TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Trekkie4]

I hope the *Delux PSU *on the Retro PC I have ordered on eBay has no problems,
The seller said it is working fine.I had never heard of the make *Delux*before but it has been going for years has anyone else heard of the make before?
It is a custum build.

Never heard of Delux, although I've seen Deluxe computer cases & other accessories.

Either way, you shouldn't worry about it. If the power supply blows up, you'll just have to replace it. As simple as that ... or if you happen to have a PSU tester you could hook it up & check to see if all of the values are in order & put your mind at ease.

I've been following your quest on buying an old Windows 98 gaming system, but what I don't understand is why do you seem so afraid of making the wrong choice. Or why would you even go for pre-built system instead of building one yourself, to fit your needs? One of the beauties when putting together an old retro-gaming system is that you can make anything you want, according to your personal taste & needs. Not to mention that it's highly entertaining & valuable experience, that's how I made all my retro builds. I'd start with empty case frame & work my way up to full build.

 

[Greenslade]

Never heard of Delux, although I've seen Deluxe computer cases & other accessories.

Either way, you shouldn't worry about it. If the power supply blows up, you'll just have to replace it. As simple as that ... or if you happen to have a PSU tester you could hook it up & check to see if all of the values are in order & put your mind at ease.

I've been following your quest on buying an old Windows 98 gaming system, but what I don't understand is why do you seem so afraid of making the wrong choice. Or why would you even go for pre-built system instead of building one yourself, to fit your needs? One of the beauties when putting together an old retro-gaming system is that you can make anything you want, according to your personal taste & needs. Not to mention that it's highly entertaining & valuable experience, that's how I made all my retro builds. I'd start with the empty case frame & work my way up to full build.

Delux without an e.Well i have never done it before, i get your point though.It is a bit of a daunting task to do for someone who has never done it before.I will try it as some point.I could start by taking a motherboard out of the case and putting it back in there only one channel works on it ,there are bent pins on the CPU unit.,i will be chucking it out anyway to many bent Pins.
To test if i can do it as a trial for trying the real thing with a new mother board.
That would be a nasty experanxe for one to blow up Has anyone on here had that happen to them?
Another video about the 5v rail.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Of course... Using modern components inside the truly vintage, period-correct system is the waste of time & money if you ask me. Nothing ... and I repeat /nothing/ works better than the real deal! My Pentium II 350 will boot Win98 off the mechanical hard drive (Quantum Fireball) in less than a minute. In less than HALF a minute, to be exact. I would love to see the same result on a modern-day system ... even with SSD!

I would agree with one exception, CompactFlash. They're a wonderful substitute for IDE hard drives.

 

[Trekkie4]

I would agree with one exception, CompactFlash. They're a wonderful substitute for IDE hard drives.

Maybe so, and perhaps it would work for generic (and testing) applications. That being said, I've heard of Read/Write cycle issues with CF cards and because of that I can't imagine one substituting a genuine mechanical hard drive on a daily basis, especially when it comes to retro gaming which repeatedly reads & writes to a hard drive for literally thousands of times.

Edit
Speaking of vintage storage solutions... I just bought these on ebay, yesterday


Because who doesn't like self-ejecting, quirky BTC CD-ROM drives?! It's the same unit(s) as the one I featured in here the other day, the one with cold solder joint(s).

 

[lexluthermiester]

Maybe so, and perhaps it would work for generic (and testing) applications.

It works perfectly. Have you tried it? I posted some links to an adapter and flash card a few pages back. Not expensive.

 

[Trekkie4]

It works perfectly. Have you tried it? I posted some links to an adapter and flash card a few pages back. Not expensive.

Adapters themselves are quite cheap, yes. But 40GB CF cards not so much ... at least they hadn't been last time I checked.

So, what you're saying is that the CF card could perform the same amount of Read & Write cycles as mechanical hard drive, without sustaining any damage?

 

[lexluthermiester]

But 40GB CF cards not so much ... at least they hadn't been last time I checked.

Don't buy 40GB cards then. it's an uncommon size. Get a 32GB or 64GB. Much more common and inexpensive.

So, what you're saying is that the CF card could perform the same amount of Read & Write cycles as mechanical hard drive, without sustaining any damage?

I've never seen any problems.

 

[Trekkie4]

Don't buy 40GB cards then. it's an uncommon size. Get a 32GB or 64GB. Much more common and inexpensive.

I was comparing it against 40GB hard drive, which is my personal standard for Win9x/ME retro gaming systems. Anywhere between 3 & 10GB is considered authentic but not convenient. 20GB is considered acceptable (alas barely enough), 30 (uncommon) too difficult to find, where 40GB is "just right" & leaves enough room for future upgrades/more games to be installed.

I've never seen any problems.

Just saying what I heard from others. I'm not 100% sure on this, but even LGR may have talked about this subject at some point. Would have to trace back & double check.

 

[Greenslade]

I would agree with one exception, CompactFlash. They're a wonderful substitute for IDE hard drives.

