Re: Which USB 2.0 cards for old motherboards
Posted on 2021-03-23, 08:56
Look at making a floppy with the plop bootloader on it. It worked just fine on my PPro machine with a USB card when I still had it.
Re: How about a MR-BIOS ROM file repository?
Posted on 2020-09-17, 09:58
The UM480 variants all seem to lock up with my GA-486VM. The variant I settled on earlier in the thread comes the closest to working completely -- it detects the CPU fine, detects the proper amount of RAM and L2, and then locks up before I can even get into setup. I'm assuming it has something to do …
Re: What do you use UNIVBE for?
Posted on 2020-09-17, 06:16
Well, my 486 has a TGUI9440AGi, and I've only had a single issue without UNIVBE. The only game I had a minor issue with (because it was loading the wrong VESA TSR) was SimCity2000, even that was quickly fixed by reconfiguring it. How common are those games that need it? I thought I had a fair amount …
Re: Value in IBM AT vs a 386 for retro gaming?
Posted on 2020-08-24, 11:08
For some reason I have it in my mind that I could replace the 8Mhz 286 chip with a 12 or 16Mhz CPU, but that might not be possible. Does it matter for EGA games? I don't know. Be careful with that line of thinking. I'm not sure the original AT had decoupled the CPU from the expansion bus yet -- the …
Re: Voodoo Banshee vs. Voodoo-3 3000 ?
Posted on 2020-08-24, 10:57
I had a PCI Banshee for a while in my (now retired) PPro system with a comically small green heatsink. I got so concerned with how hot it got (it surprisingly wasn't fussy about it at all in actual use) that I rigged up a 120mm fan between the supports for the monitor in my case to blow air over it. …
Re: Video recommendations for 486-class machines
Posted on 2020-08-19, 04:56
Well, I tried an Am5x86 and it just would not work. I spent too much on this DX4 OverDrive for it to sit on a shelf, anyway. The Am5x86 was my initial idea, actually.
Re: Video recommendations for 486-class machines
Posted on 2020-08-19, 03:28
If they wrote it for DirectX/Direct Draw it would not perform under DOS any better than a non DX/DD card. There is no true DX/DD support under DOS that actually works AFAIK. Well, no, but I'm talking about changing out the graphics library for something that addresses the video hardware directly. …
Re: Video recommendations for 486-class machines
Posted on 2020-08-19, 02:58
I live in the US, but the big problem with Euro sellers is shipping, especially right now with COVID. A few months back I bought a nice slotket from a German seller and they immediately cancelled the order and refunded my money because they couldn't ship it in a reasonable timeframe with the …
Re: Video recommendations for 486-class machines
Posted on 2020-08-19, 02:46
that will do okay enough in DOS while still actually accelerating DirectDraw applications (like Diablo, or RoadRash95). Ok. So...you want to use a 486 and try to get games like Diablo (out in 1997 designed for Win95+ and a Pentium 60+) or RoadRash95 (which designed for Win95+ and Pentium 75+) to …
Re: Video recommendations for 486-class machines
Posted on 2020-08-19, 02:03
I've used an older 4:3 LCD with this card in the past and it's just awful, the output is "blocky" in a way if that makes sense. At anything above 800x600 you can barely tell the font in use it's so soft, but I'd just as soon say you're not really supposed to do that on a 486 anyway -- what I'm …
Video recommendations for 486-class machines
Posted on 2020-08-18, 12:18
Hi, I don't mean to rehash an earlier thread I found, but said thread is years out of date now -- you can't seem to get ahold of Trio64 or Mach64 VLB cards at all, and Trio/Mach32 cards are very expensive. I have a Trident TGUI9440AGi card with 2MB, and it's great for DOS, quick and pretty standard …
Re: overwhelmed by motherboard and CPU selection for 486 build
Posted on 2020-08-11, 03:19
Well, in the case of War2 BNE (and tangentially Diablo, as I believe its requirements are the same for the same reasons) I believe the transition to using DirectX for video (specifically DirectDraw) is a bit less efficient than relying on addressing the video hardware directly. That and it makes …
Re: How much RAM do you need ?
Posted on 2020-08-10, 11:59
So what would you say is a good amount of memory and cache for the following computers in order to play DOS games well and run Windows 3.0 programs ? IBM AT - 8088 = ? IBM XT - 286 = ? 286 and cache = ? 386 and cache = ? 486 and cache = ? Any XT I have will get a full 640K if the motherboard …
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Posted on 2020-08-10, 11:52
YMF719E-S card for my 486 since my CT2800 blew three caps and lost an output channel last night. I feel like I'm going to have a blast getting the WSS stuff working -- I've never messed with that before -- but it ought to go alright.
Re: The VOGONS Experience
Posted on 2020-07-29, 09:49
My experience was more like, "hey, you're poor and can only work with what you're given or can get ahold of on a shoestring budget" for many years. I learned most of what I know now on a late PIII machine, a Dimension 4100. 866MHz PIII, 256(later 512)MB of RAM, 32MB GeForce2MX. It's only been …
Re: How about a MR-BIOS ROM file repository?
Posted on 2020-07-28, 18:09
A 27C512 ROM chip equates to 64KB. Therefore, if you a 64KB image, just burn it to a 27C512 EEPROM and replace it with the one on your motherboard. I wouldn't overwrite the existing one. Oh wow I completely bungled that! I'm not sure how I divided 512 by 8 and came up with 128, but that's exactly …
Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?
Posted on 2020-07-27, 07:30
I narrowed down the exact MR-BIOS rom image I needed for my 486 board (GA-486VM, UM480 chipset, probably rev B) and got to troubleshooting my second copy of the IODE-3295UMC card -- it works, but neither the DOS driver nor a utility a friend wrote for setting drive speeds on its UM8672 IDE …
Re: How about a MR-BIOS ROM file repository?
Posted on 2020-07-27, 06:45
So after some preliminary sifting I've narrowed it down to these: V037B401 UMC_401 UMC WriteBack 82C48X 486 WriteBack, Rev 0 *ONLY* V037B402 UMC_402 UMC WriteBack 82C48X 486 WriteBack, Rev A,B *ONLY* V037B404 UMC_404 UMC WriteBack 82C48X 486 WriteBack, Rev A,B *ONLY* x037B402 (TL-) I think that the …
Re: How about a MR-BIOS ROM file repository?
Posted on 2020-07-26, 06:40
I find myself a little overwhelmed at the sheer amount of stuff to sift through for this. Would anyone by chance know what would work with a UMC480 chipset? Chips are 82C481BF and 82C482AF. I'm not sure what revision that makes my chipset. I'd probably just go for trial and error, as I imagine the …
Re: 486 Upgrade Options
Posted on 2020-07-26, 05:10
Well, I jumped the gun a bit saying it works at 120MHz. It doesn't make it into Win95 or even reliably start Quake at that speed, and PCPBench is garbled... It posts, runs TOPBENCH (which with no L2 it loses to the DX2-80 in), runs Doom, and basically nothing else. So, no 40MHz bus, oh well -- it …
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