The notion of period correctness might depend on means and possibly your location (so either way means play into it), also time or times. 30 years ago I had what I had and I upgraded what I could, meaning I ended up with mutant configurations that were... the least terrible choice I could make at the time, also very much dependent on availability. Didn't really have access to affordable components since they just did not exist. Simplified things, in a manner of speaking.

Now, if back then you had access to a vast selection of pre-builts of all shapes and configurations that you could then also drop a high-end 3D accelerator or GPU into without saving for a literal year to obtain it there's a good chance you were thinking in hardware generations the way we currently are back then even outside of DIY circles. My first Pentium carried me for *many* hardware generations, and I couldn't afford - literally - to consider, say, bottlenecks or optimal upgrade paths whenever I was even able upgrade.

Then, there's hindsight. Much easier to think in "period correctness" now when you sort of have all of those components available, and definitely well catalogued, benchmarked etc. You can theorycraft on an infinite scale before you even physically assemble anything. So roughly the "kids now have it so much easier and they don't even know it!" option.

Personally, I'm too not strict about period accuracy, but I do draw some lines per taste, like DOS on P4 is just pointless to me at best. If this were my only option, like I imagine it can be to some for a variety of reasons, I wouldn't mind it, because eh, if it works it works at that point. Plus nostalgia can be a factor. XP I'm having a hard time considering as retro, so my XP box is basically the maximum I was able to stick into it sans SLI, because screw that, not worth the hassle.

Bought a replacement laser for my Panasonic 3DO FZ-10 console a couple of weeks back, which arrived today. This is the second time I've had to replace the laser in this console, after it decided to stop reading discs after being in storage for a while.

I set aside some time to fit it, remembering how it took a couple of hours last time to tweak the potentiometer of the new laser to get all discs reading properly.

But to my surprise, after putting it in and testing it (after desoldering the ESD blob of course) - it just worked perfectly first time, reading everything including CD-R. I didn't have to do a single tweak, I was shocked to say the least!

Quickest fix I've had in a while with retro hardware.

I enjoy period correctness but there is definitely overlap. Do you need to play Doom on a 486 and not a pentium 1? Would I play doom on my pentium 3 or 4? probably not.
There is hardware overlap as well. I have a voodoo 3 in a pentium 3, but would i put it into a pentium4 ? no.
Also nothing beats the feel of playing Warcraft two on a CRT monitor , on a pentium with a ball mouse and a pair of cambridge soundworks speakers.

I had two Pentium 1s and i really wanted the new P1 i found in the old case because its cooler. I somehow in BIOS changed the HDD setting from auto to LBA and didnt realize it, so any time I was trying to install win 98 on a hard drive i was getting errors that it was not formatted and needed to be formatted. So the drive would be formatted but htne say it couldnt install win 98 becuase of wrong format. I took 2 days wondering what the heck was wrong . Why would win 98 isntall fine on the other pentium but not on this one.

What a waste of time for something so silly. Anyway glad both machines are now up and running perfectly. Sometimes a small issue causes to much trouble.

such wrote on 2026-06-09, 13:31:

Personally, I'm too not strict about period accuracy, but I do draw some lines per taste, like DOS on P4 is just pointless to me at best. If this were my only option, like I imagine it can be to some for a variety of reasons, I wouldn't mind it, because eh, if it works it works at that point. Plus nostalgia can be a factor. XP I'm having a hard time considering as retro, so my XP box is basically the maximum I was able to stick into it sans SLI, because screw that, not worth the hassle.

yes i'd agree, in fact i wouldn't have pure dos on anything P1 with 16mb ram or more tbh, i dont see the point as you can then have w95 or 98, have dos plus all the rest anyway - and these days shouldn't be struggling with tiny HDD in same way

i also don't like to "waste" capability although that's aesthetic/preference and not really period or anything "correct", i mean if its 64 bit then have 64 bit OS

for me i tend to think its fine to play a game on dosbox, with patches, using gog etc which usually means windows 7 is fine on some lga775 or later setup for almost all games on PC up to the point where you'd have win 10 and "modern" machine anyway

i totally recognise that for some people the actual hardware is part of it though, i get that aspect more when it comes to non game software oddly, like development tools and office suites and so on, when i tend to observe "period correct" a tiny bit more

Change the sound card on my Cyrix build once again. Since AWE64 needs lots of files and drivers to work and GM doesn't work out of the box, besides, nothing can beat the real OPL3 chip 😀. So I've installed a MAD16 sound card with a Yamaha OPL3 chip for DOS and a Vibra16XV for Windows. I recapped the both cards last year so they were ready to go.

