Replaced the hard drive in my Tivo. What, it's a computer too. And it's 16 years old this month. Never mind that its primary function is to record TV shows... you can actually telnet into it and use the underlying Linux. 😀

Went looking for a desk for my 7950GX2 Quad SLI build I'm getting back into working on. That counts, right?

Took pictures of a bundle (mobo, gfx, soundcard, mem and soundcard) and put it up for sale on a local online trading place.
Hope to get some money from this, in order to buy items I am missing in my collection.

May be picking up a pair of mint condition AT pentium desktops iv been eyeing for the past 3 years

stamasd wrote:

Replaced the hard drive in my Tivo. What, it's a computer too. And it's 16 years old this month. Never mind that its primary function is to record TV shows... you can actually telnet into it and use the underlying Linux. 😀

Is it a Series 1? I'm one of the few who is still using one; it refuses to die. I got a lifetime subscription for it and I was greeted by a message saying that the guide data would no longer be available as of Sept 29 when I turned it on yesterday. I added a network adapter to mine too.

FuzzyLogic wrote:

stamasd wrote:

Replaced the hard drive in my Tivo. What, it's a computer too. And it's 16 years old this month. Never mind that its primary function is to record TV shows... you can actually telnet into it and use the underlying Linux. 😀

Is it a Series 1? I'm one of the few who is still using one; it refuses to die. I got a lifetime subscription for it and I was greeted by a message saying that the guide data would no longer be available as of Sept 29 when I turned it on yesterday. I added a network adapter to mine too.

Yup, series1. I know they turned them off, but this one has sentimental value for me. I've been using it continuously since August 23rd, 2000. Has gone through several HDDs, current one is a 500GB Seagate. I had in it successively: a TivoNet adapter with a NE2000 network card, a TurboNet adapter, and currently a CacheCard (network+cache combo from SiliconDust).

If you've used yout lifetimed Tivo S1 anytime during the first 7 months of this year (Jan 1st to July 31st) you can call the Tivo S1 hotline 1-877-407-1983 that they established because of the shutoff, and put a little pressure on them, they will transfer your lifetime to a Tivo Bolt that you can also get at a discount. I ended up with a 1TB Bolt with lifetime subscription for a total of $265 ($250 plus taxes, instead of regular price of $300 plus $550 for lifetime). I did have to call 3 times and talk to several supervisors, but if you're persistent they will give you the deal eventually.

FWIW I'm the one who first made a CD with upgrade tools for the S1 Tivo, using Tiger's original mfstools ("kazymyr's Boot CD" in late 2000 - my username on tivocommunity was kazymyr at the time) and this unit is the one I used to test it with. 😀

stamasd wrote:

Yup, series1. I know they turned them off, but this one has sentimental value for me. I've been using it continuously since August 23rd, 2000. Has gone through several HDDs, current one is a 500GB Seagate. I had in it successively: a TivoNet adapter with a NE2000 network card, a TurboNet adapter, and currently a CacheCard (network+cache combo from SiliconDust).

Great setup. I wanted a CacheCard when it came out, but I couldn't justify the price at the time.

If you've used yout lifetimed Tivo S1 anytime during the first 7 months of this year (Jan 1st to July 31st) you can call the Tivo S1 hotline 1-877-407-1983 that they established because of the shutoff, and put a little pressure on them, they will transfer your lifetime to a Tivo Bolt that you can also get at a discount. I ended up with a 1TB Bolt with lifetime subscription for a total of $265 ($250 plus taxes, instead of regular price of $300 plus $550 for lifetime). I did have to call 3 times and talk to several supervisors, but if you're persistent they will give you the deal eventually.

I was thinking about getting a Bolt and getting rid of DirecTV. Thanks for that info! I'm going to give them a call on Monday to see if I can wangle a deal like that.

FWIW I'm the one who first made a CD with upgrade tools for the S1 Tivo, using Tiger's original mfstools ("kazymyr's Boot CD" in late 2000 - my username on tivocommunity was kazymyr at the time) and this unit is the one I used to test it with. 😀

Cool! I probably used it at one point. I checked my Tivo parts box and I have a disk labeled Tiger Tools along the original Quantum Fireball hard drive (which still works.)

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.

Installed and played with my new ACA1233n upgrade card for my A1200. It works well apart from a few battles with finding appropriate kickstart ROM images for WHDLoad. I have the Kickstart 1.3 image and that works well but ironically games that need the A1200 ROM image fail - despite running on an actual A1200. I have physical ROM chips for Kicks 3.0 and 3.1 but I'm not sure how to combine the dumps I made with my GQ4X so that WHDLoad will recognise them. Apparently WinUAE has a utility to dump the ROMs from within Workbench so maybe I should try transferring that utility to my real Amiga and running it there.

