VOGONS


Reply 19940 of 27168, by debs3759

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BitWrangler wrote on 2021-09-18, 19:10:

You only need a 1985 system, a 1990 system a 1995 system a best CPU/GPU system for every 3 months between 1995 and 2000, a noughties system...

Each to their own. I need one for the top end of each generation of CPU (and variants thereon). At least, from 386 and later (although I still need to get round to starting to test and sell some of my many superfluous CPUs and FPUs, as well as over 125 motherboards)

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 19942 of 27168, by debs3759

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Anders- wrote on 2021-09-19, 00:27:
debs3759 wrote on 2021-09-19, 00:17:
BitWrangler wrote on 2021-09-18, 19:10:

You only need a 1985 system, a 1990 system a 1995 system a best CPU/GPU system for every 3 months between 1995 and 2000, a noughties system...

Each to their own. I need one for the top end of each generation of CPU (and variants thereon). At least, from 386 and later (although I still need to get round to starting to test and sell some of my many superfluous CPUs and FPUs, as well as over 125 motherboards)

Going to sell some of the 125 motherboards, you say.
Maybe it's a better idea to buy a some more, as it's likely you'll find a few broken ones once you start testing them, and it's good to have replacements or other boards to take parts from.

I like how you think 😀 Shame I have long ago run out of space to move in my small house 😀

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 19943 of 27168, by Caluser2000

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Repaired the back boundary fence to stop it squeaking/moving in the high winds we have been having lately.. It was annoying, especially at night trying to get some sleep. Use a piece of that ever so handy item called a wire cloths hanger. There's over a 101 uses for these things. Now the fence is nice and quiet, as it should be....😉

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There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 19944 of 27168, by kolderman

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Swapped a Yamaha SW20PC for a Telesound Telewave Audio 32 in my DOS PC. Amazing how much more compatible and easier to get working it is. The MIDI quality might be not quite as good, but still not bad for sure. Playing Heretic and now it works fine at full CPU speed.

Reply 19945 of 27168, by BitWrangler

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debs3759 wrote on 2021-09-19, 00:30:
Anders- wrote on 2021-09-19, 00:27:
debs3759 wrote on 2021-09-19, 00:17:

Each to their own. I need one for the top end of each generation of CPU (and variants thereon). At least, from 386 and later (although I still need to get round to starting to test and sell some of my many superfluous CPUs and FPUs, as well as over 125 motherboards)

Going to sell some of the 125 motherboards, you say.
Maybe it's a better idea to buy a some more, as it's likely you'll find a few broken ones once you start testing them, and it's good to have replacements or other boards to take parts from.

I like how you think 😀 Shame I have long ago run out of space to move in my small house 😀

I was of course joking a little about how that period is hard to make choices from with half a dozen different CPU lines, chipset lines, GPU lines etc. But yeah I gotta be over halfway to 125 motherboards too, I am still organising for a proper count. Guesstimating somewhere around 80, but keep coming across things I forgot about having, but then remember when I see it, but also the odd thing that I can't for the life of me remember laying eyes on before (Those I think are things that were throwins, or bottom of the box lot stuff I didn't mentally register because they weren't relevant to what I was messing with at the time.)

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 19946 of 27168, by BitWrangler

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Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-09-19, 00:52:

Use a piece of that ever so handy item called a wire cloths hanger. There's over a 101 uses for these things.

Yah, I always carry one in my old beaters, emergency exhaust hanger, hose clamp (Though I generally have one of those too) ... and I don't know how the hell it happened, but a 4" alternator bolt just up and fell out one time, but I lashed it sorta in place with a few loops of the coathanger to get home... lots of things you can bodge with it if you get stuck.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 19948 of 27168, by lolo799

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Went browsing around vector.co.jp download area for music related utilities, found some nice stuff like a software to draw things for the sc-55 display and convert those into .mid files (sc55_led.lzh and sc300.lzh)
For the PC-98, one to use the sc-55 to display system data, free memory, hdd use, date and time, that sorts of thing (sctime03.lzh) and one called Virtual MPU Driver from 1995 which does part of what SoftMPU do, redirecting MPU to the serial port (vmd119.lzh)

And some nice MIDI players, sply_101.lzh, karen11.lzh (needs the japanese fonts and maybe some drivers from DOS/V like jlang/jdisplay) and srec310.lzh

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PCMCIA Sound, Storage & Graphics

Reply 19949 of 27168, by Merovign

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Well not as much as I'd intended, and I got caught up removing batteries from several Very Old Laptops (where needed). I left the Zenith's in because it's an oddball fairly integrated and I'm not sure it's a good idea to desolder it before I have a replacement. 5V, too. The Zenith has awfully poor material for screws and standoffs, however. 🙁

But I found my T4400 is the upgraded model,

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and dug through a lot of other old Toshibas, Zenith, HP, NEC...

