TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[remixedcat]

I got a retro networking hardware review soon as I can find the power adapter for this old as fook router (DDWRT_WTF_RMX_NX_87767666OMGNUMBERSXM)

and after it the big stuff review!!! OF FREAKIN YEAH!!!

 

[Trekkie4]

Really guys, not even a single comment/suggestion on the video card dilemma? Oh well, it doesn't matter now, I've decided to restore the original WinFast Ti4200, and might look into OCing the card, to take advantage of that hefty heatsink... I remember 3DGameMan doing a review on this particular model, and he talked about OC, so I might follow his footsteps & see how fast I can get it going

Normally I'm against OC old hardware of any kind, but this here situation is where OC comes in very handy due to several reasons. Primarily because I can gain more power when I need it (while playing DX8 & DX9 games), and lower it back down again when I'm under DOS & older W98 environment.

 

[Caring1]

What do you say guys, since I already have to open up the case, shall I swap the existing Ti4200 for Radeon 9550?

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=141&card2=80

 

[Trekkie4]

Thanks for the tip, but these are not accurate values... Not to me anyway, because neither 9550 or 4200 are reference cards, they're both manufactured by the 3rd party & had been modified by them. 4200 was beefed up by Leadtek, and 9550 was (somewhat) improved by Asus.

Either way, I already got my 4200 back inside & am not going to fiddle with video cards any longer I really do feel bad for DX9 support though, as there are so many games which I'd love to play on RetroMaster but they're not compatible with 4200

 

[stinger608]

I personally had a soft spot for the Nvidia Ti series of cards. I would think that the Ti4200 would outperform the 9550 by a fair margin.

 

[buzzi]

sorry mate I can't help you

 

[PHaS3]

My old Athlon64 X2 3800+ and Gigabyte M570SLI nForce 570 motherboard, now with 2GB DDR2 and running my home Sophos XG firewall install (https://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-xg-firewall-home-edition.aspx for anyone super interested) with an old X300

Spoiler: Pic one :)

Spoiler: Pic two :)

Real men run their firewalls naked

 

[buzzi]

Am I the only one who sees half a picture of the second shot?
lovely system btw

 

[PHaS3]

Am I the only one who sees half a picture of the second shot?

Odd, i see the whole thing and I'm pretty sure it uploaded the whole thing :/ if anyone else sees it like that i'll upload moar

 

[buzzi]

Now I see it in all its beauty

 

[biffzinker]

I really do feel bad for DX9 support though, as there are so many games which I'd love to play on RetroMaster but they're not compatible with 4200

If you would have stuck with the 9550 you could have taken advantage of ATI's TruForm (N-patches.)

Just for kicks I installed Soldier of Fortune II Double Helix on the system specs listed within my profile. Installed the 2003 patch, and what do you know it run just dandy without having to mess/tinker with any compatible settings in Windows 10. Something however looked off in the game though because I remembered the NPCs being more rounded instead of blocks of polygons. I forgot this was one of those games that supported ATI's TruForm it's listed within the advance settings.

Strange though the game seen the ATI/AMD card, and defaulted to Truform ON even though there's no support in the drivers unlike your older 9550 that ran Truform as a Vertex Shader with the proper Catalyst driver. The Radeon 8500 was the only one to support Truform in hardware.

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_TruForm#Games_with_TruForm_support

Nvidia choose the name R-patches for the same thing.

Edit 2:

Normally I'm against OC old hardware of any kind, but this here situation is where OC comes in very handy due to several reasons. Primarily because I can gain more power when I need it (while playing DX8 & DX9 games), and lower it back down again when I'm under DOS & older W98 environment.

If your going to overclock the Ti 4200, I suppose you could of tried the same with the 9550

 

[Trekkie4]

I personally had a soft spot for the Nvidia Ti series of cards. I would think that the Ti4200 would outperform the 9550 by a fair margin.

In that case it's a good thing I've decided to stick with trusty 4200 It really is a great card, and with DX9 support it would have been flawless IMHO. Well at least this particular model, not sure what the reference cards are like, since I never had one before. This Leadtek card was obviously beefed up, because specs from the website do not match the original values from nVidia...

sorry mate I can't help you

No prob, it's all good. TBH, I was kinda leaning more towards GeForce all along, but didn't want to say it out loud (especially because of previously mentioned DX9 issue) Which is why I wanted 3rd opinion...

