Show off your old and retro computer parts

[Tan3l6]

Real retro imo starts from 200*. And before Core 2.

Though "true retro" starts even eariler - 90's.

"basic retro" even earlier. Intel 8008 and such.

 

It's all about how you look at it...

 

(I edited a lots of "my perspective" in)

[da na]

2 hours ago, Tan3l6 said:

Real retro imo starts from 200*. And before Core 2.

Though "true retro" starts even eariler - 90's.

"basic retro" even earlier. Intel 8008 and such.

 

It's all about how you look at it...

 

(I edited a lots of "my perspective" in)

True, a high end Core 2 Quad is still a quite usable CPU. I'd argue that some Pentium 4-series and Athlon 64 chips are still usable nowadays, although incredibly inefficient. (EG, my Athlon 64 x2 6000+ that beats most early Core 2 Duos, but uses 2x as much power.)

[diegoaccord]

34 minutes ago, SimplyChunk said:

not even those 360 games are 'retro'

Actually some games of that era cost more than they did new. I had to pay more for a copy of "Import Tuner Challenge" (on a different shelf) than I ever had to pay when the 360 was a thing. When prices start getting adjustments for regular games, and not just BNIB 'Ultimate Collectors Editions' games in a given era, it's retro.

 

RTX 3000 is out of production. 

[da na]

2 hours ago, diegoaccord said:

RTX 3000 is out of production. 

Incorrect AFAIK.

[SimplyChunk]

2 hours ago, diegoaccord said:

I had to pay more for a copy of "Import Tuner Challenge"

All that means is you gots more money than sense

[flibberdipper]

3 hours ago, Tan3l6 said:

Real retro imo starts from 200*. And before Core 2.

Though "true retro" starts even eariler - 90's.

"basic retro" even earlier. Intel 8008 and such.

 

It's all about how you look at it...

 

(I edited a lots of "my perspective" in)

I'll throw my take on it:
Vintage = 70s on up to about 1990
Retro = 1990 to about 2005

General cool old shit that still deserves a place in this thread = 2005 right on up to 2010-2011

And honestly, for every year that goes by just tack on another year to that last category. Let's be honest, time ain't stopping so things are continuing to get old and "retro." I don't want to admit that the hardware I grew up using is getting to that 20 year old point, but it is (even though my mind refuses to acknowledge the fact that it's a second over 10 years old).

[diegoaccord]

14 minutes ago, SimplyChunk said:

All that means is you gots more money than sense

You could make assumptions, or maybe I have reasons for such a niche game. 

[ThousandBlade]

19 hours ago, Schnoz said:

This...has got to be a joke, right?

 

I mean. I'm gathering parts for a Win7 retro machine, just got a 3090ti and a few z270 motherboards for it. Cuz RTX3000 series is the last generation of GPU hardware that will run Win7.

 

So, I'd consider it retro.

 

It's not really about the age of the hardware, more about the usage case.

[da na]

2 hours ago, ThousandBlade said:

 

I mean. I'm gathering parts for a Win7 retro machine, just got a 3090ti and a few z270 motherboards for it. Cuz RTX3000 series is the last generation of GPU hardware that will run Win7.

 

So, I'd consider it retro.

 

It's not really about the age of the hardware, more about the usage case.

I would argue that, give the context of this being "show off your old and retro computer parts, that those do not qualify as retro in this case. They're 2 years old. I wouldn't call Windows 7 retro either, it's not even 15 years old yet. But that aside, running a "retro" OS on modern hardware doesn't make the hardware retro. I could run an N64 emulator on my Xeon workstation and it wouldn't make the CPUs retro.

[NF-A12x25]

On 10/20/2022 at 8:47 AM, Mel0n. said:

True, a high end Core 2 Quad is still a quite usable CPU. I'd argue that some Pentium 4-series and Athlon 64 chips are still usable nowadays, although incredibly inefficient. (EG, my Athlon 64 x2 6000+ that beats most early Core 2 Duos, but uses 2x as much power.)

Hell, plenty of c2d and P4/A64 chips are usable, not just the higher end ones, if you’re talking windows 7 or 10 and mostly web browsing/ light word processing and other office PC use cases 

[Vishera]

17 minutes ago, Mel0n. said:

I would argue that, give the context of this being "show off your old and retro computer parts, that those do not qualify as retro in this case. They're 2 years old. I wouldn't call Windows 7 retro either, it's not even 15 years old yet. But that aside, running a "retro" OS on modern hardware doesn't make the hardware retro. I could run an N64 emulator on my Xeon workstation and it wouldn't make the CPUs retro.

True, Though the older the operating system is the tougher it is not only to make it usable but also to make it work at all.

So i think that shouldn't be ignored.

 

In the past year i have been working hard to make every Windows operating work on modern hardware and be usable.

