I'm shifting to actually using the software more.
I've mostly got what I want now bar maybe 1 or 2 rare cards ill probably never get my hands on (original pro audio spectrum) , and I'm still playing with the idea of getting an A1200.
Now that I've got everything set up I've found myself playing more games and trying to make use of my systems.
I went through and beat system shock and now I'm going through 2 , I've also been playing dark sun : shattered lands.
Usually, after I've picked a good quality title to play and after figuring out what hardware the game supports
I'll try making use of the various hardware my 2 systems have (Sony Trintron Monitor , MT32 and General Midi, A3D , EAX , Direct3D via 256 DDR , 3DFX , PowerVR , S3D , MSI , Tandy , CMS , Gravis , Sound Blaster 16 , AWE64) ,
since I've got all my stuff KBM'ed , switchboxed and all sorts of hardware crammed into the computers its a bit easier to focus on hardware and use it ,
mostly a matter of pressing a few switches and shifting over to another bit of hardware ,
so I feel like all the hard work paid off and I can actually enjoy some software since I'm mostly done with Min Maxing stuff.

gerry wrote on 2023-03-27, 14:55:

well, it is easier this way so why have all that hardware?

inertia

AppleSauce wrote on 2023-03-27, 18:19:

since I've got all my stuff KBM'ed , switchboxed and all sorts of hardware crammed into the computers its a bit easier to focus on hardware and use it ,
mostly a matter of pressing a few switches and shifting over to another bit of hardware ,

I'm working towards something similar. How do you handle audio mixing / switching between computers? Do you use external sound modules between different systems?

Maybe in the future I will collect some hardware, possibly old Apple stuff (PPC era and Apple II). And maybe an Acer Extensa 710T if I ever find another, because the one I had years ago went kaput.

I do badly want a G4, but not now, because of other priorities in life.

Since the beginning of my “retro adventures” I was always, and I am still, just interested in the software so I keep using vms and emulators for that purpose. Another reason is lack of time and space to collect these stuff. At the end of the day I just want to game.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-03-28, 01:29:

AppleSauce wrote on 2023-03-27, 18:19:

since I've got all my stuff KBM'ed , switchboxed and all sorts of hardware crammed into the computers its a bit easier to focus on hardware and use it ,
mostly a matter of pressing a few switches and shifting over to another bit of hardware ,

I'm working towards something similar. How do you handle audio mixing / switching between computers? Do you use external sound modules between different systems?

Ah yeah I've seen some of your builds , guess you've got a similar obsession with having all the things xD.

I've bought a bunch of cheap 3.5mm switchers from aliexpress , luckily my altec lansing acs 45.1 speaker system has two audio inputs , which I've got hooked into the midi desktop modules via 8 port rca switcher and 3.5 switcher to the sound cards. The stack of sound modules (MT32, CM32L , SC55 , SC55Mk2 ,MU80) are all hooked into the socket 7 rig via a mpu 105 midi switchbox then to a mpu 401 breakout box and finally to a Midi interface card.

The most annoying part imo was figuring out how to have the CD drive spit out audio into all three socket 7 sound cards (CT1740 SB16 , AWE64 Gold , Primax Gravis Ultrasound Clone ) , in the end I did away with the cd in cable and used the headphone jack on the front of my NEC CDR 273 cd drive to pipe audio out via a 3.5mm switchbox to all the sound cards line in jacks.

The Slot 1 was much simpler since it has only 2 sound cards (sound blaster live and a diamond monster MX300) and each card has a duplicate pioneer DVD drive with its own cd in cable.

I'm also currently working on getting a DB25 switcher setup going for the print port sound cards (CMSLPT , TNDLPT) and a separate audio jack switcher for those.

Since all the sound modules have volume knobs its pretty easy to adjust the volume , it gets a bit more tricky with the sound cards sometimes I need to mess with software mixers as well as the switchboxes volume wheels.

I probably should just get a proper mixer at some point but I haven't got around to it.

I built all of my period machines to be overpowered, now I just enjoy them. I do however still find ways to improve on them, convenience factor, more storage, a little more power...etc.

My current project is removing the CD-ROM drive from my shuttle and just using an external drive so I can stuff it full of 128GB SSDs instead. I really don't need to but, as you use your old machines, you realize how to maximize what is most important to what you are using them for...or just come up with a hardware project for fun I suppose...The shuttle is my Voodoo 5 Win 98 machine, I'm wondering with 4 SATA III SSD drives if I'll need to mount a fan in there to increase cooling...

