Re: Video card recommendation for 1998 Win98 PC

Posted on 2016-09-05, 16:51

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If that Matrox G100 chip is integrated into the motherboard, why don't you just get a Voodoo2 card and be done? You don't need a completely new card for 2D performance, since the G100 chip will do that just fine. Get a Voodoo2 12MB card and a VGA pass-through cable. The Voodoo will run Half-Life …

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My PC journey

Posted on 2016-09-05, 14:56

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

So, uh, gonna just post my stuff because we're all nerds and that's what we like doing - bragging about our stuff. LOL Anyway, a list of my old-ass PCs I remember having and the ones I currently still have access to. 1 - 486 (~1990-ish) CPU: Intel 80486DX 33MHz RAM: 16MB EDO HDD: Somewhere around …

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Re: Retro Gaming PC (1998)

Posted on 2016-09-05, 01:22

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ok, so I have been totally unable to find a manual on-line for that Micronics motherboard. I know it's a M55HI+ Revision B board, so I'd know what BIOS to update it with, but I've been unable to find the manual so I know what jumpers to set, what that Power Module thing socket is for, etc.

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Re: Perfect Windows XP Hard Drive?

Posted on 2016-09-05, 00:51

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'll tell you what, a hybrid drive like that would be f***ing sweet in a Windows XP system. I wish they made a hybrid laptop drive in a PATA format I could use for my Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 laptop. I'm just stuck with a 250GB regular hard drive. Hell, I'm lucky that worked, because apparently the …

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Re: Retro Gaming PC (1998)

Posted on 2016-09-04, 18:22

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I took two more shots, this time of the Abit MB and the Athlon XP system running Windows XP. The system is running a HDD defrag as I take these pictures. The reason the case is open is because I took out the crappy 80mm rear exhaust fan for a better 92mm fan to push more air out. The system has been …

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Re: Retro Gaming PC (1998)

Posted on 2016-09-04, 17:16

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, I just looked up that Vibra chip. Apparently, it's a Sound Blaster 16 chip made for OEMs to put on boards like this. It uses an ISA-type bus to run it on. Hey, I'm not complaining. I love Sound Blasters back in the day and Creative Labs, to me, was always the audio king for PCs. Hell, I even …

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Re: Retro Gaming PC (1998)

Posted on 2016-09-04, 16:12

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, but like, what do I do with it? LOL I do have a copy of Windows 95 with a key....but I have no graphics card, I doubt I'd be able to find the drivers for the on-board stuff like that audio chip, it has a 20-pin ATX power plug, but I can't find any pins to plug in a power switch to. I wouldn't …

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Re: Retro Gaming PC (1998)

Posted on 2016-09-04, 15:27

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So, other stuff I have lying around in boxes that I'm going through. Intel Pentium 200 FV80502200 with what looks like a permanently-attached heat-fin tower by Micron. It's a metallic blue, has a central core up the middle and what looks like office floor levels coming off of it as heatsink fins. I …

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Re: Retro Gaming PC (1998)

Posted on 2016-09-03, 20:26

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, I pulled out my big bag-o-ram that's on my shelf of un-confirmed RAM sticks from way back in the day, contains DDR1 and DDR2 sticks. I found a bunch of DDR1 stuff. Tried them all out on my system and while I found a matching pair of 256MB 133MHz DDR sticks, I also found ONE working 1GB 166MHz …

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Re: Retro Gaming PC (1998)

Posted on 2016-09-03, 00:32

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So I went and looked at my older brother's house. And guess what I found in one of his spare bedrooms? MY OLD WINDOWS XP DESKTOP! WHOHOO! It was rebuilt in my original Pentium II computer case and still has the Pentium II sticker on the back! So I took my old PC that I had rebuilt and put it back in …

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Re: My Socket 7 "circa 1997" build

Posted on 2016-08-30, 14:05

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yeah, Voodoo1 would be on my hotlist to buy for a system like this.

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Re: Does anyone have an emachines in their collection?

Posted on 2016-08-20, 01:21

by

by FFXIhealer

in Milliways

in Milliways

Oldskoolmaniac wrote: ^^^Did you swap the power supply? Nope.

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Re: Does anyone have an emachines in their collection?

Posted on 2016-08-19, 16:06

by

by FFXIhealer

in Milliways

in Milliways

I have an eMachines computer right now. I swapped the crappy dual-core Pentium processor in it for my mother's old Core 2 Duo - MUCH better processor. 4GB of memory and a freshly wiped 500GB hard drive and it now runs a natively installed copy of Windows 10 Home 64-bit. Works perfectly fine for me. …

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Re: Help me chose hardware for retro gaming pc

Posted on 2016-08-19, 16:04

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, I was gonna say my recommendation was a Pentium III, probably in the Coppermine socket type if he has it. A motherboard to support it. And for those times, I ALWAYS went Creative Labs on the sound card. Sound Blasters were my jam. In my retro rig, I purchased a used ISA AWE64 (not gold) for …

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Re: Best sata to IDE converter.

Posted on 2016-08-18, 15:19

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've considered getting a SATA CD-RW drive for my legacy build with an adapter, but it has to have jumpers on it, because I have 2x HDD on primary IDE, and then the CD-ROM and ZIP250 on Secondary IDE. Any thoughts?

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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 2016-08-18, 15:16

by

by FFXIhealer

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'm playing Super Mario Bros, Mega Man, Zelda, and Castlevania. Because in 1990 we only had 2 systems: the NES and a Commodore 64. I also played Olympic games on the C64, as well as a bunch of others, like Donald Duck's Playground and Ghostbusters.

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Re: I can't decide.... Graphics card(s) for K6-2/500 DOS/W98 Machine... And more!

Posted on 2016-08-12, 16:46

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You're sticking with them hot-ass ATI cards?

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Re: I can't decide.... Graphics card(s) for K6-2/500 DOS/W98 Machine... And more!

Posted on 2016-08-12, 15:46

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What I have at hand right now out of the cards suggested are the Voodoo3 2000 which is the PCI version and a Radeon 7200 SE which is AGP. If i can track them down I know I've got a Voodoo 4 & 5 stashed away somewhere. Personally I never had any nVIdia cards till the geforce 440 MX came out as I was …

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Re: DOS Shell

Posted on 2016-08-12, 14:15

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

DOSSHELL was hugely useful. It was a pretty poor file manager but an excellent app launcher with task switching if you disabled the file tree windows. When switching tasks it would create a memory image on disk that you could look through and even modify, and then load the altered snapshot back …

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Re: Retro items that you regret throwing away

Posted on 2016-08-10, 23:36

by

by FFXIhealer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My original 8MB Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold ISA card and my original Diamond Stealth II G460 8MB AGP card, mainly because those were my first real parts. I, of course, still have the Pentium II, the ASUS P2B, and the 128MB PC-100 RAM.

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