VOGONS


Reply 17520 of 27168, by kolderman

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RetroLizard wrote on 2020-12-13, 05:16:
kolderman wrote on 2020-12-13, 04:51:
RetroLizard wrote on 2020-12-13, 04:48:

Voodoo 2?

Better, but 6200 is too new for win98 gaming. Get fx5900.

Would that card work in an AGP 2x slot?

Yes. It has external power so it should not overdraw the agp slot.

Reply 17521 of 27168, by EvieSigma

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I dunno how "retro" this machine is, but I spent part of my day cleaning up and software updating the Dell Inspiron XPS laptop I've had for over a year but had neglected up until now. It definitely needs new thermal paste and would benefit from more RAM, and it complains about even a 130W charger not being enough, but given it was a recycling rescue I'm just kinda glad it works at all.

Reply 17523 of 27168, by PD2JK

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What game is that AoE?

Sorry to be a philistine.

i386 16 ⇒ i486 DX4 100 ⇒ Pentium MMX 200 ⇒ Athlon Orion 700 | TB 1000 ⇒ AthlonXP 1700+ ⇒ Opteron 165 ⇒ Dual Opteron 856

Reply 17526 of 27168, by evasive

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SVD wrote on 2020-12-12, 20:21:
evasive wrote on 2020-12-12, 20:09:
SVD wrote on 2020-12-12, 19:34:

Ahhhghh
So thats why it wont start...

Edit: If anyone have a picture of the area around/under the battery on a Opti-495slc board it would be very appreciated. some traces are gone.

UH19 now has 10 different identified OPTi 495SLC boards to choose from. More info would be welcome I think.
https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/?chipsetId=375

Ahh thanks, it is this https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/1487

If/when possible, would you please make a bios dump and post that somewhere please? We still miss that one apparently. Thank you in advance.

Last edited by evasive on 2021-11-24, 22:07. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 17527 of 27168, by SodaSuccubus

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4:00 AM Post! Retro computers make the insomnia laden nights feel much cozier.

Anyway I picked up this cheepo PS2 mouse on Amazon yesterday and MY GOD, what a improvement this is over the 3 button serial mouse I was using prior.

Crank PS2rate to 200hz and I can aim in Quake again! 😁

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Allmost as good as I do on my modern PC! (of which iv gone wireless with my mice and have no plans of going back).

Reminder: a mouse bungie is a absolutely great investment too! No more lazy-cord or cord drag screwing up your shots. I wonder how resources intensive such a smooth mouse rate is on a MMX machine though

Reply 17528 of 27168, by henk717

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It has been a great second day for my first serious retro pc build (Only having the T5710 prior). It rocks the following specs for context:

GPU : 6800GT AGP 256mb
CPU : Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Motherboard : ASUS A8V (Via chipset)
RAM : 4GB DDR from Kingston
HDD: 300GB
Sound: YMF744

Where yesterday was trying to get XP and 98 stable day, today was the dual boot day.

Yesterday when installing 98 i also prepared the machine with the BootIt boot manager although naturally the boot sector had been overwritten by 98.

One bootit reinstall later and i could make the XP profile. Installed XP over USB trough a Windows PE desktop and a utility that can copy the XP setup to the C: drive. Went smoothly at first but then got a hal.dll is missing error on the second boot. Yet another BootIt reinstall later and the XP setup continued.

For XP i also experimented with some drivers this time round. A older Nvidia Omega driver, the latest official driver. And an NGO Nvidia driver.

The nvidia omega driver had great compatibility in the old build of Half-Life 2 and ran great in UT2004. 3Dmark2001 ran in the 17000 range. Roughly the same performance i get in Win98.

The latest official driver ran 3Dmark in the 20000 range but Half-Life 2 had a lot of missing textures once again proving that running the latest drivers for retro projects is a bad idea.

Finally the NGO driver, this one combined the best of both worlds. I still have to bench the latest omega driver and then i can see which one i like best between the two. (The modded drivers are advertised to have visual and compatibility improvements but i mostly find them interesting because of the following they had in this 2005 era).

