Show off your old and retro computer parts

[Bitter]

23 minutes ago, DeepFriedWater316 said:

Okay slightly off topic, but "Chicagoan."  That's a new one.  What do we call people from Ohio?  I need to know for research purposes and definitely not to use as a weapon against my friends unfortunately from Ohio.  Is it just Ohioan?  

Ohio? Oh there's some choice adjectives for people who live there but that's outside the scope of this website. Ohio is the Florida of the north.

[luckybob77]

10 hours ago, beaglebox said:

Germany NRW sry

Go post about it here.

https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php

 

It will have a new home before the end of the week.

[SimplyChunk]

4 hours ago, DeepFriedWater316 said:

What do we call people from Ohio?

Unlucky?

[DeepFriedWater316]

7 hours ago, Bitter said:

Ohio? Oh there's some choice adjectives for people who live there but that's outside the scope of this website. Ohio is the Florida of the north.

Oh for sure.  But like, when was the last time you heard someone say "we're going to Ohio for vacation this year!" Exactly.  Never.

[DeepFriedWater316]

2 hours ago, SimplyChunk said:

Unlucky?

Fair.

[da na]

"Oh man, I wish I could buy an underclocked HD 2900 XT with as much VRAM as a GTX 680"

After all, Who wouldn't?

Luckily, FireGL v8650 is here to save us. Quite a good-looking card with its wireframe silkscreen on the blower and the red accents along the heatsink frame.

First card to pack 2GB of memory, and AFAIK still holds the record (and probably always will) for the highest number of individual VRAM chips on one 3D accelerator die. 

Not through clever trickery nor through ingenuity - no, they just stuffed thirty-two GDDR4 chips onto the same 512-bit memory bus as the HD 2900 XT. This makes the card perform notably worse than the HD 2900XT it shares a die with because each chip is only granted 16 bits of bandwidth, versus where the HD2900XT's 16 chips each get 32 bits of bus width. 

 

I am eager to play with this a little more.

[Bitter]

This is probably a good place to ask this, the game is just over 20 years old now. I'm playing MechWarrior 4 again...anyone know how to get it to run at my native 1440p? I've got 1080p and that works but doesn't look great on 27 inches. I know the menus are going to always be like 800x600 or whatever.

[da na]

3 minutes ago, Bitter said:

This is probably a good place to ask this, the game is just over 20 years old now. I'm playing MechWarrior 4 again...anyone know how to get it to run at my native 1440p? I've got 1080p and that works but doesn't look great on 27 inches. I know the menus are going to always be like 800x600 or whatever.

Looked for an .ini in the game directory? That's typically how one can force old games to run at outlandish resolutions.

[Bitter]

51 minutes ago, da na said:

Looked for an .ini in the game directory? That's typically how one can force old games to run at outlandish resolutions.

Seems like editing that doesn't work, the game just overwrites it when launched with whatever was last selected in settings. If the resolution isn't on the list in the game menu it's not valid in the file and gets 'fixed' on launch.

[SimplyChunk]

19 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Seems like editing that doesn't work, the game just overwrites it when launched with whatever was last selected in settings. If the resolution isn't on the list in the game menu it's not valid in the file and gets 'fixed' on launch.

https://www.thegamer.com/play-any-game-windows-borderless/

 

You could try the above program.  Should enable the game to run in a borderless fullscreen which will be your screens native res

[da na]

Gathering more and more HP laptops and accessories. Picked up the Pocket Media Drive yesterday and it's quite a cute little piece of gear.

Its color scheme fits in perfectly with the era-appropriate Pavilions.

Was lucky enough to get a brand-new, never-opened 250GB model.

Quite an attractive drive. Also came with a nice cloth case for storage.

It is not just an external hard drive, though - the Pocket Media Drive seamlessly docks into many HP desktops, like the TouchSmart IQ770 shown here.

Pretty unique concept, having a HDD that can be external or internal. Would be far more useful, though, if there was any speed benefit to docking it, though - unfortunately, it runs at USB2.0 speeds regardless of how it is connected.

Love seeing that 18-year-old hard drive brand new with 0 flying hours on it.

As with all of my old hardware, I am not only happy to add this to my collection as a piece of history, but this drive will certainly see some use. Its unique docking capability is wonderful, I've already put several hours on it moving files around between TouchSmart, Pavilion, and MediaSmart computers.

