darry wrote on 2021-01-19, 19:10:

imi wrote on 2021-01-19, 18:51:

Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-01-19, 06:25:

but the 486 motherboards will live forever, if not in use.

Varta disagrees with you.

Old Varta battery : "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of motherboards”

EDIT: I wish I had come up with that, see Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Changed all to lithium cells, and some of my motherboard already have originally lihtium cells.

darry wrote on 2021-01-19, 19:10:

imi wrote on 2021-01-19, 18:51:

Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-01-19, 06:25:

but the 486 motherboards will live forever, if not in use.

Varta disagrees with you.

Old Varta battery : "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of motherboards”

EDIT: I wish I had come up with that, see Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Hmmm, perhaps sligthly off topic, I have some early 90's Lego battery boxes and a control center (also Lego) lying around with damage from old batteries. Those still need to be sorted out.

domomex89 wrote on 2021-01-18, 00:38:

This game?

I personally agree with @hyperrmachine though.
I think that Tetris Classic is the best Tetris game that Spectrum Holobyte has released. It's much easier to play than Welltris and much more fun to play than Super Tetris and Faces-tris 3.

I think that's the best tetris to play with friends (and destroy friendships), although I must say that it may be very colourful. If you're playing alone... I don't remember what Tetris I played on PC, but my favourite is Atari Tetris (arcade).

First multiplayer Tetris were a "fair" competition, where making lines faster than your opponent was the goal. Gameboy Tetris had a feature that sent "lines" to your opponent when you cleared more than 1 line at the same time.

Varmint Eittris is warfare tetris. It can be played by (up to) four players, but I must confess that playing three on a keyboard feels uncomfortable (I did). When playing, you have a key to choose a "target" to send your cleared lines... but you can get also some "gifts" that you can send to your "target". Some of that gifts would be reversing your opponent controls or making that every piece they get is an S or Z piece. Also, if you're quick enough you can "stack" bonuses on your targets.

There are DOS and Windows versions. I remember that you could use your MIDI or MOD files to get your own soundtrack when playing, but that's purely eyecandy.

Probably not retro enough. But my mrs plays (the short, catchily named) "Tetris - The Absolute - The Grand Master 2 Plus" pretty much exclusively since everything else seems too, I don't know, simplistic and childish, by comparison. An unfair judgement, I know. But there is something extra about the professionalism of it, it seems.

When I was a teenager (around early 2000s) I had Compaq Presario CDS-520 equipped with an AMD 486 SX-2 66 MHz. The computer was struggling to play MP3 files at the lowest possibly quality because of the fact that CPU hadn't been equipped with FPU unit.
The operating system was Windows 95. It had it's problems, but it worked. Many of the problems came because of the "DOS" based OS (although the PC was not fast enough to handle NT). Then I had another computer with Pentium 166 MMX paired with Windows 98 SE. This time the computer had much more power, but still, crappy Windows "dos based". It crashed every hour, that was a nightmare. Especially when you've loaded the computer with some software.
And the need for reinstalling OS after couple months because of the viruses, unused files and so on. Lot's of mess.

After many many years I felt that nostalgia and installed Windows 98 on one of my computers. Don't know why, but it felt like almost unusable piece of crap. You want to copy files from CD-ROM? Bang, you got freeze until copying is done. You want to put more memory? Nope. It will crash your system spectacularly. And so on and so on.
Maybe my expectations were too high, but after that experience I'm cured and I don't have "DOS" based Windows on almost any of my computers.

Since then I'm always trying to put Windows 2000 whenever is possible. I found it to be rock solid, stable. It handles dual core processors well, it handles let's say 2048 MB of ram with no issue. Also developing programs for the NT platform is a lot better experience (Windows 2000 is compatible with Visual C++ 2005 and MSVS2005 IDE).

Since then I'm trying to stick with NT based OS'es from Microsoft. Mainly Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP. I hope some day I will give another try and put some 9x OS again on my PC. This time with a lot lower expectations 😁

I put 40 and sometimes 80 GB hard drives in all my machines, even my 286. Screw having to delete something to install something other. I do have period correct 40 and 80 MFM/IDE hard drives but i just have them on display because the speed is horrid and the have so little space.

Also i pretty much like retro tech for the tracking down parts/building aspect. Once the machine is built i just put it on a shelf for display until i want to play some games, end up playing lemmings for one day and on the shelf it goes. Repairing a broken computer? Even more entertaining! Once its repaired i just post it on facebook how i managed to get it going and it goes on the shelf.

hmmm! a love testn 486's version like a Cyrix!

