TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-01-05, 21:00:

In my old age of 22 I mostly just hoard various forms of CRTs and sit around thinking about all the ways I can setup my hardware to better play games, implement those improvements, and then still not play games because I would rather watch Star Trek then catch some sleep before my next shift as a slave retail worker. I'm slowly accepting I'm just a hardware tinkerer that doesn't actually play games anymore.

Heh, sometimes I think I need to just keep 3 systems and epoxy the cases shut.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-01-05, 21:24:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-01-05, 21:00:

In my old age of 22 I mostly just hoard various forms of CRTs and sit around thinking about all the ways I can setup my hardware to better play games, implement those improvements, and then still not play games because I would rather watch Star Trek then catch some sleep before my next shift as a slave retail worker. I'm slowly accepting I'm just a hardware tinkerer that doesn't actually play games anymore.

Heh, sometimes I think I need to just keep 3 systems and epoxy the cases shut.

That's probably what I should do, I just took in a Compaq Deskpro 386/20. So of course much tweaking and tuning shall ensue eventually.

Last night the apartment got trashed - inside job in a fit of mania, not me. Surprisingly the vintage hardware took it well but I need a new HDMI cable for my modern PC. I'm considering getting a storage unit or a more robust lock on my door because now I may have lost hundreds of dollars of vintage big box software (thank god I stored all of the contents on my file share).

...

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-01-05, 21:00:

I own one, it's not THAT fucking bad. UT99 runs faster in MeTaL than it does on a Voodoo3 3000 in GLIDE on a Pentium III 933 and […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-01-05, 03:14:

Got to play with the rather notorious Diamond Viper II Z200 based on the Savage 2000 GPU and I can indeed confirm that it is as terrible as it was reported to be, I spent more time working around driver issues than actually testing the card. (I secretly enjoy hardware like this, its frustrating but enjoyable when you finally get it to work)

I dont own this card but it was actually rather fun to tinker with it, if I ever see one on eBay for a reasonable price I may just buy it for my dumpster fire collection.

I own one, it's not THAT fucking bad. UT99 runs faster in MeTaL than it does on a Voodoo3 3000 in GLIDE on a Pentium III 933 and the super texturing MeTaL has support for makes the sky texture in maps like CTF Facing Worlds look pretty great. It really does suck outside of MeTaL mode though.

Its kind of exaggerated, just like everyone swears Oblivion didn't run on the GeForce FX series but my FX5950U runs it fine @ 800x600 @ Medium Low settings. Is it a next gen experience? No, of course not. But its more than playable.

I wish I still had the time to test shit and dis spell myths.

In my old age of 22 I mostly just hoard various forms of CRTs and sit around thinking about all the ways I can setup my hardware to better play games, implement those improvements, and then still not play games because I would rather watch Star Trek then catch some sleep before my next shift as a slave retail worker. I'm slowly accepting I'm just a hardware tinkerer that doesn't actually play games anymore.

I always thought that S3 Metal was really nice, but this card was not good at everything else when you compare it to its peers of the time.

It was over priced, over hyped and failed to deliver and I love it all the same, it was a fun GPU to play with so much so that Ill happily buy one when I see it at a good price.

Archived the Commodore diskette and BIOS ROMs from the PC-III board.

Currently designing the battery replacement using the 3.7V 190mA battery and a micro USB charger board to prevent the battery from overcharging. Just needs a diode on the positive out on the charging board and the other end to the positive lead on the motherboard.

Testing a pile of MFM hard drive bricks on WD1003V-MM2 controller. Seagate ST225 was the only one I could not get recognized in system, even though power-on sounds about right. Going to test it with another controller in Commodore PC-10.

One of the disks is probably LLF'd to RLL because fdisk show no partition + it just freezes the system.

ST251 has the nicest sound!

Retrolan - Sad experience

does a retro lan count as a retro activity?

Got the Compaq Deskpro 386s/20 about 90% fixed up. Just needs the Dallas Clock Chip mod, some drive rails ($5 on ebay), and maybe I'll toss an optical drive on there as well. Boots up off of floppies for now and runs great. Surprisingly snappy with that 75MHz 486 snap-on upgrade chip and 10MB of RAM.

Things left
- new CR2302 battery holder soldered to trimmed Dallas DS1287 Clock Chip /w Battery
- Drive Rails
- Optical Drive
- Replace HDD if it no longer works (from the sound at boot, it does work and sounds healthy, very quiet for a 31 year old Connor, neato spinup sound)
- Find a proper Compaq PS/2 mouse for it
- Retrobrite the front and back panels of the case

Got my drive cage rev'd for the 3D printed retro case.. perfect fit for the 5.25 and 3.5 drives. Also test fit a keylock, which also fits perfect. Still waiting on other parts, and then I just have to reprint the revised version of the front panel.