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*Too* *many* *things*!

Reply 19950 of 27168, by dataino.it

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appiah4 wrote on 2021-09-17, 09:42:

I'm troubleshooting an AOpen Vi9 motherboard that is kind of curious and important to me because it's a 386/486 combo board with VLB. It doesn't POST though. There is some battery damage I am fixing up, but I also noticed this strange solderjob on the chipset legs, it's as if two legs are soledered to a joint solderpad that go to the same via. Anyone think this is leftover from a botched repair attempt (and possibly root of the problem) or just something normal? Maybe they are both ground or something? I am not familiar with the chipset in question but the markings say it is an EFAR EC798.

wow, even the contacts are just staggered, if not unsoldered, try to touch them gently with the tester leads, the double connection on near pads seem be ok .

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Reply 19951 of 27168, by HangarAte2nds!

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Recently, I have been sorting through old PC junk from stuff I got free and hadn't looked at yet, looking for incidentals I need for upcoming retro builds. I have found stuff like a MSI LGA775 gaming MB, 2 IDE HDDs, lots of cables, some IDE optical drives, FDDs, including one with built in multi card reader for my PIII build. I am going to do dual boot on that one, 98SE and 10. The idea is to have a machine that can run Windows 10 so I can use it for downloading software but be able to write to CF, IDE, SATA, floppy and CD all in one machine, natively, as well as serve my machine for playing late Win98 era games. I lucked into a rather rare PCI to SATA card today on eBay. It will be nice to have a SATA SSD running natively for running 10.
I also went thrift store hunting today and netted a rather satisfying selection of parts. 7 cards, $5 per:

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SB CT4780 SB Live 32 bit
SB 0550 SB X-Fi Elite Pro
AZTECH/Packard Bell 030082 w/ YMF262C, CS 4231A-KL (3D Audio) and wavetable board - for my imminent Am486DX4-120 build
ASUS (HP OEM) Geforce 4 MX 420 64MB AGP - for a future P4 Prescott build.
SIS 6236 AGP 16MB - for an imminent Pentium MMX build overclocked to 200 or 250 MHz on an Asus P5A
VIA USB 2.0 PCI adapter card - also for the PIII, which will be used to download software and author floppy and CD installation media for older rigs. It will probably also be a programming rig for running a mid 90s version of C++ for Windows.
Last but certainly not least...
Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 512MB AGP, in the most pristine condition, no less - for a P4 650 XP gaming rig for all my late XP needs. I had been using a 7800GT but that kinda sucks for some late XP games. The 7800GT just doesn't give a great experience with Crysis. I have two of them though so now I also get to build an early SLI rig! The interesting thing about the HD3850 is that it was the first GPU capable of floating point operations without involving the CPU. In fact, given it was released 6 days after Crysis, I can't help but wonder if Crysis was literally designed for this GPU...

Reply 19952 of 27168, by HangarAte2nds!

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Merovign wrote on 2021-09-14, 23:27:
So I was gonna do a whole big thing, but I've had little time, so I figured I would throw a few pics up. Tested a ton of RAM and […]
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So I was gonna do a whole big thing, but I've had little time, so I figured I would throw a few pics up. Tested a ton of RAM and a few HDs and CDs/DVDs.

And then there's a brace of these:

!DT505A.jpg

They don't power up, but I haven't had time to take them down and check. Missing a few minor bits but nothing apparently critical. One has a very small crack on the screen, so I don't know what to do about that yet.

On the other hand, this works:

!P133-1.jpg

AST Pentium 133 from the "funky proprietary backplane design" era, in this case apparently not to make the case smaller, but just because, hey, backplanes! CPU is good, RAM is good, replaced optical drive, was missing PSU and I have to get a switch that works properly with this case. Has built-in S3 Trio64 V+ "Turbo," Turbo apparently meaning "with less RAM" in this context. I even found out that if you go back to Hiren's boot CD version 5.0, it will boot on these 90s machines.