What's that breadboard? Very first thought was HDDc, but that's not it.

gerry wrote on 2026-06-10, 16:05:

yes i'd agree, in fact i wouldn't have pure dos on anything P1 with 16mb ram or more tbh, i dont see the point as you can then h […]
Show full quote

such wrote on 2026-06-09, 13:31:

Personally, I'm too not strict about period accuracy, but I do draw some lines per taste, like DOS on P4 is just pointless to me at best. If this were my only option, like I imagine it can be to some for a variety of reasons, I wouldn't mind it, because eh, if it works it works at that point. Plus nostalgia can be a factor. XP I'm having a hard time considering as retro, so my XP box is basically the maximum I was able to stick into it sans SLI, because screw that, not worth the hassle.

yes i'd agree, in fact i wouldn't have pure dos on anything P1 with 16mb ram or more tbh, i dont see the point as you can then have w95 or 98, have dos plus all the rest anyway - and these days shouldn't be struggling with tiny HDD in same way

i also don't like to "waste" capability although that's aesthetic/preference and not really period or anything "correct", i mean if its 64 bit then have 64 bit OS

for me i tend to think its fine to play a game on dosbox, with patches, using gog etc which usually means windows 7 is fine on some lga775 or later setup for almost all games on PC up to the point where you'd have win 10 and "modern" machine anyway

i totally recognise that for some people the actual hardware is part of it though, i get that aspect more when it comes to non game software oddly, like development tools and office suites and so on, when i tend to observe "period correct" a tiny bit more

I wonder about that. For a time I was stuck with DOSBox for DOS games and - looking at it objectively - it was a perfectly fine substitute, but moving back to native DOS just felt like swapping a jalopy for a sports car. Again, objectively speaking the performance difference is so minor it should not matter, if it's even noticeable at all, but it feels substantially different to me. Could be them frametimes all the kids are talking about these days and whatnot. All I know is that I need a DOS... box on my desk.

such wrote on 2026-06-10, 21:33:

What's that breadboard? Very first thought was HDDc, but that's not it.

gerry wrote on 2026-06-10, 16:05:

yes i'd agree, in fact i wouldn't have pure dos on anything P1 with 16mb ram or more tbh, i dont see the point as you can then h […]
Show full quote

such wrote on 2026-06-09, 13:31:

Personally, I'm too not strict about period accuracy, but I do draw some lines per taste, like DOS on P4 is just pointless to me at best. If this were my only option, like I imagine it can be to some for a variety of reasons, I wouldn't mind it, because eh, if it works it works at that point. Plus nostalgia can be a factor. XP I'm having a hard time considering as retro, so my XP box is basically the maximum I was able to stick into it sans SLI, because screw that, not worth the hassle.

yes i'd agree, in fact i wouldn't have pure dos on anything P1 with 16mb ram or more tbh, i dont see the point as you can then have w95 or 98, have dos plus all the rest anyway - and these days shouldn't be struggling with tiny HDD in same way

i also don't like to "waste" capability although that's aesthetic/preference and not really period or anything "correct", i mean if its 64 bit then have 64 bit OS

for me i tend to think its fine to play a game on dosbox, with patches, using gog etc which usually means windows 7 is fine on some lga775 or later setup for almost all games on PC up to the point where you'd have win 10 and "modern" machine anyway

i totally recognise that for some people the actual hardware is part of it though, i get that aspect more when it comes to non game software oddly, like development tools and office suites and so on, when i tend to observe "period correct" a tiny bit more

I wonder about that. For a time I was stuck with DOSBox for DOS games and - looking at it objectively - it was a perfectly fine substitute, but moving back to native DOS just felt like swapping a jalopy for a sports car. Again, objectively speaking the performance difference is so minor it should not matter, if it's even noticeable at all, but it feels substantially different to me. Could be them frametimes all the kids are talking about these days and whatnot. All I know is that I need a DOS... box on my desk.

Looks like fan controller. At first I thought it was a internal amplifier but I don't think that's the case given one of the case fans goes to it.