[Bitter]

1 hour ago, SimplyChunk said:

https://www.thegamer.com/play-any-game-windows-borderless/

 

You could try the above program.  Should enable the game to run in a borderless fullscreen which will be your screens native res

I'll try that, but it seems like game would still need to support 1440p? It does not.

 

Wait, am I an idiot? Can't Radeon drivers/hardware upscale it from 1080 to 1440? Maybe even the menu too? Having the monitor dip out to switch modes is annoying.

[Bitter]

Good news, I am an idiot, yes I could just set the AMD drivers to upscale without the monitor switching modes all the time on me. It looks better and plays better and hurts my brain less.

[Issac Zachary]

I'm so happy! I got my hands on a working serial Intellimouse! So my Beige Baby 12th gen Intel PC has a PS2 keyboard with a build in PS2 track pad and now my ball Intellimouse with scroll wheel (and SATA DVD drive and floppy drive that I need to fix, but is installed and does connect via a floppy to USB adapter).

 

I'm really wanting to hook up my beige VGA CRT monitor too. I just need to figure out where to put the printer that's on top of my Beige Baby desktop.

 

I do need to figure out how to better install my DIY USB ports as the ones I got in it are kind of loose since I hot glued them in. I'd also like to add a DIY SD card slot somewere and add the audio ports to the front. Time for some more fabrication.

 

I'd post pictures, but I've also gone back to a film camera and haven't developed the film yet.

[Dabombinable]

3 hours ago, Issac Zachary said:

I'm so happy! I got my hands on a working serial Intellimouse! So my Beige Baby 12th gen Intel PC has a PS2 keyboard with a build in PS2 track pad and now my ball Intellimouse with scroll wheel (and SATA DVD drive and floppy drive that I need to fix, but is installed and does connect via a floppy to USB adapter).

 

I'm really wanting to hook up my beige VGA CRT monitor too. I just need to figure out where to put the printer that's on top of my Beige Baby desktop.

 

I do need to figure out how to better install my DIY USB ports as the ones I got in it are kind of loose since I hot glued them in. I'd also like to add a DIY SD card slot somewere and add the audio ports to the front. Time for some more fabrication.

 

I'd post pictures, but I've also gone back to a film camera and haven't developed the film yet.

I've been using a serial compatible (managed to buy an original MS adapter at the same time) IntelliMouse Pro, and bought a standard IntelliMouse just in case it didn't work. And it is remarkably good even with the desktop at 1024x768. Comfortable too.

Only bought them due to the dodgy PS/2 port on my Slot1 AT board. So weird seeing PS/2 referred to as "mouse port" instead.

[Bitter]

I have had several of the later optical USB intelimouse and until I got a 1440p screen I loved them. After that the dpi was pretty bad, they were really slow.

[Bitter]

16 hours ago, Bitter said:

Good news, I am an idiot, yes I could just set the AMD drivers to upscale without the monitor switching modes all the time on me. It looks better and plays better and hurts my brain less.

Quoting myself for an update, it's so nice. The first time I played MW4 Mercenaries the radio chatter and Solaris announcer didn't work and I didn't know they didn't work because I never heard them, until almost 3/4 through I kept failing a mission. I Googled a walkthrough and found out that depending on some stuff earlier and reputation levels or something that the radio would tell me what to do as the objective changes partway in. Well without that I couldn't figure it out and gave up. Now I have that. It's great.

I loaded a Wolfhound I salvaged on Halloran with 4 Clan ER small lasers and a Clan ERPPC and obliterated the first light mech fight at Solaris. Bringing a Clan ERPPC to a light mech match should be a war crime.

[SimplyChunk]

All three of my retro mice are Microsoft ones.  I have an old serial one.  (The straight one with the bigger left button) I have a curved PS/2 one with only two buttons.  I bought this last year new old stock. And I have an three button/scroll wheel curved one which is branded Microsoft for Tiny computers.  This is the one I use on frog.  Though I have an issue in Dune 2 where it doesn't register the left click at all.  I suspect it's something between the Tiny computers mouse and the (unrelated) Tiny mouse driver I use ironically enough .  It should work according to the documents but I'm gonna dig both the other mice out and try them first