Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Posted on 2023-04-11, 05:25

by

by dormcat

in Milliways

in Milliways

I have about 100 tabs and heavy web user, youtube and facebook. Well that explains. :sweat_smile: For almost three decades I've witnessed and assisted many people around me claiming "my computer/smartphone is slowing down and/or running out of storage space." Most situations were mixtures of …

---

Re: Vintage Athlon XP 'gaming' laptops

Posted on 2023-04-10, 18:56

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Back in 2003 I had an HP Pavilion ZE4000 series (probably ZE4315US) with Athlon XP-M 1800+ (1.53 GHz), 256MB RAM, 20GB HDD, DVD/CD-RW combo. Can't remember the spec of video chip, though.

---

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

Posted on 2023-04-10, 15:23

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

HWiNFO for DOS provides a lot of hardware information. None of the diagnostic tools will tell about the Mainboard. Therefor I actually think CPU-z will also not achieve that anyway. The BIOS strings will tell Unisys pw² 500 16A, I guess. I wonder how many 386-era motherboards had make and model …

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-04-10, 04:55

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Picked this up for £5 today at a car boot sale. Seems to work just fine! Although it boots into a chinese install of windows XP SP2. These small laptops dont have batteries or floppy/cd drives so installing windows 98se will be fun. Pentioum 3 500mhz 320mb ram Unsure yet on VGA but google says 4mb …

---

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

Posted on 2023-04-09, 04:55

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@dormcat: Is there a CPU-Z which will work on a 386 as well, eg DOS or Win3.11? Or is it possible to get 95 on a 386 to work? Win95 can work on a 386 but the performance wouldn't be practical for apps and games (probably better than Win10-x86 on an Atom N280 with 1GB RAM, though). IMHO using DOS- …

---

Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2023-04-08, 07:03

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You are expected to take things from a lot of recyclers, even if it's for a small fee, and are encouraged to do so. I thought it was just someone on staff being petty. Do they not allow you to take things here *and* won't sell it to you? That does seem petty. Could it be that some e-waste recyclers …

---

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

Posted on 2023-04-07, 06:20

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Installed Win98SE on a spare 2GB SD card on my old Pentium 120 (OC to 133) and benchmarked with CPU-Z Vintage Edition. Surprisingly, the score was 190.8, 6.6% higher than the reference score (179). Filename IMG_20230406_175904.jpg File size 1.13 MiB Views 1528 views

---

Re: in praise of low end budget hardware!

Posted on 2023-04-04, 07:51

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

IMHO Core i3 (Ivy Bridge and earlier)-based desktop systems are very good budget choices for late XP and early Win7+ gaming; just add a decent (not necessary premium) graphics card. Ironically, while Core i3 systems occupy most government and private offices as basic office computers, they rarely …

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-04-04, 07:35

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Brawndo wrote on 2023-04-04, 01:01: Just bought a NOS WD 30GB ATA100 hard drive. Will be perfect for an old Win95 PC with a 32GB hard drive limit. Is that the 33.8 GB limit mentioned on this page?

---

Re: Video playback on a 286? - here's how to do it

Posted on 2023-04-02, 09:38

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

dr.zeissler wrote on 2023-04-02, 08:56: This thing works on A2286/8 ET4000 bu8t has no sound. Wow, Mina from Densha Otoko! That's more than 17 years ago...... 😿

---

Re: in praise of low end budget hardware!

Posted on 2023-04-02, 04:16

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Rule of thumb, budget components made 3-4 years after a game was released are often powerful enough to play it at max settings. As an example, a 128-bit GeForce 4 MX440 which was released in 2002 can play most games from 1999 and earlier fully maxed out. Not to mention a GeForce 4 Ti4200, which was …

---

Re: No CRT Emulation? Why!?

Posted on 2023-04-01, 01:36

by

by dormcat

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

So if someone does emulate it, will we get glare from sunlight through the windows behind us, or lamps and light fixtures around the room, like we did with CRT's? That is so distracting, and I say no. Good riddance to CRT's. It's like the CRT filter function of NES / SNES Classic: it was actually a …

---

Re: Why are people like this exist

Posted on 2023-03-31, 23:48

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Most computer users today know very little about hardware specifications; only a small portion of those who do know the value of vintage hardware. Imagine this: Put a Voodoo4 4500 and a low-end PCIe card side by side and grab 100 passersby, ask them which card would you like to have. I'd say >90% …

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-03-31, 21:53

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Congrats, what arrived in my P5A was a Pentium 100 I think... enough to think "Seriously? You get a Super7 board and stick a first gen Pent in it, not even MMX?" Same reason why I gave up an (untested and "showered") Epox EP-51MVP3E-M when I saw the Pentium 166 under the heatsink. Should have …

---

Re: FYI: Steam drops Win7/8/8.1 in 2024

Posted on 2023-03-30, 22:07

by

by dormcat

in Milliways

in Milliways

I found this very ironic: Half-Life 2 , one of -- if not "THE" -- most successful game by Valve, was first released in November 2004 when XP was the mainstream OS just about everywhere. Its demo pack required Steam installation (which went online in September 2003) but Steam ended its support to XP …

---

Re: microATX and AGP

Posted on 2023-03-30, 10:13

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

sfg wrote on 2023-03-30, 08:52: - 3ghz P4 Northwood If power usage is your concern, get rid of NetBurst P4 and use 90 nm Athlon64 instead.

---

Re: Period correct 1996 Pentium system

Posted on 2023-03-30, 08:14

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Original -> Current (if applicable) NEC MultiSpin CDR-273 4X CD-ROM -> AOpen 52X CD-ROM NEC MultiSync 15" monitor -> HP 15" LCD monitor (1024 x 768) I think those two are downgrades and not upgrades. While I like those two NEC products, CDR-273 was not the high-end SCSI MultiSpin series that gave …

---

Re: Mobile Core2Duo upgrade

Posted on 2023-03-30, 00:33

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

More research done. On intel page it says that T7250 is PPGA478, while P8400 is PGA478. So although it fits on socket like own, it could be incompatible electrically. Even if CPU and motherboard have the same socket electrically doesn't necesserily mean they are compatible with each other. BIOS and …

---

Re: Ultima Underworld config file

Posted on 2023-03-29, 23:02

by

by dormcat

in DOS

in DOS

My UW.cfg reads: 6 -1 -1 -1 sound 2 -1 -1 -1 speech 0 cuts I guess "0" from the default file stands for "no sound," while other numbers correspond to respective sound and speech devices: adlib.adv mt32mpu.adv pasdig.adv pasfm.adv pcspkr.adv sbdig.adv sbfm.adv sbpdig.adv sbpfm.adv tandy.adv And " …

---

Re: Period correct 1996 Pentium system

Posted on 2023-03-29, 16:14

by

by dormcat

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

So my 1996 Pentium back then was like this: Pentium 120 MHz (very soon overclocked to 133) DataExpert EXP8661 motherboard with Intel 430VX chipset 16 MB RAM ExpertColor S3 Trio64 graphics card 1.2 GB Seagate HDD (believe me, this was HUGE compared to my previous computer) Keytronic keyboard and MS …

---