debs3759 wrote on 2020-10-20, 19:27:

PTherapist wrote on 2020-10-20, 18:49:

debs3759 wrote on 2020-10-20, 17:55:

Dug out a G41 chipset board this afternoon to make a media centre PC for a friend. Turns out the clips are broken on the heatsink - and she's not getting one of my Noctua NH-D14 😀 At least she gets a Q8300 I had laying around.

Guess that project is on hold for a few days until the stock cooler I just bought on fleabay arrives. At least I had a spare 500 GB drive I could give her, and can replace the DVD drive with a Blu-Ray, so she'll be able to play anything, and store well over 100 movies. Going to install XP (that's all she needs, and I have a pre-activated copy) and K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 13.8.5 (last version to support XP SP3). I hope her TV has a spare HDMI port so I don't have to buy a cheap switch and another cable. Not going to do any major optimising, as I can't see a 63 year old getting into heavy gaming 😀 Might install a solitaire collection for her though.

Personally I wouldn't recommend building a Media Centre PC/HTPC with any kind of stock cooler, it will be much too loud.

Also, is the Blu-Ray drive just for data usage? As I think you'll have problems playing back actual Blu-Ray movie discs on Windows XP, Windows 7 would probably be better for that.

It'll probably be the cheapest option for transferring rips, but I didn't know XP wouldn't offer good BD playback. Unfortunately I have never seen a pre-activated copy of 7, and I'm not sure I want to trust keys off ebay to activate.

Yes, ripping them would probably be the easiest option. The reason XP isn't good for Blu-Ray playback, is that PowerDVD 11 is the latest version that will run on either XP or Vista and PowerDVD 11 will struggle with a lot of newer titles due to updated DRM.

However another issue is if the onboard graphics has HDCP support? Otherwise it won't matter which OS you use as it still wouldn't work without 3rd party tools such as AnyDVD HD.

Fitted a Diamond Monster MX300 with my new Korg Wavetable board into my machine today. Getting a bit crowded in there sound wise now, but I have one ISA slot left which I'm thinking about filling with a SB16 with either a DB50XG or the Dreamblaster X2. I used the No_SB Drivers off Phil's site, as I don't need SB compatibility in Windows. I will manually add the dos drivers into dos mode. Another thing I need to do is figure out the mixing. I've done the Line-In > Line Out thing so far but I'm leaning towards getting a mixer.

Cards are like this

SB Audigy
MX300
Turtle Beach Maui
>SB 16 (DB50XG or X2 TBD)

Today I repaired a Radeon 9250 that had bad memory.
When I got it was artifacting even on the desktop. So I took out a dead 9600SE from the junk box and pilfered some of its RAM and tried it in the 9250. Obviously as the card has 8 chips, I found the bad one on the 8th attempt.
Now 2D mode was fine, but 3D was still a no go*. As desoldering and soldering back these chips got old pretty fast, I decided for a nuclear approach. I removed all of the original memory, and swapped it with 6 chips pulled from an old Samsung 256MB PC2700 SODIMM. While I was in there i also did a cheapo recap on the Vram rails (apparently this thing runs the memory off two separate, completely independent rails, not even set at the same voltage (one is 2.5 and the other is 2.7V)), from 2x470uf 16V Gluxons to 2x510uf 4v used OsCons.

Surprisingly enough in all of this mess I only lost two pads, a ground and a NC, so no big deal, and even stranger, now the card works properly.

* The only way it was kinda working was with the RAM downclocked to 120 Mhz with a massive volt mod that gave it 3 volts. Has anyone ever heard of memory (6ns 16Mx16 Elixir from 50th week '07, in this case) degrading so badly?

Impressive soldering work. I can't even tell if it was modified or not. As if it came out of the box.

konc wrote on 2014-07-12, 18:22:

Just finished transferring all XT-Hercules (or simcga) capable games I own and could think of to a Schneider Euro XT. Time to s […]
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Just finished transferring all XT-Hercules (or simcga) capable games I own and could think of to a Schneider Euro XT.
Time to see now on a so-rare-yourself-and-your-geeky-things Saturday night what actually runs on the 512KB RAM this XT beauty has.
Sorry about the phone photos, I reallly don't know any better way to get a screenshot out of an XT running DOS 3.3 😀
(that amber... it can't be just memories, somehow I love it more than I probably should!)

