VOGONS


Authenticity vs Power

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Reply 20 of 48, by appiah4

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Building the most powerful possible example of a certain architecture has its appeal but I think it is rather short lived, especially once you realize how it's not as difficult or rare as you think.

Building something more authentic to its time frame is eventually more satisfying, but means you usually need more PCs to cover a wide period of games.

I started out trying the latter and settled for the former.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 21 of 48, by LunarG

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FuzzyLogic wrote:

Get the card authentic card and enjoy both. Some people get pleasure out 100% OEM computers and cars and some love to max them out and create "sleepers." Ask yourself where you side. Maybe it's both.

My opinion is that PCs are meant to be upgraded and that "period correctness" is a fallacy. But I come from a cobble your PC yourself world. Yet even Compaqs have slots and cards that are interchangeable for upgradeability and repairability. Back in the day, we used to upgrade our PCs specs as much as we could, and we still do it today. For example I been using an i7-3770 with a 660 Ti video card for six years or more and upgraded only upgrade the video card to a 1080 last August. I've also upgraded the SSDs and will mod the BIOS so I can boot from NVMe. That's certainly not authentic or period correct for a 2012 PC.

In the "modern era" of computers, basically since the advent of PCIe, lifespan of parts have generally been longer. Keeping a first gen i7 running still today, may very well be viable. So getting a new graphics card for it, wouldn't be "not period correct". I mean, even a 1080Ti could work great in an overclocked i7 920. These pieces of hardware are both from the "modern period" so to speak.

But for example, getting hold of a PCI Voodoo 5 for use in a 486, would be pointless.

The difference between the best hardware in 1996 vs. the best hardware in 1997 would be MAJOR. It could well be a 100% increase across the board, perhaps more.
The difference between the best hardware in 2005 vs. 2006, would have been very much smaller.

So "period correctness" isn't about having a "as from the factory" brand name PC, but about using hardware that may realistically have been used together when it was relevant.

WinXP : PIII 1.4GHz, 512MB RAM, 73GB SCSI HDD, Matrox Parhelia, SB Audigy 2.
Win98se : K6-3+ 500MHz, 256MB RAM, 80GB HDD, Matrox Millennium G400 MAX, Voodoo 2, SW1000XG.
DOS6.22 : Intel DX4, 64MB RAM, 1.6GB HDD, Diamond Stealth64 DRAM, GUS 1MB, SB16.

Reply 22 of 48, by dionb

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Yep. And in fact even back in 1996/1997, the difference in CPU and VGA might have been huge, but if you had an 'old' Gravis Ultrasound and/or Sound Blaster AWE32, not to mention a good mechanical keyboard, there would have been little reason to upgrade those parts even if you'd just upgraded your 486 with ET4000AX to a Pentium II with S3 Trio64 and Voodoo 1.

But again, with retro stuff it's whatever floats your goat. One person's "period correct" might be exactly the system he had back then - warts, odd combinations of old and new and all, another's would be the system they lusted after but couldn't afford and a third might want the exact configuration a system was supplied in.

Reply 23 of 48, by torindkflt

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dionb wrote:

One person's "period correct" might be exactly the system he had back then - warts, odd combinations of old and new and all [...] and a third might want the exact configuration a system was supplied in.

I typically tend to fall under both of these categories, and for me the two categories have a significant overlap.

The first category is why it took me so long to finally finish my 486 rebuild, because I was trying to recreate as close to exactly the same as possible a mail-order CTO system from my childhood. I wasn't wanting something "souped up" or "maxxed out" or anything like that...I wanted that system from my childhood, exactly as it was when my family first got it in 1995, identical specs across the board, including any flaws and detriments...right down to the non-functional tape cartridge drive. 🤣 When I eventually get the money and time to recreate my first and second custom builds, I'll certainly go through the same process.

As for the third category, that's how I am with store-bought systems from my childhood that I am trying to recollect. I prefer if possible to get ones that are the same model and have factory-original specs. If absolutely possible, especially for the more uncommon systems, I am willing to provide a little leeway (case in point, the CTX EzBook laptop I bought off eBay a few years ago has a slightly different GPU and CD-ROM, but is otherwise identical to my childhood CTX laptop on the rest of the core specs). But, if I can get a system that is exactly the same as how my family originally received it on day one, I prefer that. This is typically where the overlap with the first category occurs, specifically regarding the "exactly the system he had back then" qualifier.

That said, I'm not totally against upgrading or improving a vintage system, especially ones that I don't have a personal history or attachment to. Case in point, I was more than happy to add a hard drive to my dual-floppy AT&T PC 6300, eager to add both a 5.25in floppy and internal Zip drive to an IBM K6-2 system I was given for disposal to make it a "storage media bridge" system, and I am still on the lookout for a 20MB hard drive and controller card for my Toshiba T3100 (although in this particular case it would be more of a restoration...it originally shipped from the factory with a 20MB drive, but the factory-original drive and controller had been replaced by a previous owner with the 10MB versions for reasons unknown).

