TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Trekkie4]

Actually, I'm running Win7, SP1 ... with no intention of (ever) upgrading to something newer

Speaking of beta Windows ... are these worth anything? To be completely honest, I don't even know what some of these do!

Windows Millennium, Beta 2 & Beta 3


Windows 2000 Evaluation & Deployment Kit


Windows 2000 Corporate Preview Program (for all the 3 "flavors" of Win2k)


Windows 2000 Channel Readiness Kit


Office 2000, Release Candidate 1 (is that unofficial, "official" retail release?)


Year 2000 Resource CD


Free Internet!

 

[Audioave10]

Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 - I got this about one year ago (Ebay) for $69 new and complete Open box. This one is a lesser micro board but still has a lot of features.
760G/SB710 AM3. As much as Gigabyte has lost their reputation lately, these mobos have always been great. I have 7 of them and my AM2 790X is 12 years old
still doing fine and slightly OC'ed. Its hard to find anything these days.

 

[Mr.Scott]

The Gigabyte AM2 through AM3+ boards were a good run for them. I have a bunch.
785GM-US2H
790X-UD4P
790FXT-UD5P
890FXA-UD5 black socket

All easy to use and very overclockable.
They are some of my favorite boards to bench on.

 

[Audioave10]

Risky business...I bought this case 6 years ago and opened it TODAY. Lucky me that it is in perfect shape.
Sometimes I think I've got TOO much "stuff".

 

[Trekkie4]

So guys, which one does it better? 3dfx Voodoo2 in SLI ... or nVidia GTX760?

 

[Greenslade]

It's actually funny that floppies are being so obsolete that you actually need to hunt for those from second-hand market... and I'm not that old, 32 next month.

Do floppy discs Deteriorate if they have not been opened?
These are even cheaper than the ones i got ,and they have not been opened.Do all floppy discs work with any OS? they must have been in storage as they were 2.99?



















































View attachment 242614

 

[Ruru]

Do floppy discs Deteriorate if they have not been opened?
These are even cheaper than the ones i got ,and they have not been opened.Do all floppy discs work with any OS? they must have been in storage as they were 2.99?



















































View attachment 242614

Hard to say. I haven't used floppies in ages but I never had any problems.

 

[Greenslade]

Hard to say. I haven't used floppies in ages but I never had any problems.

Thanks i was just wondering ,i know if you don,t use batteries they can even if they are unopened.They must have been in storage for some time at that price of 2.99 The seller is selling them for 4.99 for 10 seems like a good deal ,and unlike the ones i bought have not been opened I am thinking of getting a couple.I have a thin client which i am going to put Windows 98 on.I will use them with this machine

. There Is a lot to get Windows 98 on there, well it is for me.

 

[Audioave10]

Interesting! Is that a difference in the Monitors, the technology, the drivers? Is that the same version of the game?
All of the above? Question is for Trekkie4.

 

[Trekkie4]

Interesting! Is that a difference in the Monitors, the technology, the drivers? Is that the same version of the game?
All of the above? Question is for Trekkie4.

Haha, are you kidding me? All of the above!

First things first - on the left there's a Pentium 4, running previously mentioned Voodoo2 in SLI and the original Half-Life that's been updated with "High Definition" texture pack. High Definition for that era, of course - it was the official update released by Valve themselves. You're seeing 15" LG StudioWorks monitor, running in 1024x768, 60Hz mode.

The one on the right however is Core i5 760, running Gigabyte GTX760 OC Edition, with the modern remake of Half-Life, under the name of Black Mesa (Source). It was a free game which eventually developed into the standalone, retail edition and it's available through Steam. Or you can just grab the free (perfectly legit) version that hasn't been entirely finished & only features the story up to Lambda Core, ending with "long jump" into the Lambda teleporter beam. "Monitor" is actually a Philips FTV, running in 1920x1080 mode.

You'd think that dynamic lighting, shadows & all that modern stuff would outperform the original game, but I have to be honest with you & admit that the game lost that "special something" in the process. IDK, maybe I'm just too sentimental but if I'd have to choose ONE of the two, I would pick the original version, running on 3dfx any time!

 

[stinger608]

So guys, which one does it better? 3dfx Voodoo2 in SLI ... or nVidia GTX760?

