BitWrangler wrote on 2021-09-22, 21:23:

Well still modern in today's context has become upper half HD6xx0 and GF5x0 upwards, and creeping back into the HD5850s and GT460s out of desperation. 10+ year old stuff now, when 18 months ago, ppl would have been calling 2015 stuff ancient relics.

Damn it's kind of insane looking at it, it feels a bit as if we are in some post-apocalyptic landscape and we are scavenging for anything that works.

iraito wrote on 2021-09-22, 21:29:

Damn it's kind of insane looking at it, it feels a bit as if we are in some post-apocalyptic landscape and we are scavenging for anything that works.

Reminded me of this.

I made some special memory 😁

Thermalwrong wrote on 2021-09-23, 00:03:

I made some special memory 😁

Could you do a new thead about this video memory modifications?

While on non-related vintage repair, I'm researched and now know which balance staff to get for this 1/10 sec lemania based 5000 series stopwatch. This was after fixed the bent hairspring and thought that I could take a good staff from one of my stopwatch movement parts hoard turned out not same part. That took awhile on google and ebay.

Cheers,

It's fairly simple, you pin your hopes of addressing the lack of memory by address shifting address pins to address the addressing problem not addressed by merely pinning the pins of the data and lower address buses together.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-09-22, 13:35:

With that, you're kinda getting into GPUs that aren't expensive because they're retro, they're expensive because they are still playable on the less demanding but popular stuff like fortnite, LoL, rocket league etc, and other stuff in 1080p or close resolutions. (Basically the ones you only need an "ordinary" monitor for). Plus the ongoing "GPU drought" that has yanked some of these cards back from being sold/worth under $50 in 2019 to $150+ by late 2020. So at the moment, it's probably gonna be what you can find a good deal on.

I was reading yesterday that top end GPu prices had rebounded after a slight slump, so guess it's gonna be a while longer until things get sane. The price of the wafers going up is meant to be something to do with it too. (Other areas of semiconductor industry were in "drought" also so probably quite a surge in demand on fabs and materials as everything plays catchup) You can find the odd one or two better deals, they get snapped up, but it seems in general everything performing around or a little better than a 1030GT is gonna stay north of $100 for another year.

Eh, the HD 7000 series is not that bad now since HD 7000, R9 200 and R9 300 series all stopped getting driver updates from AMD a couple of months ago. I paid CAD$60 for a HD 7870 for my WinXP machine this week.

Another step further on my early 2000s recreation, got the TDK VeloCD 52x drive installed, and tied up the main PSU cable so it's hidden and out of the way. Spent a good chunk of time just looking at it and thinking about cable management as cleanly as possible. It's gonna be a chore...

I'm unable to see the images on my laptop for some reason.

Check that. Not appearing on any of my devices, except for my phone when I use my cellular data.

Brawndo wrote on 2021-09-23, 04:33:

Another step further on my early 2000s recreation, got the TDK VeloCD 52x drive installed, and tied up the main PSU cable so it's hidden and out of the way. Spent a good chunk of time just looking at it and thinking about cable management as cleanly as possible. It's gonna be a chore...

very tidy, must admit that as long as cables don't clip fan blades i tend not to be so tidy!

Pulled a Pentium200 PC from storage for a Win95 install. During Windows and other installations I got some error messages about not being able to write to disc C, as well as the drive just being sluggish in general. Ran checkdisk and found this:

OOF. When 1 appears, more will soon follow. RIP my 8GB IBM drive.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-09-23, 00:54:

Could you do a new thead about this video memory modifications? […]
Show full quote

Thermalwrong wrote on 2021-09-23, 00:03:

I made some special memory 😁

Could you do a new thead about this video memory modifications?

While on non-related vintage repair, I'm researched and now know which balance staff to get for this 1/10 sec lemania based 5000 series stopwatch. This was after fixed the bent hairspring and thought that I could take a good staff from one of my stopwatch movement parts hoard turned out not same part. That took awhile on google and ebay.

Cheers,

That's detailed in here: Upgrading Philips PCA761AW / AMD Interwave 'GuS Clone' to 1MB RAM
Most address, data and power pins are common across different memory chips on this card. They're separated by 2x extra CAS lines that I had to solder on the extra wires for 😀
Nice permanent mod, but I can't stop from considering how I'd connect up more RAM to this thing. Still trying to figure that part out, even if it won't change much.

Munx wrote on 2021-09-23, 08:10:

Pulled a Pentium200 PC from storage for a Win95 install. During Windows and other installations I got some error messages about not being able to write to disc C, as well as the drive just being sluggish in general. Ran checkdisk and found this:P_20210922_204918.jpg
OOF. When 1 appears, more will soon follow. RIP my 8GB IBM drive.

