Maes
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Yet, it is :-p
Just yesterday, I received a bunch of PCI, ISA and VESA expansion cards, along with some rarities like a COASt module, a multi-purpose VG-3000 ISA VGA that can be turned into 8 bit, 16-bit, CGA, EGA, MDA etc. just with dip switches and some ISA ethernet adapters.
Also, I received what I thought would be a 386 SX/16 by the markings on the -slim form factor- case. I expected to make a Wolf3D or Win 3.1 machine out it, at best, even if it had 8 MB of RAM.
Well, was I in for a surprise: the motherboard was indeed a 386 JET-300C, but it had a Cyrix Cx486DLC@40 MHz plugged in, along with an external buddy Math co-pro! This means that it plays in the same league as a full-fledged 486DX, and in fact the CPU was only a tad weaker than my 486 DX/40. The machine came with Windows 95 (!) on it, which ran surprisingly fast, too.
As a first step, I replaced the motherboard's (dead) CMOS backup battery: since I didn't have a button cell pack, I just soldered a couple of extension wires to a flashlight's 3 AA battery compartment, threw in some alkalines, and voila', ghetto replaceable CMOS batt. replacement :-p
Set up DOS 6.2, tried to find a decent VGA among the bunch (a Trident TVGA 8900CL or somesuch, with 1 MB of 32-bit DRAM), put in a cheapo opti 82c931 instead of a genuine creative just for kicks (it works fine in Soundblaster Pro mode). It runs Doom, although it's clearly slower than my 486 DX/40 with a VESA local bus. Other stuff like Second Reality and module players, WfW3.11 etc. work fine too, with sound (the OPTi has, surprisingly, good driverless compatibility as a Pro, you just need to run a non-resident setter utility to select between SB Pro and MSS mode).- Show previous comments 17 more
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leileilol said:
Voodoo2-exclusive Glide support
...
The Matrox G200 had the gimmicky Environment Bumpmap support
And theeeeere's your killer. Perhaps I should have rephrased as "the demoscene had bump mapping before it became mainstream on widely supported, consumer-grade video cards that the average Joe could afford, and not on transitional technologies that only techno junkies/spoiled rich-kids could afford at the time" :-p
Which pretty much means DX7 era and less exotic cards by Ati and nVidis, for you and me (unless you fitted in one of the above categories). -
Man, that's a pretty impressive demo for a Speccy. Lol at your friend tho, even back in 88 when I was just a boy with a Tandy I knew about putting programs on the 12-minute cassette tape!
I love the sound chips these old systems had. Amiga's Paula, C64's SID, whatever the GameBoy has. I should get LGPT going on my GBA someday, pity I suck at making music :P
If you like chiptunes, I've recently been listening to the Crunchy Records 2008 Compilation lately, which has some good tracks. Also check this out:
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Super Jamie said:
Man, that's a pretty impressive demo for a Speccy. Lol at your friend tho, even back in 88 when I was just a boy with a Tandy I knew about putting programs on the 12-minute cassette tape!
When I asked him how he could keep so ignorant of the fact that loading + saving was possible, and of the existence of a large software library, e.g. "Didn't you know anyone else with a Speccy or even a C64, Amstrad, etc.?" he replied that he didn't know anyone else with any computer, for that matter :-S
I mean, imagine living in a cave with just a B&W TV (he didn't even know the thing had colours) and Speccy. Nothing else. Sad, isn't it? Especially considering that every other C64, Speccy and Amstrad user I knew had a vast collection of cassettes or floppies, and swapped them with buddies.
About chiptunes....I'd love having a hardware, portable MOD/chiptune player :-D
Bucket said:A shame. Well, put RedHat on it or something.
Even DSL will barely work with 8 MB, and then only in console mode. An older flavour of PC UNIX with x-windows may work better, with x. I recall an ooooold version of Redhat (in 1998) working on 486DX/120 rigs with 12 or 16 MB, but today even DSL won't work with graphics < 24 MB.