Today's retro activity didn't end well. I was setting up a Slot 1/440BX PC but having some issues with HDD detection. I found an updated BIOS that mentioned something with regards to HDD detection and so I removed the BIOS chip to flash it in my MiniPro. I then reinserted the BIOS chip and powered on - nothing at first and then after about 10 seconds what sounded like a SNAP and the PC powered off.

What happened - in my haste I didn't double check the orientation of the BIOS chip and had accidentally inserted it the wrong way around. RIP BIOS chip. I have a replacement chip on the way, hopefully it's only the BIOS chip that's fried and not the motherboard itself. I tested the socket afterwards with a spare 1M chip and my multimeter and it's still reading 5V correctly, so fingers crossed!

Iv been soaking in the vast amount of FG ports on my DX4 rig lately. Although these are the kinda games i prefer on consoles, i thought i'd check out what the PC had to offer gamers in comparison.

REALLY impressed with how well the Eurocom port of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo plays on a measly DX4-100. Especially when you consider how accurate to the arcade game it is. A bit slow on animated background heavy stages, but otherwise on par with consoles. Lots of sound options too for MIDI. Same with the CD version of Mortal Kombat 1, Very accurate and plays better then most console ports of the 90s.

Just a shame there's no good control pad for DOS. Gravis Gamepad sucks for FGS. Im not pro enough to notice the difference between 4 and 6 button pads i guess, but god the Gravis D-pad is horrible. Especially when you need to press up/down and some direction to pull off a special move.

Makes me really wanna find some way to get a proper Sega pad working.

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-09-08, 22:34:

Iv been soaking in the vast amount of FG ports on my DX4 rig lately. Although these are the kinda games i prefer on consoles, i […]
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Iv been soaking in the vast amount of FG ports on my DX4 rig lately. Although these are the kinda games i prefer on consoles, i thought i'd check out what the PC had to offer gamers in comparison.

REALLY impressed with how well the Eurocom port of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo plays on a measly DX4-100. Especially when you consider how accurate to the arcade game it is. A bit slow on animated background heavy stages, but otherwise on par with consoles. Lots of sound options too for MIDI. Same with the CD version of Mortal Kombat 1, Very accurate and plays better then most console ports of the 90s.

Just a shame there's no good control pad for DOS. Gravis Gamepad sucks for FGS. Im not pro enough to notice the difference between 4 and 6 button pads i guess, but god the Gravis D-pad is horrible. Especially when you need to press up/down and some direction to pull off a special move.

Makes me really wanna find some way to get a proper Sega pad working.

I was the Assistant Producer/Tester on the Eurocom version of SSF2T. There are a couple differences in that we didnt have the ram to do all the animations so some are cut a little short, plus the screens are not as wide. But I agree I did a fantastic job of capturing the arcade experience...alright mostly I just complained, the Eurocom team did the awesome job, which I told them at the time. PS it works with 6 button joysticks as well which it shipped with at the time.

I forget which magazine did a review, but it got 98% and they said "If God were a game he would be this game". I was so proud of that.

Oh I tested it on a P90 with a SB and GUS. Yes, I did all the testing =).

Was taking the Abrash ModeX path (to having wide CPS-appropriate video modes) ever considered?

Checking out some interesting news about Crystal Caves getting a HD remake >> http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/09/crystal … -of-apogee.html

I am slowly taking apart Creative's 3D Graphics Library (CGL) so I can get it to work with some more cards and some more (open source) games. Tonight I figured out why there's 4 different CGL drivers per card:
Re: Fun with CGL (Creative Graphics Library) on 3D Blaster

I don't know if this counts or not (sorry if it doesn't) but...
I have this K6-2 300mhz PC, into which I stuck a 32gb CF card (it's what I had...).
I wanted it routed out the front for easy insertion/removal, but... that gaping hole...

So I fired up Blender 3D and designed a front faceplate, with a slot for the CF card, and a shelf to screw the front of the adapter board to:

Then I fired up Cura and sliced the .stl file, and saved it to SD (my 3D printer doesn't talk to Linux...)

First try printing, I had a little white filament left, but not enough

Second try, I loaded black filament (cause that's all I have) and it completed printing

Finally, after installing it (CF card not bolted down, yet):

Not the best looking, I guess, but I'm pleased I got it with only one shot at modeling it, and two shots at printing.
Print took 3 hours.
I intend to eventually hit it with some filler and sand it to diminish the lines, then paint it an off-white, trying to match the case.

