Re: SD Card to IDE Adaptor issues with FIC Slot 1 motherboard.

Posted on Yesterday, 15:02

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What you say might be plausible. I have an IBM disk with a 2 GB jumper that limits it to 1024 cylinders. But that is still 1 cylinder too much for the BIOS of my 486. Very sneaky bug 😉

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

Posted on 2020-11-23, 15:08

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I was about to try the same. And same result. At least, if you want testers, I'm available also.

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Re: english, the planetary language

Posted on 2020-11-23, 14:56

by

by digistorm

in Milliways

in Milliways

I would say there is a point where simplicity starts to work against you. I feel in English that you need a lot of auxiliary words to make your statements precise. In my own language, Dutch, it is heading in the same direction. We lost the noun cases, but now we are injecting extra words to describe …

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Re: Win98SE poor network/ide performance on fast system

Posted on 2020-11-12, 18:13

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I am waiting for my Deathstar to die 🤣 it has had bad sectors for over 15 years by now and it still refuses to give up. So I figured I use it as my testbed for OS and driver experimentation. Formatting is agonizing because of the long “kggg kggg kggg” scraping sounds but it doesn’t seem to gain new …

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Re: Bruninho's Virtual Machines (Windows, Linux, Mac)

Posted on 2020-11-08, 09:10

by

by digistorm

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

There are tools like kid3 (https://kid3.kde.org/) that allow you to convert between tag versions and batch process files.

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Re: Socket3 (ECS?) UM4980 Mobo won't detect CF2IDE

Posted on 2020-11-03, 06:53

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does the CF card work in other systems? Some CF cards are less compatible with older IDE controllers, and not all of them present themselves as fixed disk, but rather removable storage.

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Re: Awe64 + PCI card with Yamaha chip

Posted on 2020-10-31, 09:08

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

If you choose soundblaster it will address the FM chip through the soundblaster base address and then it ends up on your AWE64 using it’s CQM implementation of FM music.

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Re: How to insert this motherboard diagnostics card?

Posted on 2020-10-23, 12:42

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Whoops! 😬 Yes, my previous comment is only correct with a regular AT/ATX case.

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Re: How to insert this motherboard diagnostics card?

Posted on 2020-10-23, 07:33

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In a tower build, the components of an ISA card should always face upwards when you install it. As a side effect, you will be able to read the display when you have your motherboard installed in a tower. That corresponds with 'rear' meaning the rear of the case, but is like a small extra reminder. …

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Re: Speaking of dual boot. The big trouble to put Windows 98SE and Windows XP in two different hard disk.

Posted on 2020-10-17, 07:31

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Newer motherboards (like my Athlon 600 board) have full auto detect on all IDE ports. So if I leave them all to auto they will automatically adjust to what I have connected and boot from the first drive that is detected (is doesn’t even need to be the primary master). So then the CF in front setup …

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Re: Crystal Caves HD!?

Posted on 2020-10-12, 14:46

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by digistorm

in Milliways

in Milliways

Because computational power has become (more) cheap and abundant, programmers got lazy and lost the ability to optimize in favor of feature creep and ease of use. So we keep buying and spending to be able to run software that would have worked as well on what we had. So we keep creating e-waste and …

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Re: My new DOS machine... Pentium 75Mhz. Some advice...

Posted on 2020-10-10, 09:23

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also, you should get Microsoft Network Client to work if your server / host has SMB 1 enabled and you create a public shared folder. Just make sure your firewall doesn’t let it out on the internet 😉. I use it with WFW 3.11 and the TCP/IP patch on my 486.

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Re: Combining System Bios and XT-IDE into one chip?

Posted on 2020-09-29, 05:52

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe your mainboard connects both address lines to the same pin of the ROM chip? Or the address decoding on your mainboard works in a way that both addresses end up reading the same location of your ROM chip?

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Re: turbo button speed

Posted on 2020-09-28, 16:12

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Interesting… on my 486 DX2/66 Speedsys always reports 22 MHz, with or without turbo 🤣 (22 ís in line with the manual, that says that the turbo button reduces the clock with ⅓, whatever that means)

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Re: Tried to plug an IDE CD-ROM into my486's controller, now not seeing HDD or Floppy

Posted on 2020-09-26, 08:31

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe you already did this at this point, but just wanted to share my experience with a stubborn 486: I had quite similar experience with my VLB 486 when I tried to add a second hdd to the second IDE port. Sometimes the hdd disappeared, sometimes the floppy drive or the COM or LPT ports. I had to …

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Re: Realibity of old WDC HDD

Posted on 2020-09-20, 12:50

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, unfortunately the coating on the cathode will still slowly evaporate, leaving the crt with little to no brightness. The same happened in the past with vacuum tubes in radios. The cathode wears out when the heater is on and sooner or later you had to replace the tubes in your radio. Fortunately …

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

Posted on 2020-09-11, 13:27

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a 560 MB Samsung drive and a 30 GB IBM drive, both with a couple of bad sectors. They have had them for more then 20/15 years now and they still work and seem more or less stable. So they seem to defy the norm. But on the other hand, I don’t run then daily of course because they are in retro …

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Re: Seeking suggestions for first ISA model sound card for new dos rig

Posted on 2020-09-03, 09:28

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Sampling rate would be more important I think, but most of the times you cannot choose it. It is often fixed. So the only thing you can improve then is bit depth. 8 bit audio annoys the crap out of me, especially with slowly decaying sounds like echoes that are embedded in a sound effect. It has a …

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Re: OPL2/3 vs. the clones

Posted on 2020-09-03, 09:20

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by digistorm

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I certainly feel that OPL3 is quickly overrated when it is just used to listen to an OPL3 MIDI driver playing MIDI music. There are occasions that a game has music composed for the OPL3 chip that programs the OPL3 chip directly, but it is rare. Most games used some sort of MIDI engine and an OPL3 …

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Re: Seeking suggestions for first ISA model sound card for new dos rig

Posted on 2020-09-02, 16:50

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Two ways to approach this: 1) Early DSP SB16 (eg. CT1740, CT1750 with 4.04/4.05 DSP): all requirements met, downside rather noisy. That's retro noise. It's not a bug, it's a feature! 😁 (Seriously, though, I kinda love the noisy, bassy, low-kick sound. Reminds me of a Mega Drive Model 1.) I can’t …

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