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A SWEATY FATBEARD posted:the cable wasn't terminated and a flailing end would introduce data transmission errors. This was reversed in early 90s, rendering a whole army of 40MB IDE steppers "sort of" incompatible-ish with later cables/paddle cards/drives. And 40MB IDE steppers are what most people ran in those days. I sort of missed the point of this one, so allow me to extrapolate why this was important. a) if you were upgrading from an old st506 interface and going ATA, there was no easy way to copy your data over from an old analog disk to a new ATA disk as both interfaces were designed to use the same system resources. b) if you were copying data from a failing ATA drive to a new ATA drive, and they refused to work together on a single channel, you were hosed. Hook up your computer to a different one using a null modem cable and wait for ~26 hours for everything to copy over to the temporary machine, then after installing a new drive, wait another 26 hours for all data to get sent back to the new drive. Dual ATA channels - which we took for granted during most of 90s and 2000s - were mostly a 486 thing. The BIOS in 386s and 286s was designed to work with only one ATA channel so if both of your drives refused to work on a single channel, which was painfully common, the techie would scream and look for a Laplink floppy. IBM and Seagate drives were mostly okay, but yeah good luck getting your Kalok and Conner to cooperate on a single ATA channel.
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Feb 3, 2016 21:00
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GAY 4 ORGANS 
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Tarkus posted:This thread has inspired me to collect a huge array of emulators and ROMs/Disks the last few days. That said, I Remember when I first got our first Matrox G400 video card, the tech demo that came with it made me think that nothing could ever get better with graphics. God I was such a Matrox fanboy. They were smart in knowing when they were defeated and pulling out/focusing on what they did well, probably the only reason they're around anymore. Although I think their latest cards all use AMD stuff. I still have a Parhelia  and my recent K6 III I put together to play older games has a G400.Because of how SCSI also was an actual, proper bus you also could have several SCSI controllers on the same bus which meant you could share drives between devices. Of course you couldn't write to them at the same time without causing a mess, but you know, it had it's uses. That is, when the controller let you change the ID, some *insisted* on being 7. I have some video hardware for the Amiga lying around which would capture analog video, digitize it and directly raw stream it to connected SCSI drives without going over the system bus as that would've been prohibitive with the 3,5 MB/s Zorro II had. This was incredibly advanced stuff and costed thousands, you needed fast drives for that. Every USB Stick for ten bucks nowdays is faster. How time flies. I used 4DOS extensively. I also dragged my feet on Win95 for a while. EDIT: Just remembered the huge-rear end manual for 4DOS. Police Automaton has a new favorite as of 21:38 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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Feb 3, 2016 21:15
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Tarkus posted:This thread has inspired me to collect a huge array of emulators and ROMs/Disks the last few days. That said, I Remember when I first got our first Matrox G400 video card, the tech demo that came with it made me think that nothing could ever get better with graphics. 1999? I bet that was super impressive back then. Hell, I remember thinking Diablo 2 with the parralax scrolling looked really cool. I remember being jealous of my friend who had a 3dfx card so he could enable all the 3dfx "extras" in Diablo 2. I guess there's now Nvidia Hairworks, so the more things change....
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Feb 3, 2016 21:53
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loving lmao at anyone that bought non-Voodoo graphics cards back then for gaming purposes. What the heck were you thinking?
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Feb 3, 2016 22:08
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Mak0rz posted:loving lmao at anyone that bought non-Voodoo graphics cards back then for gaming purposes. What the heck were you thinking? The very first 3D card I ever bought was some Diamond (Insert XXXXXXTREEEEEEME naming scheme here) based on the Rendition Verite 2 chipset. If you don't know what that is, don't be surprised. There's a reason it died into obscurity. I managed to get GLQuake to run on it. Well, that's not entirely true. I managed to get a specially compiled version of it (VQuake I think) to run on it, and it looked fantastic and ran great. But there wasn't a recent enough version that actually worked online with other players. The GL drivers were buggy to the point of locking up GLQuake solid, running lovely, or being so dark you couldn't see anything (and gamma adjustments didn't work). I owned that card for about 2 days before it went back to the store for a full refund. The following week, I bought my Voodoo2, and thus began my 3D gaming experience proper. I forget if it was the 8MB or 12MB version, but whatever it was it was awesome, and lasted me for quite a while. Eventually, I "inherited" (ie. saved from being thrown away and repaired in my spare time) an AppleVision 17" Trinitron-based CRT that did NOT like the Voodoo2. I think it had something to do with the pass-through cable, setup or something. That's when I bought a Voodoo3 which my resurrected space-heater CRT liked just fine.
