Posted 2022-04-30 9:50 PM (#2371 - in reply to #2370) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
That is a nice contraption you have made. It does look strange with a Sega controller on a PC, playing these old games. But nice job, getting this going and working.
As for me, then I have gotten a couple of emulators going on my modded Wii. I have it up and running with that Yoshi controller. And so far I have NES, SNES and GBA running. I have also tried PS1 emulator, and had crash bandicoot running. It is reported to be playable on the net, but too laggy for my taste. So I will drop PS1 emulation for now.
Personally I have connected the Wii with one of them el-cheap'o HDMI dongles, and the default video-filther and the tv set at 4:3 will result in a slight non-sharp image, that reminds me of back in the days, when we used composit cables on CRT tv's. But there is no flickering and those things, that we had on CRT. Kind of the best from both worlds. Modern image quality that do not make one tired in the eyes, yet the subtle smoothness of CRT. The best thing is no ultra-super-duper sharp pixels.
Posted 2022-05-04 6:26 PM (#2372 - in reply to #2371) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
Recieved the case badge for my 1200.
And now it is finished the way I want it. Fully recapped, brand new case, accelerator and more. I am really happy with the result and with the IndivisionAGA-MK3 it has a really sharp and crisp picture. I can simply not complain at this point. Never had I dreamt that I would be getting another 1200, after I sold my previous Amiga 1200 in the spring of 2006. But here I am in 2022 and yet again do I own a 1200. So happy....
Posted 2022-05-17 10:05 PM (#2373 - in reply to #2372) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
Rise MP6
Posts: 263
That's brilliant, love it!
I just bought an MSi motherboard, first one I've ever had. Got it for a good price, which is hard enough these days. Quality looks to be spot on but will it self ignite?
Posted 2022-05-26 10:01 PM (#2374 - in reply to #2373) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
My 1200 is truely awesomme now. Works like a charm and no longer urine-colour stained case. Just need them new keycaps when they are ready for purchase later this year. I will keep hanging on to it and never sell it. If it still works when I am dead and gone, then it is a nice thing for my son to get handed. Who knows how hard it will be to get one some 40 years down the line? Again. If it still works 40 years from now, and my son have an interrest in computers and especially vintage computers. Then he will be really happy.
Uhhh.... I have had a couple of MSI boards. They tend to work really good.
Posted 2022-06-07 11:21 PM (#2376 - in reply to #2375) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK
There. Still a fair bit to do.
I also started work on this thing, but haven't got time to go back and finish it yet. Table sorting will not exist in any later revisions. http://dxzeff.com/machines
Posted 2022-07-04 11:48 PM (#2393 - in reply to #71) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
#Tedster
I have been playing around with that ISO you posted, on that Mac Mini with Intel and Geforce-9400 gfx. I have it dual booting, and with the boot-camp drivers version 3.2 it is working like a charm. Been playing some Pirates a couple of hours and I am really pleased with this machine. It is perfect for mid range/era XP games and it is almost silent. I can really advocate for this small machine if space is limited. 7cm width and dept and 5 to 6cm in hight. Strange to use a Mac with XP. Anyway.... Your ISO and bootcamp drivers version 3.2 are a nice combi.
Else, I have some changes in my daily driver....
My Lenovo X220 sadly gave up the ghost. Well, not quite. The fan is close to totally gone, so I had to find a solution really fast for a daily driver. The choice landed on a HP Probook 6460b. Bought it refurbished with 8gb Ram and 120gb SSD. I spend the whole day taking backup of the X220 machine, and finally swapped the 120 with the 320gb 7200 rpm SATA-III drive that was in the X220. Now comes the cool part of it all. The HP boots the X220 Ubuntu Mate (Linux) as if it was the exact same hardware. No error's, no lockup's. It is as if we are back in the days of MS-Dos. Just swap the drive to a new machine, boot and off you go. Dude... With a modern type OS like Ubuntu Mate. What gives???? The only thing I had to do, was to enter the WIFI password again, as the router did not know the new WIFI card.
Else I love the new machine. Keyboard is equally good to type on, and the screen area is larger. A tad higher resulution as well... AT least I now have a backup of my data on NTFS formatted USB harddisks.
