What retro things have you done today?

Ninco! said:
Great looking machine!

My Dell XPS L502 has recently retired from service (used it for work and its been faultless) other than the battery is knackered. The battery was pretty rubbish from day one and lasted for about 2 hours!

I'll try and find a battery replacement. Other than that, the screen and chassis is in excellent condition. I am going to give it a good service and install XP or revert back to Windows 7 for retro gaming!

Just out of interest, why have you reverted to XP over Windows 98?
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I had a game on the Inspiron 8100 yesterday. Battery lasted 38 minutes of Unreal Tournament, 16 player TDM. FPS was usually around 50. Pretty great for a machine from 2001
Proper retro gaming from mid 90s I expect would last and hour or maybe an hour and half as UT really hammers the CPU on 16 player and I guess GPU too

Yamaha S-YXG100plus SoftSynth works great with certain games. Big Race USA (pro pinball) the ESS audio was garbage. Using the Yamaha SoftSynth made it go from unplayable to 100% playable and sounded great.
Other games it made the audio worse due to lag.
 
Found this card on FB marketplace and got it delivered yesterday for 8£ in total. I know it's an Adlib, but don't know anything else about it, I just hope it's a PNP, but I doubt it. I guess I will have to test it under MS-DOS considering it's age, I hope I'll be able to do this, I'm not too familiar with MS-DOS. :D
 
manisses said:
Found this card on FB marketplace and got it delivered yesterday for 8£ in total. I know it's an Adlib, but don't know anything else about it, I just hope it's a PNP, but I doubt it. I guess I will have to test it under MS-DOS considering it's age, I hope I'll be able to do this, I'm not too familiar with MS-DOS. :D
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Well you just made yourself a nice payday if you decide to sell it ;)
It is just plug and play with the adlib cards.
 
manisses said:
Found this card on FB marketplace and got it delivered yesterday for 8£ in total. I know it's an Adlib, but don't know anything else about it, I just hope it's a PNP, but I doubt it. I guess I will have to test it under MS-DOS considering it's age, I hope I'll be able to do this, I'm not too familiar with MS-DOS. :D
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Yeah Original Adlib right there. £8 is bargain of the century. I got one a few years back in a bundle of card for £40. They are a collectors piece more than anything but worth a few hundred quid! Nice score mate!

Here's mine
RHQ2hFzl.jpg
 
LewisRaz said:
Yes but its not like a normal soundcard that you may know. Its literally just opl2 so can only be used for midi.
Also the fact someone has marked over what would be the opl2 chip is suspicious. Perhaps its a clone
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Its not a clone - Adlib used to scratch the chips in the hopes of no one reverse engineering the card :cry: Didn't work out too well hahaha

Here's an image off google of an early Orignal version card

product-100308.jpg
 
cee-S-dee said:
Yeah Original Adlib right there. £8 is bargain of the century. I got one a few years back in a bundle of card for £40. They are a collectors piece more than anything but worth a few hundred quid! Nice score mate!

Here's mine
RHQ2hFzl.jpg
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I knew AdLib cards are rare, but not that rare :D I need to test it when I get back to the UK, I hope it works.
Thanks for the info!!
 
Maybe someone is close and interested in buying it. It's a nice Tiny system
www.ebay.co.uk

VINTAGE TINY PC COMPUTER TOWER,KEYBOARD,SCANNER,PENTIUM 3 PROCESSOR WINDOWS 98SE | eBay

WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET, THE HARD DRIVE HAS BEEN CAREFULLY REMOVED BUT THE REST IS ALL THERE. BULGING AND LEAKING SO THESE OR THE MOTHERBOARD WILL NEED REPLACING. IMPORTANT NOTE. ON RECENT INSPECTION I NOTICED THAT ELECTROLYTIC CAPACITORS ON THE MOTHERBOARD WERE.
www.ebay.co.uk
 
Is anyone near Sheffield? This unit has a GF 2 Ultra reference model in working condition. If the price doesn't go any higher, it's a very good deal.
www.ebay.co.uk

Vintage Windows 98 SE Computer AMD Duron, 765MB RAM, GeForce 2 Ultra, 120GB HDD | eBay

AMD Duron 900MHz Processor. 120GB Hard Drive. Nvidia GeForce 2 Ultra Graphics Card. No monitor, keyboard, mouse or leads included, just the PC Tower. Windows 98 Second Edition OS. Liteon CD/RW Drive.
www.ebay.co.uk
 
Im stripping a PC down that i wanted for the case. it was tested by the seller and booted to BIOS. i havnt tested it. if anyones interested the CPU, Motherboard and RAM will be in members market shortly for £15. there is an SFX PSU as well which i can throw in.

