Re: Is the Pentium 4 underrated for retro computing?

Posted on Today, 00:52

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

P4 mobos with ISA a rarer than hens teeth, but practically they are not much use, although I suppose if you only play late DOS games that are not speed sensitive it might be a nice platform to get SPDIF out of say an Audigy2 and mix it with midi sound from a ISA card. That's what I thought at first …

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Re: Online copies of games are not owned

Posted on Yesterday, 19:58

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by Shponglefan

in Milliways

in Milliways

Helldivers 2 has been pulled from Steam in 170 countries without PSN access How Sony could mess up this badly is truly mind-boggling. Looks like Sony has backed off on this change: Sony Gives Up ‘Helldivers 2’ PSN Link Demand, The Only Way This Could Have Ended “Helldivers fans — we’ve heard your …

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Re: Is the Pentium 4 underrated for retro computing?

Posted on Yesterday, 12:39

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by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

kolderman wrote on Yesterday, 02:43: Forget ISA, this is not a DOS gaming machine. But... what do I do with my ISA slots then? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Re: Is the Pentium 4 underrated for retro computing?

Posted on Yesterday, 12:38

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

fosterwj03 wrote on Yesterday, 02:50: My DOS issue with speeds has to do with timing bugs in the sound drivers. I feel like I have to tune the P4 independently for each game/app. It's annoying. Which games do you have issues with?

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Re: Is the Pentium 4 underrated for retro computing?

Posted on Yesterday, 01:26

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I can’t think of any DOS applications that truly benefit from the raw performance of a P4 that you couldn’t meet with a Pentium MMX 233MHz. Build engine games and Quake in software mode at higher resolutions do benefit. That was one of the driving reasons I built my own P4 system was to see how far …

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Re: Is the Pentium 4 underrated for retro computing?

Posted on Yesterday, 00:29

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by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

leileilol wrote on 2024-05-05, 02:12: A p4's great for a PCX2 😀 That's in intriguing idea. Hadn't thought about trying a PowerVR card in a P4. I'm now thinking my next build might be a quad-GPU setup... 😁

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Re: Is the Pentium 4 underrated for retro computing?

Posted on 2024-05-05, 15:27

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by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2024-05-05, 15:11: Isn't there P4 boards with the SB Link connector for better DOS compatibility? According to Retroweb, there are a bunch of socket 478 boards with SBLink. Most of them seem to be QDI motherboards.

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Re: Faulty Roland RAP-10 Repair Help Needed

Posted on 2024-05-05, 15:24

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Moreover, now that I attached an amplified speaker to the OUT port instead of a hifi headphone, I can actually hear a very, very, very low and VERY distorted and muffled music playing when I run DOOM and the Music is set to GM so I gues the Synthesis IS working, but maybe the dac or the …

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Re: Athlon XP performance ratings

Posted on 2024-05-05, 13:13

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by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Fish3r wrote on 2024-05-05, 01:44: I guess I was expecting less from the p4 due to them being supposedly (literal) hot garbage. It's unfortunate that the P4 has been tarnished with such a rep, as not all P4 processors are created equal.

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Re: Is the Pentium 4 underrated for retro computing?

Posted on 2024-05-05, 12:51

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

problem with the p4 is lack of isa and the problem with industrial p4 boards with isa is crippled agp slots (or dma implementation of isa). i'm sure the perfect p4 industrial board exists, but i'll never be able to get one. There are motherboards like the Advantech AIMB-742 that are available now. …

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Re: Is the Pentium 4 underrated for retro computing?

Posted on 2024-05-05, 12:50

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by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

pixel_workbench wrote on 2024-05-05, 06:33: It's just that anything a P4 can do, the Athlon64 can do better, and likely use less power, and have better heatsink retention and selection. (aside from SATA quirks on Via chipsets). Are there any Athlon64 boards with ISA slots?

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Re: Is the Pentium 4 underrated for retro computing?

Posted on 2024-05-05, 12:49

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sure, but... how many industrial 478/775 motherboards with ISA slots are out there? If one YouTuber gets people excited in this, within a week they'll be all gone on eBay or insane prices. This is the reason I'm looking into these things before that happens. The trick to getting interesting …

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Re: Is the Pentium 4 underrated for retro computing?

Posted on 2024-05-04, 22:52

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by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think people avoid them because they ran hotter than their AMD counterparts. But you're probably not running a retro rig 24/7/365, so who cares about the power consumption - just slap a decent cooler on there and enjoy. edit: Oh right, and they fall into the "capacitor plague" timeframe, which …

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Re: Is the Pentium 4 underrated for retro computing?

Posted on 2024-05-04, 22:49

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

3) The other thing I would note is that nostalgia is an important driver of decisions. People want either what they/their friends/etc had in their youth, or what they read about in the magazines and web sites and wished they could have afforded at the time. Other than maybe a few Northwoods for a 6 …

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Re: Is the Pentium 4 underrated for retro computing?

Posted on 2024-05-04, 20:52

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't think P4s are useless for retro gaming, in fact along with P3s they seem to be a good option for those all-in-one retro builds. That's from a purely utilitarian POV. But personally I just find the 478 platform so utterly boring to tinker with that I never feel like dedicating a build to it. …

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Re: How to optimize DOS and Windows 3.11/98 for CF cards/SSDs?

Posted on 2024-05-04, 20:21

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by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You could disable virtual memory, though that may lead to performance, stability, or compatibility issues. Alternatively you could use something like an HDD or SSD and assign virtual memory to that drive instead of the CF cards. Of course, if you install an HDD or SSD, you might as well just install …

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Re: Is the Pentium 4 underrated for retro computing?

Posted on 2024-05-04, 20:05

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

exept very rare boards no P4+ boards have ISA, then not good for DOS I agree that having ISA slots does allow for better DOS support. But I'm not sure if these boards are really that rare. For example, the board I'm using (DFI ITOX G7S620-N-G) was readily available on Ebay as of a few months ago. …

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Is the Pentium 4 underrated for retro computing?

Posted on 2024-05-04, 18:39

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The Pentium 4 seems to have a mixed rep. I've seen some folks straight-up swear off ever even looking at a Pentium 4, let alone creating a build based on one. Though most of the negative rep stems from the under-performing Willamette processors and the power hungry Prescott lineup, but I feel like …

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Re: Why The Internet Archive Is In Danger Right Now...

Posted on 2024-05-04, 17:29

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by Shponglefan

in Milliways

in Milliways

Errius wrote on 2024-05-04, 16:54: "Temporarily Offline" hmm... Looks like that is just the Wayback Machine. The file archive still seems to be working.

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Re: Faulty Roland RAP-10 Repair Help Needed

Posted on 2024-05-03, 22:30

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

When you say you've tested in games, does this include games that support it as a digital audio card (e.g. not just MIDI)? If it's not being detected at all, then I'd start by testing traces and voltages from the ISA contacts, as well as testing for any loose pins on the ICs. If you can look up …

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