Re: CRT vs LCD?

Posted on 2015-06-23, 19:41

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by meisterister

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It depends on what you want to do with the display. For computers, CRTs are awesome for gaming and such because of their response times. I could also imagine that they'd be pretty good for graphics/design work because of their color depth and quality. Older operating systems are especially well …

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Re: How much computer is enough?

Posted on 2015-05-30, 19:15

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by meisterister

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'd venture to say that the people that need or want it are us . FTFY. I suppose that there may also be some industrial control systems that need 16 bit compatibility, but they really shouldn't be running a modern, 64 bit OS anyway (Not having pre-emptive multitasking is a plus for that sort of …

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Re: GokuBench CPU benchmark

Posted on 2015-05-07, 22:24

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by meisterister

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Just wondering, but what exactly does it benchmark? Is it mostly integer, vector integer, scalar floating point, vector floating point, or a mix? For this: model name : AMD FX(tm)-8320 Eight-Core Processor stepping : 0 microcode : 0x600081f cpu MHz : 3813.187 512 x 256 gave me between 48 and 49ish …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-05-03, 02:50

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by meisterister

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I got a 900MHz T-Bird Athlon. I'll post pictures when I manage to clean it, but it runs quite well for a $9 CPU! It will be going into a Win9x/ME build that I've been planning for a while. After testing with a GeForce 4 MX, it can get about 50 fps on the OpenArena timedemo.

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Re: Games completely outshined by their sequels

Posted on 2015-05-03, 02:40

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by meisterister

in Milliways

in Milliways

The original Age of Empires was outshined by Age II. II is a far larger, deeper, and more complex game that retains the same fundamental gameplay but polishes it very nicely. It can also be argued that Age III outshines II but in a sidestep-y way. This is just because of the Havok engine (who …

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Re: How many of you guys still use CRT monitors on all your retro computers (and maybe your modern ones too)

Posted on 2015-04-21, 23:16

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by meisterister

in Milliways

in Milliways

I currently have two CRT monitors in use. The first one is an HP D2842A, which I found in a trash bin where I work. Since I'm fortunately a SysAdmin, I put it on the empty desk beside mine and use it when testing and setting up systems. The second is some (AOC?) CRT that I use for all of my …

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Re: Random Crazy Idea/True Fastest 486

Posted on 2015-03-27, 19:25

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by meisterister

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, I'll definitely have to check whether the bus used by whichever soft core I go with actually matches and follows a 486 bus spec. It looks like its creator was actually running fairly complex software (like Windows 95) on it, which does lead me to be somewhat hopeful for it not giving much …

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Re: Random Crazy Idea/True Fastest 486

Posted on 2015-03-27, 18:57

by

by meisterister

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hm. Alright. I'm seriously thinking of starting this as a project. I have a Digilent FPGA (it's one of the Spartan 3 models, but meh), a socket 3 board, and a Cx486 to use as a reference. I can't wait to get home in a few days...

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Re: Random Crazy Idea/True Fastest 486

Posted on 2015-03-27, 18:00

by

by meisterister

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The reason I mentioned the connections going to a dev board is twofold: 1. It would greatly simplify debugging when doing an initial implementation. 2. It's a lot easier and cheaper to get an FPGA dev board at the moment. A drop-in replacement would be really neat, but would require enough interest …

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Re: Random Crazy Idea/True Fastest 486

Posted on 2015-03-27, 17:25

by

by meisterister

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

To be completely honest, raw coolness is a very big factor. The only other way I can answer the question is by asking, "Why overclock a 5x86 to 133 MHz?" http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=28848 It could also be a good testbed for people who want to learn about serious verilog design, as …

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Random Crazy Idea/True Fastest 486

Posted on 2015-03-27, 17:09

by

by meisterister

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Since we're busily living in the future, I'd like to give a bit of an elevator pitch for an idea I had: One of the biggest difficulties with running retro hardware besides the various compatibility problems is that CPUs can sometimes be pretty hard to come by. This fact has been exasperated by the …

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Re: Pentium 4 and retro gaming

Posted on 2015-03-26, 14:53

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by meisterister

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

P4's are very OLD machines already to many of the cellphone generation already. I don't think many will care... the problem is most P4's don't do anything unique really. Compared to a modern PC. They just do it slower. Most XP things work fine in Vista\7\8. P4's mostly run XP. And there are no ISA …

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Re: Remember the 16550 UART (and the modem era)?

Posted on 2015-02-16, 19:09

by

by meisterister

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I unfortunately grew up in an era of DSL only (which was admittedly very nice back in '04), but I've never bothered to throw away any of the various modems I've accumulated over the years, mostly out of the fact that they seemed pretty cool. I've always wanted to get a phone line simulator so that I …

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Re: A modern DOS Quake engine by Qbism

Posted on 2014-12-30, 21:49

by

by meisterister

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

First of all, *bump*. Second of all, I think that it would be an interesting project (that I would start if I had the time and/or skill) to try to write a quake engine specifically optimized for the 486. As I have heard, quake may well be the single most pentium-optimized game in existence. It would …

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Re: Just curious..what is your oldest computer still in daily use for actual work?

Posted on 2014-12-30, 19:02

by

by meisterister

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm currently using a dual 1GHz coppermine box as a server at work since I couldn't be arsed to set up one of our P4s. It has 1.5 GB of ram and a hard drive larger than the BIOS can support. To be honest, that machine is actually quite fast, even when browsing the web. If I hadn't upgraded last year …

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Re: Compaq Presario 4764

Posted on 2014-11-25, 04:40

by

by meisterister

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I managed to run a few more benchmarks including some somewhat unscientific ones: For fun, I ran Chocolate DOOM on my desktop computer and laptop (running Linux Mint 17 and 16, respectively). The source port used was Chocolate DOOM at 640x480x32bpp, since my modern graphics cards don't support …

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Re: Compaq Presario 4764

Posted on 2014-11-25, 00:05

by

by meisterister

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Hm. That's a shame. It would've been nice to have an absurd amount of cache to make up for the RAM and bus speeds in that computer.

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Re: Compaq Presario 4764

Posted on 2014-11-24, 23:02

by

by meisterister

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

There are not that much difference between a K6-II and a Pentium 200 in this system. To be fair, this is only in the benchmarks that I have run (namely quake... and nothing else :lol: ) Tonight I'll try more benchmarks like Duke3d and DOOM if at all possible and report back. I'm hoping for …

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Re: New PC advice

Posted on 2014-11-24, 18:03

by

by meisterister

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

What say ye about this: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/TjCQhM Once again, it'd be nice to know what games, exactly, she'll be playing on this computer. Given that you were at least considering 775, I'd say that any CPU currently available (aside from AM1 and some of the Celerons) would be a nice upgrade.

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Re: Compaq Presario 4764

Posted on 2014-11-24, 03:33

by

by meisterister

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Alright! I've managed to fix the whole CPU fan sliding off situation in the form of lots and lots of rubber bands :lol: As for the cache RAM, I've managed to find something on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/512KB-Cache-SRAM-Coast-Pipelined-Burst-Modul-NEU-NEW-100-OK-/281071267546 Would this be it? …

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