Hope I haven't bored everyone with this.

That's pretty good.

Hamby wrote on 2020-09-09, 05:48:

Hope I haven't bored everyone with this.

Considering I’m still a 3D printing virgin I find the whole process interesting. There probably should be a dedicated thread for 3D printing so others can reference it for advice and designs (if there isn’t already). If I were to get one it would probably be used mostly for what you did and hard to find I/O backplates.

Disassembled and cleaned my old A4 Tech PS2 keyboard. My sister spilled some soda on it, so a thorough cleaning was in order.

After a bath in a dishwasher liquid/water mix and some scrubbing, the keyboard appears to be as good as new. I'd even say the keys feel a bit more responsive now.

After modding my Japanese Roland A-880 patchbay for USB power instead of 100V, today I at last got around to removing my 'old' Edirol UM-550 and installing the A-880 in my desktop rack. Hooked everything up and it all works perfectly, listening to the Ultima 6 intro on MT-32, SC-55 and MU-50 at the same time 😀
Which sounds horrible as it really is an MT-32 composition, but that's not my A-880's fault 😜

Now to figure out if I can repaid the broken input port on the UM-550. Seeing as I have the A-880 it's surplus to requirements, but it will be a lot easier to sell if fully working...

Today I borrowed a BIOS chip from another of my PCs to replace a chip I accidentally fried in my current Slotket PIII build. Programmed it on my MiniPro with the latest BIOS I could find for this motherboard and happily it cures the HDD detection issues I was having. The board now recognises the installed 40GB HDD fine.

Happily today both my Slotket & cooler arrived, so I removed the old Slot 1 PIII 450MHz CPU and installed a Coppermine 1.0GHz Pentium III via the Slotket.

At POST the BIOS doesn't recognise the CPU speed correctly (showing 962EB MHz), but CPU-Z shows it is indeed running correctly at 1.0GHz. I was worried the cooler I chose wouldn't fit as it was larger than it appeared in the pictures 🤣. But it just fit nice and snug, with just enough clearance from the nearby capacitors.

I'd forgotten that the 440BX chipset (or at least the boards I have) require double sided RAM when it comes to 256MB sticks. I managed to scrounge 1 stick from another PC, I'll have to dig through my collection to see if I have anymore, or probably order one on eBay. The goal is 512MB overall for this build, currently settling for 384MB.

Now comes the fun of setting up the OS. I'm probably going to aim for Windows 2000 for nostalgia/novelty.

I've been up to a lot of Retro Stuff lately, though less in the PC vein in some cases.....

In the last 3 weeks I have....
- Cleaned and reorganized my closet (mostly)
- Setup the stack of retro-systems in said closet next to one of the two free TV's I picked up
- picked up 2 free TV's from a pro A/V dude who filmed my band, one DOA (Mitsubishi), one working (Magnavox)
- Did a focus adjustment on the Magnavox, set it up in the closet on a entertainment center I purloined from Mt. Trashmore in the back of our complex, and started playing Atari 2600 and NES again
- Done some work on the monitor stand for my NEC Versa docking station
- Did some more reinforcement work to the 40EC's screen, it's pretty solid now. (thinking about doing an LGR-style woodgrain wrap to cover the JB Weld work I had to do)
- Finally cracked into "Under a Killing Moon" on the Versa M/75, really digging it
- Fixed the dock problem with the versa laptops, I could not use the internal floppies on those laptops because of a conflict with the docking station ,turns out there's a switch in back to fix that
- (mostly) Repaired the Mitsubishi TV, it would not power on, cracked solder joint on input relay, now buzzes like a nest of hornets on bright colored screens, have heard the HV pop once or twice, needs degaussed and a new power cord
- Been introducing the wife to more retro-console games in the mean time

I have reached a pinnacle of retro gaming decoration today

Looks like my main retro system's boot disk (21 years old 4GB Quantum Fireball) failed today...the system won't boot into Windows anymore and complains of corrupted directories. It suggested running ScanReg, which hung itself. Scandisk shows some bad sectors and appears to not be able to get past a certain point when running a surface scan 🙁

It had shown some increasing signs of instability in the last couple of months. Guess I now know why...

