I spent a bit of time today doing some programming on my 486DX4-100 using Borland C++ 4.5 under Windows 3.11. This would be my second ever DOS program (in C) - the previous one being something to output my current IP address as DHCP flashes by too fast during startup to easily catch the output.

This program figures out if NZ Daylight Savings Time is currently in effect - this because the DOS SNTP client I use doesn't do daylight savings time; you've got to pass in the UTC offset on the command line. And I don't want to edit my autoexec.bat twice a year. So now the right thing should just happen automatically on startup - something I'll get to test on the 3rd of April.

Lately still optimizing my netbook oriented mini-itx dual Atom SoC to work as fast as it can on Win 8.1. The GUI reduced to the lightest possible configuration and using most of its DIrectx9.0c integrated smartphone oriented SGX545 GPU to "accelerate" gui and games. Not as bad as might be expected. Testing games like Far Cry with 800x600 at medium level details is almost playable and similar would be on Doom3. Considering this iGPU basically has almost no power impact at the plug when stressed (maybe a couple of watts) it's interesting. An external video card on PCI can increase the compatibility and final speed as tested with the Geforce 210 or GT610 (on PCI only) but I wanted to keep the compact mini-itx case.
Interesting to see ATi tech demos for 9700/9800 cards running on this hw almost smooth. Generally I'd say that beside the very weak CPU it's still GPU limited monitoring the cpu usage. But as GPU-Z reports, it has 4 Unified Shaders and 2 ROPs and 4 TMUs on a 400Mhz clock and using shared 1066Mhz DDR3 memory.

Been playing around with Amiga emulators on a raspberry pi 400. Amiga for me was just games though so I feel lost in workbench..

Swapped out the tired stock cooler on my Slot-1 Pentium 1000 100/256 CPU with a nice new shiny thin finned one with copper heatspreader. Used Arctic MX-5 for the paste.

It seems like it is going to run just fine at 1.12Ghz in the GA-6BXC motherboard I put it in though I will most likely try one of the modded BIOSes as they are supposed to fix some stuff with the OEM BIOSes.

Also put that motherboard into an old Dell Dimension XPS case in preparation for building a system to test out PCI sound cards. It will also end up being a full build.

Joakim wrote on 2022-03-27, 21:44:

Been playing around with Amiga emulators on a raspberry pi 400. Amiga for me was just games though so I feel lost in workbench..

Don't feel lost.

There's so much you can do in Workbech.

You can enjoy the pre-emptive multitasking, by running multiple things at once, the speech reader, the bouncy ball thing, a notepad editor.
You can use WHDLoad to launch games and demos from Workbench.
You can make your own icons for things; check out the icon for launching Monkey Island for example.
And look at Workbech through the ages on YouTube up to the present day. It's done well.

Joakim wrote on 2022-03-27, 21:44:

Been playing around with Amiga emulators on a raspberry pi 400. Amiga for me was just games though so I feel lost in workbench..

This was useful to me when I was getting back into the Amiga.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjBU3y4IHTM

appiah4 wrote on 2022-03-24, 10:24:

I am trying to remove the HSF from a PII-350 I own so that I can mount it on a PII-400 I recently purchased. However, there is a problem: I can't seem to figure out how to remove this bolts/screws that have it tied down. Are these small allen key screws? Are they torx screws? Anyone have experience with removing and remounting these?

Check out this thread about said type of cooler.

Re: Pentium 2 SECC heat sink removal

As a side note, one of my allen keys are now permanently twisted 🤣 it's that tight they are ...

appiah4 wrote on 2022-03-25, 10:51:

stef80 wrote on 2022-03-25, 08:40:

appiah4 wrote on 2022-03-25, 08:09:

Yeah, I tried oil as well as WD40 to break the rust and that inhuman grip, but it only worked on two of the screws. That thing is bolted onto there by Thor himself.

Don't do it. Just find one with SECC2 cooler.

I actually just found a Pentium II 450 which worked out even better for me; now my 1998 build has the best CPU that was available that year. (I only had a PII-300 😀 )

Great find 😀. Easily serviceable with massive Foxconn heatsink. Have 2 just like yours, Compaq branded.
You can attach regular, slow moving 80mm fan there with no problem:

Huge project weekend, couple more mobos for testing dozens of video cards for DOS. Became kind of a technical nightmare with trying to use a CF/IDE adapter, which I gave up on after about three hours. It seemed to be actively sabotaging, no matter what changes I made to the configuration, it would try to boot to CF if it was plugged in, so I couldn't reformat it or copy files. UBCD could see it but nothing worked. My Conner 1gb drive seems to have died in the process as well.

