Do you have an Sdram based board? for those Willamettes?
I have a 1.6ghz socket 423 IBM P4 that is using the i845 with not DDR... but PC133 Sdram. It is to say a massive under-performer.

AlphaWing wrote:

Do you have an Sdram based board? for those Willamettes?
I have a 1.6ghz socket 423 IBM P4 that is using the i845 with not DDR... but PC133 Sdram. It is to say a massive under-performer.

It's a modern motherboard from Asrock: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/P4i65G/

Takes DDR memory.

I ran into an issue. Voodoo 2 performance is held back by something, especially SLI. Maybe this board is too new to do well with Windows 98 SE? It doesn't even come close to the SLI scores of the P3. I might reinstall W98SE or try another board...

I have bad luck with win9x and P4's.
Never had a single P4 board that would run 9x stable or without some weird issue.
That willy I had to put 2000 on because it would just randomly hardlock no matter what I tried in 98,98se and ME.
Runs 2000 rock solid tho 😐
An I850 Rdram based board I have is exactly the same way.

I just played some Kings Quest 5 and Monkey Island 2 in DosBox with CM-32L turned on for the first time (So much better than the Adlib I had way back then), and I've been trying to get wing commander 2, strike commander, Tie Fighter, and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe to play nice with my 360 controller. I don't have a legacy joystick, and don't have the money to spare on a HOTAS setup (even though I've got that new A-10 sim just waiting to be played).

Pretty boring, really. I need to play some more retro games tonite (and NOT get sucked into StarBound for hours!). I'll either DosBox, ScummVM, PCSX2, or Taito X/X2 or Sega Model 2 it tonight. Maybe some CPS2, if I wanna play a shmup.

AlphaWing wrote:

I have bad luck with win9x and P4's..

Well this one mentions W98SE on the website and it has drivers on the disc. It installed fine, using W98SE is super fast, no dramas whatsoever. Single V2 performance is also on paar with Pentium 3 systems, but SLI performance is held back by something...

ElectricMonk wrote:

I just played some Kings Quest 5 and Monkey Island 2 in DosBox with CM-32L turned on for the first time (So much better than the Adlib I had way back then), and I've been trying to get wing commander 2, strike commander, Tie Fighter, and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe to play nice with my 360 controller. I don't have a legacy joystick, and don't have the money to spare on a HOTAS setup (even though I've got that new A-10 sim just waiting to be played).

Pretty boring, really. I need to play some more retro games tonite (and NOT get sucked into StarBound for hours!). I'll either DosBox, ScummVM, PCSX2, or Taito X/X2 or Sega Model 2 it tonight. Maybe some CPS2, if I wanna play a shmup.

That's very cool! Having a CM-32L does make a massive difference.

I played Wing Commander with the mouse but it's not the same. I think I would struggle playing it with a gamepad.

I'd recommend Tiefighter for exclusive play... but thats just me. 😀

I'm getting ready to test a Geforce 256 DDR on my soyo PII-300 again for 3dmark scores.
Think I'll stop with the 256 on that machine. As its bottle-necking the TNT1.
But I wanted to show RIVA 128-Geforce 1 scores on it atleast.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

That's very cool! Having a CM-32L does make a massive difference.

Thanks! When I was a kid, I could only drool over the MT-32 and CM-32Ls Sierra sold in their catalog. That's why I'm so hot and bothered over getting to use BASSMIDI for killer GM/GS (there's even a 128MB OPL3 soundfont!), and MUNT with the original MT-32 and CM-32L ROMs. I'm slowly going to experience all the games of my youth the way they were meant to be played, not with the crappy hardware I could afford.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I played Wing Commander with the mouse but it's not the same. I think I would struggle playing it with a gamepad.

Back in the day, I had a lapboard to hold my keyboard, and my MS Sidewinder joystick (pro, maybe?) and played the hell out of WC 1-4, Privateer, and Tie Fighter. Those game were so good.

But all I have is gamepad, so I'm kinda screwed, until I come up with some kinda solution.

