EDIT: removed unhinged rant

Today I equipped my ThinkPad A22p with the best docking station there is - the IBM Thinkpad Dock II (Type 2877).

The dock has one PCI slot for expanding the capabilities of this great machine. I put a Radeon 9250SE in it. Windows XP recognized it without a problem and it's a massive upgrade to the integrated Rage 128.
Windows 98SE crashes with a blue screen - I'll probably have to reinstall it so it can recognize the hardware properly.

In the future I'll probably puta 3Dfx Voodoo II in it so I can play some nice DOS and Win9x classics with the best graphics.
I definitely need a bigger table, though...

I've spent the last few days putting my latest acquisition through its paces. I bought a MEDION Radeon 9600 TX (essentially a factory over-clocked 9500 Pro) for a Windows 95 retro rocket. I have to say that I'm pretty happy with it.

I only found one Catalyst driver package that works properly with Windows 95 (both retail and OSR2). I had to modify the ATI Catalyst Suite 3.0 with the correct PCI ID for the card and updated screen modes for my 1080p monitor. It works great in Windows 95 with full DX8 and OpenGL support for all of the programs I've tested so far.

The ATI control panel options work too. This version of the control panel just doesn't offer as many configuration options as later versions, though.

The only issue I encountered is several helper programs in this driver package fail at boot up with user32.dll errors. They don't affect driver performance that I can tell, but this issue does prevent the ATI tray program from running (not a big deal to me). I just removed the .exe calls in the registry to keep the programs from starting at boot time.

Wow that's an early OS for that video card, CPU and that screen resolution 😀
I'm surprised it all works with the exception of the tray programs.

Do you need to plug in the power connector that the card has for it to work well? I've got a similar Medion Radeon 9800XL card and that's got the same power connecter in the upper left and I suppose it probably does, but yours still has the sticker on there and is working. I wonder if the external power is more for boards that have poor AGP power implementation?

Also, it might be worth taking off the heatsink to see what the thermal paste is like or at least check the thermals. Mine has the same fan and it was practically welded onto the ATI R350 core, it uses a yellow thermal pad which was making good contact but I do wonder if it would have worked well. I've read that this cooler (same as your 9600) is a bit inadequate for a 9800 but I don't have another one that would fit. (BTW if you do try to pull the cooler off be careful, I heated it up with a hairdryer then twisted and it eventually popped off cleanly)

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-06-03, 23:15:

Wow that's an early OS for that video card, CPU and that screen resolution :) I'm surprised it all works with the exception of t […]
Show full quote

Wow that's an early OS for that video card, CPU and that screen resolution 😀
I'm surprised it all works with the exception of the tray programs.

Do you need to plug in the power connector that the card has for it to work well? I've got a similar Medion Radeon 9800XL card and that's got the same power connecter in the upper left and I suppose it probably does, but yours still has the sticker on there and is working. I wonder if the external power is more for boards that have poor AGP power implementation?

Also, it might be worth taking off the heatsink to see what the thermal paste is like or at least check the thermals. Mine has the same fan and it was practically welded onto the ATI R350 core, it uses a yellow thermal pad which was making good contact but I do wonder if it would have worked well. I've read that this cooler (same as your 9600) is a bit inadequate for a 9800 but I don't have another one that would fit. (BTW if you do try to pull the cooler off be careful, I heated it up with a hairdryer then twisted and it eventually popped off cleanly)

It's almost the fastest card possible for Windows 95 Retail. I figure a Radeon 9700 would be about 10% faster and the Radeon 9700 Pro would be about 25% faster. I paid a fraction of the cost of a 9700 or 9700 Pro for this card including overseas shipping, so I think I got a good value.

I don't have a GeForce Ti 4600 to test with Windows 95, but it would also be faster if it worked. I have tested a GeForce FX 5200 with Windows 95, but it doesn't work properly with OSR2 and it didn't work at all with the Retail version of Win95. I think the FX series drivers are just too new for Windows 95.

The sticker on the power connector says it's for mainboards that don't provide power. I gave it a try on my Asus P5PE-VM without supplemental power, and it seems to work just fine.

The GPU doesn't seem to get too hot. I don't plan to stress it with hours of gameplay (this is just a fun project), but the heatsink didn't feel very warm after I ran some benchmarks. I don't think I'll attempt to remove and clean the heatsink.

Glide + Win2K + SMP + CRT + EAX = ❤️👍

Vintage market 2023, June:

Today it was a lot bigger than usual with some street performers. Huge crowd, but a lot of good stuff unusually cheap.

A huge full-copper new-old stock Socket A/478 cooler. The packaging is very worn and missing the fan screws and the s748 retention assembly, but seems to have everything for Socket A.