The Gateway P2 233 is kind of amazing, perfect balance of old and new features for a late non-speed-sensitive DOS machine. USB as well.

Finally used a Fujitsu drive and got the 486 running, after a lot of config headaches, though after testing a few cards I got a memory parity error and packed it in for the day.

I went to Goodwill and got a C64 modem for $2.50 though, and a few other things. They never have computers anymore, anything interesting just happens to have slipped by the sorters.

Downgraded my Cx5x86 PC from Win95C to DOS/WfWG. Feels so much more right. Also installed mTCP and now I can transfer files to/from it easily. Also played a bit of Dune II. One of the few games I know where the FM Synthesis soundtrack is far superior to the MT-32/General MIDI ones.

Merovign wrote on 2022-03-28, 10:09:

Huge project weekend, couple more mobos for testing dozens of video cards for DOS. Became kind of a technical nightmare with trying to use a CF/IDE adapter, which I gave up on after about three hours.

I don't know what the issue is exactly, but I have problems with trying to use CF cards as IDE drives if they have ever been formatted in Windows. Even Partition Magic for DOS reports and error with the partition table and won't allow any actions to be performed on it.

I am always able to fix these issues by booting to a floppy, deleting the partition using fdisk, and formatting it there. Then it will recognize properly in Partition Magic, DOS, 9x, and boot properly from the BIOS. It's also recommended to use "fdisk /mbr" to ensure that the master boot record is written properly, just to be certain. This procedure has always worked for me, even on the most stubborn of CF and SD cards.

andrewreader wrote on 2022-03-28, 05:32:

Don't feel lost. […]
Show full quote

Joakim wrote on 2022-03-27, 21:44:

Been playing around with Amiga emulators on a raspberry pi 400. Amiga for me was just games though so I feel lost in workbench..

Don't feel lost.

There's so much you can do in Workbech.

You can enjoy the pre-emptive multitasking, by running multiple things at once, the speech reader, the bouncy ball thing, a notepad editor.
You can use WHDLoad to launch games and demos from Workbench.
You can make your own icons for things; check out the icon for launching Monkey Island for example.
And look at Workbech through the ages on YouTube up to the present day. It's done well.

Hehe great tip, "don't feel lost". Why didn't I think of that! 😁

Thing is, I only had an a500 and I was 7 😀

appiah4 wrote on 2022-03-28, 05:33:

Joakim wrote on 2022-03-27, 21:44:

Been playing around with Amiga emulators on a raspberry pi 400. Amiga for me was just games though so I feel lost in workbench..

This was useful to me when I was getting back into the Amiga.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjBU3y4IHTM

Cool I'll look into that.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-28, 15:27:

I don't know what the issue is exactly, but I have problems with trying to use CF cards as IDE drives if they have ever been formatted in Windows. Even Partition Magic for DOS reports and error with the partition table and won't allow any actions to be performed on it.

I am always able to fix these issues by booting to a floppy, deleting the partition using fdisk, and formatting it there. Then it will recognize properly in Partition Magic, DOS, 9x, and boot properly from the BIOS. It's also recommended to use "fdisk /mbr" to ensure that the master boot record is written properly, just to be certain. This procedure has always worked for me, even on the most stubborn of CF and SD cards.

Well, this CF is brand new (though a small 256Mb) and fdisk won't detect it, though the BIOS does. Actually I tried several partition utilities, drive scanners, etc... The CF could be defective but I haven't had time to put *another* system to check it. I tried 3 adapters.

Fdisk says "invalid drive designation."

Smells like you need to use that util for changing it from removable drive.

I reflowed the memory chips on a Radeon X850XT (AGP) with my hotair station. The card was giving me issues with black squares randomly popping up on the image.

The previous owner had covered almost all of the memory chips with small heatsinks. Except two of them - why this decision was made, I don't know. Maybe he ran out of them...

Reflowed them both, put brand new thermal tape and heatsinks on them and...all the issues are gone! I'm happy I did not have to go the full reball route.

Another card saved from the trash. 🥰 This will make for a killer 98SE build. I just need a quiet and powerful fan now. My Zalman OP1 is driving me crazy at 12V and running it on 5V barely keeps this card cool.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-28, 15:27:

I am always able to fix these issues by booting to a floppy, deleting the partition using fdisk, and formatting it there. Then it will recognize properly in Partition Magic, DOS, 9x, and boot properly from the BIOS. It's also recommended to use "fdisk /mbr" to ensure that the master boot record is written properly, just to be certain. This procedure has always worked for me, even on the most stubborn of CF and SD cards.

