VOGONS


Reply 19280 of 27168, by BeastOfSoda

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I finally, FINALLY managed to get Wing Commander 3 working on my Piii build. Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong, from dodgy audio drivers to gremlins crashing the game for using an USB mouse, along with parts taking months to arrive or not being up to the task, topping off with an SB16 dying on me, but the satisfaction of having it run reliably is simple bliss.

Reply 19281 of 27168, by LewisRaz

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Got my first recording up from the new soundcards that I picked up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2or2Qdq0dw&a … nel=LJRRetroPCs

Of course the first upload is DOOM! 😀

Using the ES690F Wavetable Synth on the card.

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My retro pc youtube channel
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Reply 19282 of 27168, by bjwil1991

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Replaced the 72 pin edge connector and cleaned most of the NES off and it works.

Also made sure I plugged the controller port wiring in the correct spots this time.

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So I now have 2 working consoles and all that's left is to get an NES power brick, a few more games, 2 more controllers, and another Zapper so I can have 2 consoles on 2 different TV sets (CRTs).

Discord: https://discord.gg/U5dJw7x
Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/retropcuser

Reply 19283 of 27168, by BitWrangler

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Yay! Can I send you a NES, a GameCube, and 4 Xbox 360s to get working for me, maybe a Wii or two with a software issue? 🤣

Just kidding, but the console "round tuit" pile never seems to get any smaller. May not even be much wrong with some of them. I think I'd have plucked out an original xbox or dreamcast to play with if either of those were in there though.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 19284 of 27168, by Aebtdom

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I have installed my freshly arrived geforce 4 ti4200 128mb from leadtech winfast series.
It had some glitches before installing but seen it only once. Only thing I am facing now is that I can't seem to get my voodoo 2 SLI up and running again, but maybe I have to take skme more time to investigate the driver kind of issue.

Builds:

Xp3000+ gf3 ti200 + vd2 SLI 12MB + 768MB + SB live @ WinXP & 98 Dualboot.

P2 350mhz + Diamond Viper V550 + 3Dfx Voodoo 2 12MB + AWE64 + 128MB SDR @ msdos / win98.

Reply 19285 of 27168, by Caluser2000

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canthearu wrote on 2021-06-21, 09:18:
Just for giggles, I pulled out an old SFF Compaq with 1gig ram, 2.4ghz P4 and ATI Radeon 9550. Installing the operating system ( […]
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Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-17, 23:15:

Got the Shuttle Xpc sorted. About a minute and a half to boot to the desk which is Cinnamon on Linux Mint Debian Edition. If you look at the system info shot below you'll see how much resources this little beauty has. So if someone says Xwindows is slow or there is no modern operating system for older 32-bit x86 hardware that is regularly updated tell them to go pound sand 😉

I'll create a dedicated thread some time to explain the small issue I had a some time.

Peace out.

Just for giggles, I pulled out an old SFF Compaq with 1gig ram, 2.4ghz P4 and ATI Radeon 9550. Installing the operating system (LMDE) went ok, and I'll admit, it wasn't really slow when it first booted.

But loading firefox and going to a website caused it to slow to a bloody crawl. Youtube is completely out of the question.

I also tried playing a video on it, old SD DIVx file. It worked ok at standard size, but started chugging once expanded to full screen. I'm going to try VLC, see if it will perform better than the default media player.

The P4 is obviously not the best PC to be running a modern linux distribution. If I were a patient person, then I suppose I could use it to do some basic office style work. But I'm far too spoiled by actual fast hardware and the capabilities and snappy performance to even put myself through "trying to do work on really old PCs" again. I tolerated it while I was young because I couldn't afford any better, but always pushed for more performance.

P4s were in production for 10 years- https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium_4/index.html And there were numerous variants- https://www.cpu-world.com/info/Intel/Intel_Pentium_4.html

I can assure you all of them play YouTube videos with out any issues at at all. All they are the one core 2 thread versions. I use this one , 3.2Ghz ,to view real time footage from our security cameras. And edit the local law enforcement, aka Police, are interested.

