I just showed one of the 20-something ladies here at the office an mATX motherboard I just received in the mail [a cute green hued Biostar P4 board, part of my on-going "W98se Max-Redux" struggle]. She smiled and said "neat - it's like looking at a little city!" So there is hope for us...

Artex wrote:

I don't know of any women that think this stuff is cool - especially my wife. Each time the doorbell rings with the USPS person waiting for a signature, I get "the look." 😵

That's funny as hell, actually i've go the look from the CTT people (Portuguese mail service). Sometimes i wonder if they wonder what the hell i'm doing. "Is this guy building a particle accelerator or something?"

Fortunately my quest for hardware is almost finished. My quest for software just started a few days ago.

vetz wrote:

Tomb Raider runs in DOS on a special PCX1 or PCX2 executable (depending on what you have), the only game using PowerSGL Direct, which is similar to statically linked 3DFX games.

I'm not sure you are using the correct term.
From the PowerVR Series1 SDK documentation:

1.1 PowerSGL and PowerSGL Direct […]
Show full quote

1.1 PowerSGL and PowerSGL Direct

PowerSGL is a high-level graphics library designed to exploit the features of the PowerVR silicon
technology. It enables the programmer to define objects and other entities such as cameras and lights in
3D coordinate space, and organize these in a hierarchy. The rendering of these entities can include
advanced features such as automatically generated shadows, textures, and depth cueing (fog).

In contrast, PowerSGL Direct is a low-level library, in which the user supplies triangles and quadrilaterals in
screen coordinates for every rendered frame. All responsibility for transformation, lighting and projection of
these polygons falls to the user. Because the polygons have been projected they must be z-clipped
against the foreground plane, whereas x and y clipping are optional. The error-checking performed by
PowerSGL Direct is minimal.

Although the two APIs are supplied in the same library and both use common routines to manage the
PowerVR texture memory and output devices, they are otherwise independent.

I understand that PowerSGL was implemented before PowerSGL Direct. The Mechwarrior 2 port was implemented with PowerSGL because of this.
I agree that Tomb Raider 1 is the only PowerVR port for DOS and probably won't run with a Neon 250.

idspispopd: Thanks for clearing that up, seems like I've been misinformed in the past 😀

Bought this at a thrift shop for $5 and it can do 75hz
http://www.amazon.com/Viewsonic-Vp140-Flat-Pa … r/dp/B00001OPJ6

Been a long time since I was last here on Vogons! I had misplaced my password again 🤣, had to reset it.

But anyway, today I got a small lot of hardware for free, including:

A complete Pentium 1 100Mhz system, including a case (but alas missing it's cover) with a 2 digit LED display. Except for the missing cover, it's still in excellent shape (minus mild yellowing). The 430VX board inside looks to be in brand new condition. Theres even hardly any dust inside, as if it's hardly been used 😁
The motherboard has 2 SIMM modules, each 8 meg EDO. Nothing special there, except the modules have blue heatspreaders on them (or what appears to be heatspreaders). The heatspreaders look to not be 3rd party but anyway, I thought that detail was interesting somehow.
It had a CT2950 in it (I "think" that's a soundblaster 16 something?) and a 2 meg S3 Trio-something graphics card (made by Diamond, it's missing it's VGA memory upgrade chips).
The CPU is a not-so-special Pentium 100 along with a HSF that attaches directly to the CPU.

Also I got a dual 5.25in floppy drive, probably 1.2M and 1.44M combo, a black standard floppy drive and a black DVD/CD-burner drive

Along with this stuff I got some small bits like a Socket 939 backplate, a couple chipset heatsinks and it goes down from there! 😜

I'm probably missing some stuff that I forgot, but I'll look into it all tomorrow when I'm freshly awake 😁

Edit: I really need to get used to the slightly different layout 🤣!

Tetrium wrote:

Been a long time since I was last here on Vogons! I had misplaced my password again 🤣, had to reset it.

Sure been a loooooooooooooooooooong time! Welcome back! 😁

Malik wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Been a long time since I was last here on Vogons! I had misplaced my password again 🤣, had to reset it.

Sure been a loooooooooooooooooooong time! Welcome back! 😁

Thanks! 😁
It's nice to be back 😁
I see I missed some stuff here, the site looks different but awfully familiar at the same time! 😜

The thing is, I haven't really been busy with all my retro gear the last couple months. 2 weeks ago I phased out my last remaining singlecore system from frontline service for a dualcore. It's in reserve now. I still use a couple of my singlecores for other duties like for some particular games and theres always my main storage system (which is basically what my main computer was before I got my PhenomII), but those have hardly been used lately. But whenever I get the itch to play some particular games like Simcity 4000(?) and Sacred Gold, I dust off the old rigs again 😁 They're still wonderfully stable and theres nothing wrong with them except they are slower for use as a main LAN rig.

But I should keep this short! Wouldn't want to derail this thread too much 🤣

Picked me up this nice 14" Sony CRT for my Commodores / Sega. I don't know how long it'll last but there are still quite a few decent CRT TV's being sold second hand around here. I assume people bought them cheap when they were being phased out and put them in their spare room / bedroom / whatever. They cost next to nothing and often have had very little use. This one looks brand new:

Sony TVs, and many others, have hidden service menus which allow you to adjust the image like on a monitor.

