I think a good heads up to those who want to find OG hardware is that you should be prepared to troubleshoot and be patient. It took me a while to get stuff like Windows 98 installed on my first...
I think a good heads up to those who want to find OG hardware is that you should be prepared to troubleshoot and be patient. It took me a while to get stuff like Windows 98 installed on my first try, and it took me a while to get the correct drivers. It's like fixing cars, or fixing anything else for that matter. The other thing is that if you're going with mid-90s to late 90s hardware, you'll need to do research on what you want to play on your computer. Something like HL1 would probably be terrible to play on a Pentium 133 Mhz system with a non-3d accelerated card, if you get something like a 350mhz cpu then you will get faster performance, but that means "faster" in the context of the 90s (30-40 fps). I have a 700mhz windows 98 PC with a 3dfx card and even that slows down occasionally on Hl1. So, if you do play those sorts of games, then be prepared for when they might get choppy and just live with it.
The other thing is that you can cheat by using "later" hardware such as a Pentium 4 paired with a geforce MX-400, and you'll get fast performance for virtually every 90s-era game.
The other thing is that DOS games are a whole other story, you can play many of them on high-end CPUs but alot of them can be restricted to speed cycles and you'd need to slow down your CPU to play them well. Best bet at that point is to find a 486 but those are getting very rare now.
I have a couple of these machines because I got lucky, so I have some leeway to experiment with different setups. But that's the fun of retrocomputing.
And all those considerations are only if you buy a refurbed unit from a capable refurbisher. If you're restoring the hardware yourself you have to deal with swollen or burst capacitors, dead...
And all those considerations are only if you buy a refurbed unit from a capable refurbisher. If you're restoring the hardware yourself you have to deal with swollen or burst capacitors, dead chips, feeble power supplies, possible corrosion of traces, rusty cases, or even worse. I used to work for a refurbisher (a reseller, honestly), and some of the shit I've seen in old PC cases would blow your mind.
I remember one that was completely covered in what appeared to be maggots. No idea what they were feeding on, but it had to be something because there were enough corpses that it wasn't a new,...
I remember one that was completely covered in what appeared to be maggots. No idea what they were feeding on, but it had to be something because there were enough corpses that it wasn't a new, single-generation infestation.
We did bin it, but we still needed to clean the sucker out so our teardown line could strip the recyclables out. We never did nearly as much actual refurbishment as I wanted. Management saw easy...
We did bin it, but we still needed to clean the sucker out so our teardown line could strip the recyclables out.
We never did nearly as much actual refurbishment as I wanted. Management saw easy dollar signs for the gold and platinum from anything that needed actual repair, so I would end up fixing stuff surreptitiously if I thought we could get some money for it.
I hated the management at that job. Our spec was ridiculous. By the time I left, we were scrapping anything that wasn't Haswell or newer, regardless if there was a vintage market for the stuff or not. So much neat hardware thrown into the crucible because management didn't want to bother. Such a waste. That's why I'm so skeptical of recycling these days and am always advocating for repair and reuse. I know what a greenwashing crock the e-cycling biz is.
ETA: I think the maggot farm was a Core2Duo system, so we wouldn't have tried fixing it anyway. Probably '07-'08 or so. Don't remember the OEM.
Ah if it were a Core 2 Duo system that's probably not worth so much It's sad that we go through recycling so much without looking at what it's worth beforehand.
Ah if it were a Core 2 Duo system that's probably not worth so much
It's sad that we go through recycling so much without looking at what it's worth beforehand.
I think the biggest issue with e-cycling is that it encourages a disposable mentality wrt our devices. As far as the general consumer or business customer is concerned, you can just use up a...
I think the biggest issue with e-cycling is that it encourages a disposable mentality wrt our devices. As far as the general consumer or business customer is concerned, you can just use up a device, chuck it over to the recycler, and feel alright that you aren't really being wasteful, you're just maintaining operative capacity. Besides, that recycler is going to ensure everything stays out of the landfill, and isn't that important?
Well, yes and no. Nothing we received at my old work went into the dumpster, not even the breakroom waste basket. We recycled all metals and plastics, not to mention the copper and other precious metals from the circuitry and chips, and sold the waste paper and other combustibles to be used as fuel in the recycler's incinerating generator. That's good, in that it kept heavy metals and toxic flame retardants and whatnot from just being buried somewhere.
