amadeus777999 wrote:

Great job, liqmat! Hope it all goes up to archive.org. One can get quite nostalgic thinking about those little companies who once were a small part of a "booming" industry. This thought more often than not crossed my mind when I was watching Computer Chronicles and somebody presented his/her product.

Sounds like you are more my age. I grew up on the Computer Chronicles. Absolutely loved that show. My favorite episode was the Amiga vs. Atari ST. It was introducing the world to both. At the end they ask the Atari rep if the ST can do a Boing! ball demo like the Amiga. He produces one, but notice no sound. The first model Atari STs had a terrible internal sound chip compared to the Amiga so they pulled up a silent Boing! demo.

https://youtu.be/FoNmsL74T7Y

As far as the archives I have completed so far, the Cardinal SNAPplus drivers, manuals and software updated archive and the Wang APC software & system disks, can be found over at -0°.

http://minuszerodegrees.net/manuals.htm#Cardinal

http://minuszerodegrees.net/manuals.htm#Wang

The ALR server software resource was a combination of Vogons members hard1k and gbeirn's collections and I just categorized, combined and labeled everything for a definitive archive. Thank goodness those two had the files from the defunct website that used to have them since ALR server system files are basically near impossible to find online today. I posted that archive over here in another thread:

The great Pentium Pro haul of 2018

As far as the Tempra software archive, that is an ongoing pet project of mine and I am still not done with imaging and scans. I do give a quick synopsis of the Cardinal SNAPplus and the Tempra software over at Vcfed's "Online Manuals" section.

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?672 … 7697#post547697

Just coming back to VOGONS after a small hiatus. Just had/have so many projects and things to do, but finally things are coming together.

First "big" thing I just did was update my post on my P4 machine. I upgraded the machine, throwing in a PNY Nvidia GeForce 6800GT to replace the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and a 2GB G.Skill RAM kit to replace the 1GB Corsair RAM kit that were in the machine, and the performance gains I saw... there was no competition. Obviously, the biggest reason for the performance uplift was the GPU upgrade, but, under XP, the RAM upgrade surely helped too.

Here's a comparison of benchmark scores, before and after the upgrade:

Under Win98SE:

• 3DMark2000:
  • Before: 6995
  • After: 19072

Under XP:

• 3DMark2001SE
  • Before: 7928
  • After: 14025
• 3DMark03
  • Before: 1689
  • After: 5169
• 3DMark05
  • Before: 535
  • After: 3232

Now that the machine is so powerful I'm considering using it under Win98SE as my main Glide gaming rig using nGlide for Glide emulation. Whereas on my Pentium 3 Vooodoo3 3000 machine, to get playable performance in NFS3 w/ modern patch, I had to turn down the resolution and quality settings, on this machine, I'm able to max out all of the settings and the resolution, and after letting the game load in all of the resources during the first lap, the game runs buttery smooth and runs at a stable 60FPS with Vsync on with only occasional dips. I think I can now say that this is an ultimate Win98SE/decent XP machine. 😀

liqmat wrote:

Sounds like you are more my age. I grew up on the Computer Chronicles. Absolutely loved that show. My favorite episode was the A […]
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amadeus777999 wrote:

Great job, liqmat! Hope it all goes up to archive.org. One can get quite nostalgic thinking about those little companies who once were a small part of a "booming" industry. This thought more often than not crossed my mind when I was watching Computer Chronicles and somebody presented his/her product.

Sounds like you are more my age. I grew up on the Computer Chronicles. Absolutely loved that show. My favorite episode was the Amiga vs. Atari ST. It was introducing the world to both. At the end they ask the Atari rep if the ST can do a Boing! ball demo like the Amiga. He produces one, but notice no sound. The first model Atari STs had a terrible internal sound chip compared to the Amiga so they pulled up a silent Boing! demo.

https://youtu.be/FoNmsL74T7Y

As far as the archives I have completed so far, the Cardinal SNAPplus drivers, manuals and software updated archive and the Wang APC software & system disks, can be found over at -0°.

http://minuszerodegrees.net/manuals.htm#Cardinal

http://minuszerodegrees.net/manuals.htm#Wang

The ALR server software resource was a combination of Vogons members hard1k and gbeirn's collections and I just categorized, combined and labeled everything for a definitive archive. Thank goodness those two had the files from the defunct website that used to have them since ALR server system files are basically near impossible to find online today. I posted that archive over here in another thread:

The great Pentium Pro haul of 2018

As far as the Tempra software archive, that is an ongoing pet project of mine and I am still not done with imaging and scans. I do give a quick synopsis of the Cardinal SNAPplus and the Tempra software over at Vcfed's "Online Manuals" section.

