TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Robert B]

Motorola MC68040RC33. 33MHz PGA179. Apple/Amiga. I'm unable to test it but I had to buy it.

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/68040/Motorola-MC68040RC33.html

 

[Apocalypsee]

Fair enough. The X-fi was released in 2005. So you're right, an Audigy or Audigy2 would be more period correct. Your Audigy SE would be a perfect fit.

IMO Audigy is more than enough if you play EAX games. Only small number of games support EAX 5.0 like Battlefield 2 (one of the best games if you want to show EAX effects). Also, run on Windows XP because ALchemy wrapper on newer Windows don't work as great as running natively on Windows XP.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Motorola MC68040RC33. 33MHz PGA179. Apple/Amiga. I'm unable to test it but I had to buy it.

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/68040/Motorola-MC68040RC33.html

That is a conversation piece and a rare one. Frame it and hang it on your wall!

IMO Audigy is more than enough if you play EAX games.

For the system they're building, I agree.

Also, run on Windows XP because ALchemy wrapper on newer Windows don't work as great as running natively on Windows XP.

Definitely this. @MaxiPro800 That single core AthlonXP will not handle well anything newer. I would recommend further that you get a copy of XP SP2 to keep the system workload lighter as SP3 does add to overall OS overhead. For multicore CPU's it's not a big deal, but for a single core like your AthlonXP, it's a measurable difference.

Saw this and thought it would fit well here in this thread;

"Don't copy that floppy" LOL!
The Channel has video's from all the way back in the 80's.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Definitely this. @MaxiPro800 That single core AthlonXP will not handle well anything newer. I would recommend further that you get a copy of XP SP2 to keep the system workload lighter as SP3 does add to overall OS overhead. For multicore CPU's it's not a big deal, but for a single core like your AthlonXP, it's a measurable difference.

Was thinking of XP SP2 and a 2k SP4 dualboot. Thanks for the tip!

 

[biffzinker]

Motorola MC68040RC33. 33MHz PGA179. Apple/Amiga. I'm unable to test it but I had to buy it.

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/68040/Motorola-MC68040RC33.html

The first computer I bought had a Motorola 68LC040 @ 33 MHz in a Macintosh Performa 577. I later handed off the Performa 577 to my parents when I upgraded to a Power Macintosh clone. Eventually my parents donated it, and bought a new HP Pavilion with a Athlon XP 2000+, and Nvidia nForce 420 chipset.

Macintosh Performa 577

The Apple Macintosh Performa 577 computer is equipped with a Motorola 68LC040 33 MHz processor, 5 MB of RAM, a hard disk with 320 MB and two CD-ROM drives. The compact "All in One" housing also has space for a 14-inch color display.

madeapple.com

 

[Retrorockit]

I came across an interesting book at my local book store. It was in the science section and not the computer area. "The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti". Much of the book is about the Olivetti family and Italian politics in the 1920s and '30s ( WW2 also) so I didn't buy it. But it does push the birth of the desktop computer back to the early 1960s. Olivetti presented it at the New York Worlds Fair in 1964 and sold about 44.000 of them. Many went to NASA. But Olivetti's mechanical typewriter business was going downhill, and they became victims of their American "partners" and cold war politics (it seems). Mystery, intrigue,espionage (industrial and political), suspicious death(s) historical revision, and a dose of truly retro tech for good measure. They came with a built in keyboard (no surpise from Olivetti), and a built in printer also! Olivetti sued HP for patent infringement and won.
The computer was called the Programma 101. They often refered to it as a "calculator" to keep from having R&D funding withdrawn, and to hide what they were really up to.

Programma 101 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Calculator That Helped Land Men on the Moon

Olivetti’s Programma 101 embodied the company’s holistic approach to technical efficiency, ease of use, and smart design

spectrum.ieee.org

Olivetti/Programma 101/Revive - DDHFwiki

datamuseum.dk

 

[kazz]

Was thinking of XP SP2 and a 2k SP4 dualboot. Thanks for the tip!

Athlon XP handles windows7 flawlessy if ram is enough - but..there is sadly one big issue
despite OS wise its possible go up to win8 (beta at least worked, some sources tell final version not)
program selection you can install - if we talk about fairly new soft - is very limited due to SSE2 not supported. So...yes, not much benefits on Athlon XP with newer OS,lacking SSE2 limits everything by far more than XP

/me typing this comment with Athlon XP3200+ (I had little bit cold here in my room today so I decided to turn that beast on!)

