After 3 damn frustrating days,I finished my latest buy from my regular e-waste supplier.
It is in very good shape. CMOS battery was empty so I replaced it with a 2x2032 coincell holder so that solved problem number one.
Problem 2: setup config error but this has to be done with a setup file/floppy which I didn't have. Gsetup kinda worked but kept giving me setup errors. Getting this on a 5 1/4 floppy was also an adventure which involved a P3 laptop to make a 3,5"floppy, several pc's to find one with a good working 5 1/4" drive and finding some healthy floppy disks.
At least the HD was recognised now but this gave me problem 3: HD error code (HD is a Seagate ST-225 BTW).
I wanted to see if I could revive it to look at all the stuff on that whopping 20mb! Using Spinrite to repair it was taking like a predicted 40 hours so I decided to try and format it with DOS 3.1 which somehow was not really working so I found a working version of DOS 5.0 on 5 1/4" disks. Format went like a breeze, no errors and the hard drive still felt and sounded happy.
Problem 4: the 3,5" drive was wonky so I wanted to replace it. For some reason, none of my spare drives were seen by the PC so I opened the original drive,cleaned the heads and regreased it.Bingo!!!
Problem 5: that pesky config error,having to press F1 all the time, had to go so I went on googling and found a thread on a French forum which lead me to HPmuseum, where after trying some different files,I found the right one I believed. Had to convert it using HxC floppy emulator software from Teledisk format to IMG file,then use my P3 laptop to write the IMG with Winimage to a 3,5" floppy and then fingers crossed....
Well it worked! Config error gone and I have some extra utilities to explore including speed change tool, a memorytool etc....
Today I hoped to finish the quest by adding a soundcard but.....problem ummm 6?!
I decided to use a Mozart OTI601 card but finding the correct driver and writing all the different ones I found on a floppy took over 1,5 hours 🙁
I kept getting 'No Mozart card found' ALL THE TIME. I even tried an identical one I but same thing. Reseated the first one and tried one of the many drivers again and......It works!
Tested SQ3 and now I'm going to put this PC from hell in a corner 🤣. I kinda got tired of this one pffff...

stef80 wrote on 2022-11-29, 09:54:

Nice looking system. What are the specs?

It's an i7-3770k with a GTX 980 Ti and 4 GB of DDR3 RAM.

I'm trying to get a reasonably fast XP machine while still maintaining hardware compatibility with 32-bit XP.

Sombrero wrote on 2022-11-29, 10:45:

The game does have its own v-sync, it just doesn't work.

That's what threw me off at first. It lists the v-sync in the graphics options, but apparently does nothing. 😒

Isn't coil whine wonderful?

Ugh. My least favorite computer noise.

Equipped the CT3620 with 2 x 1MiB Simms and enjoyed some DoomII.

Replaced the CD-ROM drive on my Pentium 133 build. The previous Toshiba 6x was making weird ticking noises, so I swapped in an 8x Mitsumi.

After hooking up the CD audio cable, tested it with the most period appropriate soundtrack I could find. 😁

Did some test of this tool: https://github.com/TheSandBoxMKG/ipxgw, that allows IPX multiplayer games between real MS-DOS/Win9x and DOSBox.
Used DOOM as test case, it worked!
Gonna use it to play online, through a virtual LAN, with some friend 😁

Those floppy drives and CD drive match that case perfectly! It looks great.

Demetrio wrote on 2022-12-01, 17:05:

Did some test of this tool: https://github.com/TheSandBoxMKG/ipxgw, that allows IPX multiplayer games between real MS-DOS/Win9x and DOSBox.
Used DOOM as test case, it worked!
Gonna use it to play online, through a virtual LAN, with some friend 😁

Nice! 👍

I did something like that to play Hexen in co-op but with a USB to serial port years ago.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-12-01, 20:01:

Those floppy drives and CD drive match that case perfectly! It looks great.

Thanks a lot 🙂
Practically, I didn't need the 2nd floppy drive, but I added it anyway cause it looks good 😄

No, no-- it's perfect. The two floppy drives look great. Most of us peasants have to read, then write. You can do both at the same time. Show it off!

Demetrio wrote on 2022-12-01, 17:05:

Did some test of this tool: https://github.com/TheSandBoxMKG/ipxgw, that allows IPX multiplayer games between real MS-DOS/Win9x and DOSBox.
Used DOOM as test case, it worked!
Gonna use it to play online, through a virtual LAN, with some friend 😁

Very Nice!