Thank you for confirming Linux loads fast and is easy to install

LMDE is not the operating system. It's the pretty bit which sits on top of Xwindows, which sits on top of the drivers and kernal. Gnome, KDE, XFCE4, MATE, Cinnamon are also pretty bits. I generally ignor Gnome and KDE because of their extra overhead with respect to system resources. Linux can be installed as a cli only operating system . This is great for servers. It doesn't need the pretty bits at all to function, unlike MickySolft Windows 10

I tested two more distros:

The first was BunsenLabs Lithium which is quite a small initial install that can be built on using repositories, including Debian repositories. - https://www.bunsenlabs.org/

The second was 32-bit Devuan BeoWolf 3.1 . This is a Debian derivative that uses sysinit instead of systemd- https://www.devuan.org/

Both of the above distros ,using Firefox-esr ,ran YouTube videos just fine.Like this one - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzIS_q4yS88 I'm trying to recover data from my brothers one...

And all of these distros are current and updated on a regular basis and function as they should on all of my P4 HT systems, 2.8GHz, 3GHz and 3.2GHz.

Take care now 😀

Edit: Shivers I forgot to mention the my 1.6Ghz Atom based EeePC does as well. I'm quite forgetful these days, being 60 plus en all...

Last edited by Caluser2000 on 2021-06-26, 10:05. Edited 3 times in total.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 19286 of 27168, by Mister Xiado

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Bought a 15" 4:3 VGA LCD Hewlett Packard monitor with inbuilt speakers, to match the 17" iteration I already had. While I have a like-new Packard Bell CRT, I don't want to use it until I have a project that would be better served by it. Like taking a photo of the system it came with playing Quake or something, but at the moment, it's got Windows 3 on it, with a PB user environment. I do need to drag it out some time soon to perform a DALLAS transplant, as I finally bit the bullet and bought a Hakko FR-301 to make such tedious jobs much less tiresome.
If I manage to slap together enough older systems, I could make a sub-network on my LAN suitable for Warcraft 2 multiplayer, but then, I'm not 15 anymore, so inviting people to come over and play video games is about as doable as getting AB- unicorn blood.

b_ldnt2.gif - Where it's always 1995.
Icons, wallpapers, and typical Oldternet nonsense.

Reply 19287 of 27168, by pan069

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pan069 wrote on 2021-06-20, 06:08:
pan069 wrote on 2021-06-14, 06:36:

Messing around with my Windows 98 rig today, playing some games etc. Suddenly my my CDROM drive stops opening, stuck. Needle/pin opening doesn't work, like there is no mechanism behind it to push open the drive. Super frustrating, I have had this happening to so many drives before, not sure what causes this. I opened the drive (an AOpen 40x model CD-940E/AKU), an absolute bitch to open up specially since I couldn't open the drive tray before disassembling so I couldn't remove the front panel. Then after having it opened, it gives me access to the bottom side of the drive. After removing the PCB I was able to manually trigger the drive to open by shifting a latch from left to right which drops the inner drive assembly (the one with the lens) and ejects the tray. However, I wasn't able to figure out how to further disassemble the drive so I left it at that. After putting the drive back together and reinstalling it, no juice. Same problem.

When is there going to be some smart person putting together the GoTek of CDROM's? All this mechanical stuff seems to failing left and right... 🙁

Managed to fix that CDROM drive today, yay! Replaced the drive belt, now it opens again like a champ!

Managed to fix two more drives that were equally stuck. How about being on a roll? 😀

Reply 19288 of 27168, by Caluser2000

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Went for a 400km motorcycle ride in the rain...😉

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 19289 of 27168, by liqmat

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Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-26, 14:13:

Went for a 400km motorcycle ride in the rain...😉

Sounds invigorating actually. Especially if there is lightning. Nothing worse than the Colorado hail storm I hit years ago. It literally was all ice and no rain. Complete downpour. Surreal.

I'm joking about the lighning of course. Did you see this? Crazy! >> https://people.com/human-interest/lightning-s … uck-windshield/

Reply 19290 of 27168, by Caluser2000

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liqmat wrote on 2021-06-26, 14:31:
Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-26, 14:13:

Went for a 400km motorcycle ride in the rain...😉

Sounds invigorating actually. Especially if there is lightning. Nothing worse than the Colorado hail storm I hit years ago. It literally was all ice and no rain. Complete downpour. Surreal.

