RandomStranger wrote on 2022-05-21, 08:15:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-05-20, 18:07:

Started performance testing my finished Windows 98 box and got through about one third of the games I plan to check, also disqualifying some because of Vsync issues. Looks like I'll have a lot more of those. Everything trying to go for 30/60fps if I set my screen to 60Hz or 38/75fps if I set it to 75Hz really messes with things. Like for example Aliens vs Predator 2 has significantly worse performance (both minimum and average fps) in 60Hz than in 75Hz mode, while Colin McRae Rally 2.0 is more mixed (much better average fps in 60Hz mode while much better minimum fps in 75Hz mode). My previous Ti4200 also had this issue, but not to this degree. Over all it's very circumstantial whether the FX5700 is faster or not even when Vsync is off on both cards.

Need for Speed: High Stakes was AWFUL. I couldn't go higher than 640×480 in 32bit mode and in 1280×960@16 it was slower than Hot Pursuit 2 in 1280×1024@32, so just breifly tried driver version 53.04. Now Vsync can be turned off in Quake 2. It's still a lot slower than on Ti4200 (166 vs 256 fps) and NFS4 now crashes to the desktop in Direct3D mode. IRC is also seems slower. Further testing late afternoon. So far I'm very disappointed with the FX.

I know how to fix the resolutions. You can use dx7z.dll from NFS5 in place of d3da.dll. There is even a patched version that disables 16-bit colors
As for the performance, that makes no sense. The FX sucked, but this is just not right.
Have you tried Omega drivers? They seem to work nicely on my Ti 4600 and they support FX too.
You can grab them here: https://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2019 … iaw9xomega.html

SteveC wrote on 2022-05-20, 15:56:

Got this to boot up!

I did a video 😀 https://youtu.be/WpZVbvvkHjU

TechieDude wrote on 2022-05-21, 10:47:

I know how to fix the resolutions. You can use dx7z.dll from NFS5 in place of d3da.dll. There is even a patched version that dis […]
Show full quote

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-05-21, 08:15:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-05-20, 18:07:

Started performance testing my finished Windows 98 box and got through about one third of the games I plan to check, also disqualifying some because of Vsync issues. Looks like I'll have a lot more of those. Everything trying to go for 30/60fps if I set my screen to 60Hz or 38/75fps if I set it to 75Hz really messes with things. Like for example Aliens vs Predator 2 has significantly worse performance (both minimum and average fps) in 60Hz than in 75Hz mode, while Colin McRae Rally 2.0 is more mixed (much better average fps in 60Hz mode while much better minimum fps in 75Hz mode). My previous Ti4200 also had this issue, but not to this degree. Over all it's very circumstantial whether the FX5700 is faster or not even when Vsync is off on both cards.

Need for Speed: High Stakes was AWFUL. I couldn't go higher than 640×480 in 32bit mode and in 1280×960@16 it was slower than Hot Pursuit 2 in 1280×1024@32, so just breifly tried driver version 53.04. Now Vsync can be turned off in Quake 2. It's still a lot slower than on Ti4200 (166 vs 256 fps) and NFS4 now crashes to the desktop in Direct3D mode. IRC is also seems slower. Further testing late afternoon. So far I'm very disappointed with the FX.

I know how to fix the resolutions. You can use dx7z.dll from NFS5 in place of d3da.dll. There is even a patched version that disables 16-bit colors
As for the performance, that makes no sense. The FX sucked, but this is just not right.
Have you tried Omega drivers? They seem to work nicely on my Ti 4600 and they support FX too.
You can grab them here: https://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2019 … iaw9xomega.html

Thanks. Will try the DLL from Porsche Unleashed, though I had no similar issues with TNT2 in NFS4. The omega driver doesn't seem to support the FX5700. Probably like the driver version (45.23) it's based on, only offically supports early FX cards like the FX5800/5600/5200 series. I don't know if it works if you add the card to the .inf, but I also don't know what differences were made to the second wave cards like the FX5900/5700 series. Did anyone try this?

Edit
This DLL stuff don't seem to work for me. Tried to simply copying over from the NFS5/Drivers folder to NFS4, tried to delet d3da.dll, then tried to rename dx7z.dll to d3da.dll. Also tried similarly replace d3da.dll in NFS4/3dSetup. Also tried some patches (4.42 and 4.50), reinstalled the whole thing. The game cares about nothing.

