I have been talking to my dad to remember how we used Win 3.x in the past. We had a great conversation (as always!).

He reckons we had 8mb and sometimes 16mb ram in our very first win 3.1 computer. He can’t remember the specs really. Neither can I, hence why I went for 32mb ram on DOSBox and 64 on VMWare hahaha.

I cant remember the HDD size either, but I am guessing it was either 1GB or smaller. I can’t remember what were the smaller sizes. But given how much stuff I’ve installed in my instances, I can’t believe we had less than 1GB.

And oh we had Sound Blaster. Pretty sure it was either 16 or 2.0...

Hell0- new here - cant create a new post yet so posting here.
Ineed some experience/ advice - I'm pulling my hair out with a modern /retro build amd 4800+ 1gb ram 32gb SSD with win98SE and 2 x 8mb Diamond SLI voodoo and a S3 virge 2mb pass thru card . MObo is a ATI Sapphire Pure innovation PP-A9Rs480 via chipset .
Obviously before the build - I thought - hey why not fix the mobo - and build a fast retro machine with Win98 - it will blast the old games and blah ..................- wait - oh crap - this win98 thing sucks - my god - no wonder I loved XP when it came out. I had forgotten what a pain in the a$$ 98 was and how easy it is to mess / corrupt the drivers and have to do a fresh install because its too hard to drive clean it

My problem is that Unreal and halflife frame rates suck - unreal probably around 20fps with half life chunking at maybe 10 fps. Unplayable - So its not a glide vs D3d driver problem - its both and yes its SLI detected , unreal has got the shiny floor in the flyby - but the fly by is choppy - not smooth - cant play in 1024x768 at all - just playable at 800x600 - 16bit color

Edit - dammit - its a ati radeon express 200 chipset not via - even tho its got s via chip on board

Edit EDit - Ok forget my rant - was fixed in 5 minutes when I went back to XP and installed the fastvoodoo 4 XP gold drivers - the problem all along was Win98 n the wrong chipset - I just wanted to get my SLI voodoos working on a more modern rig - and XP works wonders - like it always has . Ive already rested 2 x 100mm fans on top of the the voodoo cards . But its flying now in full resolutuion even with the little old S3 virge 2mb video card ha ha

Win98 - bin job for me now

I

I created an (unofficial) IRC channel for vogons.

Server: irc.slashdot.org
Channel: #vogons

Happy to chat with anyone who feels like hitting the place during week days!

If admins want me to close or hand over the channel, let me know. Happy to do either.

Good. After I leave the work today I'll join!

I engaged in some bizarre shenanigans involving a Lexmark Model M, a Microsoft Intellimouse USB, a PS/2 -> USB adapter, and three KVM's. The USB mouse works fine in PS/2 mode if it's connected to a computer or the janky IOGear KVM, but not the fancy Trendnet TK-801R or Belkin F1D104, the latter of which has an internal PS/2 -> Serial Mouse converter I have yet to test.

OK, so, solution? Run the mouse and keyboard through the janky KVM, then pass the signals to either of the other KVM's. No discernible lag, but not exactly the prettiest cable management. I might see if it's just an issue powering the mouse or something else afoot. The IOGear and Trendnet KVM's require the tapping of scroll lock, which isn't helpful when it auto-triggers the IOGear switching mechanism. One option is to have the IOGear KVM pass to the Trendnet, then have the Trendnet pass to the Belkin, as the Belkin will activate its switching mode if I simply hold scroll lock. The be perfectly reasonable, the best solution might be to solve the USB mouse power/signal issue and then only use the Belkin with its master/slave mode to add more device paths as necessary. Fun stuff.

MrSmiley381 wrote on 2020-01-09, 03:23:

shamino wrote on 2020-01-08, 03:14:

Last weekend I replaced a DIN keyboard connector on a Tyan S1590 baby-AT socket-7 board. I noticed it would be possible to install a pair of PS/2 connectors for mouse+kb, but doing so would require switching to an ATX case. That's a problem for this board because the layout puts the AGP slot too high to use with ATX cases. Therefore I stuck with the AT style DIN connector, even though I don't own a single DIN keyboard.

I've got this same motherboard and it looks like I need to do some DIN repair as well. Do both the AT keyboard and mouse connector share the same footprint with a standard MiniDIN 6 header so that you can solder directly to the board? If so, I might go that route as well since the case I'm using has a small IO panel that can be removed to accommodate more than just an AT keyboard connector. I'd check myself but there's a lot of cable in the way at the moment.

I believe so, yes. The footprint matches a 6-pin mini-DIN that I had on hand, but since I decided not to use it, I never confirmed for certain that the pinout is correct. I expect it is, but you'd want to make sure of that. I only got far enough to say that the solder points are common to the 5-pin DIN, but I didn't confirm they're all in the correct locations.

I've attached a picture I took under the board when starting to work on it. <Not sure what happened to the option of pasting it in the middle of my comment>

The solder points for the 6-pin mini-DINs are at different distances from the back of the PCB. So that aspect of it is odd. I think a mini-DIN keyboard port would stick out from the board a bit. If I remember correctly, I think the mouse port was the one that looked like it would align with the edge.