Like many I built my first PC because I wanted to play a certain game that I couldn't get running on my daily driver (in my case Need for Speed 4) but that quickly changed to building systems with hardware that I only dreamed of at the time, which then led to building systems with hardware I didn't even know about, eg early 3d accelerators from S3, Matrox, etc and also branching out into old servers.

In the last 2 years I've slowed down on the hardware side of things, mostly because I have just about everything I "need" and have actually started playing games again so gone full circle in a way but have no doubt at some point I'll get the itch and either reconfigure existing systems or find an excuse for a new one.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2023-03-27, 16:21:

For me, it wasn't nostalgia though; it's about running games with their maximum system requirements. My retro system building philosophy is always period overkill instead of period correct. You can find more about it on this thread.

though i was never that bothered with running games at maximal settings i do like the fact that running something from GOG, for instance, on a machine with a spec way beyond the original requirement allows for all settings to be maxed!

Bruninho wrote on 2023-03-28, 01:30:

Since the beginning of my “retro adventures” I was always, and I am still, just interested in the software so I keep using vms and emulators for that purpose. Another reason is lack of time and space to collect these stuff. At the end of the day I just want to game.

yes when it comes to just playing a game the fastest and often best route into that is to use emulation and things like dosbox and gog

AppleSauce wrote on 2023-03-27, 18:19:

since I've got all my stuff KBM'ed , switchboxed and all sorts of hardware crammed into the computers its a bit easier to focus on hardware and use it ,
mostly a matter of pressing a few switches and shifting over to another bit of hardware ,
so I feel like all the hard work paid off and I can actually enjoy some software since I'm mostly done with Min Maxing stuff.

and when using various systems this is definitely a good way to remove barriers to actually using the hardware

I spend more time on Vogons talking about vintage computing, or watching YouTube than I do actually using or tinkering with vintage computers.
I have several desktops and several laptops. But I simply don't have to the time to really use them.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2023-03-28, 16:56:

I spend more time on Vogons talking about vintage computing, or watching YouTube than I do actually using or tinkering with vintage computers.
I have several desktops and several laptops. But I simply don't have to the time to really use them.

You would if you wouldn't waste it on Vogons and youtube 😁
That is a real issue, youtube and social media in general are awful time sinks and very addictive. People spend a lot more time on them than they realize and that eats deep into their quality/productive activities.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2023-03-28, 16:56:

I spend more time on Vogons talking about vintage computing, or watching YouTube than I do actually using or tinkering with vintage computers.
I have several desktops and several laptops. But I simply don't have to the time to really use them.

I'm guilty of this as well. In part I think it's because helping others is a kind of "virtual tinker" my systems are more or less done and this is a way to continue building systems

Honestly, I have more fun these days changing around my configs every so often. I get them set up and working, play games for a while, then get the idea to rebuild them. So I tear them down and reconfigure them.

I have alternate CPUs, RAM, Sound, GPUs for both my rigs that I've collected over the years so I just change what it is and does for a while. Have even switched around cases here and there. If I assembled everything I had, I'd prob have 5-6 alternate rigs (with 3-4 of them missing a part or two like a case, drive, or PSU).

It's weird but it scratches that PC building itch for me.

Over the last couple of years, I've narrowed down what I want from my retro builds, and acquired the relevant hardware to fulfill that purpose. Initially, I was more interested in the "one build to rule them all" approach. However, with time and experience, I've come to realize that this requires some compromises that I wasn't willing to make.

I feel like I finally have most of the hardware that I wanted. Nowadays, I'm just doing some minor tinkering and playing games on my retro rigs.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-03-29, 05:36:

Jasin Natael wrote on 2023-03-28, 16:56:

I spend more time on Vogons talking about vintage computing, or watching YouTube than I do actually using or tinkering with vintage computers.
I have several desktops and several laptops. But I simply don't have to the time to really use them.

You would if you wouldn't waste it on Vogons and youtube 😁
That is a real issue, youtube and social media in general are awful time sinks and very addictive. People spend a lot more time on them than they realize and that eats deep into their quality/productive activities.

This is probably true. But my time spent on Vogons is almost exclusively spent during work hours, on a secondary monitor.
I pretty much only watch Youtube at late hours after the wife and kids are asleep. Not that this time couldn't be spent more productively, I really need to get back to working on my old car during this time.
it's pretty much the only free time that I have to myself as evenings and weekends are always time spent with family or running errands/shopping what have you.