Then tried 61.76, the earliest 6x driver I found. The menu is all black, I can't navigate it, 3DMark2001SE works, unlike with 66.93, the speed is a little less compared to 56.64 (9561 vs 9910), Hot Pursuit 2 has somewhat better average framerate, but whitin the margin of error (33.9 instead of 32.3 fps), same with all the other games I've tried so far. Only NFS4, the one that matters to me the most has to be the problem child.

SteveC wrote on 2022-05-20, 15:56:

Got this to boot up!

Wot is it? Is that a serial terminal?

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-05-21, 15:38:

Thanks. Will try the DLL from Porsche Unleashed, though I had no similar issues with TNT2 in NFS4. The omega driver doesn't seem […]
Show full quote

Thanks. Will try the DLL from Porsche Unleashed, though I had no similar issues with TNT2 in NFS4. The omega driver doesn't seem to support the FX5700. Probably like the driver version (45.23) it's based on, only offically supports early FX cards like the FX5800/5600/5200 series. I don't know if it works if you add the card to the .inf, but I also don't know what differences were made to the second wave cards like the FX5900/5700 series. Did anyone try this?

Edit
This DLL stuff don't seem to work for me. Tried to simply copying over from the NFS5/Drivers folder to NFS4, tried to delet d3da.dll, then tried to rename dx7z.dll to d3da.dll. Also tried similarly replace d3da.dll in NFS4/3dSetup. Also tried some patches (4.42 and 4.50), reinstalled the whole thing. The game cares about nothing.

Then tried 61.76, the earliest 6x driver I found. The menu is all black, I can't navigate it, 3DMark2001SE works, unlike with 66.93, the speed is a little less compared to 56.64 (9561 vs 9910), Hot Pursuit 2 has somewhat better average framerate, but whitin the margin of error (33.9 instead of 32.3 fps), same with all the other games I've tried so far. Only NFS4, the one that matters to me the most has to be the problem child.

I meant specifically the patched dx7za, which I've attached here.
I can't seem to find it online, so I uploaded it here. Hopefully it helps

Fun times..

appiah4 wrote on 2022-05-23, 05:13:

Fun times..

I'm not even sure I'll need one, but I've been meaning to build a couple. Good for the toolkit.

(Looks at toolkit)

If you have room.

I went down a rabbit hole of early early 80s CPM commercial games online... sheesh. Lots of digging. And yet everything I found will have to be back-burnered for at least a while.

I think I found the early 80s office server I want to base the aesthetic-ish of my new file server on... the problem is I don't like the Zobex logo. So I guess I'll have to make a new one (maybe combining Zobex with the Encom aesthetic?).

chris2021 wrote on 2022-05-22, 22:52:

SteveC wrote on 2022-05-20, 15:56:

Got this to boot up!

Wot is it? Is that a serial terminal?

No it's an IBM Infowindow 5250 terminal - connects to the AS/400 over Twinax - a kind of big industrial two pin connector

My first post in this thread - here we go:

I finished a dumpster find SiS based Tualeron build. I made it out of the case, optical drive, FDD and power supply from a NEC PowerMate ML4 desktop I found at the side of the road a while ago and an ASUS TUSI-M motherboard, 1100MHz Tualatin Celeron and 512MB of PC133 ram I found last week in a pile of beige boxes left near a dumpster. Just added a socket A cooler, an FX5500 PCI and an 80GB HDD. My first SiS build. Won the CPU lottery with this chip too - it's stable at 1466 / stock voltage! It's not pentium 3s 1400 fast but damn it's close!

In the same pile of beige boxes I got the TUSI-M from I found an Acer Veriton core 2 duo NUC style PC. It's really beat up, missing the front fascia and power supply. I tried powering it on with an appropriate PSU but it's completly dead, so I salvaged the HDD, SODIMM DDR2 and CPU (Core 2 Duo e6300) as well as a slot loading Matsushita laptop IDE DVD-RW drive witch I think is pretty cool. The drive is IDE and it connects to the mainboard by a SATA cable using a IDE to SATA adapter that was bolted to the back of the drive - pretty handy too!

