Athlon/Geforce Retro PC drivers

Posted on 2019-12-30, 11:00

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I've spent some time over the holidays tweaking and finishing off one of my retro machines. The idea was "Fast Windows 98" for games like Half-Life and Quake2/3. I've targetted late 2000 for most of the hardware. Its running an Athlon 1100, and a Quadro2 (Geforce 2 GTS) and currently dual boots both …

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Re: SD vs Compact (converted from IDE)

Posted on 2019-08-08, 08:39

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As wikipedia says, A2 requires host OS support for write caching and command queueing, so its likely A2 isnt the best idea. A1 doesnt need that. Personally i'd look for an A1 card, that also has a decent sequential write rating, such as U3. This combination should hopefully get a card as fast as …

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Re: SD vs Compact (converted from IDE)

Posted on 2019-08-08, 06:41

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

With the rise of actual computers that run from SD cards (like the Raspberry Pi) there has been an uptick in SD card performance as well as a new class rating system for cards that are designed to be used as a system drive. Clearly crap slow SD cards still exist, but look for the new "A" rating for …

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Re: I need help with SCSI setup - SS7 + Adaptec 39160.

Posted on 2019-08-08, 06:16

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Get yourself a 68pin u160 cable which has terminators built in. I ran a 39160 in my old Dual Athlon machine back in the day, with some 18gb 15k RPM drives. The fast disks really made a difference. Similar to SSDs these days, computers with normal drives always felt REALLY slow to me as a result!

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Re: NuXT - micro-ATX IBM XT (LGR review)

Posted on 2019-08-05, 14:50

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeh, while i can appreciate the effort etc, the price certainly soured the whole thing for me. I watched the video thinking "ooh i want it" and headed straight to the website. At which point it turned into "oh hell no"... And sure, i get something like this is very niche and expensive due to …

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Re: Another PS/2 Mouse ISA (ISA8) card adapter

Posted on 2019-08-05, 14:39

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

certainly interested in this, is there a order process or waiting list?

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Re: MT32 and Lucasarts weirdness

Posted on 2019-07-30, 07:39

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Fired up SoftMPU this morning and both Monkey1 and Loom work perfectly with that running. I'm not sure the games are actually requiring Intelligent mode, but i guess SoftMPU is fixing whatever weirdness is going on otherwise, so thats good!

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Re: MT32 and Lucasarts weirdness

Posted on 2019-07-29, 18:02

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I did not try SoftMPU. Theres no mention i can find the SoMI or Loom requires SoftMPU for their MT32 music. As i understand it, its only required for certain titles which use "intelligent mode". Perhaps the machine is too fast i guess! Its a bit of a weird machine BIOS wise with not much by way of …

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Re: MT32 and Lucasarts weirdness

Posted on 2019-07-29, 11:16

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

This was recorded with the AZT2320 fitted, but the SB16 sounded basically the same (also note the music takes ages to actually start playing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_miQ7e7qtkU&feature=youtu.be This was recorded with the ESS1868 fitted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0u-pUtJDzs&feature= …

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MT32 and Lucasarts weirdness

Posted on 2019-07-29, 11:07

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I posted this in another thread but didnt get any responses and i figure it was probably not the right place for it. I've also since done some additional testing. I've been trying to get my 486/MT32 build up and running and i'm having some issues. Hopefully someone can give me some pointers. The PC …

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Re: Power Supply Turns on by Itself

Posted on 2019-07-27, 20:32

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

perhaps try a POST card? Have you reset the CMOS? As for the board, i pulled a SE440BX3 out of a Dell XPS T500 which sold on ebay for peanuts, with the CPU still in it. The whole dell system was very cheap too. Worth looking into as a replacement option if the "genuine" ones are silly money.

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Re: Any risk of using newer PSU on older systems?

Posted on 2019-07-27, 20:01

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

depends what your building ofcourse. A typical 200w Pentium 3 era PSU might have had 20A on the 5v rail. A 350w unit from the Athlon era might have had 30 or 35A on the 5v rail. If the board has the seperate 4pin power, then that means its using 12v for CPU and so modern stuff is fine. P4 stuff …

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Re: Monkey Island 1&2: Roland MT-32 + Sound Blaster support

Posted on 2019-07-27, 17:28

by

by Aragorn

in DOS

in DOS

I know its an old thread, maybe making my own would make more sense, but it seems to fit here. I've been setting up an old 486 and wanted to get these games working. PC has a SB16 value, and a first revision MT32. Its a AMD X5 133 chip, with 32megs of ram. As downloaded, both monkey 1 and 2 both run …

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Re: Advice Thread - Optimum System Coverage

Posted on 2019-07-22, 09:04

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It also feels like i'm missing something between the 486 and the Athlon, its funny, but a LOT changed in those 5 years between '95 and '00, so despite being the smallest gap out of the systems i have, it feels like i should have something in there. Currently thinking Socket 7 and Voodoo2 based …

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Re: Advice Thread - Optimum System Coverage

Posted on 2019-07-22, 07:57

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've been fighting with this a bit myself... I currently have a couple 486's which i've not finished setting up. I suspect i'll maybe sell one though, as i bought one, then uncovered an old 486 of mine from back in the day in my parents attic. The 486 would be aimed at DOS stuff, Soundblaster(or …

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Re: Unboxing NOS Diamond Edge 3D card *Lots of pictures*

Posted on 2019-07-22, 07:35

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

pretty sure i had one of these back in the day. Its very fuzzy and vague, but i feel like it would have been a K6-233 based system with one of these cards in. I'd have been about 10 or 11 at the time. I do remember it was somewhat awkward (especially for 11 year old me) and i couldnt get much to …

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Re: Utility for making exact hard drive clones?

Posted on 2019-07-06, 21:17

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I posted earlier about linux/dd and it seems to have not appeared. But yes, this is what i'd use. On a modern box it'd be a usb stick or CD ofcourse, but same method. You can also do "cat /proc/partitions" to view the devices and their partitions to figure out what your copying where.

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Re: Win98SE When is the hardware overkill?

Posted on 2019-07-01, 21:28

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Back in the day i can distinctly remember ditching 98SE at the earliest opportunity. I was running the RTM build of Windows 2000 as soon as it was available. And that was despite it seriously hurting performance on what was my main gaming PC at the time, as the Win2K drivers were pretty crap to …

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Re: What HDD to use on a socket A, Windows 98 SE computer ?

Posted on 2019-07-01, 17:15

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by Aragorn

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

hmm! i didnt even think about partition alignment when installing on my SSD! I guess i should repartition the drive and reinstall '98 as its currently just a clean install with nothing on it. Why does scandisk matter?

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Re: Too long PSU and fitting a laptop optical drive ?

Posted on 2019-07-01, 07:53

by

by Aragorn

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

From my experience with these drives in a recent dell server, the sata data connector is standard, the power connector is a shorter version which only carries 5v and ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Power_connectors It appears to just be called "slimline sata". Not sure on the …

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