Seriously, this case was designed by a maniac. It's got more interdependent parts in its assembly than a Volvo. Easy 9-step processes everywhere! I'll get more detailed pics later.

I'm also glad I got a picture of this label before I found out that it's basically watercolor (or early inkjet printed on plastic film), because one swipe while cleaning wiped half of this out and it was gone.

!ASTLabel.jpg

So a reminder that just because it looks solid and it lasted 25 years doesn't mean it *is* solid. Also it was apparently never cleaned before.

!DriveRail.jpg

Miraculously, drive rails were included, and this is my first attempt at reproducing them. I chose a 2-part design because of the shape of it, and the fact that the "arm" has to bend. I planned on using screws, and still might, but on looking at it I could probably print a pin and use it to reinforce superglue - I wasn't confident that just superglue on the flat surfaces would work that great.

I didn't get pictures yet, but I got an Athlon XP-based HP as well. Had planned to do something else today, but here I am playing with my train set.

Do you know the baking soda trick? It catalyzes CA glue into a rock solid substance, similar to JB weld. Also, any time you glue two smooth surfaces, you need to rough up the surfaces. Glue isn't magic.

Reply 19953 of 27168, by Brawndo

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I gave my MSI K7T266 mobo a good cleaning and installed it in its permanent (for now) home, in a Thermaltake Xaser V blue case. I have most of the rest of the parts I need to recreate that build from my prime time 20s years. Just now getting around to putting it together.

Reply 19954 of 27168, by iraito

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I'm building my 5th PC, since the last one was an XP machine this time i went for a Win7 one:

  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300
  • DDR2 dual channel 4gb 800Hz
  • hd 5750

It's pretty much me recovering old pieces i had lying around and putting them together, what i have in mind now is this, what's the most powerful GPU i could add to this build before the CPU becomes a bottleneck ?

uRj9ajU.pngqZbxQbV.png
If you wanna check a blue ball playing retro PC games
MIDI Devices: RA-50 (modded to MT-32) SC-55

Reply 19955 of 27168, by appiah4

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iraito wrote on 2021-09-22, 12:19:
I'm building my 5th PC, since the last one was an XP machine this time i went for a Win7 one: […]
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I'm building my 5th PC, since the last one was an XP machine this time i went for a Win7 one:

  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300
  • DDR2 dual channel 4gb 800Hz
  • hd 5750

It's pretty much me recovering old pieces i had lying around and putting them together, what i have in mind now is this, what's the most powerful GPU i could add to this build before the CPU becomes a bottleneck ?

I think a Radeon HD7770 would work quite fine with that system, I know I had one with an Athlon II X4 at the time so yeah.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 19956 of 27168, by iraito

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appiah4 wrote on 2021-09-22, 12:23:
iraito wrote on 2021-09-22, 12:19:
I'm building my 5th PC, since the last one was an XP machine this time i went for a Win7 one: […]
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I'm building my 5th PC, since the last one was an XP machine this time i went for a Win7 one:

  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300
  • DDR2 dual channel 4gb 800Hz
  • hd 5750

It's pretty much me recovering old pieces i had lying around and putting them together, what i have in mind now is this, what's the most powerful GPU i could add to this build before the CPU becomes a bottleneck ?

I think a Radeon HD7770 would work quite fine with that system, I know I had one with an Athlon II X4 at the time so yeah.

Never had that but i heard many good things about it, if i remember correctly people played the witcher 3 on that GPU without any issue at release.

uRj9ajU.pngqZbxQbV.png
If you wanna check a blue ball playing retro PC games
MIDI Devices: RA-50 (modded to MT-32) SC-55

Reply 19957 of 27168, by appiah4

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iraito wrote on 2021-09-22, 12:27:
appiah4 wrote on 2021-09-22, 12:23:
iraito wrote on 2021-09-22, 12:19:
I'm building my 5th PC, since the last one was an XP machine this time i went for a Win7 one: […]
Show full quote

I'm building my 5th PC, since the last one was an XP machine this time i went for a Win7 one:

  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300
  • DDR2 dual channel 4gb 800Hz
  • hd 5750

It's pretty much me recovering old pieces i had lying around and putting them together, what i have in mind now is this, what's the most powerful GPU i could add to this build before the CPU becomes a bottleneck ?

