Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████

28 Jan

Current list of all hardware I am still actively looking for, in case you want to trade or whatever.

20 Apr

Help: what was the most surreal thing you had to do in a nightmare to survive? I might steal it, though, since I recently played another horror game where I thought the concept is great but it could have been done so much better.

15 Apr

So it would have been okay to fatally shoot the driver, right?

Raider@iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social

ICE vehicle strikes San Diego activist Arturo Gonzalez.

15 Apr

Hm so the good news is the system seems to boot just fine, the bad news is the PCI SATA adapter isn't showing any signs of life, at the very least it looks like it has no BIOS of its own for booting from it. I set he motherboard's first boot option to SCSI which is usually necessary but no luck.

Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████@16bitmanfred.bsky.social

Found the missing PCI SATA adapter! Now, what to do with the actual system? I'll attempt to start it in the evening, and see what happens. Could also run W98 I guess. At least games of that period shouldn't glitch out.

15 Apr

It's probably an issue with the firmware of the PCI SATA adapter, but luckily the board is so modern it lets me boot from USB. I should then be able to flash another firmware to the adapter, then have it appear as a 120 GB drive in IDE mode to install W98 to it. Will try that later.

Listening to an almost 40 year old concept album and within seconds I had started making a face and headbanging without even noticing it. The falsetto back then had some room for improvement. But I don't care, this is pure metal.

Peltier-cooled Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz and 3 ISA sound cards, ticking ALL the important DOS sound boxes. Sadly what looks like an AGP slot is actually ADD and does not support graphics cards, so I'm limited to PCI in that regard, and using a Geforce FX 5200 because I have nothing proper.

It's a cool curiosity in my opinion but realistically speaking there is absolutely nothing that you would do that needs an ISA slot but also a CPU of the GHz or even more era. All DOS games run just fine on way slower hardware, if anything the 3 GHz make some games unplayable.

Together, these provide: AdLib/FM ESS ESFM Sound Blaster Sound Blaster Pro Sound Blaster 16 General MIDI (.sf2 and .94b sound fonts) MT-32 (via wavetable daughterboard or external real one) Gravis Ultrasound In theory there is one faster motherboard with working ISA slots but it's >400$ USD.

I on the other hand one day got this board from someone who thought it was defective because no he tried it with several different graphics cards but got no picture. You guessed it, he tried AGP graphics cards only, which could not work in it. The board itself was 100% working as intended.

PCI SATA adapter is still somewhere in a box, I'll use it once found to go along with the SATA SSD. Combination of sound cards: Guillemot Maxi Sound 64 Dynamic 3D PicoGUS Creative AWE upgrade card a.k.a. CT1920 Goldfinch

Found this in my lab, it's the forgotten inferior replacement board for my first Neoware CA2 that I accidentally killed when I had, after a long series of swapping expansion cards, forgotten to pull the power plug and promptly caused a deadly short. This 333 MHz Geode is much slower than the VIA C3.

However, if it is at least as compatible as an S3 graphics card is in DOS games, that would at least let me play early W9X games and enjoy a wide variety of stuff before that. Also no idea how much RAM is on this double sided module, but I'll find out tonight after dinner.

And there is already an issue: the IDE connector is full size 40 pin. Which means whatever I want to connect will need an adapter not only to that but also to a power source. At least the power source exists.

In fact, the Nehemiah could be clocked at 1400 MHz, a Pentium 733 equivalent at least. While I hope for the Geode to be at least a Pentium MMX 166 equivalent, but that's not granted. And the onboard GPU? I have no idea what it is, but it certainly won't be as fast as an S3 Savage 4.

12 Apr

if you see this post an image you saved because it made you laugh.

This post is unavailable.

The Leadtek WinFast A350XT TDH (Geforce FX 5900 XT 128 MB) got upgraded with a Zalman VF-1000 aftermarket cooler and Enzotech copper VRAM heatsinks. It may not be as nostalgic as a Voodoo 5, but it is much faster while ticking all legacy compatibility features that certain vintage games need!

Today I spread more fake news than an LLM. CPU-Z tricked me into believing this was a Mobile Barton 2500+, but it is actually a Mobile Barton 2400+, which is a LV version with a 35W TDP and 1.35V voltage. Now I could put in either the 1000 MHz 18W Geode (1500+ rating) or 1400 MHz 25W Geode (1750+).🤔

Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████@16bitmanfred.bsky.social

I misremembered the CPU. There is still an AMD Athlon XP-M 2500+ (Mobile Barton) in there, which the motherboard turns into a 1900+ because it doesn't run the CPU's default FSB of 333, but only 266. I guess I was too lazy to put the Geode NX back in because the CPU cooler is a nightmare to mount.

