Huh, I've never been able to get my AVGA1 to work in my 286, just Pentiums. I don't own any functional desktops that are in between right now, so I'm not sure if it's a BIOS issue, but it's utterly useless in my Pentium machines because of the limited VRAM and the slow ISA bus vs PCI.

bfcastello wrote:

Caluser2000 wrote:

Spent about an hour picking up an sorting computer screws off the floor because I forgot to seal the container lid and knocked it off the chair while reaching for something.

This is terrible. I hope you managed to pick them all. I wouldn’t sleep if I had left one screw on the floor just waiting to pinch my foot... (and I tend to walk barefoot at home).

Thank you for your concern. I'm sure I've missed 1 or 2. Stepped on a drawing pin a few days ago so sure I'll locate them.....

Put together this lovely Dell XPS T550, mostly to get it ready to sell, but I figured I could have some fun with it while it was out on (under) the workbench:

Specs:
PIII/500 on an SE440BX-3
256MB SDRAM
8MB ATI Rage LT Pro PCI
Sound Blaster Live
Original 13GB HDD
Fresh Win98SE installed

That ATI Rage is in there for a reason, it's so I can finally try out the only 3D accelerated PC port of Wipeout, which I've had for ages but have never played. So I got to see this screen for the first time:

The game runs pretty well. In 640x480 with perspective correction on, it's fluid & fully playable. Nowhere near 60FPS, but a decently solid 30 with only a few dips here and there. It looks so much better than the DOS version which is stuck at 320x200x8 and uses heavy dithering. It doesn't quite match the PS1 original in performance, but definitely beats the Saturn port (which is how I played this game until I sold off my Saturn stuff a few years ago) by a pretty good margin.

Admittedly, the PS1 game with its colored lighting effects & better transparency does look nicer, but there you're stuck with 320x240 and an ugly analog video standard unless you use an emulator that does some high-res rendering trickery. I had texture filtering off because it creates ugly seams in the textures, not because of the performance hit, which is minor. The PC port is a bit of a half-assed effort in general, but it plays fine once you get into the game.

I didn't get a pic, but Tomb Raider also runs nicely, and the ability to run at high res & with perspective correct textures really go a long way in smoothing over the lumps of an otherwise very dated engine. TR1 was a great game when it came out, but for some reason it just hasn't aged very well compared to its contemporaries.

Note that this is a 4th-or-so generation Rage chip, and is a ton faster & better optimized than the original Rages that were around when these few native CIF games came out. At least for those titles and stuff that was released around the same time, the later versions of this chip aren't bad at all.

Naturally I also had to run the only "feature length" tech demo the Rage cards got (although this is technically just a DX demo & you can run it on other cards too), the classic Rage Dawning:

This was intended for yet another generation newer Rage (128), but it runs pretty well here aside from some slowdown when heavy alpha blending is used. Still, pretty solid showing. Like everything else here, this demo's pretty cheesy and dated, but I still think it's pretty enjoyable. The (cheesy and dated) music is still running through my head all day later. 😜

I'll probably hang onto the Rage card and sell this machine with a GF2MX or Radeon 9200SE in it. Those are objectively much better cards, but subjectively much more boring.

Decided to test a theory to see if my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus can take a drive bigger than 10GB (120GB). After installing the HDD, the system detected the drive as 58GB (past 32GB) and 32GB (with the jumper set to 32GB limitation), however, the system will not boot up and locked up. Then, the system wouldn't reboot or power on, but after clearing the CMOS settings by removing the jumper, the system was able to power on and hooked up the 4.3GB HDD and all's well. Past 32GB for the Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus with the Micro Firmware BIOS is actually not bad, but consequences can be had.

dionb wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

[...]

Welcome to the TubeTime Adlib Club 😀

Nice club - with DIY fake unicorns 😉

This evening spent some time on another project, got my Lo-tech ISA XT CF (odd name for something with 40p IDE connector, not CF...) up and running. Not even sure I'm going to use it in my XT, but if its MFM drive dies or just irritates me enough with noise & small size, I have an alternative at hand.

They are not 'fake' though, the TubeTibe cards have Replica of 1991 Adlib on them which I really approve of. I don't care about trying to make it look 100% genuine, I used sockets for all ICs on mine for example. The guy really deserves commendation, his AdLib and SnarkBarker projects are amazing.

FAMICOMASTER wrote:

Huh, I've never been able to get my AVGA1 to work in my 286, just Pentiums. I don't own any functional desktops that are in between right now, so I'm not sure if it's a BIOS issue, but it's utterly useless in my Pentium machines because of the limited VRAM and the slow ISA bus vs PCI.

