PhilCs blog / the latest things hes broken(fixed)

[mrbombermillzy]

@PhilC Never mind. CL4 is 6 months away after all.


@rubber_jonnie


Ive just re-visited the whole PS3 backward compatibility thing.

I think all PS3s are PS1 backward compatible.

There were CECHA and B which had PS2 ICs for Emotion Engine, Graphics synthesizer and Rambus on and is 100% compatible.

The CECHC 02/3/4 and 8 had the EE and RB removed (emulated) and is ~70-90% PS2 games compatible.

All other models/later slims, etc are not PS2 compatible whatsoever as all the ICs were removed/not emulated.

The CECHC03 was the only one of the 'mostly' compatible ones to be sold in the UK.

Hope that clears things up. Apologies about the less precise info before.

[rubber_jonnie]

@PhilC Never mind. CL4 is 6 months away after all.


@rubber_jonnie


Ive just re-visited the whole PS3 backward compatibility thing.

I think all PS3s are PS1 backward compatible.

There were CECHA and B which had PS2 ICs for Emotion Engine, Graphics synthesizer and Rambus on and is 100% compatible.

The CECHC 02/3/4 and 8 had the EE and RB removed (emulated) and is ~70-90% PS2 games compatible.

All other models/later slims, etc are not PS2 compatible whatsoever as all the ICs were removed/not emulated.

The CECHC03 was the only one of the 'mostly' compatible ones to be sold in the UK.

Hope that clears things up. Apologies about the less precise info before.

Yeah, I have 2 PS3's and neither are backwards compatible AFAIK, but I do have a PS1 so need to try one of the disks in them.

[PhilC]

been working on the Raven and my RS232 terminal emulator today. The terminal emulator is finished and just needs programming, which I will do later. The Raven is just waiting for the Ram, a replacement 48mhz oscillator (misplaced the last one) and thyristors to arrive, which if I'm lucky, will get here before Easter.

PXL_20250415_154617024.jpg (422.36 KiB) Viewed 1268 times

[mrbombermillzy]

That looks grand Phil!

Hopefully you will have that Raven running very soon.

Have you got any ISA cards ready for it?

[PhilC]

That looks grand Phil!

Hopefully you will have that Raven running very soon.

Have you got any ISA cards ready for it?

I've got a Mach32, ET4000, Picogus and a couple of network cards to try on it once I get it finished.

[PhilC]

Well that's just annoying. My new laser for the PS1 arrived and I've got it all fitted button it looks like the bios chip is faulty.

It looks like the cost for bios chip replacement parts is more than the tenner that I paid for the console. Time put that to one side and see if I can pick up another from the car boot or similar.

[PhilC]

Just noticed I'd not posted anything on my blog for months.

So amongst all of my projects I dug out a couple of old PC motherboards. One is a 486SLC33 and the other is a P II 266.

I never had a 486SLC back in the day, with my 386DX40 being sold to buy an Amiga A1200, then a couple of years later and I got my P90. I had to remove the battery and repair a few tracks thanks to battery acid damage which took me a couple of hours but I'm happy to report that it's all up and running now. I've got no idea what I'll actually do with this as the second board was the one I was interested in.

The P II 266 has an ATX motherboard that supports ISA, PCI and AGP and after a bit of a clean up, boots just fine. Of course I've over clocked the CPU to 366, which is the fastest this motherboard will let me go with a 66mhz bus CPU.

The board has a whole 512mb ram, which is overkill but is the maximum that Windows 98 supports IIRC. So I've put a 10/100 PCI network card in to it and have tried it with a few ISA sound cards and graphics cards and it works great.

So whilst I was browsing eBay, I decided to look for an AGP graphics card for it. Back in the day I had a Matrox Millennium 2 working with a Voodoo 2 and used this for my Quake and Unreal adventures, so started looking for something similar. Amusingly I managed to bid on and win Matrox Millennium G550 for a whole £1.95. the carriage cost nearly twice that.

So now I have a P2 366 with a daft amount of memory and graphics card that I'll be using for my retro PC gaming needs. Just got to find a retro case for it to go in.

Do you guys have a retro gaming PC? If so, what do you have and what do you play on it?

[Steve]

Do you guys have a retro gaming PC? If so, what do you have and what do you play on it?

Yeah I went through the retro-gaming-pc phase a few years ago, I went through many different configurations but I settled on the following which covers all my bases:

3dfx / Glide build (pre-2000 games)
1.4Ghz Pentium 3 Tualatin, Asus CUBX motherboard (modified to take tualatin, 440BX chipset) 1GB SDRAM, SB Audigy2 ZX, 3dfx Voodoo3 3000 AGP.

Nvidia / P4 build (for 2000-2005? ish games)
Nvidia Quadro FX3000 AGP (The last and most powerful Nvidia card that supports *all* legacy 3D features like 8bit palleted textures and table fog) ASRock Intel 865 motherboard (I much prefer Intel boards in the AGP era) 3Ghz Pentium4 dual-core, 2GB DDR RAM, Auzentech X-Fi Prelude sound card.

In the years I was building these systems I unfortunately let go of my Voodoo2-SLI set (I wish I kept it) I also had the 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 PCI with DVI output, but unfortunately it had a fault in one of it's VSA chips, I sent it to Germany to get it diagnosed but then couldn't afford the price of fixing it Sad times.

I mainly play old Quake and Unreal engine games, system shock, thief, deus ex, hidden and dangerous, Sin, etc

[dml]

> Do you guys have a retro gaming PC? If so, what do you have and what do you play on it?

A couple of 486/P5s in storage. Probably battery-nuked by now. I would go and look but then I'll have 12 projects on the go instead of the 9 I'm already juggling with.

OTOH its the same place where some interesting PC cards could be hiding. So I might have to take the risk

[JezC]

> Do you guys have a retro gaming PC? If so, what do you have and what do you play on it?

A couple of 486/P5s in storage. Probably battery-nuked by now. I would go and look but then I'll have 12 projects on the go instead of the 9 I'm already juggling with.

OTOH its the same place where some interesting PC cards could be hiding. So I might have to take the risk

Similar for me (though that kind of depends what you regard as retro for a PC )...I have a (large number) ranging from a 386SX board (ISA only) up to Core 2 Duo systems. I also should have a number of ISA & PCI cards of various kinds plus a small number of AGP graphics cards.
I'm sure one or two of the older systems have/had Varta batteries on them, so they are probably in need of serious repair but I'm hoping tha vast majority were button cells so they may have fared better...maybe.

As for playing on them...no time for that at the noment

Dare I look at the weekend...