RandomStranger wrote on 2022-01-16, 19:20:

A co-worker lent me an older notebook to check and see if I'm interested. It's a HP Compaq NC4010. […]
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A co-worker lent me an older notebook to check and see if I'm interested. It's a HP Compaq NC4010.

So far I'm not all that impressed. It's compact, might be decent for retro lan parties for pre-2000 games, but the Radeon 340M IGP just don't have the punch to it that I like. No optical drive or first party Windows 98 drivers either.

What I checked so far (all games on the highest graphics settings 1024×768@32):

3DMark 2000 (default settings): 3039
3DMark 2001 SE (default settings): 1810

Quake II timedemo (demo1.dm2): 49.8 fps
Quake III Arena (GoG) timedemo: 32.1 fps
1nsane: 17.1 fps(avg) 12 fps(min)
Hitman 2: 16,9fps(avg) 8fps(min)

I think I'll just throw in some other games, write a blog or something then give it back.

Yesterday I found the time to do this. Ran all the games in the highest graphics setting, 1024x768@32bit. The Quake 2 and 3 data comes from the built-in benchmark, the rest is from Fraps over a longer game session.

To be honest, I'm disappointed. I didn't expect much, but it still underperformed what I expected from a late 2004 laptop with dedicated GPU. Though most games should run fine in 800x600 and maybe with a bit lower settings. The only surprise I had was with Deus Ex which ran really well, especially compared to Unreal Gold.

I'm still just tracking down good MIDI music to listen to, now that my VSTs can be used. I already got the old Sierra stuff, Everquest 1 MIDIs, Dragonsphere, Descent, DOOM, Duke3D, LucasArts, Magic Carpet, Jazz Jackrabbit, Theme Hospital, and some others. It's a shame there aren't more "complete soundtrack" arrangements available, but I know that many games have looping atmospheric MIDI that isn't suitable for that.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-01-31, 07:30:

To be honest, I'm disappointed. I didn't expect much, but it still underperformed what I expected from a late 2004 laptop with dedicated GPU. Though most games should run fine in 800x600 and maybe with a bit lower settings. The only surprise I had was with Deus Ex which ran really well, especially compared to Unreal Gold.

Yah definitely seems to underperform compared to the generation earlier 7500 mobility radeons and the contemporary intel GMA900/950... and the one I had in my Turion notebook, x200 was decent on that older stuff. All that generation of radeon IGP seem to perform real crappy, I wouldn't be surprised if they got bested by the later Rage 128 mobility on the dx7 titles.

Cap replacing day. All but the two large 230V 330uF's.

Can't seem to find new ones, but they measure OK. 340uF on my UNI-T 601.

To be fair those old caps also look OK, why replace them?

Since the power supply is 32 years old, I actually did it preventively.
The machine's runtime is unknown, perhaps redundant indeed, but I'd like to be on the safe side. There not many P3238's left.

But isn't that with all rust buckets... 😉

I added 256k of l2 cache to the motherboard of my 486.
Next upgrade will be an additional 4mb RAM, and then I'll think about getting an extra 512kb of video ram.

-Cleaned the Philips P3238 front; removed dried white paint, fly shit, etc.
-Abused the Dallas RTC.
-Contributed to Ultimate Retro.

Abused you say

you know Dallas likes it when you abuse them with that Dremel 😉

In a 2-3 hour moment of not being seized by COVID related headaches (holy crap are they bad) I was able to test a Tseng 4000 and a WDC WD90C33 in two computers to gauge which one should get what. I also realized that I am dangerously close to finally being able to put together my Blue Lightning PS/1000:

Those VL ports are super finnicky - too much pressure = no signal on monitor. Too much = Signal out of range. Touch your toes, do a quick jig, blow on the card the right way = we get signal. Oh you wanted to put other cards in there too? Repeat the same thing (ISA works fine, just any flex to the riser reproduces unstable VLB problems)

All I need now is to modify a base from another case, and desolder my AWE32's broken RAM clips and solder in new ones. Knowing me, it'll probably sit for a couple months before I get to it.

So the WDC card (1Mb DRAM, 45 ns) in the Blue Lightning performed 3D Bench at 37.0 FPS, and got 34.6 FPS in Doom timedemo.
The 2 Mb (also 45ns) ET4000 in the Blue Lightning got 35.7 on 3D Bench, and 34.4 FPS in Doom timedemo.

When I put these cards into my Siemens Nixdorf 486/100, the WDC got 62.5 FPS in 3D Bench, and 53.6 FPS in Doom timedemo.
On the ET4000, it got 62.5 FPS in 3D Bench, and 51.9 FPS in Doom timedemo.

I opted to keep the ET4000 in the 486, and have the WDC go into the Blue Lightning, mostly due to the 2 Mb of RAM that card has, as performance between the two cards on the 486 were similar.

Does anyone know where I could get 44256 DIP RAM at 45ns? I have only 60ns (six of them at that) and I don't know if I want to populate the WDC with 2 Mb - will it slow down performance?

I am going to Twitch stream myself installing Windows 98 and a drivers and other software tonight.

pinesal wrote on 2022-02-02, 18:36:

I am going to Twitch stream myself installing Windows 98 and a drivers and other software tonight.

