Old Style PCs *spawn*
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
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tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
A Highscreen. Pentium 2 350mhz, ati 3d rage pro 8mb, 32mb ram if I remember correctly, a 56k modem, 4gb hard disk AND a 17" monitor
We had a dos pc before that but I never really learned how to use that. My parents weren't interested in PC's and it didn't have a manual. I knew how to boot some programs but that was about it.
I had to make due with that Pentium 2 for ages. It wasn't until I bought my first PC, a athlon 2500+, before I got something new.
that was a pretty good PC, only held back by its amount of memory. In fact I am very surprised that given the rest of the specs it had 32MB of RAM, because the GPU was spectacular. My first PC had that amount of RAM and I got it in September 1995, but the GPU was mediocre and it was a Pentium 100 --really good for the time.
A Highscreen. Pentium 2 350mhz, ati 3d rage pro 8mb, 32mb ram if I remember correctly, a 56k modem, 4gb hard disk AND a 17" monitor
We had a dos pc before that but I never really learned how to use that. My parents weren't interested in PC's and it didn't have a manual. I knew how to boot some programs but that was about it.
I had to make due with that Pentium 2 for ages. It wasn't until I bought my first PC, a athlon 2500+, before I got something new.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
We got it in 98 or 99 though. I believe 32mb was more or less the standard by then?
I do remember upgrading to 128mb years later but it would still take like 15 minutes to load a level in counter strike.
I do remember upgrading to 128mb years later but it would still take like 15 minutes to load a level in counter strike.
Blazkowicz
Legend
We had 4MB and couldn't play Duke 3D in 1996. Bought 4MB but it was the wrong RAM. We needed four 1MB 9 bit sticks, they didn't have it anymore.
So my parents ended up selling that whole DX/2 66 + peripherals at a good price.
So my parents ended up selling that whole DX/2 66 + peripherals at a good price.
did you and your family get a PC with a Pentium processor afterwards?
32 only? I had a 486 DX2 66Mhz with 32MB RAM bought from my dad's company when they were selling their old equipment. I even installed a CD ROM drive on it so I could play Diablo II!!! Yes, it did work apart from the cutscenes (needed 16bit graphics and chipset was only capable of 256 colors). It would get reaaaaaally slow like 2 FPS with a horde of mobs on screen, but I didn't care! Was able to finish the first two acts on it before I bought a Pentium III 1Ghz Coppermine with 64MB RAM and a Riva TNT2. I think it worked "alright" because the graphics chipset had 4MB of memory, which was quite good for a 486 machine I guess.
Blazkowicz
Legend
We had a Pentium-class computer after the 486, yes. The days of Intel chipset and non-Intel CPU.
and wow.. S3 PCI graphics cards made in 1996 were cheap and had amazing 2D performance (though I didn't know much at the time, so didn't really appreciate it besides old games working insanely fast). Hard drive boasted about IDE Mode Pio 4. Great, thanks. But this still had the CPU work hard for every I/O, kind of noticeable in Windows 95. Wasn't bad really but the Ultra DMA 33 drives just a gen later were so much better, thanks to DMA.
Even today, you can use an UDMA 33 drive and a S3 graphics card (or Rage Pro, much the same thing) with a recent linux, that'll be "survival mode" but that works.
and wow.. S3 PCI graphics cards made in 1996 were cheap and had amazing 2D performance (though I didn't know much at the time, so didn't really appreciate it besides old games working insanely fast). Hard drive boasted about IDE Mode Pio 4. Great, thanks. But this still had the CPU work hard for every I/O, kind of noticeable in Windows 95. Wasn't bad really but the Ultra DMA 33 drives just a gen later were so much better, thanks to DMA.
Even today, you can use an UDMA 33 drive and a S3 graphics card (or Rage Pro, much the same thing) with a recent linux, that'll be "survival mode" but that works.
4MB of video RAM was very good at the time. The weakes component on my computer back then was the GPU and tis meagre 2MB of RAM. Then I switched it to something else and added a Monster 3DFX card, video problems were gone. Not to mention the original diskette with the drivers had a virus, plus without Internet I couldn't update the drivers at least..
32MB of RAM for a 486DX2 processor had to be incredible, maybe even unbalanced? A single MB of RAM cost 30€ back then, and I went with that amount after reading in a PC magazine that Windows 95 ran at 8MB, run slightly better with 16MB of RAM and that it ran very smooth with just 32MB of RAM.
Your computer was meant for a better processor, although the 486 wasn't bad.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Oh, you might be right indeed. The "GPU" was a Tseng Labs ET4000/W32i, which supported a maximum of 4MB of VRAM. Mine probably only had 2MB. I just remember seeing something about 4MB at the time on SiSoft Sandra, but that might have been the maximum and not the actual amount.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tseng_Labs_ET4000
The computer was similar to this one, apart from the fact mine was 486DX/66 and had more memory and a larger HDD (4GB I think?)
http://www.totalgeekdom.com/?p=356
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16 bit is 65k colors.
Regards,
SB
Where did I say that that 16 bit was 256 colours? I said that the game ran fine apart from the cutscenes because they needed 16bit graphics. The game itself ran with 256 colours only.
The last version of Windows I ran on it what Windows 98 SE. It ran quite well. Games like Age of Empires I and II or Duke Nukem 3D also run very well.The most annoying thing about it was the lack of sound apart from the internal speaker, so I could not really play music on it.
The amount of memory was crazy indeed, I dont know what they used the PC for at my father's company. A friend of mine had a Pentium 75Mhz but only with 16MB RAM, so he did not manage to make me totally envy. I had the computer for ages since it was good enough for school work (Word, Excel run very well).
I'm pretty sure your mis-remembering the specs of your 486
My Pentium 75 only had a 850mb hdd
Heres a couple of quotes I found on google :
"The last time I actaully used DOS 6.22 the biggest drives around were under 500 Megs"
"FAT16 tops at 2GB for DOS 6.22. DOS 6.0 tops out FAT16 at 528MB, IIRC"
Given that I played Diablo II on it and it requires around 1GB disk space I'm quite sure that can't be right. Keep in mind that I got the PC after it had been used at my father's company (employer), so it went through upgrades.
I had Windows 98SE on it probably using FAT32.
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