Re: DIDN'T buy this retro hardware today

Posted on 2018-11-10, 10:06

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I went thrift shopping again, found some interesting things, and purchased none of them. Time to bump this thread. First up is this nondescript Acer tower (Pentium D-based, onboard everything), with a Zip 750 drive shoved way back into the case for some reason. CameraZOOM-20181109215233912.jpg …

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2018-11-10, 07:40

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I thought solving the retro vga capture problem was pretty easy and cheap. I just read through the thread, picked up the visionrgb-pro2, and was good. Writing proper software for it took a bit of time, as did setting it up for capture in linux that it had no support for. But the hardware itself was …

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Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2018-11-09, 23:19

by

by xjas

in Milliways

in Milliways

We should get some retro online MP matches going around here. I'm able to host UT99, Unreal 1 (I primarily do Unreal 1 more, it's infact the only game I make mods and maps for anyways), Descent 1&2, and UT2004. Though I really don't like playing deathmatch because I am very, overly conscious about …

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2018-11-09, 22:35

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Has anyone so far tried either of these cheapo converters? https://n11scdn4.akamaized.net/a1/org/elektronik/diger-bilgisayar-yedek-parcalari/vga-to-hdmi-cevirici-donusturucu-converter-adaptor__0445066290390899.jpg A while ago I bought the three cheapest VGA-to-HDMI converters I could get off Ebay, …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-11-09, 01:22

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

what kind of connectors do the proprietary cables have? I bet it'd be not too hard to make up new ones; just map the pinout with a multimeter. Looks like standard DIN & mini-DIN jacks from in the photos. Sounds like you're sorted, but for all those bare-bones cards on Ebay... 😉

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Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2018-11-08, 22:27

by

by xjas

in Milliways

in Milliways

^^ I did the then-very-new competitive LAN party circuit around the east coast right when Quake II got huge. It wasn't my "main" game (that was Descent I/II), but I played it, along with everything else that somebody might want to set up a match of. In 1998 I did alright; I was probably in the top …

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2018-11-06, 08:20

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

^^ cool, I'll try something faster (C2Q Q9300, pretty much the most powerful thing I have with expansion slots) and report back. I was intending to move the capture setup elsewhere and sell the Athlon machine anyway.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-11-06, 07:49

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The ALR Server is completely stock. To understand why they did it let's go back with a little bit of history. [...] That's interesting, thanks for the explanation. I knew there were "slocket 8s" but I figured they came later when P2 boards were getting common & a lot of people were upgrading. I …

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2018-11-06, 00:48

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

On my system, it does solid 60 fps at 640 x 480 and 45 at 800 x 600 with 32-bit color, and that's running through a virtual machine. Some months back I implemented run-time memory validation in vcs, which can have performance implications. It didn't on my test system, but beyond that I rely on …

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Need case ideas (ALR 7200 / dual P3)

Posted on 2018-11-05, 22:40

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So I have this ALR 7200 server board that has turned into a complete albatross. I can't fit it in anything, can't store it neatly, it's hard to even pick up and move around because the weight of the components flexes the board... I'd like to either get rid of it, or put it in something. Nobody's …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-11-05, 22:02

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

After long searching, I finally found an ALR Revolution 2x server. Two slotket's ( Slot 1 to Slotket 8 converter) with Pentium Pro 200 MHz 256KB cache, [...] That's weird, was that stock? Are they "true" Slot 1 slots or some proprietary thing that just looks like Slot 1? If Slot 1 already existed …

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2018-11-05, 11:51

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

A few more for those who don't feel like clicking through to the gallery. zerogunner2.png armada2.png timestalkers3.png ut99.png rally3.png BTW VCF1.2 is working great, some really nice features compared to Datapath's stock util. (And it's totally possible to 'tune out' the sampling issues I had, I …

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2018-11-05, 11:46

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Here's a preliminary shot at Dreamcast VGA capture. I have to play with this more to get the settings right... for some reason all the games were being slightly undersampled resulting in pillarbox bars. Unfortunately I didn't realize this was happening until after the fact, which is why the …

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Re: Bought these games today

Posted on 2018-11-05, 07:44

by

by xjas

in Milliways

in Milliways

Here's another one in the scanning queue. I've actually had this for a couple months but don't think I posted it here yet. Similar vein. CameraZOOM-20181105000541885.jpg CameraZOOM-20181105000550917.jpg CameraZOOM-20181105000658089.jpg ^^ that disk looks warped but reads perfectly fine incidentally. …

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Re: Bought these games today

Posted on 2018-11-05, 07:37

by

by xjas

in Milliways

in Milliways

Looks like I have some scanning to do too. ;) This was too cool to pass up. CameraZOOM-20181104235635446-sized.jpg CameraZOOM-20181104235718342-sized.jpg CameraZOOM-20181105000123344-sized.jpg CameraZOOM-20181105000319100-sized.jpg CameraZOOM-20181105000327031-sized.jpg Holy HELL that's a lot of " …

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Re: Post your 'current' PC

Posted on 2018-11-05, 06:53

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Side panel on https://i.imgur.com/t6ZwwgBm.jpg Windows 10 desktop. Hopefully you guys recognize where it's from. https://i.imgur.com/DSvw4xmm.jpg Specs https://i.imgur.com/S1MLZOHm.jpg And of course, SkiFree! Surely you must be using the updated, 64-bit version of NT3.5's File Manager that somebody …

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Re: The PC/DOS mini

Posted on 2018-11-05, 06:02

by

by xjas

in DOS

in DOS

I wanted to share a little project, the PC/DOS mini: [...] I commented on VCF but again, neat idea & thanks for putting it together. ;) I have a question about your thin client - do you have the ISA/PCI slot riser? I would LOVE to know the pinout or even what it looks like. Can you post a pic if …

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Re: Red, green, beige, and blue - I build this junk so you don't have to

Posted on 2018-11-04, 21:50

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Guys, I'm thinking of discontinuing this thread. I've been having a lot of fun with this build, but the lack of response here has been pretty underwhelming & I have other projects to move on to. I'm not whining or begging for "likes"; if nobody's interested than fair enough, but it's not worth the …

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Re: Red, green, beige, and blue - I build this junk so you don't have to

Posted on 2018-11-04, 11:03

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I didn't realize it at first, but the timings for this stuff are listed rather conservatively in the SPD. I think they do that to make it compatible at 1.8V. It doesn't say it on the sticker, but its rated timings require 2.1V which is "out of spec" and needs to be set manually. Fortunately this …

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Re: Red, green, beige, and blue - I build this junk so you don't have to

Posted on 2018-11-04, 10:24

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

The bottleneck I figured it made sense to take care of next was RAM speed. I originally used two mismatched pairs of low-end PC2-4200 (533MHz), which was already way underspecced for this board. Well, for once in my life I went out & bought good RAM for this project. Here it is: 45-sized.jpg 46.jpg …

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