What retro things have you done today?

almoststew1990 said:
I'm thinking of bidding up to say £30 or so as I kind of want a fastish Coppermine supporting ISA board for Windows 98/DOS but might not bother (especially if your bid is already more than that!)
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Go for it mate I only went £1 a time until I was winning ;)

I am done really for this era once the socket 7 is running.
I will have 133 or 100mhz pentium with S3 virge and 16mb running win95.
200mhz pentium pentium 2 laptop with 2mb chips and tech gpu and 32mb ram, running win98se
1ghz pentium 3 with geforce 6200 and 512mb ram running win98se.

I intend to put up a high XP build too at some point probably built around socket 775, but that can wait.
 
My main machines are my P233 and My Tually 1.4-S which I think cover a good spectrum of the 98/DOS games I like to play.

I find myself trying different combos of sound cards more than anything else!
 
I have absolutely no idea when it comes to soundcards. Ive got 2 socket A systems that have some form of soundblaster in them that I plan to steal for the windows 95 machine. Hopefully they will be compatible enough for my dos games. I have been enjoying watching some of LGR and RMC videos on early 90s soundcards tho but much of it is out of my pricerange (Unless I manage to grab another car boot bargain!)
 
Nice one mate!

Had a look at 1 of my soundcards and it is a soundblaster live CT4830. Any good for win95/dos?

I see you have the same switch as me from an AT-ATX psu adapter? do you have any plans to try and make a proper mount for it?
 
Soundblaster Lives are OK for older DOS games, or very powerful CPUs due to the way they emulate FM synthesis. More modern DOS games or on a late 90s CPU and they'll play OPL3 quite slowly, but OPL2 a bit better. They do soundblaster sound (effects) fine.

They do quite a nice General Midi music, which I defaulted to for Doom, Duke 3D.

I made a video comparing a bunch of card one rainy weekend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL-qTfdOya4&t=725s

Windows sound is quite good with solid EAX support (which is the cards USP). Drivers can be a bit of a faff. Phil's Computer Lab has a good guide on it and good DOS drivers, which is what I use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-HiLp5p820&t=1619s

I've been thinking about drilling through somewhere, or making something for the 5.25" bay but I do most of my DOS gaming on proper ATX stuff so I rarely need the AT style switch.
 
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Ok....so today I have transplanted the PSU into the Simply box, success! system now running beautifully :)

Biggest downside so far is the GPU, its a 2MB S3 Virge by the looks of things that isn't up to do much at all. The system had NFS3 installed on it, tried to run that and its like a powerpoint lol

Been looking at Matrox PCI cards as you can pick up a G450/G550 for under £20, what is the deal with Matrox cards as I have never owned one? I know that they are VERY good at 2D desktop stuff but can they still throw pixels around in 3D? I am not expected the world as its for a 166 Pentium, but sure a 32MB G-Series card will still be a monster jump and give me OpenGL functionality right?

Ta

Ben

P.S - Line of the day, from my dad who was over for a bit "Dad, check out this system, its really old!!" him - "oh what's it running Windows 8 or something"
 
Ok so think I am sorted now, picked up a cheap RIVA128 4MB card on ebay, found it by doing some obscure search I cant even remember lol......didnt show up even when you searched RIVA128

I dont need monster power so that should fit the bill nicely.

A search through my garage stash also gave up a SoundBlaster PCI Audigy2 SE card which was nice, so might try that too if there is driver support
 
phatboy said:
Ok....so today I have transplanted the PSU into the Simply box, success! system now running beautifully :)

Biggest downside so far is the GPU, its a 2MB S3 Virge by the looks of things that isn't up to do much at all. The system had NFS3 installed on it, tried to run that and its like a powerpoint lol

Been looking at Matrox PCI cards as you can pick up a G450/G550 for under £20, what is the deal with Matrox cards as I have never owned one? I know that they are VERY good at 2D desktop stuff but can they still throw pixels around in 3D? I am not expected the world as its for a 166 Pentium, but sure a 32MB G-Series card will still be a monster jump and give me OpenGL functionality right?

