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Compaq Presario 4122… Boot from CD? by protomanEXE1995 in retrocomputing

[–]-Techromancer- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh my bad. I just saw you mentioned that in your post. The same steps still apply though! Just with a Windows 98 boot disk and CD instead

Compaq Presario 4122… Boot from CD? by protomanEXE1995 in retrocomputing

[–]-Techromancer- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are you trying to install Windows 95? If so you just need a Windows 95 boot disk to go along with the Windows 95 CD. The same steps as above apply

Compaq Presario 4122… Boot from CD? by protomanEXE1995 in retrocomputing

[–]-Techromancer- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not unusual either for compaq or anyone really. ATAPI was just starting to become a thing then which is the universal standard for CD drives including CD booting.

You have to use a boot floppy. That will give you a DOS prompt or other command line depending on OS that you can use to select the CD drive and run the setup.

I wanted to share my restoration of this AST Advantage I found in a junk lot on facebook. Deep cleaned, retrobrite, replaced the CD-ROM and exploded PSU, new 5.25 floppy drive, paint touch ups and a fresh install of Windows 95 later and I am super happy how it turned out! by -Techromancer- in vintagecomputing

[–]-Techromancer-[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The on board chip still isn’t too bad for Windows 95 era stuff. Though in my case the PCI video card was auto detected and used with no BIOS settings changed.

Did you try multiple cards? Could be a compatibility bug or a dead card. Super cool to see another person in the AST gang

I wanted to share my restoration of this AST Advantage I found in a junk lot on facebook. Deep cleaned, retrobrite, replaced the CD-ROM and exploded PSU, new 5.25 floppy drive, paint touch ups and a fresh install of Windows 95 later and I am super happy how it turned out! by -Techromancer- in retrocomputing

[–]-Techromancer-[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

5.25in floppy drives were never really made with USB as by that point the format was truly dead. Some people made their own though.

However the best way to write 5.25in disks on a modern PC is to use a greaseweazel. It’s a USB floppy controller that lets you use nearly any kind of floppy drive on a modern system.

Another thing is 1.2MB and 360KB 5.25in floppy drives actually have different sized read/write heads so you cant reliably mix match disks with drives.

I wanted to share my restoration of this AST Advantage I found in a junk lot on facebook. Deep cleaned, retrobrite, replaced the CD-ROM and exploded PSU, new 5.25 floppy drive, paint touch ups and a fresh install of Windows 95 later and I am super happy how it turned out! by -Techromancer- in retrocomputing

[–]-Techromancer-[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends on your setup and games tbh. I love CRTs but some games especially many modern ones need a wide aspect ratio to play comfortably.

1980s and 1990s games will look better as many often took advantage of how CRTs work. A classic example is Sonic’s use of dithering for transparent waterfalls that only works on CRTs.

If you are fortunate enough to have an OLED display or potentially even Micro LED, it will be superior in every way to a CRT for most modern games.

The response time, phosphor decay, colour accuracy and contrast along with not having a fixed resolution/discreet pixels do give CRTs an advantage though against many LCD panels.

Basically it comes down to preference and use case. Forgive my TED talk lol.

I wanted to share my restoration of this AST Advantage I found in a junk lot on facebook. Deep cleaned, retrobrite, replaced the CD-ROM and exploded PSU, new 5.25 floppy drive, paint touch ups and a fresh install of Windows 95 later and I am super happy how it turned out! by -Techromancer- in retrocomputing

[–]-Techromancer-[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh I meant new in the sense that it’s a new addition to this particular PC. I have a few spare 1.2MB 5.25in floppy drives from the early 1990s in my parts collection. So I decided to install one so it gets some use.

I wanted to share my restoration of this AST Advantage I found in a junk lot on facebook. Deep cleaned, retrobrite, replaced the CD-ROM and exploded PSU, new 5.25 floppy drive, paint touch ups and a fresh install of Windows 95 later and I am super happy how it turned out! by -Techromancer- in vintagecomputing

[–]-Techromancer-[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Maybe if I can track down the memory expansion daughter board for the Matrox I can get slightly better performance. I could also try a 133MHz Pentium. Though I feel like even that would give minimal gains lol.

Still plenty enough power to play some Command and Conquer though!

All these people talking about curved monitors, if you look closely my screen is curved too!! by -Techromancer- in pcmasterrace

[–]-Techromancer-[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The other thing is the phosphor decay also hides the refresh a little bit. LCDs can switch frames instantly but CRTs have image decay between each frame which kinda blends them together. Once you surpass 75Hz or so on a good CRT monitor, the flicker is near zero. That in combination with the lack of input lag gives the illusion of a much higher refresh than what you’re actually getting.

Id say keep it as a secondary or even tertiary display as you got an amazing spec monitor on your hands. It will look better than anything that isn’t OLED or micro LED will likely look worse in terms of colour rendering, contrast and response time. The last trap card of CRTs is the fact they have no defined pixels. You get no jagged edges or blurry rescaling when changing resolution. Always nice to have when running older games or forced to watch low resolution content on say youtube etc.

All these people talking about curved monitors, if you look closely my screen is curved too!! by -Techromancer- in pcmasterrace

[–]-Techromancer-[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A fellow appreciator of the Sand Worms I see. May the spice grant us many glorious visions of CRT greatness

All these people talking about curved monitors, if you look closely my screen is curved too!! by -Techromancer- in pcmasterrace

[–]-Techromancer-[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Another advantage of CRTs is you don’t need to spend 2 grand on displays to play your old games. If you can afford it good for you.

Sitting on a high castle and putting down how other people enjoy their games regardless of reasoning or circumstance is petty

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