I had random drives do that to me a few years ago. It was pretty sad that those drives died all of a sudden (they were working fine). 9 years ago, my old 80GB HDD died after the brownout occurred in my neighborhood that was in my 486 at the time and that also died. I had it plugged into a power strip at the time and wish I used my surge protector, but the board was failing anyway.

Munx wrote on 2021-09-23, 08:10:

Pulled a Pentium200 PC from storage for a Win95 install. During Windows and other installations I got some error messages about not being able to write to disc C, as well as the drive just being sluggish in general. Ran checkdisk and found this:P_20210922_204918.jpg
OOF. When 1 appears, more will soon follow. RIP my 8GB IBM drive.

indeed, if no spares will you use CF or SD?

I was experimenting with CF in an IDE adapter recently, an old socket 370 motherboard seemed ok with it - maybe i'll go back and complete that project!

Munx wrote on 2021-09-23, 08:10:

Pulled a Pentium200 PC from storage for a Win95 install. During Windows and other installations I got some error messages about not being able to write to disc C, as well as the drive just being sluggish in general. Ran checkdisk and found this:P_20210922_204918.jpg
OOF. When 1 appears, more will soon follow. RIP my 8GB IBM drive.

Still, I have two drives that accumulated some bad sectors and are still working fine. They have not accumulated any more bad sectors in the last couple of years. One of them is a IBM 30 GB hdd. Your mileage may vary, of course …

digistorm wrote on 2021-09-24, 07:57:

Still, I have two drives that accumulated some bad sectors and are still working fine. They have not accumulated any more bad sectors in the last couple of years. One of them is a IBM 30 GB hdd. Your mileage may vary, of course …

I had an IBM 40GB laptop HDD that had poor performance, low fitness, and bad sectors. I was surprised that it still booted XP on that thing. Eventually put it onto a working 40GB HDD and upgraded to a 512GB SSD (mSATA to laptop IDE) by cloning the 40GB drive to the 512GB SSD. Runs faster than before and I'd use it for the GM Tech II Windows scanner, but the battery dies after 30 minutes (cells are worn).

gerry wrote on 2021-09-24, 07:43:

indeed, if no spares will you use CF or SD?

Got spares, luckily. Have some CF cards and adapters too, but it's not the same w/o that old spinning HDD sound.

I started up a Toshiba 430CDT that hadn't run in a year or so. The battery charged up just fine. I am not sure how much of a charge it will hold but I ran it on battery for a couple minutes and it still said 100% so not even close to being dead. Charge time of 4 hours was what would be expected given it was on for about half the time. I got it for free last year and it is fully functional.
Pentium 120
11.3" TFT Active Matrix Display (max res 800x600)
32MB EDO DRAM 60ns
CT65550 VLB 2MB DRAM
ESS688/OPL3 (YMF262)
2.5" EIDE HDD 1.26GB
3.5" FDD
10x CD-ROM
Li-Ion battery

I got Majesty, Age of Empires and Roller Coaster Tycoon installed and running. Sadly, Mig-29 would not run due to memory management issues. It may not be compatible with DOS 7.1. Seems to me there was a reason I stuck with Win95 after Win98 came out. I think I just remembered why.

Cool, and congrats on breaking up page 1000.

I did not know there were games that don't run on DOS 7.1. Tbh I don't really see it as a negative thing because I have a wierd affection for DOS 6.2. Fat16 is a bit lackluster though. Not sure how to dual boot it on a laptop in a good way. On one rig I have it on an SD card.

Some games don't like RAM past 16MB. I use a program on my 486 (64MB FPM) and my Toshiba Satellite Pro 410CDT (40MB EDO) that drops the RAM down to 32MB or even 16MB for certain games and it does a great job with it, but, on my 486, I use QEMM 8.03 so my conventional RAM is always at 610KB free.

And the memory management being a big factor with the games is the number 1 thing to look at.

My 410CDT had the CMOS and wake batteries leak, but it didn't cause any damage and it cleaned off rather nicely and my CMOS battery is the Lithium-Vanadium from a parted 4800CT. The main Li-Ion works, but if the laptop is left sitting out in storage for a month or so, the battery goes flat (needs a calibration, but it charges and it runs without the charger being plugged in), much like my PSP 2001 console.

I flashed the BIOS of a motherboard dating back to 1997, installed DOS 6.22, then Windows 98 for the first time in over 20 years and then promptly followed that by installing Windows NT 4.0.