HighTreason wrote:

And now, my evil scheme is revealed! […]
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And now, my evil scheme is revealed!

Still needs some work, but the basics are in and I can display pretty much whatever I want. Video, images, cameras or video input from capture devices... Scanners too, which is a bit useless. I can clone the image onto all monitors, spread it across all monitors or display separate images on each screen. It is all controlled from a 5th monitor which cannot be seen in the images. I will probably try to write a simple, primitive, remote control - probably using a simple Telnet server and some kind of "library" to call the content from, the library could be updated via FTP. All output is automatically cropped to 4:3 aspect for the 1280x960 space the monitors provide. Finally, I have a CRT video wall, albeit a very small monochrome one. I have wanted one of these since I first saw one. Now I know it works, I may replace it with a more elegant color system in the future, but I actually like the character of the simple black and white screens, even though they aren't perfect by a long way. I don't want to tear the monitors apart, but one tweak I will do is to flip the top monitors upside down. I shall build a simple enclosure for them with fans to hold them in place and keep them cool.

If you know the movie and the song in these images, I will be impressed.

I like where the last image ended up because it almost looks as if the woman is responding to me tapping on the screen with my finger. The image was taken from me shooting the whole thing working on video and this was completely unintentional as I went through the file and just randomly hit the snapshot button.

My last notes on this thing are that it does throw out a decent amount of heat, requires a pretty nice mass of wires and makes the room smell of ozone for a little while once it is first turned on.

That is VERY,VERY cool!!!!

Tetrium wrote:

Sedrosken wrote:

My 7600GS came in today, I'm putting it through its paces. It's much quieter than my old 9600XT. It's stable and pretty damn fast for what it is.

I liked the GF7600GS, was very similar in performance to the GF6800 using 2 very similar A64 rigs.

I probably would have gotten a 6800, but the 7600GS having support for shader model 3 and being cheaper to boot sold me on it instead.

It likes to wig out for a minute or two (frame buffer glitch or something, probably just trying to repaint the whole resolution) after I enable/disable my second monitor in software. But other than that it's perfectly fine, runs TDU like a dream. Skyrim gets a decent amount of FPS as well, and Civ 5 runs alright too.

I've created a Retro Computing forum mainly for Australian (although not limited to) users as trading in Australia is expensive and difficult.

http://retrocomputing.com.au/

mwdmeyer wrote:

I've created a Retro Computing forum mainly for Australian (although not limited to) users as trading in Australia is expensive and difficult.

http://retrocomputing.com.au/

Nice work. Looks small and tight.

brostenen wrote:

Nice work. Looks small and tight.

luckybob wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/Lffqx89l.jpg […]
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brostenen wrote:

Nice work. Looks small and tight.

luckybob wrote:

oh lord, you are one of those people that put cameras in bathrooms and changing rooms.

I'm getting the impression you're suffering from some form of frustration.

luckybob wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/Lffqx89l.jpg […]
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brostenen wrote:

Nice work. Looks small and tight.

You dropped me there, sir. Don't understand. 😐

brostenen wrote:

You dropped me there, sir. Don't understand. 😐

Perhaps a suggestion that the same thing could be said in a different context and mean something completely different. Not sure what he's referring to tho...

Ahhhh.... A bit dirty minded then. 😁
I see it clearly now. 🤣

Done with inventorying all the CPUs I brought downstairs (all >340 of them). I even rediscovered the PII Deschutes 400 that should have all multipliers from 2x to 5.5x unlocked 😁 (I apparently labeled it with a sticker so I would know which one was semi-unlocked, as I have several PII-400s), along with a few other interesting chips. And now I know exactly how many Coppermine 1000s I have, how many and which Slot 1 CPUs I have (very few are Coppermine though), how many K6-+'s (lots of those 400ATZ ones), my MII's (my non-2.2v ones are still unaccounted for, so those are probably still in the attic somewhere) and I seem to have a huge pile of P1 MMX 233 chips and a few more VIA chips than I thought 😁
Unfortunately I don't have a lot of Tully 1400S's, but enough I reckon and the 3 Tillamook 266's I have aren't of much use anyway I think.

