It takes days, not mere hours.

Got some SOJ packaged dram chips and upgraded my VLB S3 805-P from 1MB to 2MB.
Same card as here: http://www.vgamuseum.info/images/vlask/s3/805-pf.jpg

Using Fraps to test my frame rate on Colin Mcrae Rally 2 with My SLI Voodoo 2s and FX 5200.

Neither of them can even come close to running the game maxed out at 60fps.

I'm not sure if the game is just that demanding (it has always been gorgeous) or maybe it's something wrong with my setup (pcgaming wiki mentions more cpus having an fps drop). I only have my XP2100+ to test it with.

Still, with lowered settings it's been great to play. It's still my favourtite rally game of all time.

Finally found DOS PCMCIA drivers for my Hitachi Visionbook pro 6000. It has TI PCI 1131 controller. But I could not find any DOS drivers for it online. So I looked up whether any of Thinkpads had the same controller. Here is the complete list of controllers for ols Thnkpads http://ps-2.kev009.com/pcpartnerinfo/ctstips/caba.htm
And it turned out to be TP 310E/ED. I installed the drivers on my Hitachi and evrything worked.

Received the Serial SD Card Adapter that I ordered for my Sega Dreamcast today. So I've been playing around with DreamShell on that.

I need to look into it some more tomorrow, as compatibility with games does seem to be horrendous. Got 2 games running via SD Card so far - Resident Evil: Code Veronica & Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2. The serial port adapter is nifty, but not really an ideal solution as the slow Serial port can't keep up and leads to micro stuttering in games, as I fully expected.

To be honest I mostly wanted the adapter for transferring save game files from PC to VMU, which it works very nicely for. Being able to play games from it was just a bonus. I'll probably buy a 2nd Dreamcast at some point and mod it with a GDEMU instead, that way I keep 1 untouched system and have another which will be able to run all my games properly from SD card.

Hooked up my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus to play and install DOS games and still runs. Cannot get my 4.3GB HDD to get detected at all, even though, the BIOS is version Micro Firmware 4.05.10 (up to 8GB maximum). Ah, well, the 4GB CF card still works.

D: packard hell

My dad and I are thinking about firing up an old small HP laptop this weekend. It has a touch screen and a pen. Last it was working well it had Windows Vista installed.

We seriously have some hate issues with the Vista version, And I doubt this laptop can run Windows 7 with relatively good performance/speed, so we have been thinking about using Windows 2000 or Windows Me. It will not be a daily driver laptop, and will not connect to the internet, he will just use it at home for some programs he has for the ECU of his old motorcycles . Ideas?

oeuvre wrote:

D: packard hell

I get good framerates with Duke Nukem 3D running at 640x480 (VESA mode) and great framerates at 320x200 (normal mode).

bfcastello wrote:

My dad and I are thinking about firing up an old small HP laptop this weekend. It has a touch screen and a pen. Last it was working well it had Windows Vista installed.

We seriously have some hate issues with the Vista version, And I doubt this laptop can run Windows 7 with relatively good performance/speed, so we have been thinking about using Windows 2000 or Windows Me. It will not be a daily driver laptop, and will not connect to the internet, he will just use it at home for some programs he has for the ECU of his old motorcycles . Ideas?

I've often found that Windows 7 generally runs better than Vista on the same hardware, so you might be very surprised if you try it. Basically, if the laptop can run Vista it should cope with 7 fine.

I've been in a Doom resurgence mood these days, so I'm hunting down the latest megaWADs and I'm installing them on the RDD. While some of them run perfectly, some others didn't, requiring me to update GZDoom. Turns out the latest versions no longer support SSE only CPUs, so I had to resort to the last SSE only capable version, and got everything sorted out. Only one megaWAD refused to work, but thankfully, that one has been sorted out as well by using PrBoom+, and despite it has some niggles (you can't see what you are selecting in the options), it works very well and is silky smooth.

Currently looking for new large campaigns for Unreal and Duke Nukem 3D, because in the long term I would really like to play Ion Fury with EDuke32 on the Tualatin... 😎

PTherapist wrote:

bfcastello wrote:

My dad and I are thinking about firing up an old small HP laptop this weekend. It has a touch screen and a pen. Last it was working well it had Windows Vista installed.

We seriously have some hate issues with the Vista version, And I doubt this laptop can run Windows 7 with relatively good performance/speed, so we have been thinking about using Windows 2000 or Windows Me. It will not be a daily driver laptop, and will not connect to the internet, he will just use it at home for some programs he has for the ECU of his old motorcycles . Ideas?

I've often found that Windows 7 generally runs better than Vista on the same hardware, so you might be very surprised if you try it. Basically, if the laptop can run Vista it should cope with 7 fine.

