iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Help: what was the most surreal thing you had to do in a nightmare to survive? I might steal it, though, since I recently played another horror game where I thought the concept is great but it could have been done so much better.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

So it would have been okay to fatally shoot the driver, right?

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Hm so the good news is the system seems to boot just fine, the bad news is the PCI SATA adapter isn't showing any signs of life, at the very least it looks like it has no BIOS of its own for booting from it. I set he motherboard's first boot option to SCSI which is usually necessary but no luck.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Listening to an almost 40 year old concept album and within seconds I had started making a face and headbanging without even noticing it. The falsetto back then had some room for improvement. But I don't care, this is pure metal.

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Reposted by Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████

Anne @anneb.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Peltier-cooled Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz and 3 ISA sound cards, ticking ALL the important DOS sound boxes. Sadly what looks like an AGP slot is actually ADD and does not support graphics cards, so I'm limited to PCI in that regard, and using a Geforce FX 5200 because I have nothing proper.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Found this in my lab, it's the forgotten inferior replacement board for my first Neoware CA2 that I accidentally killed when I had, after a long series of swapping expansion cards, forgotten to pull the power plug and promptly caused a deadly short. This 333 MHz Geode is much slower than the VIA C3.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

if you see this post an image you saved because it made you laugh.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

The Leadtek WinFast A350XT TDH (Geforce FX 5900 XT 128 MB) got upgraded with a Zalman VF-1000 aftermarket cooler and Enzotech copper VRAM heatsinks. It may not be as nostalgic as a Voodoo 5, but it is much faster while ticking all legacy compatibility features that certain vintage games need!

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Today I spread more fake news than an LLM. CPU-Z tricked me into believing this was a Mobile Barton 2500+, but it is actually a Mobile Barton 2400+, which is a LV version with a 35W TDP and 1.35V voltage. Now I could put in either the 1000 MHz 18W Geode (1500+ rating) or 1400 MHz 25W Geode (1750+).🤔

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

I misremembered the CPU. There is still an AMD Athlon XP-M 2500+ (Mobile Barton) in there, which the motherboard turns into a 1900+ because it doesn't run the CPU's default FSB of 333, but only 266. I guess I was too lazy to put the Geode NX back in because the CPU cooler is a nightmare to mount.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

I went and upgraded the sound card. The door hides the sadly poor condition of the audio panel's print, and I lobe that the case has proper cable management. Should do absolutely fine for any game or music released prior to Windows XP.

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Reposted by Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████

Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

I'm insanely excited about this! 🤗 1Ghz AMD Athlon Slot A ✅

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

It has "only" a single ISA slot, but the Epox 8KTA3+ supports Athlon and Athlon XP CPUs, even a mobile Barton works with it. I'm using a Geode NX (Athlon XP 1700+ mobile binned to only use up to 25W) instead to keep it semi passive with lots of copper.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Maybe these belong together? MSI MS-5129 w/ Intel Pentium MMX 166, 32 MB SDRAM and 256+256 kB cache via COAST module. No AGP slot but PS2 mouse and keyboard connectors for the AT board. I was thinking S3 graphics, Voodoo 1 and two sound cards?

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

"FAR BETTER THAN NINTENDO!" Meanwhile, or rather a year earlier, at Nintendo...

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Applied fresh thermal paste to the CPU cooler, put the thing back together, it booted fine. During graphics driver installation, towards the end, the "two clicks" sounded again, the system immediately restarted and is now back in this loop.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

I insulated the IDE44 to dual CF adapter using special tape, put the Sound Blaster AWE64 w/ memory expansion back into the ISA riser and cleaned the VIA C3 CPU's heatspreader. It's marked as 800 MHz Ezra-T but the voltage gives away it's really a 1200 MHz Nehemiah. At some point VIA only sold those.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

The day is total shit with my main PC still out of commission and my replacement D5 compatible pump also not working, but at least I found my insulating tape so I can attempt to put the retro gaming thin client back together.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

This is simply a catastrophe, I need that PC for absolutely everything, from job search and projects to trivial stuff like everyday browsing and powering our living room TV, all of my documents are on there.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Yeah so my D5 compatible pump is not even attempting to start, no idea why. I was certain it worked.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Turns out I have lots and lots of used but perfectly fine radiators, including stupid sizes like 80x80mm (five pieces), 360x120, 180x180, 240x240, 400x200 (90mm thick and complete with dual 200mm fans), and two more flat 400x200 joined together as a 400x400mm monster. All copper. How to get rid?

