I've got an old installation disk for half life 2, but I can't play it since it needs steam, and steam would probably update it ... (And the key is already attributed to someone else. Not a big deal since I bought myself the game on steam, but still, I'd like to play it under windows 9x because it used to be possible, but I can't without cracking it ... Which I can't find (and I won't talk munch more about this since it's prohibed here)

I would love to have a dual slot 1 system, congrats! At what speed are you going to run the CPU's? The P2B won't support the 133MHz. Also, you might want to consider using Windows 2000 for the SMP support.

Eendje wrote:

All parts for my Asus P2B-DS / dual P3@733MHz / Voodoo3 / Win98 build have arrived. Will post pics soon.

Today I came to conclusion that Conner HDDs are hell of a weirdos. Dug out my old Conner CP30174E that has nice circular scratch in the middle of the top plate (the drive was hanging loose in PC, so I think somebody bumped into the case while it was reading). Years ago I was able to read that drive with no problem, but booting was no success. It had DOS on it, but when I tried to boot it, it wrote Betriebssystem fehlt and then froze the computer. Today I tried to power it up, it started, but the head was stuck in one position. So I opened it up, pushed the read arm free and closed it back up. Then I tried to power it up. It was scratching and wrong, so power down and another peek inside. Turned out I put the seal gasket wrong, so I took my time to put it in right and what do you know? The HDD passed its seek test and I was able to read data after 4 years once again! And I thought it is dead. Very, very strange drive.

Hehe nice. Now try that with a new HDD! Doubt it would survive...

Yeah, exactly. My brother dropped four connected pieces of Duplo on SAMSUNG HD103SJ in external case while reading and boom, dead. And with it went majority of my photos, all movies and games, rare software saved from floppies, basically everything. It was three years ago and I am still thinking if I should put money into that and send it to some rescue lab, or screw that and forget it existed...
But as a student with very close to no money... 😁

That's terrible to hear 🙁 I've been in a similar position too. Too trusting on a slightly used drive donated from work or whatever and the drive just dies at a random time when I need it most...

I'd suggest you hold onto the drive. You never know what might happen eventually down the track. At least you know the data is on the platters still so there is a possible chance it is recoverable at a time that best suits you.

krivulak, I messed with a Conner today too 😁

My old 486's Conner 250MB which has been through hell I formatted and tested today, since I am using it in the new build.

Windows 98 scandisk throrough test brings up no bad sectors! 😁

Today after work I spent a whopping 3 hours in front of my DX2-80 playing Alone in the Dark, The Secret of Monkey Island and Scorched Earth. I was listening to Seventh Sojourn, Days of Future Passed, and Turn of the Cards on the record player in the other room as I played.

It was wonderful! A real blast from the past. The last time I got to waste that much time playing DOS games while listening to prog rock was what, 20-25 years ago? I did it all the time back then. 🤣

Last night, I was working with my first XP computer. It's this one:

I have a little bag full of old RAM sticks, from DDR and up, so I was digging around and found I had MULTIPLE 1GB PC3200 (DDR) sticks, but I had only put ONE in my machine months ago. Why? So I ran some tests and found two of them that booted in the first slot and ran Memtestx86 on both of them for a pass with no errors. Sticking the 2nd one in and the system gives me a beep-code error for RAM. So, on a whim, I move the 2nd stick to the 3rd memory slot (out of 4) and suddenly it boots up. Ran an hour-long Memtest on this configuration and it came up stable. WHOHOO! It now has as much RAM as my gaming laptop does.

OK, so I thought let's try it. Installed Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. When I went to start it at 1024x768, the framerate during the opening scene is choppy almost throughout, with some hiccups here and there. I'm thinking to myself WOW, this game is bringing the graphics card to its knees. There's GOTTA be better options. It's an ATI Radeon 9550 256MB card - which is an ENTRY LEVEL card, as it turns out. So I start searching for other cards in the 9800xt range and they're all $100 on EBAY. I even look higher, at an X850XT PE for $100. The PCI-Express versions are all, like, $20....but the AGP versions are all at or over $100. Crazy. I guess Retro places like this are driving up demand and therefore driving up prices.

