1) cleaned out my DOS PC interior. While I had it open, I switched out graphics cards. Took the TNT2 M64 out and put in an S3 Virge GX with 4MB. It's an STB Nitro 3D. This gets the system a bit more "period correct" as VGA now matches CPU in release year. Plus the 4MB is the most I have on a period correct graphics card which lets me run LinksLS at 1024x768x32bpp (technically it'll run at 1280x1024x24bpp but I refuse to push my 17" CRT that hard). I have faster period correct cards with less memory, but the VRAM is more important then a few percent performance.
2) benchmarked the Virge GX. It's about 5% slower than the TNT2 M64 and ARK1000PV in VGA and 6% slower in SVGA. For more context, it's 23% faster than my integrated CL-GD5430 2MB in VGA, and 45% faster than the GD5430 in SVGA. So in other words, it's way closer to the fastest DOS PCI cards then it is to the slowest.

I managed to assembly my Dell Optiplex GXa. After over one week of retrobrighting the case, it is finally done. There is one thing left - CD-ROM is still "in progress".
I replaced Pentium II 233 to Pentium III 500, it runs at 66 MHz bus thus the CPU clock is down to 330 MHz, but I got SSE instructions and it is a lot faster than Pentium II. The ram has been upgraded from 128MB to 384 MB.
I installed the Voodoo 2 12 MB PCI card.
I ordered SGRAM extension (2MB). ATI Rage Pro will have then 4 MB of total VRAM.

Take a look at the pictures 😀

I will demonstrate this PC later on Vogons once it'll be ready.

edit: adding to my post above only after I'm confident I didn't seriously hurt myself

24 hours ago I took a major fall down the stairs to the basement with my retro PC in my arms. Believe it or not, the first thought through my head as I was falling was "Don't let the PC get hurt!". I ended up apparently bruising a kidney and ribs, but no damage to my DOS PC. I cradled it like a baby while my butt and left side of my back took the full brunt of my weight plus the weight of the Packard Bell. I thought I might've cracked a rib, but 24 hours later, it feels like only a deep bruise to muscle tissue. Still hurts like hell, especially sneezes, hiccups, and bending forward or backward. But much better than last night. And the reason for the trip down the stairs was I got a new air compressor for Christmas, which I'd set up in the basement, and was taking my baby down to blow all the hard-to-reach dust out. Next time, I'll wear proper tennis shoes rather than slippers (pun intended).

It's a dangerous hobby! Glad you escaped worse injury.

clueless1 wrote on 2020-12-26, 22:16:

edit: adding to my post above only after I'm confident I didn't seriously hurt myself

Get well soon mate! I'm glad you are not hurt badly.

A few months ago, I nearly tumbled down a staircase due to wearing a crappy pair of slippers while moving some chairs. Since then, indoor house shoes are my trusty companions when carrying anything heavier than a notepad.

I did a video about my P3 Deskpro EN with Windows 2000 and GeForce 6200 PCI video card.

https://youtu.be/3tuoQihron8

mwdmeyer wrote on 2020-12-27, 08:08:

I did a video about my P3 Deskpro EN with Windows 2000 and GeForce 6200 PCI video card.

https://youtu.be/3tuoQihron8

Don't know, Doom 3 wasn't the most optimized game back in the day. The PCI bus should definitely bottleneck the Geforce 6200, but I wouldn't expect much from an AGP variant either. Back then I used to have a factory overclocked Radeon 9600 Pro and even that struggled with it on medium. Also Doom 3's minimum recommendation for a CPU is a 1.5GHz Pentium, so that should be underpowered too.

Nice rig btw.

Well ... I bought another retro PC ... My wife is surely gonna make me homeless now 🙁
It's a 386.....

clueless1 wrote on 2020-12-26, 22:16:

edit: adding to my post above only after I'm confident I didn't seriously hurt myself

24 hours ago I took a major fall down the stairs to the basement with my retro PC in my arms. Believe it or not, the first thought through my head as I was falling was "Don't let the PC get hurt!". I ended up apparently bruising a kidney and ribs, but no damage to my DOS PC. I cradled it like a baby while my butt and left side of my back took the full brunt of my weight plus the weight of the Packard Bell. I thought I might've cracked a rib, but 24 hours later, it feels like only a deep bruise to muscle tissue. Still hurts like hell, especially sneezes, hiccups, and bending forward or backward. But much better than last night. And the reason for the trip down the stairs was I got a new air compressor for Christmas, which I'd set up in the basement, and was taking my baby down to blow all the hard-to-reach dust out. Next time, I'll wear proper tennis shoes rather than slippers (pun intended).

OMG ... are there any bad sectors on Your HDD? (joke) hope You're OK .... Anyway I would go for X-ray.....

Spitz wrote on 2020-12-27, 12:16:

Well ... I bought another retro PC ... My wife is surely gonna make me homeless now 🙁

I heard if you buy enough retro machines, you can stack them up on top of each other to create a rudimentary hut. 😜

mwdmeyer wrote on 2020-12-27, 08:08:

I did a video about my P3 Deskpro EN with Windows 2000 and GeForce 6200 PCI video card.

https://youtu.be/3tuoQihron8

Very nice system you have there. I also like using 2000 it does well with games. Your video was very nicely done you got yourself a new subscriber.

