What retro things have you done today?

phatboy · 7 Mar 2024 at 17:22

so luckily the seller offered refund straight away and just apologised which was nice

.

also found 2x 150GB 2.5 velociraptor drives in my boxes, one of which is currently having XP installed on

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Son friends dad is into his PC's and retro so he appeared half hour ago with 2x DVD drives for the project too, so that was cool

lastly. have just found a forgotten SoundBlaster LIVE! card too so going to see if that works, fingers crossed

Retro6 · 7 Mar 2024 at 20:58

The TOCA Race driver 2 & Colin Mcrae Rally games wouldn't work on the WIN98 build they took ages to install but the games wouldn't load. They work on more modern machines tho. Both games are supported by Windows 98 and my build is well above the system requirements to run them but I guess thats the problem with PC gaming, you never know what games are going to run. Need for speed works well on this build,

phatboy · 8 Mar 2024 at 00:07

Retro6 said:
The TOCA Race driver 2 & Colin Mcrae Rally games wouldn't work on the WIN98 build they took ages to install but the games wouldn't load. They work on more modern machines tho. Both games are supported by Windows 98 and my build is well above the system requirements to run them but I guess thats the problem with PC gaming, you never know what games are going to run. Need for speed works well on this build,

Weird, I have McRae running on my P1 MMX '98 box in 3dfx mode fine. Ran D3D fine only trouble I had was getting voodoo enabled initially.

Games of that era are notoriously more picky. I have found psygnosis F1 '97 and Rollcage to just love intermittently not working for no reason

Retro6 · 8 Mar 2024 at 09:27

phatboy said:
Weird, I have McRae running on my P1 MMX '98 box in 3dfx mode fine. Ran D3D fine only trouble I had was getting voodoo enabled initially.

Games of that era are notoriously more picky. I have found psygnosis F1 '97 and Rollcage to just love intermittently not working for no reason

I guess its all about having the right combination of hardware like for example Need for speed games would look horrible with pixelated graphics on some machines but on other machines Need for speed displays normally and works regardless of specs. Some games give the "Illegal operation error" where as on other machines they work.

phatboy · 8 Mar 2024 at 09:58

Very true. Mine is the original need for speed SE. LOVE that game and one day it just decided it doesn't run anymore out of the blue

phatboy · 8 Mar 2024 at 10:02

So up early this morning so got the windows activation gumpf out the way for XP. Nice that MS still have a nice portal for it.

Found drivers for the X-fi and it works a treat which is brilliant. So windows is now fully up and running with drivers installed for near enough everything.

Currently it's a sea of cables and drives across my workbench so need to get it all built up correctly so it's an actual machine

Then it's benchmarks and stuff I guess to give it a proper run up

Retro6 · 8 Mar 2024 at 11:47

So I decided to have another go at the problematic DOS/WIN95 build that kept on giving C: failures and blue screens. I managed to find a fully working 20GB IDE hard drive among my parts which I forgot I had so I've put that in and re-installed everything and so far so good no issues yet.

I did however notice a dodgy looking electrolytic capacitor by the RAM slot but I'll pretend I didn't see it for now, its slightly bulged but not too bad. Fingers crossed.

!bluetonic! · 8 Mar 2024 at 14:21

I've had an update on my Amstrad 6128 monitor. It's not good news. Faulty scan coils. Apparently it was stored in a damp enough environment to trigger the rot.

As much as I'd like to save this, there is a budget.

My repair specialist is looking out for a donor monitor. We'll see what happens.

cee-S-dee · 8 Mar 2024 at 16:06

Just been in the loft and hoisted this down. I'm going to rebuild it and use it for a bit. Not messed with much Retro PC stuff for a bit.

Abit BX133 Raid Motherboard (Which I recapped)
Intel P3 Tualatin 1.4S
512mb Cas2 133 Ram
Leadtek GF4 ti4600 with a Zalman Cooler on it
KingDian 128 SSD
Unknown Size Hitachi Deskstar

From what I remember, this system was really fast under Win98.

Retro6 · 8 Mar 2024 at 16:45

It be nice to see it once its all done. 256MB RAM or 384MB RAM is best for Windows 98 at the MAX for 90s gaming. 512MB can present compatibility issues I find. If that IDE HDD is working I'd go with that rather than the SSD for long term.

cee-S-dee · 8 Mar 2024 at 21:00

Retro6 said:
It be nice to see it once its all done. 256MB RAM or 384MB RAM is best for Windows 98 at the MAX for 90s gaming. 512MB can present compatibility issues I find. If that IDE HDD is working I'd go with that rather than the SSD for long term.

I've never had any issues with 512mb Ram with Win98SE. Anything over 512mb can cause issues, but then you just apply rlowes ram patch which sorts it. I've had 2gb and a Xeon CPU in a Win98 system with his patch without issues. That system was stupidly fast!