That's awesome. I love it.

Bruninho wrote on 2020-10-21, 14:29:

Impressive soldering work. I can't even tell if it was modified or not. As if it came out of the box.

Thank you 😀

In the meantime I replaced the 2 Mira brand chips off the 9600 with the last 2 Samsungs off the Sodimm, as I thought it would be better for all the memory to be the same. Despite often being that better is the enemy of good, all went fine. I also did a small mod so that both memory supply rails sit at the same voltage (that was YOUR job Sapphire, not mine), now 2.79V, which is a bit high but nothing dramatic.

At the end of the day I got a fully working card, and the 166MHz-rated RAM seems to be stable at 230MHz, of which I'm not complaining.

Well I've gone slightly bonkers with my sound setup on my Tualatin machine! I removed the Turtle Beach Maui and replaced it with a EWS64XL, But I've managed to retain the Kurzweil midi as i populated the breakout bay with a Turtle Beach HOMAC 😀 I also added a CT2940 with Gen OPL3 and a DB50XG. It's currently all playing nicely in windows and it all comes out the Audigy. Next I have to tackle DOS. I'm going to use @PARUS multi channel mixer for the Audigy. But the DOS setup can wait for tomorrow!

Sound setup is now

Audigy
Vortex 2 MX300 With Trust Korg Module (300)
EWS64XL (310)
EWS64XL Midi-2 (HOMAC) (320)
SB16 DB50XG (330)

andrea wrote on 2020-10-21, 16:13:

Thank you :) […]
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Bruninho wrote on 2020-10-21, 14:29:

Impressive soldering work. I can't even tell if it was modified or not. As if it came out of the box.

Thank you 😀

In the meantime I replaced the 2 Mira brand chips off the 9600 with the last 2 Samsungs off the Sodimm, as I thought it would be better for all the memory to be the same. Despite often being that better is the enemy of good, all went fine. I also did a small mod so that both memory supply rails sit at the same voltage (that was YOUR job Sapphire, not mine), now 2.79V, which is a bit high but nothing dramatic.

At the end of the day I got a fully working card, and the 166MHz-rated RAM seems to be stable at 230MHz, of which I'm not complaining.

How's the performance of the card with the new ram?

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-10-22, 12:42:

andrea wrote on 2020-10-21, 16:13:

Thank you :) […]
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Bruninho wrote on 2020-10-21, 14:29:

Impressive soldering work. I can't even tell if it was modified or not. As if it came out of the box.

Thank you 😀

In the meantime I replaced the 2 Mira brand chips off the 9600 with the last 2 Samsungs off the Sodimm, as I thought it would be better for all the memory to be the same. Despite often being that better is the enemy of good, all went fine. I also did a small mod so that both memory supply rails sit at the same voltage (that was YOUR job Sapphire, not mine), now 2.79V, which is a bit high but nothing dramatic.

At the end of the day I got a fully working card, and the 166MHz-rated RAM seems to be stable at 230MHz, of which I'm not complaining.

How's the performance of the card with the new ram?

On an 266FSB Athlon 2600+, in 3dmark 01, I get 5652 points at default (240 core/166 ram), 6573 pts overclocking the memory (240 core/230 ram) and 7280 overclocking everything (320 core/230 ram).

A 9200/9250 with 4ns Ram (which I know they exist), and perhaps 128MB instead of 256, could be interesting to play with.

EDIT: For the sake of comparison, on the same machine a 8500 flashed to 9100 @275/275 scores 8905, and a 9600XT 500/200 9668.