Not today, but yesterday I finally resolved some IRQ conflict issues with my upcoming "All things Diamond" build that I have set up around the Diamond/Micronics C400 Motherboard. Had to shuffle around the PCI cards quite a bit, but now everything works without issues.
Little preview of the build:
- Diamond C400 motherboard
- Diamond Viper V550 TNT graphics card (if I find a V770 or V770 Pro/Ultra for a reasonable price, I'll replace the V550)
- Diamond Monster 3D II Voodoo 2 (2 cards in SLI, actually)
- Diamond Fireport SCSI Adapter
- Diamond Monster Sound MX300 sound card
It's basically all set up now, but I'm thinking of moving it to a different case. Once everything's finished, I'll make a separate thread about it.
It still has one free ISA slot, but AFAIK the Diamond-branded ISA sound cards were quite unspectacular, generic cards, so I'm not willing to shell out the extra Euros.

the_ultra_code wrote on 2020-12-27, 13:31:

Spitz wrote on 2020-12-27, 12:16:

Well ... I bought another retro PC ... My wife is surely gonna make me homeless now 🙁

I heard if you buy enough retro machines, you can stack them up on top of each other to create a rudimentary hut. 😜

Thx mate - good idea, I'll better start right away!

Now the family christmas is done, I've been having great fun making 3 working laptops out of 4 non-working laptops I found on ebay recently for cheap. Out of 3 Thinkpad 600 laptops ( a 600, a 600E and a 600X), I've been able to make 2 working good ones, they just need hard drive covers to finish. Which I can do since I've got one for reference and a 3d printer. All 3 have working screens, which is great since the 600x laptop I bought a year or so ago had a bad screen and their LCD panels are very rare now.

I was going to 3d print repair parts for this PMD-5500 486 laptop, but decided that just squishing some Polymorph / whitemorph plastic in would be easiest, since hinges don't get too hot normally.

Then getting Windows 95 installed on the laptop, which sadly had a totally dead hard drive so I used a Toshiba 810mb drive, which is working great. Thankfully the drivers are the same as desktop ones, with the Terratec Maestro soundcard drivers working nicely for the CompuMedia ASC-9308 sound chip.

The Vanadium Lithium VL2330 rechargeable cell was bad and its low voltage stopped the laptop (with AMI WinBIOS) from booting. I'm genuinely surprised and really pleased that I had a spare VL2330 cell to replace it just in my box(es) of parts.

When I was repairing the screen, I was worried because the corner of the screen that I heated with a hair dryer to reshape the thermoplastic went white from the heat. But it went back to normal once it cooled down. Which is great, screens for computers this old are difficult to get.

Lucky find: searching for CD-rom drivers mentioned in the manual turned up a similar but older model laptop and its Windows 3.1 drivers, very handy! http://www.computernerdkev.heliohost.org/skd- … 00/skdspecs.htm
I'll have to get in touch with him and tell him that a similar manual is available since he was searching for it 4 years ago.

I finally completed "Dark forces" tonight. Very good game IMO. Yes, it has weird controllers by default (fixable with a patch) and some parts that are boring (I dislike the sewers, for instance) but generally speaking, very good. It's also very approachable for everybody, since the difficulty levels really honor their names, unlike other games I've played.

Got a PCChip M915i / Amptron DX9200 up and running. Was giving bootup issues. It has Fake Cache chips but wanted to make it run ok before attempting to put sockets and real cache on it.
Works ok now and ran lots of tests that all worked fine except NSSI, it hangs on BIOS/PnP detection (which the board does not have PnP 🤣).
Probably related to the fake cache. One more board moved from the "To Fix" pile to the "working" shelf. Will do the cache implants later....

I hate those socket board there they put 2 16 bit isa board that will get in the way of the cpu heat sink !

ElBrunzy wrote on 2020-12-28, 07:52:

I hate those socket board there they put 2 16 bit isa board that will get in the way of the cpu heat sink !

I doubt there will be an issue at all. My 60 or so 16-bit isa cards finish at the end of the slots.

thank you so much, Caluser2000, I hate to be the single user of a new forum page.

clueless1 wrote on 2020-12-26, 22:16:

edit: adding to my post above only after I'm confident I didn't seriously hurt myself

24 hours ago I took a major fall down the stairs to the basement with my retro PC in my arms. Believe it or not, the first thought through my head as I was falling was "Don't let the PC get hurt!". I ended up apparently bruising a kidney and ribs, but no damage to my DOS PC. I cradled it like a baby while my butt and left side of my back took the full brunt of my weight plus the weight of the Packard Bell. I thought I might've cracked a rib, but 24 hours later, it feels like only a deep bruise to muscle tissue. Still hurts like hell, especially sneezes, hiccups, and bending forward or backward. But much better than last night. And the reason for the trip down the stairs was I got a new air compressor for Christmas, which I'd set up in the basement, and was taking my baby down to blow all the hard-to-reach dust out. Next time, I'll wear proper tennis shoes rather than slippers (pun intended).

Glad you are ok! Pretty daring to move heavy stuff down the stairs with slippers on.. those things should only ever be used in the bathroom.