What's not so good is that recycling is a distant regime of energy efficiency from simply keeping your shit working and not buying a new device quite so often. We can refine our infrastructure and processes to be more efficient, but we'll never reach the efficiency of doing it right in the first place. It takes energy–and at present, that means fossil fuels to a great extent–to recycle materials. It takes trucks to transport, machinery and human labor to sort, and electricity to run smelters. It takes much less energy to have someone replace a component on a main board, or the display on a phone. It's just not as monetarily efficient for huge corporations, so they don't even bother.
The problem–and this is true for all sorts of human endeavors in this benighted age–is that the incentive structure is all fucked up. OEMs have absolutely no incentive to design devices that might reasonably remain functional for years or decades, despite that being an entirely reasonable and attainable goal. They do much better if they can sell a device, warranty it for two years, then when it shits the bed, melt the fucker down to begin the process again. The more, the better.
Think about how much longer we could keep our devices running if we mandated form factor standards, and developed the computer design philosophy of the old ISA backplanes. Design houses long ago figured out how to make the line go up by instilling in consumers that new always>old, and whole units are always>than components. I don't see a compelling reason to suppose that compatibility problems of modularity in a broad range of consumer-grade products is inherently insurmountable, particularly with the strides we've made in miniaturization over the last several decades.
Sorry, I've gone off the rails in a rant again. This topic touches on something that's been very present in my mind this last year. It's really been something that's frustrated me for about ten years now, since I switched to technician work, but it's really been weighing on me since I was laid off last year (different employer from the recycler).
This is actually a very good point. And people underestimate how well old technology can work given you take care of it. For instance, my 486 from 30 years ago works totally fine, just as if it...
What's not so good is that recycling is a distant regime of energy efficiency from simply keeping your shit working and not buying a new device quite so often. We can refine our infrastructure and processes to be more efficient, but we'll never reach the efficiency of doing it right in the first place. It takes energy–and at present, that means fossil fuels to a great extent–to recycle materials. It takes trucks to transport, machinery and human labor to sort, and electricity to run smelters. It takes much less energy to have someone replace a component on a main board, or the display on a phone. It's just not as monetarily efficient for huge corporations, so they don't even bother.
This is actually a very good point. And people underestimate how well old technology can work given you take care of it. For instance, my 486 from 30 years ago works totally fine, just as if it were 1995. We're stuck in this constant loop of buying new technology which yeah, makes sense if you want new technology or new graphics hardware, but there's no incentive to keep a product when you don't need anything else.
Maybe we will break out of this vicious cycle when we run into problems with our current workflow.
Yep. Had a Gateway 486 33c with a busted barrel battery and that leaked all over the mainboard, destroying the keyboard encoder (long IC responsible for decoding and encoding keystrokes) and an...
Yep. Had a Gateway 486 33c with a busted barrel battery and that leaked all over the mainboard, destroying the keyboard encoder (long IC responsible for decoding and encoding keystrokes) and an ISA slot. Replacing the IC socket it damaged was bad enough, and I was lucky the chip survived (which replacing it made the keyboard work), but getting a new replacement CR2022 battery was tough luck. I luckily have another 486 with a socketed dallas RTC chip.
Other issues like bad capacitors is only inherent with motherboards and graphics cards made during the 2000s. Most 90s stuff tends to be higher quality, unless it's something notorious like pcchips. When you ignore all that though and like, have a working 486 in a nice AT case that you've fixed then there's a sense of pride and accomplishment which is somehow more satisfying than building a modern computer.
They certainly make you work harder for it, that's for sure. I've seen burst and swollen caps in computers of all ages prior to about 2004, but you're right that they're most common in...
They certainly make you work harder for it, that's for sure.
I've seen burst and swollen caps in computers of all ages prior to about 2004, but you're right that they're most common in early-to-mid-aughts. I've seen a lot of units though, and usually defunct ones as well, so maybe I have a skewed perspective.
I've been tempted to pick up a CRT for retro emulation - mainly pixel stuff - they're cheap, but every time I seriously look around for them I'm reminded of how convenient flatscreens are. My TV...
