Re: retro full time

Posted on 2016-06-17, 04:25

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There shouldn't be anything strange about using older hardware. We have at least a 10 year period of PC hardware that's perfectly usable for day-to-day purposes. I use Windows XP and 7 every day, but I also have Win98SE and ME systems in active use too. I used to run Windows 2000 on a desktop here, …

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Re: Pentium II 450 and Voodoo cards

Posted on 2016-06-14, 17:03

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I was using a wide variety of compatible AGP cards, Geforces or others but DVD playback was not smooth. I even tried a PCI based card: The ATI Rage 128 16MB that played DVDs great in my Pentium III 700Mhz 440BX system, but surprisingly won't do the same in my Slot A rig. My question is that since …

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Re: Name this sound card!

Posted on 2016-06-14, 15:27

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, C-Media cards are actually pretty nice. I have a CMI8738 PCI-SX card and it has surprisingly decent OPL2/3 support.

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Re: Cleaning up a lot of battery leakage

Posted on 2016-06-06, 07:54

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The only other way to know for sure is to get a multimeter, set it for resistance testing (20k ohm works for me on mine) and see if the bad traces are truly disconnected. As just a plain 286 board though, it doesn't sound like anything special. Is there anything useful on it? Now if this was a Neo …

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Re: Why are old PCs considered lame and boring?

Posted on 2016-06-06, 07:34

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm always saddened by the complete lack of respect vintage PCs get, particularly the DOS kind. Now, I may not be so hardcore that I have old beige AT systems lying around, but I did make an Micro ATX Socket 7 PC which is still seriously old by now, good for quite a few DOS uses. That said, I have …

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Re: Cleaning up a lot of battery leakage

Posted on 2016-06-02, 18:15

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This should be handled like an arcade PCB, neutralize the battery damage first and then do resistance tests with a multimeter to look for broken traces. Always check what kind of battery did the damage, some are alkaline and some are acidic.

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Re: Tetrium's guide to Windows ME

Posted on 2016-05-26, 16:50

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The two Pentium M laptops I've used have almost no features or options in the BIOS, they're really quite boring there. They handle Windows ME just fine, just like if one were to use Windows 98SE.

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Re: Tetrium's guide to Windows ME

Posted on 2016-05-26, 07:36

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is all off-topic for here.. but no, Win98SE absolutely must have maximum 20GB as the OS drive it's installed to. If you go past that, then "Drivers fail to install" and installed programs randomly crash and the entire system gets quite unstable. Secondary partitions can be anything up to the …

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Re: Tetrium's guide to Windows ME

Posted on 2016-05-26, 02:36

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Where do newer motherboard chipsets like the Intel 855 fit into that? Remind me, what is the alternative to ACPI? I keep thinking of ACHI...

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Re: Tetrium's guide to Windows ME

Posted on 2016-05-26, 00:41

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I know you don't want this to be a discussion.. but most likely the reason people dislike ME is because it is notorious for being -extremely- unstable when things as simple as clicking on the start menu button sometimes causes BSOD's even on non-overclocked hardware, on vanilla installs with no …

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Re: Windows Me - "Misunderstood Edition"

Posted on 2016-05-26, 00:39

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by notsofossil

in Milliways

in Milliways

No version of Windows 2000 comes with 48-bit LBA support, not SP4 or Rollup 1. I know this because I had a giant IDE HDD in my Win2000 desktop and that drive was not visible until I purposely installed the 48-bit LBA update, I think it's an official Microsoft update.

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Re: Tetrium's guide to Windows ME

Posted on 2016-05-26, 00:10

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have been using the stock Windows ME OEM version and it has been wonderful to use. It's just like Windows 98SE with new features and improvements. The unofficial service pack is certainly nice, but even un-updated Windows ME is perfectly fine, like 98SE. I really don't understand why people hate …

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Re: How different is Windows 9x from NT? Are they not the same?

Posted on 2016-05-23, 07:35

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This thread somehow reminds me of an old Windows Me parody, Windows RG (Really Good Edition). It's a flash demo, which not only makes fun of Win Me, but also of Clippy and his friends. So that demo is pretty much the whole Win9x experience in a nutshell.. I hope you've got a good sense of humour. …

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Re: RANT...Pay more for I/O shield then for the motherboard...

Posted on 2016-05-22, 03:40

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If it's a board that will go in a case and used for longer periods of time, then I do make sure an IO shield is included. But most my projects are for a quick test bench setup, so it doesn't worry me much. I think it's awesome that you can buy the IO shields though. It's something that likely …

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Re: How different is Windows 9x from NT? Are they not the same?

Posted on 2016-05-21, 05:08

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've used ME for years (on retail month 1, before all the "me sucks" memes were widespread) and I wouldn't oversell it like that, and OPL2 support has nothing to do with its instability. I've had an all PCI machine crap out on Me before (with all WDM drivers too). Retail version? I'm strictly using …

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Re: Oldest PC you've visited VOGONs with?

Posted on 2016-05-18, 00:32

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm not familiar with the C800, but the Latitude D800 is a Pentium M-based laptop usually with a GeForce 4 chipset. That would be a very nice laptop, great for Windows ME. I'm sure the D800 shares the same mobo chipset as the D600. The GeForce 4 has very good drivers for 98/ME.

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Oldest PC you've visited VOGONs with?

Posted on 2016-05-17, 03:08

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finally found a USB Wi-Fi adapter with Windows 98SE support, so now I am logging into VOGONS with my oldest PC. MicroATX Tower AMD K6-2 400MHz 160MB SDRAM 3DFX Voodoo 1 (PCI) ATi Rage II+DVD Graphics (PCI) Soundblaster-16 CT1740 (ISA) Roland MT-32 (MIDI using SB16) Windows 98SE Mozilla Firefox …

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Re: How different is Windows 9x from NT? Are they not the same?

Posted on 2016-05-14, 04:22

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The fact that this forum thread exists at all is rather hilarious to me, no offense to notsofossil but VOGONS exists primarily because things were so different between NT 4 / Win2K / WinXP and DOS / Win9x that people needed to make all sorts of compatibility patches, shims, locate obscure registry …

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Re: How different is Windows 9x from NT? Are they not the same?

Posted on 2016-05-13, 08:16

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Very insightful, thanks! So I guess the real Y2K bug was migrating from Windows 9x to NT. In my opinion, Windows XP has not too shabby 9x support, but seeing how I have the means to run Win9x, I'd rather run that when my goal is 9x games and programs. What do people usually run on NT 4.0 and 3.1 now …

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Re: How different is Windows 9x from NT? Are they not the same?

Posted on 2016-05-13, 07:36

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by notsofossil

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So, the Win32API is the common ground between 9x and NT? But at their cores and in the lower levels, they are completely different? Like the existence of the Win16 subsystem and the MS-DOS manager? Why is it occasionally there are 32-bit Windows 9x games that refuse to work on older versions of …

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