So far i worked on Vista, XP and 2000:

 

[da na]

2 hours ago, NF-A12x25 said:

Hell, plenty of c2d and P4/A64 chips are usable, not just the higher end ones, if you’re talking windows 7 or 10 and mostly web browsing/ light word processing and other office PC use cases 

Office use is definitely doable, I meant stuff like modern games and 1080p video.

[NF-A12x25]

19 minutes ago, Mel0n. said:

Office use is definitely doable, I meant stuff like modern games and 1080p video.

ah fair, yeah I’ve got a couple c2q machines kicking around (with their big-ass stock cooler) and they are pretty capable

[Bitter]

Up until a 3-4 years ago we were using a C2D based Pentium as the shop PC running Win7, when the scan tool and office PC started using Win10 I upgraded the shop PC to a 4th gen Intel platform running 10 as well to make integration easier. I wouldn't have considered the C2D system 'retro' at all because it was perfectly capable in a production environment. 4th gen system is BLAZING fast comparatively but in our use case we're bottlenecked by slow software and slow websites more than the system itself so the perceptible difference is fairly small. Biggest difference is having 8GB RAM available vs 4GB RAM especially when we have many tabs open, however lately I've been considering swapping in a 4th gen i5 as they're getting pretty cheap or maybe even an i7 as they're also fairly cheap these days, things are becoming more and more expectant of a lot of threads and not just fast cores, many lower clocked cores seem to be preferable instead of a couple higher clocked ones. A 65W Haswell i5 or i7 would mop the floor with a 70+W C2D or C2Q even accounting for generational IPC gains simply because of the extra threads available for parallel execution.

[Dabombinable]

57 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

 

• Vintage: 1960s-1992. Vacuum tubes, CRT oscilloscopes, those EPROM chips with fancy windows, sub-1GB hard drives, the works. I love computers of this era, but I'm afraid that I'm going to be brutally murdered when a CRT implodes on me.

 

 

More like sub 420MB for the early 90's...both my 80MB were made in '92.

[da na]

3 hours ago, Schnoz said:

• No-man's land: 2001-2006. They're old enough that they're not so usable today and often lack Windows 7 driver support, so they're being tossed out in the masses, but not so old that they're valued too much as collector's items. And everything this age and older has all sorts of weird heavy metals in it because RoHS wasn't passed yet.

This is my favorite era. Especially since stuff here is starting to become more expensive as it gets older (and capacitors go poof)...

[ThousandBlade]

Well, as long as I have enough spare parts to keep this Win7 machine alive. 

 

It'll eventually be retro someday XD

 

I'm just a few years early to the party lol

[Vishera]

6 hours ago, Schnoz said:

Holy hell, that's impressive. My dad had issues installing Windows 7 on his R5 5600X; maybe he should talk to you lol.

For Windows 7 to work properly on the Ryzen platform you need to install the xHCI driver for USB functionality and setup the power plan in a specific way or just go with the performance power plan without modifying it.

Using the default balanced and power saving power plans or modifying the default Performance power plan can result in BSODs.

[da na]

Decided to test the 780i SLI before replacing caps, as they were for non-crucial things. The board works just fine! I will still proceed with replacement, however, since I don't want any further degradation of this board.

 

[Dabombinable]

Going to buy one of these (seller has 2) just to have a NIB version of my 315 (that also has the SiS 301 onboard):

Also just to get a driver disc, manual and DVD playback software that's appropriate.

 

Vs my AGP 2x 315E/with 301 and basic 315:

 

BTW, does anyone know what the 3.5mm jack on these cards is used for?
Edit: They only specify shipping for the US, so not happening.

[Bitter]

28 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Going to buy one of these (seller has 2) just to have a NIB version of my 315 (that also has the SiS 301 onboard):

Also just to get a driver disc, manual and DVD playback software that's appropriate.

 

Vs my AGP 2x 315E/with 301 and basic 315:

 

BTW, does anyone know what the 3.5mm jack on these cards is used for?
Edit: They only specify shipping for the US, so not happening.

Where you at? You seem pretty excited for this, I might be able to reship, but it could be cost prohibitive.

[Dabombinable]

46 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Where you at? You seem pretty excited for this, I might be able to reship, but it could be cost prohibitive.

Australia. TBH it's only a "nice to have" - it's not like I'll ever use the card extensively as I know that the caps are time bombs after fixing up the lower end version. Also it will probably run at only AGP 2x:

At least the T&L is fully functional - not bad for what was their 3rd graphics architecture (crushes the 305 and 128bit+rare 300).

[Dabombinable]

This is the list of cards that I've done at least 3DMark runs with btw (with varying degrees of success):

[Bitter]

I'm around Chicago, if you ever do want something from the US reshipped to you I'd be happy to help.

[ApolloX75]

Wish I had my 9800 GX2s from years back still, but three 9800 GTXs will work too.