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Hello, I have an old ATI graphics card and I’m trying to learn about it and what all of its connectors are, not the io, because it is a weird graphics card. This card is older than me and I want to put it in a system for fun. If anyone can help that would be great. I have the manual but it doesn’t say what is on the board itself. (this is my first post here. I’ve been watching Linus since my middle school days back in 2014)
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Hey All, Out of nostalgia and talking with my sisters, we came around the topic of quite old game that we played around 2000s. It was a tetris game with PvP mode (I think even more that 1vs1 - 1vs1vs1 and also it was possible to play vs a PC) that had a feature to screw up your opponent's puzzle with multiple types of "weapons", like shuffle or add additional blocks. There were also some helpful blocks. And it had awesome music in it It was an offline game (maybe there was a newer revision with online play - don't know) that was possible to download at a time (and also was still developed as new versions were available), not Flash based, but now when looking for it, not possible to find anything. That may indicate that it was an independent work. And the title that I think it had was Etris, but Google Search does not help me with that. Maybe my memory is blurry with that one. Maybe it rings a bell to someone? [UPDATE] Now after doing some digging it may be not 2000s, but late 90s as we remembered other game that we played a lot: Bust-a-Move 2: Arcade Edition. That one is dated from 1996 (thx Wiki), but it's possible that we played it not when it was brand new. So this tetris gam would be from late 90s or early 2000s. And, by looking on some YT videos, it was dark themed (maybe even black background) with blocks with colors, but "I think" not whole - just a borders.
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Outpost 2 - A game that should be given a second chance
Mira Yurizaki posted a blog entry in Yurizaki's Tech Ramblings
I recently had a bug of a niche side of the city building genre: colony building. But then I remember an old standby that I still think should be used as the yardstick for all colony building games. That game is Outpost 2: Divided Destiny. What is Outpost 2? Outpost 2 was a game developed by Dynamics and released by Sierra in 1997. It can be summarized as Sim City meets Command and Conquer. Well, loosely speaking. The premise is that humans have left earth because an asteroid annihilates it. And in their time drifting, they reject planet after planet until they find one is close enough. In desperation due to running low on resources, they land and hope to start anew. So there's a colony building aspect. But humans being humans have different ways of solving a problem of trying to survive. One side wants to terraform the planet. The other wants to adapt to it. And things get heated and point lasers at each other. There's the combat aspect of it. What makes Outpost 2 great? The first part has to do with the colony building aspect. Depending on the scenario, you start off with a central command center that is the heart of your colony: if it goes, the colony goes. But from thereon, you build, expand, get resources, make babies, research! Speaking of resources, there are plenty to manage, but most of the time you're not monitoring all of them constantly. The ones are metals to build stuff, food to feed the colonists, power to power structures, the colonists themselves (broken up into children, workers, and scientists), and the one you'll mostly be keeping an eye out, colony morale. The neat thing is a lot of the time you don't really have to actively manage them. You get regular reports both with a voice over and "pinging" if something needs attention or something happened. The colony building itself is done by you. You put down the structures, layout the infrastructure, and generally make the colony. Speaking of which, there's only one infrastructure to worry about: tubes. And perhaps bizarrely, this is only to connect to the command center. Power is transmitted wirelessly. Food magically appears to colonists. Refined metals just teleport. Here's a snippet of a colony from a scenario I'm playing: There's a middle ground between macromanaging and micromanaging. You don't really need to tend to any single building or unit. The only time you do is because you want to use the building's function. But at the same time, you may need to juggle resources. If there's not enough workers to run a building, you may consider "idling" one until you get another worker. Morale may be the only one you really have to look out for, because there are many ways to influence it. Some directly, some indirectly. The other part of the game is the lore. A whole novella was written and included in the game. It's something you have to read though after the mission briefing, but a surprising amount of backstory was available from the get-go. The