• Tag Archives retrocomputing

  • boot (August/September 1996)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Source: boot – Issue Number 1 – August/September 1996

    Maximum PC and its predecessor ‘boot’ has always been by far my favorite computer related magazine. Maximum PC is still published today which is surprising given the state of magazines in general. I buy an issue occasionally and they seem to have maintained their quality fairly well.

    Anyway, the August/September 1996 issue was the very first one and featured the first ‘Dream Machine’ which they’ve had every year since. At times they have gotten a bit absurd with that with things like multi-thousand dollar custom cases, etc. but I digress. This issue includes:

    news

    • nuggets – Brief news bits about microchipping pets, The Court of Last Resort, RetireReady! retirement guide on CD-ROM, Duckman: The Legend of the Fall CD-ROM, the first online diocese, The Otherside Gaming Facility with ‘simulation pods’ featuring Duke Nukem 3D, Descent II, ATF and Warbirds; The Dissectible Human CD-ROM, Aeon Flux, Movie Maker (the game), and more.
    • bootWire – “News That Matters” featuring and interview with Bill Gates explaining why the PC (and Windows 95) is the ultimate game platform; MMX arrives to accelerate multimedia applications; Merced set to replace Pentium Pro; first DVD-ROM drives and movie players set to ship by the end of the year; and more.

    reviews

    • bootWorthy: Speakers – A look at the Altec Lansing ACS500, Yamaha YST System 45, Bose Acoustimass, Advent AV570, and Cambridge SoundWorks MicroWorks. All of which were apparently reasonable choices depending on your specific needs and desires.
    • Previews
      • Sony Jumps Into the PC Market – Sony enters the PC market with the PCV-70 which features a 166MHz Pentium, 16MB of RAM and a 2.1GB hard drive and the PCV-90 which features a 200MHz Pentium, 32MB of RAM and a 2.5GB hard drive. boot’s summary “Pretty case; little innovation” says it all. They also weren’t cheap at $2,000 to $3,000.
      • Tomb Raider – A preview of what would become one of the most popular games of all time.
      • The Outer Limits On-Line – Preview of an online role-playing game based on The Outer Limits TV show.
      • Star Trek: Star Fleet Academy – Preview of a Star Trek game for those that have always wanted to command a Trek ship.
      • Dark Earth – Interview with Kevin Bachus, Mindscape’s international development manager, about Dark Earth.
      • City of Lost Children – Preview of an adventure game based on the French film of the same name.
      • Fujitsu Notebook Series – Fujitsu enters the U.S. computer market with Pentium powered notebook computers costing up to $5200.
      • StarCraft Preview of one of the most popular RTS games ever made.
      • SimCopter – Interview with Will Wright about the upcoming SimCopter.
      • Drowned God – Preview of an adventure game in which you must fined the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, the Rod of Osiris, and the Philosopher’s Stone.
      • Unreal – Preview of one of the most well known FPS series ever made. There were a LOT of true classics made circa 1996. Fully texture-mapped polygons even on a Pentium 90 with no 3D acceleration!
      • NBA Full Court Press – Preview of this basketball game from Microsoft.
      • Syn Factor – Preview of this adventure game involving a missing spaceship crew.
      • Windows NT 4.0 – First look at the newest version of Microsoft’s professional OS.
    • Reviews
      • Gateway 2000 Solo – I was a Gateway 2000 fan so if I could have afforded one ($5,599 for this one), this might have been the one I chose. It features a 120MHz Pentium, 40MB EDO DRAM, 1.2GB EIDE hard drive, 4x CD-ROM drive, a 11.3-inch active matrix display capable of 800×600 at 256 colors or 640×480 at 64,000 colors.

      • Hitachi M-120T – Another laptop choice, this one featuring a 120MHz Pentium, 16MB EDO RAM, 1GB hard drive and more for only $5,299.
      • Strife – Making an RPG with the Doom engine.
      • d-Time 95; SpeedyROM – Two programs designed to cache data from your CD-ROM to make it faster.
      • 512k Pilot – One of the earlier Palm Pilot devices. Laughable by today’s standards perhaps but pretty amazing then.
      • WingMan Warrior – Joystick designed to replace the keyboard and mouse for FPS games.
      • PC ProgramPad – Somewhat reminiscent of the SNES or Genesis game pads but programmable.
      • Nokia Multigraph 447Xavc – An interesting 17-inch Trinitron CRT monitor with built-in camera and speakers for only $999.
      • Chaos Overlords – A turn based strategy game in which you take the role of a futuristic crime lord.
      • Nine Worlds – Explore the solar system with Patrick Stewart as your guide.
      • Frank Lloyd Wright: Presentation and Conceptual Drawings – A rather expensive collection of CDs with a large amount of Frank Lloyd Wright’s drawings.
      • Battleground 3: Waterloo – Strategy game featuring 22 scenarios including variations of the Battle of Waterloo.
      • Gateway 2000 P5-166XL – I had a 486 DX2/66 at the time but if I had been upgrading in the Summer/Fall of 1996, then this is the machine I probably would have gone for. It features a 166 MHz Pentium and 16MB of EDO RAM.

