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Retro confessions. What are yours?

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First post, by Moogle!

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I confess that I think those Roland speakers everyone has to have are overpriced and over rated and I refuse to buy them.

I also never cared for the Doom level 1 theme and think it is mildly catchy at best.

Last edited by Moogle! on 2020-11-07, 01:48. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 749, by Almoststew1990

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I'm really not that into 3DFX cards, ones later than the Voodoo 2 anyway. My first Windows 98 PC (that I built as a retro PC) had a TNT2 Pro in it and I never once ran into an issue where a game would not support Direct X or OpenGL. I have a Voodoo 3 PCI that I fortunately picked up for £15 in an box of assorted junky parts and I rarely use it.

I've never cared for period correctness beyond what is needed to get a game to work properly.

I've never cared for CRTs. The games I play mostly are Windows 98 accelerated games so I just run them at 1280*1024, the native res of my LCD screen because I play them on hardware that can run them at 60 or75fps/Hz at these resolutions. The DOS games that I play at 640*480 generally "look so bad" that the non native resolution scaling is not the problem (it's the colour depth or sprite size / number of pixels or number of animated frames per second or whatever).

The Duke 3D theme song Grabbag or whatever it is also isn't that great. Much better songs later on in the soundtrack!

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I have a vacancy for a main Windows 98 PC

Reply 2 of 749, by Joseph_Joestar

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I don't particularly care about stuff older than Socket 7. Main reason: no PS2 ports. This means no optical mouse, and that's a dealbreaker for me. Hated mechanical ball mice back then, still hate them now.

Also, I don't see myself ever building a 386 or 486 rig since newer CPUs can be slowed down to those speeds using SetMul and Throttle. Perhaps things would be different if I had one back in the day, but I started with a Pentium 133, and have no nostalgia for anything made before that.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 5 of 749, by Con 2 botones

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- Recently saw a CRT monitor working and I realized I don´t miss them, at 60hz I could clearly see the screen refresh (causing a bit of dizziness).
- I feel lazy when it comes to configuring sound in DOS, if it gets troublesome I quit.
- Never finished Doom nor Duke Nukem 3D

Reply 6 of 749, by wiretap

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I have always hated Apple my whole life, but I recently purchased a NIB dual CPU G4, and a Mac Mini G4 that runs MorphOS. Still looking to get a Quadra because Jurassic Park, and maybe a Color Classic or NeXT. I mainly just like them for the Motorola 680x0 CPU or PowerPC architecture, but I still loathe Mac OS and the company practices overall, and Steve Jobs as a person.

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Reply 9 of 749, by mothergoose729

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kolderman wrote on 2020-11-06, 19:28:

I have sc55, sc55mk2, mt32, cm32l sitting in cupboards because I find Munt and SCVA "good enough" and it leaves room for other modules from korg, casio, etc.

Unforgivable

Reply 10 of 749, by VileR

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Never cared for optical PC storage media or optical drives at all. The sluggishness, spin-up/mounting delays, and above all that infernal NOISE. One thing I'm glad we no longer need.

Never really managed to get into any of the Wing Commander OR Ultima games.

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Reply 11 of 749, by jefklak

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mothergoose729 wrote on 2020-11-06, 19:30:

I didn't think Secret of Monkey Island was all that funny.

unforgivable?

(I put a HDMI-out PCI-E card on a 2006 WinXP build. Ooh.)

Reply 12 of 749, by TheMobRules

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VileR wrote on 2020-11-06, 20:04:

Never cared for optical PC storage media or optical drives at all. The sluggishness, spin-up/mounting delays, and above all that infernal NOISE. One thing I'm glad we no longer need.

Fully agree. I was OK with my first CD-ROM drive (a 4x Acer), but soon after when the whole speed craze started it became unbearable. Not only the noise and constant spin-up/down but also the general unreliability of those stupid drives. Without a doubt the component that I had to swap more frequently due to failure in my PCs during the 90's, maybe I had bad luck, but the lifespan of those things was a joke.

