What retro things have you done today?

!bluetonic! · 17 May 2024 at 13:15

I haven't tried PCem yet.

My retro tinkering has been stagnant over the last month.

I haven't bought anything or even been tempted.

I discovered Medieval Dynasty and sunk a lot of time into that on my gaming PC.

I've a ticket for the Retro Revival gig in June.

And there was a diary clash for the first South West Amiga meet in Exeter, so I couldn't attend that.

Fonz-Valo · 17 May 2024 at 15:01

!bluetonic! said:
I haven't tried PCem yet.

It has really scratched that retro hardware itch for me, since you are literally emulating the hardware of the era it feels a bit more legit(?) than say dosbox, i love dosbox but there is something about running it on fake real hardware that i've configured myself.

My main laptop is comfortably running a P233mhz mmx with Voodoo 2 and s3virge, i've never noticed any performance hits

!bluetonic! · 18 May 2024 at 19:21

!bluetonic! said:
I haven't bought anything or even been tempted

And back to normal service..

PicoGUS sound card emulator has been ordered.

cee-S-dee · 18 May 2024 at 20:40

!bluetonic! said:
And back to normal service..

PicoGUS sound card emulator has been ordered.

OOO Nice! I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. What was the cost in total shipped if you don't mind me asking?

!bluetonic! · 19 May 2024 at 08:17

cee-S-dee said:
OOO Nice! I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. What was the cost in total shipped if you don't mind me asking?

£58.93 has left my bank account. This was from Tindie with the more expensive shipping option.

The issue now is which machine does it go in. I'm thinking my 386. But, when I tucked that away, it already had a good sound setup and a S2 wavetable running in it.

I could buy a new retro setup..

Although my wife wouldn't see that as an option.

LewisRaz · 20 May 2024 at 17:34

PicoGUS deserves a 486 really

!bluetonic! · 21 May 2024 at 18:12

LewisRaz said:
PicoGUS deserves a 486 really

I haven't got a 486..

Have you one to give me?

LewisRaz · 21 May 2024 at 19:57

.. I wish I did

!bluetonic! · 23 May 2024 at 12:24

I hadn't powered up my Win2k build for a while. The next thing I wanted to see was to simply play an Audio CD to see how it sounds.

This is because the 'Sound Blaster Exitgy' I had was meant to be better than high-end audio setups.

And it failed miserably. The PC fan is too loud to hear the subtleness of the audio. The CD drive spinning adds another layer of noise. And the PC, for some reason which I will now diagnose, couldn't play a CD without causing the audio to be jumpy.

This could be for a number of reasons. Is it the flakyness of USB and trying to ask too much of the machine to send the audio of a CD over USB to an external sound card on an archaic PC.

I will continue my diagnosis and report back.

Ice Rich · 25 May 2024 at 10:34

Fonz-Valo said:
It has really scratched that retro hardware itch for me, since you are literally emulating the hardware of the era it feels a bit more legit(?) than say dosbox, i love dosbox but there is something about running it on fake real hardware that i've configured myself.

My main laptop is comfortably running a P233mhz mmx with Voodoo 2 and s3virge, i've never noticed any performance hits

Sounds great and I also have that itch.
What is your laptop specs and which version of windows are you running?

Fonz-Valo · 25 May 2024 at 10:51

Ice Rich said:
Sounds great and I also have that itch.
What is your laptop specs and which version of windows are you running?

This is on a Ryzen 7 3700u, 32gb ram and vega 8(?) integrated graphics.
It's more about CPU power than anything else when running pcem as I believe your gpu isn't leveraged at all

Ice Rich · 25 May 2024 at 13:10

Fonz-Valo said:
This is on a Ryzen 7 3700u, 32gb ram and vega 8(?) integrated graphics.
It's more about CPU power than anything else when running pcem as I believe your gpu isn't leveraged at all

Thanks,
Presumably you boot into your normal laptop OS and then run the app from there and start whichever windows version you have opted for? Or does this need a seperate HDD?

Fonz-Valo · Sunday at 13:56

Ice Rich said:
Thanks,
Presumably you boot into your normal laptop OS and then run the app from there and start whichever windows version you have opted for? Or does this need a seperate HDD?

It's literally just an emulation app you run on top of windows, you don't need an additional harddrive as you create virtual hard drives for pcem to use.

Whilst I fumbled my way through my first installment of it, I've recently discovered that Phil's computer lab on YouTube has a fantastic setup guide for it so it's worth checking that out

Ice Rich · Sunday at 18:54

Will do, thank you

Spacedeck · Monday at 14:58

I started using PCEM first time yesterday, also followed Phil's video for my W98 setup. Now setup and runs great, just getting games installed now to see what it can run.

!bluetonic! · 2024-06-01T07:15:30+0100

Yesterday, I had a little play with my Win2K build, seeing if I could get CD audio to play through the SB Extigy without being jumpy.

Alas. I changed the CD drive over to a spare Sony one and it was the same. And, sometimes, simple solutions are the best. When I took the audio feed from the CD Drive's headphone socket and passed it into the Line In of the Extigy, it played fine.

I had to use WinAmp to play the CD so it didn't go through the SoundCard twice.

I haven't got time to mess about. It's worked. In the olden days, I would have spent weeks trying to sort this out and be gutted with the above but working solution.