Successfully patched Murder Club to work in 16 colors and 3 voice sound on the PCjr. Murder Club was one of several Japanese computer games ported to the U.S. in the '80s, but unlike Thexder and Silpheed, it had no native support for the PCjr, only the Tandy 1000. Not anymore.

Spent several hours messing around on my Win98 machine today, doing various things. (Athlon 3000+, 512MB, GeForce 4 Ti 4200 , Audigy EAX Advanced HD SB0090)

Ended up putting Modplug on there, then locating X-Plugin v1.0.1 (used to love that visualizer), for that ultimate Windows 9x Tracker PC jam experience!

Spent WAY too much time just listening to tunes I already have on both my DOS and modern machines as well! 🤣

StriderTR wrote on 2025-09-29, 04:17:

Spent several hours messing around on my Win98 machine today, doing various things. (Athlon 3000+, 512MB, GeForce 4 Ti 4200 , Audigy EAX Advanced HD SB0090)

Ended up putting Modplug on there, then locating X-Plugin v1.0.1 (used to love that visualizer), for that ultimate Windows 9x Tracker PC jam experience!

Spent WAY too much time just listening to tunes I already have on both my DOS and modern machines as well! 🤣

The best player 😀
I'm joining :

Yesterday the hard drive of my W98SE machine died.
It was fine tuned, all updated and upgraded and sparkly.
The disk was recognized only after a power on, and get stuck at the beginning of Win loading sequence (or crash at 1% of scandisk).
Then it was recognized as 2.8GB instead of 20... I'm going to do some more testing to see if some smd failed hooking it to a constant size cap (it should be 2.1GB btw).
When it still worked it displayed this error message: (see pic)

As I'm at it I'll redo the build and add a mobo with CD-ROM boot support.

I remembered a recent video from Phil's and was looking for the fastest way to install W98 and came across the "quick install".
Looks interesting and I'll try that.

My question is: apart from the approach, isn't this the way OEMs work? Copying and prepping for first use to setup everything?

I'll probably end up do a clean slow reinstall, patch it to brink of becoming W7 and image it. 🤣

Nexxen wrote on 2025-09-30, 11:02:

Yesterday the hard drive of my W98SE machine died. ...

Yep .. had to do this a few times over the years!

If you can read some of it in another machine (either attached or via USB cable)
Make a backup of as much as you can .. this might let you retrieve drivers, other systems
files, applications/settings and user data if you need...

Then do a clean install on a new drive, and restore what you can from that
backup ... good luck!

Today I finally did something I never touched before: create a Crossfire setup.
My mainboard is a Gigabyte GA990FXA-UD3 paired with a Phenom II X4 965. It has the first chipset supporting Crossfire via the PCI-Express bus instead of using the crappy bridges. It was a mainboard + CPU combo I got for free from my local computer shop when they closed a couple of years ago.

As graphic cards I have a pair of XFX Radeon 290X which were pretty high end back in the day. I got the pair for 30€ so this kickstarted the whole affair...it's cheap enough for a hobby build.

I'm quite impressed with the results in 3dmark 11 :

With both cards:

Aside from the score, it's clearly not as "smooth" as with one card, there are some micro-lags going on. I also tested the setup with Bioshock Infinite and it's a very enjoyable experience, I didn't see the lags there...but oh boy do these graphic cards SCREAM. They have a blower fan and it's loud as hell. How people were accepting that 10 years ago is beyond me. I'm glad we have better cooler designs nowadays.

DaveDDS wrote on 2025-09-30, 13:51:

Yep .. had to do this a few times over the years! […]
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Nexxen wrote on 2025-09-30, 11:02:

Yesterday the hard drive of my W98SE machine died. ...

Yep .. had to do this a few times over the years!

If you can read some of it in another machine (either attached or via USB cable)
Make a backup of as much as you can .. this might let you retrieve drivers, other systems
files, applications/settings and user data if you need...

Then do a clean install on a new drive, and restore what you can from that
backup ... good luck!

I'll use a Windows machine to try something.
I'll image the disk once it's done.

Btw what software are you guys using to image disks, that support compression (remove empty space in the images)?

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2025-09-30, 19:41:

Btw what software are you guys using to image disks, that support compression (remove empty space in the images)?

