Re: Heat mitigation on a poorly-designed 1997 PMMX laptop

Posted on 2015-06-26, 05:28

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The heat dissipation of a CPU scales in linear proportion to clock speed but with the square of the voltage. So dropping the voltage is the most effective thing you can do to make it run cooler. Dropping the clock speed should mostly be seen as a way of enabling a lower voltage, as the reduced clock …

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Re: Programming DOS games

Posted on 2015-06-26, 04:38

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

I guess my basic suggestion is don't overthink it or worry about how long it might take to achieve some goal. Just jump in and have fun. The only way to learn is by writing code, and to that end the most important thing is to go down whatever path you find interesting. I'd encourage you to make the …

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Re: Glorious PC Master Race - An Endangered Species

Posted on 2015-06-25, 11:23

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by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

Even if you did put effort into something, pride is never a good thing. God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Hey look at that, there is something more pointless than the PC master race and the Kardashians - …

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Re: Help identify 486 VLB motherboard

Posted on 2015-06-24, 08:51

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you have (or can find) a pinout for this CPU socket, maybe you can measure the Vcore that it's getting to the CPU. That would be a good thing to check in case it's the reason it won't POST. If you have a capable meter, maybe you can also measure the FSB speed that it's getting. I'm pretty much a …

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Re: Programming DOS games

Posted on 2015-06-24, 00:42

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

I interpret the RPG project as a long term aspiration, not something he's expecting to do right away. As he starts learning to do basic things, simpler projects will probably take hold. I was always trying to do things I didn't really know how to do. That's what motivates you to learn more. When you …

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Re: Programming DOS games

Posted on 2015-06-23, 18:45

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'm not sure what sort of web sites are still up nowadays, but you should study up on how to program VGA graphics directly. MSDOS game programming books of the 90s would also certainly cover this. "Mode 13h" is a good search term, that being in reference to the extremely popular 320x200x256 color …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-06-23, 11:59

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by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think the RCX-Z100 is the heatsink I have on my nForce2 board w/ an overclocked Athlon XP-M. I was always happy with it. I'm glad to see it's still available. I don't honestly know what I'm going to do with it Pentium III-S 1.4 GHz of course :lol: It might come to that eventually, but I have three …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-06-23, 06:13

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finally got my first VIA 694T motherboard. I don't honestly know what I'm going to do with it, but I've long wished I had one, and it's a full size board with an ISA slot, so I jumped on it. Up to now my only Tualatin boards were serious business i815 boards that couldn't be tweaked and their RAM …

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Re: The year is 1990 and you still have a PC/XT and can't upgrade. Which games are you playing?

Posted on 2015-06-22, 05:59

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by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

When I think about this scenario, it makes me realize I'd probably regain a lot of interest in programming. I guess at some point, the complexity of modern operating systems and the plethora of graphically intense multi-million dollar games killed my enthusiasm.

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Re: CRT vs LCD?

Posted on 2015-06-22, 05:16

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by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I love a good CRT. Bad ones are painful, though. I'm still annoyed at the disappointing service life of my last CRT, a 19" Trinitron. I would love to have that thing in good condition today. It had all the specs I could want, and it looked better in games than any other monitor I've ever had. As it …

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Re: corsair sdram giving spd checksum error

Posted on 2015-06-22, 04:38

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by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I find it hard to believe that all 3 of those modules have a corrupted SPD file. I think it's more likely that the software is just having a problem reading it for whatever reason. Does the same issue occur using a different motherboard? A corrupt SPD won't directly affect the RAM at runtime, it …

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Re: Humour Thread: Outrageously priced retro gear for sale online

Posted on 2015-06-22, 03:53

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by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

In 1984 Apple released the first Macintosh home computer with a mouse-driven operating system, known as Graphical User Interface (GUI pronounced "gooey") It cracks me up how ads like this start explaining the most inane things as if it was the 1980s and I was 8 years old and didn't know what a …

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Re: Great video games you never played

Posted on 2015-06-20, 16:14

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by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'm sure there's countless highly popular games that I've never run. Some come to mind that I picked up on GOG recently, since they've been running sales. Tomb Raider - I remember being skeptical of this game because of the apparent gimmicks of sex appeal + 3D. I'm still skeptical, but given the …

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Re: Toshiba has dropped online support for old Libretto laptops :(

Posted on 2015-06-20, 07:01

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by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Whenever I download drivers or installers for anything I own, I keep the files archived. However, this can still be a problem when I get something new and it's support pages are already gone. It wasn't long ago that I needed to grab drivers from Toshiba's site for a particular model Pentium-75MHz …

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Re: Rescuing an Intel DX4 100MHz 16KB WB CPU from an unidentified ISA board

Posted on 2015-06-19, 02:22

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Awesome outcome! You definitely worked for that chip, glad to see it works. I'm guessing the black stuff might have been glue to hold it in place before it was soldered.

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Re: finding a pair of Slot 2 retention mechanisms.

Posted on 2015-06-19, 02:09

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by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Can this be of any use? He's looking for Slot-2, not Slot-1. :) Unfortunately, I'm not sure if it's common to find "standard" slot-2 brackets, since those CPUs were more often used in bigger machines with proprietary layouts. I get the impression they might have all their own ways of mounting the …

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Re: Problems with SB live and Gravis Xterminator...

Posted on 2015-06-19, 01:51

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

From your posts, I get the impression that you might be hotplugging the joystick port. If that's the case, don't do that. A long time ago I burned out the joystick port on a Sound Blaster card by doing that. They aren't designed to be hot pluggable. You'll get away with it 98% of the time, but …

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Re: Video card for Athlon XP?

Posted on 2015-06-18, 01:28

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by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For the 6800GT, which rail on the PS should I be concerned with? And what's a sufficient current for that rail? This article did an impressive job of investigating this, and fortunately they covered the 6800GT: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/ati-vs-nv-power_3.html The chart on …

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Re: New parts ordered

Posted on 2015-06-17, 01:31

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by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Dangit. That's the fear I have with buying old high end video cards, especially from the lead-free era. Oh well, at least it wasn't expensive. I wish they were built to last long term, but gamers don't want to pay for that, they're happy if it lasts 1-2 years and doesn't make too much noise. This is …

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Re: Help, ID blown component on MB

Posted on 2015-06-17, 01:07

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This tends to happen when tantalums are left unpowered for a very long time (years). I'm not sure if environmental conditions also contribute. I think if such a board is powered up periodically the tantalums will last basically forever. Realistically, stuff is going to sit around though. When …

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