I've been tempted to pick up a CRT for retro emulation - mainly pixel stuff - they're cheap, but every time I seriously look around for them I'm reminded of how convenient flatscreens are. My TV is nothing special, midrange LDC from 2018 with some pretty poor contrast but I realise I really take the size, weight and connectors for granted.
Oh, I was just talking about how unwieldy these things are today with someone else - I got a 32" CRT TV I dragged from a dumpster while serendipitously throwing out my broken CRT. It is 115 lbs, I...
Oh, I was just talking about how unwieldy these things are today with someone else - I got a 32" CRT TV I dragged from a dumpster while serendipitously throwing out my broken CRT. It is 115 lbs, I threw out my back getting it inside and was a pain in the ass to move like three times. So was my family's one before it. I've got an entire entertainment center area of my wall dedicated to it in my basement by my desk. My wife slips me hints that maaaybe it's tiiime we get rid of it! Her pleas go unheard, as I inexplicably decide I must now softmod an Atari Jaguar.
OK, maybe not that. But I did just softmod my Xbox, and now I'm playing Steel Battalion on it. I keep it around because graphics aren't quite the same and because I play a ton of light gun games like Time Crisis 3 that don't work on digital. But there are upscalers with good CRT filters that are starting to get there like the retrotink 5x, CRT filters in emulators have really come a long way, PCSX2 has Guncon emulation, and there are some light gun options like the Sinden that offer some compatibility via optical tracking, which is thankfully faster than Wii-style IR tracking. But that's all a couple hundred dollars for a less robust setup, so I still don't want to yet... Maybe someday if some of the tech gets faster or cheaper enough that the differences are negligible.
If you're a hobbyist and a bit of a maker, check out Lichtnarre. It's windows software that aims your wiimote using 4 IR LEDs positioned around your tv. It makes lightgun games an option for non...
If you're a hobbyist and a bit of a maker, check out Lichtnarre. It's windows software that aims your wiimote using 4 IR LEDs positioned around your tv. It makes lightgun games an option for non CRT tvs
I've never been a fan of IR solutions (Wii or arcade examples like Ghost Squad), I find they feel a step behind where you're pointing and get jittery, but I am seeing the extra two points...
I've never been a fan of IR solutions (Wii or arcade examples like Ghost Squad), I find they feel a step behind where you're pointing and get jittery, but I am seeing the extra two points reference may help here. I'll try to give it a shot. I speedrun TC3, and while I won't argue I'm any good - like 4 mins behind wr - I'm a little sensitive to the lag...
I haven't plunked down cash on anything yet, but if you go for an IR option I hear the Retroshooter 3 Reaper is pretty good. Non-IR the Sinden is good, it's optical via a white border around the...
I haven't plunked down cash on anything yet, but if you go for an IR option I hear the Retroshooter 3 Reaper is pretty good. Non-IR the Sinden is good, it's optical via a white border around the play area and then uses that to track on trigger pull. Sinden also has some hacky compatibility with the PS1/PS2.
I'm a bit out of looking at hardware because I'm on my original Guncon 2 and it works fine the way it is :^) Which is the nice advantage of doing all this and having the OG hardware... I keep an ear out for any silver bullet solutions (har har) through the TC speedrunning discord, and nothing has bubbled up aside from the Sinden. I think anyone looking for stuff like recoil or really hardcore precision is probably going to want to plunk down money on some kind of hardware, so some software options like Lichtknarre are definitely worth to try first and see if they satisfy the itch. It's pretty unbeatable to find some $10 CRT at a rummage sale or craigslist/FBM and get everything working, though.
I truly miss lightgun games. I was big on Sega's offerings during the Saturn and Dreamcast era and loved arcade fare like Point Blank, Time Crisis and all the rest. I just picked up a FFB wheel...
I truly miss lightgun games. I was big on Sega's offerings during the Saturn and Dreamcast era and loved arcade fare like Point Blank, Time Crisis and all the rest.
I just picked up a FFB wheel for this arcade unit and am really pulling out all the stops (cost has become is irrelevant) so maybe I'll grab the Sindens if the Lichtnarre four LED option doesn't fly (I've only used the 2LED option).