If you would have stuck with the 9550 you could have taken advantage of ATI's TruForm (N-patches.)

Edit 2:

If your going to overclock the Ti 4200, I suppose you could of tried the same with the 9550

Can't say I've heard about TruForm, but I did Google 9550 several times, I even searched for benchmarks & other useful information on YouTube... From what I gathered, 9550 WILL indeed do its job (just like 4200) but at much lower rate than GeForce. It will outperform 4200 under DirectX9 environment to be exact, but it'll be much slower in Win9X & DX8.1, at least that's what the guys wrote on the support forum.

And not really, no. According to folks who used this card way back, when it was brand new, 9550 is not the kind of card you'd want to OC. From what I understood, that would have been 9500SE, but maybe I'm wrong? *shrug*

Also, don't forget about cooling issue... Whenever you OC anything, it'll get much warmer than it's designed to. And somehow I don't think that tiny fan with Asus branded heatsink on 9550 would do a proper job of cooling OCed GPU. On the ther hand, you saw Leadtek card, right? It's basically sandwiched together by two aluminum plates, both VRAM and GPU and it has a bigger fan. Which makes it much better candidate for OC in my opinion

 

[biffzinker]

Wasn't arguing with you for choosing the Ti 4200, just in case you had that impression. I did enjoy my Geforce3 Ti 200 way back at the time. No luck finding the company brand for the Ti 200. I bought it locally in Alaska at CompUSA. (memory failure)

Edit: I did have the ATI Radeon 9500 Pro, and I definitely remember overclocking on that card.

^How about that it looks exactly like the card I had.

 

[Trekkie4]

I know, I know Just wanted to help you see things from my perspective, that's all. One way or another it was a tough choice, seemed to cause a lot of disputes back in 2002/03. Just Google for 9550 vs Ti4200 and you'll see what I mean

Edit
Ah yes, 9500Pro would be much better candidate for OC in my opinion... It also has the external power supply header, because it draws too much current. Unlike 9550 which is your average & basic model. I'm not saying it's impossible to OC 9550, just that you wouldn't gain much in the terms of speed & performance.

Edit2
Here are few more pics, last ones for now

Finished RetroMaster 2000 system, ready to roll!


I wanted to do a clean install on this thing, especially since I replaced so much hardware... But unfortunately I've encountered some annoying (and weird) problem half way booting up Win98, it began crashing due to sound card (it confused on-board sound with Live!), so it was either to give up entirely & start over or just take the external drive (from the pic), hook it up & restore previously-made system image... Which I did, I guess you can call it instant success XP was not so lucky, it doesn't want to boot up for some reason so I'm going to do it from scratch. It's not a big issue, as there are only few games & drivers under XP anyway.

 

[biffzinker]

Did you forget to disable the on-board audio codec? You could have taken out the Sound Blaster Live!, do the clean install of Windows 98, and then re-install the Sound Blaster Live! card.

 

[Trekkie4]

Did you forget to disable the on-board audio codec? You could have taken out the Sound Blaster Live!, do the clean install of Windows 98, and then re-install the Sound Blaster Live! card.

Nope, didn't forget... Just wanted to install drivers for both of the sound cards 1st, and only then disable the onboard sound. I did the same thing 1st time, and it worked out OK, not sure what happened today *shrug*

W98 recognized Live as "default" sound device, but still kept on searching for VIA onboard audio for some reason which led to system crash. Ironically, Live! was working perfectly OK all this time, and I had the sound mixer icon for Live card in taskbar. So I'm thinking it may have something to do with sys registry... IDK

 

[Ruru]

Wasn't arguing with you for choosing the Ti 4200, just in case you had that impression. I did enjoy my Geforce3 Ti 200 way back at the time. No luck finding the company brand for the Ti 200. I bought it locally in Alaska at CompUSA. (memory failure)

Edit: I did have the ATI Radeon 9500 Pro, and I definitely remember overclocking on that card.

^How about that it looks exactly like the card I had.

That looks like 9500/9700/9700 Pro, 9500 Pro had all the memory chips in a straight line.

9500 Pro had a physical 128-bit memory bus, but those 9500 128MB had a physical 256-bit bus, and could be modded to 9700/9700 Pro. 9500 64MB didn't have all the memory chips so that couldn't be modded to a 9700 series card.

