I thought the hipsters were those who were "into" things before they were cool... uh, that's us 🤣

To me it's not a hobby, it's more a nostalgia. I want to play and touch everything I could not afford for some reasons or missed or something like this.

"Hipsters" as you call them create demand and bring curiosity. I was thinking recently - what will be with all that stuff when I become too old and too poor to play these things. The interest will disappear with us. But if you say "hipsters', that means retro computers are interesting for younger people that never had them. Like I've seen and worked on 286 and even 8086 so they mean something to me. But for millenials there is not much difference in Cyrix or IDT, Awe64 and ESS, they just touch it and play it. That's our price for making these things last longer. I am interested in new software and hardware much more than in bare old and rusty metal just for the sake of it.

I'm going to catch some flack for this, but in a bubble, I prefer things to be "expensive " AND AVAILABLE. Compared to it being "worthless" and dumped thus lost.

Yea, its sure fun to get something free, but that hasn't been realistic in almost a decade.

The Va 503+ arrived today with a K6-3 400AHX so ill be setting that up a bit later to test it out and see if its fully working, board came with all the accessory cables and 512mb of ram too which is pretty nice.

I spent yesterday doing an analysis of MIDI playback of the EverQuest title track on older synthesizers. The conclusion was that it cannot play back properly on anything older than an SC-88 due to the polyphony limitations. There is some analysis and a lot of example recordings for those who are curious as to what happens in this scenario.

Significant differences with certain MIDI files across Roland synthesizers

I will be making a new thread soon that analyzes Warcraft 2 on a number of synthesizers with examples of similar faults and how to identify them.

Well then you need to figure out how to split out left and right channels so you can SLI two old boxes together 🤣

luckybob wrote on 2022-02-01, 03:14:

I'm going to catch some flack for this, but in a bubble, I prefer things to be "expensive " AND AVAILABLE. Compared to it being "worthless" and dumped thus lost.

Yea, its sure fun to get something free, but that hasn't been realistic in almost a decade.

Hear, hear. I don’t mind paying if it’s in good working condition, has a box, is hard to find otherwise and if it’s on my Wanted list. I’m getting older and have disposable income not to mention an increasing lack of patience due to Covid basically ruining the normal things in life. Bring it on (and let me add it to my collection).

Newly purchased with pics to come:

- 3dfx Voodoo5 AGP rev1.06
- Gravis Ultrasound 1MB

- Bought the LPT Iomega ZIP for my P2 build (and probably for 386 one). My other builds have internal ATA ZIP drives, that's a high-end floppy alternative 😀
- YMF719 sound card is on the way. Will also use it on P2 for DOS games and going to buy Monster Sound MX300 as a PCI sound card
- Voodoo 2 12MB is on the way.

Bought three Pentium III-S 1266/512 (Tualatin) with bent pins. After straightening them, two of the CPUs work.
With the third CPU I accidentally ripped out one pin including the pad while trying to fix them even if I didn't use much force and was pretty careful 🙁 I was hoping the processor would still work since that pin is only 'ground' according to what I found, but unfortunately it won't post.

Any ideas if this can be fixed? The 1266-version is not super-rare or -expensive but I don't want to simply give up on it 😀

If the pad is missing, it will be nigh on impossible to fix. There's probably a way, but not for us hobbyists.

Picked up two CRT monitors today. An NEC FE950+ and an old "TriGem" (WITH MATCHING TOWER!). The NEC sadly appears to be on its last legs, full brightness and its still dark. Sucks too, 1600x1200 at 75Hz.

The TriGem however appears to be perfectly fine, 1024x768 60hz max. 800x600 at 85. I didn't check the other resolutions yet. The tower is a Pentium 133, 16MB RAM, Ark 2D (1mb?) card, Opti sound card (with yamaha OPL3 chip), on what I assume is a 430HX board. POSTs, unfortunately the 1.6GB Seagate HD is dead. Whats funny, the CD drive wouldn't open, I could hear it spin up so it had something in it. Took it apart, and of all things AN OG WINDOWS 95 CD. Couldn't believe it.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-01-30, 01:26:

Its because retro PC gaming is trying to go mainstream and the hipsters are coming in. The hobby is going to get flooded with pe […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-01-30, 01:01:

Big OOF, looks like Voodoo5 5500 has taken another price jump now over ~1200 AUD or about ~800USD 🙁

Not happy.