I use Clonezilla.
There is a remove empty space IIRC.
When it's 2GB I don't really care. It can be restored on bigger partitions no stress.

There are better options, DD is one but I don't know how to use it properly.

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2025-09-30, 18:47:

Today I finally did something I never touched before: create a Crossfire setup. My mainboard is a Gigabyte GA990FXA-UD3 paired […]
Show full quote

Today I finally did something I never touched before: create a Crossfire setup.
My mainboard is a Gigabyte GA990FXA-UD3 paired with a Phenom II X4 965. It has the first chipset supporting Crossfire via the PCI-Express bus instead of using the crappy bridges. It was a mainboard + CPU combo I got for free from my local computer shop when they closed a couple of years ago.

As graphic cards I have a pair of XFX Radeon 290X which were pretty high end back in the day. I got the pair for 30€ so this kickstarted the whole affair...it's cheap enough for a hobby build.

I'm quite impressed with the results in 3dmark 11 :

With both cards:

Aside from the score, it's clearly not as "smooth" as with one card, there are some micro-lags going on. I also tested the setup with Bioshock Infinite and it's a very enjoyable experience, I didn't see the lags there...but oh boy do these graphic cards SCREAM. They have a blower fan and it's loud as hell. How people were accepting that 10 years ago is beyond me. I'm glad we have better cooler designs nowadays.

I ran a setup like this, but with an overclocked FX-8350. One and only crossfire setup I ever did. Worked really good.

And yep, those are cold cathode lights, we don't need no stinking LEDs! 🤣

Recapped the IBM 5150, except for the power supply and floppy drives (pulled from a dead Compaq Portable XT) and I get the continuous beep of death. Either the CPU is having issues or the RAM is dead. Anyone know where I can find 16Kx1 DRAM 16-pin PDIP chips? The RAM is most likely dead as a hammer and I want to make the system work once again and find a way to upgrade my SixPakPlus SPK-384 from 384KB RAM to 576KB RAM (2x 256KB RAM, 1x 64KB RAM) without my wallet biting me in the rear and.

StriderTR wrote on 2025-09-29, 04:17:

Ended up putting Modplug on there, then locating X-Plugin v1.0.1 (used to love that visualizer), for that ultimate Windows 9x Tracker PC jam experience!

Spent WAY too much time just listening to tunes I already have on both my DOS and modern machines as well! 🤣

Would you or anyone else happen to know a large tracker music compilation pack floating around somewhere in the depths of internet?

I've tried to google for such a thing couple times without success, and I have a hard time believing nobody has never made such pack full of DOS-Win9x era tracker music and uploaded it to somewhere.

bjwil1991 wrote on Yesterday, 04:59:

Recapped the IBM 5150, except for the power supply and floppy drives (pulled from a dead Compaq Portable XT) and I get the continuous beep of death. Either the CPU is having issues or the RAM is dead. Anyone know where I can find 16Kx1 DRAM 16-pin PDIP chips? The RAM is most likely dead as a hammer and I want to make the system work once again and find a way to upgrade my SixPakPlus SPK-384 from 384KB RAM to 576KB RAM (2x 256KB RAM, 1x 64KB RAM) without my wallet biting me in the rear and.

Aside from just buying chips on ebay or aliexpress, sometimes you can find memory\RAM cards for various devices listed for sale (even in scrap lots) and they're usually loaded with common memory chips found in PCs.

It's possible the supply has dried up by now, but 6-7 years ago I picked up a laser printer memory board for almost nothing and it gave me the chips I needed to max out the memory on a GUS Classic. I think I paid less than $10 for the whole board with 16 chips vs $25+ for 8 chips being sold separately.

Just keep an eye out for ones that need desoldered vs ones that are socketed. Both will work, but it depends how much of a hassle desoldering is for you.

Sombrero wrote on Yesterday, 14:12:

StriderTR wrote on 2025-09-29, 04:17:

Ended up putting Modplug on there, then locating X-Plugin v1.0.1 (used to love that visualizer), for that ultimate Windows 9x Tracker PC jam experience!

Spent WAY too much time just listening to tunes I already have on both my DOS and modern machines as well! 🤣

Would you or anyone else happen to know a large tracker music compilation pack floating around somewhere in the depths of internet?