Yes, it's a fan controller using two LM317 for both the case and CPU fan. These fans love to collect dust, there's also an issue of noise.

dominusprog wrote on 2026-06-10, 20:10:

Change the sound card on my Cyrix build once again. Since AWE64 needs lots of files and drivers to work and GM doesn't work out of the box, besides, nothing can beat the real OPL3 chip 😀. So I've installed a MAD16 sound card with a Yamaha OPL3 chip for DOS and a Vibra16XV for Windows. I recapped the both cards last year so they were ready to go.

The attachment IMG_20260610_230747.jpg is no longer available

The attachment IMG_20260610_230727.jpg is no longer available

I'm a simple man. I see multiple ISA sound cards, I'm happy.

dominusprog wrote on 2026-06-11, 06:02:

Yes, it's a fan controller using two LM317 for both the case and CPU fan. These fans love to collect dust, there's also an issue of noise.

The attachment Schematic-of-standard-lm317-adjustable-voltage-regulator-circuit_Electrothinks-1056088707.png is no longer available

I wonder if someone could make a gerber of this? This is the kind of thing I find I need A LOT in retro cases..

I made something similar years ago: https://lopo.losys.sk/projects/reobaybus.html

appiah4 wrote on 2026-06-11, 06:33:

I'm a simple man. I see multiple ISA sound cards, I'm happy. […]
Show full quote

dominusprog wrote on 2026-06-10, 20:10:

Change the sound card on my Cyrix build once again. Since AWE64 needs lots of files and drivers to work and GM doesn't work out of the box, besides, nothing can beat the real OPL3 chip 😀. So I've installed a MAD16 sound card with a Yamaha OPL3 chip for DOS and a Vibra16XV for Windows. I recapped the both cards last year so they were ready to go.

The attachment IMG_20260610_230747.jpg is no longer available

The attachment IMG_20260610_230727.jpg is no longer available

I'm a simple man. I see multiple ISA sound cards, I'm happy.

dominusprog wrote on 2026-06-11, 06:02:

Yes, it's a fan controller using two LM317 for both the case and CPU fan. These fans love to collect dust, there's also an issue of noise.

The attachment Schematic-of-standard-lm317-adjustable-voltage-regulator-circuit_Electrothinks-1056088707.png is no longer available

I wonder if someone could make a gerber of this? This is the kind of thing I find I need A LOT in retro cases..

That would be nice, but you can also use a buck converter. They essentially are the same thing.

Thanks, everyone.

dominusprog wrote on 2026-06-11, 06:02:

Yes, it's a fan controller using two LM317 for both the case and CPU fan. These fans love to collect dust, there's also an issue of noise.

The attachment Schematic-of-standard-lm317-adjustable-voltage-regulator-circuit_Electrothinks-1056088707.png is no longer available

Also appreciate the schematic!

Finished giving my 1983 Commodore64 (250407) a new look. By using a new case, made on original 1986 injection molds.
The case colour are breadbin-gray and I used a yellow power LED for this one. Then I gave it a gold-badge.
(Also, as a starwars lover, I gave it an extra case badge)

I posted about this earlier, but a few things where missing. This is the final result.
I really like this final result. 😀

Well, not today, but yesterday I put up my collection of games patched to run in 16 colors on an IBM PCjr. For anyone interested: https://archive.org/details/PCjr-16-color-patches. There are now 49 more games taking advantage of the ol' peanut's 16-color graphics.

brostenen wrote on 2026-06-13, 14:48:

Finished giving my 1983 Commodore64 (250407) a new look. By using a new case, made on original 1986 injection molds. The case co […]
Show full quote

Finished giving my 1983 Commodore64 (250407) a new look. By using a new case, made on original 1986 injection molds.
The case colour are breadbin-gray and I used a yellow power LED for this one. Then I gave it a gold-badge.
(Also, as a starwars lover, I gave it an extra case badge)

I posted about this earlier, but a few things where missing. This is the final result.
I really like this final result. 😀

The attachment C64-01.jpg is no longer available

The attachment C64-02.jpg is no longer available

The attachment C64-03.jpg is no longer available

The attachment C64-04.jpg is no longer available

Very nice result! Especially Revenge of the SID 😎 and yeah, I thought it looked familiar, so thanks for noting it was an update to your previous post - thought I was going crazy 🤣

Installed Mac OS X 10.5 on a Mac Mini A1176 via USB. It seems to be missing apps like iMovie and Garageband, though.

Wondering what software to get for it.