HP Pavillion tx1410us, AMD Turion x64 cpu. Last I used I had installed elementaryOS. But he (my dad) needs Windows, so I gave it back to him. I'm thinking more and more that with XP instead of 7 it would be faster.

Linux would work. Make sure you have enough RAM for the laptop as Linux is x86_64 these days.

Umm...

Yeeeeeeepppp.

Genuine RF out from the Xbox in case you were wondering; these little TVs don't have any kind of composite input (although I bet they can be modded.) Splitting the signal three ways doesn't quite degrade it beyond usability.

I should probably not be allowed to get bored.

bjwil1991 wrote:

Linux would work. Make sure you have enough RAM for the laptop as Linux is x86_64 these days.

Linux works, I had installed and used elementaryOS before I returned it to my dad. But needs Windows, his motorcycle apps are for Windows. So he ended installing Windows Vista *facepalm*, which was the OS shipped with the device, even though I warned him to try XP or 7, but he is stubborn like me (like father, like son). I even tried to convince him to remove the bloatware that comes with HP after he did a factory restore and to switch to classic theme (thus deactivating Aero theme) for a better performance, but he’s stubborn. Oh dear...

bfcastello wrote:

bjwil1991 wrote:

Linux would work. Make sure you have enough RAM for the laptop as Linux is x86_64 these days.

Linux works, I had installed and used elementaryOS before I returned it to my dad. But needs Windows, his motorcycle apps are for Windows. So he ended installing Windows Vista *facepalm*, which was the OS shipped with the device, even though I warned him to try XP or 7, but he is stubborn like me (like father, like son). I even tried to convince him to remove the bloatware that comes with HP after he did a factory restore and to switch to classic theme (thus deactivating Aero theme) for a better performance, but he’s stubborn. Oh dear...

Disabling Aero on Vista & 7 actually degrades performance as it switches the GUI rendering from the graphics card and onto your CPU instead and you'd notice things like bad tearing on 3D gaming & video playback. The amount of RAM freed by disabling Aero is negligible too.

Shortened my games.bat file sorting games by either genre or company name and the file calls the genre or company name (8 character+3 file extension limit), which will call the game batch files or for sound comparison (for YouTube), different sounds and music for every game. I need to add the FB01.DRV files to King's Quest 4 and another Sierra game and add that to the game list for the Yamaha FB-01 (not connected as I need a 1/4" to RCA adapter, MIDI cable, and A/V switch box to connect to the existing one so that when I play GM or Roland MT-32 games, it won't throw sound to the speakers.

PTherapist wrote:

bfcastello wrote:

bjwil1991 wrote:

Linux would work. Make sure you have enough RAM for the laptop as Linux is x86_64 these days.

Linux works, I had installed and used elementaryOS before I returned it to my dad. But needs Windows, his motorcycle apps are for Windows. So he ended installing Windows Vista *facepalm*, which was the OS shipped with the device, even though I warned him to try XP or 7, but he is stubborn like me (like father, like son). I even tried to convince him to remove the bloatware that comes with HP after he did a factory restore and to switch to classic theme (thus deactivating Aero theme) for a better performance, but he’s stubborn. Oh dear...

Disabling Aero on Vista & 7 actually degrades performance as it switches the GUI rendering from the graphics card and onto your CPU instead and you'd notice things like bad tearing on 3D gaming & video playback. The amount of RAM freed by disabling Aero is negligible too.

Very interesting. I would love to see some hard numbers of comparison.

[unrelated]
Currently installing OSes to my recently acquired TYAN S2882-D dual Opteron 285 server system.

PTherapist wrote:

Disabling Aero on Vista & 7 actually degrades performance as it switches the GUI rendering from the graphics card and onto your CPU instead and you'd notice things like bad tearing on 3D gaming & video playback.

I highly doubt that this is true. Yes, no Aero means that the CPU has to draw the screen, but you also lose all of the heavy GUI features like Aero Peak, transparency, etc. and it will still use the 2D acceleration of the graphics card (the blitter, that is). So the CPU won't have that much to do. On slower Intel chipsets with integrated graphics, Aero was often disabled by default, because the GPU was to slow for it. That of course means that the CPU renders non-Aero faster.

Lately i made vacation in non-x86 space. I got myself my first ever Amiga 500 (never had one) and i got an Amstrad CPC464.
I finished recapping the psu and the amigaboard and i'm happy everthing is still working. 😁
Next i got myself a DDI-4 interface so i can use a normal 3,5" floppy drive, and i'm again happy as it is working. Time to play my first games i remember; Tau Ceti, Ikari, and so on...