borgie83 wrote:

Fantasma, how do you go playing late 80's to early 90's games using the MX440? Games like old Sierra titles or even commander keen. I always thought there would've been VESA issues? I do own a new in box Leadtek Winfast Geforce2 TI which I haven't used yet.

Almost everything I throw at it works fine, from very early games like 3-Demon or Alley Cat, to late SVGA ones. I actually played some Apogee games this past weekend and had no problems. The compatibility issues I have are more related to sound and CPU speed.

badmojo wrote:

@fantasma - the OPLSAx only does SB Pro, not 16.

Thanks for the correction, I just assumed it did SB16.

Half-Saint wrote:

Why exactly does there have to be another "show your retro rig" thread when we already have this:
Retro Rig Photo Thread

I was also thinking about this, maybe the threads can be merged?

Half-Saint, I opened this thread as I wanted to share my latest rig. I also understand that there most likely many other threads similar to this one but I'm not going to look through the hundreds of threads available trying to find the appropriate thread to post in. I'm quite happy and excited to see people here sharing their rigs. I don't really see an issue either and I'm sorry if your annoyed about seeing another thread with people wanting to share their prized rigs. I suppose there's always going to be someone annoyed about something...there always is!

Anyway, back to it...

Fantasma, that's awesome. I came across a few fx5700 and fx5900 graphics cards on eBay but always thought they may have had issues with some late 80's to early 90's games so never bought them. Might just have to give one a shot soon 😀

I found a great website where a guy has actually done a load of testing for game compatibility with certain graphics cards. Am I allowed to share it on vogons if it's not a vogons thread?

If you just wanted to show off your rig, why not call the thread "Behold! My retro rig!" 😁

I'm not annoyed, it just doesn't make any sense. Sorry.

borgie83 wrote:

Fantasma, that's awesome. I came across a few fx5700 and fx5900 graphics cards on eBay but always thought they may have had issues with some late 80's to early 90's games so never bought them. Might just have to give one a shot soon 😀

It's possible that recent cards can't do such low resolutions (like 320x200) but those from the early 2000s surely do.

borgie83 wrote:

Fantasma, that's awesome. I came across a few fx5700 and fx5900 graphics cards on eBay but always thought they may have had issues with some late 80's to early 90's games so never bought them.

I am using a FX5700 in my P4 system. They say that FX(5) series are less compatible to older games than TI(4) series, but I have yet to discover any bugs. So far everything I tried worked perfectly.

borgie83 wrote:

PcBytes, never heard of XP Lite. That still wouldn't have real dos though would it? Or are you dual booting with just say 6.22?

I'd want to dualboot with 6.22,but after some thought it would be more useful to place 6.22 on a CD and keep it in case I need it for something.(i.e flashing the BIOS)
EDIT:Took 2 pictures of the PC.First one is the PC itself,and the another is my Radeon 7000,also showing the cooling it has.(that comes from a dead Palit PCI-E video card)
Here they are.Sorry for the quality,it's all my tablet can give.



The videocard's fan header is a 3 pin CPU fan header (it was made that way from the factory)that attaches to the motherboard.It also has 2 nice leds,orange and green.
I plan using the wallpaper above on that PC,since I like it.

Fantasma & Bristlehog, now that I see you guys are having a lot of luck using the FX series I'm thinking I should maybe use a FX5900 or FX5950 in my Pentium III 1.4Ghz rig instead of my Voodoo 3 3000. Or would you say that the voodoo has overall better compatibility due to good 2D and Glide support? I do realise the FX would wipe the floor with the Voodoo in overall speed.

PcBytes, would you please get yourself an actual camera, your pictures bring tears to my eyes!

Sadly,I don't have a digital camera.Just a USB camera(which looks worse than this)and the tablet's camera.Also,I can't afford a digital camera right now.

Maybe if you shrink them down a bit at least they'd look better.

Update on Pentium 2 rig:
The 160GB HDD died,and so,I had to track down a replacement.I found my old 10GB Xbox drive (a Seagate ST310211A,U5 series)and installed it.Later then,I swapped the HDD on my currently broken Xbox (FRAG)and installed another drive,a WD Caviar Protege,which has 8GB capacity.
Amazing how the WD HDD is so easy,that compared to my old Samsung SP1603N,this one is almost like a leave.
Also,since my XP lite disc didn't work,I had to resort to a HP OEM XP SP2 disc I had from a dumpster.Runs pretty nice,it moves almost faster than my Sempron PC with Windows 7.(it runs fast too,but it slows a little down on some apps).
I have to replace the NIC on it,as the Intel one I have is TOTALLY refusing to work.Not even changing the duplex setting in Device Manager won't work.I still get a "Network cable unplugged"baloon message.
On the other side,might copy to my USB and try Total Immersion Racing on this rig.I hope it sounds better than my AudioExcel AV511 this time.
Also,since the front panel leds went out,I replaced them with ones from my old HP E-Vectra.The only led that doesn't work is the power led,but that's because the motherboards uses the older 3pin pinout,where 1 and 3 are + and -,and pin 2 is NC.Newer MBs use the same 3 pin header with pin 2 being + instead of NC or a simple + and - 2pin header.The HDD one is a normal 2 pin header though.

