Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-11-26, 20:49

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My $30 486 set arrived: https://i.postimg.cc/bdkBnLPX/Chicony-CH-471-A.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/Z0WTzG68/Intel-486-DX4-75.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/SJVVLvtP/Pine-Technology-PT524-8-G.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/6yHg6qwT/Pine-Technology-PT-628-A.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/1VB0H8MF/Surecom-EP-312-V.jpg I …

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

Posted on 2018-11-26, 04:13

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My home's wiring is so old that it KILLED ME when I was plugging in an HDMI cable and touched the metal shielding on the plug. Catching 120V across the heart with God knows how many amps doesn't feel good, but neither does being revived. Found out how badly the house wasn't grounded when I hooked …

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Re: Soundfont recommendation thread

Posted on 2018-11-26, 04:04

by

by appiah4

in Milliways

in Milliways

Not a soundfont, but I have come to love the sound of midi music of games being played/interpreted by Yamaha XG devices (as in SW60XG and alike). It sounds gorgeous. If I would have had a synth card like these back then.... SW-YXG are software synths and if you search enough you can find various …

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Re: How stable is your Windows 98?

Posted on 2018-11-24, 20:30

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My K6-2 Win9x system is rock solid but my P3-700 Win Me system can behave strangely (on occasion locks up on desktop right after boot etc) that I think is more motherboard related than OS related (parrially recapped BX2000 bosrs that never ran stably with a Voodoo 3 despite having headers to …

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Re: Bought these games today

Posted on 2018-11-24, 20:20

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by appiah4

in Milliways

in Milliways

I've looked for this on-and-off for years - the collectors edition of Gothic 3. Not rare actually, but finding the english version for reasonable money was a little challenging. Damn, we had a local store that still recently had those collecting dust for 10e apiece. Bought one for myself around 4 …

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Re: Upgrading a dead-end(?) system - PCI in the DX7 era

Posted on 2018-11-24, 06:12

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

128 bit SDR = 64 bit DDR in terms of bandwidth. Same difference.

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Re: Upgrading a dead-end(?) system - PCI in the DX7 era

Posted on 2018-11-24, 05:02

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Didnt have any problems with drivers. I installed the card first and then remived the intel driver w/o problems. Used the newest ones Intel had on their website for this motherboard. Could not find any specific chipset drivers, only separate ones for graphics, storage, etc. EDIT: Post MX400s …

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Re: Intel 440LX vs VIA Apollo Pro

Posted on 2018-11-24, 04:52

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for the insights; Ive come to the same conclusions since I had started this thread a year ago (it got necroed by an off topic post) and sold them both off 🤣

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

Posted on 2018-11-23, 14:09

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If only it could be tiled..

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Re: ABIT VP6 (VIA Apollo Pro 133A)

Posted on 2018-11-23, 10:09

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, yeah.. but the ABIT VP6 is an Apollo Pro 133A motherboard, a completely different and a vastly more capable and stable chipset, it's more comparable to the 440BX or even 815E I think..

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Re: ABIT VP6 (VIA Apollo Pro 133A)

Posted on 2018-11-23, 10:01

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

How is this relevant?

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Re: Upgrading a dead-end(?) system - PCI in the DX7 era

Posted on 2018-11-23, 06:31

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Post MX400s fillrate results in 3DMark2001SE pls, 128bit on PCI is very very improbable.

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Re: Any specific AGP cards I should keep (lower end) ?

Posted on 2018-11-23, 05:18

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Keep these: 4 HD3850 2 7800GS a few x800xt, an x800xt PE, x850xt Multiple Voodoo 3 3000, a 3500, 2-3 2000, 1000 2 Voodoo 5 5500 2 3dfx Banshee Rage Fury MAXX Matrox G450 (Dump the G100) Hercules 3d Prophet 4500 (Kyro II) Radeon (SDRAM) 3-4 TNT (Keep at least one) 4-5 TNT2 (Keep at least one non-M64, …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-11-23, 05:10

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I wouldn't be surprised if the fan was just for marketing purposes. "If it needs a fan it must be a fast graphics card" -average consumers, probably. Likely. I also have this PCI MX400 that has an active cooler (it's a 64-bit card with a tiny heatsink and fan on top - why?). https://i.postimg.cc/ …

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Re: Upgrading a dead-end(?) system - PCI in the DX7 era

Posted on 2018-11-23, 03:58

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

The PCI MX400 is 64 bit. Iyit is effectively performing like a TNT2 Pro. Install a Radeon 7500 PCI (rare) or a 9250 PCI (common) and watch that sustem fly.

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Re: 486 OC and cooling.

Posted on 2018-11-22, 18:40

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I believe Voodoo1 is a very good fit for 486 systems. 1995-1996 was the time during which original Voodoo was introduced and most popular. And during the same years, a Pentium was still an expensive proposition and high end 486 (DX4 100, 5x86,etc. ) was the mainstream PC for most of the common …

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Re: New Shrink Wrapped Big Box Games/Software

Posted on 2018-11-22, 18:34

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I remember buying a shrinkwrapped copy of Tachyon: The Fringe from a Virgin store in London in 2000. I opened it up at the hotel and found out that it had no CD inside the jewel case. It was my last night in the city so I took the subway, got to the store about 10 minutes before closing and …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-11-22, 14:44

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A bunch of stuff came in the mail today: https://i.postimg.cc/Vd3kCGzP/ASound-MA5-ASOUND-007.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/3dWkp0pm/Creative-3-D-Blaster-Banshee-CT6750.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/xJhJVPh3/Winfast-Ge-Force2-TH.jpg Finally I have an above average quality ALS007 card that's mostly silent.. …

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Re: Pentium PC won't boot with IDE-FC Adapter..

Posted on 2018-11-22, 12:14

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I understand it seems completely illogical, but once I had a similar issue with exactly the same CF adapter and card: on a specific motherboard, plugging the adapter directly to the IDE connector caused beeping as there's no VGA installed. I solved it by using a HDD cable and connecting a different …

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Re: Any specific AGP cards I should keep (lower end) ?

Posted on 2018-11-22, 10:23

by

by appiah4

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Keep a TNT2, a couple of geforce 2 and 4 era cards, an S3 and anything 3dfx. Ati and matrox are really not worth keeping unless you have some very unique or nostalgic cards. Some higher end 'last of an era' cards, like the fx5900 ultra, are also worth keeping but anything newer where there is a pci …

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