Re: Best PC the year 2000 could provide.

Posted on 2017-11-16, 19:29

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My first pc at my current job in 1999 was a Compaq Deskpro 6200 XL with a Ppro 200. I still regret i didnt save it after it was replaced. I know the feeling...:( Probably still a good idea to get one or two before the gold hoarders melt every last one down :P. Thankfully the PPRO is quite …

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Re: Demanding games that will run well on my retro PC

Posted on 2017-11-16, 19:11

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Milliways

in Milliways

Steering a little off topic out of curiosity, which graphics driver version do you have running? I can't get RTCW working, on both Win98 and WinXP single player mode just gray screens on startup.. no matter which patch version I install I'm using 45.23. But I'm using the GOG version of RTCW (which …

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Re: Old hardware you didn't take or buy... but might still want?

Posted on 2017-11-16, 18:21

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Apple doesn't seem to big around this board but I recently passed on an Apple IIGS (looked like a ROM1 with a RAM upgrade board) at a garage sale complete with a printer, disk drives, games, rgb monitor, etc because I wasn't carrying any cash. I wish I had gone back for it, the IIGS was the …

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Re: Demanding games that will run well on my retro PC

Posted on 2017-11-16, 18:01

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Milliways

in Milliways

Steering a little off topic out of curiosity, which graphics driver version do you have running? I can't get RTCW working, on both Win98 and WinXP single player mode just gray screens on startup.. no matter which patch version I install, But I can get multiplayer going fine. It's happening even …

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Re: Best PC the year 2000 could provide.

Posted on 2017-11-16, 16:18

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Wasn’t the Pentium Pro geared more towards servers or something? I feel like I’m my research there was a reason I didn’t include Pentium Pro as part of a casual home user based system list. The ppro is what became the Xeon. Not necessarily for "servers" but it was still priced as such. The reason …

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Re: Maximum amount of memory on a 486

Posted on 2017-11-16, 02:42

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Doesn't matter what machines were sold with.. People were still mesmerized by a machine that had excessive amounts of any spec (including ram) even if it was totally inconsequential to performance (or in reality with caching, detrimental). I knew a few guys who did nothing but play DOOM and fart …

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Re: Old hardware you didn't take or buy... but might still want?

Posted on 2017-11-16, 01:34

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Apple doesn't seem to big around this board but I recently passed on an Apple IIGS (looked like a ROM1 with a RAM upgrade board) at a garage sale complete with a printer, disk drives, games, rgb monitor, etc because I wasn't carrying any cash. I wish I had gone back for it, the IIGS was the computer …

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Re: Low Profile Pentium 4 (2003)

Posted on 2017-11-15, 00:18

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Awesome! Totally awesome! Makes me want to track down some junked 2u systems to consolidate and free up some room in the garage.

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Re: Best PC the year 2000 could provide.

Posted on 2017-11-14, 22:56

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, if we could ascertain the release date of the 900A for good, I'd be happy. The only photo of a 900A I can find online is this, and it has a manufacture date of 30th week 2001 on it. As for Voodoo 4 and 5 - I believe they were actually released in 1999. I just used Voodoo 3 for that year …

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Re: Mac Emulation on Windows

Posted on 2017-11-14, 21:09

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by BeginnerGuy

in Macintosh Emulation

in Macintosh Emulation

Are we talking Motorola 68k? power pc? x86 OS X? Mac could mean anything from 1984 to the apple store right now! I'm gathering that thread is a troll though, in that case I would say it's better to emulate windows from a mac and then run mac within the windows emulator. So buy a macbook pro --> …

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Re: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004

Posted on 2017-11-14, 20:33

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Windows

in Windows

It's not a direct solution to your problem but I installed Windows XP to a virtual machine using Virtual Box. Throw a couple of CPU cores and enable 3d acceleration and most of these early 2000s games work no problem that way. Windows 10 broke a great deal of XP era games for me and getting them to …

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Re: New here need recommendation for a gaming rig

Posted on 2017-11-14, 20:02

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This list of games ranges a good decade as far as I can see. This will turn into people recommending you build multiple computers if you want to play the games on time period accurate machines. Off the top of my head, psychonauts is going to require a beefy 1+ ghz system. A quick search on Syberia 2 …

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Re: Improving my wife's computer

Posted on 2017-11-14, 16:53

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by BeginnerGuy

in Milliways

in Milliways

FX 6100 is a bulldozer CPU, 8350 is a Piledriver. Piledriver chips were a decent jump over bulldozer, most reviews at the time (2012) showing around 20% faster than the similar bulldozer part (8150 in this case). So you're getting two extra cores that will be a decent bit faster. It's still not a …

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Genoa 486VLG X4 - Voltage ?

Posted on 2017-11-13, 23:30

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi! I'm seeing this board now for the second time today [Genoa 486VLG X4 Ver. D] (first it was on ebay, now I have a chance to another one locally). I've never heard of this board or the brand, but it looks like a pretty solid SiS 471 board. I'm wondering if this will be able to do 3.3 - 3.45V on …

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Re: What was your favorite computing era?

Posted on 2017-11-13, 13:45

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by BeginnerGuy

in Milliways

in Milliways

Early 1990s 386 or 486 on the high end. Games were unique and developed by small teams and there was still a sense of a pioneering spirit in terms of all of the software and hardware available at the time. This was also the last era before the internet started taking over and "in person" computer …

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Re: Can anyone explain what is TAG RAM?

Posted on 2017-11-08, 12:00

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

In other words they are the same exact kind of SRAM chips you use in the other slots, but sometimes a different size is required and you want to check the boards manual. For example, on this random board I picked. Scroll down to the section on cache and you'll see bank 0, 1, and tag. http://stason. …

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Re: I'm a daddy...

Posted on 2017-11-05, 15:21

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Milliways

in Milliways

Congrats! Congrats! Here's to a long life and good health. Maybe play her OPL3 MIDI music when putting her to bed. When she turns 20 this stuff will be half a century old. Maybe she'll take some 8088 appreciation class in her ultra futuristic college curriculum about dinosaur hardware used by …

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Re: QBasic games.

Posted on 2017-11-04, 13:51

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

GORILLA.BAS I feel like everybody had this game (including me). I think it was included with qbasic disks. Basic can use graphics mode no problem, only issue is it's extremely slow compared to game engines written in C or pascal with assembly for memory moves. On the bright side its hilariously …

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Re: Windows for Workgroups birthday

Posted on 2017-10-29, 01:22

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Milliways

in Milliways

It crashed a lot, had no good games, and didn't seem particularly useful. That's what I remember of Windows 3.x. Windows 9x had DirectX, a far nicer interface, and didn't crash nearly as often. It had real multitasking. The 8.3 character limit was gone. Best of all, it was its own operating system, …

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Re: Help me pick parts for Socket 3 486 rig (HDD controller, graphics)

Posted on 2017-10-28, 09:23

by

by BeginnerGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ouch. BeginnerGuy - you have been through a lot of pain with your system work. I've been through a few of your threads, and you face adversity with your parts & just soldier on. So - words of encouragement here for you, because man... sometimes these parts just seem out to get you (didn't you have …

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