Re: What do you stockpile?

Posted on 2024-02-26, 05:45

by

by Blavius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also like most people I'm seriously at my limit of what I can really keep around handy. I could of course stock pile on old towers in my shed or garage, but really what's the point? I've already gotten about 6-7 completed towers and about 10 retro laptops that are all working, plus boxes of ram, …

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Re: What do you stockpile?

Posted on 2024-01-19, 08:25

by

by Blavius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also super restricted in space here. The only thing I'm hoarding is WMO1.1 mice whenever I come across them. I use them for both retro as they have PS/2 compatibility, as well as my modern systems. My hand just kinda deformed to its shape over the past two decades, so not keen on switching to …

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Re: Trouble getting US Navy Fighters to run on vintage hardware

Posted on 2023-12-19, 20:32

by

by Blavius

in DOS

in DOS

Took me a while to get around it, but yep; sound works with IRQ3. It's buggy though, as I get a stack overflow when I watch the intro movies. Tried everything to resolve that (STACKS setting in config.sys, different IRQ's, removing other cards, etc.) but the game itself runs like a charm. I'd say, …

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Re: Trouble getting US Navy Fighters to run on vintage hardware

Posted on 2023-12-12, 20:43

by

by Blavius

in DOS

in DOS

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit, but I hadn't yet checked out the game's readme yet. One of the suggestions it had was to configure himem in a specific way. I made a DOS7 bootfloppy with the suggested config.sys and autoexec.bat and added my CDROM drivers. This resolved the crashing behavior, but the …

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Re: Trouble getting US Navy Fighters to run on vintage hardware

Posted on 2023-12-09, 20:38

by

by Blavius

in DOS

in DOS

Thanks for uploading the patch! So, i've been experimenting a bit: -To not have to format my harddisk to FAT16, I've connected a zip drive and run it via palmzip.sys. It mounts as C:\ and gives me a drive to install to when using a dos 6.22 boot floppy. So, I installed from my scsi cdrom and tried …

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Re: Trouble getting US Navy Fighters to run on vintage hardware

Posted on 2023-12-09, 11:46

by

by Blavius

in DOS

in DOS

Thanks for your help! Rwolf; I would be very grateful for the 1.1 patch as I am using an SB16 on my 425, so it might come in handy. Could you post it as an attachment so future people seeing this thread can also get it? Deano; Good thinking. I've made a 6.22 boot floppy to test this out an learned …

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Trouble getting US Navy Fighters to run on vintage hardware

Posted on 2023-12-08, 13:41

by

by Blavius

in DOS

in DOS

Hello, I have many fond memories of US Navy Fighters (USNF) from 1994 and wanted to try it again. Not having much luck getting it to work though. I still have the original CD, so I installed it on my IBM valuepoint 425 with a 5x86 (s3-805), only to be greeted by a crash. The same happens on my IBM …

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Re: MY PENTIUM 1 "TIME MACHINE"!!

Posted on 2023-06-23, 17:55

by

by Blavius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Really nice find Stefano! What do you plan to play on the voodoo?

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Re: My IBM PS/2 model 35SX build

Posted on 2023-04-08, 11:24

by

by Blavius

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Thanks for the write-up, that was fun to read! Beautiful machine. I have a 76i that has the same case, but is a MCA machine with a 486DX. What do you plan to run on it? And do you have a socket for a cpu ugrade? There is a wealth of upgrade possibilities to turn your 386 in a half decent 486 😀

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Re: S3 805 VLB graphics - onboard vs card

Posted on 2023-01-09, 21:33

by

by Blavius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Fine, then. Yes, AM5x86 would be better, but I guess you don't have 3volts support. And still if you have an 3 volts adapter it is unlikely that the board will work correctly with it. So I would stick to 66MHz, that is the easist option. No, I don't unfortunately. On my 76i there is a header to …

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Re: S3 805 VLB graphics - onboard vs card

Posted on 2023-01-08, 12:26

by

by Blavius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You're thinking in 2023. Think in 1995 instead. A year ago you bought a very expensive 486DX2-66 system with VLB. You don't intend to buy a new PC for another 3 or 4 years (Dutch PC Prive fiscal incentives at the time only allowed one once every 5 years). But this new Windows 95 runs like crap on …

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Re: S3 805 VLB graphics - onboard vs card

Posted on 2023-01-08, 10:11

by

by Blavius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for taking the time to look into this, that's very helpful. It's clear that there is not much to gain with buying the 805 card, so I can put that to rest. Very interesting part about DOS performance! I'm indeed building this system to play DOS games. From what I see, games requiring windows …

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S3 805 VLB graphics - onboard vs card

Posted on 2023-01-07, 22:17

by

by Blavius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I recently got a new desktop to play around with, an IBM PS/Valuepoint 425SX/S. On paper this 25MHz 486SX isn't very interesting, but it has an 'overdrive' socket and a socketed crystal, which IBM itself says you can replace with a 33MHz one if you need, and I've seen posts of people running it …

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Re: USB to PS/2 keyboard adapter

Posted on 2022-12-30, 20:19

by

by Blavius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-12-30, 14:44: afaik USB keyboard support was non existent up to ~1998? Bios needs 'USB Legacy support'. $5 solution https://github.com/No0ne/ps2pico Holy moly! I've been looking for something like this for ages. Did you build one?

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Re: What era of computers do you draw the line at collecting and/or using?

Posted on 2022-12-29, 23:04

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by Blavius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sorry to get a little philosophical, this thread made me ponder. Reading though it, a common motive seems to be recreating an experience from back in the day, both in hardware and software - mostly games. As it seems though, because when I thought about it, for me personally it is more nuanced. The …

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Re: Custom interposer module for TI486SXL2-66 PGA168 to PGA132 - HELP!

Posted on 2022-12-10, 19:44

by

by Blavius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe U1 and U2 will fit there as well. Only 1 person will ever use those. Well, that person and everyone else that will put this in an IBM ;-) I didn't check the thread for a few weeks, and I'm thrilled to see the progress you guys are making. Great job on bringing the noise down and getting …

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Re: IBM PS/2 55SX recapped diskette drive still not booting to Reference disk

Posted on 2022-12-07, 16:56

by

by Blavius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had the same issue with a drive of an IBM L40SX. After recapping the main board the issue still persisted. It turned out there were some traces around the old caps near the motor that were corroded. Managed to sort that out with a multimeter and a botch wire. After that it happily spun away. As …

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Re: Advice needed : systems for a 90's themed company event.

Posted on 2022-12-07, 13:07

by

by Blavius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I really enjoy playing red alert over a serial cable with my son. That's on a Pentium 133, on which it runs fast enough. Does take you a good hour or so if you want to comp stomp, so maybe Doornkaat is right and its better to stick to games you can enjoy for a few minuted. Doom deathmatch might be …

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Re: Do dual pentium 4 motherboards exist?

Posted on 2022-12-05, 18:19

by

by Blavius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for the detailed writeup dion, very interesting to read. I wonder if you could maybe take a 603/604 cpu and put a bga 478 socket on it? Then put whatever pentium 4 you had laying around on it? Heheh :-) I guess you could, if the socket doesn't check for the missing pins. However, unless all …

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Re: Do dual pentium 4 motherboards exist?

Posted on 2022-12-03, 14:30

by

by Blavius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a Pentium 4 rig running a SL8PZ and a dual Xeon rig with a couple of SL8P3's. What's interesting about this is that both chips have the same CPUID/stepping (0F4Ah/R0). So it's basically the same CPU in both cases but just in a different packaging (LGA775 vs. S604) That's very interesting, …

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