As for OG hardware - I'd love to, but I'm an emulator guy through and through these days. That, and I sold a PVM I searched high and low for because I just didn't use it and took that as a sign.
Oh man, this is cool. It brings back the day of the turbo button that slowed down the PC. I really wanted to get ReactOS working on an old EEEPC I had sitting around, but sadly it was never stable...
Oh man, this is cool. It brings back the day of the turbo button that slowed down the PC.
I really wanted to get ReactOS working on an old EEEPC I had sitting around, but sadly it was never stable enough.
ReactOS is apperantly notorious to install and get working correctly, so much so that installing older windows would be better. No seriously, this guy spends a week doing it makes you want to go...
It's kinda similar to the reason why people just install MS-DOS 6.22 on 486s instead of period-accurate Linux or even FreeDOS, there's no use for open-source operating systems when you can just install something from the period and expect it to run because you're just playing Monkey Island or Wing Commander.
It should be noted that the video in question is 5 years old, which in the ReactOS project's time frame might as well be the Neolithic. I would probably still rely more on the "intended" software...
It should be noted that the video in question is 5 years old, which in the ReactOS project's time frame might as well be the Neolithic. I would probably still rely more on the "intended" software of the era than ReactOS for this specific use-case (...or any, really, ReactOS is still very much experimental), but it's definitely better now than back then.
I think a good heads up to those who want to find OG hardware is that you should be prepared to troubleshoot and be patient. It took me a while to get stuff like Windows 98 installed on my first try, and it took me a while to get the correct drivers. It's like fixing cars, or fixing anything else for that matter. The other thing is that if you're going with mid-90s to late 90s hardware, you'll need to do research on what you want to play on your computer. Something like HL1 would probably be terrible to play on a Pentium 133 Mhz system with a non-3d accelerated card, if you get something like a 350mhz cpu then you will get faster performance, but that means "faster" in the context of the 90s (30-40 fps). I have a 700mhz windows 98 PC with a 3dfx card and even that slows down occasionally on Hl1. So, if you do play those sorts of games, then be prepared for when they might get choppy and just live with it.
The other thing is that you can cheat by using "later" hardware such as a Pentium 4 paired with a geforce MX-400, and you'll get fast performance for virtually every 90s-era game.
The other thing is that DOS games are a whole other story, you can play many of them on high-end CPUs but alot of them can be restricted to speed cycles and you'd need to slow down your CPU to play them well. Best bet at that point is to find a 486 but those are getting very rare now.
I have a couple of these machines because I got lucky, so I have some leeway to experiment with different setups. But that's the fun of retrocomputing.
And all those considerations are only if you buy a refurbed unit from a capable refurbisher. If you're restoring the hardware yourself you have to deal with swollen or burst capacitors, dead chips, feeble power supplies, possible corrosion of traces, rusty cases, or even worse. I used to work for a refurbisher (a reseller, honestly), and some of the shit I've seen in old PC cases would blow your mind.
Dust, tobacco tar, lots of small ants/spiders, … !?
I remember one that was completely covered in what appeared to be maggots. No idea what they were feeding on, but it had to be something because there were enough corpses that it wasn't a new, single-generation infestation.
Jesus Christ at that point you might as well just bin the system or pray for divine intervention
What was it, a 2000s OEM pc or something older?
We did bin it, but we still needed to clean the sucker out so our teardown line could strip the recyclables out.
We never did nearly as much actual refurbishment as I wanted. Management saw easy dollar signs for the gold and platinum from anything that needed actual repair, so I would end up fixing stuff surreptitiously if I thought we could get some money for it.
I hated the management at that job. Our spec was ridiculous. By the time I left, we were scrapping anything that wasn't Haswell or newer, regardless if there was a vintage market for the stuff or not. So much neat hardware thrown into the crucible because management didn't want to bother. Such a waste. That's why I'm so skeptical of recycling these days and am always advocating for repair and reuse. I know what a greenwashing crock the e-cycling biz is.
ETA: I think the maggot farm was a Core2Duo system, so we wouldn't have tried fixing it anyway. Probably '07-'08 or so. Don't remember the OEM.