Pets V4 4500, dont you die little buddy.

Its because retro PC gaming is trying to go mainstream and the hipsters are coming in. The hobby is going to get flooded with people with pockets so deep @Artex will look like a peasant. Same bullshit is happening with CRT TVs and the same bullshit happened with retro gaming quite a while ago now. Voodoo3 3000s are basically as expensive as 5500s were 2 years ago now. I'm glad the 3000 another VOGONS user gave me some years ago is still chugging along nicely.

This is why I'm notoriously elitist and gatekeepy with my hobbies. At this point with the types of chumps joining this hobby, if I were to die some horrific unforeseen death tomorrow, I just want my shit thrown into a river unless a museum or someone from my shortlist of individuals who actually are in the hobby for the right reasons takes it. I don't want it falling into the hands of some snobby college kid who just wants to look cool. I was doing this shit years before it was cool. Like you can't have a cheap hobby anymore. It seems like everytime I switch to a new cheap hobby prices start going up soon after.

Anywho, I've been bored lately and slightly motivated get some of the more esoteric items on my want list before they get noticed by the above mentioned deep pockets people so I've picked up both an Intel i740 and a 3DLabs Permedia 2. I will be curious to see how these cards perform. I also need to invest in a Super Socket 7 ATX board at some point, since I would like to have something more approriate than a slow P3 to test these early 3D cards on.

Not all of us like it just because its cool , I grew up in the 90s and experienced early 3D with a matrox mystique but missed out on the dos gaming period , the only interactions I had were a few games that required going into dos mode to play them. So I always kind of had a fascination for the period and wondered what it was all about.

I really got into this hobby around 2008-2009 ish way back before it was cool , later i watched alot of lgr and actually went around grabbing old computers on the side of the road and building old pc rigs back when you could easily get a stack of sound blaster 16s from them.

So I guess you could call me a pseudo hipster , but its not like I'm into it for street cred , hell back then people looked at me like a weirdo for being into this old crap stuff ,but now everyone wants a slice because they see the dollar signs which equals status.

I do genuinely like the hardware which I find fascinating and the history , defunct companies like 3dfx , gravis , tseng labs, media vision , matrox , S3 etc and I like mucking about with it because its an experience you don't get anymore , the mt32 showing you little messages , the installers , some of which are very sophisticated like in broken sword or command and conquer , setting up sound devices before you play etc. Plus alot of those old games are genuinely good and have intresting mechanics or good level design or music which merits at least trying them out , and its easier to do that with period correct hardware.

And believe me I would really prefer it if this hobby was still niche and parts cost nothing like a decade ago so I could muck about with my hardware without a care in the world about things going bad , but its not like I set the prices , so I've had no choice but to shell out occasionally if there's something I want.

HanSolo wrote on 2022-02-01, 23:21:

With the third CPU I accidentally ripped out one pin including the pad while trying to fix them even if I didn't use much force and was pretty careful 🙁 I was hoping the processor would still work since that pin is only 'ground' according to what I found, but unfortunately it won't post.

Tualatins2.jpg

Any ideas if this can be fixed? The 1266-version is not super-rare or -expensive but I don't want to simply give up on it 😀

What I would try on that is a single strand out of a small cable and tacking that tiny little gold nub you can see in there to the nearest other ground pin.

Retro? Probably not quite. Still, a couple of things I picked up for my NetVista/AM2 build..

Private_Ops wrote on 2022-02-02, 01:18:

Picked up two CRT monitors today. An NEC FE950+ and an old "TriGem" (WITH MATCHING TOWER!). The NEC sadly appears to be on its last legs, full brightness and its still dark. Sucks too, 1600x1200 at 75Hz.

The TriGem however appears to be perfectly fine, 1024x768 60hz max. 800x600 at 85. I didn't check the other resolutions yet. The tower is a Pentium 133, 16MB RAM, Ark 2D (1mb?) card, Opti sound card (with yamaha OPL3 chip), on what I assume is a 430HX board. POSTs, unfortunately the 1.6GB Seagate HD is dead. Whats funny, the CD drive wouldn't open, I could hear it spin up so it had something in it. Took it apart, and of all things AN OG WINDOWS 95 CD. Couldn't believe it.

