Re: Anyone on here into retro console gaming as well

Posted on 2016-11-11, 13:37

by

by Darkman

in Milliways

in Milliways

I do have some retro consoles Mega Drive Model 2 (modified to be region free) MegaCD Model 2 Original PS1 (one of the 9000 models , modified to be region free) Model 1 Saturn (modified to be region free) N64 (modified for RGB) Dreamcast PS1 PS2 Crystal Xbox Gamecube I did own an FZ-10 3DO and a …

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Re: Win95. yea or nay?

Posted on 2016-11-11, 11:26

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

that kind of setup would be fine, though I would add more RAM. 8-16mb was the norm for most people in 1995, but 32mb will help.

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Re: Apricot Xen 486 PC fixed and upgraded

Posted on 2016-08-07, 07:57

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by Darkman

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

its rather hard to tell , and Apricot didn't make it easy as their site doesn't give any tech details, it just refers to it by a part number. The best I can find is the manual http://insight.actapricot.org/insight/kbase/guides/manuals/pdf/15349331.pdf it does have a picture of the necessary chips on …

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Re: IDE or SATA hard drivers on retro computers?

Posted on 2016-08-06, 16:43

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

yes a drive overlay software would be necessary for that type of machine. as for the type of drive, generally speaking an IDE drive is more than enough , with SATA you have to use adapters , though they will be more reliable in general (as even the newest IDE drives are going to be almost a decade …

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Re: Apricot Xen 486 PC fixed and upgraded

Posted on 2016-08-06, 15:39

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

a bit of an update, sadly the board in the Xen PC died, and Im not quite sure what it was (tried quite a few things, just blew I guess). Not wanting to be beaten by a pile of metal and plastic, I figured I may as well get a replacement board as long as it wasn't expensive. turns out this wasn't such …

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Re: Best GPU for Dual PIII 1Ghz?

Posted on 2016-08-06, 08:33

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I would go with either a Voodoo5500 . but since its quite expensive I would go with a Geforce2 , preferably a 64mb Ti or Ultra. 2 Voodoo2s in SLI would be a bonus for later.

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Re: Apricot Xen 486 PC fixed and upgraded

Posted on 2016-08-03, 21:44

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I wouldn't worry about the single IDE channel, with a large enough HDD you don't really need it for games and if you add a network card in that last ISA slot you wont even need it to install software. If its a acer board maybe they will have something to apply the .bin firmware update? Look forward …

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Re: Apricot Xen 486 PC fixed and upgraded

Posted on 2016-08-03, 09:24

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Due to my PC dying on me (I think the power supply is dying) it took an extra day for me to post this, the photo isn't very good , but it will do for now http://i956.photobucket.com/albums/ae46/darkman_019/IMG_20160802_160219233_zpsa0h5udd5.jpg running Speedsys got me a CPU result of 23.59 , while …

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Re: Apricot Xen 486 PC fixed and upgraded

Posted on 2016-08-02, 12:07

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by Darkman

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Ill post a better photo of the motherboard later during the day hopefully. From what Ive checked on the Apricot site, if you bought the DX2 model , it already came with 256k cache chips installed, however, given that there aren't any, and given that its using an overdrive CPU (not something Apricot …

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Apricot Xen 486 PC fixed and upgraded

Posted on 2016-08-02, 09:31

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

So very recently I got myself a 486 based Apricot Xen PC , However it was not in a fully working condition , as the hard drive was faulty , and the RAM seems to be faulty too (its 16mb but reports as 12mb), it was also missing a Sound card, or any cache and wasn't the cleanest thing , inside or out. …

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Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Posted on 2016-07-29, 15:21

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by Darkman

in Milliways

in Milliways

Acer XF270HU - 27'' 2560x1440 IPS, 144 Hz refresh. Really huge upgrade from old 22'' TN. :evil: Should be also suitable for retro gaming using period-correct GPU connected via DVI. The LCD itself is capable of 1:1 display mode, so no ugly interpolation. 1600x1200 should work just fine, perhaps even …

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Re: Audigy 2 and Vortex 2 in same machine under Win98

Posted on 2016-07-26, 19:39

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by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

the bigger annoyance is getting the Audigy 2 ZS to work properly on Win98 , its not impossible, but it is a hassle. Please elaborate :happy: by default the installation for the Audigy2 ZS installs the WDM drivers , which don't work as well as the more standard VxD drivers you tend to find on Win9x. …

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Re: Audigy 2 and Vortex 2 in same machine under Win98

Posted on 2016-07-26, 11:30

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

sure you could, just be careful of resource conflicts (Ive had that problem) the bigger annoyance is getting the Audigy 2 ZS to work properly on Win98 , its not impossible, but it is a hassle.

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Re: Best Socket A (462) Motherboard?

Posted on 2016-07-26, 11:07

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The caps are in terrible condition, I was very surprised that it completed all the tests. This was with a XP 3200+ and 7800GS. I will definitely re-cap this board as it's a keeper. to be fair a lot of boards at the time had the capacitor issues , ASUS and Abit weren't perfect either. probably the …

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Re: Best Socket A (462) Motherboard?

Posted on 2016-07-26, 10:08

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've got a GA-7N400 Pro with busted caps all over the place. Only the 12V caps are Panasonic. Still, it was 100% stable doing all my benchmarks. The Abit NF7-S on the other hand wasn't 100% stable. really? Ive found the NF7-M to be very stable, fast too. meanwhile every Gigabyte board from that …

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Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Posted on 2016-07-25, 23:35

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by Darkman

in Milliways

in Milliways

Not really modern or retro per se, but I got myself a Dell Ultrasharp 2007FP monitor. the CRT I use for my retro PCs is dying (the picture is getting darker to the point of eye strain, also some weird flashing on the screen) and so I decided I wanted an LCD , but a 4:3 one which can do 1600X1200 …

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Re: What parts do I need?

Posted on 2016-07-18, 20:26

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by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oldskoolmaniac wrote: I could go with a g400 max, but how do they stack up against the tnt2 This video should tell you more about the card, but in general its about the same as the TNT2 , but not quite as fast as a TNT2 Ultra https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BinfyV_PdSc

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Re: What parts do I need?

Posted on 2016-07-18, 14:30

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oldskoolmaniac wrote: Ill probably get the tnt2 cuz the GF256 SDR version is impossible to get for cheap, voodoo3's are not to bad in price $30 shipped but i already have a voodoo3 and thats not really what i want with this build. you could also go with a Matrox card like a G400, very nice 2D …

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Re: What parts do I need?

Posted on 2016-07-18, 09:35

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by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does $18 for a Creative 32MB AGP Riva TNT2 seem like a fair deal? It seems like the best deal ive found. personally I wouldnt go for a TNT2 and instead go for a Voodoo3 (for Glide support) or if you want something better, go for a Geforce256 which did come out in late 1999 (the SDR version , not …

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

Posted on 2016-07-13, 13:21

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

did some general cleaning to the interiors of my computers (Ive got pets so dust and hair are a big problem , especially with my modern build). got a Geforce 7950 GX2 for my HP XW4400 machine. I wasn't quite sure whether it would work since the XW4400 obviously doesn't show up in Nvidia's …

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