      • RDC-1 Digital Camera – A $3,000 digital camera that features less than half a megapixel of resolution.
      • Packard Bell Platinum Pro – I always had a negative perception of Packard Bells and this review doesn’t change that. It’s not that much cheaper than the Gateway either. Despite having the same 166 MHz Pentium is was much slower due to its older asynchronous cache design and lower end video card. Plus it used the horrible LPX motherboard form factor instead of ATX.
      • Hewlett-Packard Pavilion 7130P – A 133MHz based machine that features a built-in scanner for scanning photo prints (up to 5×7).
      • Duke Nukem 3D – Classic early FPS 2nd in fame perhaps only to Doom.
      • Web.Designer – Set of web creation tools to aid you in creating web sites.
      • Total Mayhem – Compared, unfavorably, with Crusader No Remorse.
      • 3D Studio Max – Excellent but VERY expensive modeling and animation package.
      • Color QuickCam – Webcams were just becoming a thing.

    voices

    • Editor’s Words – An introduction to boot.
    • Game Theory – Opining the use of style over substance in modern gaming with plenty of criticism aimed at Myst and Macromedia Director.
    • On the Line – ISDN vs. cable modems.
    • On the Road – The advantages of laptops and mobile computing.
    • Glitch – Odd editorial and rumors around the computer tech industry.

    departments

    • Comm Port – It seems that subscribers of the recently defunct CD-ROM Today magazine/CD combo were switched over to boot as that’s where the letters in the first issue come from.
    • bootDisc – The cover CD includes the first episode of Quake, a demo of Shattered Steel, the first level of Duke Nukem 3D, WarBirds, a demo of Strife, Adobe Acrobat Reader 3.0 Beta, a demo of AnchorPage, PoliForm, Hijaak Morph, Calamus, video interview highlights with JEan-Louis Gassee, father of the BeBox, and more.
    • Pure Lust – Featuring Sony’s Plasmatron TV, U.S. Robotics’ Conference Link C51000 speakerphone, Fieldworks’ rugged laptops that can withstand 100G shocks and temps from 5 degrees F to 122 degrees F, Ricochet modem (sort of an early wi-fi technology), the Roland Personal Drum Assistant, Sharp’s Zaurus ZR-5800FX PDA, Panasonic’s new CF-62 laptop featuring a PD rewriteable optical drive, Panasonic’s KX-P5600 printer/scanner/copier, and Zenith’s HomeWorks Universal Cable modem (4Mbps internet!).
    • 12-Step Program – A 12-step tutorial for creating a web page.
    • bootRadar – A look at new and upcoming products, including the Venturis FX family of Pentium based computers from DEC; the KV-SS25 production scanner from Panasonic; Mystique 3D graphics accelerators featuring a newly revised lower introductory price; the Realmagic Ultra MPEG-1 card also featuring sound; Viewsonic P815 and P810 21-inch CRT monitors; Texas Instruments 6000 and 6000Si personal organizers; Sony Spressa CD-R drives; 12-MHz and 133MHz Pentium notebook PCs from Kiwi; affordable ($350) DC20 digital camera from Kodak featuring 1MB of storage (good for 8-16 pictures); OS/2 Warp; Heroes of Might and Magic II; POD, one of the first games to make use of MMX; NASCAR Racing 2; and much more.

