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Fujitsu 186
Posts: 7
| Yes I do have one, sadly I speak french, so unless you can understand it... |
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Chips 386
Posts: 37
| I have a long-lasting temptation to learn - some French books and movies impress me seriously to think about it, but... that's not enough: there will be no progress without an actual study (obviously). Laziness and other duties win at this point.
/laziness is an unbeatable thing, lol (and I need to build a shelving to store CRTs there, but... that old enemy is here: I bought shelves, still need to buy the rest of the construction and assemble it; a half-year has passed) A sudden sad post, makes me laugh.
Edited by twm 2018-06-04 10:49 PM
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Fujitsu 186
Posts: 7
| Oh I know, but for me it's not lazyness but this is not the right place to talk about that, but yess, I have some things that I wanted to do years ago and still haven't done. |
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Slow 8088
Posts: 1
Location: New Zealand | Hi All,
I'm Unobsolete from New Zealand. I'm into vintage computer systems and audio equipment. I have a few systems that i'm in the process of getting working and will be posting my progress on here as soon as i get the projects off the ground. I have been watching Hightreason's youtube videos for years now as well as Waybacktech.
My first pc system was a
Intel 486DX 4 100Mhz
8MB of 32 Pin Ram
800MB Connor IDE Drive
1MB VLB Cirrus Logic Video Card
Sound Blaster 16 ISA Sound Card
VLB Dual IDE Interface Card
Windows 3.1 & DOS 6.22
14 Inch CRT Monitor
That system got me through high school and was used quite a bit during the weekends to play duke nukem 3d, doom and rise of the triad. 2001-2004. It was second hand then.
I'm in the process of building another system like it but am still in need of a few parts and a case before it will be working again but i will post with i finally get it working.
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
 
Location: Hull, UK | Figured it would be good manners to say welcome to the boards, even though I'm sure we already spoke on Discord. Obviously I wish you the best of luck with this system, always had a soft spot for the 486. |
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Fujitsu 186
Posts: 6
| Evening everyone.. The names Howard.. I've gone by the alias of H something or other (with a prefix or suffix of some kind) on numerous other forums and places around dhat there interwebnetz thing.. I've been getting involved in number live streams on PornTu.. Urgh Fuu.. I Mean.. YouTube! YOU TUBE! (not that there's much a difference now.. IS there? *cue a long pause for thought* as of late.. Just out of sheer fucking boardem of being out a decent paying job and stuck living the dole.. YAY! (NOT..)
I've had a long standing.. (if somewhat.. unhealthy.. Though it's not as bad as it used to be.. Honest 'Guv *cough*) obsession with these number crunching box thingamys people like to use.. It all started in my mid childhood when dearest mumsy brought me a very used n abused ZX Spectrum 2 128K+ (mien gott.. what a stinking pile of shit that thing was) to her later disdain.. of course..
After a few years of watching HT's channel and seeing he'd set up his forum about what? Nearly three years ago now? I've been meaning to join just for a looksee.. And now finally gotten a fucking around to it.. I suppose.. I also have a number of systems.. Though my little “collection” (if you could call it that) is mostly x86 PeeCee based hardware.. in varying degrees of complete and semi-functional unfinished systems.. I've let a number of projects slide.. Due to having a lack of time/money/inclination left to finish them.. So I really do kinda need to get my fugg'n shit together.. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Howdy, Howard.
I'd like to say something nice about the ZX Spectrum but have yet to find one that actually works, it seems either the keyboard membrane fails or the RF box doesn't want to play ball... umm... I have a working soviet version, but no reliable way to interface it with a TV as yet. Although the ZX Spectrum version of some music is coming in handy for learning a song right now as the tones are much closer to actual notes than the C64 version I'm used to hearing.
The boards here aren't super active a lot of the time, but interesting things do show up occasionally. |
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Fujitsu 186
Posts: 6
| Well.. If your thinking about getting one.. I'd recommend a genuine Sinclair ZX.. (such as, the last 64 and 128k "Toast rack" originals) And not one of Mr Sugars cheap arse Sinclair branded shit boxes..
Those fucking tape load errors where the bane of my existence.. Plus trying to find tapes for the fucking thing as a child.. (around the time when every other kid's who's parents could afford it, had ROM cartridge based NESs SNESs and Mega Drives) was borderline impossible.. The shit box 286 Olivetti my father got me after that.. Where everything loaded of one disk.. ONE DISK! felt like a world apart..
I'm not really a fan of General Instruments AY series of PSGs.. They never seemed to get the best out of them in micro computers.. Unlike when they where used on arcade boards.. It pains me to say it.. But Commodores SID series whacks the living snot out of everything else.. With some chip that was made by Philips, coming in a close second.. It was some kinda stereo PSG that was used in the Sam Coupe.. (Now good look finding one of them for "reasonable" money nowadays.. Heh eh) and some other micro puters n arcade boards.
I don't expect this place to be anything like the private forum I used to hang around on was.. It used to originally be for a game clan I was in, but at it's peek.. when it's the guy who owned it allowed friends of ours to join.. It swelled up into monster he and his wife and daughter could just about mange.. Though it started to slowly die off around 2009-10.. There was hardly anyone active anymore when he pulled the plug on the sever in early 2014.. It was a say day.. But as they say.. All good things must come to an end.
Edited by UserH 2018-10-13 3:13 AM
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Slow 8088
Posts: 3
| Hello, i've been a long time fan of DXZeff's YouTube channel and today was the first time i really checked out his profile there and saw the website and this cool forum.
Im into everything electronic - be that computers as a whole or similar devices. I work as a telecom engineer and this gives me access to cool old and new electronic devices and field installations.
My hobbies are repairing computers and phones, video games and collecting warez.