That's kind of a no-brainer.

 

[MachineLearning]

That's kind of a no-brainer.

I know, right? SLI is OP!

 

[Susquehannock]

Somebody say floppy? Had these for about 25 years and still work fine.

A couple shots from the Win98 voodoo 4 rig last couple days. Been playing Red Faction and UT'99.

 

[lexluthermiester]

nVidia GTX760

All day long..

 

[Greenslade]

All day long..

I just saw this on utube

how important is it to have a drive that writes and reads faster or is it not important for my basic use?.

There is one on ebay for 15 make an offer with box of 10 floppy discs as seen in the photo.Is it worth going for ,i have a disc drive coming.Along with the 20 pack open box.I just saw the Amstrad ones i put on here unopend 1 for 4.99 2 for 8,48 three for 11.97 that is packs of 10 o think i will go for 2 for 8.48 for 20 more discs.I wish i had waited befiore i got them,That looks a cool drive. It proberly isnt a good idea to get another drive just brcause it reads and writes faster.

 

[MachineLearning]

10 years old... Z77 feels far more recent. It's hard to believe it was back in 2012.

The Biostar TZ77XE4, one of their very good motherboards, a rarity this late in their existence. TPU reviewed this back in the day and loved it, as did many other reviewers.

However, the previous owner of this unfortunately didn't give it a lot of love, the blockhead couldn't even plug in a USB port which you may have noticed evidence of above.

Kaboom. Remnants of an SMD capacitor? Luckily, this wasn't not on my watch. The board powers up just fine, except those two USB ports + PS/2 port don't function.

(evidence of high intelligence in humans)
"Don't force it." I have been told this many times while building things growing up and it's saved my ass many a time. The original owner is lucky the board works.
I got it relatively inexpensively, so I don't really care. I still have 4 rear USB ports and I can OC like mad. Just glad this isn't a Robert B type job where I need to do socket voodoo...
My "cure" is to put electrical tape over the ports and blasted capacitor, as it makes me sad to see and I'd rather pretend it never happened.

I took one of my i7-2600k's, and was off to the races.
Only really gunned for PYPrime, because I wanted to see how well this board would RAM OC. Initially it went extremely poorly, as I was trying 2133MHz+ without bumping VCCSA... lol oops. I'm not fully used to Sandy Bridge yet. Put the CPU @ 4.8GHz, and got a respectable 55th for PYPrime 2b DDR3.

HWBot Submission Here

I used a few kits before deciding to take out my initial frustration on random OEM Kingston Elpida BDSE sticks.

I think I'm some variety of hardware psycho, as I was running this at 2.0v... yes, I know it's not DDR2
The voltage was necessary to stabilize these timings, which are all as low as they can boot into Windows reliably. These fans too, were a necessity, because these chips scale tRCD and seemingly a couple other timings with temperature.

Full timings as I tuned them:

I walk away impressed not only with these OEM sticks, but with this motherboard. vReg is good, around -30mv off BIOS under load and -10mv at idle. It doesn't get hot with my 0.5mm APT2560 pads, and the board overall is subjectively attractive. I wish Biostar still had whatever talent created this product, I'm a big fan, and the BIOS - usually a weak point - is actually quite replete and organized. Good job, seriously.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I just saw this on utube

how important is it to have a drive that writes and reads faster or is it not important for my basic use?.

There is one on ebay for 15 make an offer with box of 10 floppy discs as seen in the photo.Is it worth going for ,i have a disc drive coming.Along with the 20 pack open box.I just saw the Amstrad ones i put on here unopend 1 for 4.99 2 for 8,48 three for 11.97 that is packs of 10 o think i will go for 2 for 8.48 for 20 more discs.I wish i had waited befiore i got them,That looks a cool drive. It proberly isnt a good idea to get another drive just brcause it reads and writes faster.View attachment 242655

I have a TEAC 2X Floppy. It's pretty quick. Copies data at 61kps so it's actually a bit faster than 2X speed.

 

[Greenslade]

I have a TEAC 2X Floppy. It's pretty quick. Copies data at 61kps so it's actually a bit faster than 2X speed.

