India Pale Ale is too precious to rinse PCBs with.

Well, I guess you could use it after it's gone once through...

took things abit to far on my vista laptop. I even have a custom login screen, removed the windows logo and everything. I'm working on a removing the vista orb that shows up before the login screen.
Next I'll make a custom bios screen and boot slash screen.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

Like, imagine if DOS MechWarrior looked and sounded like this instead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI8-Oq3G9CI

I wasn't ready for that music in the bar scene at ~55 sec mark.

Jade Falcon wrote:

took things abit to far on my vista laptop. I even have a custom login screen, removed the windows logo and everything. I'm working on a removing the vista orb that shows up before the login screen.
Next I'll make a custom bios screen and boot slash screen.

My God. You installed Vista on that really nice Asus with the GTX 260? There's literally no advantage to that. In every case I've ever seen 7 is more efficient than Vista.

You may not have raped the words as snover said... You've done worse and raped the computer xD

Lol, no vista is far better for that system.
Older laptops with mobile g92 core Nvidia cards can get buggy in 7. Most older laptops with nvidia Optimus and g92 cards will not even work on 7. Well you can install 7, but the video drivers will likly not work.
7 on this laptop will lose you the gpu power saving and voltage control. You need that otherwise the system will over heat and shut off at lower loads.
Oddly most manufacturers had custom drivers for g92 cards that worked with that laptops power saving stuff and alot dells, and some HPs with g92s for instance will not even work with stock nvidia drivers.

That and the drivers are optimized for vista and I prefer it...

Jade Falcon wrote:

Lol, no vista is far better for that system. Older laptops with mobile g92 core Nvidia cards can get buggy in 7. Most older lap […]
Show full quote

Lol, no vista is far better for that system.
Older laptops with mobile g92 core Nvidia cards can get buggy in 7. Most older laptops with nvidia Optimus and g92 cards will not even work on 7. Well you can install 7, but the video drivers will likly not work.
7 on this laptop will lose you the gpu power saving and voltage control. You need that otherwise the system will over heat and shut off at lower loads.
Oddly most manufacturers had custom drivers for g92 cards that worked with that laptops power saving stuff and alot dells, and some HPs with g92s for instance will not even work with stock nvidia drivers.

That and the drivers are optimized for vista and I prefer it...

Ok I guess since your not using this for gaming that makes sense. If this laptop was being used for gaming the loss of power savings to gain performance would be acceptable. If your main goal is stability and battery life though your way is the better way to go.

Its a big problem for gaming too. The lack a voltage control and being able to use the 260gtx would be devastating.
Take the older area51 laptops with 8800gtx 9800gt and 260m's, your stuck using vista on most of them. NVidia never made a driver that works with those system (that I know of) and Dell only made a vista driver for most of them.

Its a likewise problem the ROG, but with the ROG you can get the card to work right in 7 with drivers off NVidia site, but you loose all voltage and power control so the card will just over heat and shut off. The only fix would be to run the fan at full speed. Even then the system could over heat. I had quite a few older gaming laptop and all but a few with a g92 card ran over 100c at full load.

I did load a few games on the laptop to test like SH3 and the system runs so hot under 7 and with newer NVidia drivers I wonder if Satin had one.
Plop vista on it with the Asus drivers and the card can control the voltage and clock speeds and fan.

EDIT:
Anther side note for gaming, the older laptops with G92 core cards tend to have better drivers for vista vs7 and your likely get higher FPS under vista over 7, if you can get win7 drivers to work witch is more then doable if the laptop lacks Optimus tech. Older systems with Optimus were a nightmare.

Replaced a broken power button on a Gateway 450 desktop system. Well known part to break on late 90s Gateway systems where the power button sinks into the case when the power button plastic pole snaps. Actively looking for the clear plastic power button harness part on a late 90s or early 2000 Gateway desktop computer. Found the replacement power buttons on Ebay, but if any of you ever come across the back part or front cover/bezel please give me a holler.

Ohh, yeah those kind of things like to brake.

Mine has not, yet, so I am doing some anticipatory parts hunting since the button snapped. I have four of the power buttons now. 🤣

Tested two soundblaster cards with the P60 system and it seems that the CT4670 is a little less of a resource "hog" than the CT4760 when playing Doom. Could also be a misconception though.
Quake on the other hand seems not to be affected at large.

I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to get both running under DOS.

Half retro half what the fuck....

My 4GB Sandisk flip USB stick that I keep formatted to FAT32 for transferring stuff back and forth to and from various vintage OS's so I went to 3 different stores looking for a decent flash drive under the 32GB FAT32 limit since I need one to get files to my iMac G3 Bondi running OS 9.2.2 and it turns out the local walmart was selling 32GB Sandisk BTS (or some such non-sense) flash drives for 5 dollars. I'm pretty sure 32GB of flash memory costs more than $5 so I must admit I'm confused as to why there selling them this cheap. I talked to the guy and supposedly there back to school surplus but that still doesn't explain why they are marked down so much. The drive seems to work fine and is about as fast as you would expect given my laptops somewhat out of date USB 2.0 ports.

I could buy up all those drives and sell them on eBay for $12 and double my money if I cut corners on shipping. I may actually do that if I can raise enough capitol to get the op going.