New-old stock PCMCIA gigabit networking card that supposed to be officially supported from Win98SE all the way up to Vista.

Counter Strike Anthology. Seems to be pre-Steam version. I've seen nothing on the box or in the (one sheet) manual that'd suggest it needs online activation. The disc is near mint condition.

A very nasty looking ESS AudioDrive ES1868F. Lots of dirt and corrosion, but I don't see flat out broken traces or missing components and it was essentially free.

A 3Com fast ethernet card from 1998, some corrosion on the screws that fix the bracket onto the PCB, otherwise it looks to be in decent condition.

All this for what amounts to about 8€.

Also added two new pieces of pin-up art to the collection.

Tested some SCSI drives and cards.
One cd-rom unit powers on but no reads. Won't even try reading.

pulling my hair out trying to figure out why the XT-IDE UB ROM when shoved into my 3C509B in my 386 will find the second IDE disk in my system, but not give any drive letters to the three partitions. yet, with the same ROM in an XT-IDE card, will magically just work with nothign else changed. Today is the day I get to figure out memory addresses, hooray.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-06-04, 15:32:

Vintage market 2023, June: […]
Show full quote

Vintage market 2023, June:

Today it was a lot bigger than usual with some street performers. Huge crowd, but a lot of good stuff unusually cheap.

IMG_20230604_120445.jpg

A huge full-copper new-old stock Socket A/478 cooler. The packaging is very worn and missing the fan screws and the s748 retention assembly, but seems to have everything for Socket A.

New-old stock PCMCIA gigabit networking card that supposed to be officially supported from Win98SE all the way up to Vista.

Counter Strike Anthology. Seems to be pre-Steam version. I've seen nothing on the box or in the (one sheet) manual that'd suggest it needs online activation. The disc is near mint condition.

A very nasty looking ESS AudioDrive ES1868F. Lots of dirt and corrosion, but I don't see flat out broken traces or missing components and it was essentially free.

A 3Com fast ethernet card from 1998, some corrosion on the screws that fix the bracket onto the PCB, otherwise it looks to be in decent condition.

All this for what amounts to about 8€.

Also added two new pieces of pin-up art to the collection.
IMG_20230604_120712.jpg

After a little bit of scrubbing I found a burnt trace coming from the ISA slot straight up to the wavetable header. Burnt traces are never a good sign, but if that's all there is to it, then it shouldn't cause any problem as long as a wavetable isn't connected and also it should be an easy fix.

Edit: Also, I was wrong about CS 1 Anthology not needing Steam.

Say does anyone remember what this game is? I asked on Reddit a few years ago but nobody ever could tell me what it was. This is a either DOS or early Windows game I played when I was really young

The main things I remember are that it had a ludicris number of discs, and that the discs came in a binder sort of like the binder like Phantasmagoria or the software bundles new PCs used to come with.
The very first thing that I remember happening in the game was some sort of escape or maybe chase sequence that if you failed you blew up. I want to say you were re-entering a planets atmosphere in an escape pod. Right after that your in some sort of industrial base/military looking area with a lot of lava.

After feeling the need to play through TIE Fighter again, I finally moved my UMAX mac clone out of the way, and set up my DOS machine again. This, in turn, led me to figuring out why windows 3.11 wasn't happy with my sound setup, and figuring out that I had accidentally set both sound cards to using the same DMAs and IRQs. Now that those issues are cleared, and my system has been downgraded to a 100MHz Pentium 75, I can play TIE fighter without the speed issues that even 233MHz can introduce.

BetaC wrote on 2023-06-05, 06:17:

After feeling the need to play through TIE Fighter again, I finally moved my UMAX mac clone out of the way, and set up my DOS machine again. This, in turn, led me to figuring out why windows 3.11 wasn't happy with my sound setup, and figuring out that I had accidentally set both sound cards to using the same DMAs and IRQs. Now that those issues are cleared, and my system has been downgraded to a 100MHz Pentium 75, I can play TIE fighter without the speed issues that even 233MHz can introduce.

I've noticed CPU speed affects even mouse sensitivity in TIE Fighter, the faster CPU the more sluggish the mouse gets. No idea does it affect joysticks but if you are using one and it feels like you aren't turning as fast as you should, then 100MHz is still too fast.

Seems like I'm currently going through a period of planned obsolescence, all my stuff is breaking. First 6800 GT croaked, then Voodoo3 2000 and now Sound Blaster Z I had in my "modern" PC (that just had its 9th birthday) continued the streak. What's next in line, my apartment burns down and I get leprosy?

Sombrero wrote on 2023-06-05, 06:56:

Seems like I'm currently going through a period of planned obsolescence, all my stuff is breaking. First 6800 GT croaked, then Voodoo3 2000 and now Sound Blaster Z I had in my "modern" PC (that just had its 9th birthday) continued the streak. What's next in line, my apartment burns down and I get leprosy?