So right now this retro time machine project has 3 modes you can seamlessly boot between without altering any settings or on the hardware configuration.

Windows XP mode : No special tweaks here other than the modded nvidia driver. It has access to 3,5GB of ram and both cores.

Windows 98 mode : Doesn't support dual core so automatically runs single core. HimemX is used in config.sys to cap the memory to 512MB. I used the 77.72 driver for the nvidia card here. Notably i am not sure if its fully using AGP here but i don't have anything to complain about in terms of stability and performance. No shutdown bug, no bluescreens, no weird hangs for the most part. The only notable issue is with MSDos games. I need to alt + enter to get full screen games to run. If they initialize fullscreen themselves it wont show anything.

MSDos Mode : Activated by choosing Reboot To MSDos in 98 and then choosing 98 in bootit. This one has my custom autoexec and config.sys tweaks. I also made profiles for cpuspd to quickly switch to 8086, 368, 468 or full speed modes. HimemX is used here to to keep the ram within save limits but other memory managers are availible.

Dos right now leaves a bit to be desired, with some games working flawlessly and some hanging the system.

All in all a great weekend with what is rapidly becoming a great time machine build. Soon ill try more operating systems like OS/2, Windows 10 and a Amiga/Linux hybrid.

Reply 17529 of 27168, by foil_fresh

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bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-12-11, 05:25:
That is amazing. I gotta do that for my Ti4400 AGP and good thing I have plenty of case fans to install. […]
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foil_fresh wrote on 2020-12-10, 10:15:

That is amazing. I gotta do that for my Ti4400 AGP and good thing I have plenty of case fans to install.

I tested the Austin PN/312 TFT laptop that the seller said it "won't light" and when I plugged in the switching power supply set to 9VDC 2.5A, it turned on. The issues that are present are a dirty/oxidized/corroded power board that does work to a point, broken right hinge (will use epoxy to fix it), and the floppy drive that suffered from the belt plague. The display is in amazing shape and it will get more inspections and a new CR1225 battery holder with wires and the battery.

Currently looking for an NEC NL6448AC30-07 TFT display so I can install one in the AMS laptop and surprisingly, the 5x86-P75 3.3V CPU works in the AMS laptop, but I need to find a way to set the CPU to 133MHz (4x clock speed). The Austin has 20MB RAM and a ceramic Intel i486 DX4-100 CPU.

cheers. what kind of ti4400 do you have? i was lucky enough for the winfast to have a nice heatsink with spots for the screws to thread into.

hope you can get those classic laptops back in shape 😀

Reply 17530 of 27168, by bjwil1991

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Mine is the PNY variant. Nice thing about it is the heatsinks on the RAM chips, which is a nice touch.

Discord: https://discord.gg/U5dJw7x
Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/retropcuser

Reply 17531 of 27168, by ultra_code

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Just finished rebuilding my Pentium 4 machine.

Same CPU (Pentium 4 672) as before, but:

  • New motherboard + RAM (Asus P5AD2-E Deluxe + 4GB Crucial DDR2-533 RAM)
  • New GPU (PNY Nvidia GeForce 7950GT)
  • New CPU cooler (Noctua U9B)

I sacrificed flawless Win9X compatibility for better performance. Anyways, with the previous setup, I had already transferred most games to the XP install or other systems, and most of the games I wanted to play under 9x would/should work just fine under XP anyways. So, this is an early-PCIe era XP rig.
kNULbiBl.jpg

Only thing I'm missing is an I/O shield for my motherboard. If anyone has one they'd be willing to give to me, let me know. 😀

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Reply 17532 of 27168, by debs3759

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the_ultra_code wrote on 2020-12-14, 16:09:

Only thing I'm missing is an I/O shield for my motherboard. If anyone has one they'd be willing to give to me, let me know. 😀

I don't know where you are, but there is one on eBay that isn't expensive and has free shipping to at least EU and USA. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/170959618740

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 17533 of 27168, by ultra_code

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debs3759 wrote on 2020-12-14, 16:19:
the_ultra_code wrote on 2020-12-14, 16:09:

Only thing I'm missing is an I/O shield for my motherboard. If anyone has one they'd be willing to give to me, let me know. 😀

I don't know where you are, but there is one on eBay that isn't expensive and has free shipping to at least EU and USA. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/170959618740

Bought it already. Doesn't fit my board. Meant for a different board.

