Ocuk Retro gamers

Really nice machine Ninco! Love the Pro 454! I had one of these back in the day. Awesome monitor.

I have quite a few retro pc machines i have built! These two are the ones that get used the most. The Left one is a K6-III+ 450 and the Right one is a 200mmx which is going through a change of hardware at the moment.

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And this is what i'm working on currently. A PIII 1400 Tualatin with a 4600ti

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As well as the Iiyama LCD I have a 19" CTX Trinitron monitor. Its my Pride and Joy :)

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Duke said:
Nice beigeness :D I'm intrigued to what the card is with the full size SIMM/DIMM on it?
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Hahaha can't beat some beige! The Card in question is a Terratec EWS64s soundcard. It has a 32mb Simm installed to allow the loading of soundfonts. The EWS is one of the few cards that can load soundfonts in DOS.

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Thank you for your comments and showing off your awesome collection cee-S-dee!

You own a beige flat panel & a CD multidrive! I picked up a 15" Sony LCD the other day, from the sellers photos I thought it was beige. Only in daylight it turns out to be an odd shade of very light grey/mint green which when looking back it was a Vaio trend back in the day. It's a nice screen and almost new, but the weird colour combo does look a bit random next to beige kit so its been banished to storage.

I know what you mean about the CRT being your pride - I'm the same, currently reliving some classic's, too many games to play! During this weekend I have been messing about playing Quake (using the excellent QuakeSpasm mod) Half Life and Unreal.

The urge to book a week off and doss is looming! :o
 
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Ninco! said:
Thank you for your comments and showing off your awesome collection cee-S-dee!

You own a beige flat panel & a CD multidrive! I picked up a 15" Sony LCD the other day, from the sellers photos I thought it was beige. Only in daylight it turns out to be an odd shade of very light grey/mint green which when looking back it was a Vaio trend back in the day. It's a nice screen and almost new, but the weird colour combo does look a bit random next to beige kit so its been banished to storage.

I know what you mean about the CRT being your pride - I'm the same, currently reliving some classic's, too many games to play! During this weekend I have been messing about playing Quake (using the excellent QuakeSpasm mod) Half Life and Unreal.

The urge to book a week off and doss is looming! :o
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The CD Multidrive is a nice novelty but its a pain in the ass to use hahaha. I'm trying to configure my 200mmx with a combination of sound cards and GFX cards to allow it to play a wide variety of games. I wanna get some games played on the CRT!

This is how the 200mmx is shaping up currently

Pentium 200mmx (Speed adjustable via setmul)
Gigabyte GA-586TX3 AT motherboard
64mb 66mhz SD-Ram
16mb PCI 3DFX Voodoo Banshee
Matrox M3D PowerVR 3D Accelerator
Music Quest MPU401 Midi Card (For Roland MT32 & SC155 Sound Modules)
Sound Blaster AWE32 CT3980 (OPL3 & 2MB Ram) and a Yamaha DB50XG mounted on the wavetable header
Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum 16 (PAS16)

Just got the task of making this all place nicely together. Will be a fun machine to play games on when its configured.
 
Ninco! said:
A better photo of the D4100:


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Update: Dell 4100 bit the dust. Something has gone awry, refuses to turn on, gutted as it was running well with Windows 98. Only after a night of retro gaming, the next day - nothing, refuses to turn on. Dead as a dodo. :(

Patience started to get tested so decided to park the Dell project to try something else.

Now the proud owner of a HP T610 Plus Thin Client for a new WinXP project courtesy of watching PhilsComputerLab:


It turned up this week, sadly no time to test until next weekend!
 
Ninco! said:
Update: Dell 4100 bit the dust. Something has gone awry, refuses to turn on, gutted as it was running well with Windows 98.
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Sorry to hear about the Dell! Looks in great condition! If you do decide to repair it, be careful with the Power Supply, as I think Dell used a custom pinout on the ATX connector so a standard PSU will do even more damage. I would do some research if you look to replace the unit.
 
cee-S-dee said:
Sorry to hear about the Dell! Looks in great condition! If you do decide to repair it, be careful with the Power Supply, as I think Dell used a custom pinout on the ATX connector so a standard PSU will do even more damage. I would do some research if you look to replace the unit.
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Cheers Cee. The Dell probably sat dormant for years and the shock of working the system, just too much! I got to test a couple of things to see if it was the PSU, however, parked the Dell for now and will investigate when in the right frame of mind!

Thanks for the tip regarding replacing the PSU :)

As an aside, I saw a Dan PC on eBay the other day - Talk about an original 90's brand & blast from the past! Always felt they were high end kit back in the day.

The temptation to buy was high, albeit, ended up with Thin PC instead, hardly retro but the idea of running XP games without too much faff & space appeals (lazy). :o
 
Hopefully I won't get burned at the stake for doing this outside the MM, but would anyone be willing to swap their SECC motherboard mounts for my SECC2 mounts? I'll throw in a random P3 CPU to keep the mounts "square" when posting!
 
almoststew1990 said:
Did you get that case from that online shop that i've forgotten the name of who does a range of new beige cases for bulk order? What is the quality like? What mounting holes does it come with?
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This is an "Acme" desktop case. They also sell a case similar to the Chieftec Dragon. Quality is awesome in my opinion. Solid build, space for a 92mm fan in the front. It has all the mounts for standard ATX standoffs.