game also came with an online manual (which was really just a large help file) and even the description of the units and structures get a blurb about what life is like for the people trying to survive. I mean, here's an example for a Vehicle Factory: And this extends a bit further in game. I mentioned there's research, which was starting to become the next big feature in RTS games of the time with regards to the tech tree. But I don't recall an RTS around that time that went into a level of detail such as this: I mean, most other games probably would've cut it off at the first paragraph. The second part though, makes the game feel more immersive. Instead of the what the research is providing, it's telling me the why. Why should I spend my valuable scientists on this research? And not only that, the level of science fiction used in this game could be closer to hard science fiction than not. Sure there are some implausible technologies thrown around like "cool fusion" and "boptronics" (a combination of biological, optical, and electrical gadgets), but take this for example: The outcome might be a bit of a stretch (they found a way to use conductive fluid to generate electricity due to the planet's shifting magnetosphere), but this research topic is a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamics This sort of thing tickled my imagination way back when I found it. It still sort of does. Either way, the amount of detail that went into this game, for an RTS that didn't deal with historical points or whatnot, is amazing. What isn't so great about Outpost 2? I may love this game, but that doesn't mean it's not without its faults. A large part of it is RNG. This game is full of it. While you can control how much metal you have, how much power you generate, and how much food you can produce, anything involving the colonists are random. You can only influence them. This means that in the beginning, you'll be struggling to break even as you have to squeeze every bit of resources you can get. And what makes things worse, one resource, Scientists, do not automatically generate and require scientists to create (by way of a University... which needs a scientist). So you can doom your colony to failure. In addition to the colonists, the planet the people settled on is active. It has its natural disasters. While most of the time they take place away from your colony, you still have a chance of say a tornado spawning in the middle of your colony and wrecking everything. Damage control will be extensive. But hey, maybe this RNG is part of the charm. You are trying to survive after all. But if this is too much random chance, it might be best to skip this. There's also the announcer. While it's helpful at times to give you periodic resource reports, later in the game it starts to get a bit too chatty. One thing it announces? Every natural disaster. You can also research early disaster warning systems... which the announcer also announces. Of course, you can turn it off and still get reports, but it also means you have to keep an eye out on the resources tab more often. And lastly, but this is more of a preference, the game is slow paced. One complaint I saw in a review of it at the time is that the game is slow. Not that it ran slow, but it's slower than others. It can actually take a while for units to move a good distance of the map. But this was at a time when RTS games were compared to Command and Conquer and Warcraft. You did mention a combat system... I did! But part of me feels it was tacked on as an afterthought to make it try to compete with other RTS games at the time. It's not that it's bad and there's justification for it. But at the same time it feels slightly out of place. In any case, combat is mostly relegated to robot vehicles (can't have the colonists risking their lives now). They shoot things. There's pros and cons. There's also guard posts that shoot things but they can't move. But wait, this is a "2". Where's "Outpost"? (Or why Outpost 2 never really took off) The original game had a similar idea: Earth is dead, so go find a planet and build a colony. But the problem is that the game was released lacking features that someone hyped, it was unpolished, and the worst sin that any game can commit: it was unstable. This left a bad taste in people's mouths. So when a sequel came out, not only was it facing the genre defining games that I mentioned, but people still looked at this as yet another soppy colony building game that couldn't pass muster. How do I get a hold of this game? So far it's being sold at Amazon from third party sellers for a fairly decent price: https://www.amazon.com/Outpost-2-Divided-Destiny-PC/dp/B0006OFKOQ/ I'd say if you like colony building games, this is one you should at least try. I feel this sets the bar for other colony building games. If not just for the game mechanics, but also how much they put into the lore and story. -