Jade Falcon wrote:

Its a big problem for gaming too. The lack a voltage control and being able to use the 260gtx would be devastating. Take the old […]
Show full quote

Its a big problem for gaming too. The lack a voltage control and being able to use the 260gtx would be devastating.
Take the older area51 laptops with 8800gtx 9800gt and 260m's, your stuck using vista on most of them. NVidia never made a driver that works with those system (that I know of) and Dell only made a vista driver for most of them.

Its a likewise problem the ROG, but with the ROG you can get the card to work right in 7 with drivers off NVidia site, but you loose all voltage and power control so the card will just over heat and shut off. The only fix would be to run the fan at full speed. Even then the system could over heat. I had quite a few older gaming laptop and all but a few with a g92 card ran over 100c at full load.

I did load a few games on the laptop to test like SH3 and the system runs so hot under 7 and with newer NVidia drivers I wonder if Satin had one.
Plop vista on it with the Asus drivers and the card can control the voltage and clock speeds and fan.

EDIT:
Anther side note for gaming, the older laptops with G92 core cards tend to have better drivers for vista vs7 and your likely get higher FPS under vista over 7, if you can get win7 drivers to work witch is more then doable if the laptop lacks Optimus tech. Older systems with Optimus were a nightmare.

Everything I'm hearing here makes it sound like G80 derived cores like (G92) should never have found there way onto laptops. G80 is even too much for some of my mATX machines (Christ, I had a 8800GTX from EVGA inside an Athlon 64 x2 95w machine and even with an exhaust fan it made the side panel burning hot) but G92 based GPU's like 9800GTX+ are acceptable. They sit right on the edge of the thermal envelope but the machine doesn't get burning hot even after about 3 hours of Metro 2033.

Anyways what stops you from forcing 7 to load Vista drivers? IIRC Windows 7 was designed to accept drivers for Vista. I also wonder if there's anyway to mod the drivers to work correctly if that's not possible. If not I would look into cooling mods. Maybe some faster fans and better thermal paste? In any case I'm sure glad I didn't buy the G72GX I had a chance to buy. It even said in the description that it was warped in one spot from the heat output. I thought it was damage from something else that was mistaken for heat damage but now I wonder...

Well I spent a good long time with a old area 51 trying to get 7 to work right with the drivers, dell put a lock out on the driver that stop them from installing.
I ended up installing vista on the system, pull the driver files off the system then install 7. it did not preform well nor did Optimus, or fan controls work.
The asus is alot better in that both the gpu and cpu can kick up the fan. But there is only one fan.

attached is the systems temps, this is with the best Tim and pads with a fan the can run unto 6200rpm.
All I have running is firefox (2 tabs and one dl) and rainmeter and my AV software. with all power saving stuff on.
This first temp is the gpu core. and the fan is not at 0rpm.

And this is the system at full load after about 30 seconds.
with 7 or drivers off nvidia's site the gpu would be well over 100c.

EDIT:
This laptop is no LAPtop, its a heater in its own right. Its not safe to use on your lap.
I'll need to do some cooling mods at some point, I know I'll have it all apart to paint black and red. so maybe then.

Jade Falcon wrote:

And this is the system at full load after about 30 seconds. with 7 or drivers off nvidia's site the gpu would be well over 100c. […]
Show full quote

And this is the system at full load after about 30 seconds.
with 7 or drivers off nvidia's site the gpu would be well over 100c.

EDIT:
This laptop is no LAPtop, its a heater in its own right. Its not safe to use on your lap.
I'll need to do some cooling mods at some point, I know I'll have it all apart to paint black and red. so maybe then.

Yeah, this abomination should never have existed.

Getting the Commodore 64 in the mail today, so I'll be able to set it up later on either today or tomorrow.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Yeah, this abomination should never have existed.

Honestly mobile hardware can take the heat far better.
Most older gaming laptops are like this, the 8800,9800 and 260 were just not good cards for mobile systems. But there was not much anything better at the time.

The scary thing is a systems like the older m17x, 2 8800gtx in sli in a laptop 😲 oddly ATI cards for laptops were not a good seller and not many were made like the nvidia cards. I'd love to drop in a 4870 or newer card like the 740gt in the system, but asus used a reverse slot so it would be a pain to get anything newer to fit. I think the newest card that been used in the older ROG laptop like mine is the 470 and 570m and that requires you to make a custom heat sink mounting plate.
And wile the 4xx/5xx cards can take the heat far better, its not much of a better card in terms of heat and power use.
Something like the 740gt would be a nice card for the system. drop in a faster c2d or c2q and it would be a rather nice all rounder.

I think I'll make a wire mesh bottom for the laptop that will allow more air to flow over the cpu and gpu. Also dropping in a faster cpu with the same TPD will help abit as I would not be pushing the cpu quite as hard all the time.

Question: has anyone ever heard of a cartridge called IDE64 for the Commodore 64? Looks like a Hard Drive cartridge to load/save games and stuff onto the drive (CF card standard, SD, MMC, IDE/SATA HDD/CD/DVD, LS-120 and ZIP [PSU required] optional) to be in place of the 1541 floppy drive.