Let's be honest, the Geode 1500's efficiency is so cool, but I can't deal with being beaten by a P3 Tualatin, so the Geode NX 1750 is the likeliest candidate if none of you persuades me to do something else. I also have 1 GHz regular Athlons or different desktop Athlon XPs of almost every speed.

By the way, AMD speaks of a "typical" thermal design power of 9 and 14 W, but the actual maximum power draw is 18 and 25 W respectively, so I won't repeat their marketing BS, in case anyone was wondering about my numbers. I like AMDs socket 462 CPUs, but I'm not any brand's loyal fanboy.

Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████@16bitmanfred.bsky.social

It has "only" a single ISA slot, but the Epox 8KTA3+ supports Athlon and Athlon XP CPUs, even a mobile Barton works with it. I'm using a Geode NX (Athlon XP 1700+ mobile binned to only use up to 25W) instead to keep it semi passive with lots of copper.

It would still be faster than a regular 1900+ because this has twice the cache, and I could theoretically mod the CPUs multiplier settings so t defaults to 16x133 MHz to make up for it. But I'd prefer the lower speeds of the 25W Thoroughbred-B Geode NX, especially since the RAM bottlenecks anyway.

I went and upgraded the sound card. The door hides the sadly poor condition of the audio panel's print, and I lobe that the case has proper cable management. Should do absolutely fine for any game or music released prior to Windows XP.

Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████@16bitmanfred.bsky.social

I love* Gotta love my german phone autocorrecting english words.

Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ reposted

Gammitin (Ben) 💾

@gammitin.bsky.social

10 Apr

Replying to @gammitin.bsky.social

I'm insanely excited about this! 🤗 1Ghz AMD Athlon Slot A ✅

For a single ISA slot DOS card I went with the Sound Blaster 32 CT3670 which is really based on AWE64 tech and therefore bug free, but I might in the future swap it out for my Terratec EWS64 XL sacrificing SB16 compatibility and MT-32 emulation for a front panel with a wavetable connector.

I haven't used the system in a while but I really like how the case allows me to show off the cool rare components, look at the debug display, and offers space for optical drive and front panel but also hides them behind a door.

Although these faster CPUs work, and even a Geforce FX 5900 XT running at 5950 Ultra speeds is accompanying them, the weakness of the system is the SDR-133 RAM. CPU and GPU would love RAM that os twice or even thrice as fast.

9 Apr

Maybe these belong together? MSI MS-5129 w/ Intel Pentium MMX 166, 32 MB SDRAM and 256+256 kB cache via COAST module. No AGP slot but PS2 mouse and keyboard connectors for the AT board. I was thinking S3 graphics, Voodoo 1 and two sound cards?

9 Apr

"FAR BETTER THAN NINTENDO!" Meanwhile, or rather a year earlier, at Nintendo...

videogame history@vghistory.bsky.social

epic megagames official electronic catalog, excerpt (1994) www.mobygames.com/game/13032/j...

Applied fresh thermal paste to the CPU cooler, put the thing back together, it booted fine. During graphics driver installation, towards the end, the "two clicks" sounded again, the system immediately restarted and is now back in this loop.

Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████@16bitmanfred.bsky.social

I insulated the IDE44 to dual CF adapter using special tape, put the Sound Blaster AWE64 w/ memory expansion back into the ISA riser and cleaned the VIA C3 CPU's heatspreader. It's marked as 800 MHz Ezra-T but the voltage gives away it's really a 1200 MHz Nehemiah. At some point VIA only sold those.

9 Apr

I disconnected the fans and USB mouse believing it might take load from the PSU and got it to boot again once, but sure enough I still had no VGA driver installed and it happened again during installation. Weirdly, a cold boot after an hour or so works most of the time.

My best guess is that the Nehemiah's yield on the smaller node got so good it was cheaper to only produce the better product and sell it as the cheap one, too.

The day is total shit with my main PC still out of commission and my replacement D5 compatible pump also not working, but at least I found my insulating tape so I can attempt to put the retro gaming thin client back together.

This is simply a catastrophe, I need that PC for absolutely everything, from job search and projects to trivial stuff like everyday browsing and powering our living room TV, all of my documents are on there.

Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████@16bitmanfred.bsky.social

Yeah so my D5 compatible pump is not even attempting to start, no idea why. I was certain it worked.