This post might be more popular with the older crowd. Many of these items were in a moving box within smaller boxes, this ended up being a mess to sort through for disposal and potential re-use. Decided upon less photos as some vintage computing users might go nuts seeing a stack of 5.25 floppies in a disposal pile. I don't throw out failed 5.25 floppies, they're re-used for art or custom CD cases for indie bands. Found a box of floppies in various sizes, if I recall that 3M 500K floppy was from a set of disks I used in childhood sometime around the C64/Apple II era and those McAfee VirusScan disks were when my school had a virus outbreak in their Novell WordPerfect PC lab--why I kept that floppy set, they can be erased and reused like I've done with past AOL floppies. In another bin I had even more Double-Density 720K floppies that are packed to be shipped to the UK, a friend still uses my old Amiga 1200. It was common to use portable HDD cartridges by SyQuest which were really Conner platters in a cartridge with just a single usable magnetic side, the EzFlyer 135 MB was designed to compete with the Iomega Zip and the 230 MB drive made removable storage affordable($30 back in 1996, 135 MB cartridges were reasonable at $15). SyQuest drives were unique as they ran between 3200-4000 RPM depending upon the series/generation(they made 5.25" & 3.5" cartridge drives), plenty fast enough for MIDI synth audio banks/recording your own mix arrangements, in graphic design they were common to transfer files without lugging a heavy external SCSI or Parallel Port HDD around, I actually used cartridges to boot minimal installs of DOS+Windows and MacOS 7.6(PowerMac 7300) if I needed to run a program which wanted more memory. Reliability of SyQuest pre-SparQ were reasonable, however the SparQ like SyJet was prone to head crashes destroying any inserted storage media which were just as bad as Iomega's Zip click-of-death killing Zip cartridges--SyQuest went bankrupt in 1998, ex-SyQuest engineers later formed Castlewood to release the Orb which suffered a similar reliability nightmare. An old 1GB Western Digital drive, last I recall this drive was pulled from my 486 in 1997 and last spun up in 2002 in a Pentium III... more of a desk paperweight which I originally planned to reuse the platters for a turbine project. Drives after 2003 shifted to glass platters, I think Western Digital was the last to stop using metal platters--encountered a few 80-120GB drives with older platters built in 2004. When the underside of drives were still exposed and at risk of damage if you weren't careful... 30-Pin RAM: Haven't actively supported any system using this RAM since 2002, these are my leftover test bench sticks. At one point I had over 80 1MB sticks, thankfully vintage computing allowed that stockpile to shrink. Most unlikely clients I've had were Ham Radio operators using old systems for custom controllers handling automated analog/digital recording deck solutions.
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I know this isn't exactly a "where do find old game" section, but I wasn't sure where else to ask. You guys have been very helpful before. So there is this old computer game my brother and I used to play. The Game HAS to be from the 90s - 2005? I know that is a big gap, I was born in 94. I had to have been at least 8 years old or younger when I played it. Anyway, I have tried to Google it, but I do not remember enough to yield any results. There is a lot I can remember from it, But not the name of the actual game itself.. I can remember one song specifically, the game itself I believe was some kind of futuristic SciFi genre. I do not recall ever having the CD Case, but the CD design itself was all black except for the main character on it. He was colored a gray/white color. I think I remember his pose. I think one of his feet were in front of the other and he had his hands up as if he was stepping a mine or something. I believe he might have had a shocked expression? He had that generic "white guy" look. Like Duke Nukem or BJ Blazkowicz from Wolfenstein 3D. I think he also might have had an eyepiece on? Kind of like a scouter from Dragon Ball Z. Actual Gameplay, here is what I remember. I believe it was a First Person Game. I do not recall if it was a point and click or an actual game where your character could move freely or on rails. I remember one of the first levels, There was this Giant metallic door. I don't think you could progress the game until you opened the door. My brother and I could never figure out how to open it. I also remember a bathroom, you could interact with the sink and toilet. I think the colors were purple and gray? I also remember a room kind of like the Holodeck from Star Trek. You could change the walls of the room to have different environments. I think one option would make it look like a jungle or forest? Anyway, it has been 10+ years and I still have no idea what game it is. I'd appreciate any ideas you guys might have. My knowledge of old PC games is very little. I didn't actually start truly playing computer games till about 3 or 4 years ago.
