TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-12-29, 01:23:

LewisRaz wrote on 2022-12-29, 01:09:

Spent hours today arguing with a toshiba satellite 1800. Windows ME was crapped out. Windows 2000.. Cannot find a working VGA dr […]
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Spent hours today arguing with a toshiba satellite 1800.
Windows ME was crapped out.
Windows 2000.. Cannot find a working VGA driver
Windows 98se.. VGA Drivers say they work but dont.
Now its the turn of XP.. But I hold little hope.

Dont want to go crawling back to ME

Why does everyone hate ME so much?

Every time I've tried it, my experience has been positive. Has so many quality of life features that W98 doesn't have, with the added benefit of being 9x based. For a true WINDOWS 9x machine (not a combo DOS/Win9x setup) its great.

I haven't run ME in years, but I remember when I worked at a PC repair shop in the early 2000s we used to secretly really appreciate working on it, despite all the hate. The reason was that it had drivers for almost everything built right in, so unless you needed something more full-featured from a driver package you could just install the OS and almost everything just worked. Along with that clean installation came a very smooth a well running system... something that a lot of people never saw, because of what OEMs did to the poor machines. Much like Vista, I think the problem was that it was often put on terrible hardware and combined with too much 3rd party software.

When I think of a "Windows ME Computer", I think of those blobby little Compaq systems with colored plastic panels, insufficient RAM, slow CPUs, dirt-slow Quantum Bigfoot hard drives (among others) and tons of pre-installed bloatware, which was starting to become a thing at this point in time. Prior to this you usually got a big book of CDs of full-version software with your PC and most of it was installed but didn't have to run at startup... but it seems like ME came about right as things were shifting to "lets just install irritating trial versions of *everything* on this already barely adequate PC" . To top it all off, way more people were trying to do things online in the early 2000s and broadband was starting to be a thing, which meant that it was very likely that you were running ME if you were also a clueless new PC user that clicked on everything and downloaded viruses and adware.

So, I agree. ME was not a bad OS, it was just a victim of the times in which it was released.

I had a PC I built myself that I upgraded to ME when it came out. It crashed and died constantly. I'm not saying that drivers didnt get better, but as an early adopter I went back to 98 and didnt switch until XP. For my particular hardware at the particular time ME was total garbage. That experience was probably similar for most early adopters.

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-12-28, 19:56:

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-12-28, 13:15:

The Voodoo Banshee wasn't a dumbed down Voodoo2 like most people think. Although having one TMU, it came with a 128-bit memory i […]
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Radical Vision wrote on 2022-12-28, 08:28:

3Dfx did pull shitty cards such as the Banshee or like Voodoo Velocity...

The Voodoo Banshee wasn't a dumbed down Voodoo2 like most people think. Although having one TMU, it came with a 128-bit memory interface and lay the groundwork for the Voodoo3. Still, that doesn't change the fact that 3dfx lost vision at this point.

Rendition was a company that was promising, their Verrite V1000 was on part with the Voodoo 1, but sadly they did bankrupt a bit later with Verrite V2200, guess they did not had brand popularity, and not good channels for sale.

Rendition did major mistakes. Their chip designs were completely outsourced without any QA being done and the V1000 didn't have hardware support for z-buffers.

I don't know who would consider Banshee bad and why. I have one in my PII-450 system and it's an amazingly good combination. It's not much slower (~15%) than a Voodoo 2 but it has amazingly good 2D output vs Voodoo 2's passthrough vaseline filter.

The Voodoo 3 outdoes it in every way, but for its time it was a very good competitor to the TNT. Also, I don't think they are targeted for the same kinds of systems; the Voodoo 3 is a bit wasted in most systems (K6/PII) where the Banshee would excel, I feel.

