I snagged the old Roland VSC from the late 90's/early 2000's and am using it to listen to the QuestStudios MIDI files and a bunch of other MIDI files that can fully show what it's capable of and where it fails. So far, it's pretty good, but it occasionally falls short on the files that were made on desktop modules and represent non-game music. For the game files, it seems to be more or less correct.

luckybob wrote on 2021-12-28, 18:23:

Ugg, my fat brain misread Tempra as tempura. Took me a good 30 sec to actually process it correctly. I guess I know what I'm having for my cheat day...

But on a more serious note, I honestly miss the early 3d. Nobody does that acid-trip amalgamation of colors and textures like that box anymore. Everything is just so.... high-res, and "real" looking. It feels so commercial and uninspired.

Check out Affinity Designer:
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/

The problem is that graphic design has taken a turn for the worse.

On the topic of my retro activity.. I "refurbed" the Inspiron 8500 laptop I received the other day. Cleaned the clogged CPU heatsink and fan, took the dumb aluminum film off the cooler that was used as the TIM, cleaned up the cooler and the CPU and applied decent thermal paste.

Also did similar for the GPU.

I took the display bezel off and tightened up the hinge screws.

Haven't cleaned up the rest of the system or replaced the HDD with an SSD either. This will be set up as a Win98SE laptop... no DOS sound support but it does have the UXGA screen so it should be a pretty decent retro gaming machine.
It originally came with XP which but of course most older laptops are much better with a previous OS on them.

I'm starting a discord for retro tech and retro PC gaming:

https://discord.gg/WyxnnJJ8 - Cyb3rst0rms Retro Hardware Warzone

I'm setting up text channels, voice, user roles, etc. We will have private channels for content creators and developers.

(The primary impetus of this is I'm going to start thinning my collection out a bit as its taking over, and I'll be using this server as a hub for that).

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-01-01, 00:12:

I'm starting a discord for retro tech and retro PC gaming: […]
Show full quote

I'm starting a discord for retro tech and retro PC gaming:

https://discord.gg/WyxnnJJ8 - Cyb3rst0rms Retro Hardware Warzone

I'm setting up text channels, voice, user roles, etc. We will have private channels for content creators and developers.

(The primary impetus of this is I'm going to start thinning my collection out a bit as its taking over, and I'll be using this server as a hub for that).

Just joined your channel. Not very active on discord, but interested to see how it works out 😀

I don't think I can afford to join any more retro groups. I have too much stuff!

Maybe eventually we'll all have our own discords for trying to get rid of the "extras." 😀

I am making poor progress, I mean, I did move some systems and my "junk box" of dead parts out, and I'm a fair chunk of the way through the catalog, but I have to be careful.

I had a pair of Dell Vostro 230s - one C2D 7500 and one Xeon X3370, the latter with an SSD. I had the *good* one in the "move out" pile by mistake!

Passed on a local AT desktop case and I'm regretting it. Told myself I need to clear more space first, and I was right. Still regretting it. I really need to find something like a circa 1990 Everex Step or one of the cool off-brand AT clones, or even an early Gateway. Sad how "desktop" came to mean "non-server" so there's no real way to distinguish in searches between what used to be called Desktop and Tower.

I was investigating this board that i have (MS-3131):
https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/1389

Based on chipset's datasheet, it should support writeback for its cache. But i never got it to work.

I used AMISETUP and CTCHIP34 to look into chipset's registers, but couldn't find much about writeback.
There's MR-BIOS available for it as well, but that as well didn't enable writeback.

Then i took out the chipset's datasheet once again to check the pins from the chips. And what i see is that alter bit lines are fixed to 5V through resistor.

So natively, no writeback support on the board itself.

But theoretically, if one would remove the smd resistors and instead does some modding and piggyback with additional cache chip, it could be doable... but that's not for me. I have an amazing M-321 board, that does writeback very nicely and i'm happy with that.

New coolers for FireGL X1 and Radeon 9700 TX:

9700 TX appears to be a "golden sample" chip:

Artefacts start appearing north of 410Mhz, in most cases with R300 limit is ~380Mhz.

Regarding infamous "yellow goop" TIM originally used on those cards, it depends how much the card was used. In one case it was totally elastic and went 100% off with just some pre-heating and IPA. In most cases it's solid and takes hour or two to get it off using heat, WD-40, nitro thinner, scraping with razor blade ... etc.

where did you get the replacement coolers from?