 

[Retrorockit]

I came across this photo while looking into successors of the 1964 Olivetti Programma101 desktop, and found this 1966 Programma 203 "programmable typewriter". Looks like a P101 with a typewriter attached, and a tower computer for a base. There was a P102 for the British military, a P101 with a serial port output added.
If that tower adds more memory the keyboard/printer may be able to go to more than the 22 decimal places the tape output provides. I wonder if the serial port output became standard on these? Word processing programs? AIO in 1966! I suppose there were no components available to do it any other way.

Judging by the scuff marks this may have been the less desireable kick start version.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Judging by the scuff marks it may have been a kick start version.

LMBO!

 

[Robert B]

Got me one of these! A mighty beast, let me tell you.

 

[basco]

is this the asus gtx 260 matrix? 55 or 65nm?

 

[Retrorockit]

1966 Olivetti 203 running. The number keys on the keyboard move when it's printing.

The prototype P101. This was stolen and they had to chase the criminals down in the Swiss Alps and pay a ransom to get it back according to the book. The US military had a very serious interest in these. They were used to generate flight orders for secret B52 bombing missions into Cambodia. The missions were generated on a P101 at the airbase, and only known to the flight crew and CO. No paper trail, and no messages to intercept or leak.

 

[Robert B]

ASUS ROG MATRIX GTX 260 *** ENGTX260 MATRIX/HTDI/896MD3

55nm.

 

[Komshija]

PCIe... Is THAT what people refer to as "Retro Gaming", nowdays?! What happened to Socket 5, 7, 370, 462 & Slot-1?

Many people are considering retro Sandy Bridge CPU's like second gen Core i7 and GPU's like HD 6000 / GeForce 500 series; not to even mention older hardware.
IMO, a 10+ year old hardware would fit into retro category, but not 7 or 8 year old hardware.

It's all good, I never saw your statement as offensive. I just don't share the same opinion, that's all.

I miss the old(er) days, when people talked about obsolete stuff, and not necessarily old hardware. After all, Core i7 series is now getting seriously old, but it is still very much in production & represents the "flagship" of what Intel has to offer. Some of you will point out how Intel released several new versions, production series but to me Core i7 is i7 ... whenever we talk about current gen or the one from 10 years ago. Performance-wise, things hadn't changed much since then. Which is mainly the reason why I'm still running Q6600 in 2019, when you pair it with 8GB of DDR2 and serious video card, you get a modern (and very much capable) unit, that's capable of running just about every single app or game you throw at it. BeamNG Drive for example, I've been playing the heck out of this game & it never gave me any problems or serious lags on Q6600

Very old stuff might be fun for testing to see whether they can still run after 20 or 30 years, but no one sane will use such systems as their daily machine simply because they are way too slow or way too outdated (like old ordinary cars from the 1970's or 1980's; supercars like Lamborghini Miura and Ferrari 288 GTO, F40 are excluded). Intel introduced "mainstream" i9 CPU's, so i7's aren't the flagships anymore.
Performance difference from Nehalem to Kaby Lake i7? Not so big. Intel made a bigger performance jump in the last two years than they did in 10 years before that, and that's only because they were forced by AMD Ryzen CPU's which smashed Intel's much more expensive equivalents.

Even if you pair an old top-of-the-line 775 CPU like QX9770 with some more modern GPU like RX 580 or GTX 1060, you'll still have a major bottleneck - bottleneck being the CPU. Try running newer games like Far Cry 5, Battlefield V, Assassin's Creed Odyssey at FHD resolution and medium-high details with Q6600 and 8800GT and you'll immediately see the problems. Try making video editing or animations in Blender (free software ) with such system and you'll also immediately notice the problems. Multi-tasking with such hardware? Forget about it, unless you have a steel nerves. Realistically, LGA 775 based systems today are good only for some light internet, MS Office tasks and as your back-up computer. That's it.

 

[Retrorockit]

Judging by the scuff marks it may have been a kick start version.

LMBO!

The funny thing is they say that on one at the Olivetti museum the keyboard will freeze up if it isn't run for a couple days. So there may be some truth to it. New meaning to the term booting up.

 

[agent_x007]

Even if you pair an old top-of-the-line 775 CPU like QX9770 with some more modern GPU like RX 580 or GTX 1060, you'll still have a major bottleneck - bottleneck being the CPU. Try running newer games like Far Cry 5, Battlefield V, Assassin's Creed Odyssey at FHD resolution and medium-high details with Q6600 and 8800GT and you'll immediately see the problems. Try making video editing or animations in Blender (free software ) with such system and you'll also immediately notice the problems.

