@liqmat

Did you grab that Lego set in the back?

liqmat wrote:

Now that I have moved to my winter digs and have all that PPro gear to inventory I needed a good retro chair to sit in. Yep, that's coming with me and it works! Hacker chair with A/C!

blowchair.jpg

I actually want one of those for its intended purpose. 😜 I have long hair and hitting it with a blow dryer every morning is a big pain. Plus, those things exude a good bit of '60s retro-futuristic aesthetic which I love, even though they were pretty mundane. I DEFINITELY don't have a decent place for it in my apartment though. #horribleideadontdoit

Contemplating upgrading the RAM in my main retro PC, a Presario 425.

Originally came with 4 MB, previous owner upgraded it to 8 MB, which it is at now. I have a mystery RAM stick lying around that I'd like to try in it, but it's a 486 PC (486DX2 50 MHz Overdrive) and I hear that even the 66 MHz 486DX2 was standard with 8.

Stuff runs just how I'd like it, for a 486 primary retro machine, so I might not.

Ultrax wrote:

Contemplating upgrading the RAM in my main retro PC, a Presario 425.

Originally came with 4 MB, previous owner upgraded it to 8 MB, which it is at now. I have a mystery RAM stick lying around that I'd like to try in it, but it's a 486 PC (486DX2 50 MHz Overdrive) and I hear that even the 66 MHz 486DX2 was standard with 8.

Stuff runs just how I'd like it, for a 486 primary retro machine, so I might not.

I had a DX33 with 4MB RAM in 1994 (Windows 3.1), upgraded to 8MB and a CD-ROM in 1995 (Windows for Workgroups), then to a DX4-100 with 16MB RAM in 1996 (OS/2 Warp 3). I would say 8MB is the sweet spot for a DX2 class PC. More RAM wouldn't hurt but it probably wouldn't be of much help either.

Nice avatar! 🤣

I agree with 8MB being just right. It runs everything I expect a 486DX2 PC to run. My friend still has the default 4 MB of RAM in his 425, but he doesn't have an Overdrive 486 installed, and runs the on board 25 MHz SX. So that makes sense.

Strangely, I've got a Pentium MMX 133 (?) PC that came with 16 MB of RAM. I thought that 32 would be the minimum for a system like that.

16MB for a DX4-100 also suffices as well since some games don't run or work with more than 16MB RAM. I have 32MB RAM installed in my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus that has a DX4-100 OverDrive installed. I'm planning on fixing the Pentium OverDrive 83 that has a missing pin or two and install it in my Packard Bell.

Ultrax wrote:

Nice avatar! 🤣

I agree with 8MB being just right. It runs everything I expect a 486DX2 PC to run. My friend still has the default 4 MB of RAM in his 425, but he doesn't have an Overdrive 486 installed, and runs the on board 25 MHz SX. So that makes sense.

Strangely, I've got a Pentium MMX 133 (?) PC that came with 16 MB of RAM. I thought that 32 would be the minimum for a system like that.

16MB is about right for a P133 system. 32 MB was obscenely expensive in the early pentium days, even my P2-300 PC came with 32MB RAM in 1998. I didn't upgrade to 64MB until I started using a Coppermine P3. Then somehow at some point memory prices came down fast, I went straight to a DDR 256MB Athlon XP a few years later.

If anyone has a recollection of the price trends from the 1995-2000 era and could remind us why memory prices were so high in the late 90s, I'd be grateful.

appiah4 wrote:

Ultrax wrote:

Nice avatar! 🤣

I agree with 8MB being just right. It runs everything I expect a 486DX2 PC to run. My friend still has the default 4 MB of RAM in his 425, but he doesn't have an Overdrive 486 installed, and runs the on board 25 MHz SX. So that makes sense.

Strangely, I've got a Pentium MMX 133 (?) PC that came with 16 MB of RAM. I thought that 32 would be the minimum for a system like that.

16MB is about right for a P133 system. 32 MB was obscenely expensive in the early pentium days, even my P2-300 PC came with 32MB RAM in 1998. I didn't upgrade to 64MB until I started using a Coppermine P3. Then somehow at some point memory prices came down fast, I went straight to a DDR 256MB Athlon XP a few years later.

If anyone has a recollection of the price trends from the 1995-2000 era and could remind us why memory prices were so high in the late 90s, I'd be grateful.

