Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2020-10-25, 16:27

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Cool, I love my A21p, despite the fact that I avoid playing on it due to possible video chip failure :D I used to be afraid of that, but since I acquired a hotair station I feel like I can fix almost everything. For the GPU I only need a stencil and the solder paste to recreate the balls under the …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2020-10-25, 16:16

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The A22p can run Half-Life very well. I had one back in the day and used it for LAN parties. I have an A22m with the slowest Rage chip of them all, though. Half-Life crashes in OpenGL mode (locks up the whole machine) and in D3D I can barely get it to work in VGA. So yeah, that machine is only …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2020-10-25, 15:27

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My A21m recently died. Not due to GPU failure, but the more common blink-of-death (failure of the power control chip). Maybe that is also heat-related. I recently fixed one! All it needed was a new ADP3421 chip, I've got 20 of those on Aliexpress for a good price. :) The machine is pretty useless, …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2020-10-25, 12:44

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Mobile GPUs of that era typically shipped with no cooling. Even ATI 7500 which was used in some Thinkpads did not generally have a cooler attached. This was OK for nominal operation, apparently, but under stress could lead to various failures. Insufficient GPU cooling was the worst decision IBM …

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Re: Retro Hardware Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-10-23, 12:31

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You can set up your own shipping prices though. Either you create a general table for the countries you want to send to or you can enter them manually when you create an auction. Never trust the automatic process. :) So it doesn't hurt to ask the seller to adjust the shipping price if you really …

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Re: Archimedean Dynasty 4

Posted on 2020-10-19, 00:02

by

by schmatzler

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

I played it for half an hour...the AI ship that was supposed to guide me through the tunnels in the beginning got stuck on the tunnel wall... Enemies are always in your face, shooting all at once. There is no joystick support, not even a basic one. Mouse+Keyboard or an Xbox 360 controller are the …

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Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Posted on 2020-10-17, 11:16

by

by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

It's E-ATX, but it will hopefully still fit into my In-Win Q500 case. If not, I am in a lot of trouble. :D Update: The dual Xenon board did NOT fit into my In-Win Q500 case. Only a few screwholes at the bottom aligned properly so the board was flapping around at the top. It turns out that …

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Re: Worst Nightmare ? Athlon X2 PC from Trash to Treasure

Posted on 2020-10-14, 00:27

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Awesome! I imagine the smell must still be lingering around, seeing those huge amounts of dirt. It's not impossible to get rid of cigarette smell, what worked for me in the past was sealing the components with coffee powder into a box for a few weeks. That helps a lot and the rest of it will be …

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Re: Is anyone excited for the Nvidia 3000 series cards

Posted on 2020-10-10, 12:07

by

by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

I've decided to stick to my GTX 1060 for the foreseeable future. That whole RTX30xx launch is a mess with bad PCB design, inflated prices and supply chain problems. RTX can wait for a while. I was fine without it for ages, I will be fine without it for a little while longer. 🙂 And I'm absolutely not …

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Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Posted on 2020-10-07, 22:23

by

by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

Got a Supermicro X10DRi board with two Xeon V3 processors and 64GB DDR4 RAM for a really good price. This will a beast of a rendering machine. 😀 It's E-ATX, but it will hopefully still fit into my In-Win Q500 case. If not, I am in a lot of trouble. 😁 Filename supermicro.jpg File size 521.96 KiB …

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Re: 8-bit guy gets ultra-rare NOS IBM (prototype?) from Computer Reset then proceeds to obliterate it

Posted on 2020-10-01, 19:09

by

by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'm a patron of his, but he is most certainly not my idol. 😁 Mistakes have been made and he apologized for it, that's a good move. This incident will be forgotten very soon.

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Re: 8-bit guy gets ultra-rare NOS IBM (prototype?) from Computer Reset then proceeds to obliterate it

Posted on 2020-10-01, 15:39

by

by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

He has posted a response on Patreon: https://youtu.be/SYopBjwhF1M This is an unlisted video, but feel free to share it if you are part of some of the groups that has been demanding a response.

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Re: Which browser do you use?

Posted on 2020-09-22, 21:25

by

by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

I use Chrome, because I'm a web developer and the included inspection and debugging tools are so much better than on Firefox. Mozilla lost me when they started to change the interface heavily and tried to include weird extension bloat like Pocket or that video conference thing no one needed... Now …

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Re: Official Retro Game Wallpapers

Posted on 2020-09-20, 11:30

by

by schmatzler

in Windows

in Windows

No One Lives Forever 2: Filename pcaction_11-2002_wall_04.jpg File size 205.39 KiB Views 324 views I-War: Filename fleet1.png File size 1.15 MiB Views 324 views Shadow Man: Filename shadow_man.jpg File size 82.43 KiB Views 324 views American McGee's Alice: Filename wallpaper_alice_04.jpg File size …

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Re: Where can I buy vintage hardware other from eBay?

Posted on 2020-09-20, 02:10

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Repo Man11 wrote on 2020-09-19, 19:54: Third time I've tried to register: That message just looks like they haven't set up stopforumspam properly, so nobody can register at their site at all. Should sort itself out, when the admin wakes up. 😜

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Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-09-20, 02:03

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Shipping from the US to EU up to 2 pounds costs $24.50. And if you ship with DHL Express you always have to pay import taxes on top of that, too - which is annoying as hell, because packages are getting stuck in tax limbo in some warehouse for ages until tired and underpaid people ("customs …

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Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-09-19, 09:22

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I bought a GTX8800 on eBay, because it had a massive aftermarket cooler (Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme) that keeps the card cool and is also supposed to be attached WITH THERMAL PADS for the VRAM chips. The previous idiot owner did not attach the thermal pads. So of course, the VRAM chips have …

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Re: Asrock 775Dual VSTA & Core4Dual thread

Posted on 2020-09-15, 22:09

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just a quick update: I can confirm that AGP still works on Windows 10 2004 64bit with an ATI HD4650 card. I just replaced the "PCI to PCI bridge" with the "VIA CPU to AGP controller" (via agp.inf) - had to disable driver signature enforcement for that. Then I imported the .reg file. Windows did …

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Re: Thinkpad T22/T23 S3 Savage IX & SuperSavage

Posted on 2020-09-13, 23:45

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I distinctly remember S3 Metal working on my T23 with UT99, I am using the modded ChroMetal drivers: https://we.tl/t-F5Ei1bGrZl

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Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-09-13, 12:31

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, that happens. Especially very large pictures get compressed again when they're uploaded to eBay - probably to improve the loading times for the website. Also, not everyone has a super-fancy DSLR. The photos I take with my phone are always a bit blurry when zoomed in. So I don't care about …

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