Standard Def Steve wrote on 2021-09-24, 04:11:

You know, if I were fortunate enough to stumble upon a $10 Amiga 4000 and a $10 Dell 386 at a garage sale, yet unfortunate enough to find but a single tenner in my wallet, I'd pick the Dell. No lie!

As a cheap crapbox, Dells are OK.

Wouldn't pass up the Amiga 4000 though!

ncmark wrote on 2021-09-09, 23:10:

I tossed a p233 running DOS/3.1

the horror!

a milder 'confession', i have never flashed a bios, never felt the need and always fine with whatever was on the board anyway. the only reason I'd ever do it is if there is a known bug in the board or if i had a cpu that would only be compatible after flashing the bios (and no alternatives at hand) and i haven't encountered either yet

gerry wrote on 2021-09-24, 07:59:

a milder 'confession', i have never flashed a bios, never felt the need and always fine with whatever was on the board anyway. the only reason I'd ever do it is if there is a known bug in the board or if i had a cpu that would only be compatible after flashing the bios (and no alternatives at hand) and i haven't encountered either yet

On modern boards and laptops, I am finding it a necessity to update the BIOS when I first get them. For hardware and software compatibility and stability.

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2021-09-24, 04:11:

I've got another one! […]
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I've got another one!

I am probably the world's biggest Dell fanboy. No, Dell didn't start the IBM clone business. They didn't out-junior the PCjr with their own custom sound and graphics modes. Hell, they didn't even have the balls to affix "Never Obsolete" stickers to any of their cheapo Celeron boxes. Still, I love them. Every Dell I've owned--and there have been plenty over the years--has never given me any trouble. They're just fantastically quiet, robust workhorses.

You know, if I were fortunate enough to stumble upon a $10 Amiga 4000 and a $10 Dell 386 at a garage sale, yet unfortunate enough to find but a single tenner in my wallet, I'd pick the Dell. No lie!

We should totally dedicate the month of February to our favourite Dells! Call it FebruDellry or something! TechTubers, are you listening? 😜

But you could sell the a4000 and use the money to buy 20 dells. 🤣

canthearu wrote on 2021-09-24, 10:56:

gerry wrote on 2021-09-24, 07:59:

a milder 'confession', i have never flashed a bios, never felt the need and always fine with whatever was on the board anyway. the only reason I'd ever do it is if there is a known bug in the board or if i had a cpu that would only be compatible after flashing the bios (and no alternatives at hand) and i haven't encountered either yet

On modern boards and laptops, I am finding it a necessity to update the BIOS when I first get them. For hardware and software compatibility and stability.

a bit of a worry for the future 🙁

Confessions demanded ! 🤣

So I was going through some RAM, and I want a confession from whoever created/wanted/was a market for 128MB DDR DIMMs, explain yourself !

1993:

As a teenager, a friend told me that one of his friends the next city over had a game I reeeally wanted.

So I put a couple of sandwiches, a big bottle of water, and an air pump into my backpack on the next Saturday morning bright and early at about 6:30am, and bicycled on my cheap teenager's bike a full, ridiculous 120 km round trip, entirely and only for the purpose of getting this game, ASAP.

I already had a Korean bootleg version of the game which was really cool and had heaps of features. But this was the OFFICIAL release, so it must be really good and superior. Best thing ever, I was sure. I was really looking forward to it.

I was home by about 2pm, very exhausted, but the proud owner of a fresh copy of US Gold's DOS version of Street Fighter II.

Then I finally loaded up the game, the results of a day's hard labour (it's now 25 years later, and I never cycled that far in my life again!) and excited anticipation. As the first character sprite leapt up into the air to perform a flying kick, the sprite floated up and up and up... and up and up... out the top of the screen... along with my extremely surprised eyebrows, as I soon realised that I'd wasted the biggest, fittest day of exercise of my entire life on THE WORST game port in existence.

It still stings today. 🤣

Shreddoc wrote on 2021-10-01, 19:42:

Then I finally loaded up the game, the results of a day's hard labour (it's now 25 years later, and I never cycled that far in my life again!) and excited anticipation. As the first character sprite leapt up into the air to perform a flying kick, the sprite floated up and up and up... and up and up... out the top of the screen... along with my extremely surprised eyebrows, as I soon realised that I'd wasted the biggest, fittest day of exercise of my entire life on THE WORST game port in existence.

It still stings today. 🤣

Haha that's a great story! Do you still have the game? 😁

Joakim wrote on 2021-10-01, 20:09:

Shreddoc wrote on 2021-10-01, 19:42:

Then I finally loaded up the game, the results of a day's hard labour (it's now 25 years later, and I never cycled that far in my life again!) and excited anticipation. As the first character sprite leapt up into the air to perform a flying kick, the sprite floated up and up and up... and up and up... out the top of the screen... along with my extremely surprised eyebrows, as I soon realised that I'd wasted the biggest, fittest day of exercise of my entire life on THE WORST game port in existence.

It still stings today. 🤣

Haha that's a great story! Do you still have the game? 😁

I am afraid not! 😀

A few years later I was 18, and the simple existence of the early-mid teens came to an end. The beginnings of adult life intruded, and suddenly it seemed like there were more important things than PCs and games. Foolishly and without a backward glance, I gave my childhood PC to my so-called best friend, and along with it, a huge stash of ~1000 floppy's worth of DOS software I'd collected over the years. A lot of bicycle miles!