Ah if it were a Core 2 Duo system that's probably not worth so much
It's sad that we go through recycling so much without looking at what it's worth beforehand.
I think the biggest issue with e-cycling is that it encourages a disposable mentality wrt our devices. As far as the general consumer or business customer is concerned, you can just use up a device, chuck it over to the recycler, and feel alright that you aren't really being wasteful, you're just maintaining operative capacity. Besides, that recycler is going to ensure everything stays out of the landfill, and isn't that important?
Well, yes and no. Nothing we received at my old work went into the dumpster, not even the breakroom waste basket. We recycled all metals and plastics, not to mention the copper and other precious metals from the circuitry and chips, and sold the waste paper and other combustibles to be used as fuel in the recycler's incinerating generator. That's good, in that it kept heavy metals and toxic flame retardants and whatnot from just being buried somewhere.
What's not so good is that recycling is a distant regime of energy efficiency from simply keeping your shit working and not buying a new device quite so often. We can refine our infrastructure and processes to be more efficient, but we'll never reach the efficiency of doing it right in the first place. It takes energy–and at present, that means fossil fuels to a great extent–to recycle materials. It takes trucks to transport, machinery and human labor to sort, and electricity to run smelters. It takes much less energy to have someone replace a component on a main board, or the display on a phone. It's just not as monetarily efficient for huge corporations, so they don't even bother.
The problem–and this is true for all sorts of human endeavors in this benighted age–is that the incentive structure is all fucked up. OEMs have absolutely no incentive to design devices that might reasonably remain functional for years or decades, despite that being an entirely reasonable and attainable goal. They do much better if they can sell a device, warranty it for two years, then when it shits the bed, melt the fucker down to begin the process again. The more, the better.
Think about how much longer we could keep our devices running if we mandated form factor standards, and developed the computer design philosophy of the old ISA backplanes. Design houses long ago figured out how to make the line go up by instilling in consumers that new always>old, and whole units are always>than components. I don't see a compelling reason to suppose that compatibility problems of modularity in a broad range of consumer-grade products is inherently insurmountable, particularly with the strides we've made in miniaturization over the last several decades.
Sorry, I've gone off the rails in a rant again. This topic touches on something that's been very present in my mind this last year. It's really been something that's frustrated me for about ten years now, since I switched to technician work, but it's really been weighing on me since I was laid off last year (different employer from the recycler).
This is actually a very good point. And people underestimate how well old technology can work given you take care of it. For instance, my 486 from 30 years ago works totally fine, just as if it were 1995. We're stuck in this constant loop of buying new technology which yeah, makes sense if you want new technology or new graphics hardware, but there's no incentive to keep a product when you don't need anything else.
Maybe we will break out of this vicious cycle when we run into problems with our current workflow.
Yep. Had a Gateway 486 33c with a busted barrel battery and that leaked all over the mainboard, destroying the keyboard encoder (long IC responsible for decoding and encoding keystrokes) and an ISA slot. Replacing the IC socket it damaged was bad enough, and I was lucky the chip survived (which replacing it made the keyboard work), but getting a new replacement CR2022 battery was tough luck. I luckily have another 486 with a socketed dallas RTC chip.
Other issues like bad capacitors is only inherent with motherboards and graphics cards made during the 2000s. Most 90s stuff tends to be higher quality, unless it's something notorious like pcchips. When you ignore all that though and like, have a working 486 in a nice AT case that you've fixed then there's a sense of pride and accomplishment which is somehow more satisfying than building a modern computer.
They certainly make you work harder for it, that's for sure.
I've seen burst and swollen caps in computers of all ages prior to about 2004, but you're right that they're most common in early-to-mid-aughts. I've seen a lot of units though, and usually defunct ones as well, so maybe I have a skewed perspective.
I've been tempted to pick up a CRT for retro emulation - mainly pixel stuff - they're cheap, but every time I seriously look around for them I'm reminded of how convenient flatscreens are. My TV is nothing special, midrange LDC from 2018 with some pretty poor contrast but I realise I really take the size, weight and connectors for granted.