U5gTzxJ.jpg
 
I've been considering a retro desktop again and a good ISA soundcard like an AWE32 or AWE64 gold.
DOSBox however has come a long way and OPL3 specifically is fantastic in DOSBox now. It's not as retro but damn, its way more convenient and space saving!

Edit, ive decided not to.
Here's some info on using soundfonts to emulate (and very well) AWE32, AWE64 Gold, Roland SCP-55, GUS and many others including huge 300MB+ soundfonts.
Yes, they wont be like perfect hardware but soundfonts like 'SC55EmperorGrieferus' sound way better than real hardware Soundcards which cost hundreds.
------------

Taken from a post on GOG forums...

1) Download de original AWE32 soundfont file here:


2) Download VirtualMIDISynth here:

CoolSoft | Where software is cool

coolsoft.altervista.org coolsoft.altervista.org

and install it.

3) Decompress aweromgm.rar, inside is AweROMGM.sf2

4) Configure VirtualMIDISynth,
in Soundfonts/Soundfont chains add and select de file AweROMGM.sf2
in OPTIONS/Output audio device select your soundcard
click OK.

Run the setup of doom2 in DOSBOX and go choose Music Sound Card and select General Midi. save and launch doom2.

This work for me, the original AWE32 sound of Doom2 music.


Some soundfont collections linked in this Youtube video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40kZfIH1y9A

edit. I find that the 'SC55EmperorGrieferus.sf2' sounds best to my ears. Fantastic for Blood and Duke 3D
 
Today I watched this fantastic tutorial installing DOSBox Pure core in Retroarch.
Windows 98 SE installed, drivers installed and played a bit of Quake 2 on 3dfx
Need for Speed 2 SE doesnt work properly, there's a bug where it sometimes crashes... so just like authentic Windows 98 :p

 
chockimon said:
I'm currently putting together a collection of the best DOS games from the eXoDOS collection and I'm using the excellent DBGL as the frontend. I've been at it for 8 months and I'm only halfway through. :rolleyes: Looking forward to playing some of these great games using 3dfx and MT-32 Roland emulation etc. ;)

MUNT -Roland MT-32, CM-32L, CM-64 and LAPC-I.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/munt/
DOSBox Game Launcher
https://dbgl.org/
DOSBOX CRT
https://mattiasgustavsson.itch.io/dosbox-crt
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Is there (good) 3dfx emulation now? I've heard of MUNT, how does it differ to say using Coolsoft VirtualMIDISynth and SC55 soundfont (or any soundfont like AWE32, GUS etc.)

For frontend im using LaunchBox. DOSBOX CRT looks cool, will try that :)

Still tempted to pick up a Win98 machine and something like an AWE64 gold... I havent as yet. The emulation options for MIDI are fantastic so might just be a waste of money to play games like Duke Nukem 3D
 
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Guest2 said:
Is there (good) 3dfx emulation now? I've heard of MUNT, how does it differ to say using Coolsoft VirtualMIDISynth and SC55 soundfont (or any soundfont like AWE32, GUS etc.)

For frontend im using LaunchBox. DOSBOX CRT looks cool, will try that :)

Still tempted to pick up a Win98 machine and something like an AWE64 gold... I havent as yet. The emulation options for MIDI are fantastic so might just be a waste of money to play games like Duke Nukem 3D
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Munt is a MT-32 emulator. MUNT emulates the MT-32 hardware utilising the original roms from an original MT-32 unit. Its not GM and is more suited to older games (Luscasarts and Sierra were big on MT-32 sound). For Duke 3D your better off sticking with a GM Soundfont.
I wouldn't class a soundfont as emulation. Its more of an approximation of what an original device sounds like.

Roland do have a Sound Canvas emulator (Sound Canvas VA) which is a VSTI plugin which I've read sounds very close to the SC Family. I'm sure its possible to get it work with DOSBOX

 
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