Last edited by torindkflt on 2019-02-28, 18:39. Edited 3 times in total.

Reply 24 of 48, by The Serpent Rider

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Would you stick with the high end card, or sell it for the authentic one?

Only POWEEER!
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I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 25 of 48, by SaxxonPike

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This is a kind of game that you can play any which way you please. We're all going to have a different opinion. I'm in the "put whatever the heck you want inside" camp.

Many others here have already covered what I would suggest, so all I have to add... options are nice, and if you feel like you might miss having the option to go superpowered or go authentic in the future, you probably will.

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Sound Blaster
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Reply 26 of 48, by doaks80

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It's worth mentioning that "power" (or modern) is not always a good thing, many games run better on period correct hardware, as it supports the right features and quirks the game needs. It's about what it great for gaming - and in most cases, close to period correct is best.

k6-3+ 400 / s3 virge DX+voodoo1 / awe32(32mb)
via c3 866 / s3 savage4+voodoo2 sli / audigy1+awe64(8mb)
athlon xp 3200+ / voodoo5 5500 / diamond mx300
pentium4 3400 / geforce fx5950U / audigy2 ZS
core2duo E8500 / radeon HD5850 / x-fi titanium

Reply 27 of 48, by SaxxonPike

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doaks80 wrote:

It's worth mentioning that "power" (or modern) is not always a good thing, many games run better on period correct hardware, as it supports the right features and quirks the game needs. It's about what it great for gaming - and in most cases, close to period correct is best.

Absolutely. Intent is key. Compatibility should definitely constrain the use of modern parts. After all, what good is the hardware if it can't run the software?

I have a sound card that does not operate well on P4 boards well at all. The games will run, but the sound will be complete garbage. FPS won't matter one bit if I can't enjoy the experience otherwise. I have success on KT133A boards, so that's a constraint.

Chronological constraints ('period accurate') are just as valid. Ya just pare back all the things that won't work, and everything that's left is eligible. Constraints make things interesting and challenging.

Sound device guides:
Sound Blaster
Aztech
OPL3-SA

Reply 28 of 48, by appiah4

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SaxxonPike wrote:
Absolutely. Intent is key. Compatibility should definitely constrain the use of modern parts. After all, what good is the hardwa […]
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doaks80 wrote:

It's worth mentioning that "power" (or modern) is not always a good thing, many games run better on period correct hardware, as it supports the right features and quirks the game needs. It's about what it great for gaming - and in most cases, close to period correct is best.

Absolutely. Intent is key. Compatibility should definitely constrain the use of modern parts. After all, what good is the hardware if it can't run the software?

I have a sound card that does not operate well on P4 boards well at all. The games will run, but the sound will be complete garbage. FPS won't matter one bit if I can't enjoy the experience otherwise. I have success on KT133A boards, so that's a constraint.

Chronological constraints ('period accurate') are just as valid. Ya just pare back all the things that won't work, and everything that's left is eligible. Constraints make things interesting and challenging.

Your sound card intrinsically knows Pentium 4 is shit and refuses to work on it. Athlon forever.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 30 of 48, by retardware

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Reading the forum shows how many different aims everybody has with his/her old computer stuff.

For me, for example that 1985 IBM 5170 Personal Computer AT that I found on the street and saved from the scrapyard reminds me of the computer I wanted when I was at school, when the sale of my fully equipped Apple II system only yielded enough to buy a "cheap" (almost 6000 Deutsche Marks, or maybe $5000 at that time) PC clone in 1984.

I was a long-time AMD fanboy, and so I put in the best K6 processors. But I was dissatisfied by its Descent 3 performance, and recently I found two`of the very rare Baby AT mobos that can take directly the late Pentium 3 Tualatin. From the outside, the computer looks almost like 1985, but the inside, except for the antique PSU, will soon be from 2000 to 2005.

This AT optics is compounded by a Model M keyboard and a first-generation Microsoft Serial-PS/2 compatible mouse. Which is, like the keyboard, of a mechanical quality you do not see often nowadays. The only things which do not match the 1980s optics are the DVD drive and the 5.25" sound box from the 1990s, but this doesn't disturb me much. After all it is still an AT and not a modern ATX 😀

Reply 31 of 48, by appiah4

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SirNickity wrote:

Could just be that the sound card in question was too close to the CPU in a previous Athlon build, has suffered massive heat damage, and no longer works correctly. 😁

Well played, sir.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 32 of 48, by Vaudane

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I'm glad LunarG mentioned Ebay, which made me check and see a separate (*much* cheaper) listing to the one the seller I was watching had. The card arrived today and god it's beautiful. Doesn't look like it's ever graced the inside of a computer as the metal fingers don't have any of the score marks that appear when you push a card into a slot. Sadly this one didn't come with the manual and floppies and I doubt the other seller would sell them separately (tried to haggle on another piece - a memory module which he claimed he had no idea what it's for and it's build specific for the early deskpro's -of which I don't imagine there's a huge amount left in existence and even fewer collectors. There was give and take, just a "no" so i need to decide if 55 euros is money I wish to part with.)