As it turns out, DOS 6.22 wasn't having any real issues with my hardware. It just didn't like an 8GB SD card being completely unformatted. I sometimes hate old hardware's willingness to just throw a fit about the smallest of things.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-12-28, 19:20:

Pulled out the Optiplex GX260, plugged it in, heard a pop, PSU blew out smoke, now the room smells like Caramel (oddly pleasant […]
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Pulled out the Optiplex GX260, plugged it in, heard a pop, PSU blew out smoke, now the room smells like Caramel (oddly pleasant smell, makes me wonder what chemicals I'm inhaling currently).

Now the new low profile GeForce 6200 AGP has no home 😒

Not sure if this is just my collection aging (it didn't explode the last time I had it powered on, 3 years ago) or if the unclimate controlled shed I store my stuff in is actually becoming a major problem.

EDIT: Motherboard survived after testing with another PSU. Will probably tear open the dell PSU and see if the failure is easily fixed. If not, I guess I'll have to spend $20 on a new PSU from eBay since I don't have any Dell SFF PSUs of this type lying around or in any other system.

This is why I visually inspect power supplies internally before plugging them in nowadays. Although it's not foolproof as capacitors can be bad without looking the part, it reduces the chances of me using something with bulged/leaked capacitors or low-quality capacitors that were a miracle that they survived for so long. It also helps identify how well-constructed the power supply is, especially when I'm cross-referencing it with the old PSU thread from several years back.

Considering it's a Dell from the capacitor plague era, I'm willing to bet capacitors inside the power supply were to blame. I once had an Optiplex GX520 with bulged capacitors both on the motherboard and inside the power supply. Although it still worked in this state, I ended up replacing both components for good measure.

I should get a PSU tester and test all of my spare power supplies (as well as the ones I'm currently using in my old computers) to ensure they're within spec. I'll be sure to make it (along with visual inspections) an annual ritual once I come across a good tester.

Most of the time, it's tough to find good modern replacement power supplies for older computers because modern power supplies have their own sets of problems (e.g. not enough Molex connectors, not enough current available on the 5V rail (important for K7 Athlons), the lack of a floppy drive connector, and the lack of a -5V rail (for certain ISA cards)) that make finding the ideal replacement difficult sometimes. Not to mention the proprietary form factor power supplies that smaller computers used.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-12-28, 01:46:

Do you have full photo of this yellow motherboard that have 286-20 processor? Is this one using CHIPS chipset?

Cheers,

Sorry for the delay.

V

Actually, nevermind. This system refuses to boot anything but a floppy for whatever reason. I'm just gonna give up and move on to greener pastures.

Vanessaira wrote on 2022-12-29, 06:55:

20221228_224545.jpg […]
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pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-12-28, 01:46:

Do you have full photo of this yellow motherboard that have 286-20 processor? Is this one using CHIPS chipset?

Cheers,

20221228_224545.jpg

Sorry for the delay.

V

I SOOOOOOOO like it! This board would look super cool in a transparent case or at least with a side panel to let my eyes feel happy!

I agree. That's a very pretty motherboard.

So I think I bricked my Epson today.

I was trying to troubleshoot why it would lock up on a soft reboot. I thought the issue might be XTIDE related, since without XTIDE it would reboot just fine. But trying various configs and different firmware builds, the system now refuses to boot at all (even with XTIDE removed).

I did have a spare motherboard and stock 286 processor which works perfectly with all the other hardware I was using including XTIDE. So that leaves either this motherboard or the Cumulus 386SX card I had installed as the potential culprits.

In the mean time, I'm going to keep working on the system with the stock 80286 processor, since based on some benchmarking tests it looks like it's a bit faster than when using the Cumulus 386SX 'upgrade'.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2022-12-29, 01:47:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-12-29, 01:23:

Why does everyone hate ME so much?

Every time I've tried it, my experience has been positive. Has so many quality of life features that W98 doesn't have, with the added benefit of being 9x based. For a true WINDOWS 9x machine (not a combo DOS/Win9x setup) its great.

...
So, I agree. ME was not a bad OS, it was just a victim of the times in which it was released.

