Re: Abit AB-PB4 twin paradox

Posted on 2021-02-15, 16:08

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

... Thanks, it'll be quite a project! But, you gave me a lead. I'll be really curious as soon as I'm capable of feeling curiosity. After my first workday, I just can't... Edit. And talking about debug... Well, if that's the string that I saw in the first two blocks of the C000:0000 dump then the …

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Re: Abit AB-PB4 twin paradox

Posted on 2021-02-14, 07:23

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Can you take a picture of the chipset ? Maybe there's a different chipset revision on both causing this behaviour ? In case the silkscreens aren't enough: chipset_fast.jpg ("Fast" chipset) chipset_slow.jpg ("Slow" chipset) I also ran benchmarks at 4*33MHz, with a Diamond Virge/DX (I was lucky again …

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Re: Abit AB-PB4 twin paradox

Posted on 2021-02-13, 11:26

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Cant help but will though my results in as have the same motherboard, same revision, same CPU and same bios settings. Thanks, I'll give 33 a try. I have a few Virges lying around, and eve the permanent build's VGA is a Miro Virge/DX. It's just one single jumper difference to get to 33MHz FSB. It …

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Abit AB-PB4 twin paradox

Posted on 2021-02-13, 05:51

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

(Foreword - I feel the need to apologize for the lack of pictures - one of the boards is built into a permanent system and it wouldn't look too useful with all the cards and cables covering most of it.) I happen to have two, apparently identical AB-PB4 boards. For the tests I equipped both with an …

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Re: 486DX PC running really slow. Thoughts?

Posted on 2021-02-04, 13:18

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

But I should give a "486DX-60" a try. 66...? I'm not sure. Because VLB and all . That's why he said PCI motherboards. Well, it took this long but finally I got a PCI/5x86@180 system working. It's the M912's PCI counterpart, the M919 but it performed even a tad worse than the M912. No problem, the …

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Re: Starting a project. Pentium Pro 200

Posted on 2021-02-04, 13:04

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I tried a Ppro-200/256 under DOS and though my consequence about its performance was "it's nothing special compared to a similarly clocked PMMX " (despite being vastly different) I still think the Ppro is a cool looking and otherwise very interesting CPU so yeah, go ahead, you can't go wrong with it …

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Re: Register settings for various CPUs

Posted on 2021-01-31, 08:06

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I necropost the thread to thank you feipoa for figuring out these settings. And report that my Quake timedemo went up from 19.3 to 20.6 fps with your guidance. I don't even know what clock it's running at, though. It's a BGA 180MHz piece but BIOS insists the board drives it at 200MHz. And every …

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Re: Memory not working together but works individually

Posted on 2021-01-30, 04:12

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Have hou tried them with relaxed timings? I'm not sure of course, 133MHz isn't THAT much but one of my P3B-F boards can not do 150MHz wit 1 stick with tightest timings (140 is okah though) and the other is very picky about it, taking only a fes pairs of the many sticks I've tested at 150MHz. Along …

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Re: CPU collectors: do you collect each and every revision or just one?

Posted on 2021-01-22, 03:16

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Miphee wrote on 2021-01-16, 21:49: But people who only collect CPUs will always love the 775 package. I don't. They can't be stacked in the showcase because the stacks tend to fall apart thanks to the asymmetric SMD arrays on the bottom. I'd say 775 CPUs are unstable 😁

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Re: 486DX PC running really slow. Thoughts?

Posted on 2021-01-19, 18:14

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

rmay635703 wrote on 2021-01-19, 16:31: Sadly Intel insisted on this holy terror CF39475D-45CD-4568-B19A-39CB9AA5DF3E.png What a beautiful and pointless chip, definitely missing from my collection...

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Re: 486DX PC running really slow. Thoughts?

Posted on 2021-01-19, 12:35

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On some PCI boards, the Intel DX 50 can even run at 66 MHz. Admittedly, my sample size of one single DX 50 isn't very meaningful :) No problem, even one data point can prove that something's possible. It can't tell you how common it is, but it's certainly possible. Heck, I had to get 3 pcs of 300A …

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Re: 486DX PC running really slow. Thoughts?

Posted on 2021-01-19, 07:39

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Wasn't there also an unstable non-doubled 40MHz as well at one point? Not by Intel. Intel's try was the single speed 50MHz variant. AMD and Cyrix had 40MHz models. Their stability depends on how the motherboard and (VLB, sometimes PCI) cards handle the 40MHz bus. And yes, 50MHz is an even more …

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Re: CPU collectors: do you collect each and every revision or just one?

Posted on 2021-01-13, 08:18

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

so if you have some 1000+ cpu's do you also have 1000+ boards they work on or are you just buying and hoarding cpu's because you can and are trying to make some museum ? Must be the latter. I only need one (okay, two) working board per platform. It's enough to test everything. I have a board for, I …

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Re: p3 500mhz benchmarks

Posted on 2021-01-13, 03:15

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Whhat I find it the most interesting is how the Vanta pulls ahead in Doom benchmarks. Does it like planar trickery? If so, why?

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Re: CPU collectors: do you collect each and every revision or just one?

Posted on 2021-01-12, 18:26

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So CPU collectors: do you want them all or just on of each type? P4/2.4 is at least 5 models to me: 2.4/400/512, 2.4/533/512, 2.4/800/512, 2.4/533/1M, 2.4/800/1M (does the latest exist?). But they're quite boring to me, I don't need more than one per model. Ppro , that's another question. I grab …

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Re: Dallas DS12887 longevity

Posted on 2021-01-09, 19:19

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Generally, no - they just forget their settings. What usually happens is someone discovers their Dallas is dead and removes it, then can't figure out why the board won't boot (it has no RTC/CMOS). Then I really hope that this is what happened to my Shuttle 486. I routinely go through BIOS settings …

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Re: Dallas DS12887 longevity

Posted on 2021-01-09, 18:50

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

a dallas is the literal opposite of a time bomb, when they fail they fail gracefully and do no harm I beg to differ. They really do no physical harm, that's fine. This is why they're still better than typical barrel batteties. But if I get it cofrectly they're designed in an utterly stupid way that …

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Re: Dallas DS12887 longevity

Posted on 2021-01-09, 13:23

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My lucky Dallas pieces are Shuttle HOT-433 and Asus P6NP5 (anyone? :D). The HOT-433 is especially interesting: after long hybernation in the motherboard cupboard it said it forgot the settings yet it could remdmber them after I set up everything. Interesting (and fortunate) behavior on a Dallas' …

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Re: When did you purchase your first 386 / 486 Computer? Availability vs the early 90's affordability norm.

Posted on 2020-12-31, 16:27

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As a poor student in Eastern Europe I played catch-up with technology in the 90s. I had a (very local) 8-bit micro until late '93 when I got my first XT from parts. Then came a 286 (board from a classmate) then a 386sx-33 (also from a classmate) in, maybe '95? First with 2 megs of RAM then I saved …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2020-12-31, 15:15

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[You may want to try older versions of PQmagic, like 5 or 4. ... It seems you're right. My version is 7 so what you say is completely plausible. Btw I tried pcchips m919 at 180mhz today and it was very underwhelming. I think I'm better off running it at 160mhz, at least with this cache/ram …

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