Retro hardware is overrated. I just want the smoothest, prettiest game experience even if it means a source port or re-implementation.

And I'll take enhancements of all kinds, even if they violate the 'purity' of the experience. Though it's true that some enhancements or emulation are just uglier, like color inaccuracies ruining some pre-GPU game graphics or mediocre 3D models replacing quality sprite work.

mOPQatjjIGnZ6ORlY wrote on 2021-01-24, 19:54:

Retro hardware is overrated. I just want the smoothest, prettiest game experience

Don't play retro games then. Modern games are very pretty.

Modern games are pretty, for people who equate high resolution and generic Uncanny Valley 3d-simulation with "pretty".

winuser_pl wrote on 2021-01-24, 14:23:

When I was a teenager (around early 2000s) I had Compaq Presario CDS-520 equipped with an AMD 486 SX-2 66 MHz. The computer was […]
Show full quote

When I was a teenager (around early 2000s) I had Compaq Presario CDS-520 equipped with an AMD 486 SX-2 66 MHz. The computer was struggling to play MP3 files at the lowest possibly quality because of the fact that CPU hadn't been equipped with FPU unit.
The operating system was Windows 95. It had it's problems, but it worked. Many of the problems came because of the "DOS" based OS (although the PC was not fast enough to handle NT). Then I had another computer with Pentium 166 MMX paired with Windows 98 SE. This time the computer had much more power, but still, crappy Windows "dos based". It crashed every hour, that was a nightmare. Especially when you've loaded the computer with some software.
And the need for reinstalling OS after couple months because of the viruses, unused files and so on. Lot's of mess.

After many many years I felt that nostalgia and installed Windows 98 on one of my computers. Don't know why, but it felt like almost unusable piece of crap. You want to copy files from CD-ROM? Bang, you got freeze until copying is done. You want to put more memory? Nope. It will crash your system spectacularly. And so on and so on.
Maybe my expectations were too high, but after that experience I'm cured and I don't have "DOS" based Windows on almost any of my computers.

Since then I'm always trying to put Windows 2000 whenever is possible. I found it to be rock solid, stable. It handles dual core processors well, it handles let's say 2048 MB of ram with no issue. Also developing programs for the NT platform is a lot better experience (Windows 2000 is compatible with Visual C++ 2005 and MSVS2005 IDE).

Since then I'm trying to stick with NT based OS'es from Microsoft. Mainly Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP. I hope some day I will give another try and put some 9x OS again on my PC. This time with a lot lower expectations 😁

Windows 9x os's are unstable crash happy messes. Windows 2000 won't run smoothly on really old systems. Try playing Flash files on an AMD 80586 133mhz. Lotsa fun!

I don't get the fascination with "midi". It's not music, it's just a load of silly beeps and squeaks!

texterted wrote on 2021-01-25, 10:00:

I don't get the fascination with "midi". It's not music, it's just a load of silly beeps and squeaks!

Aren't you speaking about FM synthesis...? 🙂

BTW, MIDI is just a communication protocol, it is not type of music.

There you go then, told you I didn't get it! 😁

texterted wrote on 2021-01-25, 10:00:

I don't get the fascination with "midi". It's not music, it's just a load of silly beeps and squeaks!

Try pc-speaker "music"...

texterted wrote on 2021-01-25, 10:00:

I don't get the fascination with "midi". It's not music, it's just a load of silly beeps and squeaks!

I don't get it either. MOD music was vastly superior.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-01-25, 14:01:

texterted wrote on 2021-01-25, 10:00:

I don't get the fascination with "midi". It's not music, it's just a load of silly beeps and squeaks!

I don't get it either. MOD music was vastly superior.

Absolutely. The only DOS era sound card comparable with Amiga was GUS.

texterted wrote on 2021-01-25, 10:00:

I don't get the fascination with "midi". It's not music, it's just a load of silly beeps and squeaks!

Boooo, Midi, if done correctly, is amazing. (Prince of Persia 2 with SoundBlaster 16 or Dune 2 with AdLib and Roland MT-32)

Even the PS2 had games that used Midi-Sequencers for high quality music that perfectly loops, one example is Silent Hill 2.

Using a Midi-Sequencer for game music can be so much nicer and more organic due to how it allows perfect infinite looping of music and how it properly ends the songs with the last instruments being played rather just fading out while the song never ends.

That's must be why a lot of DOS/Windows games used CD Audio as soon as possible.