Still need to do all the chips that stayed behind in the attic, including virtually all my 486s, 386s, most of my P4 and A64 class CPUs and a few more trays of CPUs in s7/s370/sA trays.

One "funny" thing I found was a Slot 1 Pentium III chip (has Pentium III embedded in the front of the large package) with a piece of tape on it with "P II" on it (my former employees weren't exactly rocket scientists 🙁 ), will post a pic of that little mishap later 😁
When going through my graphics cards a week ago, I found a PCI graphics card with another 'sticker' with the same handwriting as the one on the Pentium III chip, the sticker mentioned the card was AGP. Yes, they were idiots 🤣

I remember my former college thinking some AGP card had 64MB of video memory, just because he said the model number mentioned it (it was a TNT2 M64), that's just tearable 😁

Installed an Ensoniq Soundscape S-2000 in my BX build. I already had the Opus and Vivo, but it's nice to have the original Soundscape, especially since it has the 2MB patch set. I really like the GM on this card.

Tetrium wrote:

One "funny" thing I found was a Slot 1 Pentium III chip (has Pentium III embedded in the front of the large package) with a piece of tape on it with "P II" on it (my former employees weren't exactly rocket scientists 🙁 ), will post a pic of that little mishap later 😁
When going through my graphics cards a week ago, I found a PCI graphics card with another 'sticker' with the same handwriting as the one on the Pentium III chip, the sticker mentioned the card was AGP. Yes, they were idiots 🤣

I remember my former college thinking some AGP card had 64MB of video memory, just because he said the model number mentioned it (it was a TNT2 M64), that's just tearable 😁

Reminds me of my first job where the chief IT guy used to complain that some of the PCs used "EISA" RAM. I was so confused until I realised he meant 72pin SIMMs. I tried correcting him but that didn't go well.

After spending quite a few hours on it over the break I finally managed to get my home-made Atari to PC Joystick adapter working. I use a Master System controller to provide 2 buttons and it works well in 2D platformers like Keen, Jazz etc. The Master System controller isn't the best but it's better than the single button Atari sticks and I prefer a pad to an actual stick like a quickshot etc.

HighTreason, that's so fucking awesome. Congrats for the setup. I also think that the 'boldness' of monochrome displays seems to have its own charm..

I wonder what movie is it? I think I'll let the others guess for me... 🤣

Im upgrading my new Digital Venturis 466 Socket-3 system a bit.

As the system came without a HDD i started off with finding a suitable HDD, this was yesterday. I choose a more or less new Quantum Trailblazer 840AT (840MB) drive as the BIOS while detecting larger drives correctly diddnt seem to save the parameters the next post with anything larger than ~1GB. The largest disk the DEC Venturis 486 line was sold with back in 1993 - 1995 was 840MB so I thought I would play it safe. I precopied the Windows 95 installation files to the disk to avoid issues with the SCSI CDROM drive connected to the SB16 SCSI. Everything went smoothly, I installed Windows and all hardware was detected installed and working without me having to tinker with anything.

Everything went smoothly until I installed Microsoft Encarta 97 that is. The 3x NEC SCSI drive seemed to read all discs perfectly, even almost 20 year old CDR discs but it had a hard time reading a brand new (but old) Encarta 97 disc. In the end the system hard locked while reading media from the disc and the next reboot ScanDisk found a single bad sector on the HDD while doing a surface scan. A few reboots later the HDD had alot more damaged sectors and it is more or less trash now.

I replaced the Quantum HDD with a Seagate Medalist ST31082A disk and I replaced the NEC 3x SCSI CD with a noname IDE CD-RW drive, I was going to replace the SB16 SCSI with an AWE card anyway. I also installed 1 more megabyte of video memory. I tried to upgrade the memory to 36MB (16+16+4) but even if the system accepted the 16MB 70ns FPM module I installed the system wasnt 100% stable with it so Im back to the 4MB + 16MB the system came with. I will try some other sticks later.

