This is me just trying to figure out how to fix my Compaq Portable III

I was going to be a bit more celebratory today with getting the last video of the year finished and stuff, then it got dropped on me pretty hard this morning that over the weekend we lost an icon in the world of tech reporting. 😔 obits.goldsteinsfuneral.com/stewart-chei...

Stewart Cheifet and Gary Kildall were regular guests on my television growing up. The Computer Chronicles always made me feel like I was a part of this impossible dream of being a Silicon Valley insider. Thank you, Mr. Cheifet. obits.goldsteinsfuneral.com/stewart-chei...

NOOOOOOOO GODDAMMIT!! What an unbelievably terrible parting shot for a terrible year! Shit, man! Such a seminal figure, not just in reporting on computer technology, but in data preservation, and so much more. Many times I'd dream of getting to talk to him, unlikely as it was, but now I never will.

I bought way too many GeForce 6200s, so now I've gotta inflict my fiscal irresponsibility on you, the unsuspecting viewer! Join me as we take a look at the graphics card that redeemed the budget category, for a generation at least! youtu.be/BYuU5k5V9U4?...

Many thanks to @lgr-yt.bsky.social, @actionretro.bsky.social and @adriansdigitalbasement.com for lending their vocal talents to my new video! youtu.be/JHqiiPGPHFY #Macintosh #StarTrek #TransparentAluminum

Absolutely love this series, and holy cow that Julie doll is more advanced than toys of today.

OK, VLB cards, cool technology. 32-bits. Backwards compatible. Neatness. Freakin PITA(!) to actually remove and especially insert. Not only do they need to be forced near the point of breaking to put in, but they have to be seated PERFECTLY to function. So too often I have to reseat it. Not a fan.

The #1 movie when you were 10 years old is how your 2026 is going to go. oh. that's... that's probably fine.

a dumb idea i had yesterday

Not to, ya know, flex or anything, but I found this unopened package of RAM, and I'm pretty sure this means I can retire early. 😎

I gave the Video Memory Tester made by @necroware.bsky.social a try today, and here are my results! Super useful and awesome to be able to add it to the toolchest! Give it a try! (Side note: I confirmed it works on PCIe cards 😄) youtube.com/shorts/vwRbG...

Really sad to hear about Rob Reiner. Not just a legend in Hollywood, but an incredible activist and equal rights advocate. The world lost a truly great creator, and warrior.

This is a SUPER awesome project by @necroware.bsky.social for helping to diagnose which video memory chip(s) on your card are defective. Huge thanks to them for creating it! Check out the video and download the tool for DOS to try out: youtu.be/B8poUa7nwUE?... github.com/necroware/vi...

I took Nathan's ( @pixelpipes.bsky.social ) suggestion (to @actionretro.bsky.social ) of using this cheap PCI GeForce GT210 on old Pentium 4 systems without AGP/PCIe slots. This tiny card was the perfect solution for a D2700 Atom system! It literally runs rings around the Atom's GMA 3650 on XP...

I poked around a bit with this today. I can't find any shorts, nothing blown, voltages all look good. POST card doesn't see anything. Both this system and my previous non-working machine are basically in the same state now. I'm gonna need better tools (like a scope) to have any hope of fixing it.

Pro tip (that I only found out today because I'm not a pro): Baking soda & peroxide toothpaste makes for an amazing polish for gold stained aluminum Before/After

Am I wrong in thinking that Robin Williams looked pretty cool in a mustache?

AI has made graphics cards, electricity and now RAM much more expensive. But you know, old games still run on PCs from the 90s, which in turn run on 100W or so. If emulation is fine, even a 15W Raspberry Pi 4 will do for that. All of these graphics cards by the way: 50 watts or less!

Fun fact, 25+ years ago for GDC 2000, NVIDIA worked with Quake 3 map designer "Casey", to build a super high polygon map called Area 15 - NVIDIA Bunker, which was a showpiece for the GeForce 2 GTS and id Tech 3 capabilities!