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Feb 3, 2016 22:20
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Mak0rz posted:loving lmao at anyone that bought non-Voodoo graphics cards back then for gaming purposes. What the heck were you thinking? Sure seems like 3dfx/Voodoo ruled the roost back when they first came out - about 1996/97. My very first accelerator card was the Voodoo1 and later a Voodoo2. I think 3dfx started fading fast right about then. I remember getting tips from friends in about 1991 to get a video card with the Tseng Labs ET4000 chipset. I never did, but supposedly that was one of the very best pre-accelerator video cards. Edit: I just remembered some sound card stuff. The first one I got was a Soundblaster 2.0, maybe 1992/1993. Sometime in 1993, Asian manufacturer Orchid came out with their Soundwave 32 card. General Midi compatible, it featured sound ROM's for the instruments that were supposed to be high quality. I fell for the hype and was not that impressed at all, despite spending a decent chunk of money on it  .Picture:  Listen for yourself, the Midi instruments did not sound very good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i79Pgc7i8GA A few years later, I bought myself a Yamaha SW1000XG, an actual pro-level synthesizer card. This thing:  I don't know why I had such a Midi fixation, I never used it for anything but games and listening to Midis from the Internet. That said, listen to this and compare it to the previous sound sample. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGLOqyya6Q4 TotalLossBrain has a new favorite as of 22:34 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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Feb 3, 2016 22:21
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Yeah, voodoo around that time was pretty much dead. The biggest problem with Matrox was bad drivers, even though they still kept patching them for years and they're actually in a usable state now for these old games. The true way to go already was nvidia, I guess just like it is now. They were very expensive cards though, a GeForce 3 would be around 400 ( EDIT: I think more like 499) bucks. Again, I guess just like now. Then there was ATI. Tseng Labs ended up being acquired by ATI. For gaming purposes with VGA ISA the choice of card for gaming didn't really matter though so you didn't miss out much. Usually either the bus or the CPU was the limiting factor long before something like the graphics card came into play. There wasn't any acceleration as we know it now anyways (outside of very primitive blitter operations in GUIs like Win 3.1) the CPU did everything. The only real factor was resolution, picture quality and color depth. With cheap graphics cards limited to 256 colors and lovely RAMDACs and the more expensive ones being able to do more at higher resolutions, but again this did not really matter for most if not pretty much all games. That being said, Western Digital also did excellent graphics chipsets, funnily it's basically unknown now that they did. Police Automaton has a new favorite as of 22:51 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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Feb 3, 2016 22:44
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Voodoo peaked and was still pretty strong at the 3 3000, which was available at the same time as the Matrix G400. 3dfx took a pretty hard nosedive after that, though.
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Feb 3, 2016 22:54
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Got a Voodoo3 at the end of 99 because I got Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine for Christmas that year, and the first time I staryed it up on the stock graphics card Indy was pretty much standing in the distance fog. I've always really liked 3DFXs branding, always thought it was cool.
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Feb 3, 2016 22:55
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woodch posted:Rendition Verite 2 chipset. ahh yes, the source of this oddity  jazz multimedia bonny & clyde
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Feb 3, 2016 23:11
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The first single-card 2d/3d Voodoo sucked rear end, but it came with Interstate 76, which I played online for maybe 5 years and 20 broken joysticks. The multiplayer in that game was a loving relic, too. Client side collision detection, meaning I could ALMOST t-bone another car on my end, but HIT him on his client. He'd take damage and get dragged BEHIND my unscratched car on my screen while on his screen I was ramming him along. Lag-aiming was an ART and so fun.
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Feb 3, 2016 23:22
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Mak0rz posted:Voodoo peaked and was still pretty strong at the 3 3000, which was available at the same time as the Matrix G400. 3dfx took a pretty hard nosedive after that, though. Might as well, I don't remember. Everything happened so fast in these few years, it was crazy. This was also around the time intel and AMD made a run at the first 1 Ghz CPU. Intel played quite dirty.