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?672 … 7697#post547697

I'm from Europe and only got to the Computer Chronicles via the internet.
The nostalgia comes from collecting and reading C books where, in some cases, one gets insight into the creative process embedded in a tough business world(a more "playful" example being Michael Abrash's career and books).
Same goes for hardware, where I read a little but about Cray and his designs. The Computer Chronicles had that upbeat "all American" feel that I adore.

Under XP: 3DMark2001SE Before: 7928 After: 14025 3DMark03 Before: 1689 After: 5169 3DMark05 Before: 535 After: 3232 […]
Show full quote

Under XP:
3DMark2001SE
Before: 7928
After: 14025
3DMark03
Before: 1689
After: 5169
3DMark05
Before: 535
After: 3232

That's a nice improvement, but the scores for the 9800 actually look weirdly low. More like what I'd expect from a 9600, if you're using default settings.

Yet more icons. So far, up to 96 of them.

Still thinking about a Visual Basic project.

bakemono wrote:

Under XP: 3DMark2001SE Before: 7928 After: 14025 […]
Show full quote

Under XP:
3DMark2001SE
Before: 7928
After: 14025

That's a nice improvement, but the scores for the 9800 actually look weirdly low. More like what I'd expect from a 9600, if you're using default settings.

I thought it was just me or because I was testing with Win 2k and that gave me higher scores even with my P3-S 1,26GHz, but looks like this really was low.

Well, it's been a while. "Been busy" doesn't cover it, but it looks like early in the next year I may have time to finish some of my outstanding hobby projects (repairing the 1991 Zeos, seeing if the G3 upgrade works with the desktop Power Computing mac clone, actually ever having time to play with my futuro-mod XP machine).

But what's this?

Apart from the bad caps, what does that label say? K8? Is that DDR RAM? Is that an AGP slot? Is that... an IDE SSD?

It's a Barracuda 340 Load Balancer. A lot of network appliances are just PCs, so when I ran across this I knew I'd have to take it apart. Coincidentally, I found it in a cache with some extra DDR RAM, so maybe I can get some quieter fans in there and do something with this puppy.

Also got 4 monitors, an ATI 9550x, another CT4830, a serial mouse, and a few other things. Got a SFF Dell Core 2 Duo that might have some small potential with an X3350 or something in it.

The monitors are the important part because I kinda sorta need to build a wall-o-monitors for work.

Interestingly the monitors include 2 Dell 2007FPb's with composite input. I've heard mixed reviews about 15KHz support, I guess we'll find out (when I get an EGA-VGA adapter, or make one, probably also early in the new year fingers crossed). Technically I guess I have VGA cards that can do 15KHz, so maybe I can test that sooner.

Ugh, I had to let a 486 Siemens Multimedia PC slide, even though it was just a few bucks and practically around the corner from me. Maybe it's better that way, in case the monstrous black hulk had turned out to be a giant feature-overloaded chore with a terrible built-in screen...

Also, curse central Europe and it's excessive winter darkness. I really mean to take some pictures of my Libretto 100CT so I can put it on ebay, but I keep forgetting to do it on the weekend, which is the only time I'm home during daylight hours, which is the only time for decent photos.

I have been surfing for information and magazines about Commodore hardware. And came across this site, that I had forgotten all about. This is a goldmine of reading stuff.

http://www.retro-commodore.eu

henryVK wrote:

Also, curse central Europe and it's excessive winter darkness. I really mean to take some pictures of my Libretto 100CT so I can put it on ebay, but I keep forgetting to do it on the weekend, which is the only time I'm home during daylight hours, which is the only time for decent photos.

