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

Posted on 2024-02-03, 15:08

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Cleaned up the Olivetti a little, also replaced the soldered in CR2032 with a battery holder, though not in the most elegant way. Also downgraded form 80MB RAM to 32MB which is more appropriate for a 100MHz Pentium. Also chose to replace the SB16 with a Vibra16S. IMG_20240203_115126.jpg It ended up …

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Re: Good affordable desktop PC to run Windows XP for retro gaming?

Posted on 2024-02-03, 07:20

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

red_avatar wrote on 2024-02-02, 21:29: The problem is the dual core CPU there - that's exactly what I want to avoid. If I could disable the second core when booting Windows it could be an option Start menu > Run > msconfig > boot (or BOOT.INI) > advanced options

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Re: Good affordable desktop PC to run Windows XP for retro gaming?

Posted on 2024-02-02, 21:14

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No. Netburst era OEM PCs are garbage. If you really want an OEM, instead of building your own, get something like a HP DC7900. Core2 era and it can handle a decent graphics card that won't be severely underpowered for the XP era.

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Re: what would be thest and also affordable win 98 sound card

Posted on 2024-02-02, 13:20

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by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

So you want a bang for buck card? For Windows 98 it's either the Sound Blaster Live! (SB0060; SB0100; SB0220) or the Audigy 1/2 (SB0090/SB0240). The Live! is dirt cheap, but supports EAX up to version 2.0. These are usually sub-10 $/€ cards. Audigy 1/2 non-ZS are a bit more expensive, usually 15-20 …

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Re: TechSource Raptor GFX8P

Posted on 2024-01-31, 12:05

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by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That was my suspicion too, but never attempted to tamper with the firmware/BIOS.

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Re: TechSource Raptor GFX8P

Posted on 2024-01-31, 12:01

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I used to have one. If you boot your PC with two graphics cards, one whatever that posts and the other is this one, you'll see that the device manager recognizes the Sun Permedia 2 too and drivers can be installed. That's as far as I got with it, then ran out of patience and sold it. Edit. Allegedly …

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Re: Recommended boot manager for quad boot from single drive (DOS / Win 95 / Win 98SE / Win XP)

Posted on 2024-01-31, 07:39

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by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

xfdisk worked fine so far, though the latest OS I've used it with is W2k. Re: What retro activity did you get up to today? XP should work too.

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

Posted on 2024-01-30, 09:02

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sure, it was meant to be an alternative to the Pentium, but since my other currently available option is this P100 Olivetti, the K5 is closer to a late 486 than a P100.

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Re: Retro PCs, internet connection sharing, safety

Posted on 2024-01-30, 07:57

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by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd expect that by now a sufficiently old system (pre-NT5.0) should be perfectly safe. Viruses for these old systems should be mostly extinct at the same time harmless to modern systems while modern viruses should be incompatible with these old ones. As for hacking, behind NAT it shouldn't be a …

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

Posted on 2024-01-30, 06:00

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have another socket7 board with a K5-PR133 which is about the same performance level as a late 486 so I'm not low on options. And I can use the rest of the parts I got for the 486 build with both. As for the Olivetti, the optical drive seems to be a factory option: https://mastodonpc.tripod.com/ …

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

Posted on 2024-01-29, 17:49

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Last week I went to a different section of my workplace and in front of a storage room I've seen an old beige desktop. Didn't really look that hard, seen the Windows 95 ans Pentium stickers on the front, a specific promising looking expansion card on the back and put in some word with the lead …

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Re: Will this make a decent windows 98 setup?

Posted on 2024-01-29, 10:36

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It should be serviceable. You can check in the BIOS how much you can slow down the Celeron D just in case (a sentence I never expected do write down :D ). The FX5200 supports all the features and paired with the Celeron D you have reasonable chance of using Glide wrappers. If the FX5200 is 128 bit, …

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Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2024-01-29, 06:10

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by RandomStranger

in Milliways

in Milliways

I actually started playing Skyrim a couple of months ago and have stuck with it this time. Rather than focus on the story, I have focused on exploring and enjoying the scenery (I limit fast travel), so that might be I've been able to stick with it this time. I think when I completed the base game …

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Re: How to max out this p4 system?

Posted on 2024-01-26, 13:22

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by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

games can eat up that 40GB fast, especially if you store the disc images as well. More storage space never hurts... but I'd recommend thinking about a "companion machine" to serve all that data from, especially once you have multiple retro boxes. Basically a NAS configured in a way that old OSes …

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Re: How to max out this p4 system?

Posted on 2024-01-26, 12:58

by

by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Get an Audigy 2 ZS, double the RAM, buy a 240/256GB SSD or upwards from 160GB HDD. 2001 games can eat up that 40GB fast, especially if you store the disc images as well. A budget card from around 2004 should be enough. Something like a Geforce 2 Ti200, MX460, Ti4200, FX5600, 6600 or Radeon 9100, …

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Re: W98-XP Best Forceware drivers

Posted on 2024-01-25, 17:08

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by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The FX5500 is most often 270/400MHz@128bit which is slightly better than the fastest non-ultra 5200. OP's 5200 is one of the slowest versions.

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Re: W98-XP Best Forceware drivers

Posted on 2024-01-25, 06:03

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by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's a 64bit unfortunately, 166(333)MHz clock The MX400 runs FASTER on my P4, 3DMARK 4398 of the MX400 vs 4139 of the FX5200. Unexpected! :) The 5200 though supports more stuff than the MX400? What would you use on your P4? With those specs it's not unexpected at all. The FX has half the bandwidth …

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Re: W98-XP Best Forceware drivers

Posted on 2024-01-24, 17:18

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by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

wow that's a test! Too bad the 5200 is not there. How do I check whether my FX5200 is 128bit or 64bit? HWiNFO The FX5200 can come in many flavours. Any combination of 64/128bit and 133(266)/166(333)/200(400)MHz RAM. Unless it's a 128bit 400MHz model, it won't consistently beat the Geforce MX models …

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Re: W98-XP Best Forceware drivers

Posted on 2024-01-24, 06:40

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by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Update. It's true, both MX400 and FX5200 performs identically under 3Dmark2001. Same score. I used 7.76 for the MX400 and 45.23 for the FX5200. This is a K6-2 500 with 128MB PC100, 2-2-2, interleaved. I guess the 5200 will go to the P4, it's wasted on the socket 7 :) No. It's just that slow. Well, …

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Re: W98-XP Best Forceware drivers

Posted on 2024-01-23, 07:51

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by RandomStranger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As an example, on my P3-500 system I found almost no difference between my GF2 Pro and GF4 Ti 4200 because of the need for newer drivers. The Ti4200 is already CPU limited on a twice as fast CPU. I don't doubt the driver overhead reduced the performance even further, but your system was never …

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