Trashbytes wrote on 2025-01-19, 04:51:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-01-19, 04:13:

As a wise man once said: "Good thing I brought my axe-cane."

Spiders or roaches, abandon hope all ye who dare oppose me!

The great Lord Cthulhu mumbles in his sleep disturbed by some fool yelling at spiders.

The foolish warrior wielding an axe-cane in question:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-01-19, 05:39:

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-01-19, 04:51:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-01-19, 04:13:

As a wise man once said: "Good thing I brought my axe-cane."

Spiders or roaches, abandon hope all ye who dare oppose me!

The great Lord Cthulhu mumbles in his sleep disturbed by some fool yelling at spiders.

The foolish warrior wielding an axe-cane in question:

Dr House is indeed a worthy opponent

Bought these 2x 256MB Corsair Sticks today. They should have Winbond BH5 Chips installed from what I could find so I'm excited to try those.

Also got a similar pair 2x512MB with CH5 which are also not bad. 15€ including shipping for both. Untested though.

I got this 8-bit ISA EGA/VGA card. It has a 9pin connector and a 15pin D-Sub connector. It has 256kb video memory with its eight 4464-chips.
The VGA-chip is a Paradise'88 PVGA1A-JK. I did a little research but I couldn't find any info about the card manufacturer. It is not listed among the cards that were made by Paradise (or at least I couldn't find it). The "PVG8" that is printed on the circuit board didn't help to find more info either. I found a datasheet for the PVGA1A. This chip is able to support 256kb (8x4464), 512kb (16x4464) and 1MB (8x4256). 1MB would be awesome on a 8-bit card. Maybe I will upgrade the memory 😁
Anyway, here are some pictures 😀:

See if any of those toggle switches allow MDA (monochrome) over the VGA output. I'm looking for a card that can do that simultaneously with another primary VGA display adapter for dual video output in DOS.

It was SCSI day. I had to sort the whole bin to find anything, but I grabbed the "good stuff"; 44 Items from the $.50 bin!

Also two more Quantums and a very nice Compaq keyboard for my Deskpro. Couple of cards, too. Adaptec 2906, Adaptec 2930B, UDS-IS11 external SCSI, and 3Ware Escalade 200-0069.
Tape drives are usually broken, but for $.50, can't leave it there! Colorado T1000 (I have a few of these now and might be able to make a working one if this one doesn't)

Going from the K7-750 to the A-950, was quite substantial. Using a GeForce 2 GTS as a baseline case and everything else exactly equal.
It improved 3Dmark scores about 15% on average across the board. In 2000 and 2001SE. With 1% lows and visual stuttering dramatically improved.
The biggest single difference between 2 tests was 27% on 2001SE on the Car High Detail Test.

Very cool 😎, big upgrade.

Time to slap an 80mm fan on it.
Your ears will thank you.

Time to slap an 80mm fan on it.
Your ears will thank you.

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-01-19, 19:29:

See if any of those toggle switches allow MDA (monochrome) over the VGA output. I'm looking for a card that can do that simultaneously with another primary VGA display adapter for dual video output in DOS.

Will do as soon as I get new RAM chips (8x4464). The ones on this GPU are faulty.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-01-20, 03:25:

Going from the K7-750 to the A-950, was quite substantial. Using a GeForce 2 GTS as a baseline case and everything else exactly […]
Show full quote

Going from the K7-750 to the A-950, was quite substantial. Using a GeForce 2 GTS as a baseline case and everything else exactly equal.
It improved 3Dmark scores about 15% on average across the board. In 2000 and 2001SE. With 1% lows and visual stuttering dramatically improved.
The biggest single difference between 2 tests was 27% on 2001SE on the Car High Detail Test.

Very cool 😎, big upgrade.

The attachment PXL_20250120_031516513.jpg is no longer available

Is the 950 Thunderbird with on-die cache?