It is not worth me getting it ,as i have orded a floppy Drive all ready .If i had seen it before i got the drive i have coming i would have.
Normal drive 1.42 format. 25 copy
Sony 2x 1 minute. 15 so nowhere near double the speed.

Somebody say floppy? Had these for about 25 years and still work fine.

View attachment 242638

A couple shots from the Win98 voodoo 4 rig last couple days. Been playing Red Faction and UT'99.

View attachment 242639View attachment 242641View attachment 242642View attachment 242643

That was me.

 

[Trekkie4]

I know, right? SLI is OP!

Uhh ... OP? (Original Poster?)

Somebody say floppy? Had these for about 25 years and still work fine.

View attachment 242638

A couple shots from the Win98 voodoo 4 rig last couple days. Been playing Red Faction and UT'99.

View attachment 242639View attachment 242641View attachment 242642View attachment 242643

I never had a Voodoo4 before, but judging by the bench test results, I have to say that I'm somewhat disappointed ... 3473 points?! I was always under the impression that Voodoo4 was much more powerful than V3, and V3 obviously being more powerful than V2. Yet, I'm getting 2,659 points on my V2 SLI setup. Which (when you think about it) isn't that far off from your results. From what I remember, V3 3000 (AGP) was around 3,000-something...

Either way, thanks for sharing. There's only so much documentation & information on V4 cards out there

All day long..

Wait ... From what I understood, you prefer GTX760?

 

[lexluthermiester]

you prefer GTX760?

Compared to a VooDoo card? Seriously?

 

[Trekkie4]

Compared to a VooDoo card? Seriously?

Seriously... GTX may have all the magic tricks such as dynamic lighting & whatnot but 3dfx has loads of nostalgia & "character". Somehow I was expecting everyone in this thread to agree that 3dfx does it better

 

[Dinnercore]

10 years old... Z77 feels far more recent. It's hard to believe it was back in 2012.

It does, but with 10 years back I personally think it fits in this thread. I have one Z77 board, got it with a destroyed socket and invested in a socket replacement.

Manufacturers went insane on VRMs with these, while the CPUs of that generation actually were very efficient compared to X58 before.

@Trekkie4

I would pick the Voodoo setup too, BUT I can understand why one would go with the GTX option. With the GTX you can have the same visuals as the Voodoo, you can run the old versions of the game. That is the great benefit, you can run your older titles plus some from a later period. Yes it lacks some nostalgic feeling by not using 'period correct' hardware.
But if you want to have that you would need to build a whole system with peripherals for every 2 years in the past. A dedicated 2000 machine, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008 etc.. Who has the time, parts and space for that?
Also as a collector, such rare parts as the Voodoo I would not dare to use in a daily used retro system, I would be horrified of something bad happen to it. Not talking about wear but rather an accident like spilling water, power surge frying components etc.. However unlikely that would be. A GTX is easy to replace.

 

[Greenslade]

Uhh ... OP? (Original Poster?)


I never had a Voodoo4 before, but judging by the bench test results, I have to say that I'm somewhat disappointed ... 3473 points?! I was always under the impression that Voodoo4 was much more powerful than V3, and V3 obviously being more powerful than V2. Yet, I'm getting 2,659 points on my V2 SLI setup. Which (when you think about it) isn't that far off from your results. From what I remember, V3 3000 (AGP) was around 3,000-something...

Either way, thanks for sharing. There's only so much documentation & information on V4 cards out there


Wait ... From what I understood, you prefer GTX760?

Thouse Voodo4 cards are mightily expensive 3dfx voodoo 4 4500 agp graphics card £500 wow
On another subject of rechargeable batteries i bought some EBL ones abought three years ago ,they are charged up accoding to my charger put them in my keyboard and nothing? Would they still say they were charged if they had died?.Anyway rather than wasting money on batteries ,i decied to buy a wired one,i had the same problem with a battery mouse the light was on but it failed to work.Replaced it with a cheap logitech wired one.So you use a wired or battery one?.I am on my Mac now, i use the Apple Magic Keyboard and trackpad with Bluetooth.I also have the magic mouse but there is nothing magic about it.You have to put the cabal under the mouse to charge it.I am surprised they have not changed that by now.