Ta

Ben

P.S - Line of the day, from my dad who was over for a bit "Dad, check out this system, its really old!!" him - "oh what's it running Windows 8 or something"
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Matrox were actually really good for a time. Thats what I upgraded my S3 virge to "back in the day" :)
 
LewisRaz said:
Matrox were actually really good for a time. Thats what I upgraded my S3 virge to "back in the day" :)
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The Matrox Millenium was a monster of a 2d card back in the day. Wasn't cheap at all though but damn it could pump the frames out with remarkable quality. Still damn good now.
 
My Slocket system arrived. Complete with mystery graphics card that I thought was a Geforce 2 MX but is actually a 32mb(!) TNT2 M64 which is slightly more interesting. I'll probably be putting my surprisingly fast 128bit mx440 in there to begin with.

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I'm regretting this purchase a bit less now as I found a 1GHz CPU in my collection that might work so I can turn this into a bit of a project. The board supports a 1.7v 800MHz CPU, which I think will be a coppermine because Katmai CPUs didn't go up to 800MHz. It was listed as 133MHz FSB (and the jumpers are set for that on the board) so... in theory... I can't see why my 1.7v 1GHz 133FSB coppermine CPU wouldn't work! This could be quite a fast Windows 98 PC. I can also mount my chonky-ass cooler I've been holding onto. My Soundblaster Live has also been found. I might go fully committed and track down a slightly faster GPU. GeForce 3 or 4ti or something and have my quickest W98 PC yet.

fZAcda6h.jpg
 
Oh lovely little lot there, TNT2 is a nice suprise. I just spent money buying a RIVA 128 or i would have offered to have it off ya lol....annoyingly couldnt find a well priced TNT2 anywhere :(

I made a nice little pick up yesterday from a local FB seller. nice selection of games in there, especially Diablo and 3.5" Syndicate :D. Whole lot was £15
https://drive.google.com/open?id=18NmVFT1jFHomzno6dua2s4WmtixMoA07

Also have another 32mb EDO in the post + a Pentium 233mhz MMX to max out my board
 
That's a nice little find and it's things like that which make me regret getting rid of Facebook!

I had those exact Tiny speakers with our Tiny PC we got in 1998/9! They match the PC I picked up new in box last year that I made a thread about. Those speakers actually sound alright and they're still in active service at my Grandparents house haha.
 
almoststew1990 said:
That's a nice little find and it's things like that which make me regret getting rid of Facebook!

I had those exact Tiny speakers with our Tiny PC we got in 1998/9! They match the PC I picked up new in box last year that I made a thread about. Those speakers actually sound alright and they're still in active service at my Grandparents house haha.
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Wow! Just tried out these speakers!

Seriously impressed. Felt a good test was the pinball fantasies intro :D

Also popped my head in a charity shop on the way home and got Halo for the PC for a quid which was nice. Tempted to go back and get shogun total war tomorrow too
 
phatboy said:
Wow! Just tried out these speakers!

Seriously impressed. Felt a good test was the pinball fantasies intro :D

Also popped my head in a charity shop on the way home and got Halo for the PC for a quid which was nice. Tempted to go back and get shogun total war tomorrow too
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Nice find on those speakers, that keyboard brings about some nostalgia too!
Halo PC is on my wishlist. One of my favourite FPS of all time.

My socket 7 eBay purchase arrived today. Package securely left right out the front of my house:



About 30minutes later the heavens opened so it was a good job I got home at that time!!

Anyway had a chance to test it and its all working well! :) Even tried the old EDO ram in it and I have 4x8mb sticks of that which appear to work fine! I will try the pentium 100 in it too soon so I can see if it works and finally write off the other motherboard.



Not really sure to stick with the EDO ram or use the SDRAM slots instead. The ram that was included is a single 128mb stick which feels wrong for a win95 build.

Also picking up his lot for £8 on the weekend. Absolutely buzzing for the red alert pack as thats the exact pack I had as a child!

 
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