Oh, I was just talking about how unwieldy these things are today with someone else - I got a 32" CRT TV I dragged from a dumpster while serendipitously throwing out my broken CRT. It is 115 lbs, I threw out my back getting it inside and was a pain in the ass to move like three times. So was my family's one before it. I've got an entire entertainment center area of my wall dedicated to it in my basement by my desk. My wife slips me hints that maaaybe it's tiiime we get rid of it! Her pleas go unheard, as I inexplicably decide I must now softmod an Atari Jaguar.
OK, maybe not that. But I did just softmod my Xbox, and now I'm playing Steel Battalion on it. I keep it around because graphics aren't quite the same and because I play a ton of light gun games like Time Crisis 3 that don't work on digital. But there are upscalers with good CRT filters that are starting to get there like the retrotink 5x, CRT filters in emulators have really come a long way, PCSX2 has Guncon emulation, and there are some light gun options like the Sinden that offer some compatibility via optical tracking, which is thankfully faster than Wii-style IR tracking. But that's all a couple hundred dollars for a less robust setup, so I still don't want to yet... Maybe someday if some of the tech gets faster or cheaper enough that the differences are negligible.
If you're a hobbyist and a bit of a maker, check out Lichtnarre. It's windows software that aims your wiimote using 4 IR LEDs positioned around your tv. It makes lightgun games an option for non CRT tvs
https://geekonarium.de/en/lichtknarre-lightgun/
I've never been a fan of IR solutions (Wii or arcade examples like Ghost Squad), I find they feel a step behind where you're pointing and get jittery, but I am seeing the extra two points reference may help here. I'll try to give it a shot. I speedrun TC3, and while I won't argue I'm any good - like 4 mins behind wr - I'm a little sensitive to the lag...
Oh wow - you're hardcore! Do you have recommendations for which is the best gun that works with modern tvs?
I haven't plunked down cash on anything yet, but if you go for an IR option I hear the Retroshooter 3 Reaper is pretty good. Non-IR the Sinden is good, it's optical via a white border around the play area and then uses that to track on trigger pull. Sinden also has some hacky compatibility with the PS1/PS2.
I'm a bit out of looking at hardware because I'm on my original Guncon 2 and it works fine the way it is :^) Which is the nice advantage of doing all this and having the OG hardware... I keep an ear out for any silver bullet solutions (har har) through the TC speedrunning discord, and nothing has bubbled up aside from the Sinden. I think anyone looking for stuff like recoil or really hardcore precision is probably going to want to plunk down money on some kind of hardware, so some software options like Lichtknarre are definitely worth to try first and see if they satisfy the itch. It's pretty unbeatable to find some $10 CRT at a rummage sale or craigslist/FBM and get everything working, though.
I truly miss lightgun games. I was big on Sega's offerings during the Saturn and Dreamcast era and loved arcade fare like Point Blank, Time Crisis and all the rest.
I just picked up a FFB wheel for this arcade unit and am really pulling out all the stops (cost has become is irrelevant) so maybe I'll grab the Sindens if the Lichtnarre four LED option doesn't fly (I've only used the 2LED option).
As for OG hardware - I'd love to, but I'm an emulator guy through and through these days. That, and I sold a PVM I searched high and low for because I just didn't use it and took that as a sign.
A lot of emulators have pretty good CRT filters. Not quite the same thing but close enough and a pretty good tradeoff considering space and cost.
Oh man, this is cool. It brings back the day of the turbo button that slowed down the PC.
I really wanted to get ReactOS working on an old EEEPC I had sitting around, but sadly it was never stable enough.
ReactOS is apperantly notorious to install and get working correctly, so much so that installing older windows would be better. No seriously, this guy spends a week doing it makes you want to go back to managing memory on DOS. It's that terrible.
It's kinda similar to the reason why people just install MS-DOS 6.22 on 486s instead of period-accurate Linux or even FreeDOS, there's no use for open-source operating systems when you can just install something from the period and expect it to run because you're just playing Monkey Island or Wing Commander.
It should be noted that the video in question is 5 years old, which in the ReactOS project's time frame might as well be the Neolithic. I would probably still rely more on the "intended" software of the era than ReactOS for this specific use-case (...or any, really, ReactOS is still very much experimental), but it's definitely better now than back then.