I'm joking about the lighning of course. Did you see this? Crazy! >> https://people.com/human-interest/lightning-s … uck-windshield/

Lol.

I always return home in a better mood than when I left. It's my "happy place" if you will. Any day on a motorcycle is a good day ..😀

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 19291 of 27168, by LewisRaz

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Had to reupload but got my recording of the transport tycoon deluxe soundtrack up on youtube with the ES690F Wavetable Synth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8nZ0RBn4Y0&a … nel=LJRRetroPCs

My retro pc youtube channel
Twitter

Reply 19292 of 27168, by MotoPete

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That moment when you're poking through old boxes at your oldies place, only to find a copy of dozens of games you loved as a kid!

I had no idea they had it!

Hmmm... so this is what winning the lottery feels like!

Reply 19293 of 27168, by MotoPete

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pan069 wrote on 2021-06-20, 06:08:

Managed to fix that CDROM drive today, yay! Replaced the drive belt, now it opens again like a champ!

Love that feeling when something that's got you stumped just comes together! Happy days! Enjoy!

Reply 19294 of 27168, by Joakim

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MotoPete wrote on 2021-06-27, 06:43:
20210627_163802.jpg […]
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That moment when you're poking through old boxes at your oldies place, only to find a copy of dozens of games you loved as a kid!

I had no idea they had it!

Hmmm... so this is what winning the lottery feels like!

Sweet! I long to visit my oldies for this reason ..usually it's with kids though and I don't have time to dumpster dive.. they are a bit messy, which means that they might have some treasure like old forgotten computers.. A dream is to find the old amstraf or what ever it was we had to play kings quest and winter games on when I was 6...

Reply 19295 of 27168, by Thermalwrong

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LewisRaz wrote on 2021-06-27, 06:27:

Had to reupload but got my recording of the transport tycoon deluxe soundtrack up on youtube with the ES690F Wavetable Synth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8nZ0RBn4Y0&a … nel=LJRRetroPCs

Wow, thanks for recording all those different soundtracks with that card 😀
Personally I like the OPL3 version of Transport Tycoon soundtrack since it sounds pretty excellent for just FM. I didn't realise the MIDI version sounds great too though.

Is it because of youtube or are there compression artefacts on some of the sounds? At 9:02 it sounds a bit squashed.

Reply 19296 of 27168, by liqmat

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MotoPete wrote on 2021-06-27, 06:43:
20210627_163802.jpg […]
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That moment when you're poking through old boxes at your oldies place, only to find a copy of dozens of games you loved as a kid!

I had no idea they had it!

Hmmm... so this is what winning the lottery feels like!

Out of anything that I find at garage sales nothing excites me more than a big box of floppies to explore. Don't know why, just a thing.

Reply 19297 of 27168, by LewisRaz

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Thermalwrong wrote on 2021-06-27, 14:00:
Wow, thanks for recording all those different soundtracks with that card :) Personally I like the OPL3 version of Transport Tyc […]
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LewisRaz wrote on 2021-06-27, 06:27:

Had to reupload but got my recording of the transport tycoon deluxe soundtrack up on youtube with the ES690F Wavetable Synth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8nZ0RBn4Y0&a … nel=LJRRetroPCs

Wow, thanks for recording all those different soundtracks with that card 😀
Personally I like the OPL3 version of Transport Tycoon soundtrack since it sounds pretty excellent for just FM. I didn't realise the MIDI version sounds great too though.

Is it because of youtube or are there compression artefacts on some of the sounds? At 9:02 it sounds a bit squashed.

Its mostly down to the card itself I think. It is not as good as synths with bigger patches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfAwTM0X_fg&a … nel=LJRRetroPCs

The SW60XG is far clearer as an example 😀

My retro pc youtube channel
Twitter

Reply 19298 of 27168, by MotoPete

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Modded a RTC to accept a CR2032, no more CMOS errors on POST now!

Reply 19299 of 27168, by BitWrangler

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Nice, why perform a Dallasectomy when you can perform a Dalloplasty 🤣

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.