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Feb 3, 2016 23:35
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Best Buy catalog from 1996. Pretty neat. http://imgur.com/gallery/do6if Computers used to be very expensive.  Norton antivirus. I believe Symantec released a cheap version known as Dr. Solomon. It was so bad it detected itself as a virus.
lite_sleepr has a new favorite as of 23:47 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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Feb 3, 2016 23:45
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Regarding soundcards, this card from my home country of germany was where it's at: The EWS64XL, it had the excellent crystal codec (with not-so-excellent FM-Snythesis but you can't have 'em all) and the french DREAM synthesizer chip for midi. You could expand it with memory and load your soundfonts directly into the RAM of the card and make it sound however you wanted, there were quite a few soundfonts for it. I think it went up to 64 MB or so, so plenty of space. Sounds great. It was a lot like the AWE cards in that regard, with the difference that this actually worked like you would suppose it to do and the Dream chip was 100% General Midi compatible without weird driver kludge like the creative cards, even in DOS. You could also edit in reverb and chorus effects etc. via the crystal chip. It was a bit difficult to set up but sounded great if it was set up correctly. EWS is short for the german "Eierlegende WollmilchSau" which is kind of an Idom and describes a fabled creature that produces eggs, milk, wool and ham, so basically everything you need in one place. I swear to god everything worked better than creative cards, even cheap-rear end no-name soundcards with often great and commonly known codecs. I mean they were there first but that didn't save a lot of other companies in the computer world either. How they constantly dominated the market with their crap so absolutely is beyond me.
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Feb 3, 2016 23:59
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That's a lot of caps.
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Feb 4, 2016 00:34
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TotalLossBrain posted:That's a lot of caps. Ripe for bursting  edit: Oh, speaking of Creative sound cards and drivers. I got gifted an X-Fi Titanium card a while back, and it has caused me nothing but trouble. I liked the sound quality, but Windows would suddenly not recognize it, seemingly at random. I would re-insert the card to no avail, until I wiped and re-installed the drivers, and it would be fine for a while. I got so tired of it that I just started using the onboard chip. There's a big improvement in hardware as well, usually using the onboard sound would include a ton of interference sometimes picking up radio signals. old bean factory has a new favorite as of 01:38 on Feb 4, 2016 |
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Feb 4, 2016 01:30
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PRESIDENT GOKU posted:Best Buy catalog from 1996. Pretty neat. It's funny, aside from the PCs, prices haven't changed that much. Also, I had completely forgotten about Descent II.
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Feb 4, 2016 05:35
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I could barely play AvP2 on my TNT2 Nvidia card. One day a patch update that had something to do with streamlining or simplifying the code would give a 15% performance boost. It did! I could at least play multiplayer a little more reliably. I guess performance boosting patches outside of specific game or applications don't happen anymore.
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Feb 4, 2016 05:48
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Wicker Man posted:I could barely play AvP2 on my TNT2 Nvidia card. One day a patch update that had something to do with streamlining or simplifying the code would give a 15% performance boost. It did! I could at least play multiplayer a little more reliably. I loved that game, and the Primal Hunt expansion pack. The multiplayer was damned good, although taking the Corporate side felt a bit like cheating - I killed so many people. Good times. 
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Feb 4, 2016 07:39
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CaptainSarcastic posted:I loved that game, and the Primal Hunt expansion pack. The multiplayer was damned good, although taking the Corporate side felt a bit like cheating - I killed so many people. Good times. Aliens got shafted but it's still hectic fun. I always hoped for a sequel to the single player game since I enjoyed that, but nope. Even though the ultimate ending is set for it
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Feb 4, 2016 07:47
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Wicker Man posted:Aliens got shafted but it's still hectic fun. I always hoped for a sequel to the single player game since I enjoyed that, but nope. Even though the ultimate ending is set for it Having single-player mode be basically three self-contained games with storylines that crossed over was a phenomenal structure. I really enjoyed how you would basically see the same scene taking place from another viewpoint as you went through the human, alien, and predator storylines. And the fact that there was so little re-used between them - the crossing points were just brief little bits in an otherwise unique progression. And the multiplayer just worked really well - I think the only games I might have clocked more multiplayer time in were Tribes and America's Army.
