Re: The Ultimate Sound Card Comparison

Posted on 2023-01-30, 01:59

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

LS-212: An unauthorized OPL clone of unknown origin that was very common. So common even Creative used it in cards that you would expect to find the real deal. It is awful, it sounds numb, stay far away. The LS-212 is supposedly a pin compatible copy of the YMF262-M according to this article . It …

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Re: Windows 2000 slows down after installing PCI card

Posted on 2023-01-29, 18:17

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That was one of the first things I tried yesterday, and didn't make any difference, either in IRQ assignment or speed. But I just tried it again, hoping /PCILOCK would help, and after rebooting I noticed the card got assigned its own IRQ. Got excited for a moment, rebooted again, and everything is …

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Windows 2000 slows down after installing PCI card

Posted on 2023-01-29, 01:13

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Got this SW1000XG card today, but I'm having some issues with it. It makes cool sounds all right, but Windows is now unusably slow. The 3D Pipes screensaver runs at about one frame per *three* seconds. Now I noticed it assigned the graphics card, USB controller, network adapter, and the SW1000XG all …

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Re: ESFM reverse-engineered

Posted on 2023-01-02, 17:19

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-01-01, 22:38: BTW, if you haven't already seen this, the ESS 1869 datasheet (available on Phil's website) has some info on ESFM, starting from page 41. I've seen that. It only mentions that a "native" mode exists - there's no info on how to use it, or even what it's …

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Re: ESFM reverse-engineered

Posted on 2023-01-01, 21:59

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Is there any more reason we know now of why the sound is muffled when using native ESFM? Is this a driver bug? I assume you mean muffled PCM voices? The FM synth has nothing to do with that. The PCM part of these chips is actually well documented, and they have adjustable filters. My guess is that …

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Re: ESFM reverse-engineered

Posted on 2023-01-01, 21:00

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Thanks everyone, appreciate the compliments. I just found some more registers and will document these shortly. Thank you very much for documenting this! BTW, we've been testing some games with native ESFM support in this thread . It can sound really nice when the developers use it properly. I think …

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ESFM reverse-engineered

Posted on 2023-01-01, 17:19

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Hi all, Haven't visited these forums in a while, but I've been working on something that I know some of you will find interesting. You've read the title so you know what it is. I figured out the ESFM register map. As far as I'm aware, this hasn't been done before. I published everything I discovered …

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Re: CF Card Through IDE - SLOW!

Posted on 2015-09-20, 17:42

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does your CF adapter have jumpers to switch between 3.3 and 5V? There should be a voltage regulator chip too (or two diodes, on cheap adapters). If not, it's most likely running at 5V.

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Re: CF Card Through IDE - SLOW!

Posted on 2015-09-20, 16:02

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What voltage are you supplying to the card? Some (many?) CF cards require 3.3V for DMA mode, and default to slow IDE/PIO mode on 5V. The DRQ/DACK signal lines must also be present on the CF->IDE adapter in order to support DMA mode. On older/cheap adapters these were often omitted.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-09-17, 20:19

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

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Re: Do you own any CRT monitors for your retro stuff?

Posted on 2015-09-16, 13:04

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

kixs wrote: 14" Samsung SVGA What model?

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Re: List of ISA sound card - what do you recommend?

Posted on 2015-09-14, 11:40

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

jesolo wrote: my understanding is that these cards are a bit on the noisy side >a bit

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Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2015-09-12, 22:17

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by jwt27

in Milliways

in Milliways

I like the way this looks in 40-column over composite. And aaargh this game is too addictive. My best so far, who can beat me? 😀 (Epyx v1.49 btw)

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

Posted on 2015-09-10, 19:59

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hacked my IBM 5150 mainboard to disable onboard memory and parity checking :) Nice job. I'm guessing you did this to use an external 8 bit memory card instead? That's right, although I disabled the on-board memory mainly so I could drop these chips in another computer. Only after modding and …

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Re: A tale of two PSUs

Posted on 2015-09-10, 19:56

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by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yep, and also checked the big caps inside, they're all <0.05 ohm ESR. Could probably last another 30 years without servicing 😀 My brand new seasonics look bad in comparison...

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Re: Disk on Module / DOM Recommendations

Posted on 2015-09-08, 17:40

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by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Wouldn't a decent partition tool in a modern system be able to align partitions, even if its a FAT one? Windows 2K/XP/7 doesn't. Mkdosfs claims to do it, but really doesn't. Sorry to correct you but windows 7 does align a partition. Only exception are striped raid setups.. Tested lots of them after …

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Re: Disk on Module / DOM Recommendations

Posted on 2015-09-08, 14:09

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

alexanrs wrote: Wouldn't a decent partition tool in a modern system be able to align partitions, even if its a FAT one? Windows 2K/XP/7 doesn't. Mkdosfs claims to do it, but really doesn't.

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Re: Disk on Module / DOM Recommendations

Posted on 2015-09-08, 14:02

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

philscomputerlab wrote: What's the process for aligning partitions? For NTFS, make sure the partition starts at a block boundary, and set the cluster size to a multiple of the physical sector (page) size. For FAT, run FORMAT C: and keep your fingers crossed. Hopefully your clusters will end up in …

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Re: Acer 500+ XT system

Posted on 2015-09-08, 13:34

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Great to see you got the card, and it works! Awesome 😀 I'm still curious why the hacked mainboard part didn't, though...

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

Posted on 2015-09-07, 23:40

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hacked my IBM 5150 mainboard to disable onboard memory and parity checking 😀

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