I Installed the DVD-RW in my HP Vectra 420 SFF pentium 4 build and I love it. I know it's kind of useless, but for some reason it makes me happy 😀

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-23, 10:34:

I finished a dumpster find SiS based Tualeron build. I made it out of the case, optical drive, FDD and power supply from a NEC PowerMate ML4 desktop I found at the side of the road a while ago and an ASUS TUSI-M motherboard, 1100MHz Tualatin Celeron and 512MB of PC133 ram I found last week in a pile of beige boxes left near a dumpster. Just added a socket A cooler, an FX5500 PCI and an 80GB HDD. My first SiS build.

all found stuff? I love this kind of build, all was bound for the bin and now is rescued and up and running again 😀

and on top of that it's actually a pretty high spec for the era!

gerry wrote on 2022-05-23, 10:52:

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-23, 10:34:

I finished a dumpster find SiS based Tualeron build. I made it out of the case, optical drive, FDD and power supply from a NEC PowerMate ML4 desktop I found at the side of the road a while ago and an ASUS TUSI-M motherboard, 1100MHz Tualatin Celeron and 512MB of PC133 ram I found last week in a pile of beige boxes left near a dumpster. Just added a socket A cooler, an FX5500 PCI and an 80GB HDD. My first SiS build.

all found stuff? I love this kind of build, all was bound for the bin and now is rescued and up and running again 😀

and on top of that it's actually a pretty high spec for the era!

Yup - everything is dumpster find, apart from the HDD and CPU cooler. I got lucky this time around, usually it's just empty PC cases and even then they're missing components like side covers, front fascia and so on. I posted pics of the motherboards I found - they were inside cases, but none were complete and most were rusty and smelled of mold. I think they were stored in a damp basement or something.

The NEC Powermate case I found as a complete system, untouched. It came with purple intel chipset motherboard (probably ECS? it looks really familiar), no AGP slot just like the TUSI, a 1.8GHz socket 478 P4, some SDRAM, a dead 20GB HDD and a Realtek PCI lan card. When I found it, I cleaned it up a bit and tested all components individually. Everything but the motherboard and HDD works. I tried powering on the motherboard in my test bench but it wouldn't go. It has a short someware and it's just not interesting enough for me to bother fixing (when I have piles of more attractive hardware waiting their turn) so into the parts bin it went.

Flashed a faster BIOS, went +200 points in 3DMark 2000.

Not been working on any PC-related hardware for a while, but have had some non-PC retro activities:

Had a busy weekend with friends over and some retro gaming on classic micro computers, so today I've been tidying everything back away. I laid everything out first before putting it away, so that I ensured all the correct cables & power supplies ended up back in the correct places etc. Couldn't resist taking a quick pic, it's amazing how fast a collection grows sometimes, I didn't even have half of this lot only 2 years ago:

Not pictured is my Amiga 1200, as that stays out and connected all year round.

Funnily enough, out of all these computers it was the Amiga that gave me the most trouble. Sods law when you have friends around, some old piece of hardware always decides to throw a tantrum. I've ordered a new RAM expansion for the Amiga, as I think the currently installed expansion card is causing the majority of my woes! Might also give me the excuse I need to wipe the OS and reinstall everything to tidy things up a bit too.

unfortunately I have no camera to show this, but the bfg 7800 gt I ordered arrived early. I had to move the hard drive down a slot due to clearance issues. It was heavier than I expected it to be, but nonetheless I'm happy to have it now. Had to use a 6-pin to molex adapter and a vga-dvi adapter. the seller redid one of the caps and soldered the fan connector. only issue I had was one of the dvi ports produces a very blue picture but the other dvi port is fine. system ran loud at first but after installing the drivers (I chose forceware 169.21) it quieted down. It costed me roughly $28 on fleabay.

Zeerex wrote on 2022-05-18, 10:59:

Added an extra 128mb dimm (already had a single 128mb slot installed) to my PCChips M577 MVP3 board to get some additional memory speed with via 4x memory Interleaving. I didn’t even get a single megabyte of increased throughput in benchmarking it was literally identical. I figured I would avoid the cacheable memory performance penalty above 128mb with this board since it has 1mb cache - and that seems to be true as benchmarks (3dmark99/Sandra) are identical. Well, maybe I’ll turn off interleaving to see the result.