I've tried to google for such a thing couple times without success, and I have a hard time believing nobody has never made such pack full of DOS-Win9x era tracker music and uploaded it to somewhere.

Sadly, I do not. My current "collection" mostly came from https://modarchive.org/ over the years.

I recently created a account over there so I could start organizing my favorites in one spot, you're welcome to take a look. Many are from that era.

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view … tes&query=97032

StriderTR wrote on Yesterday, 17:39:

Sadly, I do not. My current "collection" mostly came from https://modarchive.org/ over the years.

I recently created a account over there so I could start organizing my favorites in one spot, you're welcome to take a look. Many are from that era.

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view … tes&query=97032

What an odd thing, you'd think there are boatloads of compilations like that since tracker music tracks are tiny in size. I suppose I'd just have to get off my arse and finally start collecting the hard way.

Good stuff on that account of yours!

Finally succeeded in patching Total Eclipse to run in 16 colors on the IBM PCjr. Can't believe they got a 3D game like this to run on such old hardware. And the speed isn't half bad either.

GigAHerZ wrote on 2025-09-27, 08:40:

GigAHerZ wrote on 2024-07-23, 11:09:

I was trying to figure out, what mechanism i could have to attach SLOT1 coolers to the CPUs. I think i figured it out. You'll ne […]
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I was trying to figure out, what mechanism i could have to attach SLOT1 coolers to the CPUs. I think i figured it out.
You'll need:
* M3 screws with length of about 25mm (16mm is very uncomfortable to work with)
* M3 nuts
* 4mm wide and 5mm long springs
* Nylong/plastic washers for M3 with outer diameter of 6mm.

I think this is very workable solution.
Depending on the cooler, you may or may not need a washer there. (on picture, the holes were too big for the springs)

So long, mf-ing plastic "plugs" or whatever!

So, some time has passed and i was able to use my (improved) technique on re-attaching SLOT 1 heatsinks to processors.

That looks good - why use the springs instead? is it to put less stress on the board?
My solution thus far for these stripped / e-waste SECC processors has been to use zip-ties through the holes, which probably isn't great.

tehsiggi wrote on 2025-09-25, 17:08:

The VREFGC and VREFCG pins are used for the reference voltages of the AGP I/O. In spec it's meant to help with offsets in ground […]
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Thermalwrong wrote on 2025-09-25, 15:15:

The pictures online are all not great but I found that the two transistors near the back of the AGP connector connect to the last pin, the VREFGC pin. I think that's for detecting the type of AGP slot its connected to and I have a Sapphire HD 1950 which uses the same AGP to PCI-E bridge.

The VREFGC and VREFCG pins are used for the reference voltages of the AGP I/O. In spec it's meant to help with offsets in ground voltages. Therefore the graphics card generates a reference voltage it sends to the mainboard (VREFGC) so the board knows the cards reference voltage. Vice-versa the Mainboard sends a reference voltage as well via the VREFCG to the graphics card.
Some mainboards use this, some don't.

The reference voltage should be VDDQ/2 if AGP is not version 3.0. If it is AGP 3.0, the voltage is supposed to be VDDQ*0.233.
Without it, the system basically doesn't know the threshold value between high and low and the data communication is not working.

Glad you got your card fixed!

Attached some reference schematic from one of my projects..

Thanks! I understand some of that? I need to build up a test rig to test these cards before I know if it works. Since I got these from someone else as "for parts" I'm hoping that their testing of the card without those resistors fitted didn't do any damage to the chip or bridge.

The last day or so I switched onto my Compaq Armada 7350 / 7400 power supplies - I've wanted to run them off more generic DC for a long time now and made up an adapter with 4x pin sockets soldered to a PCB to make up the 4 connections of the original AC adapter / charger. I couldn't get it working with the information online so started probing around and found out that the pin underneath the ground pin supplies 4.7 volts to the laptop - if I feed 3.3 volts into it instead then the laptop detects the ac adapter and runs. So I've sourced 3.3 volts from the USB-PD trigger board and now my Armada 7350 and Armada 7400 can be run without having to get the original charger each time 😀

More details here: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/com … 6/#post-1468252