I don't have any old ads around anymore, but I'm guessing prices were due to demand. Remember that the dot-com era was in full swing, and lots of people who didn't have PCs at the time were buying them to get online. Combine that with all of the dot com companies themselves out there buying hardware to support their companies, and I'd imagine the whole market was strained.

My first PC (a P133) had only 8MB of RAM (thanks, Packard Bell) and even then I knew that wasn't really enough for what I wanted to do with it. Upgrading it to 16MB was one of the first things I did after I became comfortable with the idea of opening up my computer and doing things to it. I don't remember how much I paid for the memory kit, but I know that I had to save up for it for a while since I was in high school, making $4.75 an hour and only working 10-15 hours a week at the time.

Last week i received this Fujitsu ICL desktop. The thing that holds the floppydrive was missing, so i made one (quick and dirty 😀). Now i'm waiting for a 92mm fan, as the one inside seems to have a defective bearing.
Ít came with a DX2-66 which i replaced with a DX-33. Need to put in black-drives...

And got some time working on my special project.

Greetings

appiah4 wrote:

If anyone has a recollection of the price trends from the 1995-2000 era and could remind us why memory prices were so high in the late 90s, I'd be grateful.

In a word: Windows.

RAM prices were basically always sky-high until mid 1996 as the market simply wasn't a volume market. Then in June 1996 some new factories came online and prices dropped drastically; in a few weeks they more than halved (and yes, I bought a very expensive 8MB RAM expansion just beforehand and regretted it...). That lead to a period, from mid 1996 until mid 1998 when a nice 16-24MB of RAM was reasonably affordable. Until MS came out with Windows 1998. Where Windows 95 had been perfectly happy with 16MB, with Windows 98 you really wanted at least 32MB for things to run smoothly. So suddenly demand shot up while supply took a while to catch up, with the added complexity of new RAM tech (SDRAM had been introduced in 1997, but it only became mainstream in 1998). That ratcheted up the prices again, although still nowhere near as bad as it had been in 1996. Still, you generally spent as much on RAM as you did on a CPU...

McBierle wrote:

Last week i received this Fujitsu ICL desktop. The thing that holds the floppydrive was missing, so i made one (quick and dirty […]
Show full quote

Last week i received this Fujitsu ICL desktop. The thing that holds the floppydrive was missing, so i made one (quick and dirty 😀). Now i'm waiting for a 92mm fan, as the one inside seems to have a defective bearing.
Ít came with a DX2-66 which i replaced with a DX-33. Need to put in black-drives...

-snip-

And got some time working on my special project.

-snip-

Greetings

That's a neat looking system, I've always had a thing for older black computers from before it was a mainstream color (i.e. Macintosh TV, Power Macintosh 5500, Compaq Presario 2100-2200).

Tested out an Asus A7V600-X Socket A Motherboard, with Via Apollo KT600 Chipset. I've had it in storage and hadn't really bothered looking at it until today, taken from a working system that was given to me for free. Has 1.2GB RAM & had an Nvidia GeForce4 MX 4000 128MB AGP Graphics Card.

It claimed to have an AMD Athlon XP 1900+ CPU installed, but after tweaking settings in the BIOS it turns out that this actually has an AMD Sempron 2800+ with a Thorton core (as reported by CPU-Z). The CPU was simply configured incorrectly. Nothing revolutionary, just yet another working Socket A system to add to my collection. I now have 6 of them and only 1 of those I actually paid for, back when it was new.

Also, old but not really all that retro, I finalised my latest Socket AM2 spare parts build:

Specs:
Winfast 6100M2MA-RS2H, Socket AM2 Motherboard
Nvidia nForce 410 Chipset
AMD Sempron 3500+ @ 2.0GHz
2GB PC2-4300 DDR2 RAM
250GB SATA HDD
AMD Radeon HD 3450 256MB PCIe Graphics

Current OS: Windows 10 Pro x64

I have no idea what I'll do with this machine, it was mostly just a spare time fun build without any purpose. This is what happens when I take a week off work just for the purpose of using my holidays up. 🤣

Repurposed an old hand-made document shelf to hold some annoyingly-hard-to-store-neatly loose parts & stuff. This is probably not going to be a permanent "installation", but it works for now. 😉

That CD rack.. is that perspective distortion or is it really shaped like that? The photo really hurt my brain to look at for some reason.