There appears to be a memory expansion section for this card, and the manual talks about "Advanced Graphics Memory 109959" of which I've never seen mention of anywhere else ever but can only assume it is indeed a memory expansion board similar to the RAM and it's exceedingly rare.

SirNickity wrote:

OTOH, if you're planning to run Windows on that thing, 512KB is a nearly pointless amount of video RAM. I guess that's where I become a hypocrite, because I have no desire to live in 640x480 when I could opt for a slightly more exotic card and have 1024x768 @ 16-bit color. It all depends on what you want to do with it. I have aspirations to start writing DOS and early Windows code, so I need more pixels, and don't want to settle for an 8-bit palette. If all I were doing is playing DOS games, well... 320x240x256 is enough for anyone, and 386s don't need fast video chips bogged down by slow busses, so you may as well go for period-correct if you're already almost there.

Pointlessly large, or pointlessly small for 1024x768:16? It will have 3.11 Workgroups on it once I've cloned the hdd (need to keep a copy of it in it's original "my childhood" glory). I was unaware you could even change the resolution in Win311.

Reply 33 of 48, by SirNickity

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Win 3.x was terrible about this. Actually, the whole situation was pretty sad back then. Some graphics cards just shipped with a dozen different drivers, each one for a different resolution / color palette combination. Your list would look like: "So-And-So VGA - 640x480 @ 256", "So-And-So VGA - 640x480 @ 64K", etc etc...

And then, there were refresh rates. A common solution was to use jumpers or DIP switches to set the monitor compatibility mode. E.g., one setting might configure the card for 72Hz @ 640x480, 60Hz @ 800x600, 43Hz Interlaced @ 1024x768. Flipping one of the switches might change 1024x768 to 60Hz non-interlaced as well. Not very granular, and surely a far cry from being able to pick resolution, color depth, and refresh rate independently via a common interface like we do now.

As for the memory, here's a chart I spent all afternoon painstakingly creating (read: stole from a Microsoft KB article):

Colors       16        256       32K***    64K***    16.7 Million***
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Resolution
640x480 256K* 256K 1 MB 1 MB 1 MB
800x600 256K 512K 1 MB 1 MB 1.5 MB
1024x768 512K 1 MB 1.5 MB 1.5 MB 2.5 MB
1280x1024 1 MB** 1.5 MB 2.5 MB 2.5 MB 4 MB

As you can see, 512K only gives you 800x600 @ 256. That's OK for games, but the occasional palette swapping when you switch between windows annoys me. If you want higher resolution, you only get 16(!) colors @ 1024x768. Yuck!

Here's a tip for ya though. If the existing memory on your card is in sockets, the expansion kit you need is probably just another round of that same part number. Look at the laser-etched part number on the chip and try to find that online. It's usually available for cheap. No need to track it down by the OEM part number. Even if the onboard RAM is soldered in, and in a different package (SOIC vs. DIP or whatever), you can usually find the DIP (etc.) variant by searching for the datasheet and seeing what other packages it shipped in.

Reply 34 of 48, by dionb

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Of course if you're talking about authenticity, don't forget the monitor. If you were running Win3.x, chances are you have a monitor that couldn't decently display 1024x768 anyway, at least not at a refresh rate that wouldn't induce headaches within a few minutes. I had an S3 868 card with 1MB that could have done 1024x768@8b, but that was simply unusable on my "Sunshine" 14" monitor. Instead 800x600@16b was this card's (and this monitor's) sweet spot. With 2MB I could have done 800x600@24b, but the difference between 16b and 32b was negligible, at least with Win3.x apps. I'd agree you'd want 1MB, but anything over that would be overkill unless you go anachronistic on the monitor - or have some 1995-era unobtainium 😉

That said, I don't have room to have the correct monitor with all my systems and hook pretty much all the VGA stuff up to a 17" Iiyama Diamondtron beast from 2002-ish. On that screen I love the added value my S3 928 3MB card gives, letting me do true color at 1024x768 (I'd prefer 16b colour at 1280x1024, but of course the Win3.x driver doesn't support that 🙁 )

Reply 35 of 48, by SirNickity

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Oh, too true. As a teenager, I had saved up enough to buy my own AST Advantage 486SX/25 desktop. Just under $1000 at the time. I had probably realized, but decided not to think about the fact that it didn't come with a monitor, and that would be another $200 or maybe $300. My dad, being equal parts sympathetic and realizing that I was into this stuff enough for it to be an actual investment into my future career path, chipped in under the radar of my mom's more frugal nature. That monitor was capable of 1024x768, but only interlaced. I got used to it, having gotten into Visual Basic coding and deciding the resolution was more important to me than the flicker. But, my dad's older 386 had a nicer monitor that could handle non-interlaced 1024x768, and it was certainly easier to look at.