Here,s our friend Phil he sounds different in this video than he does now. But this was made 7 years ago. Hard drive options for Retro PCs has anyone used a SCSI drive?
Phil says CF compact flash is only good for Ms DOS? I know you and clint disagree with Phil on that Lex

why he has that background music going on in the background I don,t know.

CF vs. SD vs. HDD speed test.CF is a clear winner Nice puss in the video. Very cluttered in the case with very little airflow

SCSI I see there are ideal for severs.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I was comparing it against 40GB hard drive, which is my personal standard for Win9x/ME retro gaming systems. Anywhere between 3 & 10GB is considered authentic but not convenient. 20GB is considered acceptable (alas barely enough), 30 (uncommon) too difficult to find, where 40GB is "just right" & leaves enough room for future upgrades/more games to be installed.

Fair enough. However, Windows 98/ME will operate perfectly on a 64GB or even 128GB card.

Just saying what I heard from others. I'm not 100% sure on this, but even LGR may have talked about this subject at some point. Would have to trace back & double check.

As long as you use a brand name, high quality card, you shouldn't encounter any issues.

Phil says CF compact flash is only good for DOS? I know you and clint disagree

For DOS use, smaller cards are needed, like 1GB, 2GB or 4GB as DOS was never designed to handle anything larger than 8GB storage volumes.

 

[Ruru]

Finally got the LGA775 setup working, currently installing XP and then all the drivers for it. Then after that, I'll install Win7 x64. And I'll also first install the GPU drivers with one card installed, then I'll add the another.

-Asus P5Q Pro
-Core 2 Quad Q9500 @ 3.4GHz, I'll find out its max later, currently at 400FSB
-4x 2GB DDR2-800
-Radeon HD 4890 Crossfire
-2x 80GB & 2x 160GB old SATA HDDs
-Samsung DVD-RW
-Nexus 850W

I'll take this to my parents the next time I'll go there.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Core 2 Quad Q9500 @ 3.4GHz, I'll find out its max later, currently at 400FSB

3.4ghz is entirely respectable for a daily OC.

 

[Ruru]

3.4ghz is entirely respectable for a daily OC.

I have a flashback that the RAM goes for around 850-900MHz so I'll put more OC later. Also I'll OC the cards to their max. Though they don't OC to 1GHz. :/

 

[NotHereMan]

For DOS use, smaller cards are needed, like 1GB, 2GB or 4GB as DOS was never designed to handle anything larger than 8GB storage volumes.

You could still use larger storage, but you would just need to have a partition of 2GB for DOS, correct? It's been a very long time, but at one point I was able to successfully multiboot DOS 6.22/Win98/XP. I think multiple paritions were definitely involved. From what I remember, the way I set it up is where the system gives me a Microsoft Boot prompt to boot to either XP or 98, then it gave me the option to boot from either 98 or DOS.

I had to create the 2GB DOS parition first, then I used that same partition to install 98. I believe XP went onto a different partition. All on mechanical hard drives of course, but would this same approach work on the CF stuff?

 

[stinger608]

Hard drive options for Retro PCs has anyone used a SCSI drive?

Yeppers. I've got an ole Dell Dual Slot processor system that runs the old 50 pin SCSI hard drives.

 

[freeagent]

Finally got the LGA775 setup working, currently installing XP and then all the drivers for it. Then after that, I'll install Win7 x64. And I'll also first install the GPU drivers with one card installed, then I'll add the another.

-Asus P5Q Pro
-Core 2 Quad Q9500 @ 3.4GHz, I'll find out its max later, currently at 400FSB
-4x 2GB DDR2-800
-Radeon HD 4890 Crossfire
-2x 80GB & 2x 160GB old SATA HDDs
-Samsung DVD-RW
-Nexus 850W

I'll take this to my parents the next time I'll go there.

Makes me want to put my X48 and Xeon X3360 into my old Stacker.. I might even have a spare 850w unit that isn't bagged. I do have a spare Z77 system, but that's no fun That Xeon will run up to 4100MHz on that board iirc..

 

[Ruru]

Sucks that updating Win7 seems to be a hard thing to do. I remember having similar problems few years ago when I last time tested it, but now it's even harder.

Well, if it doesn't get the updates now, I'll get to the benchmarking. One card at stock & OC'd, then in Crossfire at stock & OC'd.

 

[Greenslade]

The first time I had heard of SCSI was when I saw Phil s video about the different drives for Retro PCs which I put on here. But the video I put on here explains all about SCSI.drives.

 

[Ruru]

Finally it works..

The first time I had heard of SCSI was when I saw Phil s video about the different drives for Retro PCs which I put on here. But the video I put on here explains all about SCSI.drives.

Yeah, that was the professional HDD and other devices' interface mostly in professional use back in the day. One advantage was that SCSI controllers had their own processors, so they didn't use the main CPU for communicating with the system.

