kolderman wrote on 2020-03-31, 08:39:

xjas wrote on 2020-03-31, 07:39:

This doesn't negate your point, but that pic of Carmack is from a 1999 video about the development of Quake 3. IIRC Id had some kind of SGI near-supercomputer to crunch the map BSPs when they were making Quake 1, but I don't know what they were using for workstations.

I don't think that is correct. The article agrees with me (not to mention I have ready John's .plan files in full which confirm this). That Intergraph workstation had some of the earliest 3D cards - but they were aimed at CAD not games, in the end the fill rate of the voodoo beat out most of the enterprise 3D cards. If you have any sources that support it was Q3 I would be most interested.

Oops, I was mistaken: it's actually from the development of Doom 3, in the early 2000s. Here's the clip in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjbEdWF1e-I

He may well have had an Integraph workstation in 1995/6, but not the one depicted in that clip.

Stiletto wrote on 2020-03-31, 09:03:

Looks fantastic. Maybe you should consider sharing that artwork somewhere!

Teh Windows XP one I literally just found in Google Images. The 98 and ME I 'assembled' but again, just out of high resolution logos I found online. They're pretty simple. 😜

xjas wrote on 2020-03-31, 07:39:

DOS Quake 1.08 retail gets 17.1 FPS on my 233MMX at 640x480 (and 51.3 FPS at 320x200.) You need something like a P2/500 to hit a consistent 30FPS at 640x480. The game was a real brute in 1996.

I'm getting similar (albeit a bit lower) numbers here, so I guess that's the way it is. Thanks for the help guys.

Haven't been doing a lot of retro activities lately, aside from playing the odd games on my Dreamcast, Amiga & GameCube games on my Wii to alleviate the lockdown boredom.

Today's activity is not at all retro, just old - been installing & playing some games onto a recent cheap acquisition - an Ouya!

Was sold as seen with no power supply but works absolutely fine. I couldn't resist the low price for this "console" and I like tinkering with stuff, so got this rooted and connected to the alternate server. Sideloaded Google Play etc and tested it all out. It does struggle on some generic & certainly newer Android games, but Ouya-specific titles work great. Not all of them suck either. 🤣

Going to start a sleeper build for a friend of mine after work today! The guts arent retro but I consider the Dimension 4600 case to be : ) have a HP motherboard of some kind with an i7-860, 8gb of ram and an EVGA SC 750ti 2gb card handy. Should make for a sweet little gaming rig to get my friend into PC gaming.

.

ODwilly wrote on 2020-03-31, 20:47:

Going to start a sleeper build for a friend of mine after work today! The guts arent retro but I consider the Dimension 4600 case to be : ) have a HP motherboard of some kind with an i7-860, 8gb of ram and an EVGA SC 750ti 2gb card handy. Should make for a sweet little gaming rig to get my friend into PC gaming.

Nice, I'm running an i7/3770 with a 750Ti for my "modern" gaming rig and I still haven't found any reason to want something faster. I mostly don't play the big-budget triple A stuff though.

Swapped out two 2Rx8 4GB for 2x 2GB 1Rx8 with tighter timing Micron memory then checked that XP on the optiplex 990 boots properly.

Cheers,

So this lockdown and furlough in my country means I have had plenty of time to crack on with some of my projects.

Finally have all of these systems set up just as I like. Only 2 will remain here for use.(I also have 2 different compaq deskpro in storage!)

MESH PC:
1GHZ Athlon
Asus A7V
512mb ram
Geforce 3 ti 200
Soundblaster LIVE CT4780
16gb CF Drive.
Windows 98se

Cheap black case:
Pentium 3 600mhz
Gigabyte GA-BX2000+(Returned from the dead after a bath in IPA!)
256mb ram
Geforce 2 mx400
Creative Vibra 16s CT2890
40GB HDD
Windows98se

Top Desktop:
486sx50 with 256k cache.
Trigem motherboard with integrated I/O.
16mb ram
Trident 8900C 1MB VGA card.
Soundblaster 2.0
200mb HDD
Dos only.

Bottom Desktop:
Pentium 133 Mhz
Biostar M5ATA Motherboard
32mb ram
ATI 3D Rage II
Yamaha MF-719 (OPL3 and GM chip onboard)
1GB CF Drive
Windows 98se (Was going to be 95 but 98 retains almost all compatibility that I need and just makes things easier.)

The pentium was meant to be a faithfull recreation of my own 486dx4 from my childhood but I was having issues with it as well as performance issues and ended up going through the 486 board and 3 other socket 7 boards before settling on this one.(Mainly because it was the only one fully working!) The DVD/CD-ROM drives are placeholders as I do not have a spare bezel. The CDROM drive is broken and I do not want a DVD drive spoiling the look that I want.
After working on that bottom one for over 1 week and getting frustrated it was very satisfying to polish off all of these builds in one day!

Those are beautiful systems.

LewisRaz wrote on 2020-04-01, 00:44:

So this lockdown and furlough in my country means I have had plenty of time to crack on with some of my projects. […]
Show full quote

So this lockdown and furlough in my country means I have had plenty of time to crack on with some of my projects.

