Re: back in the (486) game

Posted on 2011-01-18, 23:33

by

by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

B or C would be equally fine. C added USB and AGP support, included Internet Explorer 4 and fixed some bugs that came up whenever you ran the OS on a Pentium II or Pentium Pro. Considering none of those additions would have an effect on a 486 box, I'd recommend B. With memory, I tend to think the …

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Re: can u identifiey this packard bell pc

Posted on 2011-01-18, 23:22

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by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh wow, here in the US, Packard Bell never thought to use any parts that resembled something standardized and I think the fastest one made here had a Pentium MMX in it.

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Re: Interesting eBay pickup: Octek Hippo DCA1 board...

Posted on 2011-01-18, 22:34

by

by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's a good board to have as a conversation piece, I suppose. Also, I wouldn't expect it to run any worse than the average 486 board. I remember there being mention of DCA on the Redhill website. I'd love to get one of those boards and peel the stickers off the chipsets. I'll bet there's a UMC or a …

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Re: back in the (486) game

Posted on 2011-01-18, 22:25

by

by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The Mach64 would probably give the best performance out of the three video cards for DOS games. It'd definitely give the best performance in Windows. The SoundBlaster AWE4 is a good card; they sound decent and, being an ISA SoundBlaster, is compatible with just about everything. I don't think you'll …

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Re: How useful or useless is a 386 SX machine?

Posted on 2011-01-12, 14:17

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by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm sure you could have some fun with a 386SX. The 386SX to the 386DX is as the 8088 to the 8086.

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Re: 386DX40 build

Posted on 2011-01-12, 01:18

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by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Very tedious! Still, I find it somewhat relaxing and a little fun. Something about melted metal that I find appealing. As for the eBay auction, Donut, I do agree with you. Merely putting "on board" is insufficient considering (at least back in the 90s) several manufacturers would buy surface mount …

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Re: 386DX40 build

Posted on 2011-01-12, 00:01

by

by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Still, with due respect... On the ebay page, you can see in the picture that the PCB the 386 is mounted on has jagged edges and that the chip isn't centered. Also, on the right side, you can see printed numbers that were cut short and on the lower left side, you can see a surface mount component of …

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Re: 386DX40 build

Posted on 2011-01-11, 22:17

by

by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Sorry to hear about your bad luck. I don't think it was an outright scam; maybe his description just needed a small amount more detail. Apparently, there's a market for scraps of this sort. There's just no such thing as being too careful when buying off the internet. You know, seeing this post, for …

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Re: My "new" NEC V-20 based PC

Posted on 2011-01-11, 21:24

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by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Nice setup. If the computer was mine, I'd probably go dumpster diving a bit until I found a case that looked more like something from the 80s just to have a little bit of extra authenticity. I have an NEC V20 system running MS-DOS myself. However, the power supply on mine is a pair of AAs and …

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Re: 3DBENCH CPU Benchmark Database

Posted on 2011-01-11, 02:37

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by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I just ran 3DBench on my Gateway 2000 desktop. Since the motherboard is proprietary, I simply listed the computer model. Intel-Pentium Overdrive-33-2.5-83-Gateway 2000-4DX2/66-82420EX-None- PCI-Rage XL-8MB-AlphaKilo470-76.9 Intel-DX4 Overdrive-33-3-100-Gateway 2000-4DX2/66-82420EX-None- PCI-Rage XL- …

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Re: My retro setup.

Posted on 2011-01-09, 00:18

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by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If it's 500mhz, then your computer sounds new enough to have an AGP slot. If so, then you won't have much issues, pretty much any AGP card will run your old DOS games fine. If you're getting a PCI card, I'd say make sure it has at least 4mb of video ram. My personal preference for the video chipset …

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Re: Web browsing station running Win95

Posted on 2011-01-08, 20:52

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by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Even on a 133mhz Pentium Windows 98SE will still run fine. I have Windows 98 running on my Mitsubishi tablet computer which has 48mb of memory and a 133mhz AMD 5x86 and all runs well. However, Windows 95 might bring a little less clutter. There's some trade-offs but I still think 98SE would be the …

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Re: Old 486 Project Box

Posted on 2011-01-08, 20:30

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by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On the m919 I have, there's a full four rows of solder dots to correspond with the four rows of pinholes on the socket. However, only the inner three rows have pins sticking through them. The outer most layer literally has nothing but the empty solder dots. Aside from that, there appears to be no …

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Re: Web browsing station running Win95

Posted on 2011-01-08, 06:51

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by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

With those specs, I think you'd be much better off with Windows 98SE since that will give you support for most 802.11b and g cards and with a patch called KernelEx installed, you can also run current Firefox versions. For Windows 95, I'm sure you can run older versions of Thunderbird. Eudora would …

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Re: post up pics of your "computing area"

Posted on 2011-01-08, 04:14

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by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

"Low end" wouldn't begin to describe the computer before I replaced just about everything in it (even the stock heatsink had to go!). However, as far as I know, it's the only PowerEdge with an AGP slot and it features the same motherboard as some of their Precision workstation systems of the time. I …

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Re: schneider euro pc floppy drive

Posted on 2011-01-08, 04:05

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by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The flip in the cable makes no difference if you only have one floppy drive. It's there so the computer can tell the A drive apart from the B drive.

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Re: My Ultimate 486

Posted on 2011-01-06, 23:42

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by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

That's a bummer for you. I hope you get your tower back up and running soon. From the photos, that computer looks nothing short of intimidating. As for the two different AWE 32s, my only guess can be changes to another chip or two made the extra chip useless. Or maybe they sold different versions …

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Re: post up pics of your "computing area"

Posted on 2011-01-06, 05:52

by

by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I finally took a picture of what my setup looks like on a good day (normally, everything is covered in papers). The computer's an old Dell with a 3ghz Pentium 4 HT, 1gb PC3200, 256mb Radeon X800, 100gb hard drive, SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS, Windows 7 Ultimate. Click for full size (1024x768): http:// …

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Re: Found a vintage computer "toy store" earlier.

Posted on 2011-01-06, 04:40

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by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I wish I could give more information but there was too much stuff for me to give a thorough assessment which is why I just said anyone who needs a part for their vintage rig to simply tell me what they need and/or want. I did notice he had a few ISA and PCI cards with TSENG chipsets, tons of 32-pin …

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Found a vintage computer "toy store" earlier.

Posted on 2011-01-06, 01:35

by

by Alphakilo470

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Earlier today, I met up with an older man who had a crazy stockpile of vintage hardware from Pentium times and before. Picked up a few hard drives, some cache chips for my Gateway 2000 computer, a 4mb Compaq PCI video card with a Matrox chipset and an IBM Model M keyboard. I'll probably keep in …

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