Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2022-05-07, 17:53

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Bought this Socket 478 ECS Elitegroup P4VXASD2+ board with 1,7 GHz CPU and 2 x 256 Mb SDR memory. On the upper left corner, there was, I think, an SMD capactior circuit, which caused a burned trace, so someone fixed the trace with wire. I tested the motherboard and it works, so I won't attempt …

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Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2022-05-04, 03:55

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Oh, me? I'm about to play one of my favorite arcade games from back in the day, Virtual-On: Cyber Troopers . In fact... IMG_0171.png I just got a cheerful pair of Win98 PCs all networked up for some two-player action! Short of owning the 2-player cabinet, this is probably as good as home Cyber …

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Re: What's the most recent dumb tech mistake you've made?

Posted on 2022-04-24, 03:25

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

A few days ago I accidentally rolled my office chair over a Bonnie Tyler CD. Man, what a heartache.

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Re: Need help to identify common video resolutions from 1996 to 2006

Posted on 2022-04-21, 23:54

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

IIRC the first batch of DL-DVI monitors and video cards were available in late 2004 or early 2005. If you wanted to actually game at 2560x1600 though, you pretty much needed a pair of 6800 Ultras in SLI, plus a brain that could perform convincing 15fps -> 60fps motion interpolation. 😜

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Re: ESD and you

Posted on 2022-04-16, 17:51

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What's with the Asus 865PE? I remember reading somewhere (probably here) that Asus didn't properly shield the southbridge on some of their i865-based motherboards, so they were prone to USB ESD damage. Edit - found it: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=45797 https://www.badcaps.net/forum/ …

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Re: ESD and you

Posted on 2022-04-16, 00:06

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The humidifier on our larger furnace conked out a few months ago, so we've had an extremely dry & staticky winter. I've been zapping everything I touch, including tap water. I've received several painful jolts just plugging USB devices in. Surprisingly, none of our electronics seem to have been …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2022-04-12, 20:50

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

At least they're immune to Spectre and similar vulnerabilities. I think.

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Re: PIII-s on a 694T: mysterious memory errors

Posted on 2022-04-10, 15:58

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I once owned an Asus TUV4X (694T chipset) that officially supported Tualatin-256 and 1.13GHz PIII-S. And indeed, out of the box, it had loads of trouble with the 1.4S, typically hanging at POST. Now I'm going off memory here, but there was a setting in the BIOS I had to turn off - I think it was CPU …

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Re: My 3DMark01 Mega Thread

Posted on 2022-04-06, 23:11

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

is just that... newer windows are kind of slow on 3dmark 2001se compared to XP afaik, and newer graphics cards and drivers also probably don't care that much about it and dx7 performance. You know, I've been casually tracking Win10 3DMark2001 performance on my HTPC over the years, and there was a …

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Re: post up pics of your "computing area"

Posted on 2022-04-03, 02:33

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I've been collecting CRT displays for ~20-years and computers/consoles for ~30-years. The 16:9 professional monitor is a Sony BVM-D32 and it's definitely one of my favorite toys in the retro room. I feel incredibly lucky to have stumbled into it - it has less than 5k hours on the tube, I've re- …

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Re: post up pics of your "computing area"

Posted on 2022-04-02, 02:59

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

speeddemon wrote on 2022-04-01, 07:17: IMG_2182.jpg Here's a video of my retro room as well: https://youtu.be/Xdd4uTq_EFU WHUH-HO!! Absolutely dig that "if I were made of money back in 1995" home theater setup. What is that, a gigantic 16:9 professional monitor of some sort? Beyond cool, man!

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Re: Why did they rush Windows 11?

Posted on 2022-03-19, 00:43

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by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

I may be in the minority but I actually like 11, but only with explorer patcher enabled. Especially with the recent update that lets you have a Windows 10 start menu. It's just as fast as 10 with core isolation disabled. I just did a fresh install of 11 from a bootable USB drive. It took 10 minutes …

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Re: Bought these (retro) software/OS today

Posted on 2022-03-06, 21:17

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

First garage sale of the year today! Fortunately, the guy's garage was well heated because it was chilly (-12C ) this morning. I picked up these two Office 2010 family packs for $4 each, one of which came with an unexpected bonus: it had a Windows 8 Pro activation card tucked away inside! …

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Re: What modern activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2022-02-04, 04:40

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

As I was sitting at my desk today, drooling on the keyboard while waiting for a 35GB game update to finish downloading, I realized something very cool. I realized that the average internet connection is now faster than a 486's L1 cache--at least in terms of raw bandwidth. Sure, the connection …

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Re: Cannot believe I bought this "time capsule" PC, wondering what's inside !!

Posted on 2022-01-29, 22:01

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hmm. That stylish tower definitely contains: a FIC MVP3 chipset motherboard with 2MB of L3 cache K6-3 at 450 256MB of RAM 12MB Voodoo2 4MB Rage Pro Ensoniq/Creative AudioPCI A D-Link "I Can't Believe It's not 3Com" ethernet card And a whiny 20GB IBM Deskstar that the dude purchased in 2002 when he …

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Re: Win 9x program to monitor CD/DVD real time speed?

Posted on 2022-01-29, 09:34

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Looks like MPC-HC can monitor the bitrates of audio and video files in real time (View > Statistics). From that, you'd be able to calculate the drive speed (1x = 11 mb/s for a DVD drive; 1.2 mb/s for a CD drive). Keep in mind that for video files, MPC reports the audio and video bitrates separately, …

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Re: what Vintage items are you looking for?

Posted on 2022-01-26, 18:27

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd love to own an Amiga one day. I probably never will though, as they're the *SINGLE* kind of computer that I never see for sale locally. Not even 15 years ago, when C64s, IIGSs, PS/2s, and frickin PCs with Voodoo3s in them could regularly be had for $10 at garage sales. And as for eBay...heh yeah …

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Re: [Update] Pentium II seen as a Celeron (not reading L2 cache)

Posted on 2022-01-23, 18:18

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I understand the cache point but I wonder if like in the past would have been that difficult to design an external fast L2 cache on sockets like the early Pentium that would have solved the L2 problem and still living on old style Socket... The PowerPC 750 (aka G3) and very early PPC 7400 ( …

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Re: GeForce4 vs. GeForce FX?

Posted on 2022-01-20, 20:10

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

P4 is terrible when it comes to speed flexibility. There's no way of reaching 386 / 486 speeds, because even when disabling the L1 cache, the Netburst architecture is still too fast. This is not completely accurate. The reason it appears so is because using "SETMUL L1D" on a P4 actually disables …

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Re: CRT nostalgia vs the 15KHz monitor whine

Posted on 2022-01-18, 23:32

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'm 40 and can still hear the whine of my Monitor II, sometimes from the hallway if nothing else is making any noise. It brings back memories, that's for sure! I can remember my eardrums being absolutely assaulted by the chorus of 20-30 Apple monitors whenever I'd walk into the computer lab at …

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