Re: SGI machines

Posted on 2011-02-20, 18:53

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yep. I own both a Octane 2 and an Indigo 2 . For my final year project for my CS degree I wrote a cross platform, multi-threaded voice over IP program for both SGI IRIX and Linux - that was eleven years ago. It's cool to hear first hand experiences with those machines. They were so niche that few …

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Re: Good 5.25" FDD, and "bad" 5.25" disks - and how to fix them.

Posted on 2011-02-20, 18:47

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yup dust can mess with floppies and the drives. It's another reason I'm glad we're 99% done with them. 😀

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Re: SGI machines

Posted on 2011-02-20, 02:07

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Tetrium wrote: Looks a bit like my coffee machine...😜 Sounds like a beast of a coffee maker 🤣

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Re: SGI machines

Posted on 2011-02-20, 02:06

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Heh it would be pretty sweet to own one of those SGI boxes. I wouldn't mind getting something like a PowerPC 604 Mac too. The thing is I always think of how it would just end up being a gigantic boat anchor and never get used lol. With Macs though you can get Basilisk and emulate whatever Mac OS you …

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Re: Looking/searching for s3d (S3 Virge specific) games

Posted on 2011-02-20, 02:01

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

STB Nitro 3D (Virge GX) on PCI.

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Re: Trident VGA performance

Posted on 2011-02-19, 21:10

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Most of the early VGA stuff. They had slow RAM, slow memory interfaces, ISA bus, no GUI hardware, no VESA VBE, etc. You really want something on VLB or PCI from 1994 or later.

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Re: Trident VGA performance

Posted on 2011-02-19, 21:05

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

8900C is a dog for SVGA. I found a measly Cirrus Logic 5426 to be like 2x faster. Your 386 is very likely a bottleneck. Put it in a high end 486 and compare. I got a 8900C in a DX2/50 machine. And yeah the 8900C has no Windows acceleration at all. Some of their later stuff does of course but it was …

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SGI machines

Posted on 2011-02-19, 20:58

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Anyone here ever work on SGI workstations? I loved the slick looks of their hardware. I thought they made better looking boxes than anyone else. Stylish but not gaudy. :D They were colorful too compared to the boring ass beige boxes. And of course the hardware inside is pretty cool and unique stuff …

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Re: Looking/searching for s3d (S3 Virge specific) games

Posted on 2011-02-19, 20:34

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

TV didn't recognize my Virge GX. So I have a feeling that it will only run on the original Virge and maybe the Virge VX. The game runs pretty well on the original Virge anyway though.

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Re: Scored a BlackMagic Voodoo2 off the bay!

Posted on 2011-02-18, 23:13

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a pair of STB Blackmagic 12MB cards. A friend gave them to me almost 10 years ago. :) They are just reference designs but they have black PCBs so that's kinda neat. They were most likely made at the plant in Mexico that 3DFX acquired shortly thereafter w/ STB to build all of their cards. …

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Re: FM Synth soundfont

Posted on 2011-02-18, 23:09

by

by swaaye

in Windows

in Windows

The problem is that General MIDI won't map perfectly to the weirdness and quirks that you could achieve and take advantage of with an FM synth. Although most games may just use it essentially as a GMIDI synth. But also some games have separate compositions for GMIDI vs. MT32 vs. FM.

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Re: Unreal Shadows

Posted on 2011-02-18, 23:08

by

by swaaye

in Windows

in Windows

Another file that needs to be preserved within the Sacred Terabyte.

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Re: S3 Savage IX

Posted on 2011-02-18, 23:07

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

AFAIK the later Savage chips went back to the Savage4 3D hardware. It was very strange. My impression was that Savage 2000 was too much of a mess and they didn't want to bother improving it.

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Re: P55c at Overclocked to 300mhz?

Posted on 2011-02-18, 21:31

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

P55C @ 300 is pretty sweet. 100x3 really clears up the 'ol bus bottleneck that's for sure. sliderider wrote: That was probably the best overclock I ever did to a CPU percentage wise. Mine was a Core 2 Duo E6300 that went from 1.86 GHz to 3.2 GHz on stock voltage. Hells yes. 72% overclock. 😉[/list]

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Re: Unreal Shadows

Posted on 2011-02-18, 19:34

by

by swaaye

in Windows

in Windows

Don't you need a special patch for the shadows?

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Re: Most disappointing games?

Posted on 2011-02-18, 19:16

by

by swaaye

in Milliways

in Milliways

Yeah Indy 500 came with my SBPro2. I thought the car damage was cool but that was about all I payed attention to.

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Re: Most disappointing games?

Posted on 2011-02-18, 19:10

by

by swaaye

in Milliways

in Milliways

My newly revised list. Unreal 2 (omg what happened) Alpha Prime (just boring) Burnout series (bleh) AVP3 (bored to tears) Cryostasis (super terrible performance) Gothic 3 (non functional and boring even after community patch) HAWX (mind numbing beyond belief) Two Worlds (horrible Oblivion wannabe) …

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Re: FM Synth soundfont

Posted on 2011-02-18, 19:02

by

by swaaye

in Windows

in Windows

I think it's probably impossible because the hardware works too differently. It's like MT32 emulation via General MIDI. It can't be done accurately.

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Re: Pentium overdrive 83 MHz - overclocking options?

Posted on 2011-02-17, 23:09

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I never had any luck with overvolting 486s.... Some boards have 4v setting but it didn't really help. 5v would probably blow these 350nm chips up.

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Re: Pentium overdrive 83 MHz - overclocking options?

Posted on 2011-02-17, 23:06

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's most obvious with 3D games because they use the FPU. It was rare for a game to use it until that point. The Pentium FPU is a giant leap ahead of any 486's. This was also a huge oversight for the Pentium competitors like AMD K5 and Cyrix 6x86/MII. They have horrible FPUs that perform like a …

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