Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-02-21, 07:30

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm hungry now. :( Anyway, back on topic, I just bought this guy for my IBM eduquest: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CMYIRMO/ref=od_aui_detailpages00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I don't usually consider Amazon, but $32 shipped is a damn sight better than the $75+shipping that cockwomble on ebay wants. I'm …

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Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2018-02-21, 07:22

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My daughter lives in Swedish Norrland and was complaining yesterday about it being -27C when she had to leave for school in the morning, so -10C sounds positively balmy and southern ;) If you do live in the South in/near Helsinki and you make regular shopping trips to Talinn maybe a tip: shipping …

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

Posted on 2018-02-21, 00:10

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ah, the joys of DOS networking... Got fed up with having to swap around CF cards every time I wanted to get some software onto my 486. So dug up an old 3Com 3C509TP Etherlink III card and got started. My idea was to use the one of Crynwr's packet drivers and MTCP to set up an FTP server which I …

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Re: SiS 530 chipset with PCI graphics

Posted on 2018-02-20, 18:46

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Just tested with PC Mark 2002 and CPU score is very similar with and without Voodoo3 installed. So, it is not CPU what slows down, but something else. CPU and integrated VGA share system memory bandwidth, so when both are addressed simultaneously (i.e. during a game or 3D benchmark) performance is …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-02-20, 13:25

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yep, that's the last screen I remember seeing on our PS/2 model 70. Could kick myself we couldn't be bothered to fix it (that was at the end of the 1990s, when PS/2-MCA was just odd, incompatible and worthless).

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Re: SiS 530 chipset with PCI graphics

Posted on 2018-02-20, 06:53

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Disabling integrated graphics isn't possible or necessary in this case. What is important is that the Voodoo (PCI) is set as primary in BIOS and in Windows. Apart from that this sounds more like driver issues than anything else. Do you have the SiS motherboard chipset drivers installed? Exclamation …

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Re: Which card? Aztech vs Media-Vision?

Posted on 2018-02-19, 18:34

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by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I have both positive and negative experience with noise on Aztech cards. Aztech Sound Galaxy Multimedia 16 ABO (MMSN850) was noisy and this new old stock was quiet. Very interesting - those are the exact same card I have, also an 824. Will see if I have time to get mine out for a photoshoot this …

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Re: Would a Motherboard Tester Help?

Posted on 2018-02-19, 17:15

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Smack2k wrote: Ordered one...will post what I get when it arrives... That, sir, is a beautiful pun 😀

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-02-19, 10:19

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So I was very happy some time ago when I found and bought the same computer case as I had when I was young, after looking for quite some time. So, as these thing apparently go, I found anf bought another one yesterday. This one also has approximately the same insides as the one I had when I was …

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Re: Which card? Aztech vs Media-Vision?

Posted on 2018-02-18, 15:43

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Well, n=1 (both in terms of my ears and one sound card for each chip), but there were pretty clear differences: Setup: my trusty 486DX-33 with Via-based VLB motherboard, a set of Motorheadphones (prejudice would be that they are only good for 'everything louder than everything else' but in fact they …

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Re: 9 AGP cards for 1$

Posted on 2018-02-18, 11:53

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by dionb

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I've done a bit of reading and those Rage cards seem pretty useless... How so? Thier a nice card for early 9x systems for playing games like mechwarrior 2 and resident evil 2 in 3d. Check out the 3DMark score for the Rage IIC... https://i.imgur.com/EyITLuw.png Uhuh. Compare a Voodoo 2 to a Radeon …

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Re: Getting the most out of a MMX system

Posted on 2018-02-18, 11:11

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by dionb

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Indeed. The only Pentium MMX I've ever seen die in-service was one in a system in our data center that somehow lost its heatsink (one of those low blue anodized aluminim ones, affixed with tape - fine when mounted horizontally, but vertically it's asking for trouble). It ran 24/7 for at least five …

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Re: Which card? Aztech vs Media-Vision?

Posted on 2018-02-17, 21:57

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by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Just got my hands on an ESS ES688F-based card with genuine OPL3 on it. Will see if I can compare it to my Aztech AZT2316 card later tonight or tomorrow.

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Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2018-02-17, 19:13

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Was in a small town an hour's drive away from my usual stomping grounds with an hour to spare, so decided to raid their three thrift shops. Found some useful non-computing related stuff, but apart from a beige IDE DVD-RW drive for in the retro box I intend to build with my son, absolutely nothing …

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Re: Tualatin Motherboard

Posted on 2018-02-17, 09:33

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Given the relative scarcity of board with FC-PGA2, AGP and ISA, I'd start off with "any you can find". I'd agree with the VH6T as one of the best options, but unlikely you'll find one... Alternative is of course to go for a Slot 1 board with Tualatin BIOS support. Most Slot 1 is i440BX, which is …

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Re: Extrememory-RAM brand Germany ?

Posted on 2018-02-16, 20:15

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

When it comes to memory, there are basically a limited number of actual chip manufacturers - in DDR1 times there were about 6, companies like Inifineon, Samsung, Hynix, Elpida etc. Everyone else just bought buckets of their chips and stuck them on their own DIMMs. Now, the way they did that also …

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Re: Replacing IDE hard drives with something more modern

Posted on 2018-02-16, 12:36

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Depends on how much storage you want and what your BIOS can handle. Compactflash is great for older IDE-based systems. It's basically the same interface as IDE so a passive adapter is all you need.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-02-16, 11:08

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Other than what the other have already written above, there was one important factor that kinda sorta explains it: smaller percentage of consoles on the market. In many European countries, including the former Soviet block (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia etc.), consoles weren't as popular as in …

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

Posted on 2018-02-15, 23:06

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@dionb if shipping wasn't an absolute bastard, you could sell it to me. :) Tempting - but you're right about shipping, that would make any deal thoroughly uneconomical for at least one of us. I have the same problem the other way round with getting my Trackball Explorers repaired: the only people …

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Re: Is the VIA EPIA-M a good ITX Win9x platform?

Posted on 2018-02-15, 13:39

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There should be drivers for the integrated devices. As for how useful it would be - what do you want to do with it? Win9x gaming up to 1999 is what I had in mind. Bear in mind that an Epia performs much slower than an equivalently-clocked P3. The CPU would be at best comparable to a 500MHz P3. But …

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