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So a while back a family friend gave me this old computer - my plan was to potentially build my new gaming rig into its case for fun. Today I was at my parents' for the holidays and finally decided to see if it worked. It POSTS, but doesn't have a hard drive (ergo no OS). I want to try installing linux, but I want to identify the CPU before I begin, as the motherboard does not appear to boot from a flash drive at all. I found this on wikipedia about the weird form factor, and the shroud is dated 1999, but that's about it. I wish I knew more about the computer but I really can't find out until I can boot it into something. If anyone's familiar with this specific CPU, holler. It'd be nice to know what I'm getting into/what to expect performance wise. Otherwise, I'm just going to try and get it booting into something and I'll keep it posted here. Maybe it's not that interesting to anyone else, but this feels like a treasure hunt and I'm weirdly excited about it. EDIT: I got it to spit out some info, photo of that is below. Now my issue is getting it to boot to some install media. It won't boot from any of the DVDs or USBs I've tried, it has a dedicated CDROM drive, maybe it'll only take install media from that? EDIT 2: Waiting for it to "enter setup," we'll see how it goes.
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My little brothers birthday is coming up and I thought of the perfect gift. An led game he had as a kid we used to love playing. But I can't remember the name of it for the life of me.. I was hoping someone would recognize my terrible drawing and be able to point me in the right direction. Handheld 4 player Point of the game was either to trap the led in your section or reflect the led from your section depending on game mode. Black and gray Transparent circular tube where the LED's would travel through. With dome in the center.. Each player had 2 buttons and an led screen 2 digit readout. Was created around the mid 90's Any help would be amazingly appreciated!
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Hello. I need to study a specific type of aesthetics for an animation project, which is the typical looks of computer operative systems commonly used in the late 80s and early 90s. Let's take 1993 as the target year, but i would mind taking influences from previous operative systems (like Amiga OS) and later ones (like windows 95). I'd love to know if there's an easy way to emulate (possibly on Mac OS X, but i also have a windows 7 hard drive) these systems: - Windows 3.1 - Windows 95 - Mac System 7.1 (colour version) - Apple GS/OS (Apple IIGS) Feel free to add other systems to the list, as long as they fit the 1988-1995 time period. If there could be an easy way to find and use some old software as well (like very early early versions of photoshop ecc...) that would be great, but i'm not a 100% about the legality of the thing (I'd love to have more info on that). I await suggestions and instructions, thanks! Being just for reference, 100% accuracy in the emulation is not necessarily needed.
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Hey Linus Tech Tips, I'm wondering if case manufacturers still sell make beige cases. It would be fun to build my next rig in a modern tower case with the aesthetic of a 90s PC.
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- beige
- old school
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I'm trying to think of old nostalgia games from the 90's such as Duke Nukem or others like Xcom. If someone could name a few games it would help out quite a bit. I love retro gaming but I can't find any good games besides Half Life or XCOM. Also GLORY TO ARSTOTZKA!
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So I was listening Modern Talking on YouTube and I found this: I now have a new favourite. So the question is that can you recommend some more good songs from 80's and 90's? I'd like something like that Modern Talking song I put above... I have already heard Take on me and all popular 80's songs so "a bit more rare" suggestions if possible. Thank you.
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there was a game that my father loved about a beer company in the game you have to manage the company and make it successful i think the game was from the 90s but i dont know the name anybody knows it?
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So while rummaging in my loft I found a box of old computer hardware, including an old Intel Pentium CPU which I can't find any reference to this specific chip online other than it would have been produced in the 90's. If any one can help me that would be great.
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Sup guys,do you guys have any games to recommend,an old fps game like Counter-Strike Online or whats so ever,me and my friends really miss them but failed to find any,any game is okay with us if it can be played online,leave ur suggestions below,thx in advance
- 19 replies
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- vintage games
- old games
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So, i have this room at my grand parents wich i call the "pc room" where my grand mother's son old stuff is. Hes now gone (not dead, just gone) so i have absolutely no idea of most of what all of it is. The question : How many of you want me to post pictures of the old computers and parts ? Thank you for reading and please answer if you want to see them around sunday. Have a nice day -J2
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So, I just watched the newest episode of teens react, where they featured this video: it's a commercial to internet from the 90's I thought I'd share it here.