Why is this useful? Because of the frustrating issue of PAL conversions. When the released PAL games, the games had the lower NTSC resolution, so they just displayed with with black bars at the top and bottom AND 20% slower speed 🙁

Also make sure it has Scart RGB. At least European PAL TVs have this and is the best connection for these old consoles.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/121182210217

Untested per the description. I hope I didn't overpay...

Honestly, I didn't think I'd actually win the thing. I was expecting to get outbid in the last few minutes.

senrew wrote:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/121182210217

Untested per the description. I hope I didn't overpay...

Honestly, I didn't think I'd actually win the thing. I was expecting to get outbid in the last few minutes.

That's actually a good price. They usually go for $100-$150. I found one a while back with a $40 BIN and something like $8 or $9 for shipping. That one wasn't even listed for 5 minutes before I found it. A Voodoo 5 is one of those things where if you see it for a low BIN you don't wait, you just hit the button as fast as you can before someone else does.

Some stuff I bought from the swedish version of ebay arrived today.

1x Abit BH6.
It looks brand new. I used to own one of these but cant find it. I must have thrown it away when I moved for some reason.
It will be used for games that run best on windows 98 but need a faster computer than my other retro box.
~8$

1x celeron 333 mhz
I wont use it but hey it came free with the Abit board.

1x 64mb? pc100
Also free with the Abit board

128mb edo 144pin
Will be used for testing a motherboard
~6$

MSI MS6905 v1.1 slotket with a intel heatsink
So I can use s370 and fc-pga cpus with the Abit BH6 board.
It needs a complicated a mod to run Tualatin but it should handle Coppermine with a very easy mod.
~8$

Sounblaster AWE64
Its good to have a few extra soundcards...
~6$

Asus AV264CT-N
I already own one of these but they are rare so its best to have one in reserve
~2$

Not pictured.
A complete super socket 7 system with a k6-2 450 and 512mb sdram
~25$

sliderider wrote:

senrew wrote:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/121182210217

Untested per the description. I hope I didn't overpay...

Honestly, I didn't think I'd actually win the thing. I was expecting to get outbid in the last few minutes.

That's actually a good price. They usually go for $100-$150. I found one a while back with a $40 BIN and something like $8 or $9 for shipping. That one wasn't even listed for 5 minutes before I found it. A Voodoo 5 is one of those things where if you see it for a low BIN you don't wait, you just hit the button as fast as you can before someone else does.

Yep - shoot first ask questions later... I BIN'ed one last spring too same for price you paid. It hadn't been listed for more than an hour probably less. $50 is damn fine for a working V5.

Ok, one more acquisition for today...

Went to that same thrift store where I found the other two machines. Had the wife with me so I figured I'd have some kind of check on my impulse spending. Now, this thrift has a habit of wrapping their PC cases with a couple of layers of packaging tape so that no one would be able to go in and steal random parts out, and they don't let you open the machine until you've bought it so anything purchased there is a huge gamble unless you REALLY want just the case. (They even make you sign a "no exchanges, no refunds" receipt when you pay)

Anyway, we took a look at the section where they keep all the PC towers and this one just jumped out at me:

This gigabtye machine is a BEAST. I remember seeing something like this design in the CGW killer rigs in the early 2000s so it piqued my interest. The wife asked why I was staring at it and I said I wonder what's inside. She's just as much of a geek as I am and her curiosity was killing her as well so $50 later, we took the machine home. We justified it by saying at the very least, it was worth it for the case alone to build up a modern rig within.

The board is a Gigabyte GA-8I848P-G. It's got ram and a P4 I haven't identified yet as I haven't had a chance to plug it in and check the bios. Video is an ASUS MX4000 64MB so that's going in the spares pile. It's got a Techwell tw800 (I think?) card as well so I'm thinking this was used as some sort of CCTV host at some point.

Anyway, worth it for $50? I didn't really need another P4 system but it's never bad to have a spare board ready to go. Plus, the case is pretty damn badass.

That case looks like a Chieftec Dragon. I had one of those in beige in 2002 it was the best computer case I ever owned, I really regret selling it now. I have been checking ebay for one for a couple years now. I bought the full tower version last year new in the box, but its just that bit to large for my uses.🙁

Its actually made by Antec (initially) then chieftec copied/bought/whatever the design. Nothing screams 2000-2002 more than that case.

Bob can you tell me the name the Antec case went by so I can include those in my searches. Did Antec do them in beige also?

Soupdragon wrote:

Bob can you tell me the name the Antec case went by so I can include those in my searches. Did Antec do them in beige also?

they sure did! i owned one, but later traded it in for the black. Also the front door is missing. this is the one I had for a LONG time: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1258

@senrew

There's nothing wrong with buying a complete PC just for the case IF it's a standard AT or ATX case and not proprietary (unless it's a proprietary case that you actually need). Not knowing whether it works or not or what parts are already inside can be an issue if the price is high which is why I don't usually bother with machines that are unknown as to working condition or what's inside. I bid for the case only and if the parts inside work it's a bonus.