Re: Dell Inspiron 9300 - possible to get sound working in DOS games (running XP) ?

Posted on 2024-02-04, 23:04

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The command prompt is a virtualized environment, called NTVDM (Or, NT Virtual Dos Machine). Technically, the command prompt in an NT OS (or at least the ones I've used) is a native Win32/64 command interpreter called cmd.exe. And then it will run DOS things (possibly including command.com but I …

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Re: 486 DX4 75Mhz…. let’s talk about it

Posted on 2024-02-03, 23:34

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Besides being an overdrive for obsolete 25mhz 486’s I’ve never understood the point of this chip in “new desktop “ computers Slower cache, ram, video and hard drive performance meaning the venerable DX2-66 could run side by side . Marketing? The DX4 was never intended to be a flagship (the Pentium …

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

Posted on 2024-02-02, 23:16

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Pentium IV is pretty much the only option I have because I just don't want AMD after all the issues I had at the time with AMD. I'm still bitter about the many thousands of euros I put into three different AMD systems (Athlon Thunderbird, Athlon XP and and Athlon 64) only for them to die after 2-3 …

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

Posted on 2024-02-02, 23:07

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The problem is the dual core CPU there - that's exactly what I want to avoid. Okay, so... two things: 1) I suspect others here may have insightful suggestions about how to make your stuff happy with dual core systems, and 2) If you want a simple single-core solution, why not look for a Celeron 450- …

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

Posted on 2024-02-02, 23:04

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sorry, but... why not dual boot XP on your 1GHz PIII system? Assuming you have enough RAM, that should run quite nicely if you want to run early 2000s games... That was my previous system and it ran XP quite poorly not to mention AGP was all over the place in those days. How much RAM did you have …

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

Posted on 2024-02-02, 21:09

by

by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sorry, but... why not dual boot XP on your 1GHz PIII system? Assuming you have enough RAM, that should run quite nicely if you want to run early 2000s games... I guess I am just struggling with your 2005-6 timeframe. That was the darkest era in Intel's history, a time when Intel fanboys like me …

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Re: Retro PCs, internet connection sharing, safety

Posted on 2024-01-30, 23:28

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

lol, I have a Cisco Catalyst switch I might be playing with in the future for such VLAN related things. That was the original plan when I moved into my new apartment (when we thought we were getting the larger 2 car garage), was that all the retro-boxes would stay in the garage and I'd have them on …

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Re: Windows 98SE + MSI K8MM-V woes

Posted on 2024-01-30, 23:12

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not on this specific board but on a similar board, the ASUS K8V-MX with TBPlus v3.0, yes I have. PATCHPCI is in the TBPlus patch collection. It is required or else 98 will hang on startup if you apply the SATA patch. I wish I had discovered this last week (or 3 months ago) when I was battling the …

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Re: Retro PCs, internet connection sharing, safety

Posted on 2024-01-30, 22:48

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I could always get a second internet line, but the price is not worth it for how often I would use it just for retro machines. That... if anything, would increase the risk, not decrease. Any fancy routers/firewalls, etc between your retro machines and your existing network can only improve security …

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Re: Retro PCs, internet connection sharing, safety

Posted on 2024-01-30, 18:46

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I wonder if I could use a splitter on my cable line and connect the main router and a separate router just for the retro-network. That's getting into networking and TCP/IP stuff, but the way you'd want to do this is to have the "main router" be something fancy shmancy with multiple ports that are …

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

Posted on 2024-01-30, 17:13

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Salvaged this little monitor from recycling bin at work. Dell 2007FP 20", with LG IPS panel. 4:3, 1600x1200, DVI, VGA, composite, S-video, 4-port USB hub. Height ajustable stand with pivot. Not very retro itself, but very usable with lot different of retro hardware, thanks to the aspect ratio, high …

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Re: Got a P4 3 Ghz box, curious for suggestions

Posted on 2024-01-30, 03:58

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's probably a pain to use with SATA, right? I guess I can put the SATA driver onto a floppy during install like in days of yore? IIRC, at least with XP (but I would presume it would be the same for 2000), you only need a floppy driver if you're planning to run your SATA controller in AHCI mode …

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Re: Retro PCs, internet connection sharing, safety

Posted on 2024-01-30, 03:47

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There are old sites which I used to visit way back which still exist and still look like they did, back then. I don't know if I would trust those... there are plenty of sites that appear to have been neglected, still seem to look like they used to, are certainly indexed in google with their old …

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Re: Retro PCs, internet connection sharing, safety

Posted on 2024-01-30, 03:43

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I wonder if am open source internet connection sharing app could be made to allow routing through a "safe," modern OS from a retro box. Maybe it could be similar to how LAN games work, but with full web browsing. Sort of like a hybrid between a LAN connection and using the Win10 box as a "VPN" of …

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Re: Retro PCs, internet connection sharing, safety

Posted on 2024-01-30, 03:10

by

by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

But you'd be amazed how much hate I've had in the past by armchair infosec dweebs who think that a connected DOS system is a security risk. There might be more of a risk if you're putting a retro system directly on the IPv4 Internet without a NAT, e.g. on a university network or something (not sure …

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Re: Windows 98SE + MSI K8MM-V woes

Posted on 2024-01-29, 22:19

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Getting SATA to work on these VIA boards properly, in my experience, requires RLoew's SATA patch for 98 and his PCI patch specifically for VIA chipsets. Do you mean you've got Win98 to work nicely with this board in SATA IDE mode using this patch? Rather than the RAID mode, which tends to work with …

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Re: Will this make a decent windows 98 setup?

Posted on 2024-01-29, 16:32

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You know, a Linux dual booted on this might be a good idea. It would make it easy to download stuff for the XP partition instead of constantly requiring flash drives and DVD's/CD's. Maybe this isn't the greatest idea in the world, but you should be able to get an XP machine on a network and able to …

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Re: Will this make a decent windows 98 setup?

Posted on 2024-01-29, 15:54

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Seeing how you stuck an inappropriate amount of RAM in that XP machine... do not do a similar thing with the Win98 box. Even if the board supports it, the OS sure doesn't, and will break in surprising ways. Stay at at 512MB or lower. (There are ways to have more, but don't make it harder than …

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Re: Will this make a decent windows 98 setup?

Posted on 2024-01-29, 15:48

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Startech, I will try and hunt one down. I have hit a snag; This board is a 1.2A version, which doesn't really have much in the way of win98 drivers....do you think I could use the win98 drivers for the 1.1 version of this board and get away with it? I might give it a shot and see, otherwise it's …

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Re: Will this make a decent windows 98 setup?

Posted on 2024-01-29, 14:41

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by VivienM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for the suggestion for the IDE adapter as well. I might format an SSD on the XP machine in Fat32 (it was Fat32, right? And was the top something like 128gb for a drive? It's been a while...) and grab one of the adapters off the net, see how we go. Anyone have a preference for adapters? Or is …

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