What retro things have you done today?
- Thread starter Duke
- Start date
I bought a Dell P2425 100hz 16:10 monitor for my Windows XP gaming machine. I currently use a U2412M 60hz.
Underwhelmed in all honesty, looks better in low light. Uses an aggressive anti-glare filter. Looks nice in low light with decent blacks, small borders, but not enough of an improvement over my 2412 so I'll most likely return.
Also playing GTA, I reinstalled the Rockstar version given away free a few years ago. Content missing (soundtrack and I'm sure some cars). So I deleted and installed the disc version to alay my suspicions!
Must be 25 years since I last played and completely forgot about the Cossie!
Underwhelmed in all honesty, looks better in low light. Uses an aggressive anti-glare filter. Looks nice in low light with decent blacks, small borders, but not enough of an improvement over my 2412 so I'll most likely return.
Also playing GTA, I reinstalled the Rockstar version given away free a few years ago. Content missing (soundtrack and I'm sure some cars). So I deleted and installed the disc version to alay my suspicions!
Must be 25 years since I last played and completely forgot about the Cossie!
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Amazing!Fresh in from its previous owner in Finland, hands down my favorite Saturn game when I was younger.
I sold my original Saturn years ago to find wedding and lost guardian heroes with it (totally worth it but it was a great collection
)Years later I have it back as the same Japanese version. Still one of the best Saturn games made and the the soundtrack is an absolute gem!
@Ninco! That Dell looks mighty interesting. Are you able to fix the Aspect ratio on it? I wonder how it handles DOS resolutions and Refresh rate the manual looks to say it supports DOS resolutions, but i wonder if it converts the refresh rate to 60hz like the older dell monitors. The 100hz refresh rate also sounds good.
I have caused many an arguement saying that GTA 1/2 were better than 3
Love those games
I’ll raise that by saying GTA 1 demo was better… 60 seconds to cause as much carnage as you can and then swap players
GTA was also the only time I ever managed to buy a game under age, asked a random bloke to go into electronics boutique and buy it for me, next 5 mins of panic thinking he just took the money and left but then he turned up and handed it over and said enjoy kid
Sorry for the repetitive posts, I'll spoiler the images - But I'm amazed by the results after 18 hours in the sun! 
Literally has gone from bright orange to regular moderately yellowed old mouse.
I'm going to keep putting it outside with the other bits and pieces to see how close it gets to the "control" mouse on the right.
Literally has gone from bright orange to regular moderately yellowed old mouse.
I'm going to keep putting it outside with the other bits and pieces to see how close it gets to the "control" mouse on the right.
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Just put it out in the sun, lazy retrobrite. Takes a bit longer but no streaking and no effort.
Ahh, you got me - I never delved into DOS games on this screen (P2425) so cannot advise.
My Dell U2412M uses DVI (also Display port and VGA) so you can scale using the Nvida app for my graphics card (Geforce 750).
The Dell P2425, my testing was limited and simply used the supplied Display Port cable. I didn't test with a HDMI or VGA (no DVI) so there were no scaling options in the old Nvidia app. However you can set the monitor to 4:3 settings. 100Hz was recognised in XP though. I've boxed it up to return as its not for me. The blue screen filtering (whatever Dell call it) was bugging me, has limited viewing angles and looks dull to my eyes. In evening light it looks good though. If you do try one, would love to hear your views.
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I have on order a big box edition for £9.99 which is apparently due to arrive tomorrow. I am expecting a Sold-Out edition or pirated CD sans everything.GTA was also the only time I ever managed to buy a game under age, asked a random bloke to go into electronics boutique and buy it for me, next 5 mins of panic thinking he just took the money and left but then he turned up and handed it over and said enjoy kid
I will be gobsmacked if it turns up as per the pics of the sale. I owned the original, but only have the CD now.
I'm sure the maps and manual are somewhere at my parents. But as time passes, now think all was purged.
Playing this weekend, the maps were sure useful in this game!
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Thats a steal for £10 it its the proper one! I paid a LOT more for mineI have on order a big box edition for £9.99 which is apparently due to arrive tomorrow. I am expecting a Sold-Out edition or pirated CD sans everything.
I will be gobsmacked if it turns up as per the pics of the sale. I owned the original, but only have the CD now.
I'm sure the maps and manual are somewhere at my parents. But as time passes, now think all was purged.
Playing this weekend, the maps were sure useful in this game!
Agree LewisRaz, if its legit I would be gobsmacked.
Its from a respected store so genuinely intrigued if the pics match the actual item received. I shall post the result or rather, too good to be true shame.
Soldato
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It looks like you're all enjoying your retro fun.
Here's some updates from me:
The Mister has been great to get to know. The A0486 core has intrigued me the most. The micro SD card I purchased contained a ton of PC games, of which it does, but a good proporation are Chinese DOS games that are wasted on me. Google Translate does a stirling job here.
The author put together various DOS 'years' (1990, 1991, 1992, etc) on Virtual Hard Drives. So you boot the A0486 core and then attach one of the drives and reboot. It's semi-user-friendly, as a lot of times, your game choice will crash out. This is probably down to the memory choice you made on boot.
I also got the Mister MT32 Pi running, which is cool.
With regards to the Mister, I thought it was meant to be console perfection. I loaded up Sonic 2 on the Megadrive and it was glitchy. I hope that was a one-off. I'll try a few different roms of this game.
I also 'bravely' edited the config so it works on my CRT VGA monitor. Awesome stuff.
And then onto my P3-700 Mhz.
In my last post, I had trouble with the sound card. I blamed everything but the sound card, but it was the sound card that I believe was faulty.
So I took this out, and ran with my Sound Blaster Extigy instead.
In the background, I've been using my other PiMT32 with various sound fonts connected to the Extigy. What a setup!
