What retro things have you done today?

[Drumroll]

But did you confuse this forum with GD?

Guilt.

Sorted out my sound issue with a cheap pair of logitech speakers I had in the loft. No more hiss and they have an amplified headphone socket in them!

Had two quite nice, considering the price, Logitech systems here, and both had the issue of popping noise when turning on, and hissing Boise when turning the volume up, regardless how slow or fast. Tried spraying those circuit cleaning products, which worked for a while them not.
Last upgrade went to a soundbar. So far, so good, but clearly not for everyone's taste

 

[paradigm]

Looks like the guys over at Vogons have sorted it. It was my USB 2.0 PCI card!

Pulled that out and now were seeing 3238 3DMarks and 7272 CPU 3DMarks.

 

[LewisRaz]

Glad you managed to sort it. I was taking some comfort that I was suitably near your score! now a mile off

 

[paradigm]

Glad you managed to sort it. I was taking some comfort that I was suitably near your score! now a mile off

Your CPU score still doesn’t seem high enough, though not as bad as mine was before. What do you get in SiSoft Sandra? What chipset is your board? Also can you stick a decent GPU in it so as to remove any reliance on the CPU?

 

[LewisRaz]

Your CPU score still doesn’t seem high enough, though not as bad as mine was before. What do you get in SiSoft Sandra? What chipset is your board? Also can you stick a decent GPU in it so as to remove any reliance on the CPU?

Its gone up here and in 3dmark since I changed back from the SiS 6326 to the S3 virge DX 4mb.
3dbench2 with SiS was 190. With S3 its 289.

I have a slew of S3 virge variants but this 4mb DX is my fastest I think. The others are 2mb and ealier variants. (I think the "DX" was the best of the bunch?). I have a 3d Rage II as well but that is only 2mb.
the only other PCI option I have is a gefore 6200 256mb I could fit that to see what happens.

 

[hohum]

Looks like the guys over at Vogons have sorted it. It was my USB 2.0 PCI card!

Pulled that out and now were seeing 3238 3DMarks and 7272 CPU 3DMarks.

That's an interesting fix, but also frustrating as having some extra USB ports is quite handy on older boards! What chipset does your card use? Did you use the provided driver for the card or nusb?

 

[paradigm]

Its gone up here and in 3dmark since I changed back from the SiS 6326 to the S3 virge DX 4mb.
3dbench2 with SiS was 190. With S3 its 289.

I have a slew of S3 virge variants but this 4mb DX is my fastest I think. The others are 2mb and ealier variants. (I think the "DX" was the best of the bunch?). I have a 3d Rage II as well but that is only 2mb.
the only other PCI option I have is a gefore 6200 256mb I could fit that to see what happens.

Sounds like you need a PCI card that’s somewhere between the two. I’ve got an nVidia Quadro NVS 400 PCI here which is likely overkill (as it’s two NV17 GPUs on one board), but it’s baby brother Quadro NVS 100 or NVS 200 with only one chip might do the trick, 32MB, should be roughly equivalent to a GeForce 4MX 420.

That's an interesting fix, but also frustrating as having some extra USB ports is quite handy on older boards! What chipset does your card use? Did you use the provided driver for the card or nusb?

It was a useful card, not really for the extra 5 USB ports but mainly for the uplift from USB 1.1 to USB 2.0 for use with a memory stick for transferring drivers, apps and games. It’s an NEC chipset and I’m using nusb drivers rather than the ones from Belkin.

 

[LewisRaz]

Sounds like you need a PCI card that’s somewhere between the two. I’ve got an nVidia Quadro NVS 400 PCI here which is likely overkill (as it’s two NV17 GPUs on one board), but it’s baby brother Quadro NVS 100 or NVS 200 with only one chip might do the trick, 32MB, should be roughly equivalent to a GeForce 4MX 420.


It was a useful card, not really for the extra 5 USB ports but mainly for the uplift from USB 1.1 to USB 2.0 for use with a memory stick for transferring drivers, apps and games. It’s an NEC chipset and I’m using nusb drivers rather than the ones from Belkin.

@hohum has posted me a tnt2 vanta pci that needs a little love but should be good! A perfect fit for the system too.

Have you not considered CF instead of HDD?
I dont even bother with usb now. Transferring files is a breeze!

I have spent most of this evening on Transport tycoon on the k6. Sounds great with the general midi on my card.
Going to play some SC2000 afterwards.

 

[hohum]

Well it's got me curious now, as I'm using a Belkin card with a NEC chipset also! Think I might pull it tomorrow and see if there's any difference in benchmarks, although I'm using a Celeron 500MHz on a 440ZX board so may not see the same issue.

 

[Uncle_Gravy]

Question, A friend is sending me his old Gameboy Advance SP, is there mods worth while doing to it? There's an IPS mod? I'm new to this.

 

[hohum]

@hohum has posted me a tnt2 vanta pci that needs a little love but should be good! A perfect fit for the system too.

Have you not considered CF instead of HDD?
I dont even bother with usb now. Transferring files is a breeze!

I have spent most of this evening on Transport tycoon on the k6. Sounds great with the general midi on my card.
Going to play some SC2000 afterwards.