 

[Mussels]

So I gather from Phil,s informative video,i had no idea till then.

I'm glad PSU's evolved, the good? old days when system shutdown left you looking at orange text and you had to crank that physical switch like Frankenstein flipping a bigass lever on the wall

Those were the days i got electrocuted far more often.
No wonder i'm odd.

I would agree with one exception, CompactFlash. They're a wonderful substitute for IDE hard drives.

Are they a good option for Windows 7 systems?

I have a core 2 quad system i've had to fix where the motherboard is technically just IDE with sata convertors, so without TRIM support etc it's apparently a good way to get an SSD to die a fast death.
They have a modern 1TB mech in there, but the concept of a CF boot drive in lieu of an SSD never occured to me

 

[Ruru]

Ah, the good old AT PSUs. As a kid I wondered why there was that text, but then I realized that the power button is hard-wired to the PSU itself and there was no soft power on/off like with ATX.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

Maybe so, and perhaps it would work for generic (and testing) applications. That being said, I've heard of Read/Write cycle issues with CF cards and because of that I can't imagine one substituting a genuine mechanical hard drive on a daily basis, especially when it comes to retro gaming which repeatedly reads & writes to a hard drive for literally thousands of times.

Edit
Speaking of vintage storage solutions... I just bought these on ebay, yesterday


Because who doesn't like self-ejecting, quirky BTC CD-ROM drives?! It's the same unit(s) as the one I featured in here the other day, the one with cold solder joint(s).

That time when BTC meant sth else lol...

Still odd to me that optical drives are considered vintage nowadays, but fair enough. I still keep my trusty Pioneer DVR-216D in current PC as last resort solution. Rarely used it in recent years, but better to have it and not suddenly need it than other way round.

 

[Ruru]

That time when BTC meant sth else lol...

Noticed that as well. Felt like that there was an infinite amount of manufacturers/brands of optical drives back in the day

 

[Greenslade]

I was comparing it against 40GB hard drive, which is my personal standard for Win9x/ME retro gaming systems. Anywhere between 3 & 10GB is considered authentic but not convenient. 20GB is considered acceptable (alas barely enough), 30 (uncommon) too difficult to find, where 40GB is "just right" & leaves enough room for future upgrades/more games to be installed.


Just saying what I heard from others. I'm not 100% sure on this, but even LGR may have talked about this subject at some point. Would have to trace back & double check.

This is our friend Clint he must be using this in Dos as it is only a 4Gb card. I think this is the one you are thinking about Trekkie4. Depending on how many ide cabals are on the PC and whether they reach I will get the PCIe one for easy access to change it.

 

[Trekkie4]

That time when BTC meant sth else lol...

Still odd to me that optical drives are considered vintage nowadays, but fair enough. I still keep my trusty Pioneer DVR-216D in current PC as last resort solution. Rarely used it in recent years, but better to have it and not suddenly need it than other way round.

Noticed that as well. Felt like that there was an infinite amount of manufacturers/brands of optical drives back in the day

There's one other (local) forum where some of the guys would get crazy when you mention the word "BTC" to them. As in "Are you f***ing crazy?! That thing is a piece of crap, throw it away" or "I gave you a perfectly fine Teac all those years ago, and here you talking to us about BTC?!" Well, what can I say ... everyone has their own opinion of computer hardware & are chasing their own fantasies or unicorns.

Nostalgia aside, BTC really was a rather "odd" CD-ROM drive to say at least. It was built like a tank, but I guess you could call it quirky. It would either suddenly release, eject CD at full speed (and have it grinding inside the tray for at least 10-15 seconds) or it would get stuck and make crunchy sounds as if it was grinding gears inside, and the whole thing was falling apart. But then you would eject and reload, and it would work perfectly fine afterwards. In fact, you can clearly see the aftermath of ejected CD (at full speed) and what happened to the edges, while spinning out of control inside the tray:


Don't worry, it's just a generic Verbatim disc for every-day use, nothing too valuable that couldn't be replaced. Then again, there are moments where it would work perfectly normal for days. In fact, these things make interesting sound when seeking (moving laser up & down) due to the way the laser transport was built. Instead of having a servo motor bolted to the worm gear (as you'd normally expect on any modern CD/DVD unit) this thing uses 3 or 4 small plastic gears between the motor & worm gear to form a working transmission, speed reduction & torque increase. And that is what makes that specific, almost robotic sound. I guess the best way to describe it would be "WEE-HE", or "WOO-WHO", depending on the pitch & seek cycle.


It would seem as if I'm stockpiling these but the thing is, despite already having 7 or 8 of them pretty much all of them so far had been used or taken apart & used for parts (non-working units). But having quite a few of "Adison" cases from my childhood & rebuilding several of them according to the exact specs from back in a day, I absolutely had to use BTC on all of them. Yes, I suppose Plextor, Hitachi or Teac would have been a better choice, higher end but these things are not nostalgic to me, since I didn't have a Plextor back then ... I had BTC.