Re: 386 with 4GB?

Posted on 2023-01-13, 15:41

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-01-13, 01:39: :] TLDR: there is nothing that would run well on a 386 and require more than 8MB of ram. Same deal with 486 and ~12MB of ram. That's quite a statement to make. You know every single use case of a computer with a 386 during its production run, of course, yes?

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Re: 386 with 4GB?

Posted on 2023-01-12, 09:36

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Anything attached to the ISA bus is going to be (at least) several times slower than even a 386SX main memory access speeds - most will struggle to get more than single-digit IDE transfer speeds.... that's even with modern IDE drives with their large caches. It would crawl. A VLB IDE controller may …

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Re: what do you think is the best 440bx mainboard in the world?

Posted on 2023-01-12, 09:25

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I used a Gigabyte GA-6BXD with dual P3-450's as my main system for many years. It was rock solid. The customisation options/overclocking ability (or lack of ) may not place it as other peoples 'best', but for me, as my only computer (dual booting Linux and Windows 2000) from 1999-2003 (ish) it was …

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Re: Riser cards as backplanes for single board computers

Posted on 2023-01-12, 09:18

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah - that 'shoebox' formfactor is exactly the sort of thing I am looking to achieve. Great stuff! Did you 3d print the IO bracket holder or did you find a supplier?

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Re: AspringNobody's PCM-Wavetable Module Thread

Posted on 2023-01-11, 13:46

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I'm really liking those randomizer examples!

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Riser cards as backplanes for single board computers

Posted on 2023-01-11, 11:45

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a hankering for building an ultra tiny 386 with one of those everything-on-a-16bit-isa-card sbc's (PC/104 is nice, but ISA is really convenient). Most come with video , but some don't, and I'd want to add audio too - that means a total of 2-3 ISA slots. That's just the right amount that you …

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Re: Cache not working on 386 mobo

Posted on 2023-01-11, 11:39

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does cachechk report anything suspicious?

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Re: BIOS programming

Posted on 2023-01-10, 18:52

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've just used my TL866 to flash a SST29EE010 bios this week. I use the Linux software, minipro, but the Windows application should work fine Make sure that if you buy a TL866 that it comes with the PLCC32 adapter (most bundles include at least that along with several more). Other than that, it's a …

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Re: DigiPOS adventures!

Posted on 2023-01-10, 15:47

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Think about ROM access speeds (=>100ns), across the ISA bus (~8MHz, 8/16bit), compared to main memory (<100ns, 16/32bit, whatever transfer speed your memory is at). I've done quite a bit of testing, including the benchmarks here for my FIC 386-SC: https://www.target-earth.net/wiki/doku.php?id=blog: …

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Re: DigiPOS adventures!

Posted on 2023-01-10, 09:46

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

PicoPSU is fitted and working. I re-used the original AT power switch wired to the PS_ON/+5VSB headers on the ATX breakout board I fitted the PicoPSU to (easier than cutting up an ATX power cable/crimping a load of wires). It's gotten rid of that nasty little 40mm PSU fan, quietened the overall …

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Re: DigiPOS adventures!

Posted on 2023-01-10, 08:16

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's all about ISA clock (I can damn near run it at 14MHz stably on that system) and ensuring that you copy the XT-IDE rom to ram - if you're using an IDE rom replacement of course (otherwise any bios based disk access has to go over the ISA bus to access the routines in the ROM chip)! No such …

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2023-01-09, 23:49

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I have been using my Magewell HDMI Pro Capture for a while now and it has worked well with everything and every system thrown at it (via OSSC), but I just discovered recently that it really doesn't like the '70Hz' modes of a Matrox Millennium II. Those are modes like when running Speedsys, Doom, …

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Re: DigiPOS adventures!

Posted on 2023-01-09, 20:39

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That does seem a tad slow. I get 1800 kB/s on my 486 with VLB I/O card. Tell me about it; on my FIC-386SC (with 486 DLC-40) I can hit 3Mbytes/sec with the same type of card (Sandisk 16GB Ultra), CF reader and a bog standard ISA multi-io card (that's with the XT-IDE rom shadowed). On a 286 with a …

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Re: Opinions on floppy drive without cast aluminum frame?

Posted on 2023-01-09, 13:36

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The big plus of later floppy drives is that they almost exclusively went to direct drive motors == no more belts to replace!

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Re: DigiPOS adventures!

Posted on 2023-01-07, 23:17

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Completed a full suite of benchmarks with this thing: digipos_bench.jpg Looking at Phils VGA card benchmark spreadsheet, the scores are about par for the course for the WInchip C6 200; around the same level of performance as a non-MMX Pentium 133-166. So performance-wise these are not a great chip. …

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Re: Debugging an old PC that won't boot from an SD2IDE (with XTIDE)

Posted on 2023-01-07, 17:49

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

How many CF cards have you tried? I've been using XT-IDE rom across several machines (have it on a 286, a 486 and a P166 on two 3c509s and an rtl8139) for many years and there are times when it just wouldn't work with particular CF brands/models. I tend to stick with SanDisk Ultra and Extreme models …

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Re: Sunlogix 80386-33/40 (Micro Express Computer) - Config Questions now

Posted on 2023-01-07, 17:18

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Cirrus Logic and Tseng Labs cards seem to trade blows. ET4000 cards tends to be more expensive because the have a reputation as 'the fastest' but in reality that was early on, later cards caught up and are often cheaper. Dos performance doesn't take any advantage of advanced card/chipset features, …

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Re: DigiPOS adventures!

Posted on 2023-01-07, 16:18

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think it is the keyboard ground line, yes.

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Re: DigiPOS adventures!

Posted on 2023-01-07, 10:55

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I wouldn't have thought a fuse could do this, but..... IMG20230107104603-.jpg The Dell PS/2 keyboard now powers up! Even better... https://youtube.com/shorts/9GHAhATI0YU No more dropped keys when typing fast! And key repeat is working as you would expect it (hold a key and it repeats indefinitely, …

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Re: DigiPOS adventures!

Posted on 2023-01-07, 10:21

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Looking at what could be wrong with the keyboard interface and started taking a closer look around the port. There's what appears to be a typical keyboard / PS2 fuse near the AT keyboard port (FS1), which seems to be directly connected to the solder point I have highlighted (at least when measured …

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