Re: Is this ESS wavetable ROM chip legit?
Posted on 2020-11-09, 09:43
Yeah, I've been 99% sure already. Just wanted to consult it with others before canceling the order. The hunt continues!
Is this ESS wavetable ROM chip legit?
Posted on 2020-11-09, 09:32
Hi. I want to modify some of my ESS cards to have wavetable which should be easy enough. Almost everything you will encounter have ES981P 1MB wavetable ROM but as I have recently discovered, there exist ES982 2MB ROM chips too. I have contacted a Chinese supplier and they sent me a photo of the …
Re: Disappointing experience with Octek Hippo 10 motherboard (Socket 3)
Posted on 2020-10-18, 12:44
I know about that site. The manual file mentioned there is only small doc file with jumper settings for Cyrix CPU. It doesn't even mention what board revision it is for.
Re: Disappointing experience with Octek Hippo 10 motherboard (Socket 3)
Posted on 2020-10-18, 11:53
Yeah I checked the turbo button and closing it made the board even slower when WB was disabled and froze everything when WB was enabled and didn't even boot. That is suspisious as it should be ignored at worst. I have checked this mirror of Octek Australia's FTP server and there is no mention of any …
Disappointing experience with Octek Hippo 10 motherboard (Socket 3)
Posted on 2020-10-18, 11:06
Hi everyone. I've managed to get my hands on this beautiful motherboard from Octek (don't mind the broken keyboard port, it was damaged due a battery leak and will be fixed properly in the future). I had high hopes for this one as UMC chipset is one of the better solutions for 486 motherboard ( …
Re: Can my Sound Blaster SB32 CT3620 be saved from trash?
Posted on 2020-09-30, 19:21
I've put the old one back (the advantage of a socket) with no difference. As I mentioned before, even tried to listen to line out port (avoiding amplifier altogether). Both channel are now working properly, it's just the Sound Blaster part of the card stopped working (digitized sounds).
Can my Sound Blaster SB32 CT3620 be saved from trash?
Posted on 2020-09-30, 19:09
Hi everyone. I had a defective SB32 in my possesion for a while. The problem was the left channel have not been working at all even though the sound was fine otherwise. The first thing I tried was to replace caps around the amplifier but without success. Then I assumed that the amplifier chip itself …
Re: An idea about making MIDI daughterboards from existing sound cards
Posted on 2020-09-28, 13:41
Some thoughts after datasheet digging - ES690 won't work without ES1xxx, ES692 datasheet even has daughterboard schematics, but I can't find replacement for TDA1311 - its a pretty crappy DAC. In the ES690 datasheet there is schematics for a daughterboard described as "daughterboard for any sound …
Re: An idea about making MIDI daughterboards from existing sound cards
Posted on 2020-09-27, 20:04
Well, good to know. You're working on it or someone else? Either way, shouldn't it be called ESSBlaster or AudioDriveBlaster since it won't probably use Dream chip? 😁
Re: An idea about making MIDI daughterboards from existing sound cards
Posted on 2020-09-27, 15:33
@Shreddoc: Yeah, you're right that it wouldn't be commercially plausible but that wasn't my intention at all. What I would like to see is a nice open source wavetable duaghterboard for anyone who has the skill necessary to build it. Right now there are not many options- either you'll buy an …
Re: An idea about making MIDI daughterboards from existing sound cards
Posted on 2020-09-26, 17:19
Well, in the case of the mentioned card (AW32Pro), I did complete recap with mostly Panasonic capacitors (FC series) and if anything, the sound is somewhat clearer. Unfortunately the noise is more prominent. But thanks for your input, you made me think about outsourcing the chips and making brand …
Re: An idea about making MIDI daughterboards from existing sound cards
Posted on 2020-09-26, 12:07
There is probably a good chance to outsource some ESS chips (as Jager noted) and maybeee Crystal ones, true. I had this idea because it wouldn't render the card useless and you would be able to attach the daughterboard to it or to another card afterwards. To me having wavetable integrated into a …
An idea about making MIDI daughterboards from existing sound cards
Posted on 2020-09-26, 09:17
You know how cool those MIDI boards are from Serdaco and even though they are rather pricey, the quality is there and after all they are still much cheaper than second hand boards. Too bad that some of interesting MIDI boards are still basically unobtainable. Then I got an idea... I have looked …
Re: Voodoo 2 image quality issues (vga output) SLI sys
Posted on 2020-09-01, 13:44
In my experience image quality of Voodoo 2 is pretty bad. I have two of them and both of them show vertical stripes even though it's mainly visible when gamma setting is high. Diagonal stripes are weird. Have you tried to use every card individually?
Re: Troublesome DOS support of ATI Rage 128 Pro 32MB
Posted on 2020-09-01, 08:21
Well, I tried MTRRLFBE without success. In Windows running this app restars my computer and in DOS it displays an error message that LFB is not supported and crashes. Tried Fastvid and even though I could see the performance being better the flickering remained.
Re: Troublesome DOS support of ATI Rage 128 Pro 32MB
Posted on 2020-09-01, 07:39
So I've tried Rage 128 16MB and in Doom it behaved exactly the same - flickering HUD texts. It's very strange that nobody ever mentioned this problem as Wolf3D and Doom are games that tend to be the ones of the most benchmarked and tested games considering DOS compatibility. Maybe I'll try to fiddle …
Re: Troublesome DOS support of ATI Rage 128 Pro 32MB
Posted on 2020-08-31, 12:17
First how the hell can you get your Wolfenstein 3D to output VESA 640x480.... Second modern ATI cards do not have a good VGA compatibility. Better use something Nvidia based, but 6xxx series or older. Only Duke 3D was running in VESA 640x480, not Wolf3D of course :). Either way RAge 128 Pro is …
Troublesome DOS support of ATI Rage 128 Pro 32MB
Posted on 2020-08-31, 09:44
Hi. Recently I've built up a nice Pentium II machine and decided I would try to stick a Rage 128 Pro in there as these cards seem to be rather underrated. I must say I was quite satisfied with VGA image quaility and it's speed. It played everything I tried with it, the only problematic game was UT99 …
Re: Jumper settings for Octek ARK1000VL (VLB)
Posted on 2020-06-07, 10:40
Thank you! It's nice to confirm my guess was completely wrong 😁.
Re: Jumper settings for Octek ARK1000VL (VLB)
Posted on 2020-06-06, 10:10
A little update on the subject - I have dumped the bios from the chip. I'm attaching it here, might get useful for someone.
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