I ended up reinstalling Windows XP. After this install, no matter what I tried, I couldn't get the Creative Labs DVD Decoder card to work. It was always overkill for this PC that could render DVDs fine without it. I have since moved this card to my P200 MMX machine running Windows 95.
I tinkered with trying to get an SSD working on this machine, which 'sort of' did, but the IDE CD ROM drive was never happy afterwards, even though that's on the secondary IDE port. So it was back to the mechanical HDD.
Me being me, I always burn time on the things that don't work, rather than the things that do. I installed MS Train Sim and the London SE pack. Train Sim worked, but London SE did not. I gave up in the end.
And then on to Medal of Honor, Allied Assault. What a game. The menu screens are a bit glitchy, but the game runs fine. I forgot how awesome this is.
I've also installed Half Life, Unreal Tournament and Brittanica 2007 Encyclopedia DVD.
I've an Audigy PCI card arriving this week for it.
Here's some updates from me:
The Mister has been great to get to know. The A0486 core has intrigued me the most. The micro SD card I purchased contained a ton of PC games, of which it does, but a good proporation are Chinese DOS games that are wasted on me. Google Translate does a stirling job here.
The author put together various DOS 'years' (1990, 1991, 1992, etc) on Virtual Hard Drives. So you boot the A0486 core and then attach one of the drives and reboot. It's semi-user-friendly, as a lot of times, your game choice will crash out. This is probably down to the memory choice you made on boot.
I also got the Mister MT32 Pi running, which is cool.
With regards to the Mister, I thought it was meant to be console perfection. I loaded up Sonic 2 on the Megadrive and it was glitchy. I hope that was a one-off. I'll try a few different roms of this game.
I also 'bravely' edited the config so it works on my CRT VGA monitor. Awesome stuff.
And then onto my P3-700 Mhz.
In my last post, I had trouble with the sound card. I blamed everything but the sound card, but it was the sound card that I believe was faulty.
So I took this out, and ran with my Sound Blaster Extigy instead.
In the background, I've been using my other PiMT32 with various sound fonts connected to the Extigy. What a setup!
I ended up reinstalling Windows XP. After this install, no matter what I tried, I couldn't get the Creative Labs DVD Decoder card to work. It was always overkill for this PC that could render DVDs fine without it. I have since moved this card to my P200 MMX machine running Windows 95.
I tinkered with trying to get an SSD working on this machine, which 'sort of' did, but the IDE CD ROM drive was never happy afterwards, even though that's on the secondary IDE port. So it was back to the mechanical HDD.
Me being me, I always burn time on the things that don't work, rather than the things that do. I installed MS Train Sim and the London SE pack. Train Sim worked, but London SE did not. I gave up in the end.
And then on to Medal of Honor, Allied Assault. What a game. The menu screens are a bit glitchy, but the game runs fine. I forgot how awesome this is.
I've also installed Half Life, Unreal Tournament and Brittanica 2007 Encyclopedia DVD.
I've an Audigy PCI card arriving this week for it.
Just "finished" my Packard Bell I picked up a few months ago, completely filthy inside and out.
I was overjoyed to find one of these because it is my childhood system and it took years to find one for sale!
Deep cleaned and magic-eraser'd, disassembled and then "lightbrighted" for many many hours.
Re-assembled with absolutely no hot glue in lieu of broken clips, why would you even ask that.
New CMOS battery, re-pasted CPU.
And set up with a set of Packard Bell accessories (from a much later PC, probably Pentium 4 era)
It has a Pentium MMX 233MHz, 32MB of RAM, fairly rudimentary on-board S3 graphics, and a fairly basic AZTech sound card. Still running its original Packard Bell installation of 98SE.
I was overjoyed to find one of these because it is my childhood system and it took years to find one for sale!
Deep cleaned and magic-eraser'd, disassembled and then "lightbrighted" for many many hours.
Re-assembled with absolutely no hot glue in lieu of broken clips, why would you even ask that.
New CMOS battery, re-pasted CPU.
And set up with a set of Packard Bell accessories (from a much later PC, probably Pentium 4 era)
It has a Pentium MMX 233MHz, 32MB of RAM, fairly rudimentary on-board S3 graphics, and a fairly basic AZTech sound card. Still running its original Packard Bell installation of 98SE.
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You've done a great job of de-yellowing it!
I've got my childhood packard bell round my mums house which i'm desperate to pick up and get running again, it's a very similar spec to yours, mine was a P166 MMX but I did upgrade it to a P200, the rest of the spec sounds about the same
You've done a great job of de-yellowing it!
I've got my childhood packard bell round my mums house which i'm desperate to pick up and get running again, it's a very similar spec to yours, mine was a P166 MMX but I did upgrade it to a P200, the rest of the spec sounds about the same
Thanks! No peroxide, just lots of sunlight.
My actual childhood PC had a P166 as well, and Windows 95. This one must be slightly later, the next year perhaps!
Last thing is a replacement pentium sticker from geekenspiel.
Does it have Packard Bell navigator? Weirdly still remember that, it was like a dumbed down shell with applications represented as books on a bookcase etcJust "finished" my Packard Bell I picked up a few months ago, completely filthy inside and out.
I was overjoyed to find one of these because it is my childhood system and it took years to find one for sale!
Deep cleaned and magic-eraser'd, disassembled and then "lightbrighted" for many many hours.
Re-assembled with absolutely no hot glue in lieu of broken clips, why would you even ask that.
New CMOS battery, re-pasted CPU.
And set up with a set of Packard Bell accessories (from a much later PC, probably Pentium 4 era)
It has a Pentium MMX 233MHz, 32MB of RAM, fairly rudimentary on-board S3 graphics, and a fairly basic AZTech sound card. Still running its original Packard Bell installation of 98SE.