Re: How important is screen resolution to you?

Posted on Today, 17:06

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by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

On a side note, I hate it when modern-ish 16:9 TVs insert ugly GREY bars instead of black bars for displaying 4:3 content. On plasma TVs, the grey letterbox & pillarbox bars could help minimize burn-in if you were a movie buff. It doesn't surprise me that some modern TVs (well, OLEDs) do that too. …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on Today, 16:47

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have been in Canada for 24 years now, and yet " Absolute Weak Sauce " is still my first thought when I plug in a flimsy 120v device. :P Though, it seems that some kitchen appliances are finally taking advantage of 20A outlets, kind of. When I was randomly measuring the power draw of various things …

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Re: How important is screen resolution to you?

Posted on 2024-05-08, 18:22

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by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Yep, it's a 120" 17:9 AR screen, to match the somewhat unusual 4096x2160 resolution of the projector. 220 inches...at 4:3?! Yikes - that wouldn't even fit on my wall! 😀 Not to mention, at 220" my projector would likely have trouble hitting the brightness required for HDR and 3D movies.

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Re: How important is screen resolution to you?

Posted on 2024-05-08, 17:43

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by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Projector user here, using a 4096x2160 native D-ILA on a 120" screen. I can only get my old DVD rips (852x480 2.5 mb/s 264) to look somewhat decent by sitting in the back row and just letting my poor vision fill in the gaps. The best upscaler I've seen is madVR running on an HTPC - it's actually …

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Re: Pentium 60/66 are DOS Only?

Posted on 2024-05-02, 15:54

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you bought a P60 to game on in 1993, and your buddy bought a DX2-66 at the same time, he would have been laughing at you for 2 years right up until Descent came out. The only people who could really make use of the Pentium architecture for those couple of years, were power users with CAD and …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2024-04-16, 03:38

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My PCI version FX 5500 turned up today. Popped off the heatsink, and...I've been HAD! It's a 5200 in disguse. It shows up as a 5500 though, some crafty VBIOS work from a factory in China. ...and here's the thing, it's not much better than the 16MB onboard on my Slot 1 board. Is it this bad because …

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Re: Motherboard with two PCI x16 slots that can simultaneously run in x16 mode?

Posted on 2024-04-16, 03:27

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you really want to go back in time and grab a period-correct board, the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe will do that for you. That's a socket 939 nForce 4 SLI x16 board. Also, any reputable X79 board will do that; SB-E and IVB-E CPUs provide 40 PCIe lanes.

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Re: What music are you listening to?

Posted on 2024-04-13, 02:16

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by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Real jukebox with records inside? There used to be a Pizza Hut in my town with a record playing jukebox, but sadly the building was demolished 20 years ago. Nah, it's probably hard drive or internet based. But it's got the old school lights and everything. :) Juice Newton - Love's Been A Little Bit …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2024-04-10, 23:30

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does ripping music CDs onto my computer count as a retro activity? Dude! That to me is not a retro activity at all. Hell, I wish Hardware Unboxed would review optical drives and include audio extraction benchmarks. I buy CDs from garage sales all the time. It is such a cheap, fun way to discover or …

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Re: Are the Creative GigaWorks T40 Series II a good choice for a retro rig?

Posted on 2024-04-02, 23:18

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I tried the T40s with my Win98 machine a few years ago. From what I remember, they had very peaky output at around 110-150Hz; likely plastic enclosure resonance. After you tone down the peaky mid- and upper-bass, give the lower 50-65Hz bass regions an additional 5-6db, and increase the 18.5K-20K …

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Re: 2024 - End of the era of Retro Computing Youtube channels?

Posted on 2024-03-09, 08:19

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by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Gee, am I the only one who doesn't even look at video thumbnails? If the title is interesting, I watch. No need to get all wound up about a 320x180 image when the real meat & potatoes - the 15 minute video you get to watch for free (and just as easily back out of, if it's not to your liking) - is a …

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Re: Poll. How did you handle AGP to PCI Express stepover?

Posted on 2024-02-26, 17:09

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Went from a mid-2004 Athlon 3000 + X800XT AGP combo to an Opteron 185 w/ 8800GTS SLI setup in early 2007. I got the Opteron and S939 SLI board super cheap because AM2 and Core 2 had already launched. The video cards were anything but cheap though; think I was only a month shy of the much cheaper ( …

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Re: Tell about your country

Posted on 2024-02-22, 18:09

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by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Born a Brit, now a Canuck. The surgery wasn't too painful, though I still have the accent. Canada is really big. It's also plenty sunny. I can now boldly say to the random passerby "here comes the sun, doo-doo-doo-doo" and usually mean it.

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Re: What music are you listening to?

Posted on 2024-02-17, 03:07

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Just at the pizza place waiting to pick up some din-din. They've got Scorpio (Grandmaster Flash) on the jukebox, which I haven't heard in ages! Somehow this tells me it's going to be a totally copacetic long weekend indeed. ✌️

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Re: Which Mac for retro gaming?

Posted on 2024-02-14, 18:49

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I like the Mac Mini G4 idea. Though really, any pre Fw800 G4 you can get with a Radeon 7500/8500/9000 or GeForce 2/3/4 will fit the bill. Anything faster (Radeon 9500+, GeForce FX+) is an OS X only card and will not support 3D acceleration in OS9, which is where all the good games are. 😉

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Re: What vintage CPU socket saw the biggest increase in CPU horsepower from release to retirement?

Posted on 2024-02-14, 16:39

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For me anything older than LGA 775 with Core 2 latest version/ socket AM2+ with Phenom II is vintage because of missing instruction sets required by today software. Phenom II has only SSE3 functionality and is obsolete. Core 2 45nm has only SSE4.1 and many programs nowadays require both SSE4.1 and …

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Re: What vintage CPU socket saw the biggest increase in CPU horsepower from release to retirement?

Posted on 2024-02-07, 03:00

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Except you cant run a PIII-s 1400 in a PPGA socket 370 because its FC-PGA. You can modify it of course, but then its not the same. Fair enough. Here's a revised, FC-PGA only Socket 370 result. According to my screencap, I actually used a Slot 1 PIII-500E. However the socketed version should be …

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Re: What vintage CPU socket saw the biggest increase in CPU horsepower from release to retirement?

Posted on 2024-02-07, 01:31

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As usual, 3DMark 2001 can answer many of life's difficult questions. -Socket 478 sees a pretty impressive increase, going from 8238 points (Celeron-1700, 7800 GS) to 24372 (P4 3.4, 7800 GS). The best CPU for this socket is 2.96 times faster than the slowest one. -Slot 1 scales from 2163 points (PII- …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2024-01-12, 16:43

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I can still remember when games had minimum requirements for CD-ROM speed. I think this was necessary to support real-time playback of cinematics from disk, and faster speeds became necessary as the movies got larger and needed faster read speed. In Duke's voice: Real men copy the cinematics to a …

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Re: What to consider when deciding AHCI vs IDE, UEFI vs LEGACY on dual booting Windows XP and Windows 7.

Posted on 2024-01-06, 21:49

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

IIRC Win7 was a little quirky with UEFI. It does support it; big OEMs like Dell and HP installed Win7 on UEFI-based systems from 2012 onward. However with home built systems, I've always had better luck installing it in legacy mode. Win10 is easy-peasy. You can switch back and forth between UEFI and …

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