Picked up the parts from my post in the purchases thread Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Tested the mobo/cpu/gpu and all was good so decided to build them into my NoS desktop case alongside my recently acquired AWE32.

Happy owner of a 3dfx card now. This system covers pretty much all of the retro games I have an interest to play often. So it will always be set up with my main pc.

Which slot 1 cpu did you get with that lot?

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-05-15, 22:31:

Which slot 1 cpu did you get with that lot?

This one:

http://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SL4KH.html

Very nice. One day I need to rebuild my dual slot 1 p3 850 system.

HannibalAnthrope wrote on 2020-05-15, 11:47:

My favorite retro activity is enhancing my MAME front-end! I love MAME

Thanks! I joined the MAME development team roughly 20 years ago after spending about 18 months as a fanboy and frequent forum poster - and didn't look back.
Did all sorts of research, testing, community support. These days, I am one of the project administrators! 😀

Roughly two years later, I had a hand in starting VOGONS!

HannibalAnthrope wrote on 2020-05-15, 11:47:

and these days I run it on a little Raspberry Pi3b which works wonderfully.

Oof, that's probably not MAME but RetroArch's fork - unless I am mistaken! RetroArch is a fork, and depending on which RetroArch core you are running, usually of a version of MAME from -almost- 20 years ago! They've messed with the code too, it's not a pure port.

I'll acknowledge that you love it, but I barely consider it to be anything compared to modern MAME 😀

(You CAN run modern MAME on Pi3, but compared to a version from 20 years ago, it may not run as quickly, hence why RetroArch exists.)

At any rate, it's a nice frontend 😀

I made myself a mostly stable DOS 6.22 install, and added in Windows 3.11 FWG for the sake of having it, then proceeded to RGB Mod my N64 for when my SCART RetroTINK comes in tomorrow.

Stiletto wrote on 2020-05-16, 00:58:

Thanks! I joined the MAME development team roughly 20 years ago after spending about 18 months as a fanboy and frequent forum po […]
Show full quote

Thanks! I joined the MAME development team roughly 20 years ago after spending about 18 months as a fanboy and frequent forum poster - and didn't look back.
Did all sorts of research, testing, community support. These days, I am one of the project administrators! 😀

Roughly two years later, I had a hand in starting VOGONS!

Oof, that's probably not MAME but RetroArch's fork - unless I am mistaken! RetroArch is a fork, and depending on which RetroArch core you are running, usually of a version of MAME from -almost- 20 years ago! They've messed with the code too, it's not a pure port.

I'll acknowledge that you love it, but I barely consider it to be anything compared to modern MAME 😀

(You CAN run modern MAME on Pi3, but compared to a version from 20 years ago, it may not run as quickly, hence why RetroArch exists.)

At any rate, it's a nice frontend 😀

HEY WOW COOL! It's great to "meet" you and let me just say THANK YOU for your efforts! There is no open source project I have benefited from more than MAME, and for a lotta years! I don't know a specific year but I'll be that when you came on the team I was already a huge fan and had a dedicated MS-DOS machine for it!

As for RetroArch... NOPE! I definitely don't use RetroArch (or any other pre-built dist), it's the real deal mate! 😉 And I always grab new releases of MAME just to test out and see what's new etc.. The front-end that's now builtin is pretty nice, but of course I can't use that on the Pi. But on Windows it runs great. I forget what exact build I'm using on the Pi but I definitely don't run the latest on it, for no reason really other than it's working great now and doing 100% of what I need. And because glibc changes way to much on Linux 🤣 I generally build apps I want to use from source, and don't use forks or "special" distributions 🤣 I play it safe, plus I like the exercise of building from source. I don't use c/c++ for work, mostly c#/dotnet, so I don't get to do a real build. And I'm an old school Unix guy so I like the exercise.
Speedwise I've had no problems, but I also don't run X11 and have ripped out most of what comes built into Raspbian.

Again, it's very cool meeting you! MAME is just a masterpiece. And the only app I value as much as MAME.... was written by me 😉
Cheers mate!

PS: Oh and thank you for vogons too! It's a great community, I love hanging out here.