Id like to share my first PC, it still works but i no longer have an AT PSU, floppy drive and a working hard drive with small storage space (i dont think the expansion card would address anything manufactured later than 1990), and there is a potentially leaky BIOS battery 
Edited by 3dfx 2019-02-08 1:10 AM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Howdy.
Oh nice, 486 gear. You might want to take that battery off before it does any damage, you can always connect an external one if you want to use the board later.
I've heard of Pravetz, have never owned one, only clone I have from further that way is a Byte from Belarus.
Anyways, welcome to the board, it's quiet around here but things do happen, sometimes. |
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Harris 286
Posts: 19
| Hello everyone! I'm Rawit, I work in IT and I found this place through High Treason's YouTube channel. I like the late 80's/90's/early 2000's computer era with all its unique hardware and software.
Currently running the following system for my retro fix:
- Advantech MediaGX board with a Cyrix / NS 233Mhz GX1 CPU;
- I-O Data S3 Savage4 card with DFP out;
- Gravis UltraSound ACE 1.1.
Not really era specific but all of the hardware has drivers for Windows 3.11 and DOS which is what I prefer to run. My other retro "system" is a Sharp PC-1360 pocket computer.
Edited by Rawit 2019-02-18 12:11 PM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Welcome, Rawit.
The MediaGX is something I have yet to play with myself, though they're basically a Cx5x86 core from what I understand, hows the performance? Does the GUS pull the system down or increase load times? |
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Harris 286
Posts: 19
| Performance is a bit unpredictable at times. I didn't run any benchmarks on it except for framerate checks in games. According to the game MDK it sits around Pentium 90 performance. This is with the S3 card, as the integrated solution will decrease performance a lot and isn't compatible. When I got the system (with it's integrated video) Quake ran around 15fps in chained VGA. After installing the S3 Savage, replacing the supplied 256MB SDRAM stick with 32MB SDRAM stick for faster timings and optimizing Cyrix CPU register settings I get 27fps in chained VGA. I didn't run into any speed sensitive issues yet like the Borland > 200Mhz, perhaps because the lack of L2 cache.
It's almost the perfect system for me except for one thing... With my GUS I can't get 16-bit DMA to work properly. When I've used the XpressAudio as SB16, it seems the GUS hangs on DMA transfers. Using 8-bit DMA for the GUS solves this, but I can notice the performance decrease in some games. I've tried wait states, different DMA channels and disabling 16-bit DMA for the XpressAudio, but the problem still remains. One thing I've noticed is that Wolfenstein 3D locks up the GUS with 16-bit DMA instantly with it's Audio Detect routine. When I run a game with the XpressAudio in SB16 mode for effects and the GUS with 16-bit DMA for music it runs, but running any software that uses the GUS afterwards makes the system hang. I'm contemplating if a GUS PnP would solve the issues because of it's different init/PnP nature/resources known to the BIOS. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Sounds about right for that CPU core I guess, without cache anyway.
Honestly I think there's always something wrong with the GUS classic, invariably something won't work when setting it up, I've never had it go smoothly and software has always complained of one issue or another regardless of which system the card is in or which version of the drivers is used. Unfortunately I can't offer any input on whether a PNP version would fix the problem due to having no experience with those, also the sheer cost of them brings into question whether they're worth having, given their limited compatibility and the fact that pretty much everything that is compatible was written to work within the limits of the classic. I suppose you could try assigning the GUS' DMA and such to 'Legacy ISA' manually in the BIOS, maybe even don't use PNP for the rest of the system at all. Even some PCI cards don't like having to deal with Plug 'n' Pray boards, so the GUS likely isn't a fan of them either. |
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Harris 286
Posts: 19
| Yeah it seems I was lucky back in the day. The number of FAQs give a good impression how finicky the GUS can be. Thanks for the advice, double checked that yesterday and swapped the GUS with another one just to see that made a difference but alas.
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Harris 286
Posts: 20
| Hi guys, been reading the forum over the last few days and you seemed like my kind of people. Been messing with PC compatibles since early 90s, some 8 bits before that, Amigas in the middle for a time. I've been too busy or sick to get hands on the last decade or so, so have had all my older crap hidden at the back of the basement. Hoping to get it all out and start playing with it again. Still a bit short of energy until I get a procedure done in a few months, so mostly dinking around with dosbox at the moment. I currently haunt parts of southern Ontario, Canada, left of Toronto and down a bit.
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Howdy, welcome to the forum.
Here's hoping you're able to dig that stuff out some day, it'd be a shame to waste it. |
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Harris 286
Posts: 20
| Thanks. Yes, things move gradually, but only in like low range rock crawling gear. Work area is clogged up at the moment with a couple of "modern" C2Q projects, one a media server/multihead PVR deally, the other a desktop for general use, maybe a little gaming, since I got out of the habit a few years ago when I got an i5 laptop. Not sure if it would make most sense to work backwards chronologically, since it's easier to "bootstrap" older systems in terms of media etc with one only a few years older. I had built/rebuit a P3 800? system a half dozen years ago intended as a bridge system for going through all my old disks and hard drives, that is sitting in the work area so is accessible. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Hi Guys, another newbie here!
Can't say I'm into the retro scene, as such, since it's all I've ever known. All my bloody computers are retro! It's a bit of a pain really, I can't afford any new sh*t and now it seems I can't afford any old sh*t either!
Anyway, enough rambling, thanks for having me onboard and Happy New Year! Which is the same sh*t really but with a bigger number.... |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | I've been there before, man, I think most of us have at some point.
Anyways, welcome aboard.
P.S. You don't have to worry about censoring your cusswords on this board. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Thanks for the welcome! |
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Introduce Yourself!
