framebuffer wrote on 2021-05-15, 14:12:

Today I started my "1998 mega video cards compare" :) […]
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Today I started my "1998 mega video cards compare" 😀

system I'm using

- ASUS P2B
- Pentium II 400MHz
- 128MB PC100 (a little overkill in 1998 but still period correct)

video cards

- 3dfx Banshee (Diamond Fusion Banshee)
- 3dfx voodoo2 8MB (Diamond Monster 3D II)
- 3dfx voodoo2 12MB
- 3dfx voodoo2 12MB SLI
- Matrox Millenium G200 (8MB SG)
- ATi Rage 128
- S3 Savage 3D (Hercules Terminator BEAST)
- nVidia RIva TNT (Diamond Viper V550 16MB)

If you have them please also include the i740 and Trio3D.
Every barrel needs a bottom after all.😉

Found an excuse to build an "spiced up" (I think a bit too much?) WinME machine:

Here are some specs:

Acorp 6VIA81P-133 (VIA 693/596B)
LG DVD-ROM/CDRW drive
Palit/ATI Radeon 7500 64MB
20GB IBM HDD (that came out of an IBM Netvista 6570 and sounds like a damn angle grinder yet it's as healthy as it can get)
Sound Blaster 16 PCI
400W Torrent Computers LC-B400ATX PSU (230-250W realistically, but at least I've enhanced it a bit so it doesn't go kaboom on me)
RTL8139C NIC
Pentium 3 500MHz Katmai (I feel like I should've gone with a Mendocino 466 or 500 but oh well, a Katmai will do just well.)
and of course, Windows ME.

Got a couple of ASUS 802.11b/g PCI adapters. Now my Pentium 3 PC (Win98&XP) is connected to the Internet.
And it no longer feels like some ancient device I rarely touch, but rather one more "tool" to get some things done.

I gave my Sound Blaster CT1350B the CMS upgrade this week, so I've been working through the CMS supported titles to test them. I'm logging results along with any notes required to get each game working. Might turn it into a thread at some point, so others can help fill in the gaps.

Today and this weekend for that matter, I've been working on some of my 8-bit micros.

Disassembled my Acorn Electron to clean and reseat the ULA, as I was getting random small dots appearing on the screen yet RAM tested fine. The reseat seems to have alleviated it somewhat. Everything is running fine, it's just a very minor nuisance.

Also played around with the USB stick on my DDI-5 for the Amstrad CPC 464. Reorganised the files on the stick, added the HXC Selector and then used DriveSort on my PC to sort the files & folders. Was all working well until after I removed the stick 1 time and suddenly it decided it didn't want to read any USB sticks and then when it did it wouldn't work properly. The FlashFloppy firmware could see the disk images and typing CAT to bring up the directory listing would work, but nothing would RUN, citing missing disc Drive A:.

Turns out it's the USB socket on the DDI-5 starting to get a bit temperamental. I sprayed some contact cleaner into the socket and inserted a USB stick with a bit of a wiggle and it seems to be working properly once again. I'll have to keep an eye on that and hopefully it doesn't get any worse, otherwise I'll either have to try and repair it or purchase a Gotek instead. Nobody seems to be making these DDI interfaces at the moment, probably due to the pandemic and/or lack of demand, so I'm very wary of attempting a repair. It's definitely not a good time for anybody to purchase a 464 without a disk interface, the parts are just not available!

I've fixed up an old Osborne 486 running NT 4.0

https://youtu.be/6wPN8oge7hE

Today I played the game... "Which CDROM Drive has my w95 CD" with a paperclip on a stack of drives while troubleshooting an IDE controller.
Now there's a PC game I hadn't played in a while 😁 😁 😁

ThisOldTech wrote on 2021-05-18, 00:33:

Today I played the game... "Which CDROM Drive has my w95 CD" with a paperclip on a stack of drives while troubleshooting an IDE controller.
Now there's a PC game I hadn't played in a while 😁 😁 😁

I played this game two or three nights ago. It was of course, in the last one I checked. (And it was Civ 2 - I was seeing which of my CDROMS messed with it the least)

I got my Blue Lightning working with some SCSI parts - Over the next few days I plan on running some video benchmarks on it, which means I can put my Siemens 486 back together and on my desk, and then publish the 486SX-20 to ODPR benchmark. Maybe start editing some video now that I have my upstairs PC NoMachined to my editing station downstairs 😁

Happens to me all the time with my missing Windows 98SE CD.