I do watch a helluva lot of youtube retro channels..
I do get jealous of the stuff these guys get to play with...but do find watching Adrian...Usagi...Necroware...Phil...Retrospectre...and many many others ..
Inspiring and educational.
This often leads me to dig in and get started on a new project.
I watched a Tech Tangents video a while back where he reverse engineered and manufactured a rare CD interface card..
That's dedication
..and I look forward to seeing what progress Usagi has made with his monster sized "centurion mini computer" every week..
He even designs and builds 1 bit valve/tube computers...
It blows my mind.
and I love it....

I like old games, I like old computers, and I like old Windows versions. But boy has these couple years of this hobby really beaten me down. What started as way to faithfully recreate old experiences shattered my nostalgic view of the hardware and became a money sink that I didn't expect. Emulation too has been a disappointment. I mean I've barely able to emulate a semi-decent socket 7 pentium which is simultaneously too low end and too high end. Too low end for the win98 games I'm nostalgic for, and a bit too much for dos games. At that point, might as well use dosbox which is just easier for dos games. Also running XP and 98Se on real hardware does feel better on real hardware. While I was considering getting back in and working on getting a project going on, I'm almost afraid that buying one fan for a prebuilt will yet again lead to other things complicating the journey. On the other hand though, projects like SBEMU and seeing a post about win98se running on more modern intel platform has kinda given me an idea to do a "time machine" build at some point.

Leaving aside all my IT history and what lead to do it for a living, I first got interested in vintage computing by collecting CPUs. This was around 2000-2001 and I had probably the 4-5th largest CPU collection worldwide at that time. CPU-World was still a very new site and most of the people were on a german forum for that, I was a student that also did some hardware reviews for websites. At this period I had a couple of complete NegGen Nx586 PCI systems (most you could find were VLB), with FPU...completely unobtainable now. Some Alpha systems (PC164LX, XP1000) and...2 working Voodoo 5 6000 I got for testing and I could keep as 3dfx went bankrupt (yes yes, you read it right...the reviews are still online).

Then I started working in IT full time and lost interest as seeing a PC the whole day was already enough. So I sold EVERYTHING. This is probably the thing I regret most in my life. Fast-forward to 1-2 years ago and it's time for my mid-life crisis. I came across some old K6 PCs and it started interest in complete systems I could play my old games on. This is where I'm at: CPUs > nothing > useful systems.

gerry wrote on 2023-03-27, 15:05:

:) lyrics written by someone who knew! […]
Show full quote

Jo22 wrote on 2023-03-27, 11:17:

I remember these sites! Though I've never really been a QBasic nerd - I used QB45! 😅 Speaking of QBasic nerds, how could we poss […]
Show full quote

gerry wrote on 2023-03-27, 09:11:

there were still hobby programming scenes around qbasic and the like back then, although they were fading away (and remember allegro, it still exists). Now there are tiny islands of activity around some language implementations like freebasic and game libraries but mainstay hobby game programming has moved onto unity and so forth, [..]

I remember these sites! Though I've never really been a QBasic nerd - I used QB45! 😅
Speaking of QBasic nerds, how could we possibly ever forget that song?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mal6XbN5cEg

😀 lyrics written by someone who knew!

i remember all the textfile 'tutorials' from back then written by invisible techs with cool sounding names and full of assembly tricks and so forth - qbasic, qb, turbo pascal and more

and if only having qbasic - then call absolute with strings of &HCD,&H33 etc 😀

I'm still using Quick Basic/VB from time to time for writing little prototype programs, but I've started to use them in VMs, too […]
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I'm still using Quick Basic/VB from time to time for writing little prototype programs, but I've started to use them in VMs, too.
Previously, I either used real hardware or DOSBox for this.

That way I can still interface them to real hardware (USB serial adapters, gameport, LPT ports etc) on a modern PC or Macintosh.

The VM software emulates the standard IBM PC hardware on the guest side, then maps it to the corresponding hardware on the host side. 🙂

that's a good idea. i guess there are unmapped things but interesting way to maintain old hardware applications

Yes, it really works. 😃 Well, most of the time. It's fascinating what a little DOS VM and a copy of QB45 or Turbo Pascal/C can still be useful for.