Why WinQuake exists and how it works: fabiensanglard.net/winquake/

Noooo! I literally just used it the night before last. :( Can't be the clock battery, that only has like a year of use on it Guess I know what I'm working on this weekend...

Testing out a new turntable I got, and some other bits and bobs

Look how ridiculously smol

Alright, I'll get on my soapbox then. 1) let people play their SP games however they want. Who cares? 2) it was never very good at being a horror game, and a silly illogical contrivance doesn't suddenly make it into one

It amazes me that counting fingers STILL remains a viable method to determine the use of AI.

If I may humbly make a suggestion @actionretro.bsky.social www.ebay.com/itm/25273818... This GeForce 210 is one of the fastest PCI cards that's readily available. Got 79 fps in Doom 3 at 800x600 medium. (for everyone else, check out this video) www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLDF...

I was baffled as to why my VCF video was getting thousands of hits out of nowhere from "YouTube Advertising." Apparently random people can just... use your video as an ad? After doing some research it turns out you have to OPT OUT of people being able to use your videos as ads? Insane.

If he doesn't want to honor Rebecca Heineman by name, then I don't have to honor him by name any more in the future.

It's official! #PicoIDE, the open source IDE/ATAPI drive emulator I've been working on for the better part of this year, will be launching at Crowd Supply! Go there to sign up for updates and to be notified when the campaign is live: www.crowdsupply.com/polpotronics...

Rebecca Heineman doesn't have much time left. If you can, please donate for her and her family to make end of life arrangements. One last kindness we can offer for a legend of the games industry and loud and proud trans woman: www.gofundme.com/f/help-rebec...

Um, excuse me Mr. Leadtek A250 Ultra. You were dead, remember? Like... I put you in the box with my dead cards and stored you in a shed for like two years. Why....why are you working??

Unreal Tournament can now be played IN A BROWSER dos.zone/mp/?lobby=ut Along with other late 90s PC FPS classics but yeah. UT99 in a browser window... just fantastic. Thanks to the r/LGR subreddit for letting me know about it!

Ideally I wish they'd delay the Steam Machine in order to upgrade the GPU to Navi 44. According to TPU, die size and TDP is very similar to Navi 33. But the performance and feature jump would be MASSIVE. This thing launches in 2026 and will have a GPU that by then will likely be two generations old

Another idea

Dayum

More than anything I'm pretty excited to see SteamOS for desktops and what that might mean for the enthusiast PC market

Why am I taking a selfie in front of a random office building? This is a former Maxtor office and where several versions of the ATA/ATAPI spec were written. While working on #PicoIDE I noticed that the work address of the editor was literally right next door to where I work so I made a pilgrimage!

Today I replaced the worst looking caps I've ever seen on a graphics card

The newest Card Battles video closes the chapter on the first generation of DirectX 9 GPUs. The GeForce FX 5950 Ultra versus the Radeon 9800XT Can the last and fastest FX Series flagship redeem NVIDIA's troubled architecture? www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ3m...

Hey guys! Sooooo..... I re-launched my YouTube Memberships! Just two tiers this time, Texel for $1.99, and Shader for $5.99. If you'd like to support the nonsense that I do, please consider joining! www.youtube.com/@PixelPipes

And for anyone interested, here are the project files free to use! www.printables.com/model/147282... I’d love to see someone restore their own Halikan, or maybe even use as a base to install some modern sleeper hardware inside.

Post a non-religious image you think of as holy

New video up! Just finished the massive project of restoring/rebuilding @lgr-yt.bsky.social’s destroyed Chaplet Halikan LA-30A. This was a big one 😅. Enjoy! youtu.be/BilLgXkR_Kw

please look at the cow from Hard Drivin’

Every time I decide to give autocorrect another try on my phone, it invariably starts to "correct" words that are blatantly spelled correctly. "Do"? You obviously meant "don't"!

My kingdom for being able to open OBS Studio without it crashing the whole system every other time.

The DVD (1996) is now as old as the original 8-inch floppy disk (1967) was when the DVD came out.

Closest you could get to 3Dfx gaming on a laptop back in the day.