Re: The Strange (And Long) Case of The Very Unreliable Compaq Deskpro EN-SFF

Posted on 2018-10-25, 04:47

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've booted the Deskpro after the BIOS update and had success with installing Windows 98SE.. until the 'Detecting PnP Devices bit', where it just flat out locked up and after a hard reset the DVD-ROM was again not detected. At this point, I have a few last ideas to try: 1. Both DVD-RW drives I've …

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Re: 3dfx Voodoo Brands

Posted on 2018-10-24, 14:15

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Diamond Voodoo 1 cards are my personal favorites of their ilk due to having solid state caps.

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Re: Video card memory upgrade compatibility.

Posted on 2018-10-24, 14:13

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Make sure to use DRAM chips rated for speeds no slower than soldered memoey and it should be fine.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-10-24, 10:50

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

One of the S3 virge cards has a 3.5mm jack, for what? :confused: EDIT: Some googling later I found an identical card with silkscreen saying "s3 mpeg audio" by the 3.5mm jack. The 3.5 jack is for audio out in the case you add a Scenic MPEG decoder daughterboard to it. You route the audio out to …

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Re: Did I screw up my board?

Posted on 2018-10-24, 09:54

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I doubt that would result in any harm.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-10-24, 09:04

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

arncht wrote: appiah4 wrote: No OPL3 on this card I guess? How does it FM Synthesis sound? left upper side - genuine yamaha Oh I completely missed that.. Never saw a YMF chip located so far out. Looks like a very decent card.

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

Posted on 2018-10-24, 08:55

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Upgraded my Pentium 3 machine from my Asus P3B-F Slot 1 motherboard with an 800MHz Slot 1 P3 to an Asus TUSL2-C Tualatin-compatible Socket 370 motherboard with the 1.4GHz S370 PIII-S. I read the entire thing with interest.. I'm in the process of converting my Slot 1 P3-700 system into a Socket 370 …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-10-24, 08:54

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No OPL3 on this card I guess? How does it FM Synthesis sound?

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Re: TNT2 M64 16MB vs 32MB

Posted on 2018-10-24, 06:38

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The TNT2 (Pro/Ultra as well) all suck at Quake III. Even running 1024x768 with 16bit colour, you don't get the best performance. Well, obviously Voodoo 2 class hardware is not the 'best' to run a demanding 1999 game on, but the M64 can run Quake III at 800x600x16 at 50+ fps no problems. TNT2 Pro/ …

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Re: Did I screw up my board?

Posted on 2018-10-24, 06:27

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Are we talking about the EXT_BAT headrr here? Because it is usually +G0G so it lools like you connected the power without a ground which should do no harm.. However if you are accidentally plugging power in reverse ie + to G that may have caused issues?

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Re: The Strange (And Long) Case of The Very Unreliable Compaq Deskpro EN-SFF

Posted on 2018-10-24, 06:17

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That was on my mind. See, there is this video I came across on youtube while googling a fix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti9tL1SKLRM Same PC, same setup but the guy is using a PCI Promise Ultra ATA100 IDE controller.. Why I do not know but there could be a common issue? Dont speak no Russian :( …

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Re: I have a philosophical dilemma and need some input

Posted on 2018-10-24, 06:06

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's the same deal as the Dimension XPS, you need to remove both side panels, the top panel, and the bottom panel before you can remove the front panel, most likely.

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The Strange (And Long) Case of The Very Unreliable Compaq Deskpro EN-SFF

Posted on 2018-10-24, 05:40

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've had a Compaq Deskpro EN-SFF lying about for quite a while now. Lately I decided to use it as a daily retro driver PC, so I gave it some upgrades. The CPU at 1GHz Coppermine is good enough, though I am debating replacing it with a Tualatin P3 1.2GHz anyway. I upgraded the RAM from 2x128MB sticks …

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Re: total annihilation escalation with improved visual

Posted on 2018-10-23, 23:34

by

by appiah4

in dgVoodoo General

in dgVoodoo General

That is not FXAA or SMAA, that is basically a blur shader across the whole framebuffer from what I can tell. The blur is helping you get around the sharpness issues with the edges, so that is the illusion of antialiasing there, but it's also blurring everything else as well and making you lose …

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Re: What was your first (as in personally owned) PC compatible computer?

Posted on 2018-10-23, 21:46

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My first personal PC was an Atari 800XL in 1987. My father bought it out of his curiosity, pretty much, but within months it was mine as a gaming computer and I was coding in BASIC in 1988, one year after learning to read and write in elementary school. However, if that doesn't count, then I guess I …

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Re: Weird graphical issues... is my hardware going bad?

Posted on 2018-10-23, 15:18

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Have you tried the Voodoo 3 in another motherboard?

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Re: total annihilation escalation with improved visual

Posted on 2018-10-23, 13:33

by

by appiah4

in dgVoodoo General

in dgVoodoo General

Not sure what you mean by 'works' but what I see in the second screenshot is neither texture filtering or edge anti-aliasing, it's almost just a blur/smear of the framebuffer.. I can't in all honesty say whatever dg did here improves anything.

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

Posted on 2018-10-23, 13:10

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

oeuvre wrote: ew it's Pentium 4. Fixed that for you.

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Re: Soundblaster AWE32 Advice

Posted on 2018-10-23, 13:07

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I can imagine that's true and that you won't be able to tell the difference if you're not explicitly looking for it. Which brings up the dilemma; how much would you like to pay extra for a sound card that sounds just a little bit better? :confused: I wouldn't say they are indiscernible, the two …

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Re: TNT2 M64 16MB vs 32MB

Posted on 2018-10-23, 12:57

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The M64 is kinda slow when it comes to 32bit color "drawing" because of its "crippled" bus. The 16 vs 32MB issue seems kinda inane due to this, serious, shortcoming - 1GB+ vs 2GB+ per second in memory "bandwidth". Just run Quake III on an M64 32MB and see if it fits your performance window. From …

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