QX6850 with GTX 1080 vs. BF V (beta) : LINK.
Not saying Core 2 Quad is enough, just showing how it looks like when you do it.

 

[Retrorockit]

QX6850 with GTX 1080 vs. BF V (beta) : LINK.
Not saying Core 2 Quad is enough, just showing how it looks like when you do it.

The QX6850 is a 65nm CPU. The 45nm gains about 10% performance just from that. (Q6600 G0 @ 3GHZ vs. Q9650 3GHz 9x333) can clock higher, and the QX9770 has 400fsb. There's more to be had in LGA775. That's basically an unlocked Q6600 G0 on 333fsb. SSE4.1 instructions may have a lot to do with it. But thanks for posting that.
Could you run it at userbenchmark.com to see what CPU score it gets and see what CPUs it actually stacks up against?

 

[agent_x007]

FSB doesn't matter, you should see that my QX6850 had 488MHz clock on it with that overclock ?
SSE4.1 allows Time Spy tests and Odyssey needs SSE4.2 (ie. IMC on Intel).
I didn't ran userbench (I tested this over a year ago), next time I could try to do it.

 

[Retrorockit]

FSB doesn't matter, you should see that my QX6850 had 488MHz clock on it with that overclock ?
SSE4.1 allows Time Spy tests and Odyssey needs SSE4.2 (ie. IMC on Intel).
I didn't ran userbench (I tested this over a year ago), next time I could try to do it.

FSB doesn't matter to me either. QX6800 15x266.

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 @ 3989.4 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR

[bg4n0r] Validated Dump by BTXTREME (2015-09-28 03:04:25) - MB: Dell 0WG864 - RAM: 8192 MB

valid.x86.fr

 

[agent_x007]

FSB doesn't matter to me either. QX6800 15x266.

?
I thought, you said QX9770 was better because it had higher FSB than Q6600/QX6850 ?

 

[Retrorockit]

?
I thought, you said QX9770 was better because it had higher FSB than Q6600/QX6850 ?

If you're using the unlocked multiplier on an FSB locked MB then it becomes important. It's just showing that the QX9770 has a different FSBspec than the QX9650, QX6850. There may or may not be an advantage for different users. On a Dell T3400 X38 workstation it could unlock a hidden 400fsb that you couldn't get any other way. It's only better if you can use it. My E520 was locked at 266fsb so it didn't matter "to me". I went for 4GHz without it. Sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn't.
I certainly wouldn't pay a boatload of money for a QX9770 if I didn't need the 400fsb.

 

[agent_x007]

Ah, so it's a OEM thing. OK.

 

[Komshija]

QX6850 with GTX 1080 vs. BF V (beta) : LINK.
Not saying Core 2 Quad is enough, just showing how it looks like when you do it.

Again, who in their right mind would pair a very old CPU with newer top-tier GPU, except for testing purposes? This is one extremely unbalanced system. QX6850 was a top tier CPU back then, but that was a long time ago. Similarly my main system i7 6700K + GTX 1080 will be a tree trunk for the next 10 years, but I'll replace the whole system much sooner than that, likely in 2022.
I saw a few actual examples, not just for testing, where people paired C2Q with older mid-range GPU's like, for the example, GTX 750 or HD 7770 and were using them as a very low-budget gaming machine for playing CSGO, Minecraft, GTA San Andreas and alike. That's more reasonable configuration, but far from being good enough or fast for modern times. Simply it's a bad combination because such systems lack power for modern games and modern software.

Considering the upgrades today, I wouldn't go below the performance of an Core i5 2400 for CPU's and GTX 760 or R9 280 for GPU's, especially if someone will occasionally play some modern games.

 

[Retrorockit]

My Optiplex 380, X5470, GTX 1060 runs Superposition 1080 Medium just fine.

 

[DR4G00N]

My Optiplex 380, X5470, GTX 1060 runs Superposition 1080 Medium just fine.

Sure, though the 1060 is being choked to death by that X5470.

And don't think I'm hating on Core 2 cpu's, I have two Intel D5400XS', four various 775 boards and quite a pile of chips for them.
771/775 is fun to tinker with but even Dual X5460's @ 4GHz is only about equivalent to a Vishera FX 8-core @ 5GHz.