What retro things have you done today?

phatboy · 1 Oct 2019 at 20:56

I do love it when they just dump it outside on a day where the weather is totally off it's face and going crazy!

Need to get myself a copy of total annihilation, such a brutally hard but brilliant game

Found most like 20+ sticks of PC133 128MB RAM in old box at work, need to test them ideally but once I do if anyone is in need of RAM I can help. All in anti-static bags of some sort so fingers cross all be ok. All due to be dumped in the skip so glad I saved them. Single 32mb EDO too, shame it needs to work in paired banks

LewisRaz · 1 Oct 2019 at 22:42

TA was on my list but not a priority as it is readily available and easy to run on win10 (in fact I own it on GoG and steam...) But its just such a classic I couldnt pass it up at this price. IIRC it came on 2 disks too so you could play it LAN with only 1 copy?
I certainly look forward to networking up with my p3 win98 machine and playing some 90s RTS with my brother.

I managed to test the Pentium 100 too and that is working fine so now I can be sure that the other motherboard is going to the scrapyard in the sky (aka listed on ebay as spares

)

Fisrt up: Get the donor case ready - Socket A athlon 1ghz system in an absolute tank of a case from MESH. Not 100% period correct but damn close enough.

Little bit of faffing around trying to work out which holes lined up with what. only 3 screw holes actually matched any mounting points but a plastic standoff was used for the 4th corner and the board is now nice and secure.

Got the front panel hooked up and thought everything was going super smooth until I went to plug in the IDE cables and the ones in this case have the damn blanked off pin so wont fit onto the board! I know they can be drilled but I probably have suitable ones in the loft and didnt want to make a lot of noise while the daughter is in bed.

So installing the software that I had eagerly got ready will have to wait!

phatboy · 2 Oct 2019 at 12:49

That 2000 update, does that include anything important?

So this morning I put the whole new setup together and gave it a go....
https://drive.google.com/open?id=18p40UFz9W-wS4Sr7lbc3NJ9lmElTT1y_

So all seems to be well and the new RIVA 128 is running great which is nice. massivley suprised that OpenGL Quake 2 was pretty happy at 640x480 and even so at 800x600. Think that there is a RAM/CPU limitation there from loading behaviours. Be interesting to see if adding the extra 32MB of EDO and the MMX 233 chip relieves any of this

Only issue i have run into is that the ESS ISA soundboard only seems to be outputing the to right channel. got drivers down again and reinstalled, nothing. Confirmed speakers are 100% well on my phone so must be a failing component in the card annoyingly unless someone has any other ideas?

Thanks

Ben

almoststew1990 · 2 Oct 2019 at 13:02

You could clean the sound card 3.5mm hole with some alcohol and an ear stick to remove and crud from in there? Have you checked the L/R balance in the software if it has that?

elh_2009 · 2 Oct 2019 at 13:06

I need to stop looking in this thread, not only do I not have the space for a retro build with crt I dont know much about the hardware for win 95 / 98 systems as I was young back then and didn't even know what ram was Haha. Just makes me jealous looking at all your amazing builds

phatboy · 2 Oct 2019 at 13:22

almoststew1990 said:
You could clean the sound card 3.5mm hole with some alcohol and an ear stick to remove and crud from in there? Have you checked the L/R balance in the software if it has that?

Will have a go, cheers.

Yeah no real software to report tbh so just checked the usual suspect settings and nothing out of the norm.

Any idea if the SB0360 has Windows 95 support? just found one on a cheap buy it now

phatboy · 2 Oct 2019 at 13:38

elh_2009 said:
I need to stop looking in this thread, not only do I not have the space for a retro build with crt I dont know much about the hardware for win 95 / 98 systems as I was young back then and didn't even know what ram was Haha. Just makes me jealous looking at all your amazing builds

its quite a cheap little thing to build up, i would suggest if space is a limitation start with something like a Shuttle XPS style box (£50-60) and then go for a 15" 4:3 aspect TFT panel with VGA like an old DELL or something, you can find them for £5 on Facebook marketplace.
That would get you into the XP era for a starting point.

If you want to build up something yourself, I have Windows 95 running perfectly on an AMD Socket A/462 based system. There are loads of cheap boards on the socket on Ebay, just do what I did and research the model numbers to see if there are still drivers out there on legacy driver banks which support 95/98. I found that aBit were really good historic support wise. Only thing you need to do is get a patch down that I cant 100% remember at this point which upped the CPU support on 95 OS, 98 was fine and most likely a better choice anyways tbh. Was a 1/2mb file from memory

This age of stuff means you can also do what I did. Stick 2 HDD's in and make a dual boot 95/98 + XP machine

Good example, this board - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MSI-MS-6...963228&hash=item1cd5942fc3:g:fwsAAOSwxOBdMiNi

Just looked on there support site and 98 support - https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/KT4V__KT4VL_v1.0#down-driver&Win 98

supported CPU's available under £10 - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-AXDA...327851&hash=item3aec9ea1c5:g:zLEAAOSwj85ZhEBJ

Socket A/462 + also gives you access to AGP graphics cards which are faster and cheaper than older PCI style ones

I have loads of DDR1 memory laying around i can donate to save you some money if you do decide to go ahead

Hope that helps

elh_2009 · 2 Oct 2019 at 14:16

Excellent thanks @phatboy I will have a proper look when I am home from work tonight. It's something I'd like to do even if I dont always have it set up. The xp build could be a good starting point tho a dual boot 98/xp is ideal for me

Edit.

