TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Ruru]

How much clockspeed is required on a 486DX for mp3 playback?

You'll probably see my comment there as I guessed 66MHz and I was kinda right.

 

[lexluthermiester]

How much clockspeed is required on a 486DX for mp3 playback?

You'll probably see my comment there as I guessed 66MHz and I was kinda right.

I never used MP3s until the Pentium2-400/Celeron300A@450. Winamp always ran well though. Interesting insights.

 

[Ruru]

I never used MP3s until the Pentium2-400/Celeron300A@450. Winamp always run well though. Interesting insights.

Pentium II 400 @ 450 was fast enough to have Winamp play music when I played Diablo II.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Pentium II 400 @ 450 was fast enough to have Winamp play music when I played Diablo II.

You must have had an SB Live or another dedicated sound card. Hardware sound acceleration was excellent! Those were the days...

 

[Ruru]

You must have had an SB Live or another dedicated sound card. Hardware sound acceleration was excellent! Those were the days...

I had a Live! 5.1 Digital back then. Upgraded to PIII-500 @ 575 later and RAM also was boosted from 160MB to 512MB.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I had a Live! 5.1 Digital back then. Upgraded to PIII-500 @ 575 later and RAM also was boosted from 160MB to 512MB.

That was such a good card!

 

[Ruru]

That was such a good card!

Though nothing beats Audigy2 ZS if you ask me.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Though nothing beats Audigy2 ZS if you ask me.

For 9X Windows? Yes. For XP, the X-Fi is the bomb!

 

[Ruru]

For 9X Windows? Yes. For XP, the X-Fi is the bomb!

Ah, I have to admit that I haven't touched Win98 SE after 2006, I've had Audigy2 on from XP to 10. Though I also had a X-Fi XtremeGamer back in the day and nothing to complain

 

[80-watt Hamster]

You must have had an SB Live or another dedicated sound card. Hardware sound acceleration was excellent! Those were the days...

Did all the SBLive! cards do accelerated decoding? As an abject n00b in '98, I nabbed an SBL! Value based on rep and cost, and certainly don't remember any issues on a K6-2/400.

No, not really. 2 of them I've had for quite awhile. The one on the far left and the center one. The one on the far right, an Aurora, my boss just gave to me a couple of weeks ago. Had the liquid cooler in it but it had sat so long it wouldn't work. Had to put a Hyper 212 EVO in it and ram. Works like a champ though.
Installed a 12 gig triple channel kit and tossed Windows 7 on it. Frigging thing flies. LOL

Another Aurora sighting, given me by a co-worker. Given how bulky and heavy the sucker is, I'm half-surprised your desk supports an additional two even bigger Aliens.

The CLC still works, though the R9 280 I got it with was being more trouble than it was worth, so now it's just sitting there folding on an, um, GT 1030. ... What, it's the only F@H-compatible card I had left. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Robert B]

I never had one back in the day but I had to get me one of these TODAY! (dirt cheap. flea market loot!)

Modem Highscreen Bahn-Boostar 56K - Standard of the future! Vobis. Featured by ELSA. NOS.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Did all the SBLive! cards do accelerated decoding? As an abject n00b in '98, I nabbed an SBL! Value based on rep and cost, and certainly don't remember any issues on a K6-2/400.

I believe so. All of the SB Live cards were based on a similar sound processor design that was expanded upon with extra features to match the product on offer. This included the "Value" edtions of the cards. Same with the Audigy and X-Fi. After that, things got a bit weird in the product chain for Sound Blaster products.

 

[bobbybluz]

For 9X Windows? Yes. For XP, the X-Fi is the bomb!

I still have two X-Fi Platinums in use in Win 7 rigs. One I bought new, the other I traded a socket 939 CPU that I paid $20 for to somebody on Craigslist in 2010. On the other hand the Asus Xonar D2X is my all-time favorite audio card and I now have six of them. For both the X-Fi and D2X I use third party software.

Though nothing beats Audigy2 ZS if you ask me.

I have an Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro in my vintage "museum of top-end 2003-2005 parts" rig.

​

 

[80-watt Hamster]

I know that all cases have windows now, and people do their aesthetics with RGB and custom sleeving, but I still miss colorful components, even though no one sees them. One from my past (...present, since I still have it?!?):

 

[Robert B]

Flea market loot.

1. Gigabyte GA-6BXE V2.1 - 440BX
2. Intel Pentium 3 600MHz 600E/256/100 1.65V SL3H6
3. Intel Pentium 2 450MHz - SL2U7
4. Intel Pentium 3 450MHz 450/512/100 2.0V - SL364
5. PowerColor ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 - 2GB
6. AMD K6-2 350MHz - missing one pin.(AM-2 / ADSC# Cache Address Strobe) Showpiece nothing more. Bonus for the parts on points 1-4.

The big unknown is the ATI 5870. Me being me I said to bite the bullet. It also needs a new fan. The old one has a huge wobble and ate through the metal and has scratched the top cover. If it is still alive then it will be a story to be told. It was very cheap but I'm starting to think that there is a very good reason that it was cheap ...

 

[Retrorockit]

My first computer was a hand me down Desktop AST 486SX-33 with a backplane for the CPU. This was supposed to allow for later CPU compatability, But the leap from 16 bit to 32 bit Pentiums made it irrelevant. No ATX stuff for me!
I did what I could with it. Evergreen 586-133 kit, added 256kb of L2 cache (it came with 0) STB Nitro 2MB ISA video card, and some kind of sound card.
It never would play games ( flight simulators) very well because of the ISA video bus. It may have had a VLB slot, but budget and lack of knowledge kept me from using that.

 

[Ruru]

DAMN! Back in the day there was so much more innovation.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Yeah those coolers look like space ships compared to the big square blocks of aluminum now days guess they look like borg ships lol

 

[QuietBob]

Remember my OEM HD2400 Pro? It was unusable because of overheating. It'd go over 80 C and then start crashing randomly (with fresh TIM). So, I decided to slap a random fan on it. I uploaded the pics in the ghetto thread, where it caused quite a stir



Now I've put it in my daily driver and been using it for about a week. Incredibly, this 2007 budget GPU with mere 256MB RAM does just fine in casual scenarios. I've watched 1080p YT on it and even did videoconferencing with 10+ streams. Quite amazing how an old bottom of the barrel video adapter can hold up even today

 

[F-Zero]

Hey guys ! I'm not sure if the last 3 pictures are for this thread so forgive me. Anyway I tried some crossfire, got my first gen. i5 running and played with the devil

 

[JustAnEngineer]

I had (or may still have) a Radeon HD 3870x2 that cost $462 in January 2008. There were a lot of games at the time for which Crossfire didn't help much at all.

 

[Ruru]

I had (or may still have) a Radeon HD 3870x2. There were a lot of games at the time for which Crossfire didn't help much at all.

I had mine in 2009 and in most games I had a significant boost over HD 3850.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Still have.

 

[68Olds]

I had a pair of HD 3870's back then. I still have one of them, gave the other to a friend in need of an upgrade. I only turned in one 3dMark06 in '09 for the pair in xfire, 20,400 with an e8600 @ 4.5GHz.

While not computer hardware, these are vintage hardware adjacent. I found them in the cupboard & thought I'd share. They are from the Marietta GA Microcenter, which is the 2nd oldest location. I know we picked them up around the time the store opened & google tells me that was in 1988! Had to get those floppies & tractor feed paper from somewhere! lol

 

[Ruru]

Got some freebies, an E8400 and an E8500. I'll put the 775 testbed together soon.