As viewed in the "normal" orientation, the solder location for the mouse port is below the keyboard - in the space between the keyboard and the AGP slot. It's the same location where the vertical header pins are from factory. I think it would be blocked by any AT case, since there's going to be some metal between the top expansion bay and the keyboard opening.
I presume that an ATX case might allow access to a mouse port, because they have 1 less expansion bay. But as mentioned, using an ATX case also means losing access to the AGP slot.

Another option would be to install vertical pins at the keyboard location, just like Tyan did for the mouse, and then use 2 mouse brackets - 1 for the mouse and 1 for the keyboard. Or come up with a custom way to mount those connectors instead of using 2 brackets.

Tried to finish the Carry-1 mini PC yesterday but failed. As written earlier, I already had to use an ESS Solo-1 instead of an YMF744-based card due to limited space. Not a huge drawback and seeing how nice the Solo-1 works in DOS, I'm actually quite happy with that change.

However, I have to say bye-bye to the Voodoo2. After having tried two different Voodoo2 cards, various drivers, and even trashed Win98se and installed ME instead, I'm certain now that this system does not work with a Voodoo2 at all. Seems like it's conflicting with the on-board S3 Trio3D/2X. That thing seems to be wonky anyway, as it freezes the system when trying to do D3D on it with the FSB set to 100 MHz... With a Voodoo2 installed, the system even freezes when trying to open the display properties. So I gave up.

I'm installed a GeForce 4 MX 440 PCI with 64 MB DDR RAM instead. No Glide then, but it's a much faster card overall. Also, I can then disable the on-board S3 Trio3D/2X and gain TV out, too.

Finally, all is working. 😀

derSammler wrote on 2020-01-11, 15:31:

Finally, all is working. 😀

Looks spectacular man. Everything looks hospital clean.

Thanks. I have the tendency to take apart any piece of hardware and carefully clean it. Even if no one sees the stuff inside once the case is closed, I don't want to have dirty components inside. 😉

appiah4 wrote on 2020-01-10, 11:26:

I created an (unofficial) IRC channel for vogons. […]
Show full quote

I created an (unofficial) IRC channel for vogons.

Server: irc.slashdot.org
Channel: #vogons

Happy to chat with anyone who feels like hitting the place during week days!

If admins want me to close or hand over the channel, let me know. Happy to do either.

Cool.... Great... Gone online on that channel today.

Same here. I wish IRC software didn't charge anything.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-01-11, 21:15:

Same here. I wish IRC software didn't charge anything.

?? I have not paid anything for my clients. (Running on Linux)

appiah4 wrote on 2020-01-10, 11:26:

I created an (unofficial) IRC channel for vogons. […]
Show full quote

I created an (unofficial) IRC channel for vogons.

Server: irc.slashdot.org
Channel: #vogons

Happy to chat with anyone who feels like hitting the place during week days!

If admins want me to close or hand over the channel, let me know. Happy to do either.

Awesome.. Just joined up using my 286.

brostenen wrote on 2020-01-11, 21:27:

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-01-11, 21:15:

Same here. I wish IRC software didn't charge anything.

?? I have not paid anything for my clients. (Running on Linux)

I just used a win3.1 client from 1995 called PICH16 on my 286 logged in with no problems.

Got my Pentium III back up and running. Swapped CPUs and gave it a good dusting and contact cleaning and it sprang back to life. Now begins the agonizing process of trying to find drivers for a 20 year old OEM version of an Intel motherboard sold by a company that no longer exists.

brostenen wrote on 2020-01-11, 21:01:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-01-10, 11:26:

I created an (unofficial) IRC channel for vogons. […]
Show full quote

I created an (unofficial) IRC channel for vogons.

Server: irc.slashdot.org
Channel: #vogons

Happy to chat with anyone who feels like hitting the place during week days!

If admins want me to close or hand over the channel, let me know. Happy to do either.

Cool.... Great... Gone online on that channel today.

I’m there right now. I’m using mutter on my iPad while I start messing with Mini vMac here. Unless someone has a better iOS IRC app, Mutter is the only one I know.

On Windows I’m using mIRC obviously, I can’t remember what I had on a mac years ago - probably Adium.

I wonder if it's possible to do IRC from a terminal?

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-01-12, 04:30:

I wonder if it's possible to do IRC from a terminal?

I never used one that I could recommend. But I heard about them - text-based irc applications used from a terminal. Irssi being one of them.

I’d rather recommend you to use a GUI client (mIRC on Win, Textual or LimeChat on Mac, HexChat for linux distros).

I’m using Textual on Mac. And Mutter for iOS - but I have Mutter since a few years ago, I dunno if theres a new app better than that for iOS.

iPad Pro running Mini vMac and emulating a Mac II with System 7.5.5!

I’m gonna test Basilisk II iOS version to see if I can get networking going on. Mini vMac does not support it.