Nice it seems like it was a fruitful venture

Today I made a line in backplate. I needed to somehow feed the MX300 into the Audigy via an Analogue connection but the MX300 has no internal output headers. I had a bracket in my spares box and salvaged a backplate off a old soundblaster PCI card. Thankfully the jacks lined up spot on. the two jacks are connected to the AUX and CD-IN on the Audigy. Works exactly as I needed it too. Just need to set the levels for DOS using Parus's Audigy Mixer for DOS and then it's done!

What the F to do with old dead harddrives???? Yup I know what to do. Make a monitor stand for the vintage corner. 😜

Then I cleaned up some old toys from my childhood, and placed them on the shelf above my vintage corners table.
One Pezz-Darth-Vader and three small micro-transformers.

To Bancho and Brostenen those are both excellent and creative solutions I love them both.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-10-23, 12:25:

To Bancho and Brostenen those are both excellent and creative solutions I love them both.

Thanks.
And it is a woodgrain monitor stand. I think LGR would aprove. 😁

It looks like oak. I personally like the look of wood

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-10-23, 13:35:

It looks like oak. I personally like the look of wood

Oak is wood... 😉
It is actually chipboard, laminated with 5mm wood of some sort. Painted with some kind of dark stain and some kind of varnish or clear coat on top.

Setting up one of my 486.

Today and for the past couple of days I've been busy installing games on my recent 2003 WinXP build. Then I decided to setup LaunchBox, older version 4.4, to have a more fancy game launcher, rather than just using Windows Explorer shortcuts to batch files (for mounting the CD images etc).

A work in progress, but I'm quite happy so far with how it's running. Running LaunchBox as a "low priority" process, so as to not interfere with running games.

Obviously on these older versions the online scrapers no longer function, but it's local database is enough to fill in the info for about 90% of most games, then I just drag in the game covers & fanart/screenshots manually straight from web. It's easy/quick enough to manually fill in the info for the games it doesn't recognise.

PTherapist wrote on 2020-10-21, 04:47:

debs3759 wrote on 2020-10-20, 19:27:

PTherapist wrote on 2020-10-20, 18:49:

Personally I wouldn't recommend building a Media Centre PC/HTPC with any kind of stock cooler, it will be much too loud.

Also, is the Blu-Ray drive just for data usage? As I think you'll have problems playing back actual Blu-Ray movie discs on Windows XP, Windows 7 would probably be better for that.

It'll probably be the cheapest option for transferring rips, but I didn't know XP wouldn't offer good BD playback. Unfortunately I have never seen a pre-activated copy of 7, and I'm not sure I want to trust keys off ebay to activate.

Yes, ripping them would probably be the easiest option. The reason XP isn't good for Blu-Ray playback, is that PowerDVD 11 is the latest version that will run on either XP or Vista and PowerDVD 11 will struggle with a lot of newer titles due to updated DRM.

However another issue is if the onboard graphics has HDCP support? Otherwise it won't matter which OS you use as it still wouldn't work without 3rd party tools such as AnyDVD HD.

I think a cheapo GPU like a Geforce 210 or HD6450 would help alot with Blu-Ray playback on a system like that 😀

ODwilly wrote on 2020-10-24, 14:27:

PTherapist wrote on 2020-10-21, 04:47:

debs3759 wrote on 2020-10-20, 19:27:

It'll probably be the cheapest option for transferring rips, but I didn't know XP wouldn't offer good BD playback. Unfortunately I have never seen a pre-activated copy of 7, and I'm not sure I want to trust keys off ebay to activate.

Yes, ripping them would probably be the easiest option. The reason XP isn't good for Blu-Ray playback, is that PowerDVD 11 is the latest version that will run on either XP or Vista and PowerDVD 11 will struggle with a lot of newer titles due to updated DRM.

However another issue is if the onboard graphics has HDCP support? Otherwise it won't matter which OS you use as it still wouldn't work without 3rd party tools such as AnyDVD HD.

I think a cheapo GPU like a Geforce 210 or HD6450 would help alot with Blu-Ray playback on a system like that 😀

I'm thinking a GT 430 is the best of whet I have at hand.