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Reply 17534 of 27168, by Shagittarius

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Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-12-11, 22:26:
Shagittarius wrote on 2020-12-11, 22:19:
Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-12-11, 22:14:

If I remember rightly at the same clock speed FPM is a tad faster.

I will run some benchmarks, and memory specific tests before I do that swap, not to doubt you, just so I have non subjective personal results when I make the swap. I'll let you know how it goes.

Cool. I look forward to te results.

Here are the initial results, I need to go back and run only 64MB of FPM before I consider this complete:

3DMark 99 @ 133Mhz w/80MB FPM:
597 3DMarks
867 CPU 3DMarks
3DMark 99 @ 133Mhz w/128MB EDO:
579 3DMarks
872 CPU 3DMarks
3DMark 99 @ 133Mhz w/64MB EDO:
629 3DMarks
892 CPU 3DMarks

SiSoft Sandra 2001se
133Mhz, w/80MB FPM Memory:
Int. ALU/RAM - 55 MB/s
Float FPU/RAM - 76 MB/s
SiSoft Sandra 2001se
133Mhz, w/128MB EDO Memory:
Int. ALU/RAM - 61 MB/s
Float FPU/RAM - 89 MB/s
SiSoft Sandra 2001se
133Mhz, w/64MB EDO Memory:
Int. ALU/RAM - 60 MB/s
Float FPU/RAM - 88 MB/s

133Mhz, w/80MB FPM CPU:
Dhrystone - ALU 271 MIPS
Whetstone - FPU 152 MFLOPS
133Mhz, w/128MB EDO CPU:
Dhrystone - ALU 251 MIPS
Whetstone - FPU 148 MFLOPS
133Mhz, w/64MB EDO CPU:
Dhrystone - ALU 260 MIPS
Whetstone - FPU 149 MFLOPS

133Mhz, w/80MB FPM Multimedia:
Integer ALU 85 it/s
Floating-Point FPU 103 it/s
133Mhz, w/128MB EDO Multimedia:
Integer ALU 85 it/s
Floating-Point FPU 103 it/s
133Mhz, w/64MB EDO Multimedia:
Integer ALU 85 it/s
Floating-Point FPU 103 it/s

NSSI @ 133Mhz w/80 FPM:
101604-102248 Dhrystones
NSSI @ 133Mhz w/128MB EDO:
101604-102248 Dhrystones
NSSI @ 133Mhz w/64MB EDO:
101604-102248 Dhrystones

SysInfo @ 133Mhz w/80MB FPM:
421.7 Computing Index score
SysInfo @ 133Mhz w/128MB EDO:
421.7 Computing Index score
SysInfo @ 133Mhz w/64MB EDO:
421.7 Computing Index score

GL Quake @ 133Mhz w/80MB FPM:
DEMO1 = 51.0 FPS
DEMO2 = 52.0 FPS
DEMO3 = 47.3 FPS
GL Quake @ 133Mhz w/128MB EDO:
DEMO1 = 47.9 FPS
DEMO2 = 48.6 FPS
DEMO3 = 44.5 FPS
GL Quake @ 133Mhz w/64MB EDO:
DEMO1 = 52.3 FPS
DEMO2 = 53.4 FPS
DEMO3 = 48.7 FPS

Interesting, seems that the Sisoft CPU test favors FPM, but all the other tests are equal or greater with 64MB EDO, and it seems that 128MB of EDO makes the system run the slowest. It also appears that DOS doesn't give a damn about any type of ram. I'll try to update this with the 64MB of FPM results.