What would be a good range gpu for this kind of build to be able to run xp era games as well

almoststew1990 · 2 Oct 2019 at 19:11

To be honest a AGP card powerful enough for XP gaming will be quite expensive; £50+ I would think for a Nvidia 6800 or similar. If you do go this route, you really want a 5 series or earlier for compatibility reasons with W98 early 3D gaming. To do it on the cheap, grab a 5200 or MX440 or something for £15 but don't expect performance to play games newer than 2003 or so!

XP gaming is much, much easier and cheaper on Socket 775 with pretty much any PCI-E Graphics card. There is a limited space for cross over where you can get a Single Core Socket 754 or 939 with PCI-E. Be aware that PCI-E rules out Windows 98 gaming due to chipset compatibility problems. DOS would be fine though!

elh_2009 · 2 Oct 2019 at 20:56

Maybe I will go for a xp build, I have a laptop running windows 98 that Does the job so a xp build could be the way.

LewisRaz · 2 Oct 2019 at 21:25

Does anyone know if you can plug a floppy cable in back to front? As in the end that would normally go into the floppy into the motherboard instead and vice versa. The connector has a blanked out pin on the motherboard end but not on the floppy end!

LewisRaz · 2 Oct 2019 at 22:30

Ended up sticking a pin into the connector and making a hole

Bit of a concern at first as it would not boot from my floppy but after using my laptop I discovered that 2 of my 4 win95 disks no longer work, lucky I had spares.
Installing win95 now

LewisRaz · 2 Oct 2019 at 22:48

LewisRaz said:
Ended up sticking a pin into the connector and making a hole
Bit of a concern at first as it would not boot from my floppy but after using my laptop I discovered that 2 of my 4 win95 disks no longer work, lucky I had spares.
Installing win95 now

EDIT: No im not, forgot how slow things were back then, taking 45mins ish to format this 40gb disk

jellybeard999 · 2 Oct 2019 at 22:51

LewisRaz said:
Ended up sticking a pin into the connector and making a hole
Bit of a concern at first as it would not boot from my floppy but after using my laptop I discovered that 2 of my 4 win95 disks no longer work, lucky I had spares.
Installing win95 now

Glad you got sorted with replacement disks.

If you are missing any old windows disks, they might be available https://winworldpc.com/library/operating-systems

Hopefully all above board, as they're only old depreciated OSs available from this source

LewisRaz · 2 Oct 2019 at 23:13

jellybeard999 said:
Glad you got sorted with replacement disks.

If you are missing any old windows disks, they might be available https://winworldpc.com/library/operating-systems

Hopefully all above board, as they're only old depreciated OSs available from this source

I had stumbled upon that site before and it really is a great resource for those in this hobby! I do enjoy having the original media but definitely appreciate the need to back it up!

Whilst rooting in the loft for some IDE cables I did find a bag with a few "retro" goodies in it, 3 different network cards (Not sure which one to go with as yet), a PCI firewire card and a Geforce 2 MX AGP.

almoststew1990 · 3 Oct 2019 at 22:24

I put together my 1GHz PC properly today. I was thinking I can now play Morrowind on a Windows 98 PC! Nope.

Plays at sub 25fps at lowest settings at 800*600 with my "fast-for-an-MX" MX440. This is on a game that apparently has the requirements of a 500MHz CPU and Nvidia TNT and up! It really is more at home on an XP PC.

I loked on eBay for a faster replacement, prices have got even more silly over the last 3 months or so! £30 for a standard garbage MX card naturally advertised as "rare and vintage"; £60+ for anything remotely powerful. There are a few sensible options hidden away like a couple of 9600pros (noticably faster than 4200ti, likely more so now with more mature drivers) for £23 or so and a 5700LE for £20 both in the Czech Republic.

LewisRaz · 3 Oct 2019 at 23:13

I do feel quite stupid for letting my 9600XT go in a winxp build that I sold. The guy who I sold it to only wanted it for the floppy drive

phatboy · 4 Oct 2019 at 09:06

almoststew1990 said:
I put together my 1GHz PC properly today. I was thinking I can now play Morrowind on a Windows 98 PC! Nope.

Plays at sub 25fps at lowest settings at 800*600 with my "fast-for-an-MX" MX440. This is on a game that apparently has the requirements of a 500MHz CPU and Nvidia TNT and up! It really is more at home on an XP PC.

I loked on eBay for a faster replacement, prices have got even more silly over the last 3 months or so! £30 for a standard garbage MX card naturally advertised as "rare and vintage"; £60+ for anything remotely powerful. There are a few sensible options hidden away like a couple of 9600pros (noticably faster than 4200ti, likely more so now with more mature drivers) for £23 or so and a 5700LE for £20 both in the Czech Republic.

We talking AGP here I take it?

phatboy · 4 Oct 2019 at 09:07

Back in the office today and post waiting for me

233Mhz MMX chip
32mb EDO RAM
Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force + Expansion Pack

almoststew1990 · 4 Oct 2019 at 10:19

phatboy said:
We talking AGP here I take it?

Yeah. Although to be honest my MX is fine for actual W98 gaming so I probably won't upgrade for Morrowind which is an XP era game really. I tend to do XP gaming on PCI-E (never really liked Pentium 4s!) and i have a few cards lying around.