Investigating this Satellite 2800-200, won't turn on. Well, if the power button isn't connected, it sure won't... 😀

Yesterday I installed the MSI TV-tuner card into my Shuttle XPC and replaced the CMOS battery in my XP build. The Shuttle is even more cramped than it first looked. I don't know if a longer sound card, like an Audigy 2 ZS would fit.

Today I went to this year's last vintage market. Month after month it kept getting worse for vintage computer parts. I hoped I could pick up some Geforce MX on the cheap, but today I haven't found ANY expansion cards. Not even the odd modem and networking cards you always find.

So I just picked up another pair of aluminum water bottles, 16 neodymium magnets, a boxed copy of Fallout 3 GOTY and FlatOut, and these:

Another addition to my pin-up art collection and a 1GB old-stock Intenso flashdrive that is an actual PEN-drive.

Recorded a video for my MS-Dos 7.1 floppy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Mp0szm-fA
Spent a lot of effort over the years on making this the most feature packed boot floppy I could make, its a single floppy that allows you to install MS-Dos 7.1 with a good set of memory managers, slowdown utilities, cd-drivers, tools and more.

Today was a "Zalman" day:

9800XT now runs in low to mid 40s under load 😀.
Both cards have quite hot memory chips (Samsung 2.8ns on FireGL/9700Pro and Hynix 2.5ns on 9800XT), so porcupines will help.

Nice cards. That orange got me thinking it was a X800 card. Take good care of them, R3xx based cards always tend to die on me.

i noticed today three caps on my windows 98 board hidden by the cpu heatsink were... rather embiggened. spent a little bit dismantling rather than playing unreal, so yeah...

PD2JK wrote on 2022-12-05, 13:26:

Nice cards. That orange got me thinking it was a X800 card. Take good care of them, R3xx based cards always tend to die on me.

It's stock cooling solution that kills them in most cases. Also, I'm out of Zalmans 🙁.

henk717 wrote on 2022-12-05, 01:25:

Recorded a video for my MS-Dos 7.1 floppy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Mp0szm-fA
Spent a lot of effort over the years on making this the most feature packed boot floppy I could make, its a single floppy that allows you to install MS-Dos 7.1 with a good set of memory managers, slowdown utilities, cd-drivers, tools and more.

Awesome! That's a great project.
And it comes just at the right time as I'm about to install my DOS/Win98-Laptop and I'm still using my tools from 'back then'.

HanSolo wrote on 2022-12-05, 18:08:

henk717 wrote on 2022-12-05, 01:25:

Recorded a video for my MS-Dos 7.1 floppy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Mp0szm-fA
Spent a lot of effort over the years on making this the most feature packed boot floppy I could make, its a single floppy that allows you to install MS-Dos 7.1 with a good set of memory managers, slowdown utilities, cd-drivers, tools and more.

Awesome! That's a great project.
And it comes just at the right time as I'm about to install my DOS/Win98-Laptop and I'm still using my tools from 'back then'.

Thanks! It feels a lot like digital origamy trying to find ways to squeeze out enough kilobytes to make more programs fit, most of it has been compressed with UPX on the strongest settings (After decompressing the original compression of the file).
Let me know how it works for you 😁

henk717 wrote on 2022-12-05, 18:24:

HanSolo wrote on 2022-12-05, 18:08:

henk717 wrote on 2022-12-05, 01:25:

Recorded a video for my MS-Dos 7.1 floppy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Mp0szm-fA
Spent a lot of effort over the years on making this the most feature packed boot floppy I could make, its a single floppy that allows you to install MS-Dos 7.1 with a good set of memory managers, slowdown utilities, cd-drivers, tools and more.

Awesome! That's a great project.
And it comes just at the right time as I'm about to install my DOS/Win98-Laptop and I'm still using my tools from 'back then'.

Thanks! It feels a lot like digital origamy trying to find ways to squeeze out enough kilobytes to make more programs fit, most of it has been compressed with UPX on the strongest settings (After decompressing the original compression of the file).
Let me know how it works for you 😁

As an Exe-packer I would recommend aPACK. That gave me better results than UPX on a 4K-Intro 20 years ago. (But things might look different with larger Exe-files)

Have you considered using the higher density format of Fdformat that you also mention in the video? I used that back then for some of my disks.