What retro things have you done today?

kar · 11 Dec 2020 at 17:29

Today/Yesterday evening's activities!

A little upgrade for the QDI Titanium IB+ P233 MMX, a AMD K6-2 533AFX. I'm going to hunt down *one* of the 50 odd K6-III+ 533s that just got snaffled on ebay for £3500....

My Gateway 2000 DX2V66 project continues, one OEM 1mb ATI Mach32 Graphics Ultra Pro becomes 2mb and fully unleased.

Before

After

iamwilf · 12 Dec 2020 at 15:49

BoozerDawg said:
Got an Amiga 500 (what we had over 2 decades ago), its glorious, and the few games I have all work perfectly. Need to get MORE.

Best. Computers. Ever.
I'm thinking of getting an FPGA Amiga, but it's not the same without a CRT monitor and further down the rabbit hole I go

LewisRaz · 13 Dec 2020 at 20:37

Accidentally Won a Yamaha SW60XG for half the price of one that I was trying to win a few months back. Comes with driver floppy and CD too!
Not sure what to pair it with now..

I still want to keep my adlib clone because... Well I made it and I think thats cool..
So I will add the SW60XG for GM and then probably awe32 or 64 for the sounds.

Any recommendations for how to order the outputs?
I am thinking adlib -> sw60xg -> AWE?

ebay pics:

cee-S-dee · 13 Dec 2020 at 20:56

Congrats mate! Finally got one then! Is your awe32 one of the ones that has Gen OPL3 on? If it is, I would just use the awe and the sw60. The adlib is kinda redundant if the awe has opl3. Another option is to use the Yamaha OPL4 card you have and combine that with the awe64. SB Pro, SB16 and OPL3.

Speaking of Yamaha, I picked up the module version for a really nice price. You won't be disappointed in the sound. Descent is especially awesome on the Yamaha Synths.

I got the MU10. It can even operate off of batteries! Got it for £30 delivered.

LewisRaz · 13 Dec 2020 at 21:34

Thats a good price for that! Your sounds collection is getting quite big!

The awe32 has a ct1747 onboard so yes the adlib is really quite pointless it is just one of those "because I want to" things

I will pair it with that and see if I can make my £ back by selling the opl4 card.

LewisRaz · 15 Dec 2020 at 12:41

Nice delivery this morning. Although they have not aged well the original "Sims" games hold very good memories for me. I am attempting to get all variants of the sims 1 boxes and addons. (Not exactly hard or expensive really but..)

Managed to get a sealed big box for £9! Now I have to refrain from attempting to replace my collection with sealed games...

kar · 15 Dec 2020 at 12:52

That Yamaha board looks nice - there was one on the bay couple days ago that went circa £30 which doesn't seem too bad. Would be cool to hear the different midi music in Doom on the various wave cards.

Today have been prepping the GA-5AX for action. Have been running the k6-2+ at 450mhz on the QDI Titanium board, but it's really an awkward fit with insufficient multiplier / bus confg support. The GA-5AX is an apex super socket 7 board, though my 4.1A revision is missing some of the goodies of the 5.x revisions it'll marry well with the Voodoo 3 Cybermav sent

Voodoo 3

cee-S-dee · 15 Dec 2020 at 13:05

I used to own that board along with the AT version too (GA-5AA). I also used to own a Asus P5A and still own a P5A-B (AT Version). My current SS7 board is a Iwill XA100 Plus and i actually think its the best SS7 board I have seen. I have the 1.3version so is compatible with III+ CPUs. I run my K6-III+ 450 on it, but its really cool trick is the ability to change the FSB in the bios (Like Abit's SoftFSB). Combined with Setmul you can really play around with the speeds. I run mine with a V3 3000 too and its a really nice machine!

cee-S-dee · 15 Dec 2020 at 13:09

@LewisRaz Did you install you SW60XG yet? You managed to try any games with it?

LewisRaz · 15 Dec 2020 at 13:40

@kar £38

@cee-S-dee the seller sent me a message after the auction saying they were shocked how much it sold for and would post it first class today instead of second class. Not sure what that actually means for me getting my hands on it as today was the first time the postie has turned up since last weds...

Once I have it I might throw a little video up of how some games sound with it. Although @cee-S-dee already has this card so probably knows it well

I like your ss7 board. Will be nice with that voodoo. What games are you planning to play in it?

Ninco! · 15 Dec 2020 at 22:09

Every time I get my retro gaming running awesome, some gremlin decides to intervene, sooo, I go all in and balls it up! Retro gaming doesn't half test patience.

My modern 'retro' XP PC was running perfect, sound, graphics and everything running peachy.

The other day started seeing some gripe about my main drive (SSD) throwing 'delayed write failed' (d:\$Mft). To top it off, I changed to a monitor of an unsupported type and whilst it was working, I wanted more power (resolutions were capped so installed a driver which is too new). Sigh. Thrown a wobbler. Now no booting/black screen. A new drive and reinstallation looming.

LewisRaz · 16 Dec 2020 at 22:27

Removed my P3 system and fit my 166mmx system into the bottom case (Was in the top one). That case feels a bit old to have a later 90s pentium setup in it. Will put the case up for sale soon those ones fetch really good prices on ebay!

Quite a bit more room in the newer case although I need to find an ATX-AT blanking plate for the rear.

All ready for the midi board to hopefully arrive tomorrow. (Should have been today)

randal · 16 Dec 2020 at 22:45

Any retro fans got any Sun Microsystems Disk caddies knocking about? I threw a wanted thread up https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/threads/wtd-sun-microsystems-disk-caddies.18912278/

Doing an ESXi Ryzen build in an Ultra 24.

iamwilf · 17 Dec 2020 at 12:59

Biggest mistake I made was binning dozens of boxed PC/Amiga games + Amiga 1200 when I moved house years back!

LewisRaz · 17 Dec 2020 at 14:52

Midi card arrived today. It was posted in an interesting box too...

Seems to be sort of working? It plays the midi tracks but has no percussion.

cee-S-dee · 17 Dec 2020 at 16:15

Nice, did you test it with Passport.mid? Mine does that too. I think you need to set it into GM mode. Try it in a game. It will work :-)

LewisRaz · 17 Dec 2020 at 16:23

Even in games it was the same. Only playing piano voices for everything. I seem to have to open that effects program and change the effects while a midi is playing and then it works great. Was actually surprised at how good it is even tho I had heard some clips of it on YouTube.

although I have only played passportmid and transport tycoon so far!

LewisRaz · 17 Dec 2020 at 17:50

I spoke too soon! I have no idea whats going on >.<

LewisRaz · 18 Dec 2020 at 13:10

cee-S-dee said:
Nice, did you test it with Passport.mid? Mine does that too. I think you need to set it into GM mode. Try it in a game. It will work

You were actually completely right!

If you go straight into games its fine. If you open passport.mid (or any standard midis) first then the problems arise..

However I got a hold of a midi file which just contains a GM reset instruction which sets it back to working if it does mess up.

A helpful person on vogons has also given me advice on how to modifiy my 200mmx to work so I will be trying that shortly!

LewisRaz · 28 Dec 2020 at 19:44

Started pulling off components on a broken 386 board that I have to see if there is hidden away damage. I was going to chuck it but on my last few attempts I did get the post card to show some numbers instead of ---- (0066 and 0099)
Going to take me a while to get the sockets off I think but I will keep nibbling away at it. It is a little confusing as I can now see all of where the battery leakage was and nothing appears to be broken. I have checked with multimeter all the traces I can follow.