What retro things have you done today?

Over the last few days I've been playing through the whole of Goldeneye on the N64 again.

I have tried Mario 64 but I don't think I have the time/patience for it! I loved it at the time , I think I managed 118 stars then.
 
I put my ITX VIA PC back together and it's suddenly much more bearable now I have found some chipset drivers that actually work on Windows 98. With that installed and some decent graphics drivers, quite a few early DX6/7 games are pretty playable on it. The SB Live is on sound duties and I've come to appreciate that it has OK FM-synth for 80s and very early 90s (i.e. adlib) games but General Midi takes over for the likes of Doom and onwards where the FM synth emulation really struggles (even when in adlib mode). It's actually quite a neat PC now.

I can get speed sensitive games like Wipeout 2097 to work which are far too fast on a Pentium 2 even thanks to Setmul and it also gets the speed sensitive DOS games working too. I've had no issue with Monkey Island that sounds pretty good on this card (at least it plays at 100% speed)
 
Finally got around to letting both my DX4 systems battle it out over some of the benches on phils pack.
As expected the PCI system edged out the VLB but not expected to me was the ram speed being double on the PCI board?



Looks like I will be saying goodbye to this one(on top - Its not THAT dirty, low light made it look bad.):



And Keeping this one:



I am torn about swapping the cases over. The one with 3 digit display is in worse condition... But it has 3 digit display!
 
I think I prefer the BAC case, although the rounded CD drives that you've got in the other case might light odd in the very BAC case!

I finally installed some lights behind retro desk so I don't have to have the main room light on or nothing at all when gaming. I didn't realise I got the RGB version though!

The big screen is in the place of the usual 5:4 screen as I wanted to set up my steering wheel for some racing games.

ghfvcqLh.jpg
 
Anyone know any tricks to recover a bad bios flash? :(

Did everything right - dug out a floppy drive and created a "blind flash" boot disk that I used to flash the latest bios - All OK.

Rebooted and was fine, so proceeded to then flash the modded bios. All flashed ok but upon reboot I can see the VGA bios of the Geforce, but then nothing.

No activity on the Floppy Drive either, so doesn't look like it can be rescued with a blind flash :(

Have tried clearing CMOS, everything other than Floppy drive and graphics card disconnected (even tried both a PCI and ISA graphics card)
 
Armageus said:
Anyone know any tricks to recover a bad bios flash? :(

Did everything right - dug out a floppy drive and created a "blind flash" boot disk that I used to flash the latest bios - All OK.

Rebooted and was fine, so proceeded to then flash the modded bios. All flashed ok but upon reboot I can see the VGA bios of the Geforce, but then nothing.

No activity on the Floppy Drive either, so doesn't look like it can be rescued with a blind flash :(

Have tried clearing CMOS, everything other than Floppy drive and graphics card disconnected (even tried both a PCI and ISA graphics card)
Click to expand...

Is it removable? Can you hot flash it in another board?
 
LewisRaz said:
Is it removable? Can you hot flash it in another board?
Click to expand...

Nah it's a square soldered PLCC :(

Only other thing I've seen mention of is shorting 2 pins to try and corrupt the bios checksum, but not sure which pins


EDIT:
Panic over maybe :)

Using this method

Using datasheet here:
https://www.digchip.com/datasheets/parts/datasheet/438/SST29EE020-pdf.php

After realising Pin 2 and 3 weren't the highest address lines, shorting Pin 30 and Pin 2 have worked and the floppy instantly kicked into life (even before the VGA bios), and looks to be blind flashing
 
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Missed the kickstarter back in 2018/2019 for the “Legend of 3Dfx” by Oscar Barea (the dude who modifies and repairs various Voodoo cards, such as his 128MB Voodoo 5500 cards). Finally managed to bag an unread English copy from Spain, so that’s now en route.
 
Swapped out the CRT today. The 17" Trinitron is going back into storage and i'll be using this 19" CTX Trinitron instead. Picture is awesome on it.

zxesBbwl.jpg
 
Not today, but last week. Went to Nawfuk for the first time in 7 months or so, visiting parental units.

Spent the evening at Retro Replay in the Castle Mall in Norwich. Ooooh heaven! Time Crisis and Point Blank... :D :D :D

While they were closed due to Covid, they got a butt load more games installed and have more coming. Well worth visiting in you're in Norwich. £10 gets you a day inside and all the machines are set to freeplay. Also have a selection of old consoles as well. Working Vectrex anyone?

https://www.retro-replay.games/
 
Got a Voodoo 1 for a slightly lower than normal BiN price. I intend to just mess around with some early 3dfx stuff. Probably wont hold onto it for long.


cee-S-dee said:
Swapped out the CRT today. The 17" Trinitron is going back into storage and i'll be using this 19" CTX Trinitron instead. Picture is awesome on it.
Click to expand...

CRT looking nice! Are you in a cupboard?!
 
I went into CEX today for the first time in months to offload some of the crap I've been buying. Got £18 of credit from offloading my uninteresting games and two old graphics cards that no one took any interest in on Gumtree (GTX560 and a 8600GT).

Bought more junky games with the credit!
 
Installed the sloket from @hohum and the 533 celery that arrived yesterday.
After a quick reinstall of Nvidia drivers that seem to corrupt themselves somehow all ok. Both midtown madness 2 and UT running a bit smoother.

Will still be giving a coppermine celeron a go when the other sloket arrives from @paradigm
 
My second 4890 arrived. The Warranty Void stickers on the screws hadn't been tampered with and it was literally drowning in dust! It looks just as reference as my other 4890 but weirdly it came apart in a completely different way. The fan design is also quite different.

They use 2x 6 pin connector and upon realising that a 6 pin is 75watts and a 8pin is 150 I feel less worried about my power supply. 400 watts on 2 GPUs leaves 250 for the CPU minus 20% hmm...

I've got a family BBQ later but hopefully tomorrow I'll be benchmarking some games to compare single and xfire 4890 performance! Crysis 2 and 3, Skyrim, GTA V, Bioshock infinite. Not really sure what other 2009 to 2013 games to try.
 
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