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

It is the year of the horse, because driving got too expensive.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Is it true that water with lots of carbon isn't popular in other countries? I have to cool and carbonate water even for my 1 year old because he loves it.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

I knew there was suspiciously little DDR1 in this picture! While looking for a spare pump (only found an incompatible Aliexpress pump so far) to repair my main PC, I found a stash of DDR.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

I recently got sent two very cool care packages by @vswitchzero.com and @jeffchen.bsky.social, now I'm preparing one of my own for @jbenam.bsky.social. Where did I put my antistatic bags again? These are a Medion ATI Radeon 9800 XXL (same chip as XT) and Asus Geforce 6600 GT AGP.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Kids, please don't try this at home. The VIA C3 is running without a heatsink (in theory it would even run Quake for hours like this), and I "isolated" my IDE2CF with a Kleenex so it wouldn't touch the board or sound card. After gently pushing the AWE64 downwards a little, it booted again. Scary.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

By the way a gallon of gas is 9.87$ USD in Germany right now (2.259€ per liter). It will only get worse. The only good thing about this is that hopefully at least people who can afford it might finally stop driving trucks and SUVs and maybe even switch to EVs.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

It booted to W98 without issues. I then powered it down, added the AWE64, booted again. Then powered down a 3rd time, connected my USB mouse and now it doesn't POST any more, it is stuck restarting. After the beep I hear 2 quiet clicks then it shuts down and immediately powers on.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

I might have a D5 compatible pump "Alphacool VPP755" in an old build in the lab, if I didn't throw it away. It would sometimes not start up at all, but if it did it ran flawlessly. I'll look for that, as that would at least enable me to use my work PC that I also use to look for a new job etc.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

My working theory is that the IDE44toDualCF adapter touched and shorted whatever that thing is, and replacing it should fix this very cool portable DOS PC with S3 Savage 4 graphics and ISA sound card!

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Since I can't for anything about my dead pump, I decided to look at my favorite dead retro PC instead. See these 2 ICs? Looks like the magic smoke came out of the bottom one, and the fact that there is another identical one to its top tells me it's probably not storing data or hard to obtain.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

I had just made dinner, too. Wanted to watch something while eating (TV is only comnected to the PC). Now food is cold and the one modern PC in this house dead. It's like whenever I temporarily do not feel like shit something must happen.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

Well that's it for my main PC, the one powering our whole living room and where I work and sometimes played. The D5 pump died & it is impossible to swap to air cooling both for height reasons and because it is a whole custom loop with GPU and everything. I cannot afford to replace it right now. FML

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

So... any sources for the rumor that the orange clown is hospitalized?

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Rambled about how I gotta finish the P4 3GHz DOS PC with 3 ISA slots but still need to decide on a 3rd sound card to accompany my Sound Blaster AWE32 and PicoGUS and my air fryer reacted exactly like my partner did

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Thin Client fun thread! The Igel-5/3 ("Igel" means "hedgehog" in German) sports a VIA C3 Nehemiah CPU clocked at 800 MHz, SiS Mirage graphics (highly DOS compatible), dual DDR memory slots, a CF card slot and even a PCMCIA slot which I use for a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS - and a PCI slot too!

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

A BYD EV that costs 9.600$ USD elsewhere costs 21k€ (23k$ USD) in Germany due to tariffs. If we could get the same vehicle for 10k€ instead, most people who commute to work by car would have that much money back in over the course of 5 years, because electricity is so much cheaper than gas.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Okay, safe mode still works. Weird. I have no idea how to fix this.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

This is bad. I did not make any software changes (driver installations or whatever), I merely took out 2 sound cards and put in 1 AWE64. Removed the AWE64, this persists. How could I possibly have run out of extended memory? I commented out practically everything in autoexec.bat and config.sys, too.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

I wanted to record something on the Creative AWE64's FM synthesizer (Creative CQM) to show how that is inferior to Yamaha's OPL3 but in all honesty, it didn't actually sound that much worse. I'll need a second blueskeet for this, so bear with me, I'll explain how to get the most out of your CQM!

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

It's FUBAR which sucks because I now have to do the dishes manually, but it's also good because it's the landlord's problem now, he needs to buy a new one ASAP.

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Dishwasher just broke. Lost water, is somehow still active, stuck in its program, but won't power down no matter what. The breaker labeled "dishwasher" doesn't affect it, still powered on. The one next to it does exactly what it says (oven), so no confusion there either. I can't pull the plug either

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Instead of annoying you with an april fools joke, I decided to supply you with both the well-known Hans-meme as well as the perfect response (that isn't posted nearly often enough!)

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Mancomb ████good, Internet ██████ @16bitmanfred.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Things my gf drew for some Inktober (each picture was drawn on one evening after work). I wish I could do this, too. But regardless of talent or the lack thereof, everyone has to put in the hours before they get there. I have a ton of respect for the people who did or currently do. Keep at it!

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