Re: socket 4 cooler

Posted on 2008-12-09, 20:46

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah they're gonna run relatively hot. These chips are built on a semiconductor process less dense than even that of the later 486s, after all. I'm sure a K6 would blow a P5-66 away in thermal output though! These original P5s got everyone excited because they were the "hottest yet" at the time. …

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Re: very good reason why packard bells sucked

Posted on 2008-12-08, 20:34

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Packard Bell liked to skip L2 cache. That right there is one of the biggest reasons to dislike them. Sure there were plenty of other companies skipping it or faking it, and they too deserve equal disgust. Dell, Micron and Gateway 2000 on the other hand usually gave you a mostly-decent rig. Good …

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Re: Speed wise, what CPU "sits in between" a 486DX4 and the slowest Pentium II?

Posted on 2008-12-04, 23:29

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

P6 rocks for Quake, and that's PPro to P3. The Quake techinfo readme talks specifically about how awesome PPro is for the game.

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Re: Old Pentium motherboard recommendation

Posted on 2008-12-04, 23:22

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

TX gets you UDMA33 too. Kinda nice. It's less painful to have to stick a modern drive on UDMA33 than old MWDMA2. Also, HX boards only cache more if they have the proper tag RAM for the L2. And, it's a lot easier to find a 430TX board cuz everybody used the chipset. I wouldn't really be worried about …

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Re: Aztech Sound Galaxy

Posted on 2008-12-04, 04:01

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Packard Bell liked them, if that means anything to you. 😉

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Re: socket 3 system on stereoids

Posted on 2008-12-04, 01:43

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yeah Cyrix chips have compatibility problems for sure. Some games not work will not work with them. Heck, some hardware won't either. I remember a special Sound Blaster Live! driver patch for 6x86/MII CPUs. That's why I always say that the Am5x86 is the way to go. It's a 486 and it "just works" with …

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Re: Best CD-ROM drive speed for DOS PCs?

Posted on 2008-12-04, 01:33

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd consider looking for something that's CLV, so it's quiet. Usually 12X or lower. I have a Toshiba 12X that's nice. Toshiba made some good drives. I also had their 24X back in the day and it was good too. These drives will probably have problems with CDRs however. My 12X definitely struggles. It …

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Re: I just had a peculiar thought! Windows 3.x!

Posted on 2008-12-03, 03:45

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Riva128 also has Win3.x drivers. Heck so does NV1 if u wanna see the one very real NVIDIA disaster.

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Re: I just had a peculiar thought! Windows 3.x!

Posted on 2008-12-01, 00:31

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I put WFW 3.11 on a P3-1000 once. If only modern OSs booted like that. :) That OS really is a wreck though. It can be brought down in about a bazillion ways and has awful performance for apps that do fancy gfx. Well, unless you run it on some crazy hardware, which isn't all that hard to do these …

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Re: Ensoniq soundscape elite

Posted on 2008-11-27, 04:42

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I should add that the ISA Soundscape cards don't use a TSR either. They have a config util that runs to upload firmware to the card and then it exits from RAM. Other than that you have the BLASTER and SNDSCAPE vars and that's it. The cards are half software/half jumper configured too (IRQs/DMAs in …

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Re: Ensoniq soundscape elite

Posted on 2008-11-26, 22:57

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've had some experience with at least one Ensoniq card, not sure if it's that one, but my time with it wasn't very good - turns out, these cards use the patch set for absolutely everything, even Adlib music, which makes games like Wolfenstein 3D sound absolutely horrible. Do you have any of the …

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Re: Ensoniq soundscape elite

Posted on 2008-11-26, 18:57

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have just about the entire Ensoniq ISA line. Been "collecting" them since they originally came out. They are good cards, especially the Elite, but they aren't flawless of course. An SCD-10 / SCC-1 has some advantages and disadvantages to the Elite. Elite has quite a few patches that sound higher …

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Re: Lightspeed - Need Special Help!

Posted on 2008-11-26, 01:52

by

by swaaye

in DOS

in DOS

If this thread causes extreme discomfort for anyone, please delete it and let me know....

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Lightspeed - Need Special Help!

Posted on 2008-11-26, 01:40

by

by swaaye

in DOS

in DOS

Ok, so I want to play this crusty old game again. However, it occurred to me that it's on 5.25" and I lack such a glorious drive in this modern era we all live in now. Of course, I do have a 3.5" yet but that's of little consolation in this situation... So, I'm asking for an extra special favor from …

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Re: PCMag 1995 video reviews

Posted on 2008-11-24, 20:13

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah this looks entertaining. 😀

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Re: 486 mobo: mouse, floppy, HDD, CD - where do they all go?

Posted on 2008-11-22, 22:53

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You can often get by with newer IDE drives. Just use as much space as the BIOS can see. But some BIOSes freak out and won't boot with new drives. In such cases, I've managed to get PCI IDE cards working (like a Promise Ultra66) but that can be a headache too. It's often just a lot of work to get the …

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Re: Howto: ST TNG Interactive Tech Manual + Captain's Chair with MS VirtualPC

Posted on 2008-11-22, 22:48

by

by swaaye

in Windows

in Windows

Look up "sysedit". That's the easiest way to put things into a Windows 9x's autoexec.bat. You just run it from the Windows "run" box in the start menu. Autoexec.bat is just a batch file that lists what the system executes as it is booting. Each line is a command/environment variable/program that …

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Re: PCMag 1995 video reviews

Posted on 2008-11-20, 03:09

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Heh. I forgot all about Mwave (aside from the retailer with the same name). Well I imagine that it's not the best solution for DOS gaming then. I wonder if any notebooks ever had an AWE integrated. I guess that's doubtful though considering how many chips it took to make one. That's why I was …

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Re: Abandonware - Make it legal.

Posted on 2008-11-19, 21:56

by

by swaaye

in Milliways

in Milliways

With the "abandoned" games starting to show up for sale on legitimate sites, I think we can see why copyrights exist. I wonder if any of that new profit goes to the original developers though. It's probably just a little extra on the side for the publishers, which is less warm and fuzzy, but it's …

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PCMag 1995 video reviews

Posted on 2008-11-19, 06:08

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have this ancient PC Magazine CD edition from 1995. The one and only issue I bought. It was an interesting idea for them to try. Basically it has articles on it and "multimedia" like some video reviews. Video reviews of archaic DOS machines. Excited now? lol Well I put them on Youtube. One is …

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