iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 12h

Glorious 8MB of video ram 🎉 These cards are available new for £10 (designed for servers), seems like a win to me!

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 12h

Mission successful, I now have a compatible 8MB decent (for the era), PCI video card to play with.

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 12h

Voltage regulator soldered in place. 5v In > 3.3v Out Let's see if my computer will blow up! 😂

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 12h

Soldered wires to an unpopulated 5v pin and gnd pin.

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 12h

3.3v regulator desoldered from an old Arduino fits the bill

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 12h

I bought a few of these 8MB Rage XL cards a while back, and although the notches suggest it's a universal PCI card - it is not and the system will not post with it in.

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 13h

Lots better with a dedicated video card. But....... I want more video ram to play with and something a bit better for 3d.

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Playing with some 'retro' 20 year old SAS tonight, I bought 12x 10k 72GB drives. I only have one cable for this card, so I can only connect 4 of them at a time. Looking for another card for a decent price, it would be cool to connect 8 or more then at a time.

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Here's the Speedsys performance report for the system using onboard video:

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Whacked the allocation up to 4mb and the frequency to max. Let's give it a comparison.

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

So I really want to test the onboard video, I have one of those low profile AGP cards that's broken - that has one of those breakout VGA connectors. It seems seems the pinout matches the motherboard! 👍

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

It runs Windows 98 really well, even with this 2mb PCI video card. Sim City 2000 - super nostalgic for me, I got absolutely hooked to this game BiTD

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

No PS/2 mouse ports, or serial ports, so I've gone with a USB card and Linux to test. All working well.

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Well, I wasn't expecting a 256MB stick to work, OTT or what!? 🤭

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

We're in business folks, whoop whoop!

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

I'm going to use this S3 Trio64V2/DX, but 1mb is not going to cut it.

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Jumpers all setup and nearly ready for a post test, I'm just verifying the CPU voltage, so I don't fry it.

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

That'll do nicely for this: AMD K6 200 (AMD-K6-200ALR)

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Well, it likes power and nothing exploded, so that's a good start 😂

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

An untested Socket 7 motherboard from the batch I was sent by @uhf-satcom.bsky.social 🙏🙏🙏 I'll be checking out tomorrow! Quite a cool board tbh, onboard video, onboard sound (C-Media CMI8330) (no connectors for either, so I'll try and make some). Jetway J-TX98B [1998]

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Intel GMA 3150. TBH, it's actually better than I was expecting, it also runs UT99 really nice at max settings.

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

XP installed, let's do a couple of benchmarks.

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

32bit PCI Nvidia Geforce FX 5500 (256MB)

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Playing with an Intel D525MW (Mount Washington) Mini ITX board tonight, I want to test a 32bit PCI video card against the onboard graphics in XP.

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Maxtor 90432D2 (DiamondMax 4320) 4.3GB IDE / ATA/ATAPI-4 (Ultra ATA/33)

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

This Singer oil is really great for refurbishing old fans, the fan on this socket 7 cooler is so quiet now 👍

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Tonight's fun time platform (Socket 7, Pentium MMX 233Mhz):

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾 @gammitin.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Valley of Ra (1996): 3dfx’s iconic tech demo for the original Voodoo1 (SST-1). Built on the Glide API at 640x480, it blew 90s PC gamers away with hardware bilinear filtering, smooth alpha-blended light beams, and real-time reflection/transparency over ancient Egyptian pyramids.

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

Saturday greetings folks, I hope you've had, or are having a great day. ☺️

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

Remember these AMD Athlon XP retail boxes 🥰

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

- Kids these days: "I'm really sad, because my computer can't handle 4k gaming" - Me: "Dude, my computer couldn't even handle 320x200 back in the day, but I still had fun!"

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

I love this little Toshiba 486 laptop, especially as it has a clip on trackball 🖲️

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

Messing about with MidnightBSD on this Pentium III. Attempting to get a decent desktop environment going, I'm impressed so far though, 512MB ram, 1.1ghz 32bit CPU and it's nippy!