But I think the X850XT would be overkill for my 1.53GHz Athlon XP, wouldn't it? I think maybe I'd take anything over this 9550. It's not good for anything other than office PC use.

Pentium iii 500MHz slot 440BX system kept hanging when trying to install win98. took off the retention clips (broke one in the progress) and peeled off the fabric that was stuck between the cpu and heatsink. put some thermal compound in place and reassembled. Then ziptied a 4cm noctua onto it. Now the system doesn't hang.

FFXIhealer wrote:

Last night, I was working with my first XP computer. It's this one: http://valid.x86.fr/cache/banner/3smzsb.png […]
Show full quote

Last night, I was working with my first XP computer. It's this one:

I have a little bag full of old RAM sticks, from DDR and up, so I was digging around and found I had MULTIPLE 1GB PC3200 (DDR) sticks, but I had only put ONE in my machine months ago. Why? So I ran some tests and found two of them that booted in the first slot and ran Memtestx86 on both of them for a pass with no errors. Sticking the 2nd one in and the system gives me a beep-code error for RAM. So, on a whim, I move the 2nd stick to the 3rd memory slot (out of 4) and suddenly it boots up. Ran an hour-long Memtest on this configuration and it came up stable. WHOHOO! It now has as much RAM as my gaming laptop does.

OK, so I thought let's try it. Installed Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. When I went to start it at 1024x768, the framerate during the opening scene is choppy almost throughout, with some hiccups here and there. I'm thinking to myself WOW, this game is bringing the graphics card to its knees. There's GOTTA be better options. It's an ATI Radeon 9550 256MB card - which is an ENTRY LEVEL card, as it turns out. So I start searching for other cards in the 9800xt range and they're all $100 on EBAY. I even look higher, at an X850XT PE for $100. The PCI-Express versions are all, like, $20....but the AGP versions are all at or over $100. Crazy. I guess Retro places like this are driving up demand and therefore driving up prices.

But I think the X850XT would be overkill for my 1.53GHz Athlon XP, wouldn't it? I think maybe I'd take anything over this 9550. It's not good for anything other than office PC use.

I remember when I first played (and completed in the same sitting) this game on a phenom ii 550 and radeon 4890. One of my best gaming experiences. Played Dragon Age Origins around that time too.

Replaced a blown fuse on my Super Socket 7 build preventing the motherboard's USB ports from getting power. With this, I now have an IBM Model F XT with a Soarer USB converter working on the computer, but then ran into a problem where booting into Windows then restarting into DOS for DOS games would cause the keyboard to stop responding (I typically use Windows as a front-end for loading DOS games, but that doesn't seem to work with native USB or USB-converted keyboards). I then tweaked MSDOS.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT so that the computer only loads into DOS, after which I can press 1 on the keyboard to load into DOS with CD, audio and mouse drivers and 2 to load into Windows without loading any DOS drivers so I don't have to deal with this.

Bought Retro City Rampage on Steam and copied Retro City Rampage 486 (DOS AND Windows 3.1 Prototype) to my 486 and started running them. Actually quite like the experience.

Have been spending some time pricing upgrade CPU and Cache RAM for the 486 - I have a FIC 486 PVT, am thinking about tossing some 128kx8 and a 32Kx8 Tag in there to bump it up from 0KB to 512KB (Maxxed out) Cache. I've also been looking for a good case to put the beast in so my 286 has a home again but have been going through quite the conundrum about it...looking at AMD 486 DX4-100, but I prefer the Intel Versions because of my experiences with one (let's just say, DIablo says it NEEDS a Pentium, I got Diablo and Postal to both run okay-enough on a 486 DX4-100).