Reply 13 of 749, by Joseph_Joestar

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VileR wrote on 2020-11-06, 20:04:

The sluggishness, spin-up/mounting delays, and above all that infernal NOISE.

To eliminate CD/DVD drive noise in DOS, you can use CDBeQuiet! by @Locutus.

Setting drive speed to 4x or 6x makes it pretty much silent.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 15 of 749, by lafoxxx

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I confess I get mildly irritated when people call D_E1M1 music "Doom theme" -- when it's not.

I don't really like 3dfx graphics because I think it's overrated API, which is inferior to OpenGL/D3D (even Wrappers can get the job done with better perfoemance) in most games (Windows -- not DOS). I mean really, even in Unreal you can enable these missing effects in Preferences console. Shame we don't see advanced AA and filtering their products could offer though. Also cards are overpriced because they're no longer in production and API is dead (on the other hand, Aureal audio cards can be found much cheaper).

I get irritated when people call GeForce 2 MX GeForce 2 when in reality it's weaker than GeForce 256.

I hate VIA chipsets for Pentium 3 (from personal experience), and constantly open that lot on my local classified website just to see that computer dude's trying to sell for more than a year for ridiculous price of $1000 (it's got P3-s 1400, Vortex, GUS, Voodoo5, Infra-16, and all is built on some Chaintech board with Apollo 133T shipset -- why not use nicer board by ASUS (P2B) or Intel? There's also this description which lures buyers like "you can play games etc. etc. or just listen to RETRO WAVE on this PC) -- there's just so much wrong about this PC -- "devil is in the details" -- that's what I want to tell that guy.

Also I realize I'm an ASUS fanboy even when it comes to retro parts -- even while I understand Gigabyte board (the blue one) on i815 chipset looks more solid. Also ABIT and EPOX (good brands) are for some reason associated by me with "noname".

Last edited by lafoxxx on 2020-11-07, 11:45. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 16 of 749, by cyclone3d

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Moogle! wrote on 2020-11-06, 21:33:

I remember going from my Mitsumi 4X's zip-zip, zip-zip to the VRRRRRRRMMMMMMMM of the 12X and 16X. I quite like that sound, actually.

It depends on the drive. I have a 12x CD drive that I have had for years that is really quiet. Overall way more responsive than faster rated drives as well.

Also have to take into account that a lot of CD's are horribly balanced which is what causes a lot of noise.

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Reply 17 of 749, by leileilol

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Moogle! wrote on 2020-11-06, 21:33:

I remember going from my Mitsumi 4X's zip-zip, zip-zip to the VRRRRRRRMMMMMMMM of the 12X and 16X. I quite like that sound, actually.

Weird how there's no videos on the internet about that drive's iconic whining. It was a thing I wanted to try replicating in code once 😀

I don't have any PCI 3D video cards. All in on AGP... (the classic secondary devices don't count)

I'm still miffed how "DOS Games" are defined by mostly Apogee/Epic crap with a heavy FPS bias. It's a very ASP-revised history. Keen this, Duke that, "wow the gears war guy made rabbit sonic"...and of course "DOOM 95!!!! oooh dat nostalgia *Microsoft Synthesizer rendition of D_E1M1 plays*". and when it's not the texas/maryland shareware, it's Alley Cat. 😐

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Reply 19 of 749, by lafoxxx

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leileilol wrote on 2020-11-07, 01:15:

I'm still miffed how "DOS Games" are defined by mostly Apogee/Epic crap with a heavy FPS bias. It's a very ASP-revised history. Keen this, Duke that, "wow the gears war guy made rabbit sonic"...and of course "DOOM 95!!!! oooh dat nostalgia *Microsoft Synthesizer rendition of D_E1M1 plays*". and when it's not the texas/maryland shareware, it's Alley Cat. 😐

The "problem" here is -- these games were very successful commercially, that's why they're so famous everyone knows them. Hidden gems are almost always known only to hobbyists and enthusiasts (in past -- because not everyone had computers, and today -- because AAA games "overshadow" other ones)
It's like "Oh, so you're into hard rock and heavy metal? I like AC/DC and Metallica, too!"