 

[Trekkie4]

Scored a pair of Infinity boards last week and both are in working order but needed some caps replaced.
I've already fixed one with the other left to do once I track down a cap to completely redo them.
Thing that suprised me is these boards look like they just came out of the box brandnew, I mean you can't ask for these to have been in better shape except for the caps and I believe these may have been either slightly used or not at all and stored somewhere.
Naturally with age the caps sometimes will bulge anyway and thats the case here but at least it's not anything serious to worry about..... Unless I try and run them as is, then it could be trouble and not doing that. Here's a pic of one of the boards I got and I've already replaced the bad caps on this one.
View attachment 79058

"Some experts believe that the use of any keyboard may cause serious injury. Consult statement on the back of this keyboard" LMAO!! Wait, are they even serious?! Sure, if you whack someone on the head with this thing... (sorry for taking so much time to go through your posts @Bones, I was too busy & occupied with RetroMaster thing)

 

[Bones]

I understand - Was working with yet another board today (A7N8X Deluxe 2.0) and a GPU (Sapphire X1950 GT) I received.
Tested both and they are OK, great buy for me since I scored both pieces for under $30 shipped.

Actual pic of the GPU received - Looks like it's gonna be a good one guys.

 

[biffzinker]

That looks like 9500/9700/9700 Pro, 9500 Pro had all the memory chips in a straight line.

9500 Pro had a physical 128-bit memory bus, but those 9500 128MB had a physical 256-bit bus, and could be modded to 9700/9700 Pro. 9500 64MB didn't have all the memory chips so that couldn't be modded to a 9700 series card.

Strange then cause the 9500 Pro I had looked the same as the image I posted, and I never had the 9700/9700 Pro. I remember having to bend to floppy power connector on the back edge corner of the card because it started bending away from the board.

I understand - Was working with yet another board today (A7N8X Deluxe 2.0) and a GPU (Sapphire X1950 GT) I received.
Tested both and they are OK, great buy for me since I scored both pieces for under $30 shipped.

Actual pic of the GPU received - Looks like it's gonna be a good one guys.

That reminds of the Radeon X1950 XTX I did have. Managed to buy the top of line at the time for once. Always preferred buying the mid-range cards instead of splashing out the high-end cards.

 

[Komshija]

Edit: I did have the ATI Radeon 9500 Pro, and I definitely remember overclocking on that card.

These cards could be easily modified to 9700. I remember there was an article in one of our PC magazines about the whole process.

 

[stinger608]

Always preferred buying the mid-range cards instead of splashing out the high-end cards.

Pretty much the same here. The only difference is, I usually couldn't afford the high-end stuff.

 

[Ruru]

Christmas came early this year

Octek S462 board with Athlon XP 1800+ Palomino and 512MB PC133, I have moar so I can pack this with 768MB

Epox S754 nForce3 250Gb which unfortunely lacks NB heatsink, I have a spare CMOS battery but not a S754 CPU..

Asus A8V which is said to be defective, CPU is A64 3200+ and it has single 512MB stick, of course I have more of those

Asus A7N8X-X with Athlon XP 2400+ and 1.5GB DDR, this may be my primary board of these if the A8V is broken and I can't get that Epox soon to rock..

Gainward GF4 MX440 with a Sapphire branded Zalman passive heatpipe cooler, I remember seen these on 9700/9800 Radeons, I guess the middle one is a TNT2 M64 and a legendary S3 Trio64 PCI

Gainward GF4 Ti4200 with a "slightly" modified Zalman VF700AlCu, MSI 6800GT with Zalman VF700AlCu LED and Asus 6800GT 128MB (memory specs from 6800, GPU from 6800GT) with Zalman VF900

SB Live! 5.1 soundcard, Radeon X800 Pro which didn't have a cooler so I salvaged one from a dead FireGL V5100 and a MSI HD7770

Club3D GTS250 and the stock coolers from those GF6800 series cards

And all this stuff for FREE!

 

[buzzi]

Awesome pics!

Those vga make me think my XFX 8600GT G80 (now on shelf) is to consider "nostalgic"

 

[Trekkie4]

Closing a deal on a complete AMD Athlon 1500+ unit, so stand by for more pics & tech specs. (as long as we work it out, of course)

Normally I wouldn't throw my money on something I already have, but this one comes with very special bonus inside... Apparently the seller either doesn't care or doesn't realize the value, because the asking price is $15.00 (for the entire rig)