People watch this? I'm only asking because I do similar things on YouTube - send me a link to your stream pls.

Jed118 wrote on 2022-02-02, 16:52:

Does anyone know where I could get 44256 DIP RAM at 45ns?

Maybe these are compatible?: https://www.kynix.com/Detail/657606/V53C104HP45.html

Sitting here watching The Thing on my 27" wall mounted JVC AV series while testing video and sound cards I've acquired locally over the last couple of years but haven't tested (mostly due to them getting misplaced). Currently testing an HIS Radeon 7000 DDR 64MB PCI and a Turtle Beach Montego II sound card.

Is there even a point to DDR memory on the PCI bus? Like a GeForce2MX with 32MB of SDR more than saturates the bus, and can barely run Morrowind at 640x480 lowest settings. I need to find a 64MB DDR AGP card to compare against, but it seems like 64MB + DDR + AGP is a rare combo. Most AGP cards only have 32MB of memory OR are SDR.

After that I need to test a 20" RCA CRT from May of 2008 and the 3DLabs Permedia 2 that just arrived in the form of the Diamond FireGL 1000. I also need to see about finding a way to hook up some test equipment to the 3 PVMs I bought locally, since I don't have BNC connectors and apparently shipping on Prime has gone from 2 days to 5 (remind me why I pay for Prime again, Bezos?)

Not retro computing, but retro... doing some VHS captures for family, and one of the tapes had a downright flashy, embossed, golden label. Honestly I've never seen anything like this on a VHS tape.

PD2JK wrote on 2022-02-01, 06:34:

Since the power supply is 32 years old, I actually did it preventively.
The machine's runtime is unknown, perhaps redundant indeed, but I'd like to be on the safe side. There not many P3238's left.

In general I dislike recapping everything in sight but these old PC PSUs usually never had quality caps in them so replacing secondary side, even if the caps test OK-ish, is a good idea. Especially if you care about not killing whatever will be connected to that PSU if it suddenly misbehaves. And if I do find a dry, vented or leaked cap, they all go. Only once I had to replace the primary side capacitors and frankly the PSU wasn't really worth it anyway but I was doing it for the experience. So it got used but known good ones.

Anyway, if anyone is interested in the follow-up to the Cyrix bug I found - I've run some more tests:
- TI chips also have it, so it's not what makes FM Towns games unhappy with Cyrix (could be there's another bug?)
- I don't have any SLC chips but I've tested DLC, SXL and SXLC and all are buggy
- Cyrix DX2-80 doesn't have the bug anymore, I don't have any SX/DX from Cyrix to test

I'm not sure if I want to spend money on 486S CPU to test that core, I assume (since it's pretty much a DLC with 2x the cache and proper 486 pinout) that it does - until proven otherwise.
Oh and a funny thing, since I was messing around my code I re-wrote some parts of it, and accidently introduced the buggy sequence of instructions and spend another hour trying to figure it out. Doh.

snufkin wrote on 2022-02-02, 20:36:

Jed118 wrote on 2022-02-02, 16:52:

Does anyone know where I could get 44256 DIP RAM at 45ns?

Maybe these are compatible?: https://www.kynix.com/Detail/657606/V53C104HP45.html

I'll have to look into that, thanks!!

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-02-02, 23:09:

apparently shipping on Prime has gone from 2 days to 5 (remind me why I pay for Prime again, Bezos?)

Really? We get stuff lightning fast from the US to Canada - a day or two tops.

Deunan wrote on 2022-02-03, 00:05:

I'm not sure if I want to spend money on 486S CPU to test that core, I assume (since it's pretty much a DLC with 2x the cache and proper 486 pinout) that it does - until proven otherwise.
Oh and a funny thing, since I was messing around my code I re-wrote some parts of it, and accidently introduced the buggy sequence of instructions and spend another hour trying to figure it out. Doh.

I'm curious if this bug is present on a Blue Lightning IBM BL2 25/50 (33/66) type - how are you testing for it?

LHN91 wrote on 2022-02-02, 23:31:

Not retro computing, but retro... doing some VHS captures for family, and one of the tapes had a downright flashy, embossed, golden label. Honestly I've never seen anything like this on a VHS tape.
IMG_20220202_181213.jpg

I think that was when blanks were still $20 a pop and some upstarts started selling cheap $10 ones, so the brand names went to fancier packaging to make it look like they were worth it 🤣

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-03, 00:42:

LHN91 wrote on 2022-02-02, 23:31:

Not retro computing, but retro... doing some VHS captures for family, and one of the tapes had a downright flashy, embossed, golden label. Honestly I've never seen anything like this on a VHS tape.
IMG_20220202_181213.jpg

I think that was when blanks were still $20 a pop and some upstarts started selling cheap $10 ones, so the brand names went to fancier packaging to make it look like they were worth it 🤣

I will say, after the recorded-from-TV Bette Midler movie (lol) the video quality on the home video footage is perhaps a bit soft, but exceptionally noise-free and clean. And that's on what I assume is a long-record mode because I'm over 3 hours into capturing it. So at least it was a good quality tape to go with the label 🤣

The early 21st century crop of 4 head VCRs with instant auto tracking and comb filters etc make tape look a lot better than they did in the 80s or 90s. Only Betamax looked that good back in the day!