I'm actually interested to try 2 60gb SSD's I have in raid with SATA/IDE adapters!

lcg · 8 Mar 2024 at 22:52

I installed Windows 2000 Server SP4 in a VM on Proxmox. It's going to be used as a domain controller and file server for my retro machines.

phatboy · 9 Mar 2024 at 00:17

Quick play around with settings earlier after work and the Athlon 3800x2 is up to 2.2GHz with hopefully more left in it in the decent zalman cooler in place. This was just using the auto OC settings in the BIOS, just choosing the 10% option.

I think my old Manchester years ago did 2.55GHz I want to say. Need to dig out my old 3dm results on their website

Going to stick with the 7900GS now as the GPU, feels like a good period suited card, the GS cards were known to clock very well and hit near 7900GTX / X1800xt speeds so going to give it a go!

If anyone spots a well priced xpertvision or palit card on eBay let me know. I paid £10 for this one and currently there is one for £35 or best offer and that's it......not paying that!

!bluetonic! · 9 Mar 2024 at 08:07

Good news everyone.

Television Tim has found a replacement coil and got the Amstrad monitor working again. And the eagle eyed will see that there's a compromise. The picture works, but it now doesn't run to the edge of the screen. He said the monitor is basic, so has no manual adjustment controls to fix this.

I would have had to butcher another Amstrad monitor to get like for like.

Thanks Television Tim. :cool:

And this morning, this video on YouTube was a nice nostalgic trip.

SoundBlaster & DOS Games : 1993 Nostalgia Part 1

In this video we're taking a trip down memory lane with our 1993 Compaq 486.We'll add a Soundblaster 16 soundcard and play some games !00:00:00 - Intro00:00:...

youtu.be

phatboy · 9 Mar 2024 at 17:04

Finally all in one piece, running like a champ in the garage lab.

Frustratingly I have found you are meant to have rails for the 5.25 drive bays which I didn't get any of

. Drive is haphazardly hanging in bay with screws stopping it falling.

Found someone has made an STP file on instructables for them so have asked a friend of they could print me 4....fingers crossed! (He is on it

)

lcg · 9 Mar 2024 at 17:45

phatboy said:
Finally all in one piece, running like a champ in the garage lab.

Frustratingly I have found you are mean to have rails for the 5.25 drive bays which I didn't get any of . Drive is haphazardly hanging in bay with screws stopping it falling.

Found someone has made an STP file on instructables for them so have asked a friend of they could print me 4....fingers crossed!

Seeing that makes me wish I still had my P182. I sold it in 2019. I hope he can print the rails for you!

Today I booted up a Gateway computer I haven't used in a while. It has Windows 98 SE installed and I briefly played Tyrian 2000, and Jazz Jackrabbit 1 and 2. I also took a backup of the hard drive.

Retro6 · 9 Mar 2024 at 18:12

phatboy said:
Finally all in one piece, running like a champ in the garage lab.

Frustratingly I have found you are mean to have rails for the 5.25 drive bays which I didn't get any of . Drive is haphazardly hanging in bay with screws stopping it falling.

Found someone has made an STP file on instructables for them so have asked a friend of they could print me 4....fingers crossed! (He is on it )

I've made brackets from small metal strips. I had a machine once that was missing brackets and none of the brackets I had or could get didn't fit so in the end I just made some with metal strips, you just bend them where they need to fit and drill the screw holes to put every together, alternatively you can get a cheap meccano set and just use the strips from that with the holes already there.

Retro6 · 9 Mar 2024 at 21:30

I've upgraded the RAM in my Windows 2000 RM mini build to 4GB, it makes a big difference from the 512MB that was in there and I got higher benchmark scores after the upgrade however with this mini build I could only use a socket 775 420 1.6GHz processor because things got too hot inside the case when I had the dual core 2... 3.5 GHz CPU in there so just for the sake of keeping the CPU temps safe I had to use a lower speed processor so some compromises have had to be made in that regard. It works very well otherwise. I'm also searching for a low profile GPU card to put in it as I'm using the onboard graphics, the onboard graphics seem to be decent enough for all the games I've tested on it so far. At some point I may cut out a round hole at the top of the case so that the CPU can get a bit more air and then I could probably use a faster processor.

cee-S-dee · 9 Mar 2024 at 21:53

Retro6 said:
I've upgraded the RAM in my Windows 2000 RM mini build to 4GB, it makes a big difference from the 512MB that was in there and I got higher benchmark scores after the upgrade however with this mini build I could only use a socket 775 420 1.6GHz processor because things got too hot inside the case when I had the dual core 2... 3.5 GHz CPU in there so just for the sake of keeping the CPU temps safe I had to use a lower speed processor so some compromises have had to be made in that regard. It works very well otherwise. I'm also searching for a low profile GPU card to put in it as I'm using the onboard graphics, the onboard graphics seem to be decent enough for all the games I've tested on it so far. At some point I may cut out a round hole at the top of the case so that the CPU can get a bit more air and then I could probably use a faster processor.

What case you running? look at the e5800 if its compatible with your board?

I run that processor in this case, and it gets a little warm but nothing that slows it down or has any cause for concern. I use a standard Intel 775 copper core cooler.

Retro6 · 9 Mar 2024 at 22:29

Its this one... I really like this case so I wouldn't want to change it.