Got my small retro game console setup by my computer desk/home office/repair closet:

Kawasho Color TV/Radio/Alarm/Timer Model 3706 that I've had for 3 years and it needs a deoxidation for everything (potentiometers, slider controls, and RF plug, which is a 3.5mm jack) and my SNES that I've had for 5 years.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-05-18, 05:33:

Happens to me all the time with my missing Windows 98SE CD. […]
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Happens to me all the time with my missing Windows 98SE CD.

Got my small retro game console setup by my computer desk/home office/repair closet:

IMG_20210517_214109880~2.jpg

Kawasho Color TV/Radio/Alarm/Timer Model 3706 that I've had for 3 years and it needs a deoxidation for everything (potentiometers, slider controls, and RF plug, which is a 3.5mm jack) and my SNES that I've had for 5 years.

I have something similar - a black and white Citizen (also with radio) and the antenna is trashed. I have a similar external plug - can you tell me more about your antenna setup?

I use an ordinary RCA to 3.5mm cable and there are RCA to Coaxial (TV) adapters on Amazon that will work well with anything that uses a Coaxial connection, such as a VCR, converter box, etc.

Completed the Boiler Room Build.

66mhz 486DX2 machine with VLB trident video, 8mb ram, floppy drives and a 256mb SSD with a Colorado Jumbo250 for tape backup (and yes it works!)
Not an exceptional performer but a machine that is going to spend the rest of its life hidden in the back of a boiler room where it can be accessed via modem + Carbon Copy Plus and loaded down with a variety of compilers from Borland and Microsoft.
IF you want to work locally with it, it's buried behind a jungle of pipes and boilers with a dirty old VGA monitor and a keyboard. No sound, no mouse and no networking but you can be left alone to work for hours and nobody would ever find you back there.

CelGen wrote on 2021-05-19, 03:14:

Completed the Boiler Room Build. https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/a166/ballsandy/IMG_8487.JPG […]
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Completed the Boiler Room Build.

66mhz 486DX2 machine with VLB trident video, 8mb ram, floppy drives and a 256mb SSD with a Colorado Jumbo250 for tape backup (and yes it works!)
Not an exceptional performer but a machine that is going to spend the rest of its life hidden in the back of a boiler room where it can be accessed via modem + Carbon Copy Plus and loaded down with a variety of compilers from Borland and Microsoft.

Are you having it control a HVAC system? Cause that would be super cool.

No it's just down there where it can't be found. I rebuilt the power supply and made the case as secure as possible to prevent the dirty workspace and any animals that get onto the desk from bringing the system down. The modem uses a "secret" PBX extension so from anywhere inside the building and even from an outside line you can connect and then have access to a full suite of programming languages.

Very nice photo !

And nice case! Here's my 386 build from last year in the same one.

Built my own gonzo style fume extractor.

I ordered a replacement MXM graphics card for a 2011 iMac and got it working with some remote blind flashing and messing about but it's made the computer very usable again.

At work we have a really old system for which we don't have manager PC for years (even before I started there).
Now we want to replace that old system with a modern one, but we want to look into it to see if there is anything left that wasn't migrated to other systems.
In one of our storage rooms I found an old Siemens Nixdorf D6 PC. No RAM, dead hard drive, but otherwise seems to work. I fixed it up a little and started installing Windows 98 SE for the management software. Then in the middle of that the optical drive suddenly developed a mechanical issue and I ended up with a drive that can't stay shut and a corrupted Windows installation. I didn't have my retro-fix-up tools at hand so I guess I know what retro activity will I get up to tomorrow.

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-05-20, 06:47:

At work we have a really old system for which we don't have manager PC for years (even before I started there).
Now we want to replace that old system with a modern one, but we want to look into it to see if there is anything left that wasn't migrated to other systems.
In one of our storage rooms I found an old Siemens Nixdorf D6 PC. No RAM, dead hard drive, but otherwise seems to work. I fixed it up a little and started installing Windows 98 SE for the management software. Then in the middle of that the optical drive suddenly developed a mechanical issue and I ended up with a drive that can't stay shut and a corrupted Windows installation. I didn't have my retro-fix-up tools at hand so I guess I know what retro activity will I get up to tomorrow.

There are quite a few different case and hardware types for that PC, I really love the Pentium/MMX hardware in the early desktop cases. Pentium II and onwards have a weird late 90s look to them, but are still likeable. Which one was yours?