I thought I'd made clear that the software was a loan-only, but a year later I suddenly found out he'd casually given the lot away. Let's just say: not the only thing which was once mine, and that he later used, casually and without the consideration of a True friend ...but those are stories for another place and time. 😀

Shreddoc wrote on 2021-10-01, 23:27:

I am afraid not! :) […]
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Joakim wrote on 2021-10-01, 20:09:

Shreddoc wrote on 2021-10-01, 19:42:

Then I finally loaded up the game, the results of a day's hard labour (it's now 25 years later, and I never cycled that far in my life again!) and excited anticipation. As the first character sprite leapt up into the air to perform a flying kick, the sprite floated up and up and up... and up and up... out the top of the screen... along with my extremely surprised eyebrows, as I soon realised that I'd wasted the biggest, fittest day of exercise of my entire life on THE WORST game port in existence.

It still stings today. 🤣

Haha that's a great story! Do you still have the game? 😁

I am afraid not! 😀

A few years later I was 18, and the simple existence of the early-mid teens came to an end. The beginnings of adult life intruded, and suddenly it seemed like there were more important things than PCs and games. Foolishly and without a backward glance, I gave my childhood PC to my so-called best friend, and along with it, a huge stash of ~1000 floppy's worth of DOS software I'd collected over the years. A lot of bicycle miles!

I thought I'd made clear that the software was a loan-only, but a year later I suddenly found out he'd casually given the lot away. Let's just say: not the only thing which was once mine, and that he later used, casually and without the consideration of a True friend ...but those are stories for another place and time. 😀

Oof. I remember when my baby cousins got their first computer and I gave my aunt all my childhood games for them to play on it. A few years later I was feeling nostalgic and asked her what happened to them. She had no idea what I was talking about; she had completely forgotten the entire thing. Needless to say I never found out where that big stack of games ended up.

I don't really care much for 'retro brighting', i see it works and looks kind of good, I can appreciate it when done by others - but i actually quite like the aged look, old warhorses and all that!

I get that gerry, I don't mine even yellowing, the only things I'm considering retrobriting are a few things that have gone mottled and uneven, or have one very yellow part and the rest seemed to have stayed stock color.

Yeah a little yellow is ok but I want it somewhat even. For instance my Fujitsu OEM system is quite bright, but the Fujitsu mouse I bought for it looks like cheddar so I will probably brighten it a bit.

I prefer FM sound over mt32/gm/sc.

awgamer wrote on 2021-10-07, 18:23:

I prefer FM sound over mt32/gm/sc.

It's an outrage! I call tar and feathers! Bow down before your Japanese gods of midi!

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2021-09-24, 04:11:

I've got another one! […]
Show full quote

I've got another one!

I am probably the world's biggest Dell fanboy. No, Dell didn't start the IBM clone business. They didn't out-junior the PCjr with their own custom sound and graphics modes. Hell, they didn't even have the balls to affix "Never Obsolete" stickers to any of their cheapo Celeron boxes. Still, I love them. Every Dell I've owned--and there have been plenty over the years--has never given me any trouble. They're just fantastically quiet, robust workhorses.

You know, if I were fortunate enough to stumble upon a $10 Amiga 4000 and a $10 Dell 386 at a garage sale, yet unfortunate enough to find but a single tenner in my wallet, I'd pick the Dell. No lie!

We should totally dedicate the month of February to our favourite Dells! Call it FebruDellry or something! TechTubers, are you listening? 😜

I bet you never used any of the Optiplex SX/GX 260/270/280 machines during the capacitor plague years... Was doing onsite Dell warranty during that time and we were replacing those left and right. Was most of our work for a few months at least.

Or how about the Dell Dimension 4600 towers where the exhaust fan was installed backwards from the factory. This was leading to all sorts of problems such as RAM, HDD, and motherboard failures not to mention CPU throttling due to overheating. Almost every single Dimension 4600 I worked on had this issue.

Then there was the multiple years of poorly designed screen hinges on the laptops. Screws would come loose and worst case scenario was the aluminum on the hinge mechanism would break and/or cause the chassis to break. It could also break the bezel on the screen itself.

To this day, every Dell laptop I work on gets the screen hinge screws tightened up as much as I can tighten them without breaking them or stripping the screws because they still come loose after maybe 6-months to a year.

That being said, I still like Dell machines . I have a decent number of newer Dell laptops as well as a desktop that all get used pretty regularly . I also have some retro/vintage Dell machines .

Dell were not the only ones with hinge problems, sometime in late 1999 everyone just up and forgot how to make hinges. So we had hinge plague, followed by capacitor plague, followed by general lead free solder failures followed by bumpgate (nvidia mobile chips edition)

I attribute the success of netbooks to that, the used notebook market was such a minefield that even though the full price notebooks had dropped under a thousand, there was scarce supply of actually functional machines for the secondary market for a number of years.

awgamer wrote on 2021-10-07, 18:23:

I prefer FM sound over mt32/gm/sc.

I prefer PC speaker over FM sound.

I prefer silence over 99% of 'music'.

imi wrote on 2021-10-08, 12:07:

awgamer wrote on 2021-10-07, 18:23:

I prefer FM sound over mt32/gm/sc.

I prefer PC speaker over FM sound.

So do I for certain games. like tongue of the fatman.