The Probook is such a quality design. To pop the backplate, I just slide the lock and it opens without the use of srews. Inside there are full access to everything. No more taking the machine apart, if I need to change cooling paste or change ram or anything. It is sturdy. Metal hinges, metal backplate on the screen. Plenty e-sata (or what it is called) port on the side. VGA connector on the back. And more stuff. I used the bigger brother back when I was studying, and I was so sad to return it to the school. I loved that machine, because the screen is mat and not glossy. I just love this line of HP machines.
Posted 2022-07-11 11:33 PM (#2394 - in reply to #2393) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
Rise MP6
Posts: 263
Nice one with the HP, I hope it serves you well.
I've been goofing with a min-pc of sorts myself. Using XP as well, on this little Acer Revo that I have. It has an AMD dual core cpu and some Radeon HD thing in there.
It runs XP like a champ tho! Even games play pretty well.
Posted 2022-07-12 3:24 PM (#2395 - in reply to #2394) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
tedster - 2022-07-12 1:33 AM
Nice one with the HP, I hope it serves you well.
I've been goofing with a min-pc of sorts myself. Using XP as well, on this little Acer Revo that I have. It has an AMD dual core cpu and some Radeon HD thing in there.
It runs XP like a champ tho! Even games play pretty well.
That is a nice little machine you got there. It just show, that for mid-range XP stuff, small mini-PC's and Mac's from around 2009/11 are the way to go. Sure the norm back then, were these giant towers with bling-bling-neon-rgb-carnival light's. I never liked that stuff, as it reminds me of these fast and furious movies. That I hate in the first place, because of these elitists car addict's that bought all sort of ugly cold cathode stuff for their cars around 1999/2001. I can not stress enough, how ugly a cold cathode light frame, around the car stereo looks. ESPECIALLY when it is blue light. Yuck.
So that is the reason why I like small annonymus hardware for XP stuff. Personally I have no nostalgic attachment to XP games, as I worked as a system builder from late 2003 to early 2006. We had to build at least 12 fully working XP machines each day, and I were also in charge of all phone support one man, as well as all email support from 9am to lunch. And yes... I still had to build at least 12 machines each day. I had the money but not the time, to buy and game on XP, but not the money before the job. And after I stopped working there, I became a mailman and did not care for computers at all for at least two years. That is the reason why I never played any XP games during the XP era. Oh well..... I still have more fun with MS Dos on a 486 though....
Anyway.
Yes. The HP laptop is an awesomme machine. I really enjoy it and the best part of getting it. Was that I had to take out the harddrive from the X220 and mount it in the HP. Turn it on and just use it. No reinstall. No installation of drivers. That is what makes Linux awesomme.
EDIT:
For XP. Does it even matter with dedicated and "the correct" hardware at all? You know. Like we have it on Dos and Win9x era. Glide cards for 97/99 era games and GUS/SB-Pro/SB-16 cards with the correct model number for MS-Dos era? It seems as things have just gotten too smooth and mainstream and soulless in regards to the actual hardware it self, when compared to older era's. I mean. Hardware started to become less important in that sence. As if software were a more important factor than the hardware it self. As compared to 80's and 90's in were hardware were everything.
Posted 2022-07-13 9:58 AM (#2397 - in reply to #2396) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
DXZeff - 2022-07-13 12:00 AM
No, that's definitely the case and why I'm not really interested in anything beyond the K7 very much.
At the end of the day, though, what matters is that the machine is doing the job you want it to.
Ahh... Nice and happy to know that I am not the only one. :-) And yes, it really does not matter what hardware you then have. It feels the same, looks the same on the monitor and gives the same sound quality from the speakers. But I find it kind of nice to try out a couple of games that I have not played yet. I have always been a giant fan of MS Flightsim, and I have never tried MS Flightsim X. If I can find a copy somewere in the second hand book/music/games shop, then I will see how that runs on the Mac Mini under XP.
But it is nice to see what I have been missing out on. Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam are some of the games. They are fun to try, but I get bored after some 20 minutes or so. In other words, the Win98 games that also runs on XP, are the only fun stuff that I have been glued to the screen with for more than 30 minutes. Yesterday I tried to get Farcry running, but I dont know how to get it running. Might be because I try and install it from the harddrive and not from a DVD. Else I find the Mac Mini so much more fun with OsX installed. Games even seem more fun. I tried Return To Castle Wolfenstein on OsX and for some strange reason I like it better. Though Outrun-2006-Coast-To-Coast are way more fun on a Playstation2. Strange that those few games that are avaliable for OsX (Snow Leopard), are way more fun than the versions that are for WinXP.