Meanwhile, I have a Gateway 2000 Pentium 1 system that's almost all original (P100, 64MB, SCSI, CD-ROM, Combo Drive, 3GB SCSI HDD, ATI Mach64 PCI, SoundBlaster 16 Value, added a NIC to it) that I'm tempted to put on E-bay because I really have no need for it and am not that nostalgic about Pentium era hardware (the 486 era is my favorite), but on the other hand, I like the case, but i'm not sure I really want to "destroy history" by reusing the case with a 486 inside of it.

Got one guy lined up with a flip-top XT case and modded ATX PSU in XT chassis lined up for that box possibly, but I'm also considering a trip to RE-PC in Tukwila (their big store) so I can see if they have any actual Baby AT, AT, or XT style chassis there that I can get for less than $80-90 which is what they seem to be running now. The price of cases is insane now, I'm almost to the point of thinking about fabricating my own chassis at this point. At the very least find another XT PSU at around 130+ Watts I could slap in the case I had the 486 in before.

Been looking at letting go of some other systems soon eventally too, like the Compaq Portable 486c I can't find a replacement screen for (would be good parts for someone else as it works otherwise), my Mac SE that vegges out in my closet all the time these days, and then a pile of other parts that probably could be best suited to someone else.

Played around with my NEC CRT sitting in the basement. http://imgur.com/a/o3sel

?Currently setting up my CD-ROM files on a huge partition on my E: Drive of my 486 - then hacking some resource files so I don't have to use my CD-ROM's to run certain things anymore - basically, streamlining my retro-gaming. Might be adding a 40GB HDD to the mix as well next.

That and working on making a website based around my 15 or so years of doing this sort of stuff. I figured it's time I post my wisdom to share online. Now if I can just find a file host for a simple - comprehensive, downloads section of stuff, I think I may have some things not normally available anywhere.

Listened to the Space Quest 6 soundtrack MIDI on my SC-55mkII while replacing the screen and battery on an iPhone 6 Plus... Only to find that the damned Touch IC problem has occured!

I've finally took the time to take quick photos of most of my spare hardware: videocards, soundcards, NICs, multi IOs, motherboards and so on. Now I have photos of more than 98 pieces of hardware. Some stuff is still left:

- CPUs, RAM sticks, HDDs, disk drives;
- parts that are used in my three builds (a fast 486/VLB machine, a Pentium Pro desktop and an AT Slot 1 machine).

Damn that's a lot of hoarding for just one year!

I've used Bear on iPad for data entry, so now I have a Markdown file for each part with its name and a folder with its photo. Now I need to figure out a way to make a catalog of some sorts. I really like Markdown, so I'm probably going to use some kind of Markdown+Dropbox blog solution (like blot.im) or GitHub Pages but I'm open to suggestions.

Found my MiniDisc player and discs last night and went into full obsession mode. Wiped and rerecorded a ton of music. Going to connect the thing into my car and get that nice 90s experience.

I'd forgotten just how crappy Sony's SonicStage software was, but I managed to get things done pretty easily. Got it working on Win7 x64 so at least I have a way to mess with my favorite audio medium 😀

senrew wrote:

Found my MiniDisc player and discs last night and went into full obsession mode. Wiped and rerecorded a ton of music. Going to connect the thing into my car and get that nice 90s experience.

I'd forgotten just how crappy Sony's SonicStage software was, but I managed to get things done pretty easily. Got it working on Win7 x64 so at least I have a way to mess with my favorite audio medium 😀

Sonicstage was super-shit. I used the Minidisc software that came with the SB Live - worked a treat!

Today I pulled apart my Amiga 1200 and performed the ACA timing fixes at Ian Stedman's site

It appears to be working, previously my A1200 would crash after 15 minutes if my ACA1231 was installed, but would work fine once the accelerator was removed. After installing the fixes, I have had it running benchmarks and whdload for nearly an hour and so far, so good! The ACA1231 seems to be running a little cooler too.