Edit: Ah, it looks like Scandisk is just very slow. Guess I'll let it run overnight and see the damage tomorrow (I suspect that I'll have to reinstall Windows because one of the bad clusters hit the Windows drivers folder...).

My latest PIII build is beginning to be a source of endless frustration and a money sinkhole.

The PIII 1.0GHz CPU I installed on a Slotket was running too hot due to poor contact with the cooler. So I swapped the cooler for a smaller/better fitting cooler. Upon testing the CPU with the new cooler - dead CPU! 🙁

I didn't realise how fragile these Socket 370 CPUs were. I must have damaged the CPU when either removing the old cooler or fitting the new one. Just my luck that these Coppermine 1GHz CPUs (100MHz FSB) are a little harder to get hold of than the more common Tualatin or 133MHz Coppermine CPUs. I'm not planning to mod the slotket or motherboard for Tualatin support, so got to stick with Coppermine. I'm probably going to get a Celeron 1.1GHz CPU instead as aside from the smaller L2 cache vs the PIII it seems to be generally a decent performer and this CPU is more cheaply available.

Not ready to throw in the towel just yet on this PC, but certainly nearing my limits.

assasincz wrote on 2020-09-10, 16:13:

I have reached a pinnacle of retro gaming decoration today
20200910_173649.jpg

Super cool! 😁

Where did you find a high res version of that art? Or did you turn it into a vector with Adobe Illustrator or something?

My retro activity for today is/was getting a SB Live! Value to work with its Live!ware 3.0 applications on Windows 98. The installation under Windows 2000 worked fine but the newest ones (4.12.x) for Windows 98 kept complaining that there wasn't enough free disk space. It is mistaken of course and, apparently, not an uncommon problem with that installer but resizing the partition to get under 2GB of free space, and even making a new 1GB partition for just Creative's stuff didn't help.

The 4.06 VXD installation does work but doesn't include the soundfont editor (forgot the name). And who at Creative thought displaying a slow, "EAX" splash screen with sound on each startup was a good idea? Or overriding the Windows startup sound with some thunder?

Man, I would've been very unhappy if I had bought that card at the time.

HandOfFate wrote on 2020-09-10, 18:35:

who at Creative thought displaying a slow, "EAX" splash screen with sound on each startup was a good idea? Or overriding the Windows startup sound with some thunder?

I hated that as well, messing with my custom made Unreal Tournament sound theme back in the day. 😁

Almost tops the Nvidia 40.xx drivers turning off the minimize/maximize window animations and claiming "improved desktop performance".

PTherapist wrote on 2020-09-07, 18:33:

Dug out one of my PCs from storage to have a look what was inside, as my records didn't list any specific information about it. […]
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Dug out one of my PCs from storage to have a look what was inside, as my records didn't list any specific information about it. I couldn't remember anything about what was inside this PC, other than the installed CPU, RAM & HDD. Opened it up and was greeted with this:

Lovely & red, but not so nice after a quick google search and finding out what it was - PC Chips M810L Rev 7.1C

Then to my surprise as I removed the screwed in cooler - AMD Duron CPU is soldered. 😲

I love the cooler, trying to pass off the CPU as a "Duron 1200+" when it appears it's nothing more than an 850MHz Duron slightly overclocked to 892MHz. 🤣

I got this PC free from a family friend many years back. They were pretty clueless about PCs so understandable how they ended up with such an oddball system like this.

The motherboard goes into storage now anyway, as I'm going to reuse the case for a Coppermine PIII 1.0GHz build.

I have one of these too but with an actual AMD Duron 1200MHz (also soldered) but sold as AMD Pro 2000+. It is also a PC Chips budget motherboard 😀. The Duron 1200 was quite nice but it's a bold move to call it anywhere near 2000+!

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-09-10, 19:04:

HandOfFate wrote on 2020-09-10, 18:35:

who at Creative thought displaying a slow, "EAX" splash screen with sound on each startup was a good idea? Or overriding the Windows startup sound with some thunder?

I hated that as well, messing with my custom made Unreal Tournament sound theme back in the day. 😁

Almost tops the Nvidia 40.xx drivers turning off the minimize/maximize window animations and claiming "improved desktop performance".

Someday I fear we'll have advertizing on coffins and on the sides of hospital beds . By then, Creative's approach will look charmingly subtle and tasteful in comparison .