One thing is perfectly clear. I dont miss WindowsXP. But it is fun to learn and explore, in order for me to know if I can recommend a Mac for WindowsXP gaming.
Posted 2022-08-02 3:12 AM (#2398 - in reply to #2397) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK
Unfortunately my guts are playing up big time again, so I've not been able to do much beyond slowly repairing the NAS. On the other hand, I've ended up with a big boy 386 board:
25MHz. FPU is a ULSI which I didn't have. Board is dirty and seller suggested it might not work, so naturally it seems there's nothing wrong with it. I kinda wanted one of the ones with tons of DIP DRAMs on it, but they're all too busted and too expensive. I think this one fills a nice middle ground, anyway, where you can see LSI creeping onto boards in the form of the C&T 82206, inherited from the 5-piece 8221 series my 286-16 uses, placing the board in a short time between the fully discrete machines form before the mid-80s, and the almost fully LSI ones from the end of the 80s onwards.
Now my big white AT tower will have something to do, along with some other parts I wasn't really using.
Hmm, now, as I mentioned chipsets, I think I might be upsetting some people who paid a lot of money for TI TACT at some point in the future.
Posted 2022-08-02 2:19 PM (#2399 - in reply to #2398) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
DXZeff - 2022-08-02 5:12 AM
Unfortunately my guts are playing up big time again, so I've not been able to do much beyond slowly repairing the NAS. On the other hand, I've ended up with a big boy 386 board:
25MHz. FPU is a ULSI which I didn't have. Board is dirty and seller suggested it might not work, so naturally it seems there's nothing wrong with it. I kinda wanted one of the ones with tons of DIP DRAMs on it, but they're all too busted and too expensive. I think this one fills a nice middle ground, anyway, where you can see LSI creeping onto boards in the form of the C&T 82206, inherited from the 5-piece 8221 series my 286-16 uses, placing the board in a short time between the fully discrete machines form before the mid-80s, and the almost fully LSI ones from the end of the 80s onwards.
Now my big white AT tower will have something to do, along with some other parts I wasn't really using.
Hmm, now, as I mentioned chipsets, I think I might be upsetting some people who paid a lot of money for TI TACT at some point in the future.
That sir.... That is a nice looking board. Tons of components and stuff. Love it. Personally I love the look of computers with as many components as possible. The more the merrier. Yes, sure Raspberry-PI's are usefull for what they can drive and do, like monitoring fridge at bars and send text to staff, when beer runs low. It is what it is, but they are not the same as hardware with tons of components.
Posted 2022-08-02 2:27 PM (#2400 - in reply to #71) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
As for me lately.....
I have been playing more with that Core2Duo/Geforce-9400 Mac-Mini and WindowsXP. I have been reconnecting with Minecraft personally. I have this 9/10 year old version. It is a really basic version with few things in it, and it kind of makes me happy. I have more fun, because I really need to use my imagination, in order to build something like castles, crypts and that stuff. I always play creative and peacefull. Only because I want to play Minecraft as if it was Lego.
Then I have bought a V-Smile learning computer. (two controllers and 10 games) The reason being, that my childrens half-sister, become 18 years later this year. Of course I will give her a good Whiskey. Perhaps a Talisker or Glen Livit or what they are called. But as she has good childhood memoires with V-Smile, then I will give her one as a "fun-gift". She will get a copy of Winnie the pooh and that Ariel murmaid games, as well as other more basic and non interresting games. However, it is more like a joke. Kind of. "Now you are adult, and you shall have kiddie toy's. Or something. And yes. Last time she will get toys from me. There are so many angles and stuff, to look at this gift. And as it is not the official gift, then it is used and not new. I will let her open the whiskey, and then say something like: Ohhhh..... And I think I have this as well.....
Posted 2022-08-10 10:13 PM (#2401 - in reply to #2400) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
I recieved a Dell U2412MB monitor today, and I am happy to report that it is indeed 15khz compatible with PAL Amiga500, using a simple 23-Pin to 15-Pin adaptor. Though not perfect, as phase and clock need to be adjusted. Furthermore it has some nice aspect ratio settings. 4:3, 5:4 and 16:9...... This is a good find for just 40,32 Euro plus shipping.
