chipsets back then. This was a far more deserving topic than SDRAM vs RAMBUS.

No mention of bad capacitors.. this should absolutely be mentioned, because it's a huge gotcha for anybody buying these old boards. People need to be aware of that problem and know what to look for.

The paragraph about Dell was a bit odd. He called out just 1 brand of prebuilt PC and reflected such a typical bias of the THG crowd that it came off a bit fanboyish. I'm guessing he isn't aware that the Dell motherboards of the Slot-1 era are actually Intel motherboards, very reliable ones which are more likely to still work today than most ABit/Asus/Gigabyte/etc boards. Honestly I've never heard complaints about the 6pin aux power connector before, and out of all the Dells I've run into, none have had anything plugged into it. I don't think that connector is unique to Dell. I've seen them on IBMs and on mainstream retail PSUs. The connector people usually complain about is the 20pin, which on many Dells of that time do have a different pinout.
I remember there was a THG article sometime maybe 1yr back about old motherboards, and the person writing that article didn't know what the 6pin connectors were. I'm not sure this author understands their purpose either. Most systems don't need them unless you've plugged in a lot of cards.

It wasn't too bad, but it's a bit weird to realize that the writers at THG today no longer have much memory or knowledge of P1/P2/P3 PC hardware. The site made it's name on that stuff.
Doesn't Thomas Pabst write articles anymore?

I think he means (without knowing it) the non standard ATX connector problem. But agree, there are bigger things to point out like chipsets, with broken features and the big one, PCI vs sound in DOS

shamino wrote:

Doesn't Thomas Pabst write articles anymore?

Not in ages.

Putas wrote:

shamino wrote:

Doesn't Thomas Pabst write articles anymore?

Not in ages.

Too bad. This seems like exactly the topic that should have brought him out for an encore. Seems like he'd enjoy the opportunity to revisit this stuff, but maybe it's not that simple. The article would have more credibility and novelty with his name at the top - though I'm not sure he ever covered DOS gaming, one would assume he had plenty of experience with it before his web site started.

Anyway, I don't want to be harsh on the new(er) guy. Maybe he'll spend more time on it and the next article will be better.

shamino wrote:

The article wasn't as bad as I feared, but it's not as good as it should be. I think it's just a test to see if the audience is […]
Show full quote

The article wasn't as bad as I feared, but it's not as good as it should be. I think it's just a test to see if the audience is interested. The info is lacking and not very well presented, so I don't think much time was spent on it.

I get the impression that the author's knowledge of late 90s hardware is a bit spotty. I'm not sure why he immediately jumped into a comparison of the 810/815 vs RAMBUS, ignoring the larger galaxy of chipsets and assigning importance to something that hardly matters when RAMBUS is no longer prohibitively expensive. If any chipset needed special mention, it's the 440BX, surely the most famous chipset of the late 90s and the closest thing to an industry standard for that period. Everything on it works well, and that's a big deal.
He made a short comment that AMD motherboards didn't have any notable issues in the late 90s.. really? If nothing else, they are famous for the AGP headaches suffered at the hands of their 2nd rate chipsets. He had already said AGP was desirable yet didn't seem to know how broken AGP support was on non-Intel chipsets back then. This was a far more deserving topic than SDRAM vs RAMBUS.

No mention of bad capacitors.. this should absolutely be mentioned, because it's a huge gotcha for anybody buying these old boards. People need to be aware of that problem and know what to look for.

The paragraph about Dell was a bit odd. He called out just 1 brand of prebuilt PC and reflected such a typical bias of the THG crowd that it came off a bit fanboyish. I'm guessing he isn't aware that the Dell motherboards of the Slot-1 era are actually Intel motherboards, very reliable ones which are more likely to still work today than most ABit/Asus/Gigabyte/etc boards. Honestly I've never heard complaints about the 6pin aux power connector before, and out of all the Dells I've run into, none have had anything plugged into it. I don't think that connector is unique to Dell. I've seen them on IBMs and on mainstream retail PSUs. The connector people usually complain about is the 20pin, which on many Dells of that time do have a different pinout.
I remember there was a THG article sometime maybe 1yr back about old motherboards, and the person writing that article didn't know what the 6pin connectors were. I'm not sure this author understands their purpose either. Most systems don't need them unless you've plugged in a lot of cards.