AVGA1 and AVGA2 do not have onboard crystal oscillators so they rely on ISA clock to work; if your computer has a slightly improper ISA Clock signal then their video signals are out of sync. I've had it happen on a 486 board before. Here's a good read: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-isa-osc-mystery/

Very interesting. I wonder if there's a way to add a discrete oscillator to the card to make it work in other machines.

xjas wrote:

That ATI Rage is in there for a reason, it's so I can finally try out the only 3D accelerated PC port of Wipeout, which I've had for ages but have never played. So I got to see this screen for the first time:

CameraZOOM-20190925031728028.jpg

Don't think I've ever seen that. Quite sexy if you ask me.

Got some hints how to get my fingers into bits and bytes of Award bios and fixed the Write-Back cache functionality on my Soyo SY-25P2 motherboard:
Re: 486 cache/ram speed issue with write-back

xjas wrote:

Put together this lovely Dell XPS T550, mostly to get it ready to sell, but I figured I could have some fun with it while it was […]
Show full quote

Put together this lovely Dell XPS T550, mostly to get it ready to sell, but I figured I could have some fun with it while it was out on (under) the workbench:

CameraZOOM-20190924181855553.jpg

Specs:
PIII/500 on an SE440BX-3
256MB SDRAM
8MB ATI Rage LT Pro PCI
Sound Blaster Live
Original 13GB HDD
Fresh Win98SE installed

That ATI Rage is in there for a reason, it's so I can finally try out the only 3D accelerated PC port of Wipeout, which I've had for ages but have never played. So I got to see this screen for the first time:

CameraZOOM-20190925031728028.jpg

The game runs pretty well. In 640x480 with perspective correction on, it's fluid & fully playable. Nowhere near 60FPS, but a decently solid 30 with only a few dips here and there. It looks so much better than the DOS version which is stuck at 320x200x8 and uses heavy dithering. It doesn't quite match the PS1 original in performance, but definitely beats the Saturn port (which is how I played this game until I sold off my Saturn stuff a few years ago) by a pretty good margin.

CameraZOOM-20190925024729091.jpg

CameraZOOM-20190925030217630.jpg

Admittedly, the PS1 game with its colored lighting effects & better transparency does look nicer, but there you're stuck with 320x240 and an ugly analog video standard unless you use an emulator that does some high-res rendering trickery. I had texture filtering off because it creates ugly seams in the textures, not because of the performance hit, which is minor. The PC port is a bit of a half-assed effort in general, but it plays fine once you get into the game.

I didn't get a pic, but Tomb Raider also runs nicely, and the ability to run at high res & with perspective correct textures really go a long way in smoothing over the lumps of an otherwise very dated engine. TR1 was a great game when it came out, but for some reason it just hasn't aged very well compared to its contemporaries.

Note that this is a 4th-or-so generation Rage chip, and is a ton faster & better optimized than the original Rages that were around when these few native CIF games came out. At least for those titles and stuff that was released around the same time, the later versions of this chip aren't bad at all.

Naturally I also had to run the only "feature length" tech demo the Rage cards got (although this is technically just a DX demo & you can run it on other cards too), the classic Rage Dawning:

CameraZOOM-20190924181918516.jpg

This was intended for yet another generation newer Rage (128), but it runs pretty well here aside from some slowdown when heavy alpha blending is used. Still, pretty solid showing. Like everything else here, this demo's pretty cheesy and dated, but I still think it's pretty enjoyable. The (cheesy and dated) music is still running through my head all day later. 😜

I'll probably hang onto the Rage card and sell this machine with a GF2MX or Radeon 9200SE in it. Those are objectively much better cards, but subjectively much more boring.

I've always wanted to test this version. Can you take some video footage of it running by any chance?

Today I finally got around to looking up the BIOS POST code for one of my mystery motherboards

Thanks to this PC rebuilding website, which had some actual identifying information: 30-0200-001453-00101111-111192-MXIC-F (MACRONIX CW-DXI3-M40 (INFORMTECH IT-AM33/40-DLC))

Now I've got 2x 386DX40 motherboards, this one is the Informtech IT-AM33/DLC40. It has an MX chipset for a whopping 8KB of cache, a *working* turbo switch and configurable speeds for operating between 40MHz and 16MHz. It goes all the way down to XT speeds, so I think this one's a keeper 😁
A fellow Vogon'er has the same board, but a slightly different revision which has the CPU socketed instead of soldered in place.

My other 386 board seems to have no identifying information, but has 128KB cache and its turbo button doesn't work.
I really shouldn't keep both...
I need to sort out a case for this tiny little motherboard now 😀

edit: wooooow, they even uploaded a PDF manual!

liqmat wrote:

Don't think I've ever seen that. Quite sexy if you ask me.