    Features

    • 200MHz Monsters in 3D – A look at the latest and fastest 200MHz computers from major vendors. Computers previewed include 1.) IBM Aptiva C77 featuring a built-in ATI 3D Rage video chip, 32MB of EDO RAM, 3.2GB EIDE hard drive, Hitachi CDR-7930 8x CD-ROM drive, and a mWave based Dolphin sound card/modem. 3) Compaq Presario 8710 featuring S3’s ViRGE (on motherboard) and PowerVR card, 32MB of EDO RAM, an STB sound card, 2.5GB EIDE hard drive, 8x CD-ROM drive, and 33.6 modem. 3) NEC Power Player 2001 featuring ATI 3D Rage + 3Dfx Voodoo, 32MB EDO RAM, 3.2GB EIDE hard drive, built-in Yamaha OPL4 sound, 33.6 modem, and NEC MultiSpin 6×4 CD-ROM changer. All feature the 200MHz Pentium and come in at the $3200 to $3400 price range.
    • Rendering on the Fly – A look at the future of flight simulators and their support for 3D accelerators, including the upcoming Falcon 4.0, F22-Lightning, Air Warrior 2, Hind, Super EF2000, and more.
    • The $5K Dream Machine – Building a Dream Machine would become an annual event for boot and later Maximum PC. Though some Dream Machines have been more achievable than others. This one features a Supermicro P55-T2S motherboard w/ 512k pipelined burst cache, an Intel Pentium 200MHz CPU, 32MB of EDO RAM, Nanao T2-17TS monitor, Matrox MGA Millennium w/ 4MB, Adaptec 3940UW SCSI adapter, Quantum Atlas XP32150W hard drive, Toshiba TO3701 CD-ROM, Epson Zip drive, Sound Blaster AWE32 PnP, Altec Lansing ACS300.1 Speakers, and various accessories.

    …and more!


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  • Digital Archaeology: Dell Inspiron 9400

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The Inspiron line has long been Dell’s main consumer laptop models. The Inspiron 9400 was released in the 2005 time frame. It is for all practical purposes identical to the Inspiron E1705 and in fact the manuals were shared. They just had different default configuration options and were targeted at different markets. It is also substantially the same as the M90 and XPS models of the same time period, again, with different default configuration options.

    The Inspiron 9400 supported an incredibly large range of hardware options. There were multiple motherboards used. One supported add-in video cards such as the FX2500M, GeForce Go 7800 and 7900GTX among others while the second motherboard option only supported Intel’s integrated graphics. Display options included a 17″ Wide Screen WXGA+ (1440×900) panel or a 17″ Ultrasharp Wide Screen WUXGA (1920×1200) panel. The processor could be anything from a single core 32-bit Core Solo T1300 running at 1.66 GHz all the way up to 64-bit Core 2 Duo T7600 running at 2.33 GHz.

    My particular Inspiron 9400 is among the lower end models. Specs include:

    • CPU: Core Duo T2080 @ 1.73 GHz
    • Chipset: Intel 945
    • Graphics: Mobility Radeon X1400
    • Memory: 2GB DDR2-533 (2x512MB)
    • Display: 17″ WXGA+ (1440×900)
    • Hard Drive: ST9129822AS 120GB 5400RPM Serial-ATA/150 8MB buffer
    • Optical Drive: TSSTcorp TS-L632D DVD+-RW
    • Ethernet: Broadcom BCM4401-80 100Base-TX
    • Wi-Fi: Broadcom BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN

    Plus tons of expansion slots and ports including 4 USB 2.0 ports, an ExpressCard 54mm slot, FireWire, 5-in-1 Flash Reader, headphone and microphone connections, 1 DVI-D, 1 VGA, and 1 S-Video Out.

    As far as upgrade possibilities, a Core 2 Duo T7600 could be added and up to 4GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM is supported. This laptop has what is probably the best graphics option, at least in retrospect. The ATI X1400 is faster than the Intel option and more reliable than the nVidia options which had heat and solder issues (though they werer certainly faster). Unfortunately, it has the lower resolution screen option otherwise it would be a better candidate for upgrade.

    This laptop was made with Windows XP and Vista in mind. It is also capable of running Windows 7 and even Windows 10 (though some more RAM would be needed). However, operating systems supporting 32-bit CPUs are gettig pretty hard to find these days. Windows 10 dropped support in 2020. I’m currently running a 32-bit version of Debian which is the only mainstream Linux distribution I am aware of that still does new 32-bit releases. The Insprion 9400 is capable of being upgraded to 64-bit CPUs as mentioned above, however it is still limited to about 4 GB of RAM due to limitations of the chipset.

    Like pretty much any computer I ever own, this one is running BOINC whenever it is turned on. The only projects it seems to get work for out of my normal selection is einstein@home and milkyway@home. I think that is because most projects no longer support 32-bit CPUs. You can see how it is doing overall via Free-DC or BOINCstats.