Just received a Wyse Winterm 9450XE, essentially a Via Epia-V ESP5000 microITX board put into a chassis too big for the job...Here’s a comparison with an HP t5720 with the PCI expansion bay added...It’s kinda ridiculous.

Locked at 533MHz, with the same northbridge as the router-of-doom mobo and a slightly different southbridge (VT8231 instead of VT82C686B).

Fortunately the SD card from the router-of-doom works just fine...well, adding an AC97 audio device that has soundblaster emulation silicon within.

Internal layout is not exactly intuitive, and I am not a fan of using desktop DIMMs instead of Laptop SODIMMs.

Had to add the drivers to initialize the sound blaster emulation hardware, and the rather large VIA FM TSR (32kb?!) in order for emulated FM to work. Can’t say I like it that much.

A bit of ircing on the Acorn RiscPC in an x86 session using the TI486slx40 co-processor via null-modem cable hooked up to my linux box. The terminal is Banana.com under PCDos 6.3 running irssi on the linux box.

Improved a bit more my Windows 98 SE VM. Added a few games. They're not running that great, but they are.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-05-15, 20:52:

Soldering. So much soldering. If there is such a thing as solder high, then I have it.

More likely, I poisoned myself with the fumes..

After desoldering an PS/2 to USB slot adapter for my Tomato board I started to desolder the pads of my dualT board’s ISA slot. The tip of my desoldering gun is too large for the pads so I had to do it manually with desoldering wire. Of course with about 80% done I ran out of desoldering wire ... yes, there is a thing like a soldering high ... there’s a low, too

CMB75 wrote on 2020-05-16, 07:32:

After desoldering an PS/2 to USB slot adapter for my Tomato board I started to desolder the pads of my dualT board’s ISA slot. The tip of my desoldering gun is too large for the pads so I had to do it manually with desoldering wire. Of course with about 80% done I ran out of desoldering wire ... yes, there is a thing like a soldering high ... there’s a low, too

For me that low comes every time I pick up a soldering iron. And the poison fumes just minutes later as I burn the skin off one or more of my fingers.
I am reminded of the old joke... How many programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb? THAT'S A HARDWARE PROBLEM NOW GO AWAY!!!
🤣 😉
May we each of us find the thing we are great at, and avoid all those things we are not.

Today's retro fun for me is building Dosbox on a Raspberry Pi4 after having made some modifications to the source. After that I will move my MAME build from a Pi3 to the 4 and integrate them both so I can run them from my front-end app seamlessly without having to think about if a game runs in MAME or Dosbox. I've never been happier to be a programmer than to grab some source for something I want and as I like to say "stand on the shoulders of giants" and make some modifications for myself, but always I am in awe of the people who created the code I'm working with. I recently got a message from a MAME dev, for the first time in my life, and to me it felt like meeting a super-hero because in my world of software this guy -IS- a super-hero. And it inspired me quite a bit. After 35yrs writing code, I've been as giggly as when I wrote my first program and it ran! (it was a stack of cards but still so awesome 🤣).

Finding this forum has really given me some new excitement, as my retro activities had started to feel stale. Thanks to everyone

[edit: Oops, by "integrate them both" what I mean is to have them both set up and configured so that my front-end can manage them both from a Windows machine, running either Dosbox or MAME based on the game I select - So it's much more simplistic than my first wording sounded - Sorry about that]

Modified an old D&D 3.5 VB6 + MSJET software with the MS VB 6 IDE while listening to retro music thanks to Winamp 2.95 in the background :

This was done natively on a Packard Bell computer with an Intel Pentium 3 @ 700 Mhz CPU, Windows 98SE, and 64 MB of RAM. I could have used a VM but that would have been less fun.

It was closing MS Word on startup if present (I guess because it can export character sheets in .doc format...?!), and the dice roller used a way too low seed value (100).

The build process took 30 minutes (I could have built P-Code much more quickly instead of native code, but I didn't like that option) and it locked up the entire PC once. That was not fun.

Also played a bit of the Windows 95 version of UFO Enemy Unknown. It crashed. I wonder if OpenXCom could run...