I have zero experience in this but:
Best CF card in "Fixed Disk"?

Recently powered back on my pentium 4 build and I couldn't shutdown windows the correct way. I suspected the disk had issues but thought It had enough time left to last till I could get a SSD as an upgrade and clone an image out of it.

Went to turn it on again today and it was stuck the boot splash thinking it was just a fluke. hit the reset button again and "disk error". Just to be sure, I hooked it up to a sata/ide to usb adapter and tried multiple usb ports on my modern pc and the disk just doesn't read. it's not a surprise given it originally was from a late 2000s intel atom machine and has been in use off and on for many years in different systems.

Otherwise though, not much retro activity going on that build these days as the gpu in the build doesn't have a fan. Haven't gotten a replacement card as I wasn't sure if I still wanted to stick with a pentium 4 or invest in a platform one generation newer. I mean for games the pentium 4 it's fine in my experience, but trying to browse the internet to download games from GOG on the build itself was not going to happen (though a bad drive doesn't help). Sure I could copy a gog installer over via a flash drive, but what's the fun in that?

On my daily driver machine, I've been playing some bit of sven co-op which is pretty retro. might also do some team fortress classic later or half-life deathmatch as for as retro games go.

Testing and documenting 16bit color-limited Windows (and some DOS) games. Built a Windows 98SE P4 on an ECS CS P4S5A2 (SiS XP4) w/Willamette@2.0GHz\400MHz\256KB, 512MB DDR@266MHz and various graphics cards of the day including Matrox m3D (NEC PowerVR PCX2), ATI Rage LT Pro, Obsidian 100DB-4440 SLI, Matrox Mystique 220, Diamond Stealth 3D Pro 2000 (S3 Virge DX), and Powercolor EvilKing 4 (Voodoo 4500) on a 19" Gateway VX900 CRT. Sound courtesy of Sound Blaster Live 5.1 w/SB16 emulation configured.

I was originally going with a 440BX SE440BX-2 board with Pentium III@800MHz, but I again ran into SLI problems again - the Obsidian cards (like the other Voodoo2 cards I own) plain will not work in SLI with this board.

I updated my thread with the latest results. I'm in the process at the moment of gathering additional various game patches.

retrogamerguy1997 wrote on 2022-03-28, 22:37:

Recently powered back on my pentium 4 build and I couldn't shutdown windows the correct way. I suspected the disk had issues but […]
Show full quote

Recently powered back on my pentium 4 build and I couldn't shutdown windows the correct way. I suspected the disk had issues but thought It had enough time left to last till I could get a SSD as an upgrade and clone an image out of it.

Went to turn it on again today and it was stuck the boot splash thinking it was just a fluke. hit the reset button again and "disk error". Just to be sure, I hooked it up to a sata/ide to usb adapter and tried multiple usb ports on my modern pc and the disk just doesn't read. it's not a surprise given it originally was from a late 2000s intel atom machine and has been in use off and on for many years in different systems.

Otherwise though, not much retro activity going on that build these days as the gpu in the build doesn't have a fan. Haven't gotten a replacement card as I wasn't sure if I still wanted to stick with a pentium 4 or invest in a platform one generation newer. I mean for games the pentium 4 it's fine in my experience, but trying to browse the internet to download games from GOG on the build itself was not going to happen (though a bad drive doesn't help). Sure I could copy a gog installer over via a flash drive, but what's the fun in that?

On my daily driver machine, I've been playing some bit of sven co-op which is pretty retro. might also do some team fortress classic later or half-life deathmatch as for as retro games go.

I use a few apps (most free, one is paid for cos it's so useful) to clean all the garbage off my system every weekend, and do a fresh backup, so I never lose more than a week's work/play. When my main drive fails, I always have a spare waiting and a recent backup to restore onto it. Need to set up a raid array for most of my data and backups though, to stay safe, as the backups are on the same physical drive as mt data partitions (except for my drivers/manuals collection, which needs an upgrade from 3TB when I can afford it - I'm thinking of saving for 3 x 8TB in raid 5)

Today I wrote some floppies, and proved to myself that both the 3.5 and 5.25 Apple II drives are working. So, naturally, I played Oregon Trail.