It's a product of its time, but in such a good way. It'd make a great case badge IMHO.

Duouk2000 wrote:

I've always wanted to test this version. Can you take some video footage of it running by any chance?

I was thinking of recording a playthrough when I get good enough to be able to beat it again. As it is, the third track is kicking my ass even though I can place 1st on the first two every time.

Vetz has a really well-done comparison up on youtube already, but he doesn't go through the whole game.

Today I re-started my 486 mid-tower build, after the mobo I ordered from ebay earlier in the summer wound up DOA. Real shame too, would have been a nice motherboard - Socket 3, 3x ISA and 3x PCI, integrated IDE/Floppy connectors. Gutted the old stuff, most of which will be going into the new build. Didn't make it very far into the new build, unfortunately - I have ISA I/O controller cards and ISA SCSI cards laying around, but no ISA IDE or floppy controllers. At least I was able to install the mobo and the video card, to verify those parts could POST.

Part list:
AT Mid Tower-style case (manufacturer unknown - came in a box labelled "Dallas" with part number "TP-040DMDT")
ATX Power Supply (random no name brand 275w, pulled out of a PC I found at a thrift store)
ATX to AT adapter (from antronst on ebay)
Wintech MV035F Socket 3 Mainboard
CyrixSGS Thomson ST486DX2-66GS (to be replaced, if the processor from the old mobo tests good)
Diamond Speedstar Pro VLB
Soundblaster 16 CT2940 (no Yamaha chip or IDE)
Samsung 48x IDE CD drive (I had a more era-appropriate SCSI drive picked out but it didn't survive shipping, so this was laying around)
Mitsumi 3.5" Floppy Drive (Beige)
Startech 3.5" Bay CF-to-IDE
And finally whatever ISA IDE/Floppy controller cards I can find in the next couple days

The case, for those interested (imgur)

The insides, as of now (imgur)

Replaced a 80 mm fan in a used AT supply I bought for my first ever retro rig. The thing was vibrating very slightly but it was rattling and shaking the whole PC case violently. I vaguely remembered I should have an old 80 mm fan lying around, and indeed there it was under a ton of crap piled over it in a corner - a fan more than half as old as me! I asked parents to buy for our first PC because I thought it could use better cooling, but later I went all in with 120 mm fan and taken this one out, and it's been "stored" in my room ever since.
Not that I feel nostalgic about a cheap Gembird fan, but I'm happy to put it to good use again 😀

Started checking a non-working C64 mainboard that I got a while ago. Look what I've found under the video circuitry shielding.

The very first version of the VIC II chip. Looks like these sell for quite a bit of money.

derSammler wrote:

Started checking a non-working C64 mainboard that I got a while ago. Look what I've found under the video circuitry shielding.

IMG_20190927_163737879.jpg

The very first version of the VIC II chip. Looks like these sell for quite a bit of money.

Cool, got to check my C64:s at some point. One of them got serial no 4076 if I remember it right, from the West Germany plant. At least that one should have the first revision 😀

You don't happen to have figured out what motivates the high price by the way? Are the 12V variants becoming rare, or is it perhaps the palette differences, or something?

Chip collectors, I'm sure

kaputnik wrote:

You don't happen to have figured out what motivates the high price by the way? Are the 12V variants becoming rare, or is it perhaps the palette differences, or something?

It has bugs, limited shades of grey and a slightly different palette. But the ceramic case is probably the main reason. I know many people who go crazy to build mainboards with ceramic chips only.

I still have a ceramic VIC-II chip in my working C64 and the later VIC-II chip that was originally installed, plus, a spare SID chip from the broken board so that I can get stereo sound, however, some software utilizes stereo.

Whipped up a game of DOOM over TCP/IP:
(edit: using iFrag! Yes, this is really TCP/IP. The Thinkpad is connected to WiFi over a little WiFi bridge, whereas the 486 is connected to my main bedroom Ethernet, over another WiFi bridge - and it is blazing fast. No lag at all. I am impressed)

Also, made this post using VNCVIEWER 8086 for DOS, on my 486 DX2/66, logged into my main computer running Linux, and let me tell you, it is so much faster than I thought it would be. To be honest it's just as fast as running TightVNC on a Pentium III - it really makes TightVNC look utterly pathetic.

Of course, it's 640x480 greyscale, and there's no right click or non-ASCII key functionality, but hey, it's really impressive that it works at all, and that it apparently can run on an XT. Now I should try it on my 286 and see what happens.

Set up a little webserver on my old 286:
http://casablanca25.mynetgear.com:286/