BTW, THIS is the HOTAS I want, to play THIS A-10 sim. It's my favorite plane (furious the USAF is trying to ditch it, but that's a rant for another day), and the sim is by that awesome Russian sim developer.

AlphaWing wrote:

I'd recommend Tiefighter for exclusive play... but thats just me. 😀

I can't wait to get that one working properly! I must've played it 3 times in a row, even with that crappy sound card that would "hang notes".

If LucasArts (now Disney) kept having to pump out Star Wars games, why not a TF2 or TF online?

Ok I swapped the V2 cards out, maybe it was an issue with the SLI bridge I'm not sure. At least they are scaling nicely again.

However the PIII Tualatin still dominates in extreme CPU bound situations (512 x 386 in SLI). Maybe this is because of the difference in CPU architecture (The P4 has a longer pipeline). It takes a much higher clocked P4 to get get close to the PIII Tualatin in such situations.

Incoming benchmark glitches out with fast CPUs. The scores are negative and off 😵

I might just leave the P4 out of the V2 scaling project. The Tualatin 1400 does a great job at pushing the V2 as it is.

ElectricMonk wrote:

AlphaWing wrote:

I'd recommend Tiefighter for exclusive play... but thats just me. 😀

I can't wait to get that one working properly! I must've played it 3 times in a row, even with that crappy sound card that would "hang notes".

If LucasArts (now Disney) kept having to pump out Star Wars games, why not a TF2 or TF online?

Disney deleted Thrawn and therfore most of Timothy's Zahns characters which make up alot of the good sw stuff (especially in the games) along with most of the rest of the expanded universe.
Tiefighter II will never be without those chars and backstories so its gone sadly.

Most of the good Star Wars PC games are based off the EU books.
So I expect no good future Star wars games 🙁

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Ok I swapped the V2 cards out, maybe it was an issue with the SLI bridge I'm not sure. At least they are scaling nicely again. […]
Show full quote

Ok I swapped the V2 cards out, maybe it was an issue with the SLI bridge I'm not sure. At least they are scaling nicely again.

However the PIII Tualatin still dominates in extreme CPU bound situations (512 x 386 in SLI). Maybe this is because of the difference in CPU architecture (The P4 has a longer pipeline). It takes a much higher clocked P4 to get get close to the PIII Tualatin in such situations.

Incoming benchmark glitches out with fast CPUs. The scores are negative and off 😵

I might just leave the P4 out of the V2 scaling project. The Tualatin 1400 does a great job at pushing the V2 as it is.

I had a V2 in an A64 3700+ once. It produced a score of of 3500 in 3dmark2001 or was it 2000. I forget. It also ended up not working later, with the center processor coming desoldered from the PCB and the pins pulling back like a squashed bug.
Not fixable 🤣
I epoxied on heatsinks on all my left over V2's after that too.

That's sad 😒

I plan on investigating the temperature situation. I got a drive bay with two thermal probes and LED display. Might use this 😀

The middle chip heats up the most it seems?

I got a 120mm fan on top both cards in an open test bench. Should be ok.

Yea the 2 other barely get hot in comparison.

Just finished transferring all XT-Hercules (or simcga) capable games I own and could think of to a Schneider Euro XT.
Time to see now on a so-rare-yourself-and-your-geeky-things Saturday night what actually runs on the 512KB RAM this XT beauty has.
Sorry about the phone photos, I reallly don't know any better way to get a screenshot out of an XT running DOS 3.3 😀
(that amber... it can't be just memories, somehow I love it more than I probably should!)

Good Lord, that almost looks like a very early Norton Commander.

It actually is, it had to be an XT-era version

That euro PC reminds me of a Brother Wordprocessor that I used to use as a Kid, that had a monochrome orangish monitor, and a file system manager like that.

I shopped for an unlocked iPhone 3GS on ebay. Does that count? 3GS is ancient by today's standards.

How 'retro' are we talking about here? 😁

Carpentry, with no power tools. Rebuilding an already very reinforced fence that got snapped right in half during the last hurricane. Hammer, chisel and pencil to make mortise and tenon joints in 4x4"s.