Nope, it's a lovely sinusoid. You're not crazy. 😜

Part of the reason I'm thinking to move the other racks is that I liked having it stand alone & be the center of attention in this spot.

Here's some things I just did over the span of nearly half a day.

I spent 2+ hours cleaning a BFG Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT OC card that I bought on ebay recently.

It was dirty as hell, with dust everywhere, discoloration on the copper heatsink, and the chrome faceplate on the heatsink showed severe "bubbling" (don't know what the technical term is), with some of the chrome coating already coming off. It had seen better days.

After cleaning the card pretty throughly, adding new thermal tape to the VRM (?) heatsink and brand-new high-end Arctic thermal pads and thermal paste to the main heatsink, I threw it onto my ASRock 775i65G R3.0 motherboard to see if the effort was worth it and... well, no it wasn't. I didn't want this to be the case, but upon POST I was greeted with a color show, staring with a striped screen, followed by color puke.
"Can you see the Matrix, Neo?"
Going to have to return it at this point.

After that were some light-weight tasks.

I tested an Intel Core 2 Duo E7600 I bought, as well as a beautiful red 2GB kit of G.skill DDR-400 RAM I had also bought - both worked perfectly together on the same ASRock 775i65G R3.0 as mentioned above.

Also received a Pentium III-S 1.4GHz CPU, and tested that on my Asus TUSL2-C motherboard - works.

Finally, I opened up the packaging for a near-mint condition Diamond Multimedia 3dfx Voodoo 1 PCI card I bought for my P1 machine, and man, that was a sight to behold. After buying so many dirty, "abuse" GPUs of late, this was a breathe of fresh air. All I decided to do was dust it off a bit, and clean up the bracket and the ports, but it did little to improve how clean it was already.
I'm just waiting on a VGA pass-through cable so I can test this historic card. Can't wait! 🤣

It's been a monumental pain in the butt getting this far. The GUS doesn't support MPU-401 and so I installed the Sound Blaster 16. First problem: even though I jumpered the SB16 to disable the on-board Panasonic/Sony/Mitsumi CD-ROM interface, it conflicted with the Promise FastTrak. I had to jumper the SB16 to use a different IRQ for that, even though it's not being used. Finally, the computer booted. I connected the line-out from the MT-32 to the line-in on the SB16. I then proceeded to waste three hours trying to fart around with mixer settings so that I could hear what was coming in on line-in, but nothing. I was worried the MT-32 was broken. I finally had a brainwave and plugged it into the line-in on my laptop, at which point I could hear the MT-32. Yay! I don't get any Sound Blaster digital audio this way though and will need to either get a small mixing board or figure out how to get SB16 pass-through line-in to work. I then tried a couple Sierra games, all of which locked up on start. Sierra games usually expect an "intelligent" MPU-401 interface, which the SB16 does not have. SoftMPU it is! It's pretty neat. Of course, it did not work with the SB16 out of the box either and required a command-line option to work with older SBs. But finally, it's all working, minus the mixing part anyway. 😀

I got some steps closer to one of my projects (rebuilding systems i had).

At the moment:
Asus K7M Slot A
Athlon 500 -> (Need 600 Version)
GeForce 256 DDR (32mb)
64mb Ram -> not sure how much i had...

It was the one time i had the fastest pc amongst my friends. Must have been 2000, i left school in '99 and did mandatory "Zivilidienst", which resulted in me having some money. 😀

greetings

Also: I'm an idiot. I thought the "line" section of "output" in mixerset was for the card's line-out. Nope. It's basically pass-through for the line-in. Checked it, and now I'm getting MT-32 through my SB16. 😀 I suspect I'll still get a small mixing board at some point, but things work, and so more purchases can wait until I'm in better financial shape. 😀

Also need to poke at the SB16 some more and figure out where the noise is coming from. I've heard some say it's a noisy card but others have found it to produce clean audio. Of course, other things are at play too, I suspect, ranging from PSU to board to other components and cards. But at least things work. Now I can just tweak settings.

Only got the hanging note bug once so far. 😉 Will someday replace the SB16 but for now, I'll live with it. 😀

the_ultra_code wrote:

Why did you respond to a four-year old post from this thread?

Sorry about that. My bad. Shoulda payed more attention.