Out of curiosity, did the Voodoo 3 have active cooling i.e. was there a fan pointed at it?

Those things can get pretty hot, especially the PCI versions.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-05, 07:32:

Sombrero wrote on 2023-06-05, 06:56:

Seems like I'm currently going through a period of planned obsolescence, all my stuff is breaking. First 6800 GT croaked, then Voodoo3 2000 and now Sound Blaster Z I had in my "modern" PC (that just had its 9th birthday) continued the streak. What's next in line, my apartment burns down and I get leprosy?

Out of curiosity, did the Voodoo 3 have active cooling i.e. was there a fan pointed at it?

Those things can get pretty hot, especially the PCI versions.

It was in storage when it died. I bought it, tested it and put it to storage as I've been using V3 3k. Makes me wonder did it just die or did I buy a baked card.

I've noticed they run hot, I installed a 120mm fan using a PCI bracket to blow air to the V3 3k immediately, should help with longevity. I've since also flashed it with 2k's BIOS as I don't need the extra speed but would like the card to last as long as possible.

Sombrero wrote on 2023-06-05, 08:08:

It was in storage when it died. I bought it, tested it and put it to storage as I've been using V3 3k. Makes me wonder did it just die or did I buy a baked card.

Ouch. Could very well be that someone "baked" the card to reflow it. That never works out in the long run, especially with retro parts.

On the other hand, it might be a case of VBIOS corruption. I've seen a video by @vswitchzero where he brought two Voodoo 3 cards back to life by simply re-flashing the BIOS.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-05, 08:16:

On the other hand, it might be a case of VBIOS corruption. I've seen a video by @vswitchzero where he brought two Voodoo 3 cards back to life by simply re-flashing the BIOS.

Yep, tried that during troubleshooting, flasher couldn't recognize the card and aborted. I posted about the whole mess on the previous page.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-06-04, 17:17:

After a little bit of scrubbing I found a burnt trace coming from the ISA slot straight up to the wavetable header. Burnt traces are never a good sign, but if that's all there is to it, then it shouldn't cause any problem as long as a wavetable isn't connected and also it should be an easy fix.
ES1868.jpg

Edit: Also, I was wrong about CS 1 Anthology not needing Steam.

I have no idea how that may have burnt. I misaligned and inversely plugged in wavetable headers before and never managed to burn anything before. Please check C25 for a short.. But I have a feeling they plugged in something other than a wavetable onto that header - the header itself looks a bit melted in fact..

appiah4 wrote on 2023-06-05, 10:14:

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-06-04, 17:17:

After a little bit of scrubbing I found a burnt trace coming from the ISA slot straight up to the wavetable header. Burnt traces are never a good sign, but if that's all there is to it, then it shouldn't cause any problem as long as a wavetable isn't connected and also it should be an easy fix.
ES1868.jpg

Edit: Also, I was wrong about CS 1 Anthology not needing Steam.

I have no idea how that may have burnt. I misaligned and inversely plugged in wavetable headers before and never managed to burn anything before. Please check C25 for a short.. But I have a feeling they plugged in something other than a wavetable onto that header - the header itself looks a bit melted in fact..

Nah, the wavetable header is alright. It was still a little wet after the wash. C56, the one between the wavetable pin in question and the ground also seems to be fine (at least not shorted). Will check C25 and C26 when I get home. This is sadly bad news. If something inappropriate was connected to the card, it increases the risk of serious damage.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-06-05, 11:15:

appiah4 wrote on 2023-06-05, 10:14:

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-06-04, 17:17:

After a little bit of scrubbing I found a burnt trace coming from the ISA slot straight up to the wavetable header. Burnt traces are never a good sign, but if that's all there is to it, then it shouldn't cause any problem as long as a wavetable isn't connected and also it should be an easy fix.
ES1868.jpg

Edit: Also, I was wrong about CS 1 Anthology not needing Steam.

I have no idea how that may have burnt. I misaligned and inversely plugged in wavetable headers before and never managed to burn anything before. Please check C25 for a short.. But I have a feeling they plugged in something other than a wavetable onto that header - the header itself looks a bit melted in fact..

Nah, the wavetable header is alright. It was still a little wet after the wash. C56, the one between the wavetable pin in question and the ground also seems to be fine (at least not shorted). Will check C25 and C26 when I get home. This is sadly bad news. If something inappropriate was connected to the card, it increases the risk of serious damage.

That is probably a power rail from the ISA bus leading to the wavetable header through some filtering caps, so if that rail got shorted elsewhere and there was a current surge all of a sudden.. well you know..

I wouldn't try that card out on an important motherboard for sure.