If you don't mind fiddling around (of course while observing all the necessary safety precautions) you might be able to adjust some pots inside the NEC CRT to get some brightness back into it

HanSolo wrote on 2022-02-01, 23:21:

Any ideas if this can be fixed? The 1266-version is not super-rare or -expensive but I don't want to simply give up on it 😀

I've repaired broken pins by soldering them back on where the pad still exists, but if the pad is gone there is nothing left to solder onto.

CPU pin repair of an Intel 486DX-50

Added these two little gems to my GPU collection today

ELSA Erazor III Pro 32MB AGP 4X (Tnt2 Pro)

Is that a gameport ? never seen a large connector like that on a GPU.

ASUS AGP V7100PRO/PURE/32MB (Geforce 2 MX400)

Also looking at a Diamond Fusion Banshee from the same seller, but really want a Voodoo 3 3000, the MX400 was all of 8 USD which is a steal and I have always wanted at least one ELSA card in my collection. The MX400 will likely end up in my SS7 build if the GeForce 4 I'm repairing fails. (The MX400 is likely to be overkill for a SS7 machine let alone the GF4 ti 4600)

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-02, 15:35:

Added these two little gems to my GPU collection today […]
Show full quote

Added these two little gems to my GPU collection today

ELSA Erazor III Pro 32MB AGP 4X (Tnt2 Pro)

s-l1600 (1).jpg

Is that a gameport ? never seen a large connector like that on a GPU.

ASUS AGP V7100PRO/PURE/32MB (Geforce 2 MX400)

s-l1600.jpg

Also looking at a Diamond Fusion Banshee from the same seller, but really want a Voodoo 3 3000, the MX400 was all of 8 USD which is a steal and I have always wanted at least one ELSA card in my collection. The MX400 will likely end up in my SS7 build if the GeForce 4 I'm repairing fails. (The MX400 is likely to be overkill for a SS7 machine let alone the GF4 ti 4600)

I can't tell for sure from the overhead shot provided, but given the period of this card's release, I am guessing it is VESA P&D out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_Plug_and_Display

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-02, 01:44:

HanSolo wrote on 2022-02-01, 23:21:

With the third CPU I accidentally ripped out one pin including the pad while trying to fix them even if I didn't use much force and was pretty careful 🙁 I was hoping the processor would still work since that pin is only 'ground' according to what I found, but unfortunately it won't post.

Tualatins2.jpg

Any ideas if this can be fixed? The 1266-version is not super-rare or -expensive but I don't want to simply give up on it 😀

What I would try on that is a single strand out of a small cable and tacking that tiny little gold nub you can see in there to the nearest other ground pin.

Worth a shot at putting a tiny dab of low temperature solder paste on the tiny stub, then heating the chip from the other side until it melts? Never tried it and it might need to get it too hot, but at least you'd know the stub was hot enough for the solder to wet it if it works. If that worked then it would be easier to wire to the nearest ground (across one and down one I think).

Meatball wrote on 2022-02-02, 15:54:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-02, 15:35:

Added these two little gems to my GPU collection today […]
Show full quote

Added these two little gems to my GPU collection today

ELSA Erazor III Pro 32MB AGP 4X (Tnt2 Pro)

s-l1600 (1).jpg

Is that a gameport ? never seen a large connector like that on a GPU.

ASUS AGP V7100PRO/PURE/32MB (Geforce 2 MX400)

s-l1600.jpg

Also looking at a Diamond Fusion Banshee from the same seller, but really want a Voodoo 3 3000, the MX400 was all of 8 USD which is a steal and I have always wanted at least one ELSA card in my collection. The MX400 will likely end up in my SS7 build if the GeForce 4 I'm repairing fails. (The MX400 is likely to be overkill for a SS7 machine let alone the GF4 ti 4600)

I can't tell for sure from the overhead shot provided, but given the period of this card's release, I am guessing it is VESA P&D out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_Plug_and_Display

Hmm wonder how you would go about using that connector, it look so similar to DVI.