The laptop :

1Packard Bell Chrom@ 9750
2CPU : Intel Pentium 3 @ 700 MHz
3RAM: 64MB (SDRAM PC100). Max size : 256 MB
4GPU : ATI Rage Mobility M1 (8 MB VRAM)
5SPU : Yamaha YMF 754B (64 voices)
6DVD Drive, floppy disk drive, three USB1.1 ports, ...

I got it for €20 and I love it. Especially for the excellent real DOS SB compatibility. But I must recognize that the GPU can be crap for Windows 3D games. Even Starsiege, which has a lot of render options (even sotfware) refuses to run on it.

Still, it replaces a lot of my other desktop retro PC quite nicely. For DOS games and more. It might be huge for a laptop, but it's still way quicker to set up.

The screen is a "modern" LCD one, so no problems there.

(the font used for the code is Fira Code because the default 'Courrier New' was not tolerable)

I like the looks of that PB laptop.

So I've got a question for those of us here more wellversed in MIDI.

Should I get a Dreamblaster S2? The general MIDI sounds good enough based on what I can find on YT and supposedly it has a MT32 Compatibility mode. Whats the compatibility on that? Like what advantages can I expect.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-05-16, 16:19:

So I've got a question for those of us here more wellversed in MIDI.

Should I get a Dreamblaster S2? The general MIDI sounds good enough based on what I can find on YT and supposedly it has a MT32 Compatibility mode. Whats the compatibility on that? Like what advantages can I expect.

You can find my revie of the daughterboard here. TLDR; I was impressed, considering the cost. However, if you can pay double that the X2/X3M are a lot more versatile.

Also, it only works with MT-32 games that don't upload any custom patches. You can find some recordings here:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-05-16, 17:28:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-05-16, 16:19:

So I've got a question for those of us here more wellversed in MIDI.

Should I get a Dreamblaster S2? The general MIDI sounds good enough based on what I can find on YT and supposedly it has a MT32 Compatibility mode. Whats the compatibility on that? Like what advantages can I expect.

You can find my revie of the daughterboard here. TLDR; I was impressed, considering the cost. However, if you can pay double that the X2/X3M are a lot more versatile.

Also, it only works with MT-32 games that don't upload any custom patches. You can find some recordings here:

I'm seriously considering building a thin client thats soul purpose is running MT-32 and SoundCanvas VA emulation. It would be cheaper than buying either module by about $100. I would prefer a hardware solution but the prices for MIDI modules are unjustafiable. I'm actually surprised there hasn't been some sort of low cost MT-32 clone like there has been for everything else.

EDIT: Does the Dreamblaster's MT-32 not support Railroad Tycoon (Non-deluxe)? I'm guessing that AND Civillization both use custom patchs?
EDIT: Will not be buying the S2. 20 euros for shipping, it does not cost 20 euros to ship a tiny MIDI board to the US from the EU. Nice attempt at baking profit into the shipping.
EDIT: And... they add an extra fee for using PayPal. Nice.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-05-16, 19:25:

EDIT: Will not be buying the S2. 20 euros for shipping, it does not cost 20 euros to ship a tiny MIDI board to the US from the EU. Nice attempt at baking profit into the shipping.
EDIT: And... they add an extra fee for using PayPal. Nice.

I’ve paid 18 Euros for the shipping of the “DREAMBLASTER X2 + S2 PROMOTIONAL BUNDLE” from Belgium to Germany. A steep price ... but it was worth every cent ... I even placed another order to upgrade the RAM of my CT4390s ... same shipping costs
... still don’t regret it.

If that’s his kind of cross calculation - so be it - I’m happy with the products.

This is the board I'm trying to build up the motivation to resurrect. Asus P4S800, forget which revision.

Currently, attempts to power it up result in the system shutting back off within one second. The PSU is fine, but I stopped using the board years back when it was doing this same thing. I expect that replacing the 11 largest caps near the CPU socket and IO block should sort it, though I have replacements for 17 smaller capacitors all over the board. The biggest roadblock is terminal burnout from working for a phone company for a decade. It really, really destroys your will to do anything but sleep. I have desoldering braid, flux paste, a spring-loaded desoldering vacuum, and of course an iron that shouldn't set everything on fire. Just need to move everything over to a proper work table, set up my lamp, and get started. Maybe the more I talk about it, the more likely I'll be in the mood to actually get started.