What retro computer activity did you get up to today?

Set up a 386 today.

Joindata Systems G386K-B motherboard
Intel 386DX-33
IIT 387-33 coprocessor
8MB RAM
64KB cache
128MB Compact Flash


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Needed some work - had to unsolder the leaking battery first. There was a bit of damage mostly around the external battery connector, so brushed away and cleaned the area. Currently using 2 x 1.8 volt AA lithium batteries (for now) on the external battery connector. Even my multimeter is the correct vintage...

Installed DOS 6.22 with Windows 3.11 and ran a few benchmarks. The ISA VGA card is fairly ordinary (Trident TVGA9000 512KB) so I'll have to find an ET4000 or similar.


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Very nice

 

Cool vids! Makes me want to go and play Incoming and Unreal!

 

That's a nice looking 386 rig

 

Thanks. Unfortunately the ISA VGA card it on it's last legs (screen keeps flickering). Any ideas where to find a relatively decent 1MB ISA video card?

Great videos again Mau1wurf1977. Also makes me want to play Unreal.

 

You know what? I never played any of those games!

I had a "computer break" for 4 years after finishing school. So the last machine I had a was a PII 300 MHz with a Voodoo 2. After the "break" I was back with a P4 northwood 2.6 GHz and a Radeon 9800.

So I'm reliving this missed period

Buy yes, I hardly play the games. At the moment I find playing with the hardware so much fun.

 

I just fired up Unreal on my i7, seems to run okay, although I am waiting for the latest patch to download, hoping there will be a new renderer included as I'm pretty much stuck on software at the moment. I can recall being gobsmacked at the graphics when I played it for the first time, shame it feels kinda dated now when compared to modern FPS games...

Update...Much better with the new patch!

 

eBay is a bit hit and miss price wise so I gave these guys a go when I needed a couple of ISA video cards not too long ago. Great service, shipped nice and fast and more importantly worked. They have a shop in North Melbourne so even better for you they are local.

http://www.a1usedcomputers.com.au/shop/prodList.asp?idCategory=46

I grabbed one of the Tseng Labs ET4000AX 1Mb VGA Video Adapter for $15.00. Can't go wrong!

 

Is that this 227i patch?

I tried it on my P4 machine and it complained about the OS being too old

So it's a patch to get the game to work on modern machines right?

 

Yeah, 227i is the one I installed. You will need at least the 224 official patch in order to install 227i. Once installed you have the choice of OpenGL, D3D 8 and 9. I ended up going with OpenGL as that's what it recommended for best quality. Playing it on a GTX680 @ 1920x1200 is certainly faster than a Voodoo II @ 800x600 as I had originally played it

 

Thanks for the link.

Went to order and the site isn't secure, so might go for a trip to North Melbourne instead.

 

I made a video comparing Super Nintendo power supplies: http://youtu.be/eOKrrM1T50I

 

I ordered quite a few things from them and each time I had to follow up on the sales. The status would be "processing" for weeks. Only when contacting them would they actually ship it.

Haven't had many issues with eBay to be honest.

 

Played Strider on a Sega Genesis emulator. Nostalgia-goggles made me think it was way better than it is now.
The remake is meant to be quite good:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/235210/

 

Played 2 hours of Teddy Boy on my Sega Game Gear, recently picked up a 21 game cartridge, dropped it in to test and got stuck in a teddy boy loop

 

Interesting. I don't recall having any issues when I ordered a couple of items.

My only issue with eBay is the pricing a lot of sellers charge for retro gear. $15 for a Tseng Labs ET4000AX for example is a steal considering the rort some sellers are charging for the same card on eBay.


Btw I tried those FastVoodoo2 drivers you mention earlier with the 2 x Voodoo 2's I have and they work a treat!

It's a bit of mismatch system. I'm using my old Rendition V2100 (Diamond Stealth II S220) I had all those years ago for the 2D along with the Voodoo 2's for the 3D acceleration. Feels kind of funny to me because back then I was firmly in the Rendition camp so 3Dfx was the enemy! Now here they are all those years later working in tandem. Loving it!

 

Yea Voodoo cards will always be something special!

Played around some more with A3D and installed the Aureal demos. Very cool stuff. Simple but cool and shows off what you can do with this technology.

It's really depressing when you realise how little hardware accelerated audio has progressed. In fact we are back to software acceleration only

Found two IDE DVDRWs at work. Only one plays CD audio tracks through the analogue port at the back. Quite a few of the late drives simply do not implement this feature.

 

I've just placed an order for a 1.2MB FDD and Cable. Whilst site isn't secure, my Credit Card Company is good at catching thieves. So will see how long it takes.

Will update if any issues.

 

Don't get me wrong, I always got the goods in the end. But it took forever. I don't think they are very "customer oriented" or care a lot about what they do

One board had bulging caps and they send me to AOpen Slot 1 boards as replacements, that was nice. I could keep the faulty board and replaced the caps. Working well now.

 

Awesome, I didn't know about them, I'll check it out