Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2019-05-14, 13:55

by

by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I knew almost nothing about the Amiga back in the day. I was pure 100% PC. Worked my backside off part-time to earn upgrades to bring my little 286 PC up to 486 standard around the early 90s. So I suppose that I was a little late to the party at that stage. I used to read about Amigas and saw the …

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Re: Tube Time: Announcing The Snark Barker, a 100% Compatible SB 1.0 Replica!

Posted on 2019-05-07, 06:26

by

by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

So it turns out Mouser do deliver to South Africa - and in under a week if you use the courier shipping option. Got the final opamps and correct audio sockets for the Snark Barker from them - as well as some Keystone brackets for my XTIDE cards. So I replaced the temporary audio socket on the board …

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Re: Tube Time: Announcing The Snark Barker, a 100% Compatible SB 1.0 Replica!

Posted on 2019-04-15, 09:44

by

by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Got my card working after a fashion this weekend. I discovered that the DB-15 sockets I had were male rather than female so I desoldered the second DB-15 from a dedicated game port card I had. I also socketed that cards NE558 so I could use it. I managed to use an audio socket from a scrapped PC by …

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Re: Tube Time: Announcing The Snark Barker, a 100% Compatible SB 1.0 Replica!

Posted on 2019-03-25, 09:16

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Thanks - I think I'll try mouser. Apparently there is a South African mouser site, but I think I'll use my Aramex Global Shopper address instead just to be safe.

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Re: Tube Time: Announcing The Snark Barker, a 100% Compatible SB 1.0 Replica!

Posted on 2019-03-25, 07:39

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Very nice work Cyrix200+! I worked on my own board this weekend, but I am battling to get a few parts - the NJM3403A and the audio jacks are proving to be the most difficult. I managed to get an NE558 from another sound card, the sound chips from eBay and all the rest locally - but finding the exact …

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Re: Tube Time: Announcing The Snark Barker, a 100% Compatible SB 1.0 Replica!

Posted on 2019-02-27, 09:07

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Nice to see some other people building one of these too. My 10 PCBs arrived from JLCPCB last week and I found a local supplier here in South Africa who still had TEA2025s in stock so I'm slowly accumulating all the components. Awaiting delivery of the micro-processor and SAA1099 chips which will …

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Re: Adlib Revival Kit

Posted on 2018-05-21, 09:03

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Very nice. So there's no plan to sell these yet?

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Re: OPL2LPT

Posted on 2018-03-28, 13:01

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW-S1-s8Egk&t=22s Video is a bit poor since I recorded it with my iPad mini's camera, but audio is dubbed in from direct recording via my Win10 PC.

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Re: Resound OPL3 AdLib sound card just released

Posted on 2018-02-27, 06:12

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I watched that review yesterday too. Quite an interesting device, although chalk me up as another person more interested in an OPL2 kit card. It is nice to see someone selling the lo-tech designs again. Quite attractive PCB colours too.

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Re: OPL2LPT

Posted on 2018-02-26, 14:15

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I built my OPL2LPT kit this weekend. Very solid little gadget. Nice clear instructions on what goes where. You don't always get that with projects like this. Something that surprised me was that Star Control 2 actually supports OPL2! As far as I know that game's entire soundtrack uses sampled sound, …

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Re: TNDLPT : Tandy Sound on parallel port

Posted on 2018-01-11, 10:17

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I'd also prefer an ISA card. LPT port getting pretty crowded by now. You have to keep in mind that these range of products seem mainly aimed at ppl with either a modern PC that still have a parallel port but ofc no ISA so they can enjoy old games with correct sound, or ppl with older laptops that …

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Re: TNDLPT : Tandy Sound on parallel port

Posted on 2018-01-10, 11:31

by

by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I'd also prefer an ISA card. LPT port getting pretty crowded by now.

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Re: What was the first PC you built yourself

Posted on 2017-01-19, 08:35

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My first PC was built around a 286 motherboard that my dad bought second-hand for me I so would stop constantly working on his XT. The 286 ran at 12MHz CPU, 1MB onboard RAM with the Headland chipset. Started with just the motherboard and case/PSU - a friend told me about a computer scrapping place …

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Re: Covox speech thingy!!!

Posted on 2016-11-07, 07:10

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I made myself one of those resistor ladder DAC cards about a year ago. It is a fun little project to do and sounds pretty good for what it is - sadly very few games support it natively and although that 3-voice TSR is amazing it only works in protected mode - so no use on PC/XT/AT machines. That …

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Re: (E)EPROM Programmer choice

Posted on 2016-09-30, 07:15

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I own both. The MiniPro is great for simple stuff and super cheap. The reason I bought the GQ4x4 was to get support for 16-bit EPROMs as chips like the 27C322 are not supported in the MiniPro. The software for the GQ4x4 is also slightly better than the software for the MiniPro in my opinion - The …

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Re: Apogee vs. Tseng (ET4000)

Posted on 2016-09-29, 13:12

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I'm assuming you have already enabled the internal SVGA-fix options in games that have them? Other than that I'm not sure - maybe one day someone will port those games over to Amiga natively like the recent ports of Keen Dreams and Catacomb Abyss. Those ports do need at least a 68030 Amiga though. I …

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

Posted on 2016-08-29, 06:46

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Installed and played with my new ACA1233n upgrade card for my A1200. It works well apart from a few battles with finding appropriate kickstart ROM images for WHDLoad. I have the Kickstart 1.3 image and that works well but ironically games that need the A1200 ROM image fail - despite running on an …

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

Posted on 2016-07-11, 07:47

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Replaced the audio caps in my Amiga 600. Sounds much clearer now and the volume level is the same between the two speakers.

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

Posted on 2016-06-03, 11:20

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by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As ek mooi lees kan ek Nederlands ook verstaan! Ek vind dit eintlik makliker om te verstaan as ek dit lees. Dit klink baie anders as 'n mens na Nederlands luister. Gauteng is nog nie bitterkoud nie maar ons het een of twee nagte gehaad waar die temperatuur negatief was. Die heelergste is nog oppad …

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

Posted on 2016-06-03, 09:41

by

by AnacreonZA

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Another good YT suggestion: GadgetUK164. He gets deep into actual physical hardware repairs and you've got to love that northerner (I think?) accent.

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