Reply 17535 of 27168, by TheMobRules

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Shagittarius wrote on 2020-12-14, 21:46:

Interesting, seems that the Sisoft CPU test favors FPM, but all the other tests are equal or greater with 64MB EDO, and it seems that 128MB of EDO makes the system run the slowest. It also appears that DOS doesn't give a damn about any type of ram. I'll try to update this with the 64MB of FPM results.

What chipset does your motherboard use? On 430FX, VX, TX (and HX without extra tag) the max cacheable memory is 64MB, so going beyond that usually results in a performance decrease.

Reply 17536 of 27168, by Shagittarius

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TheMobRules wrote on 2020-12-14, 21:52:
Shagittarius wrote on 2020-12-14, 21:46:

Interesting, seems that the Sisoft CPU test favors FPM, but all the other tests are equal or greater with 64MB EDO, and it seems that 128MB of EDO makes the system run the slowest. It also appears that DOS doesn't give a damn about any type of ram. I'll try to update this with the 64MB of FPM results.

What chipset does your motherboard use? On 430FX, VX, TX (and HX without extra tag) the max cacheable memory is 64MB, so going beyond that usually results in a performance decrease.

Yes, its a 430FX (Triton), I had read about the caching and that's why I decided to try it with only 64MB, I wonder if the FPM would see a jump as well if limited to 64MB instead of the 80MB I had previously installed. It seems to reason that it would.

Reply 17537 of 27168, by Shagittarius

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Here are the final results 64MB of FPM vs. 64MB of EDO:

3DMark 99 @ 133Mhz w/64MB FPM:
594 3DMarks
870 CPU 3DMarks
3DMark 99 @ 133Mhz w/64MB EDO:
629 3DMarks
892 CPU 3DMarks

SiSoft Sandra 2001se
133Mhz, w/64MB FPM Memory:
Int. ALU/RAM - 54 MB/s
Float FPU/RAM - 76 MB/s
SiSoft Sandra 2001se
133Mhz, w/64MB EDO Memory:
Int. ALU/RAM - 60 MB/s
Float FPU/RAM - 88 MB/s

133Mhz, w/64MB FPM CPU:
Dhrystone - ALU 271 MIPS
Whetstone - FPU 152 MFLOPS
133Mhz, w/64MB EDO CPU:
Dhrystone - ALU 260 MIPS
Whetstone - FPU 149 MFLOPS

133Mhz, w/64MB FPM Multimedia:
Integer ALU 85 it/s
Floating-Point 103 FPU it/s
133Mhz, w/64MB EDO Multimedia:
Integer ALU 85 it/s
Floating-Point FPU 103 it/s

NSSI @ 133Mhz w/64MB FPM:
101888-102543 Dhrystones
NSSI @ 133Mhz w/64MB EDO:
101604-102248 Dhrystones

SysInfo @ 133Mhz w/64MB FPM:
421.7 Computing Index score
SysInfo @ 133Mhz w/64MB EDO:
421.7 Computing Index score

GL Quake @ 133Mhz w/64MB FPM:
DEMO1 = 50.8 FPS
DEMO2 = 52.0 FPS
DEMO3 = 47.5 FPS
GL Quake @ 133Mhz w/64MB EDO:
DEMO1 = 52.3 FPS
DEMO2 = 53.4 FPS
DEMO3 = 48.7 FPS

Some of the benchmarks favor the FPM, but the 3d gaming seems to favor the EDO. It interesting that when I had 80MB of FPM it didnt seem to run any slower despite being more ram than the MB could cache...dunno, could also be Windows vs. Dos since the 3d accelerated tests are all in windows.

Reply 17538 of 27168, by Caluser2000

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Good work Shagittarius .

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 17539 of 27168, by Shagittarius

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Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-12-15, 03:05:

Good work Shagittarius .

I was going to run 64MB of FPM and 64MB of EDO together to test but i bent one of the pins in a ram slot, (which I fixed) , but decided it wasn't important enough and just leave it be...The Motherboard says it optimizes both memory types simultaneously, I was curious what that performance would be like.