Posted 2022-08-12 12:46 PM (#2402 - in reply to #2401) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK
Would be nice if it wasn't an LCD, but beggars can't be choosers. Still, I'll stick to my Video Bastardizer for such jobs for now.
Ordered hard drives for that 386. I have long wanted to do dual ESDI, no real reason beyond 'I want to do it', so I have done it:
They're 780MB. The seller came down on price somewhat, but they were still pretty expensive. So what, I'm having fun and my collecting is really winding down these last few years due to having most everything I wanted. Now I can just do silly things like this occasionally. That said, no more big spends this year because I really need a moped.
Obviously I've no idea how long these drives will live. They seem to be late ones made in the early 1990s, but ESDI was sort of like SCSI in that it only usually appeared in servers and workstations. Because of this, hard drives of that type tend to have racked up a lot of miles - although there were some 'New In Box' ones for sale cheaper, I actually prefer to run used drives as they were at least working when they came out of service, presumably, where 'New' ones are an unknown quantity.
Posted 2022-08-19 6:17 PM (#2403 - in reply to #2402) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
I hope the drives are working. Those are rare these days.... Please post an update.
But yeah. LCD's are the future when we are looking at prices these days on CRT's. Also. I have no space for tons of CRT's..... Speaking of....
Did a new vintage-computer setup. I can use everything from C64 to Amiga and PC. Monitors are specifically bought for my hobby, and I have a Retrotink connected to the TV, if I need to use S-Video or composit connections. I have DVI, HDMI and VGA connections as well. The brown small shelf is made from an old dinner table plate, and it's feet's are old dead harddrives. There are even a casette tape holder with C64 software, next to the black homemade NAS, made from an OrangePI. I am happy with the result....
Posted 2022-08-21 12:06 AM (#2404 - in reply to #2403) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK
I miss being able to have a setup that surrounded me like that, but alas, it isn't really possible in here. By extension, I don't have room for LCDs, so if the CRTs ever die, I'm out of the game.
The hard drives seem to work, but my controller doesn't like them. It's a 15MHz controller anyway and the drives support 20MHz. I ordered a new controller, but discovered that it is known to be incompatible with only one hard drive - guess which one? We'll get there.
Posted 2022-08-21 11:03 PM (#2405 - in reply to #2404) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
DXZeff - 2022-08-21 2:06 AM
I miss being able to have a setup that surrounded me like that, but alas, it isn't really possible in here. By extension, I don't have room for LCDs, so if the CRTs ever die, I'm out of the game.
The hard drives seem to work, but my controller doesn't like them. It's a 15MHz controller anyway and the drives support 20MHz. I ordered a new controller, but discovered that it is known to be incompatible with only one hard drive - guess which one? We'll get there.
But LCD's take up less space...
Damn. That is not great that your drives are that incompatible, or is it controllers that are? But a bummer that you have all these issues. On the other hand, then this is what makes vintage computing so interresting. I just watched a YouTube video the other day. Were someone finally got a working Amiga3000 motherboard. He stated that it took him two years to finally get a working board, and that it took 3 build's of it, in order to finally have a working one. Patience is the name of the game in other words. ;-)
Posted 2022-08-22 12:31 AM (#2406 - in reply to #2405) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK
It's weird because you'd think LCDs were smaller and people will insist that they are, but no matter which way I measure, I wouldn't be able to fit them in the space my CRTs use up. They hurt my eyes anyway, or more so, cause weird flashing diagonal stripes when I look away after only a few minutes.
The hard drives should be working. It is the old 15MHz controller that is the problem. As I only know of one documented example of the replacement controller, where the guy said it won't work with my drives, I'm holding out hope that the document is wrong, especially as the guy who wrote it was having trouble with the BIOS, even with other drives. I should be in with the best possible chance as I happen to know it's the controller model that would have shipped with the motherboard I'm using. I don't know which motherboard he used.
Posted 2022-08-23 11:33 PM (#2407 - in reply to #2406) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK
Decided to forget about that controller and just do things properly. I've had enough and just want this to work now, so I got this controller to use instead:
Should support my drives and also does fancy things like head mapping. It is also one of the very few that could do four drives (The interface supports seven, technically), though I will only be using two.
Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
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