Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on Yesterday, 11:15

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

QDI P5I430VX-250 (Explorer) for 10€ in a broken state. Seller states every CPU only runs with 66MHz. This will be interesting to debug. The board works just fine. It has a really old BIOS from 1996 on it, though - so I guess it detects a lot of CPUs as a 66MHz 486 and that just confused the seller. …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-05-26, 10:56

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

QDI P5I430VX-250 (Explorer) for 10€ in a broken state. Seller states every CPU only runs with 66MHz. This will be interesting to debug. It can't be worse than my experience with the ASUS P/I-P55SP4, can it? 🤣 Filename s-l1600.jpg File size 520.14 KiB Views 151 views

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Re: Win 98 build drivers

Posted on 2023-05-18, 11:31

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by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Babasha wrote on 2023-05-18, 10:35: You can limit your RAM to 512MB with BURNMEM On my systems with more than 512MB it seemed like they got more and more unstable with every driver I installed. I now just use PATCHMEM from R.Loew, which makes 98SE rock-solid. https://archive.org/details/PATCHMEM

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Re: ASUS P/I-P55SP4 - GPU compatibility is atrocious

Posted on 2023-05-17, 19:26

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by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've now received an old ball mouse that works fine on all my computers with PS/2 ports. On this Asus board, the machine still hangs when I move it around. I guess I need to give up at this point. Something on this board must be broken, maybe it's the AMIKEY chip or something else. If I ever get …

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Re: ASUS P/I-P55SP4 - GPU compatibility is atrocious

Posted on 2023-05-12, 23:46

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by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It is very important to get the ps2 config correct. I have fried that port before getting it wrong. I think I haven't fried the port, but fried my mouse instead. Because when I plug the mouse into my working VH6T board, it also hangs the system when I move it around. Interestingly, the mouse still …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2023-05-12, 15:24

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by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I was finally able to create an SMB network share that works with Windows 98. When I upgraded my router I had to switch from Samba3 to Samba4 and couldn't get it to work anymore. So I tinkered around a bit today and tried various smb.conf options but they all didn't work - until I finally stumbled …

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Re: ASUS P/I-P55SP4 - GPU compatibility is atrocious

Posted on 2023-05-11, 21:05

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by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Good news! The Rage XL card indeed works, in both the converted 3.3V slot as well as on the 5V slots. I can't get my old Logitech PS/2 mouse (Mouseman Dual Optical) to work, though. I figured out the PS/2 header pinout, it's documented here: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=364839#p364839 I …

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Re: ASUS P/I-P55SP4 - GPU compatibility is atrocious

Posted on 2023-05-10, 17:25

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It does raise the question whether a BIOS update would help. There's a pile here: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/asus-p-i-p55sp4-rev-1.4#downloads I have already updated the BIOS to the latest version. Also, the 01/16/96 BIOS on that website is the one I dumped from my own board. :) I was …

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Re: ASUS P/I-P55SP4 - GPU compatibility is atrocious

Posted on 2023-05-09, 19:26

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Have you tried with a different power supply? Have you tried without even your keyboard plugged in? I tried that now and it didn't change anything. Even on a modern 1200W Corsair power supply the ATI cards don't boot. All of the graphics cards are fine - they work in my SS7 system (Abit VH6T). You …

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ASUS P/I-P55SP4 - GPU compatibility is atrocious

Posted on 2023-05-08, 23:08

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I got this board a few months ago and it's honestly driving me crazy. I wanted to build a nice Windows 95 machine with this and put an overkill graphics card into it. There are three PCI cards at my disposal and only the worst one of them all even POSTs. - ATI Rage 128 - black screen, board hangs - …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-04-14, 19:17

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ah that's a nice one! I didn't remember that they produced Rage 128-based AIW cards. Do you actually plan to use this part of the card or is it just for the collection? I have the AGP version of that card, too. They are amazing with the latest drivers, really solid Win98 cards. This one was planned …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-04-14, 16:09

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Got an ATi Rage 128 AIW (PCI) shipped from the US to Germany: rage128-packaging.jpg rage128.jpg Despite the not-so-great packaging, the card seems to have survived. First, it didn't output any signal. Then I put it into my system together with a Rage 128 AGP . It was then detected by Windows 98 and …

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Re: Choose one of the three OPTI929A sound cards

Posted on 2023-04-12, 23:12

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by schmatzler

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Great choice of a card! Just throwing this in here, if you're not already aware of it: https://github.com/JKnipperts/OPTi82c929_Driver

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Re: Vintage Athlon XP 'gaming' laptops

Posted on 2023-04-12, 21:43

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Gericom made at least one Athlon XP notebook (Gericom Hummer Advance 2560XL). It even came with a Radeon 9600. I had one of these back in the day and if I remember correctly it was just a big hunk of hardware with Desktop SDRAM in it. I eventually threw it out, because it had a custom fan embedded …

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Re: Cursor size on Vogons

Posted on 2023-02-06, 21:21

by

by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

It was a problem with DPI scaling on Windows for a while and I remember Edge browser (the original one) not supporting cursor scaling properly. Those should all be things of the past now. Do you have any DPI scaling active? The cursor comes from these styles applied to various elements: @media …

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Re: So, what is the #1 rule to have a stable Windows Millenium Edition PC?

Posted on 2023-02-06, 21:16

by

by schmatzler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I installed WinME on my Abit VH6T a while ago and it ran very stable...until I installed the VXD drivers for my OpTi Mad16 Pro sound card. Then it crashed very often. So I guess WinME really doesn't like VXD drivers. I stick to WDM drivers now when I use it.

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Re: Most disappointing games?

Posted on 2023-01-25, 22:12

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by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

Stalker - Call of Pripyat. It was so bland that I couldn't even finish it. I like the game. It's very slow-paced but the exploration of desolate buildings is my cup of tea. The only thing that's obvious is that they planned vehicles and were never able to finish them. The maps feel way too big to …

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Re: Most disappointing games?

Posted on 2023-01-23, 00:09

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by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

lowenz wrote on 2023-01-22, 13:20: Pariah? Tried that a while ago. This game is pure jank. Bad gameplay, atrocious level design, story written like a fanfiction from a 12-year old... I don't get why it was hyped up so much back in the day.

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Re: Integrate drivers into Win98 se CD

Posted on 2023-01-09, 23:55

by

by schmatzler

in Windows

in Windows

The drivers probably came from here originally: https://msfn.org/board/topic/163405-slipstreamable-intel-chipset-inf-drivers/ That thread also has installation instructions: How do I use these INF's? Unzip them and place them in the same directory as your Windows 98SE CAB files prior to installation …

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Re: Is anyone currently living in Germany?

Posted on 2022-12-31, 02:30

by

by schmatzler

in Milliways

in Milliways

I live in the north of Germany, just next to the Baltic sea. We call ourselves "Fischköpfe" (fish heads) here.

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