So to wrap up this personal saga on interleaving - it’s a learning adventure for me. First thing I usually do firing up an MVP3 rig is enable interleaving. In this case my PCChips M577 (Amptron PM-9900) with a single 128mb stick. So, enabled interleave: Sandra benchmark memory: INT 162, Float 174. Added a second stick of RAM, identical, and result was the same: 162, 174. Uninstalled Interleaving: 154/166. Reinstalled it, back to 162, 174. Since the interleaving is happening on the bank level, even within my single stick 128mb there was plenty of interleaving taking place. Unfortunately, adding more banks via more dimms doesn’t add more speed though at least in this case

After years of trying to fix it, i now got it into a full setup condition, all cleaned and configured. 😀
Infinity Multipro-9000

1Intel 386DX 33MHz / 256kB cache!
28x1MB 30pin SIMM RAM
3Maxtor 7120A 124MB HDD
41.44MB FDD
5CD-ROM
6Trident TVGA 8900C 1MB VGA
7ESS ES1869F Sound (100% SoundBlaster Pro compatible)
83Com 3C509B-TPO LAN

I really hope i'll get a nice new home for this.

(Can't link the auction link, as it is currently active and therefore against the rules)

Just upgraded my IBM PC330 from a P133 - I initially bought a P200 (non MMX) as it is single 3.3v and it worked fine, but now I've swapped it again for a classic ceramic P200MMX (I know I'm overvolting it, but I've seen it done many times before and a new heatsink and fan is installed). The BIOS reports both P200 and P200MMX at 166MHz but benchmarks show it's running at 200MHz.

It's gone from 32.1fps to 42.2fps in Quake 1 320x240, PCPlayer 640x480 from 12.7 to 15.3, Doom from 61 to 74fps.

Just wondering if I should put in a different video card and testing a Matrox Mystique makes no difference to Quake or Doom, but improves 640x480 PCPlayer from 15.3 to 19.3 and I can now run Quake in 640x480.

Also turns out the Etherlink III ISA card doesn't seem to want to work, so in goes a PCI Realtek 8139 and that works perfectly 😀

GigAHerZ wrote on 2022-05-24, 09:20:

After years of trying to fix it, i now got it into a full setup condition, all cleaned and configured. :) Infinity Multipro-9000 […]
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After years of trying to fix it, i now got it into a full setup condition, all cleaned and configured. 😀
Infinity Multipro-9000

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1Intel 386DX 33MHz / 256kB cache!
28x1MB 30pin SIMM RAM
3Maxtor 7120A 124MB HDD
41.44MB FDD
5CD-ROM
6Trident TVGA 8900C 1MB VGA
7ESS ES1869F Sound (100% SoundBlaster Pro compatible)
83Com 3C509B-TPO LAN

I really hope i'll get a nice new home for this.

(Can't link the auction link, as it is currently active and therefore against the rules)

Premature congrats to the new owner then. Its a beauty. 😀

Bought me a new peocessor! 266gp 2.0v (433gp core)

TechieDude wrote on 2022-05-22, 23:16:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-05-21, 15:38:

Thanks. Will try the DLL from Porsche Unleashed, though I had no similar issues with TNT2 in NFS4. The omega driver doesn't seem […]
Show full quote

Thanks. Will try the DLL from Porsche Unleashed, though I had no similar issues with TNT2 in NFS4. The omega driver doesn't seem to support the FX5700. Probably like the driver version (45.23) it's based on, only offically supports early FX cards like the FX5800/5600/5200 series. I don't know if it works if you add the card to the .inf, but I also don't know what differences were made to the second wave cards like the FX5900/5700 series. Did anyone try this?

Edit
This DLL stuff don't seem to work for me. Tried to simply copying over from the NFS5/Drivers folder to NFS4, tried to delet d3da.dll, then tried to rename dx7z.dll to d3da.dll. Also tried similarly replace d3da.dll in NFS4/3dSetup. Also tried some patches (4.42 and 4.50), reinstalled the whole thing. The game cares about nothing.

Then tried 61.76, the earliest 6x driver I found. The menu is all black, I can't navigate it, 3DMark2001SE works, unlike with 66.93, the speed is a little less compared to 56.64 (9561 vs 9910), Hot Pursuit 2 has somewhat better average framerate, but whitin the margin of error (33.9 instead of 32.3 fps), same with all the other games I've tried so far. Only NFS4, the one that matters to me the most has to be the problem child.

I meant specifically the patched dx7za, which I've attached here.
I can't seem to find it online, so I uploaded it here. Hopefully it helps

Thanks!

With NFS5a.dll it's all fixed. Even the frame rate to 65 fps, not ideal for benchmarking, but it's alright. At least it works with a decent frame rate.