The Seagate Medalist ST31082A 1080MB HDD.

The upgraded video memory.

What the upgraded video memory is good for. (Its the dirty old LCD monitors crappy scaling that makes the image quality look bad)

Trinitron 420GS is here. From 1999. Taking a photo won't do it justice so I won't bother, but 1920x1440x32 @ 75Hz sure looks nice. I am running at the native res of 1600x1200 until I have need to increase the resolution though.

Damn, it looks good. And I mean good, so vibrant and sharp. Fuck LCD technology, I am glad I decided to stay with CRT until OLED becomes affordable, possibly the best £60 I ever spent!

Now, before I leave it permanently on the workstation, I must hook it up to my GUS rig and watch Xaos on it... C'mon, it has to be done.

Edit: Come to think of it, I never spent that money, because it was a Christmas gift... So best Christmas present I ever got I guess.

HighTreason wrote:

Trinitron 420GS is here. From 1999. Taking a photo won't do it justice so I won't bother, but 1920x1440x32 @ 75Hz sure looks nic […]
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Trinitron 420GS is here. From 1999. Taking a photo won't do it justice so I won't bother, but 1920x1440x32 @ 75Hz sure looks nice. I am running at the native res of 1600x1200 until I have need to increase the resolution though.

Damn, it looks good. And I mean good, so vibrant and sharp. Fuck LCD technology, I am glad I decided to stay with CRT until OLED becomes affordable, possibly the best £60 I ever spent!

Now, before I leave it permanently on the workstation, I must hook it up to my GUS rig and watch Xaos on it... C'mon, it has to be done.

Edit: Come to think of it, I never spent that money, because it was a Christmas gift... So best Christmas present I ever got I guess.

I own a 19" Samsung SyncMaster 959NF Trinton, 73 Hz at 1920*1440 but it's just to heavy to move around. 😀

My new main screen is a Philips BDM4065UC 40" 4K monitor, its my first monitor upgrade since I bought my old 26" 1920*1200 LCD back in 2008.

Seen in the picture is an old Acer 17" 1280*1024 TFT.

I upgraded the memory in the Digital Venturis 466 to 68 MB, 4MB + 2x32MB, I only found one spare 32MB FPM module but the board seems to be able to run (what I think is) a EDO module in the second slot with a FPM module in the first slot...

With 68MB memory Im wondering if its even worth to populate the cache sockets, the board can only hold 128KB cache which in best case is enough to cache 32MB. The POD seems speedy enough without L2 cache and I think Im going to look for one that is able to run at 100 MHz, screw cache.

Skyscraper wrote:

What the upgraded video memory is good for. (Its the dirty old LCD monitors crappy scaling that makes the image quality look bad)

800x600x32.JPG

I've never noticed it before, but I find it interesting that the desktop preview in the properties window shows the local network icon. I wouldn't find it out of the ordinary on Windows 98, but Windows 95 (that's what it looks like) it is intriging!

Where does one get a mono VGA monitor?

This may or may not be retro, depending on the definition, but with how fast computer tech is evolving this might just qualify.

Dug up an old, tired Turion 64 X2 Ultra laptop, put a new heatsink/fan in it (it's a Toshiba Satellite M305D, so I had to pull it all the way apart to get to the HSF, that was a PITA I'd not like to soon repeat) and put it back in service. It was running XP on 2GB RAM, so I upped that to 4GB and slapped a copy of Arch Linux on the rapidly aging 250GB hard drive, not wanting to 'waste' one of my precious precious Win7 licenses and having what is in the end a very very simple use in mind for this thing.

I want it for my mobile workstation. By this I mean it is called upon to play music, type some documents, and retrieve the odd webpage. It's even better equipped for this than my P4. May drop an SSD in there if I can find one in the capacity I want for cheap enough.

The IBM NetVista MOBO was fried. Some parts will hopefully be salvageable.