Finally have all of these systems set up just as I like. Only 2 will remain here for use.(I also have 2 different compaq deskpro in storage!)

Top Desktop:
486sx50 with 256k cache.
Trigem motherboard with integrated I/O.
16mb ram
Trident 8900C 1MB VGA card.
Soundblaster 2.0
200mb HDD
Dos only.

I like the look of this one ! Great work ! An SX50 ? 🤣 maybe upgrade it to a DX66 ?

I did bit of upgrading for my compaq prolinea 4/50S.
I replaced 486sx2 50Mhz cpu with intel overdrive 486 100Mhz cpu, but I noticed it was running bit too hot with just the standard heatsink so I installed a small fan on top of it.
I replaced original Seagate ST3391A 340Mb hard drive with Seagate ST33221A 3.2Gb hard drive to get bit more space.
I installed Mitsumi 8x cd-rom drive that helps with file transfers to the pc.
I installed Sound Blaster AWE64 CT4520 to get sound in dos games.

I think it is a pretty good system and I expect the motherboard last quite long time because it doesn't have any electrolytic capacitors.
Only minor thing is that I have not been able to find a cache module for this motherboard and because of that it is about 10-15% slower than a real 100Mhz 486. If I had that the system would be perfect.
If anyone has any ideas of how I would be able to find one of those cache modules, I would appreciate it.

May I suggest some dust-removal on that poor AWE card? 😉

What kind of cache module is needed for it?

Horun wrote on 2020-04-01, 02:18:

LewisRaz wrote on 2020-04-01, 00:44:

So this lockdown and furlough in my country means I have had plenty of time to crack on with some of my projects. […]
Show full quote

So this lockdown and furlough in my country means I have had plenty of time to crack on with some of my projects.

Finally have all of these systems set up just as I like. Only 2 will remain here for use.(I also have 2 different compaq deskpro in storage!)

Top Desktop:
486sx50 with 256k cache.
Trigem motherboard with integrated I/O.
16mb ram
Trident 8900C 1MB VGA card.
Soundblaster 2.0
200mb HDD
Dos only.

I like the look of this one ! Great work ! An SX50 ? 🤣 maybe upgrade it to a DX66 ?

I did start a thread on what the best CPU for that machine would be as I wanted to max it out. In the meantime however I got a hold of the other desktop system with a dx4 in it so the original 486sx50 system became a side project rather than something I will actively use 😀

I will still stick a dx66 in should I snatch one cheaply enough 😀

derSammler wrote on 2020-04-01, 08:56:

May I suggest some dust-removal on that poor AWE card? 😉

What kind of cache module is needed for it?

I did ask about it in another thread and I think the best reply I got was Re: Compaq cache module compatibility.

It seems it would be 197005-001 if the answer is correct. Of course if 256Kb one would exist, it would be better.

I once again tried to resurrect my TMC PCI48AL Socket 3 mainboard, still without success. There has been a little damage from the leaking barrel battery (that I removed of course), but although it doesn't look too bad at all, I suspect this to be the reason why the board is dead. Tried various combinations of CPUs, RAM and graphics cards, double- and triple-checked jumper settings, but it doesn't even beep.
I don't have too much experience with troubleshooting dead mainboards - any advice what I could do? I will try to take some pictures of the corroded areas later today.

I got this very clean Libretto a while back. Unfortunately, it would not power up at all.

When opening her up I found a lot of acid damage from the CMOS battery (d*mnit, what a waste). I also snapped of the flimsy plastic screen connector retainer during disassembly, even though I was really careful. Sucks!

I bridged some damaged traces but still no life.

After measuring some of the fuses I found one with no continuity. Since I was in a 'screw it' mood by then I bridged it with a wire and tried it.

Seems to work just fine now. I should replace the fuse though, and the harddisk sounds like it's dying, itshould be easy to replace with a CompactFlash.

Now to find a way to fixate the screen connector...

Played some GTA V on the 360 and had fun exploring what kind of stupid things you can do.

Took a helicopter to land on a blimp. 😁

Worked on some preexisting unfinished projects today.

1. eMachines eTower 366c. Tried to upgrade the RAM to 256MB but couldn't find a compatible second 128MB stick so I had to settle for 192MB. Installed a bunch of 98SE updates and made sure the BIOS was updated as far as it could go.

2. Gateway 2000 P4D-66. Successfully upgraded to a stick of 32MB 60ns RAM. With some BIOS tweaks my boot time seemed to go way down!

Baoran wrote on 2020-04-01, 08:54:

I did bit of upgrading for my compaq prolinea 4/50S. .. .. I installed Sound Blaster AWE64 CT4520 to get sound in dos games. […]
Show full quote

I did bit of upgrading for my compaq prolinea 4/50S.
..
..
I installed Sound Blaster AWE64 CT4520 to get sound in dos games.

I see the board was made in Ireland, that is cool !. HuH.. is that major dust all over your sound card ?