H3nrik V! wrote on 2025-01-20, 12:57:

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-01-20, 03:25:

Going from the K7-750 to the A-950, was quite substantial. Using a GeForce 2 GTS as a baseline case and everything else exactly […]
Show full quote

Going from the K7-750 to the A-950, was quite substantial. Using a GeForce 2 GTS as a baseline case and everything else exactly equal.
It improved 3Dmark scores about 15% on average across the board. In 2000 and 2001SE. With 1% lows and visual stuttering dramatically improved.
The biggest single difference between 2 tests was 27% on 2001SE on the Car High Detail Test.

Very cool 😎, big upgrade.

The attachment PXL_20250120_031516513.jpg is no longer available

Is the 950 Thunderbird with on-die cache?

Yup Yup,
"K" designation is Pluto/Orion (External Cache) Retail / OEM
"A" designation is Thunderbird (Internal Cache) OEM Only
I have been told that the A 950/1000 are the most rare Slot A's, but I have no production numbers or anything to back that statement.
Interestingly enough I have seen more of the 1000's model than 950's in both K & A. Perhaps they just come up for sale more often.

Bought a Geforce 3 😀

PcBytes wrote on 2025-01-20, 16:45:

Bought a Geforce 3 😀

That is always a good decision. 😉

Questionable if retro enough, but I bought a Radeon HD 2900 XT, Asus Stalker edition. These cards are often a lottery, just like R3x0 cards.
If the card works, it would be perfect material for some Vista troll machine.

PcBytes wrote on 2025-01-20, 16:45:

Bought a Geforce 3 😀

But which one?

smtkr wrote on 2025-01-20, 20:35:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-01-20, 16:45:

Bought a Geforce 3 😀

But which one?

Palit branded card. I assume it's a Ti200, according to one bay listing I could find (the one I ordered was a classified ad from my country).

PD2JK wrote on 2025-01-20, 18:38:

That is always a good decision. ;) […]
Show full quote

PcBytes wrote on 2025-01-20, 16:45:

Bought a Geforce 3 😀

That is always a good decision. 😉

Questionable if retro enough, but I bought a Radeon HD 2900 XT, Asus Stalker edition. These cards are often a lottery, just like R3x0 cards.
If the card works, it would be perfect material for some Vista troll machine.

HD 2900XT fits my definition of retro and it was actually hard to find one for my collection (ATi collection)
GDDR3 or GDDR4 ?

myne wrote on 2025-01-20, 05:01:

Time to slap an 80mm fan on it.
Your ears will thank you.

Surprisingly I can't hear it over the whir sound of the 20GB SCSI Hard Drive 🤣.

I have finally completed my Tualatin board collection, finally saw a Via Apollo Pro 266T board show up, a dual CPU one too.

Its an Iwill DVD266, with 2Gb DDR and a pair of 1GHz CPUs, ILl be swapping these for a pair of Tualatin 1.4s CPUs and some lovely big solid copper coolers.

Not sure if the seller is a member here but the fact this board has clearly been looked after and even comes with its IO shield does lend me to believe they are also a retro collector.

Some pics

Now I just have to wait for it to arrive so I can throw a Geforce 4 TI4600 at it and play some games on her.

Bit of digging, I may have to use the Tualatin interposers on this one ..its not the 266T version by the looks of it.

acl wrote on 2025-01-20, 21:01:

HD 2900XT fits my definition of retro and it was actually hard to find one for my collection (ATi collection)
GDDR3 or GDDR4 ?

It is the early 512MB GDDR3 version. I haven't seen the 1GB GDDR4 version in the wild, yet. Do you have the 1GB version? 😀

Interesting card in many ways.
-first ATi/AMD DirectX 10 card
-first graphics card with a 512bit memory bus
-slower than the competition, because of that ATi/AMD had to sell it for less I guess
-loud
-hot
-far too late to the market

Anyway, the first tests look good. The picture looks good, driver installed fine. Now for some benchmarking, but let's start with AMD's own Whiteout techdemo.
Edit: Alright, card is working fine. Hopefully that will be the case next time I fire it up.