Apart from that I also managed to start modding my NTSC SNES with the Super CIC switchless mod. It switches into the different modes correctly now but I got too tired to continue on with the LED part so the switching is blind at this point. Plus I discovered that I placed the damn PIC chip in a place that blocks the cart eject handle. Stupid - I should have "fit checked' that before I even started soldering. I'll see if I can move the chip to a better place without messing up all my careful wiring. Luckily the scariest soldering was to the CIC pads and lifted PPU pins and that won't have to change. As long as I don't put too much strain on the the wires when stripping them for the new spot for the CIC PIC they should still work fine.

Luckily I bought a roll of AWG 30 wire which is pretty much ideal for this kind of work. Matches almost perfectly with the pad sizes on the removed CIC chip.

Today I have been testing/playing with my Socket A stuff, even did a little overclocking with the GFD 😀

Today I got a parcel with a bunch of VLB graphics cards, so I have been switching out the ISA video in my 486 build and benchmarking two VLB cards. Submitted the scores to Phil's Ultimate VGA Benchmark Database, too.

ISA CL-GD5424:
3DBENCH2: 36.9 fps
PCPBENCH: 12 fps
Doom: 18.15 fps
Quake: 7.7 fps

VLB S3 805:
3DBENCH2: 66.8 fps
PCPBENCH: 14.7 fps
Doom: 34.29 fps
Quake: 8.7 fps

VLB CL-GD5430:
3DBENCH2: 53.7 fps
PCPBENCH: 14.8 fps
Doom: 28.40 fps
Quake: 8.8 fps

I initially wanted to use the GD5430 since it's got multi I/O on board as well as video (convenient!) but it's apparently significantly slower than the S3, and it's missing the back mounting bracket too, so it looks like I'll be using the S3 for now.

Am I right to assume that PCPBENCH and Quake are CPU bottlenecked (by an iDX4/100 WT with slowish RAM) since the S3 doesn't manage a better score than the Cirrus there, while being significantly faster at 3DBENCH2 and Doom?

einr wrote:

Am I right to assume that PCPBENCH and Quake are CPU bottlenecked (by an iDX4/100 WT with slowish RAM) since the S3 doesn't manage a better score than the Cirrus there, while being significantly faster at 3DBENCH2 and Doom?

Yeah, that's definitely what it looks like. I've noticed that about PCPbench too.

Do you get any benefit from this system being a bit faster? I mean, do you play games on it that lag a bit and could use the video boost? If not, then maybe the CL with its multi-IO would make more sense?

clueless1 wrote:

einr wrote:

Am I right to assume that PCPBENCH and Quake are CPU bottlenecked (by an iDX4/100 WT with slowish RAM) since the S3 doesn't manage a better score than the Cirrus there, while being significantly faster at 3DBENCH2 and Doom?

Yeah, that's definitely what it looks like. I've noticed that about PCPbench too.

Do you get any benefit from this system being a bit faster? I mean, do you play games on it that lag a bit and could use the video boost? If not, then maybe the CL with its multi-IO would make more sense?

I guess having 32-bit VLB hard drive access would make sense for running Windows but as this is going to be mostly a DOS game PC, and some of the games I want to play kind of push the graphical limits of a 486 VLB system (Terminal Velocity comes to mind -- it runs MUCH better with the S3 than with the old ISA card) I think it's the right choice to push video performance as much as I can, even at the expense of running I/O through the ISA bus. I'm thinking I can always get a dedicated VLB I/O card later.

The S3 also has a reputation for high compatibility, but so does the CL. The reason I asked is because I don't want my 486 to be too fast, otherwise it doesn't play the older games I installed on it as well. But I also have a Pentium DOS machine that I reserve for games that need more horsepower.

I finished setting up and unpacking most of my gear in what is now my computer "lab":

still have a few things to set up an a couple of ikea display cases to assemble and populate with stuff, but I'm 70% there 😁

I also replaced the WDC WD90C31A card in my 286 rig with an older more appropriate Paradise PVGA1A-JK, and replaced the damaged 640mb Quantum fireball HDD with a good 540 WD Caviar. I'm currently replaceing the barrel battery on it's mobo so I won't have to input drive parameters every time I turn it on...

Made a classic stupid mistake 😀

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Made a classic stupid mistake 😀

I once had a big speaker magnet sit on a bunch of floppies for months and all the data on them was fine.

Some time later I bought a network card that had the drivers on a floppy. It was corrupted right out of the box.

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 haven't tried the floppy yet, it probably had memtest on it. I tossed it back on the pile already. Good to know it will probably survive this!

Kanevcr:
Looking good, looking really good. Nice job.