Re: What would you do different?

Posted on 2024-05-03, 10:33

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'd know that adding a math coprocessor won't do a damn thing for games on a 386SX. I'd reconsider our PCChips 486 build. I'd reconsider my socket-7 upgrade path. Buy lots of used consoles, games, and ISA sound cards at the end of the decade.

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Re: Computer Won't Turn On

Posted on 2024-03-26, 01:48

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Longshot - next to the southbridge chip is a clock crystal, it's that silver metal can. Make sure the legs are not touching. If there's any other devices like that on the board, check the same for all of them. I came across one board were the legs had been twisted up by somebody. Try powering it up …

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Re: Drive bay extinction in cases, PC chassis, accelerating ???

Posted on 2024-03-23, 04:57

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

My brother had eSATA on a new Gigabyte board back around 2009-10. He used it with 2 external hard drives, but the port was unreliable so he switched back to USB.

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Re: Drive bay extinction in cases, PC chassis, accelerating ???

Posted on 2024-03-22, 05:55

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

I guess it's a good time to check your local PC repair-oriented shops for 2nd hand cases they'll sell cheap. I only know of 1 such shop around me, and the one time I went in there I wasn't impressed. But some of those places do make an effort to sell used parts before throwing them away. I don't …

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Re: 694D Pro2 (MS-6321) dual P3 motherboard

Posted on 2024-03-16, 03:40

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I built up a similar board from Gigabyte just to try running things on a Pentium 3 that don't make sense. Dual CPUs and 2GB RAM helped with that. So it was fine for screwing around awhile, but I didn't keep using it long. For an actual practical system, yeah it might be redundant to run WinXP if you …

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Re: my boring Pentium200, do I install Win95?

Posted on 2024-03-12, 05:24

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I would. If you only have one retro gaming PC then Win98 is a great choice. But if you have multiple, personally I think it's more interesting to try to use different OSes on them. I have a 233MMX which I installed as a Win95/late DOS machine. The video card is currently a Rendition, but I could …

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Re: Weird GeForce 2 mx400

Posted on 2024-03-10, 00:34

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by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I just noticed in your picture there's a 0326 date code on the PCB. I don't know exactly when the MX400 cards came out but I think it must have been in 2001 - so that card is much too new to be a prerelease card. So it's weird that it has that BIOS on it, unless there's some other reason that " …

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Re: Weird GeForce 2 mx400

Posted on 2024-03-09, 11:42

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I have an early Geforce3 card with that same "Engineering Release" BIOS message. Can you get a picture showing the markings on the RAM chips? That would help determine what clock they should be capable of, and could also date the card. If you end up removing the heatsink, a picture of the markings …

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Re: "Greasey" 6800GT AGP - is this normal?

Posted on 2024-03-09, 01:20

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Try swapping to a different molex connector from another harness, unless you know the one you're using is good with other high powered cards. Honestly, that's another myth that I keep seeing on various gaming forums, at least when it comes to these older GPUs. With new gen stuff pulling 200+ Watts …

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Re: new laptop hard drive

Posted on 2024-03-08, 05:14

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

I like hard drives fine in desktops, but SSDs are more suitable for a laptop. With an SSD you don't have to worry about movement or vibration. They also use a little less power, which also means a little less heat to dissipate.

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Re: "Greasey" 6800GT AGP - is this normal?

Posted on 2024-03-08, 00:58

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It could be a power issue. Try probing for memory and GPU voltages on the card, see if they look right and whether you catch it sagging when you put more load on it. I don't know what the correct voltage is for that GPU but maybe the info is out there somewhere. Try swapping to a different molex …

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Re: New PSU killed motherboard?

Posted on 2024-03-05, 13:22

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As a general policy, I suggest using a multimeter to measure the output of unknown power supplies before you plug parts you care about into them. This won't show you the ripple, but that's a deeper thing to get into and requires expensive equipment. Checking the nominal voltages is easy and will …

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Re: If you had $100000(at your disposal), what retro act would you do back in 1990?

Posted on 2024-03-05, 00:55

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

To make money, I'd just buy stock. It's the most practical way to achieve that instead of dealing with physical stuff. But if I don't know the future of the stock market, it would be cool to get a programming job back then. I like programming for simple non-multitasking environments, it's less …

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Re: Back-in-Black ( Pentium-lll , 933mhz , with Voodoo-3 )

Posted on 2024-03-04, 23:20

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Back in the day, when beige was becoming un-cool, I built a computer with an Antec case in "performance grey". That was great... except nobody makes optical or floppy drives in performance grey. I realized this was a mistake after I put the computer together. What a silly awkward era of computing …

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Re: best version of Office to learn

Posted on 2024-03-02, 00:26

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by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

Real story. Some work I did for a customer who lives in the dark ages IT wise, but now suffers the consequences a bit. Yesterday, I had to convert an Access 97 *.mdb to a 'modern' *.accdb with the help of Access 2007, so it could be opened in Access 365 v2401. Access 365 can't convert old stuff. …

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

Posted on 2024-03-01, 05:03

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

Over the last few days I was trying to install linux Mint as a secondary OS on an Asus A8N-SLI Athlon64. It has a GT520 video card which has good video decoding. Ran into major problems with Mint 20 and Mint 19, most critically with the NVidia drivers. Each offered driver on both those distro …

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Re: Finally, a mid 90s build I am (somewhat) happy with!

Posted on 2024-02-26, 22:00

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

That slim case reminds me of a P2-era Dell I have, but I like the Micron badging much more. It also appears to be a totally standard ATX case, not the proprietary stuff Dell was doing. I don't think I ever saw any Micron prebuilts, I've only read of them in old magazine articles.

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Re: Poll. How did you handle AGP to PCI Express stepover?

Posted on 2024-02-26, 13:21

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by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I was using older hardware so I didn't face that transition until after it was over for most people. My last new motherboard for many years was a super socket 7. After that I wasn't real interested in buying the newest stuff, but I was buying and selling a lot of used parts on eBay so my PC changed …

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Re: Dual Slot 1 440FX build

Posted on 2024-02-25, 12:47

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

This is a nice example of an early high end P2 system. Great cleanup job, everything looks like new.

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Re: Motherboard SLOT1 DFI (ITOX) PA61 rev.D2, BIOS chip missing.

Posted on 2024-02-25, 09:11

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

According to my notes this is the BIOS I had on a PA61 rev.D2. That board later died so I can't test it, but it did work for a time. Filename PA61i 2000-08-18.zip File size 177.3 KiB Downloads 9 downloads

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