PcBytes, you said you've got a sempron pc running windows 7. I'd honestly just use that to browse the net, play more modern games and not even worry about running the internet at all on your retro rig. The hardware in your retro rig could not run any games past around 2001....smoothly with decent graphics anyway. Most games made around 2000 can be run using windows 98. Windows 98 is much more suited to your Pentium II CPU and ram. You'd also not have to worry about your NIC issues and needing a larger hard drive. Just concentrate on having 2 rigs for 2 different eras. Not trying to modernize your retro rig with windows xp and the internet. Don't get me wrong, I love windows xp but if you really want to use it, you could dual boot windows xp with windows 7 on you other rig. Your radeon 7000 series graphics card also has windows 98 drivers available from the amd website:

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/archive/radeonaiw-98me

You could do all this without spending a dollar! Just don't forget to download the unofficial service pack 3 for windows 98 se and then burn it to a disc to install after your fresh 98 se installation. It contains all the hot fixes and updates for 98 se.

Actually,my retro rig needs internet too,otherwise how I can get my usual programs?(generally Firefox,which I never seen slow down on any rig I had,not even a older Pentium 2,VLC Player and programs like that)
Installed 2 HDDs for having more storage,in case I run low on disk space on my XP boot drive on the Pentium 2.
Also,XP has native USB support,and automatically installs the video card driver,which makes my life easier than having to search here and there for just one driver.The only driver it didn't detect (that's because it was non-PnP I think)was the Sound Blaster 16 driver,which I told XP to install using Add New Hardware.
And,I want to make this PC a good system to watch 240p-360p videos,thus I am in search for a PC100 512MB SDRAM stick.
And,for some reason,I can't concept a system that I build without a NIC.

You'll never make that happen. The flash overhead or the HTML5 processing overhead and the SSE-loving codecs won't let you and a futile quest for more RAM can't make that happen either.

I'm also gonna have to call bullshit on Firefox not being slow on a PII.... it's trouble enough for Pentium IV and other far more modern systems!

I really have to say it doesn't run slow.I had a Pentium 3 back before the Pentium 4 rig that was there and it ran Firefox really good.No BS.
Also,for SSE,I can either get a slotket or try finding a Pentium 3 on Slot1.No big thing
And,when I meant to play 240-360P videos I meant playing them from VLC,not Youtube.

I suppose, each to their own. I just use my modern i7 rig running 16gb ram and a hd7750 for all my internet, software and videos. For all my retro needs, I like to have a build for each gaming era. On these builds I don't worry about software like office and vlc or internet for that matter because when I need to do any of that I revert back to my modern rig. I don't really see a reason to use a retro rig for anything other than gaming as everything you've stated you want to do will run much much better on a modern rig. For example, my retro rigs will never be able to play hd videos properly compared to my modern rig and I wouldn't split my videos between my pc's as I'd rather have all my videos/music in one location. Oh and I'm not sure why a lot of people go for Firefox as internet explorer seems to do everything you could ask for. Unless people are trying to stick it to microsoft...?

For me,IE probably has to be the WORST browser I used.I only used Firefox,and rarely Opera/Chrome,and only once Safari.
Also,none of those 2 machines I have (the Pentium 2 PC and my Sempron PC)can run HD videos.

I can tell you that Firefox creeps along on my Turion x2 Ultra laptop. I don't know what the hell they think they're doing over there, but FF has been getting more and more bloated ever since about version 3. It's worse now than anything Microsoft could ever dream of doing with IE. They've also had problems with persistent memory leaks that they can't seem to get straightened out. Every few hours I'm having to reboot because performance monitor shows that FF eventually takes over all my RAM and won't release any of it. That's why I use Opera and sometimes Chrome now. I won't go near FF anymore until they put it on a diet.

Weird.Just installed a RTL8139D NIC in my PII rig,and Firefox 26(newest version of FF) just flies like a plane.I think it has to do with your internet connection.Obiviously,since Google recently Youtube bloated as hell,it can't play online videos,but that can be worked around by downloading them through Voobys which uses Java.
Also,in my opinion IE took a turn for worse since version 6.First time when this PII rig opened MSN,IE JUST CRASHED,everytime I opened it on MSN.I had to set homepage as Google to stop it from crashing.I replaced it with FF 26.0.