Re: Which IDE CD drive is best suited for reading burned CDs on old PCs?

Posted on 2023-11-10, 03:12

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've always had the best luck with Toshiba drives for reading CD-Rs with low speed (<12x) drives. I have a 4x SCSI Toshiba in my 386 machine that reads every CD-R I throw at it.

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Re: Fractal Design Pop vs. Fractal Design Define R5 as modern case options for retro PC's

Posted on 2023-11-10, 02:33

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a Define R5, but don't really like it. It's too bulky for my taste and I'm not a fan of cases with doors. I prefer the Fractal Design Focus G cases (I have 4 of them) for any retro-builds in a more modern case. More slim compared to the R5, have dual 5.25" bays, plenty of airflow, and are …

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Re: Fractal Design Pop vs. Fractal Design Define R5 as modern case options for retro PC's

Posted on 2023-11-10, 00:43

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a Define R5, but don't really like it. It's too bulky for my taste and I'm not a fan of cases with doors. I prefer the Fractal Design Focus G cases (I have 4 of them) for any retro-builds in a more modern case. More slim compared to the R5, have dual 5.25" bays, plenty of airflow, and are …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-11-09, 23:12

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by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Got this Medion 9800XL Dual VGA AGP card. Came to the USA all the way from Ukraine. Interestingly, it has a factory sticker on the aux power connector saying to only use if put in a "non powered" AGP slot. I thought all 9800 cards needed aux power regardless of AGP slot type? image_50736897.JPG …

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Re: Fractal Design Pop vs. Fractal Design Define R5 as modern case options for retro PC's

Posted on 2023-11-09, 23:03

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Check out the Zalman T6. They go for $50 on the Bezos site. I build a lot of retro machines in that case.

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Re: 3DMark2000 + Voodoo 3 3000 AGP = crash

Posted on 2023-11-07, 15:01

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Is it possible the old TIM on the heatsink isn't doing a good job anymore?

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Re: 3DMark2000 + Voodoo 3 3000 AGP = crash

Posted on 2023-11-07, 15:00

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just for the record, i would like to share my experience ( i don't think a new thread is needed since it's just my 2 cents ). I had a similar problem...a Voodoo 3 3000 which started to crash on both 3Dmark 99 and 2000. Given the fact i always suggest to put a fan blowing nearby / or installing one …

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Re: Fanless AT Power Supply?

Posted on 2023-11-07, 00:22

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

thisIsLoneWolf wrote on 2023-11-06, 23:35: Bruno128 wrote on 2023-11-06, 19:05: Alternative solution is getting silent ATX PSU and AT PSU adaptor cable. This seems like a good option. PicoPSU might also work, depending on power requirements.

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Re: SD to IDE adapter not found on two different PCs

Posted on 2023-11-06, 22:30

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have two old PCs I dug out from the closet that were my childhood PCs. One "AST Advantage! 623E" (similair model to the one found here: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=1069915 ) with a Pentium 100mhz + 32mb RAM and a noname mid-tower build with a P3 800mhz and I think a Geforce 4 series …

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Re: Fanless AT Power Supply?

Posted on 2023-11-06, 08:16

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Depends on the design of the power supply. Older style AT power supplies often used one or more ceramic power resistors to operate correctly. Without airflow those could reach 100+ degrees (Celsius). More modern designed AT power supplies didn't rely on those and ran pretty cool at moderate …

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Re: My optical drive-apocalypse (and how I partially fixed it)

Posted on 2023-11-06, 04:23

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There's a YouTube channel (NorCal715) that cleans belts and pulleys with acetone. I haven't tried that or boiling belts. I have some drives with the same problem, but they also fail to read discs (one is intermittent, and one reads exactly two discs that I have - any other disc completely hangs the …

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Re: 2007 dream build performance confusion.

Posted on 2023-11-06, 03:50

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In my testing Crysis doesn't really benefit from SLI. It prefers a single card with more RAM. Like mentioned above, a GTX 295 is a good card choice. For AMD fans, my R9 270X 2GB will play Crysis 1.2.1 under XP @ 1080P High with an average around 65 FPS. With a fast dual core.

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Re: Fanless AT Power Supply?

Posted on 2023-11-06, 03:42

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Depends on the design of the power supply. Older style AT power supplies often used one or more ceramic power resistors to operate correctly. Without airflow those could reach 100+ degrees (Celsius). More modern designed AT power supplies didn't rely on those and ran pretty cool at moderate wattages …

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Re: New AT cases

Posted on 2023-11-06, 03:39

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm unaware of any company making those now - your best bet is to find some new old stock. There was a company in Oakland, CA that was selling new old stock AT cases pretty recently, but I wasn't able to find them on Ebay just now, so my assumption would be that they sold out. NOS AT cases will …

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Re: Sporadic boot problems on GA-5AA

Posted on 2023-11-02, 14:25

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you have a POST card you could use to see where it stops (if it even shows life) when it doesn't POST? I doubt it's your problem, but the kernel32 error would make me run a few passes of memtest86 to rule out bad RAM.

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Re: I pulled out a PCI card while a system was powered on today

Posted on 2023-11-02, 03:02

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Windows 98's natural state is locked up What a great quote, I'm putting that in my signature. 😄 Believe it or not, I never pulled out or plugged in a card when a system was live. But I have an Audigy 2 that's very temperamental when inserted at a slight angle into a PCI slot. It's just not being …

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

Posted on 2023-11-02, 01:24

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I like the Zalman T6 for retro-ish ATX builds. Compact mid tower with an external 5.25 bay. Can hold 2 3.5" or 2 2.5" drives. Power supply on the top but has good cable management space behind mobo tray. They go for $50 shipped on the Bezos store. I spy a Power Man (Inwin) power supply. I love those …

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Re: Is it possible to correct IRQ Table errors from within Windows 98?

Posted on 2023-11-02, 01:21

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by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I kind of wonder if it was a mistake to try to use ACPI or irq steering too soon in Windows 9x with many boards not compliant. I did a Win98 on a 440BX system a few weeks ago, and it had this issue. I decided in that case to rerun setup with the options to disable it completely. Then the system …

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Re: I pulled out a PCI card while a system was powered on today

Posted on 2023-11-01, 16:59

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Back in ~2000 I was working in a computer store, installing a PCI sound card in a PC. I was talking to a coworker and distracted. I inserted the PCI sound card in the machine while it was powered on! To my great surprise, windows proceeded to plug n play the card and install the driver!

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Re: AT (Clone) - Motherboard Formfactor

Posted on 2023-11-01, 00:40

by

by kingcake

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If your cards can run in 8-bit ISA mode it should work just fine with your old stuff. Most of my 16 Bit ISA graphics cards work in a 8 Bit slot for example. With a XT-IDE you can also go for solid state storage instead of a HDD for example. https://www.xtideuniversalbios.org/wiki Some VGA cards, …

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