I know! Had the same problem! Well, that and seasonal depression...

bakemono wrote:

That's a nice improvement, but the scores for the 9800 actually look weirdly low. More like what I'd expect from a 9600, if you're using default settings.

RandomStranger wrote:

I thought it was just me or because I was testing with Win 2k and that gave me higher scores even with my P3-S 1,26GHz, but looks like this really was low.

I don't know what to say. Here are the drivers for Windows 98SE and XP respectively so you know what I used (probably won't host the files forever), and you can find in their respective folders what settings I used to run the benchmarks here. I'm sure I disabled vsync globally, too, for the benchmarks, so that shouldn't be taken into account. If you want me to, I can take a picture or two of the card itself and share that as well. I don't know what to say.

In other news, enabled FTP file sharing on my OpenMediaVault NAS, so now I'm able to download files from my NAS under Win98SE and XP. Yeet!

That looks interesting. Which system do you use for the NAS OS? I remember using NAS4Free on my Socket 7 machine and a worn down Compaq Presario C700 several years ago.

Have been working on the repair of a badly corroded Schneider EuroPC ......

The plan A, is to clean an restore the copper tracks..... it's more or less coming along ....

The plan B, is to build a new pcb .... an it' almost done ...

Messed up with opening parcels while the children were around. My son spotted the Gravis Gamepad Pro I was intending to give him for Yule. Oh well, might as well introduce him to it now. Hooked it up to his K6-2 and spent the better part of an hour bashing around in OMF2097. Good father-son bonding 😀

Tested out a spare hard drive from an old laptop. Thought I'd check it's health status - only 4.5 million reallocated sectors. I think that's a new personal record, never seen a HDD quite so bad. 😲

Took apart and cleaned up a HIS X1950PRO 512MB AGP with a Thermaltake AT1 mounted on top. One of the earliest examples of blower style coolers; they were common on premium ATI cards from HIS at the time.

Grr, ghosts in ancient PCs haunting me again. I'm getting a 386SX system ready for someone. Everything worked fine in the original desktop case, but he wants a minitower. So took the motherboard, cards and drives and transplanted them to the other case...

...and suddenly none of the drives work. Clearly the HDD/FDD controller isn't happy. But why? Messed around with it for over an hour and still no luck. Time for bed now, tomorrow I fix this one way or another.

(Two pages later, I reply to a minor comment...)

NJRoadfan wrote:

xjas wrote:

A 5V DX2/66 overdrive CPU which I didn't even know I had & have no idea where I got. I popped it into my formerly-CPU-less Opti Local Bus board, which it should be perfect for. Will be nice to have that one up & running; I don't have a mid-grade 486 in my setup yet.

CameraZOOM-20181128145247071.jpg

That isn't an Opti Local Bus board, that is a HiNT Caesar "Mini"-EISA board (note the sticker on the BIOS chip). It was notorious for not supporting all the bus mastering features of the EISA bus.

Ah, got it, thanks! Somebody told me in a PM it looked like an Opti bus board. I have expansion cards for exactly neither of those busses, so it's a wash anyway.

canthearu wrote:

Finished restoring the old 286 I bought a week and a half ago.

Updates for my 286.
a) Changed the sound card from ESS1689 to Yamaha YMF-719 card.
b) Both the YMF-719 and ESS1689 don't work with Windows. (although, I can get basic sound by using the sound blaster 1.5 drivers after running the PnP config for the Yamaha)
c) The Trident 8800cs is a pretty awful card in windows, very slow is an understatement.
d) I also think the Trident is causing extra unpredictable slowdown when I have turbo turned off. Very weird.

So in conclusion:
a) I have ordered an OAK based ISA video card, mostly because it is really cheap and I don't need that much performance for a 286-12mhz
b) I probably won't use windows on this 286. I have much better suited computers for windows 3.1 (386DX-40 with SB16 and ET4000 video), and this computer is slow enough as it is. Will see what it is like on the OAK card.

More icons, because why not?