Re: My cool at system, help D:

Posted on 2013-08-15, 08:47

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I would imagine that the AWE64 is probably more compatible with older games. I certainly had no problem using AWE64 with DOS games back in the days. But that being said, if you already have the Guillemot Maxi Sound 64, I'd say try it out. It's a much more unusual card, and as such may be "cooler" …

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Re: Gravis Ultrasound MAX alongside Sound Blaster - Potential Issues?

Posted on 2013-08-12, 19:29

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I do know about the hardware mixing, but to be fair, I don't really see the end result on game sound being that different. If it's for use with Impulse Tracker and Fast Tracker 2, then sure, I see the point, that's why I've bought a GUS for the system I'm going to build in just over a week. I agree …

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Re: Gravis Ultrasound MAX alongside Sound Blaster - Potential Issues?

Posted on 2013-08-12, 10:24

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Wouldn't using a GUS only for digital sound kind of defeat the whole purpose of a GUS? I mean, "Digital Sound" in terms of games basically means "Digitized Waveform Audio", i.e. some derivation of ".wav". This should sound the same on any sound card with similar quality level of DACs. The thing that …

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Re: New to the community: My Win9X system.

Posted on 2013-08-09, 23:40

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I think the "Pro" name is something Compaq has made up. From the performance in 3DMark2001, I'd say it is some type of Vanta or M64 chip. It's much slower than a proper TNT2 would've been.

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Re: Owners of the Highend 486 Systems - Please Advise

Posted on 2013-08-06, 09:46

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So I turn on the PC, ran that DOS game installation, went through. Then (again) played SC1 for an hour (with my bro also playing his 3D intensive games), followed by few files copy and some win95 games installation and their testing - NO error, NO crash, NO inappropriateness. Then I came back to …

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Re: New to the community: My Win9X system.

Posted on 2013-08-06, 00:17

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I got the drivers for my TNT2 Pro from the HP/Compaq website. It's a unified driver package that covers TNT2 family and GeForce2MX family of cards. Works well enough, but I think the picture is slightly blurry at 1280x1024, but not so much that it's a problem. The performance of the card isn't very …

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Re: Best CF Cards for DOS?

Posted on 2013-08-05, 18:22

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

To be quite honest, I think the IDE interface is likely to be bottleneck when it comes to using a CF card as HD for a DOS based system. Depends on which card you are using. A common 133x CF will have theoretical rates of 21,5 MB/s (in reality probably less), while a UDMA33 interface can …

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Re: Favorite old OS

Posted on 2013-08-05, 02:59

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

IBM OS/2 Warp 3.0 was my OS of choice back in the days. For gaming I would often boot in pure dos mode, but for desktop use, OS/2 was SO much better than Windows 3.x and Windows 95. It wasn't until games moved over to mainly being Win9x based that I had to ditch OS/2. I hope I still have the discs …

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Re: Best CF Cards for DOS?

Posted on 2013-08-05, 02:04

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

To be quite honest, I think the IDE interface is likely to be bottleneck when it comes to using a CF card as HD for a DOS based system.

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Re: New to the community: My Win9X system.

Posted on 2013-08-02, 19:45

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Next up is another system. This one pretty much only happened by accident, but I though, well, now that I've got it, I better get some use out of it, hence the Voodoo2's. I've been gathering up parts for a more proper retro build. A 486. It's going to be all the things my PC wasn't back when a 486 …

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Re: New to the community: My Win9X system.

Posted on 2013-08-02, 10:36

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Thanks to the magic of ebay, this system is going to receive Voodoo 2 SLi for 3D gaming. Only 8MB cards unfortunately, but I'm sure it'll be good enough. Don't know if I will replace the 2D card as well at some point, but for now I guess the TNT2 "Pro" (Compaq specific card from the look of it) will …

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Re: My K6-3 + Voodoo3

Posted on 2013-07-30, 01:08

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Nice system you got there. I've always had a soft spot for Terratec soundcards. I quite like the look of your case, nice and clean. 15-20 retro rigs you say? Wow, I'm envious 😁

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Re: Options you change in games

Posted on 2013-07-29, 08:55

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by LunarG

in Milliways

in Milliways

A couple of years back, I would've said that I make sure to turn up all the graphics options to max. Now, well, it's more a case of finding a balance between quality and playability. Funny how my PC that used to be a monster 3-4 years ago, now is more like an old lion. It can roar when it feels like …

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Re: Introduction: Pentium build

Posted on 2013-07-29, 00:59

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I can't imagine that there should be any problems with adding a Voodoo 2. Probably makes more sense using a Voodoo 1 for this era build though, but if you already have the Voodoo 2, then go for it 😀

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Re: So what do you guys do... you know, in real life?

Posted on 2013-07-28, 17:17

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by LunarG

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'm a certified electrician, but had to give up that line of work after having a close (too close) encounters with a 17-tonne forklift. Now I'm retraining, doing a bachelors degree in computer science (which has always been my first hobby).

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Re: What year/era cd-rom/soundcard became standard on machines?

Posted on 2013-07-28, 15:49

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by LunarG

in Milliways

in Milliways

It is probably the opposite here in post-communist parts of Europe, because of the economy. The positive side effect was that much great 8-bit and 16-bit software was programmed here, especially in Poland, that kept many of these machines going long after Atari/Commodore abandoned them. Also, some …

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Re: What year/era cd-rom/soundcard became standard on machines?

Posted on 2013-07-28, 13:18

by

by LunarG

in Milliways

in Milliways

I think the US generally have been a bit behind parts of Europe in getting into the new trends. I remember lots of people in the US still running analogue modems when most people here had moved on to ADSL. In Norway, I think CD-ROM pretty much became mainstream around '92-'93. I remember getting a …

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Re: My impressive 286 system!

Posted on 2013-07-28, 10:21

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

What I find totally crazy are these people selling a few CPU's for hundreds of pounds for "gold recovery". Surely with the cost of recovering the gold, the value of even a bucket of CPU's can't really be that much. They are all scammers in my book. Should be a price on their heads, especially the …

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Re: Introduction: Pentium build

Posted on 2013-07-28, 09:29

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by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Sounds like that's going to be a nice system. I used to have a Pentium 120 back in the days. Blew one of my friends away when he saw Duke3D running on it (he thought I was still sporting my old 486sx33). All in all I think it's a great cpu for old dos games. Grats on a nice system. 😀

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Re: New to the community: My Win9X system.

Posted on 2013-07-17, 12:45

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Okay, one session with Partition Magic later, and the system now has "120"GB split into 3 partitions. 32GB for system and applications, 40GB for file storage and 40GB for games. Removed the old drive, just to discover that what the BIOS reports being a 10GB drive, is actually a 20GB Maxtor …

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