 

[lexluthermiester]

but 3dfx has loads of nostalgia & "character".

And it can't run Black Mesa. That's what was being compared. The OG Halflife and the Black Mesa fan-made remaster. A GTX760 can run both, effortlessly. The Voodoo, nostalgic or not, can't. Function before fashion my friend, function before fashion.

Edit:
Sorry man. Didn't mean to insult or disappoint you. But I was never nostalgic about HL1. It was good, but to me, not as good as Quake1, the engine of which it was based on. Heck, to me, Heretic 2 was better! Now compared to Black Mesa? I like that remake! Very well done, IMHO..

 

[Trekkie4]

@Trekkie4

I would pick the Voodoo setup too, BUT I can understand why one would go with the GTX option. With the GTX you can have the same visuals as the Voodoo, you can run the old versions of the game. That is the great benefit, you can run your older titles plus some from a later period. Yes it lacks some nostalgic feeling by not using 'period correct' hardware.
But if you want to have that you would need to build a whole system with peripherals for every 2 years in the past. A dedicated 2000 machine, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008 etc.. Who has the time, parts and space for that?
Also as a collector, such rare parts as the Voodoo I would not dare to use in a daily used retro system, I would be horrified of something bad happen to it. Not talking about wear but rather an accident like spilling water, power surge frying components etc.. However unlikely that would be. A GTX is easy to replace.

Hmm... I see your point and I even know someone who feels the same way about retro hardware (the guy prefers Glide emulators & VMs over the real thing), but that's not my cup of tea.

Although I do consider myself as retro hardware collector, it does make me wonder - what's the point in stockpiling these things if you're not going to use them? Doesn't have to be every day obviously ... and I'm certainly not going to use my Pentium II to send emails or watch YouTube But I do find myself playing Half-Life, Carmageddon II, NFS3 & other titles from time to time. Sometimes only for a day or two and sometimes for the whole month, day after day. Yes, of course I would feel bad if one of the cards would suddenly release the "magic smoke" but IMHO it's worth the risk. Where's the fun otherwise?

Besides, back in a day when I first joined TPU & had roughly 35-40 retro systems, I've had situations where the system would either fail to boot or to power on, entirely because of sitting inside the closet for too long. Nothing ever lasts forever ... unfortunately

Thouse Voodo4 cards are mightily expensive 3dfx voodoo 4 4500 agp graphics card £500 wow
(...)

Yup! pretty much the reason why I never got my hands on V4, V5 5000 and/or 5500 & 6000

From what I've seen and heard so far, I didn't miss much. Voodoo2 is the way to go if you want Glide support in your system. Especially if you want to play older, DOS (or Win95) games as the newer Voodoo cards seem to be having issues with those. Where do you want to go from that point on is entirely your decision. Heh, I could theoretically plug in my Voodoo2 setup into Core i5 motherboard & pair it with GTX760. Of course, something like that wouldn't make any sense but hey - it's possible!

And it can't run Black Mesa. That's what was being compared. The OG Halflife and the Black Mesa fan-made remaster. A GTX760 can run both, effortlessly. The Voodoo, nostalgic or not, can't. Function before fashion my friend, function before fashion.

Edit:
Sorry man. Didn't mean to insult or disappoint you. But I was never nostalgic about HL1. It was good, but to me, not as good as Quake1, the engine of which it was based on. Heck, to me, Heretic 2 was better! No compared to Black Mesa? I like that remake! Very well done, IMHO..

It's all good, I know what you meant

It's all in the eye of the beholder so to speak. To one person this may seem like pure nostalgia & bring back memories, to others it's just an old hardware, being limited by tons of oversights & technical limitations. Same thing with those BTC CD-ROM drives. I was just talking to someone the other day & he told me how BTC is literally "trash" (or garbage, if you prefer) and how I should look into getting a Teac, Plextor or something more decent. But that's the irony, Plextor isn't nostalgic, not to me anyway.

We all know it existed, and we all knew how it looked like (and that it was probably the best ODD back in a day), but nothing more or less. Same thing with Half-Life running on Voodoo cards. For me it's the ticket back in time ... to some it's a complete insanity

On a side note, I found one of the very few remaining links for the free version of Black Mesa (Source) available on MODDB