Hope it works for you! For me personally I considered CF but I already had an IDE drive to use, plus also a cheap bootable SATA card if I decide to swap in a SSD (60GB one spare). File transfers I only tend to do during initial setup really, but I use a USB controller for some games hence why I need more than two ports (USB keyboard and mouse!).

 

[almoststew1990]

This evening I had a fun evening installing DOS 6.22, then Windows 3.1, then soundcard and mouse drivers and then MS Office 4.0 - 23 (gotek emulated) floppies in total! I've just bunged my newish "project PC" Power supply in my 386SX Case and mounted the CF card to the rear (usually I would have it straight on the controller card) so I can access it with the case panels all mounted. It's nice having it under the desk like a proper (vertical) PC. It means no Soundblaster 2.0 as no -5v rail but my AWE32 wasn't doing anything so should be fine.





I was amazed at how usable MS Office 4 was. Well, I only tried MS Word. Lists, bullet points, tables, clip art; it's all here. I'm used to Office 2000 which kept the same style (thin toolbar along the top, compared to the "ribbon" introduced with 2007) but even so this was fine to use. A few automatic quality of life things were missing, like the way tab will indent your list if you're doing a list or do the next heirachy of the list, that sort of thing is missing but otherwise it's fairly fully featured. I genuinely could write letters or do "unbranded" reports on it (my employer has their own templates etc that won't work with it I would guess!)

It saves in a standard (old) DOC file so tomorrow, I saved it onto a floppy so I can access it easily on my normal PC, and it's now in my Dropbox. I'm going to open it in Office 365 for no reason other than opening a 27 year old file format on a modern system!

 

[paradigm]

@hohum has posted me a tnt2 vanta pci that needs a little love but should be good! A perfect fit for the system too.

Ah yes that'll be perfect, well no a TNT2 Ultra would have been perfect, but beggars can't be choosers

Have you not considered CF instead of HDD?
I dont even bother with usb now. Transferring files is a breeze!

My current install is on CF (without the USB card) but it's a) only 4GB as it's the largest I've got available, I mainly use CF for older systems (386/486) as it's still far more of a pain in the *** than connecting a USB disk. Powering down the machine, pulling the CF, finding the USB>CF reader, adding the files etc. Just not as quick or as simple as USB, but c'est la vie. I've ordered a 32GB card, but I'd rather go back to the 40GB IDE disk I think, as soon as I've got a network card in the system I can transfer files from my NT4 virtual machine (which in turn can access my Synology NAS, I've tried directly to the NAS with Win98/ME before, it's a no-go). I've still got a spare USB 1.1 port available anyway.

I have spent most of this evening on Transport tycoon on the k6. Sounds great with the general midi on my card.
Going to play some SC2000 afterwards.

Love Transport Tycoon, but can't see the benefit in playing it on a retro system when it works just fine either in DOSBox, or better still, using OpenTTD.

 

[LewisRaz]

I definitely think I am alone in playing the original over openTTD. I love openTTD but find it easier to get engrossed in the original. The fact everything takes longer gives a bigger sense of reward. Even on hard difficulties openTTD becomes less about money and more about nice designs after a short while.
Probably the biggest thing i the AI. I love the charm of how stupid it was but also when it randomly got lucky with station placement. I have tried nearly all of the offerings in openTTD and the best canditates either go tryhard for the entire game or drop off after a few good routes. None seem to have a good pace about them.

On the CF thing. I have PCI slot mounted CF cards and a usb CF card reader on my main pc so for me its exactly the same process as a USB drive would be, except for powering off the system.

I have been reading about how openmediavault on raspberry pi can host shares that can be seen from dos all the way to windows 10. This could be very interesting for easy transfers!

 

[paradigm]

@hohum I've not got the right cap in stock (well I could pull a used one from a more modern GPU, got a few dead 980s here), so I've ordered enough caps (both the aluminium cylindrical and the tantalum polymer) to do 5x Voodoo 3 boards (that way I can do my own at the same time for peace of mind). Hopefully Farnell will deliver those before the weekend so I can recap your board. I'll then stress test it for 24 hours and let you know the findings.

EDIT:

There appear to be some scratched traces on the back of the board, I've not continuity tested them yet, but I guess it's possible (especially in the 2nd image) that some of the traces might be crosstalking with how they have been malformed closer to each other. I've also included a shot of the suspect cap.

 

[hohum]

@paradigm That's great, thanks! Were you able to trigger the issue at all in the end? I must admit I didn't notice those scratches, I guess under a microscope it's more obvious though.

 

[LewisRaz]

oof, some of those traces look near to the mark, especially at the top of the 2nd pic

 

[hohum]

oof, some of those traces look near to the mark, especially at the top of the 2nd pic

Don't jinx it haha, I'm hoping it can be saved!

 

[LewisRaz]

Don't jinx it haha, I'm hoping it can be saved!

my favourite soundcard has worse marks but the traces are still working! Dont lose hope

 

[paradigm]

Traces can always be fixed if they end up being the problem. Nothing a scalpel, some ceramic coated speaker wire and some conformal coating can't fix. If Louis Rossmann has taught me anything it's that unless there's a short deep in the layers of the board, it's fixable!