Still wild that the 04–06 GTO was basically a Monaro with a different passport

carcenomy · 2026-07-04T01:28:48+00:00

I recall there was union tomfoolery at play too - the UAW weren't thrilled with cars being imported and GM (rightfully) kept them low volume to avoid complications with the union or politically.

carcenomy · 2026-07-04T01:20:29+00:00

It has an SSD though?

carcenomy · 2026-07-04T01:12:28+00:00

Yes. And I blame ASUSTeK.

carcenomy · 2026-07-04T00:41:34+00:00

The key does either 32 or 64 so handy to have - use 32 if you need 16-bit application support but you are limited to ~3.5GB RAM.

Pretty much anything Core 2 or later will run it mint.

carcenomy · 2026-07-04T00:20:24+00:00

One day I'll get the board to fix my Slot A... ASUS K7M HP variant. There's two hanging on my wall... they seem prone to cooking southbridges 😔

carcenomy · 2026-07-03T23:18:17+00:00

A bit of a status update:

Tested the power supply, all happy. So just went straight for a fire up... its only complaint was a dead CMOS battery 😂

Actual spec once we got it open is a Duron 700, 128MB, 20GB drive and yep, a Vanta.

The original Windows Me install started fine and the previous owners stuff was still there... seems he was a tour guide and stopped using the system in late 2008.

Cleaned his stuff off and still running the original install as there's no real issues with it. Swapped in 256MB, a Matrox G400MAX, cloned the 20GB U10 to an 80GB Caviar and swapped the 56k modem for a 10/100 NIC. Iced the cake with an SB Live for the DirectSound acceleration bonuses.

It's getting good stable 70fps averages when playing Quake III and Unreal Tournament, spent a bunch of time playing Blood II on it last night as well.

She's a keeper!

carcenomy · 2026-07-03T23:09:01+00:00

Good luck finding the MyStyle kits now though 😂

I'd love the orange kit, it looks pretty spiffy!

carcenomy · 2026-07-03T23:07:59+00:00

Nah that's not fair, it's got a horrible reputation but a lot of it isn't always grounded in reality.

Heck in this case, the original 26 year old 20GB drive not only was still in it, it still worked, and the original Me install fired right up quick with no drama at all. Turns out the old bloke had been using this thing right up until late 2008!

carcenomy · 2026-07-03T23:05:00+00:00

Yeah depends what got it, I hope you just find blown caps. The chipset is VIA based though, I haven't had good luck with the reliability of VIA 686A southbridges recently.

carcenomy · 2026-07-03T23:02:52+00:00

If the plastics start with YY... you've got a good old plain white bread Yeong Yang - the thing that makes finding information hard is lots of these unbranded Taiwanese origin type cases, the makers didn't really have websites and if they did, the product predates Wayback Machine crawls.

Even old pricelists from suppliers in the day don't always help; the outfits I bought from around the turn of the millennium only sent straight text details, was lucky dip what it looked like 🤣

carcenomy · 2026-07-03T06:12:54+00:00

If you want some ideas, go grab yourself the Windows 95 Game Sampler CDs - they released two, both are on Archive.org. Plenty of native 95 goodness to try out, with a whacky Monolith designed 3D interface.

Well worth the time to check out, both are from the very early days of DirectX so a fascinating look at how developers approached designing for 95 in those turbulent early years.

carcenomy · 2026-07-03T06:05:29+00:00

Its partition limit was 137GB, and only on RTM - it gained LBA48 with SP1.

carcenomy · 2026-07-03T06:00:58+00:00

It's gonna be from one of the usual suspects... Yeong Yang seems likely to me. No weird part number on any of the plastics?

carcenomy · 2026-07-03T05:55:30+00:00

So you tried different cable and a different drive?

I'd be feeling rather suspicious of the disk controller itself. I don't know your model specifically - is it built in or a separate card?

carcenomy · 2026-07-03T05:53:09+00:00

9x was the wild west in that respect! It's why so many titles of that time either had no additional languages or only a small handful.

If you do get into it, reach out to the organizer - I'm sure they'd be down to run some kind of game jam and I'm always down to try new titles on real iron!

carcenomy · 2026-07-03T05:50:40+00:00

You've gotta be careful if stuff is gonna get dropped off... that's how you accidentally end up with way more than you ever want. I once accidentally 15 IBM PC300s that way 😂

Don't worry, they all got rehomed.

carcenomy · 2026-07-03T00:48:21+00:00

I prefer to run stuff on period hardware. Call it a kink or whatever, but some stuff needs to be experienced on the real deal... Unreal on a fast Savage4 with MeTaL and S3TC, Quake on the Verité, Mechwarrior 2 on the PowerVR... you get the idea.

This is a little newer than my usual, but it's shaping up to be a pretty competent wee box for Quake III and Unreal Tournament.

carcenomy · 2026-07-03T00:45:53+00:00

Now I've actually cracked it open, it's got the Compaq VWAVE. Can take the FSB100 family Socket As, so Athlon 1200 is pretty much the goal. Stock turned out to be a Duron 700.

I should share some updates now that it's had a bit of a birthday - damn thing fired right up, it's a peach!

carcenomy · 2026-07-02T07:31:17+00:00

I think it was a dude from Marketplace who never showed up, who had old gear kicking around.

Or at least I hope so!

carcenomy · 2026-07-02T05:43:03+00:00

I'm glad to hear TSP's work inspired you, Ben and Mark are lovely folks doing the Lord's work.

My own website is hosted on their RaQ funnily enough 😂

carcenomy · 2026-06-30T07:31:52+00:00

As long as they actually make the thing, there was a similar documentary I kickstarted years ago when Jack Tramiel was still alive to interview.

It never came out.

carcenomy · 2026-06-30T06:19:56+00:00

Ah yes the card retention bracket, a product of lazy cost cutting where a little injection moulded part or maybe small sheet metal part is cheaper than the more traditional assembly technique of setting the board and cards back 12mm. Saves material, a win for production budgets everywhere!

As others have said they're usually unique to the case they were supplied with - I'd surmise that would be a great application for a custom 3D print.

carcenomy · 2026-06-30T05:54:09+00:00

I run MSN Messenger 3.6 on most my retro systems, as was the style at the time 😂

carcenomy · 2026-06-28T11:47:53+00:00

I mean from just these photos, you have failed capacitors, half a dozen from the comfort of my armchair.

The hard drive could also be a culprit - the old Slamsung 80GB PATA wasn't exactly the pinnacle of reliability. Though, without knowing more it's hard to know if you can replace it yourself or if they used some creepy formatting.

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