Re: My first retro project

Posted on 2021-05-02, 17:00

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

1) Is there a setting in your BIOS to set your SATA ports to compatibility mode (disable AHCI)? I've had success using SATA hard drives straight up connected to the motherboard's SATA ports in Windows 98. You might not need to use the adapter at all. https://www.top-password.com/blog/wp-content/ …

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Re: My first retro project

Posted on 2021-04-27, 01:17

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Nice build! This will be a great system for Windows XP. I remember always wanting a floppy / card reader combo drive just like that one. I never got a chance to own one though. You will probably need an unofficial patch to run with 2GB of memory in Windows 98. From what I've read, Windows 98 is …

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Re: My first dedicated XP build

Posted on 2021-04-25, 22:27

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Watch out for the 5V rail on your power supply. I expect your choice of CPU could be a problem: the Athlon XP (and the vast majority of Socket A motherboards) usually uses 5V to power the CPU. Modern computers primarily use the 12V rail, and thus modern power supplies deliver most of the power …

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Re: Another ultra modern not exactly retro yet build

Posted on 2021-04-25, 19:33

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yeah, this covers my high school and early college years so very nostalgic period to me. As hardware the P3 era is still the closest to my heart, but regarding games, I was most active in the 2000s. This is awesome. I built myself nearly the exact same system back in 2007: Core 2 Q6600, GeForce …

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Re: Audigy 2 ZS under Windows 95?

Posted on 2021-04-25, 19:16

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I tried googling "audigy 2 zs PCMCIA driver" for you... The first hit was the official Creative support page which lists drivers, the oldest OS being Windows XP. No driver for Win 9x. The third hit happened to be an existing thread in Vogons where the it seems the conclusion was that it doesn't work …

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Re: Quick Voodoo 3 2000 question.

Posted on 2021-04-10, 04:34

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

An option to consider is to mount a fan near the Voodoo card instead of on it. I wasn't comfortable making physical alternations to my Voodoo 3, I didn't have any spare 60 mm fans, and I wasn't having any success zip tying an 80mm fan to my card. Instead I purchased one of these kits and used a …

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Re: Socket A Motherboards That Have 12V-Centric VRMs?

Posted on 2021-04-08, 17:48

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In the case of the P4E-T, the page from the manual seems to indicate that the 6-pin auxiliary connector is not required. It says "AUXPWR (Optional)". On this board, the 4-pin ATX12V connector is mandatory. For the P4B, I believe that motherboard is optimized for newer power supplies (power supplies …

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Re: vintage budget cards instead of 'good' cards

Posted on 2021-04-05, 23:25

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Nothing wrong with using budget cards.... maybe in some cases you might feel reluctant to put hours on expensive stuff (and maybe risk them dying). Some of the collectors hardware also has terrible reliability. As you described, using lower end hardware that's a generation or two newer than your …

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Re: AT motherboard ATX PSU with AT attachment?

Posted on 2021-03-16, 18:54

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Here's some good info on these cables: The Auxiliary connector has three ground wires (black), one 5V wire (red), and two 3.3V wires (orange). http://www.playtool.com/pages/psuconnectors/connectors.html#aux The old AT cables had zero 3.3V wires. On the particular side of the AT connector you're …

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Re: Wierd Radeon 9800 Pro by Palit - What am I dealing with?

Posted on 2021-02-21, 22:01

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I don't see the point. Seeing as the 9600 Pro performs about the same. Unless they just had a glut of old chips they wanted rid of? My guess is that ATI had a bunch of R350/R360 chips with defect somewhere in the memory controller. And some might've had a defect in the pixel pipelines (hence the …

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Re: Wierd Radeon 9800 Pro by Palit - What am I dealing with?

Posted on 2021-02-21, 21:35

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I have a very similar card (mine is Powercolor, has a floppy power connector instead of molex, and has a slightly different positioning of electrolytic capacitors). I believe it was quite common for board partners to produce cut-down Radeon 9800 based cards with halved memory bus. These are not ' …

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

Posted on 2021-02-09, 05:36

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I reconfigured my ethernet switches to isolate all five of my retro computers (Windows 9x and XP) from the main network. Now they are all networked together on a separate subnet, where there is no router, no Gateway, and no DHCP server (static IP for everyone, old school!). They can still access one …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-02-08, 07:11

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is the exact card (surprised the listing is still up, although it's "currently out of stock and it may or may not be restocked"): https://www.newegg.ca/powercolor-radeon-9800-r98e-pd3/p/N82E16814131412R The brand is PowerColor, which is legit (certainly not Built by ATI). It performs decently …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-02-08, 04:15

by

by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I just bought this video card locally and it's fully working: Radeon-9800SE.jpg It's a Radeon 9800 crippled with a 128-bit memory bus. The weird thing is that it has a LOT of this TSOP memory (256MB) and the R350 core appears to be fully enabled. In practice, it should be similar to a heavily …

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Re: The Athlon 64 Frustration Build

Posted on 2021-01-26, 22:30

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yes, it is amazing that the in-box coolers for many generations of AMD processors still fit on socket 754/939 motherboards from 17 years ago!!! This is particularly useful because I expect a lot of people with new Ryzen builds are using a 3rd party cooler (Liquid, Closed Loop, big air, etc). The …

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Re: 6800XT thermal paste change- would thermal pads be needed?

Posted on 2021-01-04, 05:02

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I think the 'reference' cooling solution uses a separate heatsink for the memory, with thermal pads. Check out the disassembly photos of the 6800 Ultra from ixbt here: http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/gffx/nv40-part1-b.html They've got the 6800 GT here: http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/gffx/nv40-2.html As …

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Re: Windows XP - Wide Screen Monitor or Not? Am I missing anything?

Posted on 2020-12-30, 20:10

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A widescreen monitor that's capable of displaying 4:3 (or 5:4) content in the proper aspect ratio is perfectly fine... I'm okay with the resulting black bars (letterboxing... or rather reverse letterboxing??) on the left and right. What bothers me are the widescreen monitors that insist on …

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Re: Windows XP - Wide Screen Monitor or Not? Am I missing anything?

Posted on 2020-12-28, 06:13

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

From what I've found, most 19" LCD monitors seem to use 1280x1024 which is 5:4 rather than 4:3. Granted, 1280x1024 was a somewhat common resolution (certainly more common than 1280x960 for some reason) and most programs/games from the Win98/XP era support that resolution. But if you are running …

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Re: post up pics of your "computing area"

Posted on 2020-12-25, 06:05

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by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Hello! I have a few 'computing' areas... On the right side of the 'retro room', with the 19" Diamondtron CRT, I have two of my original (mostly) childhood computers: A Pentium III with Voodoo3, and an Athlon 64 X2 with Radeon X850. Details are here . On the left side, with a 20" 1600x1200 LCD, I …

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Re: Socket 775 system revival story. Bonus: In-place upgrade of a 12-year old Vista install *PICS*

Posted on 2020-12-18, 05:48

by

by bZbZbZ

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I think the fundamental difference between our views is that you see such a system as 'retro' and think more about backward compatibility, whether I see it as a machine that can still be useful in the modern world, and so I care about forward compatibility. As I said, I have enough computers more ' …

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