Re: Fastest sdram system?

Posted on 2020-07-28, 13:41

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It works fine with SDR and isn't even that much slower than with DDR. I had it with both kinds back in the day, pity that I don't have proper benchmarks from back then, nor do I have the board anymore. On a side note, it's not on nForce2 level, of course, not even with DDR memory. But it has a …

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Re: FastDoom 0.3. A new Doom port for DOS, optimized to be as fast as possible for 386/486 personal computers!

Posted on 2020-07-21, 15:40

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by alvaro84

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Does FastDoom use chunky or mode X? Just because rendering in the main memory then copying it to the frame buffer by dwords can be significantly faster, especially when a fast CPU meets a slow VGA (like in my 1996/97 system where the AMD 5x86 was seriously held back by a dog slow Tseng ET3000 😁)

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Re: Fascination with the lowest end hardware from a given class

Posted on 2020-05-29, 15:10

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hm, it's not always high-end vs low end, I often like to see that a given game or demo struggles a little bit on the config. Not too much, that can be disillusioning. But to see that I found just the right hardware for that piece of software (or the almost perfect :D) can be really satisfying. I'm …

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Re: Tales of Celeron and imagination

Posted on 2020-05-14, 12:56

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You made me curious. You've eliminated one of the Celeron's bottlenecks here, the lower FSB. The other, the halved cache, of course, remains. Let's see how it fares against the full fledged P3.

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Re: 1 vs 2 SDRAM sticks -- which is better

Posted on 2020-05-10, 05:01

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As said earlier, BX doesn't support 512MiB modules, only 16-chip 256MB ones. 815 and VIA 694 does, though. In boards based on these chipsets a 16-chip (usually double sided) 512MiB module is basically equivalent to two 8-chip (usually single sided) 256MiB ones. Two 16-chip 256MiB modules put a …

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Re: What games for a 286-6

Posted on 2020-05-09, 19:57

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd definitely try Elite. The Plus version (in MCGA mode) lags seriously near large/multiple objects when I de-turbo my 286-20 to 8 MHz/WS0 (very good at 20MHz though) but the original CGA version should run just fine.

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Re: Tualatin 1.4 512k vs Athlon Thunderbird 1Ghz

Posted on 2020-04-19, 15:51

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you can find some PC150 SDRAM, you might try that if your current memory won't go past 137 MHz. You could also try using a 2:3 divider (if available) to drop it down. PC150 memory wasn't around that long before DDR supplanted it and it disappeared. Although you can find nice sticks that aren't …

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Re: DOS pc advice

Posted on 2020-03-07, 13:12

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have 512MiB in my DOS-oriented (read: very late compo machine, with GUS 3.74, thankfully working in this MSI 694T Pro) Tualatin P3 rig. It has a single 512MiB module and could probably take said 2GiB in double stacked 1G sticks but even this amount is an overkill. I don't really know about …

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Re: GLX Player the only XT player ? Check Mod Master...

Posted on 2020-02-01, 19:23

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I revised the IBM 5150 vs Amiga 500 battle, the winner is .. :) Go watch: https://youtu.be/cCLsvhZiuGo This video is English sub-titled. What the 8088-4.77 can pull off (with the right code, of course!) is really impressive. It clearly struggles to deal with it, though. If it can't play all the …

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Re: 386 motherboard recommendation

Posted on 2019-12-25, 08:43

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have the exact same board, but yours appears to be a later revision than mine, but mine has an AMD 386 DX40 populated. Some time in the new near i'd like to sit down and have a play with this board. This is the second time I have one of these and I''m finally satisfied. For some reason I couldn't …

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Re: What Hard-drives have the best retro "ticking" sound ?

Posted on 2019-12-25, 08:22

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

CelGen wrote: The The 225's and 251's made that great hollow knock while the 3.5" miniscribes made that very familiar stepper motor whirr. Plus, apart from whirring like a buzzsaw those good old ST-225's have that really nice chirping head movements. I really like that. The loud whirring, not so …

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Re: GLX Player the only XT player ? Check Mod Master...

Posted on 2019-12-14, 16:54

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I believe I am still the only one who tested a GUs on a 8088. It's still along the road - I'll try it but I only have one non-permanent old PC on test bench at a time and I haven't tried any XT class boards these months. It's also more complicated to get progs/data on them as a shorted Audigy …

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Re: GLX Player the only XT player ? Check Mod Master...

Posted on 2019-12-11, 17:57

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

In the meantime I tried it on yet another 286, Excel Tiger-12, for the fun of it. Despite having the fastest ISA implementation I've ever seen (VGA speed is on par with an overclocked OPTi 895) it worked with GUS classic 3.74 as flawlessly as... well, as it would work on any other properly working …

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Re: Building a Pentium 3 for Windows 98 and MS-DOS gaming

Posted on 2019-12-11, 17:35

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In DOS, nVidia provided excellent VESA compatibility, on par with S3 and 3dfx and better than ATi. What's the problem with ATI cards' VESA compatibility? I know they can have performance issues in some boards/chipsets (write combining not functioning at 0xA000 segment and/or LFB) but the BIOS video …

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Re: UMBARIES.SYS, UMB driver for i420EX chipset

Posted on 2019-11-28, 20:49

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Very nice, thanks, Tiido! I hope I'll have time to try the ALI M1489 version on my Am5x86 build!

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Re: Are there motherboards with 133Mhz FSB, ISA slots AND an Intel chipset

Posted on 2019-11-06, 19:14

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Any downsides (late-era DOS-compatibility-wise) of the i820 chipset compared to the i440BX? I have a HP (FIC) KC-19+ with i820 chipset and RDRAM - and an ISA bridge. And when I used it with SB16 it seemed to work well but it definitely has issues with GUS, it needs great luck to get DMA working and …

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Re: 486 SX 16 & 20 MHz

Posted on 2019-10-28, 19:59

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I was wondering if there is a regular (non-OEM) motherboard that can drive these at 16 or 20 MHz. All my 486 motherboards start at 25 MHz. FIC 486-GIO-VT can do it if it has a VIA clock generator chip. It can go even lower though it'll have problems with HDD access eventually (but a 8MHz 486 is fun …

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Re: GLX Player the only XT player ? Check Mod Master...

Posted on 2019-10-20, 11:49

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

FreddyV wrote: Aldo when doing the xm loader i saw that xm partition compression is simple. I may implement it. Memory usage for pattern can be divided by 3 Nice, that'll help A LOT more than leaving out 10k of code!

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Re: GLX Player the only XT player ? Check Mod Master...

Posted on 2019-10-18, 19:11

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

hi, You need to use the turbo pascal CRT Fix. I do not fix the Executable when I release it. TP7P5FIX solved the problem too (when I tried it on the K6-2+/550 I tested this week). And any option you prioritize please keep an eye on memory usage. On a (max) 640k vanilla XT memory is a precious …

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Re: Intel vs AMD?

Posted on 2019-10-15, 15:52

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

gladders wrote: What types of things would I lose out on if I deviate from that chipset? My experience with early Athlon chipsets that they're weak at video access under DOS. My experimental build could run Win98 games like a champ, it performed well, but under DOS games/demos it lagged behind a BX …

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