To run Windows ME properly you need at least 128MB of RAM, and you need PROPER BEHAVING WDM DRIVERS FOR ALL your hardware, and proper ACPI support for hardware resource arbitration. ME, although it still supports VxD drivers, is discouraged its use in this configuration AT ALL.

Unfortunately at time, even OEMs and hardware manufacturers didn't understand this. Many of them insisted in supply only VxD drivers, specially soundcard and a pair of winmodem manufacturers (Ambient and Terratec, i'm seeing you...) because they already had expertise with them, and VxDs run basically baremetal in machines (cpu ring 0 execution level), so them have less latency than HAL abstracted WDM ones..... But... Well, WinME NTKERN.vxd WDM and ACPI.sys subsystem don't like play good neighbor like this.
Also doesn't help many WDM drivers at time where done by 3rd party consultancy with almost no QA and lack of experience with NT and the WDM driver model. Sound cards and USB printers/scanners were the most affected ones by this.

Like you guys said, basically the same as happened with Vista and the transition to WDDM Display driver model and the new NT6 network and sound stack.

i was trying some PCI sound cards in my Pentium 3 PC

Yamaha DS-XG YMF724 - makes Windows 98 unstable over time, hard locks when digitized sound is played in DOS applications, Adlib works fine
C-Media CMI8738 - Seems stable, a bit on the quiet side, Adlib won't work, Digitized sound works fine in DOS applications
Avance Logic ALS4000 - Also stable, has a hiss and the sound is too quiet, haven't tested it in DOS since the WDM driver won't work with DOS stuff in Windows

I can confirm that, for some reason, I've had very bad luck with some Yamaha DS-XG PCI cards in Windows. These cards can cause a bluescreen after installing drivers, no matter what I do. This problem seems limited to the VxD drivers, however. WDM drivers work perfectly. But then there is no Adlib support from within Windows, I think. DOS support is pretty good though.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-12-30, 01:31:

So I think I bricked my Epson today.

I was trying to troubleshoot why it would lock up on a soft reboot. I thought the issue might be XTIDE related, since without XTIDE it would reboot just fine. But trying various configs and different firmware builds, the system now refuses to boot at all (even with XTIDE removed).

There are a lot of large chips on that board. When the system boots, feel around to see if any of them get unusually hot. You can also compare this to the working board, if it has a similar layout. This is how I diagnosed a faulty MIDI board once.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-12-30, 04:25:

I can confirm that, for some reason, I've had very bad luck with some Yamaha DS-XG PCI cards in Windows. These cards can cause a bluescreen after installing drivers, no matter what I do. This problem seems limited to the VxD drivers, however. WDM drivers work perfectly. But then there is no Adlib support from within Windows, I think. DOS support is pretty good though.

i may put that card back in my p3 and try the WDM drivers, see how they go.

I believe I have a laptop with a similar issue. DOS audio is great, in DOS, but the DS-XG won’t work in Windows unless it’s WDM.

I have a Yamaha PCI XG card still new in box sealed. Should mess around with it at some point.

Today I got to cleaning and testing the aquarium.

V

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2022-12-15, 13:57:

vutt wrote on 2022-12-13, 20:28:

First shipment for my "Let's replace broken SB32 SIMM socket" project arrived - Blingy low profile Purple RAM.
In order to test them I had to implement temporary fix. Even managed find matching tan colored nylon thread. 🤣

Nice! That is definitely some blingy ram.
I have a couple cards that have damaged SIMM slot clips as well. How are you going about replacing yours?

So I finally made my move today and replaced SIMM sockets - more details here: Re: Replacing SB AWE32 RAM Sockets

Vanessaira wrote on 2022-12-30, 14:08:

Today I got to cleaning and testing the aquarium.

I love it! Ha-ha.

Did you make that or it is something that you can actually buy?

^ That's from a Lian Li computer case, I recall that LGR did a review about this.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-12-30, 14:59:

^ That's from a Lian Li computer case, I recall that LGR did a review about this.

Coincidently, LGR just posted a new video of an actual combined aquarium / PC case.