One of my other retro hobbies is to build old schematics in electronics books or PC interface books.
They have schematics for EPROM readers for parallel port, little LCD displays connect via COM ports, interfacing tempetature sensors to gameport etc.

Most of these schematics/projects can be built on a little vero board with little to no extra hardware.
USB serial adapters still work for DOS appli, if Windows 98 or a DOS VM is running.
The only little "problem" is power. USB converters use 3.3v or 5v, not +/-12v.
But that's no problem. Just use use two 9v batteries in series instead of using the serial port's power. Voila! Now you have +9v, ground and -9v.

In fact, even GW-BASIC and QBASIC work for most books. They always have a rudimentary sample program written in BASIC.

If you're on Windows, VB 3 and Turbo Pascal for Windows 1.5 or Delphi 1 are all it needs.

For newer electronics projects VB6 & VB NET 2005 are handy, too.
The 2005 version includes an automatic code converter for VB5/6 code.
VB NET 2008 also has it, but in a more limited form.

That's something I like about DOS eta tinkering. It's never obsolete. There are always occasions were you can apply your knowledge from many moons ago. Nothing is lost. 😁

Edit: I'm often using Virtual PC 2007 on an XP host.
However, other VM software like Qemu or VirtualBox work, too.
Especially on Linux, many pass-through features are available.

But even in many versions of DOSBox, real ports can be accessed in some way or another.
Using network emulation also makes tunneling of certain things possible, in theory.

Edit: I also love real PC hardware, of course. It's just that I'm not using it on a regular basis anymore, because VMs and emulators have gotten so good.
However, that doesn't mean that they replaced my hardware. It's rathet the contrary.
Using the "real thing" had become much more of a ceremony in which I enjoy playing with it consciously.
Like watching a VHS or Laser Disc on a weekend in the living room vs. consuming a film on a laptop in bed.

Btw, I think it helps trying to tidy up the parts collection. If things are properly boxed up in a tidy fashion, it greatly lowers the pressure.
It also causes a feeling of relief knowing that your collection is sorted in a proper way.

Making little notes about the value of each part also helps. So your mind comes to peace knowing that you left a message to the people who might sell your collection when you "moved" to another place.

Well, don't know. I've started collecting vintage computers only a little bit more than two years ago.

At the beginning my intention was to build a mobile DOS station on basis of IBM Thinkpad T42. Since then I've acquired few dozens of other machines such as Toshiba Libretto 50, HP 200LX, Epson HX-20, TRS-80 Model 100, Sharp PC-1500 and so on. So, I can say that there is a shift of my interest from old DOS machines towards even older BASIC machines. On the other hand, I have some Palm OS machines, one Windows CE machine and even such a weird machines as IBM Chipcard and Kyocera DS-110. So I dunno.

Today I mostly try to complete computers I already have with peripheral devices, cables, adapters, literature and of course software.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-03-29, 20:21:

Yes, it really works. 😃 Well, most of the time. It's fascinating what a little DOS VM and a copy of QB45 or Turbo Pascal/C can s […]
Show full quote

Yes, it really works. 😃 Well, most of the time. It's fascinating what a little DOS VM and a copy of QB45 or Turbo Pascal/C can still be useful for.

One of my other retro hobbies is to build old schematics in electronics books or PC interface books.
They have schematics for EPROM readers for parallel port, little LCD displays connect via COM ports, interfacing tempetature sensors to gameport etc.

Most of these schematics/projects can be built on a little vero board with little to no extra hardware.
USB serial adapters still work for DOS appli, if Windows 98 or a DOS VM is running.
The only little "problem" is power. USB converters use 3.3v or 5v, not +/-12v.
But that's no problem. Just use use two 9v batteries in series instead of using the serial port's power. Voila! Now you have +9v, ground and -9v.

In fact, even GW-BASIC and QBASIC work for most books. They always have a rudimentary sample program written in BASIC.

If you're on Windows, VB 3 and Turbo Pascal for Windows 1.5 or Delphi 1 are all it needs.

For newer electronics projects VB6 & VB NET 2005 are handy, too.
The 2005 version includes an automatic code converter for VB5/6 code.
VB NET 2008 also has it, but in a more limited form.

that got me thinking, if you can interface with the PC via a VM then with re-mapped VMs you could have dos VM inside a raspberry pi or something and still interface with things! although in that case why not just write it for the RPi in the first place 😀