All I can find that are similar are no name coolers from china for 10 dollars each, I guess a tenner isnt bad for a cooler that looks similar to the Zalman ones but I want some better quality ones for the rarer cards I have.

They appear on eBay from time to time in bulk quantites, new old stock. I bought few from Dutch seller. I think he had like 30 of them, 15€/piece.

My experience with chinese coolers is mixed. Smaller ones with push-pins vary in quality. Out of 4, two of them rattled out of the box. Fan was not centered. Bigger ones have wide flat base, which is not ideal for ATI chips with shim on.

stef80 wrote on 2022-01-03, 12:00:

They appear on eBay from time to time in bulk quantites, new old stock. I bought few for Dutch seller. I think he had like 30 of them, 15€/piece.

Got a name for the cooler that I can lookup on eBay ?

Zalman VF700, or Zalman VF900.

stef80 wrote on 2022-01-03, 12:08:

Zalman VF700, or Zalman VF900.

Cheers for that mate !

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-01-03, 12:10:

stef80 wrote on 2022-01-03, 12:08:

Zalman VF700, or Zalman VF900.

Cheers for that mate !

I recommend looking for faulty/dead graphics cards rather than the cooler itself. Gigabyte often used the VF700 on mid-tier cards like 7600, 8600 and 9600 series as well as HD4600 and HD5600 series.

You can get better deals buying dead cards with good aftermarket coolers than the cooler itself.

Same for Arctic Cooling Accelero L2. You can hunt Gigabyte GT240 and Sapphire HDx670 series cards for those.

Good idea. Same true for Zalman HP-80 passive coolers.
I have noticed vendor cards with VF700 Zalmans usually miss metal crossbar element at the back of the card:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/zalman-vf7 … stallation3.jpg
https://www.trustedreviews.com/wp-content/upl … 3543-pic2-1.jpg

Without it PCB may bend more.

The cheap chinese copy is pretty much identical. I have one on a 9800, works like a charm.

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-31, 01:16:

The 17" CRT arrived to day and it works perfectly but I've noticed some minor flaking of the antiglare coating, I cant fault the seller for this as its difficult to even see it unless you have the right light angle. But now I know its there I cant unsee it, does anyone have some advice in how to either remove the coating safely or how to repair it if at all possible.

Personally I would prefer to just remove it since once the rot starts it'll keep spreading and the coating does visibly make the monitor darker.

I had a NOS Sony trinitron a few years ago that had ‘gone off’. I removed it all with regular kitchen grade cleaner (e.g. spray and wipe), and nice micro fibre cloth, and lots of elbow grease. The image was much brighter so that was a win, but the glass was like a mirror finish and the reflection drove me nuts.

So yeah factor that in - maybe there’s something that can be applied afterward to replace the anti glare?

badmojo wrote on 2022-01-04, 09:11:

So yeah factor that in - maybe there’s something that can be applied afterward to replace the anti glare?

3M still do them, but might need to buy a larger 16:9 or 10 size and trim it... https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/c/office-suppli … ers-protectors/

Messing around with the 2nd DX4-100 box, getting it up and running. Having to Fight FreeDOS 1.3 RC4 every step of the way, so considering throwing on a base-install of MS-DOS 7.1x and using that, I also found the problem with running Ultima 7 goes away with that.

The Vibra 16 is also being a bit of a PITA, does not like to do Digital Audio in protected mode games for some crazy reason....might swap with the 286 (which I'm thinking I'll sell once I upgrade the Tandy to a V20 and 8087) which has a CT1600 SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 in it.

Also working out a method for wireless keyboard/mouse on that system. My Model "M" works nicely as it's cable is super long, but the mice I have don't reach, and a Serial extention cable does not work.

I've been finding a lot of issues with FreeDOS lately so I'm now toying with maybe converting my FreeDOS setups over to MS-DOS 7.01, the version I have seems to work perfectly with everything, so maybe that's the route to go by. Plus I can run Windows 3.1x on that particular setup too.

Most of the Microsoft mice seem to have a nice long cable on.

Have had a go at the AG coating and it appears to be some kind of film, its flaking off but is going to take more than cleaning wipes and microfibre cloth.

Might try some Mr Muscle magic erasers and if that fails .. toothpaste.