It wasn't too bad, but it's a bit weird to realize that the writers at THG today no longer have much memory or knowledge of P1/P2/P3 PC hardware. The site made it's name on that stuff.
Doesn't Thomas Pabst write articles anymore?

Pretty much sums it up and I was one of their top ranked posters for what two and a half years in the top 50. THG isn't what it once was and only serves modern users with very little know how so it is no surprise they missed the mark on anything older than Core 2. They are very clueless on hardware from the last decade let alone the 80s and 90s stuff, their memory is very short and their users are dreadful. Pretty sad to be honest as old school hardware modding scene is long gone. 😢

shamino wrote:

The article wasn't as bad as I feared, but it's not as good as it should be. I think it's just a test to see if the audience is […]
Show full quote

The article wasn't as bad as I feared, but it's not as good as it should be. I think it's just a test to see if the audience is interested. The info is lacking and not very well presented, so I don't think much time was spent on it.

I get the impression that the author's knowledge of late 90s hardware is a bit spotty. I'm not sure why he immediately jumped into a comparison of the 810/815 vs RAMBUS, ignoring the larger galaxy of chipsets and assigning importance to something that hardly matters when RAMBUS is no longer prohibitively expensive. If any chipset needed special mention, it's the 440BX, surely the most famous chipset of the late 90s and the closest thing to an industry standard for that period. Everything on it works well, and that's a big deal.
He made a short comment that AMD motherboards didn't have any notable issues in the late 90s.. really? If nothing else, they are famous for the AGP headaches suffered at the hands of their 2nd rate chipsets. He had already said AGP was desirable yet didn't seem to know how broken AGP support was on non-Intel chipsets back then. This was a far more deserving topic than SDRAM vs RAMBUS.

No mention of bad capacitors.. this should absolutely be mentioned, because it's a huge gotcha for anybody buying these old boards. People need to be aware of that problem and know what to look for.

The paragraph about Dell was a bit odd. He called out just 1 brand of prebuilt PC and reflected such a typical bias of the THG crowd that it came off a bit fanboyish. I'm guessing he isn't aware that the Dell motherboards of the Slot-1 era are actually Intel motherboards, very reliable ones which are more likely to still work today than most ABit/Asus/Gigabyte/etc boards. Honestly I've never heard complaints about the 6pin aux power connector before, and out of all the Dells I've run into, none have had anything plugged into it. I don't think that connector is unique to Dell. I've seen them on IBMs and on mainstream retail PSUs. The connector people usually complain about is the 20pin, which on many Dells of that time do have a different pinout.
I remember there was a THG article sometime maybe 1yr back about old motherboards, and the person writing that article didn't know what the 6pin connectors were. I'm not sure this author understands their purpose either. Most systems don't need them unless you've plugged in a lot of cards.

It wasn't too bad, but it's a bit weird to realize that the writers at THG today no longer have much memory or knowledge of P1/P2/P3 PC hardware. The site made it's name on that stuff.
Doesn't Thomas Pabst write articles anymore?

I dunno man I had a KX133 FiC based SlotA board running an Athlon 600 and a Geforce 2 MX 400 back in 2001, seemed stable to me. As for THG all the info is still there, I've been reading it and AT articles from pre 2002 again and they contain a slew of useful info, if the writer of this article simply read those articles it would have helped 🤣. Then again he could have just linked to them and been 100% right 🤣

badmojo wrote:

I've come back to FM too, after buying / trying all sorts of fancy MIDI stuff. It's how I remember it sounding, it always works, and it's the cheapest option by a mile.

I can relate to this.

Monkey Island 2 or Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, are two games that I played to death as a kid. When I got my first Sound Blaster, I was amazed at the quality. I only got Roland gear as an adult, and there are often sections that sound "off" somewhat. Monkey Island 2 is worse, because with Roland many sounds are missing.