I think a Radeon HD7770 would work quite fine with that system, I know I had one with an Athlon II X4 at the time so yeah.

Never had that but i heard many good things about it, if i remember correctly people played the witcher 3 on that GPU without any issue at release.

It's a very underrated and power efficient card that doesn't even require auxilliary power, just PCIe. It performs about as fast as an HD5850 (which was at the time of release a performance crown bearer) if memory serves.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 19958 of 27168, by BitWrangler

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iraito wrote on 2021-09-22, 12:27:
appiah4 wrote on 2021-09-22, 12:23:
iraito wrote on 2021-09-22, 12:19:
I'm building my 5th PC, since the last one was an XP machine this time i went for a Win7 one: […]
Show full quote

I'm building my 5th PC, since the last one was an XP machine this time i went for a Win7 one:

  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300
  • DDR2 dual channel 4gb 800Hz
  • hd 5750

It's pretty much me recovering old pieces i had lying around and putting them together, what i have in mind now is this, what's the most powerful GPU i could add to this build before the CPU becomes a bottleneck ?

I think a Radeon HD7770 would work quite fine with that system, I know I had one with an Athlon II X4 at the time so yeah.

Never had that but i heard many good things about it, if i remember correctly people played the witcher 3 on that GPU without any issue at release.

With that, you're kinda getting into GPUs that aren't expensive because they're retro, they're expensive because they are still playable on the less demanding but popular stuff like fortnite, LoL, rocket league etc, and other stuff in 1080p or close resolutions. (Basically the ones you only need an "ordinary" monitor for). Plus the ongoing "GPU drought" that has yanked some of these cards back from being sold/worth under $50 in 2019 to $150+ by late 2020. So at the moment, it's probably gonna be what you can find a good deal on.

I was reading yesterday that top end GPu prices had rebounded after a slight slump, so guess it's gonna be a while longer until things get sane. The price of the wafers going up is meant to be something to do with it too. (Other areas of semiconductor industry were in "drought" also so probably quite a surge in demand on fabs and materials as everything plays catchup) You can find the odd one or two better deals, they get snapped up, but it seems in general everything performing around or a little better than a 1030GT is gonna stay north of $100 for another year.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 19959 of 27168, by iraito

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BitWrangler wrote on 2021-09-22, 13:35:
iraito wrote on 2021-09-22, 12:27:
appiah4 wrote on 2021-09-22, 12:23:

I think a Radeon HD7770 would work quite fine with that system, I know I had one with an Athlon II X4 at the time so yeah.

Never had that but i heard many good things about it, if i remember correctly people played the witcher 3 on that GPU without any issue at release.

With that, you're kinda getting into GPUs that aren't expensive because they're retro, they're expensive because they are still playable on the less demanding but popular stuff like fortnite, LoL, rocket league etc, and other stuff in 1080p or close resolutions. (Basically the ones you only need an "ordinary" monitor for). Plus the ongoing "GPU drought" that has yanked some of these cards back from being sold/worth under $50 in 2019 to $150+ by late 2020. So at the moment, it's probably gonna be what you can find a good deal on.

I was reading yesterday that top end GPu prices had rebounded after a slight slump, so guess it's gonna be a while longer until things get sane. The price of the wafers going up is meant to be something to do with it too. (Other areas of semiconductor industry were in "drought" also so probably quite a surge in demand on fabs and materials as everything plays catchup) You can find the odd one or two better deals, they get snapped up, but it seems in general everything performing around or a little better than a 1030GT is gonna stay north of $100 for another year.

Oh trust me i'm not even remotely thinking of touching a still modern card in the current market, when things will get normal i might do that.

I'm happy enough that i was able to get a geforce 3 TI200 for 30€ after some back and forth this month, i really hope things will get normal at least for summer 2022 or next autumn, i'm getting ready for the next upgrade but as its now the GPU alone would cost almost like an entire PC from 5 years ago.

uRj9ajU.pngqZbxQbV.png
If you wanna check a blue ball playing retro PC games
MIDI Devices: RA-50 (modded to MT-32) SC-55