Started up a NOS PcChips M758 for the first time. I'm used to intel 810/815 so this was weird running a socket 370 board with 1gb ram. XP gave me BSOD with 'this motherboard is not fully ACPI compliant' message but no luck trying to find a bios upgrade. I think it might already have the newest on it anyway 😒

...

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-01-05, 21:24:

Heh, sometimes I think I need to just keep 3 systems and epoxy the cases shut.

If I could get down to 9, Angels would weep with joy.

Alas, I have 4 non-retro at my desk right now and two other desks, so fat chance. 🙁

wiretap wrote on 2022-01-06, 21:22:

Got my drive cage rev'd for the 3D printed retro case.. perfect fit for the 5.25 and 3.5 drives. Also test fit a keylock, which also fits perfect. Still waiting on other parts, and then I just have to reprint the revised version of the front panel.

Is there a thread for this, and what nozzle size are you using? I have issues with raised text at 0.4mm (like with my CPU trays).

Awesome job BTW! Something kind of like that has been in my noggin for a while, thinking about how to do joins for long pieces (I just did battery holders with very tight dovetail joints that seem pretty strong).

While I'm at it, more will come on this but:

Traded 2 Athlon II and 1 C2d for this. AFAICT it was literally never used, the metal plate where the CD drive would go hasn't been removed, and it's very clean.

I *really* need to get off my duff and convert some ATX PSUs to AT, or build fresh AT supplies cheaper than you can buy them (like with one or more small hobbyist PSUs). Part of the goal is to make a small server-rack style retro tower with several systems and a KVM, to save space. Maybe do up the front of the rack like a 60s style Blinkenlights computer.

Just an idle idea for now.

Got a retro YMF704 soundchip and built an Eurorack Module for my synthesizer around it.
Best of both worlds 👌🏻😃👆🏻

https://youtu.be/id5fTAAdnRg

...

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-07, 00:13:

I tested a bunch of recently acquired drives, motherboards, video/sound/add-in cards, PSUs and CPUs. No problems except I cannot get the SCSI controller on the Media Vision Pro Spectrum (not shown in the photos as I had swapped to different equipment before photo taken) to work in Windows (nor have I been able to get it to work in DOS, but I haven’t tested it on a slow enough PC yet (if that’s a factor from what I have read here, but I understood CPU speed was sound related). Sound and MPU work fine. I’ll try again for SCSI another day.

Nice! And nice kitchen too.

Merovign wrote on 2022-01-06, 22:57:

Is there a thread for this, and what nozzle size are you using? I have issues with raised text at 0.4mm (like with my CPU trays).

Awesome job BTW! Something kind of like that has been in my noggin for a while, thinking about how to do joins for long pieces (I just did battery holders with very tight dovetail joints that seem pretty strong).

I don't have a thread for it yet, but I'll post one soon with all the files and parts list. I just want to make sure it will all go together first.

My nozzle is 0.4mm, and the layer height is 0.2mm. I haven't had any issues printing text before. Even my old PowerSpec 3D Pro will do it fine, and that printer is super old and abused. It might just be your settings aren't dialed in. It also helps to use a blower fan with PLA, or an enclosure with ABS.

...

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-01-05, 21:00:

I'm slowly accepting I'm just a hardware tinkerer that doesn't actually play games anymore.

I feel you bro, I feel you! 🤣

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-06, 22:38:

Press "F7" during the XP text-mode install when it prompts you to press "F6" (to install a SCSI/RAID controller). Setup will NOT notify you ACPI HAL selection has been disabled. A "Standard HAL" will be used. You should be OK at this point.

Thanks, will give that a go.

I ran into a rather odd thing to day . .a working no bad blocks Quantum Bigfoot, had to play with it a little just to prove to myself this old dinosaur was indeed still alive and kicking and well fuck me it was very alive and working perfectly, not even any odd noises from it.

I never thought I would see one of these drives still alive and kicking.

No I didn't buy it, im crazy not stupid, we put the old girl back into her protecting sleeve and back into her coffin perhaps we will fire her up again 10 years from now and see if she is still working then.

Edit - For anyone wondering why I was amazed .. these particular drives were . .craptastic and famous for their unreliability, to see one still working perfectly in 2022 .. well that was something amazing to me.