What retro things have you done today?

Duke

Duke

Duke

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Joined
29 Jun 2003
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As mentioned here, it seemed a good idea to have a 'What have you done today' thread for all things retro related.

So what have you been up to or got planned?

I will kick off by saying I'll be playing this when it comes out :D https://www.romerogames.ie/sigil/

SIGIL™ is a free megawad created by John Romero for the original 1993 DOOM®. It contains nine single-player and nine deathmatch levels. The free megawad will be released in mid- February 2019 and requires players own the original 1993 registered version of DOOM® in order to play. SIGIL™ is the spiritual successor to the fourth episode of DOOM®, and picks up where the original left off.
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I got it out of the loft a couple of weeks ago and not had the courage to fire it up until...... now. Well part 1 anyway

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Got to remember how to use it, and how to make the image fill the screen better.

Then it'll be time to connect this up

HeathRobinson HD setup, that larger drive is dated 1985. Between the 2 drives there's a whopping 60MB

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almoststew1990 said:
Jesus that is enormous! it has it's own powersupply and fans?
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I bought the official Atari 20MB drive but after playing with PCs at work I wondered if the thing would support a 2nd drive. I took the lid off and the controller board did but the Atari PSU didn't so I rigged it up with an old PC PSU. Adding the 2nd drive (full height) meant nothing was fitting back in the case.

The drive was a 'bargain'. RRP was £739.00+VAT but as I was a registered Atari developer I got 20% off and then a further 5% off for paying cash. So a bargain @ £645.88 inc.
 
Last night I sat and watched a couple of Phil's excellent videos, this time on 1600x1200 resolution for retro gaming goodness; it prompted me this morning to retrieve my Dell Ultrasharp U2412M 24" from storage.

Fiddled with my drivers and switched off scaling, the picture now looks fantastic with no stretching and correct aspect 4:3 ratio. Quake 3 looks very good indeed, very sharp image. I thought I would hate the borders; actually its does not bother me, especially if the image is as good as it in Quake so a worthwhile trade off.

Now reading up on Falco SoundFont Midi Player since I have been dipping my toe into the world of Midi. I am currently using Coolsoft VirtualMIDISynth where some games (Betrayal at Krondor) when using Timbres of Heaven soundfont, really brings the game to life.
 
OpenRA is great....
OpenTTD is a game I that will be installed on every pc that I own.
Im planning to pop into CEX as I think they have the last few sims1 addons I need for 50p each. Cant argue with that.
 
I've been thinking about getting my BBC Micro Model B out of the attic, its still in its original box it was an ebay purchase back in 2015 it worked for a little while until the power supply sizzled so I replaced the the burnt caps in the power supply then a week later the 6522 chip dies so I may have a look on ebay for a 6522 chip and get it running again. I have two of these old Micros the other one I have is kitted out with USB and an SD card loaded with games and software. The monitor died on it just before Christmas so I be keeping an eye out for a cheap LCD TV to use on it.

Coming to think about it Retro Clinic probably has some 6522 chips.
 
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Purchased a USB adapter for a old school CH Flightstick Pro (gameport) version to replace one I owned back in the day. The adapter works surprisingly well; albeit a bit monolithic and the Aqua colour looks a bit out of place! I need to hide it!

Downloaded Kingpin: Life of Crime (from GOG) first thing which struck me is the colours were way off using default installation - this game was dark and suddenly it looks like a football stadium?

The v4 patch sorts the GOG version out. It must be 18 years since I last played Kingpin, the bad language(!) and I am getting owned on Novice - I have completely forgotten how to play this game. :D
 
Last year I picked up a IBM Thinkcentre M81 (i5-2400 @ 3.10) tonight has been the first time I have set it up. My HP Thin Client (T610) has been scratching the retro itch, a great little box for retro gaming! I am hoping the IBM will have a little more grunt as the T610 whilst not exactly struggled, it would be great to increase the frame rates on some games a notch.

Firstly I do like these Thinkcentre's and the monolithic look! :)

Installed Windows XP Pro SP3 tonight and now installing drivers. Thinkcentre fitted with a ASUS Xonar DG PCI 5.1 Audio Card and Nvidia Geforce GT730. I am intrigued by the Xonar as never listened to - I might end up reverting to my external SB Xi-Fi as this worked brilliantly with XP and the thin client. It will be interesting to compare.

Planning to upgrade the PSU at some stage and dependent on performance with the 730, might look to upgrade the card down the road. Not looking to run current games, or later XP, might try GTA Vice City and Operation Flashpoint, other than these taxing games - this is the limit.
 
Today I pulled together a Glide build from spare parts. I haven't used glide in a looong time. It's in my backup modern case so it had 1 5.25" bay and that's it, but thanks to the CF card, it doesn't need any 3.5" bays. The power supply's molex cable is dodgy so I've the CF card has that cable to itself and then I got a SATA --> Molex converter for the DVD drive. I can't use the top PCI slot because the screwhole on the case for that top PCI slot is completely smooth and won't hold after all the GPU changes that it's seen :D

VIA C3 800MHz soldered CPU with a chipset heatsink on it instead of miniscule heatsink plus whinny 40mm 4,000RPM fan. I'm going to get a 120mm fan to stick up top blowing directly onto the heatsink.
128MB SDR RAM
Voodoo 3 2000 PCI
Soundblaster Live! SB0100.

I'm tempted to put a 120m fan in the front too to blow air onto the graphics card, but there aren't any headers on the motherboard (beyond the CPU fan, which the top 120mm will have). That means I'll need a molex to fan adapter. And with the dodgy molexs that means I'll need a SATA to Molex, Molex to Fan string of adapters... eeehhhh :(

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