This is inside


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I'm doomed with this retro stuff.

As posted previously, over enthusiasm to relive my youth led me to purchase two old Dells - both impulse buys within days of one another. :o

A few days back my D4100 inexplicably died. Anyway, I have now decided to resurrect my previous impulse purchase, a Dell D266. I know it works (the last time I tested) but testing was cut short when I received the 4100 - the extra power meant the lure was too great so I mothballed the D266. I reckon Karma played a part. :eek:

Anyway, a couple of weeks back I collected a CRT - Mitsubishi Diamondtron 73 (17"). I gave it a clean and the image looks great, the only issue - it needed a wipe to rid the screen of fingerprints. I wiped with a microfibre and some of the anti-glare coating came away. :mad:

I googled some old posts and apparently metal polish will remove the rest of the anti-glare coating...

Either this is going to end horribly and make the monitor unusable - surely can't make it any worse than it is. Sadly leaving as is, just not an option.

I'll post the results and user experience...
 
Ninco! said:
I'm doomed with this retro stuff.

As posted previously, over enthusiasm to relive my youth led me to purchase two old Dells - both impulse buys within days of one another. :o

A few days back my D4100 inexplicably died. Anyway, I have now decided to resurrect my previous impulse purchase, a Dell D266. I know it works (the last time I tested) but testing was cut short when I received the 4100 - the extra power meant the lure was too great so I mothballed the D266. I reckon Karma played a part. :eek:

Anyway, a couple of weeks back I collected a CRT - Mitsubishi Diamondtron 73 (17"). I gave it a clean and the image looks great, the only issue - it needed a wipe to rid the screen of fingerprints. I wiped with a microfibre and some of the anti-glare coating came away. :mad:

I googled some old posts and apparently metal polish will remove the rest of the anti-glare coating...

Either this is going to end horribly and make the monitor unusable - surely can't make it any worse than it is. Sadly leaving as is, just not an option.

I'll post the results and user experience...
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This should make you feel a bit better mate, exactly the same thing happened to me a few weeks ago! I have a Viglen 17" Trinitron and it needed a clean, i cleaned it with some water on a samsung screen cleaning cloth and the coating came off. I managed to get it to a point where its not too noticeable when the screen is on, but i know its there and its doing my head in. I'm really interested to see your results if you do clean it with the metal polish.
 
Thanks Cee, I thought I was going mad - I only wiped with a microfibre. :p

I cleaned my Diamondtron this afternoon. I recently purchased a tube of Autosol Metal Polish (75ml) about £4 to clean exhaust tips - when I stumbled across an old thread in another forum, it seemed to fit the bill perfectly. I would not use Brasso, runs like crazy and smells a bit! Unfortunately I could not take photo's today as my camera is on loan and to be honest, my ancient iPhone would not pick up the result.

It took about 40 mins in all. At first I applied a small pea amount to a dry microfibre cloth and rubbed - I could see the polish working straight away (the cloth shows). I wont deny that whilst I knew it was working; I thought it was going to ages! I didn't need to apply much pressure and as I knew it was working (with no obvious signs of it going horribly wrong) opted to apply small blobs direct to the surface of the screen and then polish. I was careful with the edges as to not get polish under the bezel.

Eventually I found that applying small amounts but enough to cover the screen when rubbed was the best method. I left it to stand for a couple of minutes before buffing. The remaining areas as well as near the bezel (and corners) both came away surprising easily. I thought I would have a clear central portion of the screen and the corners botched. I opted to wipe the screen with Isopropyl Alcohol to get rid of any swirls and a dry paintbrush to ensure no polish was stuck in the corners or under the bezel.

I tested the screen shortly afterwards and to be honest, I was expecting it to be way too bright. I tested with a white desktop wallpaper and found no grazes, inconsistencies or blemishes. It is brighter and if you lined up a couple of monitors - you would notice, however I would not find it unusable by any stretch, I turned down the brightness and it was fine. With reference to reflections, if you are used to an iPad, for example, again, unless sitting in a bright room, even today when the sun was shining (albeit I was not sitting in direct sunlight) I found it perfectly usable.

My main criticism is with the monitor itself, whilst colours and minimal distortion pretty good - text within Windows is blurry. I would not want to play many games with huge amounts of small text or spend a lot of time in Windows (but this is the monitor itself) however for Dos gaming absolutely fine. Doom, Blood and Unreal all looked good and ran really well. I could not see any issues with reflections or brightness.

If this had not worked, the screen would be on the way to the tip, so worth a shot. :)
 
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I did a similar thing with a Gumtree pick up. I got a Sony trition or whatever they are with a Socket 7 PC and I used an alcohol spray and microfibre cloth on it to just clean general muck off it. It turns out that half of the "general muck" was peeling coating. I didn't know this was a thing until afterwards. Now it's significantly worse as it didn't agree with the alcohol! I'll try to get it all off somehow but I don't really like CRTs anyway, I end up putting my normal 1280*1024 dell LCD back on my desk after a week of CRT use.
 
4Qman said:
Amiga 500 was the earliest I played, any memories of that system?

Since I have gained an interest in this era it really does open your eyes to the progression in technology.

My fondest memories is Z (bitmap brothers), quake, doom, dungeon keeper.
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Cant beat a bit of speedball 2 by Bitmap
 
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