GigAHerZ wrote on 2020-08-19, 14:45:

But Pentium 2+ are just terribly slow "today's machines".

they're pretty fast machines that can still run ISA sound cards and legacy software :p

Mephusto wrote on 2020-08-19, 10:08:

Thanks for the info and its less of needing the fpu so much as wanting one 😀

And that is an ever valid reason to buy stuff, especially for vogoners 🤣

vetz wrote on 2020-08-19, 14:48:

Highend parts of any generation will almost always have some value. For instance the Pentium 4 EE CPUs or DDR2 sticks with the best speed and lowest timings.

True, because they

a) Have that WOW factor for collectors
b) where more expensive and thus sold in smaller numbers (less of them to begin with)
c) in case of relatively recent video cards for example, were designed to run at thermal limits and thus had shorter lifespans (even less of them left)

OldCat wrote on 2020-08-19, 13:50:

[...]

I am not questioning your list or knowledge, but I have a weird case: Doom. I played it in the nineties with sound in normal window (you could limit the viewable area to speed game up) on my mum's old 386DX/40 with math coprocessor (Weitek, I think, but I may be wrong after all these years) and it run as well as on my friend's 486DX2 (don't remember 50 or 66). Everybody else on 386, both SX and DX had Doom stutter, I played it to completion and enjoyed it a lot. Do you reckon this coprocessor thingy could be a reason? Or is it just my hazy memory?

Everywhere I look, it says Doom doesn't use FPU in any shape or form. Carmack supposedly referenced it explicitly when discussing Quake (which does), but I can't find the reference/quote anywhere.

So it's unlikely FPU would make the difference. But something clearly was. My best bet would be cache: a 386 system with 387 clearly had no expenses spared, so probably was equipped with cache. Cheaper 386 systems were not necessarily equipped with cache, indeed, 386SX systems very rarely were. Cache makes a big difference in performance and is one of the reasons 486 tend to be faster than 386 (period correct code rarely if ever used the extra instructions, but the 1kB L1 cache was always utilized).

Video card could also matter, although with late ISA systems the bus tended to be more of a bottleneck regardless of VGA chip, at least in DOS.

dionb wrote on 2020-08-19, 20:30:

Cache makes a big difference in performance and is one of the reasons 486 tend to be faster than 386 (period correct code rarely if ever used the extra instructions, but the 1kB L1 cache was always utilized).

While the 486SLC indeed only had a measly KiB of L1 cache, all "real" 486 processors had 8KB, and late ones, like the AMD 5x86 even had a whopping 16KiB L1.

dionb wrote on 2020-08-19, 20:30:

Video card could also matter, although with late ISA systems the bus tended to be more of a bottleneck regardless of VGA chip, at least in DOS.

The 386 systems that were running Doom badly likely were not late ISA systems, and something like a TVGA 9000 or an OTI077 was quite common those days. Most of them were far from being limited by ISA bandwidth.

I believe there is a Texas Instruments version of the 486SLC that has 4KB L1 Cache, I wonder how that stacks up against a 486..

I'm just looking forward to learning how to get the systems working. I want an original dos gaming experience. Speed sensitive games to work and stuff. Learning how to get sound.

I bought this about 8 months ago, it was included in a lot of computer parts I bought for $20.00, but I just got around to testing it today: HP Pavilion 7050.

I connected it, and it booted right up to Windows 95.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2020-08-20, 01:21:

I bought this about 8 months ago, it was included in a lot of computer parts I bought for $20.00, but I just got around to testi […]
Show full quote

I bought this about 8 months ago, it was included in a lot of computer parts I bought for $20.00, but I just got around to testing it today: HP Pavilion 7050.

I connected it, and it booted right up to Windows 95.

That's a good looking little pc!

Mephusto wrote on 2020-08-20, 01:29:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2020-08-20, 01:21:

I bought this about 8 months ago, it was included in a lot of computer parts I bought for $20.00, but I just got around to testi […]
Show full quote

I bought this about 8 months ago, it was included in a lot of computer parts I bought for $20.00, but I just got around to testing it today: HP Pavilion 7050.

I connected it, and it booted right up to Windows 95.

That's a good looking little pc!

It was fun to hear the Real Player sound. I popped a 233 MMX in it just for the heck of it - it booted right up, but the CPU speed that was displayed was unchanged.

That's a nice hp you have there. It's fun that it had the original install of 95 it's like a fun trip back through time.

that's a delightfully weird motherboard setup... I love it x3

GigAHerZ wrote on 2020-08-19, 14:45:

I don't know... Starting from Pentium 2, nothing really has changed. And the same way, the demand for such PCs is also a lot lower than for anything before that.

Except PCI Express instead of AGP/PCI/ISA. And SATA, then M2 instead of IDE. And lack of FDD, COM, LPT, etc. And UEFI BIOS instead of conventional text mode BIOS. And no support for Windows 95/98.
Have fun using a Voodoo2 and a Gravis Ultrasound in a new machine.

Thing always changes, but from 2005-2006 they changed much slower, and yes, a good machine from 2006 (with PCI Express, SATA, etc) is pretty much the same with a new one, but much slower, it doesn't have much use for retro computing.

But a Pentium II? That's my favorite machine, you can play pretty much any game from 1985 to 2000, you can use from DOS and Windows 3.1 to Windows 95/98, even XP.

I'm not sure if I should keep posting here but I would love to hear some more opinions of people that have knowledge on 386 computers. Of the 2 386 computers 1 is a 386dx-25 and the other is a 486dlc or slc. Of the two, which would be better for dos gaming? The 386 can have 8Mb of ram and the 486 can use 16Mb. But how much really matters?

Mephusto wrote on 2020-08-20, 09:01:

I'm not sure if I should keep posting here but I would love to hear some more opinions of people that have knowledge on 386 computers. Of the 2 386 computers 1 is a 386dx-25 and the other is a 486dlc or slc. Of the two, which would be better for dos gaming? The 386 can have 8Mb of ram and the 486 can use 16Mb. But how much really matters?

If you want to ensure that people actually notices it, I would suggest you staying a new thread ..

Repo Man11 wrote on 2020-08-20, 01:21:

I bought this about 8 months ago, it was included in a lot of computer parts I bought for $20.00, but I just got around to testi […]
Show full quote

I bought this about 8 months ago, it was included in a lot of computer parts I bought for $20.00, but I just got around to testing it today: HP Pavilion 7050.

Love the computer and the network neighbourhood icon names 😆

Today was apparantly christmas. Got a TNT2 Ultra, a NVIDIA Quadro dcc (GF3) and Diamond mx300:

Williwinner wrote on 2020-08-20, 12:52:

Today was apparantly christmas. Got a TNT2 Ultra, a NVIDIA Quadro dcc (GF3) and Diamond mx300: 20200820_113633.jpg 20200820_1144 […]
Show full quote

Today was apparantly christmas. Got a TNT2 Ultra, a NVIDIA Quadro dcc (GF3) and Diamond mx300:
20200820_113633.jpg
20200820_114428.jpg
20200820_145052.jpg

Nice haul! 👍🏻

Bought this lot today. It has quite some interesting stuff!
All untested, but I have bought some untested stuff earlier from this seller and all was fine.
He's not a vintage collector but trades in newer stuff, and doesn't seem to have much interests in vintage stuff.

The 8b ISA SCSI adapter and CPU board look very interesting! Just don't seem to be able to identify them card left of the CPU board. We'll see when it arrives (tomorrow or just after the weekend)

Can you show us the soundcard a little closer?