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Feb 4, 2016 07:52
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Anyone play DOS Links golf from like 1991ish? I remember there was only two or three sound effects in the whole game and one of them was a guy going "looks like you hit the tree Jim" every time the ball hit a tree. apparently they were still making games in the series as late as 2004
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Feb 4, 2016 11:48
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Vladimir Poutine posted:Anyone play DOS Links golf from like 1991ish? I remember there was only two or three sound effects in the whole game and one of them was a guy going "looks like you hit the tree Jim" every time the ball hit a tree. That looks extremely familiar with me and i wouldve been started to gently caress around with DOS around that era so im gonna go w yes i have played this
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Feb 4, 2016 11:58
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Vladimir Poutine posted:Anyone play DOS Links golf from like 1991ish? I remember there was only two or three sound effects in the whole game and one of them was a guy going "looks like you hit the tree Jim" every time the ball hit a tree.   The developer (who also did the Tex Murphy games) and series were bought out by Microsoft in '99, then sold off in 2004 to Take-Two, who closed it down a couple of years later. Alas, we will never see a Links Extreme 2...  
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Feb 4, 2016 12:55
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AvP 2 was unbelievably good. I could never get past the first marine level as a scared babby
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Feb 4, 2016 14:11
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Quantum of Phallus posted:AvP 2 was unbelievably good. I could never get past the first marine level as a scared babby The escape part when the aliens first appeared is actually kind of harrowing. The music that plays is super tense.
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Feb 4, 2016 14:13
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That looks remarkably familiar - did Microsoft licence their Win 3.1 Golf game from them?
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Feb 4, 2016 15:02
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Feb 4, 2016 15:44
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Vladimir Poutine posted:Anyone play DOS Links golf from like 1991ish? I remember there was only two or three sound effects in the whole game and one of them was a guy going "looks like you hit the tree Jim" every time the ball hit a tree. I worked at a Circuit City in 96 and we sold a golf club that worked with a PC and Links game, we played the poo poo out of that after closing or when it was slow. It worked amazingly well.
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Feb 4, 2016 15:56
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLg2hRSUoL8
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Feb 4, 2016 16:11
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Did anyone else play this other bike game and focus solely on loving up the other racers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bHl4l7utnU
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Feb 4, 2016 16:30
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Computer viking posted:That looks remarkably familiar - did Microsoft licence their Win 3.1 Golf game from them?
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Feb 4, 2016 16:59
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The Kins posted:Yeah, the Microsoft Golf games for Windows used the Links engine. Huh, archive.org has a copy of the exact version I played (the Multimedia Edition from 1993). Time to set up Windows 3.11 and a sb16/opl3 in dosbox.
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Feb 4, 2016 17:30
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The Kins posted:I never played them all that much, but I love how they slowly rendered out a static frame of the course. Wait, this was normal? I thought my computer just sucked.
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Feb 4, 2016 18:24
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My first graphics card was an ATI Rage Fury card back in the day, and holy poo poo was that thing aptly named.
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Feb 4, 2016 18:47
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My first video card was a Voodoo Banshee, I couldn't believe the difference it made in Quake 2.
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Feb 4, 2016 18:51
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Vladimir Poutine posted:Anyone play DOS Links golf from like 1991ish? I remember there was only two or three sound effects in the whole game and one of them was a guy going "looks like you hit the tree Jim" every time the ball hit a tree. First golf game I ever played on a computer. With "RealSpeak(tm)" Technology! Digitized sound and voice clips through the PC Speaker! Amazing! The same company (Access Software?) made a blatant N.A.R.C. ripoff that I forget the name of off hand, but it was fun. I loved playing NARC at the arcades, but hated feeding it quarters, so this was a great way to play it for free.
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Feb 4, 2016 19:34
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Vladimir Poutine posted:Anyone play DOS Links golf from like 1991ish? I had Microsoft Golf, and then Links LS 2000 and Links LS 2003. my dad owned every course so we played it a lot
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Feb 4, 2016 19:45
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woodch posted:First golf game I ever played on a computer. With "RealSpeak(tm)" Technology! Digitized sound and voice clips through the PC Speaker! Amazing! Before Links (later Microsoft golf) it was Leaderboard golf, yes it was Access. The graphics were pretty drat good for a C= 64. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0W7RT-Yp9E
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Feb 4, 2016 19:48
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Links was also the first golf game I ever played. My 286 was way too wimpy to play "Links 386". That game was often held up as a golden standard for what a computer game can look like. The German gaming magazines liked bringing it up frequently. Looking back, I am amazed 12 year old me thought golf on a computer was fun, but I sure did spend a lot of time with that game (and later, the better/prettier versions!).
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Feb 4, 2016 20:23
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