Re: Assembling a machine for DOS/Win3x

Posted on 2010-09-15, 21:39

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The voltage is a maximum rating. Just make sure you get one with at least the same voltage specified, the same capacitance and then be completely sure that you align the polarity properly (or poof). Get a few of the same cap in case you mess them up when trying to solder them in. Assuming you want …

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Re: Diamond edge 3D up for auction

Posted on 2010-09-13, 17:49

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by swaaye

in Milliways

in Milliways

Considering it's fundamentally different than a triangle rasterizer 3D chip, I can't see how it could do OpenGL or D3D well at all... But I found this nice PR blurb that is probably 80% bullshit: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-18052584.html SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 4, 1996--NVIDIA …

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Re: AGP Pro

Posted on 2010-09-13, 00:21

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

We had a C64 and then one day my Dad got a 286. He "gave up" using it after a while so I started reading that fat MS-DOS book (which was in english and that was a challenge for me back then) and started learning how to create directories, copy files and format stuff :-D It's something how some kids …

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Re: AGP Pro

Posted on 2010-09-12, 23:44

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That one button hockey puck mouse spells out Apple's desire to be a serious player in computer gaming. 😐

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Re: QUARTERDECK QEMM products ... Good? or Garbage?

Posted on 2010-09-12, 23:35

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by swaaye

in Milliways

in Milliways

My take on the alternative memory managers is that they were really most useful when you had a lot of device drivers and other memory resident programs and needed to really eek out as much conventional RAM as you could for an app. People with SCSI hardware come to mind, too, because of the extra …

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Re: AGP Pro

Posted on 2010-09-12, 18:44

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a hard time remembering what Apple II was even like anymore. :) But back then I had a Tandy 1000 TX, which has 16-color graphics and rather amazing audio too. Especially with Sierra games. Now if I'd had a IBM XT like one of my friends had, Apple II would have seemed mind blowing by …

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Re: Diamond edge 3D up for auction

Posted on 2010-09-12, 18:30

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by swaaye

in Milliways

in Milliways

It is a fascinating bit of history. I remember seeing a demo of this in a magazine that had it doing 3D acceleration in Windows 3.1! :) I don't know if that is possible with the final product but I do doubt it heh. The biggest issue is that there are only like 6 games. It also isn't compatible with …

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Re: AGP Pro

Posted on 2010-09-11, 19:14

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by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

But the reason to buy a mac isn't to do gaming...it's the awesome sound and video editing apps Got a Radeon 4890 in my 2x quad xeon Mac though so I can do some "modern" gaming when I feel like booting into Win7 It was the machine I finished Crysis on. I have nothing against Macs. They do have some …

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Re: Compact Flash drives - are they too slow for Windows 98?

Posted on 2010-09-11, 19:09

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh yeah the OSs do write behind, but not enough of it for these horrible flash devices. If you use XP or later you can get a cache driver called "Flashfire" that essentially is a gigantic write behind cache. Of course if you lose power you can hose your partition (been there). On my EeePC this …

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Re: AGP Pro

Posted on 2010-09-11, 19:03

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by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This card can do wonders in a Mac since it doesn't run a bloated OS that needs one zillion ghz etc to run stuff ;) but it's nothing for the gamer that's why I own a ton of PC's too :cool: Well, considering that the state-of-the-art in Mac gaming is kinda like Half Life 2 and Portal, that X800 may …

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Re: Compact Flash drives - are they too slow for Windows 98?

Posted on 2010-09-10, 21:29

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think the good SSDs are pretty much past this write stutter problem. The SSDs in my EeePC are more akin to a cheap USB flash stick than one of those. The most important caching aspect with these slow flash devices is the amount of write behind caching that is allowed. When the drive can't keep up …

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Re: Compact Flash drives - are they too slow for Windows 98?

Posted on 2010-09-10, 19:17

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I can tell you that my EeePC 900 with its 4GB and 16GB SSDs suffers from similar stuttering problems. It is due to very slow write speed with small files (esp many small files at once) and the lack of a cache on the SSDs. Old hard disks usually had a data cache even if it was only like 64KB. The …

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Re: Terminator Beast Savage? Hehe.

Posted on 2010-09-10, 19:05

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by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Savage 2000 - ok for 1024x768 (fast as Geforce 2MX, but worse driver support ) Understatement of the century. :shocked: I wouldn't even call it driver "support". Maybe call it driver dumping. ;) Another alpha-quality drop for our beloved end users. And they stopped supporting the card entirely …

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Re: AGP Pro

Posted on 2010-09-10, 19:03

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

All AGP Pro is is another way to give the card more power. It became pretty redundant as soon as they started adding aux power connectors to the cards themselves. It's crazy how much Mac people will pay for a 6 year old graphics card. 😁

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Re: HD6770 to have 256-bit memory bus?

Posted on 2010-09-09, 17:25

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by swaaye

in Milliways

in Milliways

I don't have any mobos with NVIDIA SLI support, or with 2x PCIe x16 slots for that matter. :) Also don't have a PSU with 4x PCIe power! (yikes) Merely moving the HD5800 down to the mid-range might not be such a good idea unless they managed to cut the power consumption considerably Perhaps, but …

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Re: Assembling a machine for DOS/Win3x

Posted on 2010-09-09, 00:46

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The Windows Roland wavetable is somewhat lower quality than a real Roland module but yeah I hear you on SCB-55 being overrated. There is a consideration here though: the composers wrote the music on a Roland synth very very often. So if you want to hear the MIDI like they wanted you to, a Roland …

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Re: Why is a DX2-66 without Cache faster than a PIII without Cache?

Posted on 2010-09-09, 00:25

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The ridiculous 820 chipset and P3 debacle was just mind boggling. The PIII with a 133 MHz FSB was perfectly matched with PC133 SDRAM. RDRAM couldn't gain you anything because the FSB was saturated already. 840 with dual processors makes more sense and obviously so does 850 with P4's bus that has ~2x …

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Re: HD6770 to have 256-bit memory bus?

Posted on 2010-09-09, 00:17

by

by swaaye

in Milliways

in Milliways

The 8800GTX was my first card over $200. I've been using it since 2007. I think it worked out well because I'm still playing most games at max settings. I moved it into a TVPC that only needs to run 1360x768 too, so that really let it breathe well again. :) I will hold off upgrading until there is a …

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Re: Terminator Beast Savage? Hehe.

Posted on 2010-09-08, 17:44

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Savage 2000 is where it's at for your " S3 strangeness " experience. That's a fairly fascinating, somewhat broken GPU. :) They basically targeted Quake 3 and UT99 so the drivers can run those games pretty well. Savage 4 targeted Unreal and UT99 too actually. With access to the S3 S3TC textures the …

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Re: HD6770 to have 256-bit memory bus?

Posted on 2010-09-08, 17:35

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by swaaye

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'm thinking that this GPU will be similar to the 58x0. Or it could literally be the Cypress chip with a new name. The new high-end will obviously have more power than Cypress or there's no point. And so it makes sense that the current 58x0 hardware (or something similar) will replace Juniper/57x0 …

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