I rocked that humble monitor until 1999, where I FINALLY got a digitally-controlled CRT that would do it non-interlaced. Three years later, Viewsonic VG150b -- LCD, baby! 😎

Reply 36 of 48, by FFXIhealer

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LunarG wrote:

In the "modern era" of computers, basically since the advent of PCIe, lifespan of parts have generally been longer. Keeping a first gen i7 running still today, may very well be viable. So getting a new graphics card for it, wouldn't be "not period correct". I mean, even a 1080Ti could work great in an overclocked i7 920. These pieces of hardware are both from the "modern period" so to speak.

I can totally confirm this, as I have hardware stretching back to 2008 running VERY modern OSes and doing VERY modern tasks. For example:

My 2010 Gaming Rig still runs today. Intel Core i7-860 quad-core, 16GB DDR3 memory, 256GB SSD, 3TB HDD, dual GTX 480s in SLI, runs Windows 10 perfectly, as well as most modern titles @1080 with Medium detail settings. Originally built in 2010, added the SSD in 2015 with the Windows 10 upgrade from Windows 7.

I have a 2008 Dell Vostro that I've retrofitted. The HDD was bad, so it got a new 1TB HDD and a 250GB SSD with Windows 10, a brand-new GT 1030, 8GB of DDR3 memory, and a used Core 2 Quad Q9650 I got off of Ebay. Works perfectly fine for all daily tasks.

I rebuilt a Windows XP system from LGA775, took out the Pentium Dual-Core and replaced it with a Xeon E5450 with the LGA775 mod done to it. I also injected the microcode into the BIOS. Boy, that was fun... #sarcasm. Anyway, 4GB of RAM and a 640GB and 3TB HDDs with a fresh install of Ubuntu Server and I have a fully-functional PLEX multimedia server as well as file server. A hell of a lot more reliable than a USB 3.0 HDD connected to my router.

As to the OP, I read some of the replies where people wanted to sort-of press their own opinion of what does and does not constitute "correct" retro behavior. I think this is a very personal hobby and no one can tell you how you are supposed to do it. I can only tell you what I enjoy doing with my own builds. Personally, I like to "max out" a specific system within a certain period of era correctness. For my Windows 98 rebuild, I eventually caved and replaced the 350MHz P2 with the fastest CPU that the motherboard could support - a 600MHz P3. I chose the fastest AGP graphics card available in the 1999 year (Riva TNT2), because I didn't want to step into full-on GPUs like the Radeon or Geforce line. To me, that came after this period. Besides, I did the same thing a lot of other people did here - I got dual Voodoo2 cards. I never had a Voodoo card before. As it turns out, it about breaks even with the TNT2 card in performance.

But who cares?

Me - I'm the only one who really cares about any of this. And that's ok. I'll do me. You do you. And don't let other people tell you you're doing this retro thing wrong.

Now, I can't wait to do the AGS-101 mod on my Game Boy Advance...

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Reply 37 of 48, by dionb

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Tbh, that whole "these days 10yo parts are still usable when in the past they wouldn't do half that" only applies if you focus on CPU & GPU. With other parts, maturity was reached much earlier. It's entirely true that in say 1999 (20 years ago) you wouldn't have been able to run anything current on a 1989 CPU or motherboard, but you'd have been able to use the AT case if you took a 1999-era AT motherboard, the floppy drive and keyboard at the very least. In 2009 (ten years ago), you'd have been able to keep literally everything except the CPU, motherboard and GPU (and possibly PSU if you went over-the-top on GPU) from a 1999 ATX build.

Right now unless you're a die-hard gamer we're getting to the point that intentional obsolescence is the main driver for hardware upgrades (no more Win10 drivers for that perfectly functional $card/$peripheral), but even that's not so new - your music isn't going to sound better on any PCI(e) sound cards than it would have done on a high-end ISA card.

Reply 38 of 48, by Baoran

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With retro computers you can always get/build computer at whatever power level you want. You could choose a power level of computer you need and then try to get authentic pc of that power level.

Reply 39 of 48, by appiah4

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dionb wrote:

your music isn't going to sound better on any PCI(e) sound cards than it would have done on a high-end ISA card.

Emm.. Were there any high end ISA cards with digital sourround output?

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.