    Overall, this seems to be a pretty solid laptop with a great deal of expansion possibility for its time. The build quality is decent and the keyboard feels pretty good. However, it isn’t as nice in that regard as later Latitudes and Precisions. Despite pushing the CPU at 100% all the time with BOINC, it runs cool and quiet. The large size no doubt helps some with that, plus it has a relatively low end CPU at the moment that is probably on the cooler end. If I had been in the market for a laptop at the time this one was being sold, it probably would have been a top contender (though with a Core 2 Duo CPU and the higher resolution screen).

    Despite having some fairly significant upgrade potential, I doubt I will be upgrading this one. I would rather start with the model with the higher resolution screen if I were going to bother. Having said that, there’s a good chance I have a Core 2 Duo that would work and some extra memory so who knows. It at least has what I consider to be the best GPU option overall.

    Check out the complete specs of this laptop here.


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  • Amstrad Computer User (December 1988)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Source: Amstrad Computer User – December 1988

    Amstrad had a major share of the computer market in the U.K. in the 1980s with the Amstrad CPC 464 and its successors which competed with the Commodore 64, Spectrum and other 8-bit computers. The Amstrad CPC is a Z80 based PC with 64K of RAM. It sold over 2 million units in Europe so was popular enough to have magazines dedicated to it. The December 1988 issue of Amstrad Computer User includes:

    Regulars

    • News – Amstrad profits increase in 1988; Game based on The Munsters coming soon; Amstrad sets up customer support BBS running Opus Bulletin Board System; new releases in time for Christmas include The Jungle Book, Peter Pan, Freedom, Terrific, Emanuelle, By Fair Means or Foul, Dark Fusion, Ninja Warriors, Shinobi, Big Screen Hero, Sabian Island, Ancient Battles, A New Beginning, Return of the Jedi, Hyperforce, Time Scanner, Rambo III, Operation Wolf, and Dragon Ninja among others.
    • Letters – Letters from readers this month include topics such as BCPL, Budgetsoft, the ERASE command, loading screens, memory expansion, printing a screen to the Star LC-10 printer, and more.
    • Hairy Hackers – Various game hacks for Bombjack, Impact, Kung-Fu Master, Batman, Zoids, Mission Genocide, Motos, Cybernoid, and Metaplex.
    • Applications Advice – Questions answered about Cash Trader, printing pound signs with a daisy wheel printer, printing company logos, Personal Banking System, converting data files, and more.

    Project

    • A drop of the hard stuff – Instructions for a do-it-yourself ROMboard that allows up to six ROM chips to be added to your Amstrad.

    Cover Story

    • Postcards to Egypt – An interview with Incentive personnel about their latest software with an emphasis on Total Eclipse.

    Programming

    • Knavery – A type-in program that gives you a computerized version of a popular Victorian card game.
    • Auntie John’s Machine Code – Some techniques (with source code) for printing the contents of registers to the screen.
    • Basic Tutor – All about the PRINT USING command and formatting print statements.

    Reviews

    • Psycho Pigs UXB – Wipe out the other pigs by throwing bombs at them.
    • Road Blasters – Port of one of my favorite arcade games.
    • Thing – An odd adventure game reminiscent of Spellbound.
    • Joe Blade II – A sort of action/beat-em-up/adventure game.
    • Overlander – Kind of like Road Blasters but not as good.
    • Bubble Ghost – A unique arcade style game in which you must maneuver a bubble with a ghost.
    • Skateboard Kidz – A rather difficult skateboarding game.
    • Action Force – A fairly derivative action shooter.
    • Vixen – An action game featuring a heroine that occasionally turns into a fox.
    • Target Renegade – A fairly typical beat-em-up game.
    • The Vindicator – An action adventure game set in a world taken over by aliens.
    • Marauder – An addictive action game.
    • Metaplex – Make your way through an asteroid blasting everything in site.
    • Kikstart II – This doesn’t get a very good review here but I always had a blast with Kikstart and Kikstart II on the Commodore 64. A fun motorcycle stunt/racing game.
    • Mickey Mouse – A decent action game featuring Mickey Mouse.
    • Stunt Bike Simulator – A motorcycle stunt game in which various tasks must be accomplished.
    • Rogue – A D&D style dungeon crawl.
    • Dear Sir or Madam – Review of Mail Merge Tutorial, a tutorial for using the CP/M+ or Amsdos based Promerge Plus.
    • Measure by Measure – A detailed comparison of two desktop publishing packages, Fleet Street Editor and Stop Press.

    …and more!


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