Re: hybrid computer

Posted on 2016-02-10, 02:14

by

by gdjacobs

in Milliways

in Milliways

So... What is the right tool? A printing press? LoL, no. For final delivery, PDF is really the best and most usable, but I would argue products like FrameMaker offer more stable intermediate handling. Even here, though, the environment pretty much must be cloned, or you get font substitutions …

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Re: X-Wing Intro Music General MIDI Samples--Santa Cruz vs SBLive!

Posted on 2016-02-10, 01:53

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by gdjacobs

in Milliways

in Milliways

The Santa Cruz sounds more austere, but I like that. The SB Live renderings have much more sibilance which I find distracting.

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Re: hybrid computer

Posted on 2016-02-10, 01:46

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by gdjacobs

in Milliways

in Milliways

We did use some more advanced features, like automatic captions for images, tables and equations; automatic summaries; equations themselves; etc. Those were the first things to go boom. About the original topic... I don't think you can do any better than an Athlon board with ISA slots as long as …

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Re: DOS games that support both MT-32 and General MIDI?

Posted on 2016-02-10, 01:24

by

by gdjacobs

in DOS

in DOS

Yup. Several Sierra games do. Dagger of Amon Ra for instance. Also, the official patch for Conquest of the Longbow makes that game sound remarkably good with General MIDI.

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Re: VLB IDE cache controllers, benchmark

Posted on 2016-02-09, 02:04

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Low cacheable limits and apps that crap out without a pagefile do exist. I'd rather enable the "ConservativeSwapFile" option on SYSTEM.INI. Please don't remind me about cachable limits -- I rock a TX board. I like your solution, btw. I think it would do very well. One other thing which would be …

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Re: VLB IDE cache controllers, benchmark

Posted on 2016-02-09, 00:48

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd avoid using SD cards altogether on a retro-machine until someone analyses if these controllers have any sort of wear leveling. With CF cards you can pretty much trust a good quality card itself will do it, and that the adapter can only do so much to screw up (since all the logic is in the card …

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Re: Most disappointing games?

Posted on 2016-02-08, 20:39

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by gdjacobs

in Milliways

in Milliways

I do remember the shuriken ban and it's relation to the choice replacement weapon in the UK version of SW, but that was far from a controversy in the context of a big debate and things being taken to court or what have you. Carmageddon, on the other hand, that was a different story. I was thinking …

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Re: Most disappointing games?

Posted on 2016-02-08, 19:33

by

by gdjacobs

in Milliways

in Milliways

Lo Wang wrote: I wonder, though, what your view is on Shadow Warrior (1997), the original mutant slicer; not being realistic, does it still disturb you? I'd say gore is the least controversial aspect of that game. It was sure funny, though.

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Re: New retro-PC

Posted on 2016-02-07, 21:25

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

i'm pretty certain the ESS card has to be initialized using a software utility.

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Re: New retro-PC

Posted on 2016-02-07, 08:51

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Makes sense. It could be successfully loading the El Torito image while being unable to read data off the disk via the disk driver.

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Re: New retro-PC

Posted on 2016-02-07, 08:15

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It would be good to know exactly where the boot process fails. I would begin looking at UMBPCI or the optical disk driver / caching driver as the problem. From what I recall, those are the two drivers which are most hardware dependent.

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Re: Athlon MP build!

Posted on 2016-02-07, 05:58

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by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Audigy 2 ZS is a brilliant card. Drivers are much nicer then earlier creative cards and while the Audigy 4 is the last official card with Win9x/2k support there isn't much difference and the 4's are no where as easy to find. And gotta love those Duel CPU rigs! How's the resampling for 44.1khz PCM …

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Re: PSU for Athlon XP 3200+, Radeon 9800 XT?

Posted on 2016-02-07, 01:48

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Certainly in the case of Delta, they appear to have moved away completely from consumer markets. Aside from their existing contracts with Antec, that is.

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Re: Mechwarrior 2 DOS performance

Posted on 2016-02-07, 01:37

by

by gdjacobs

in DOS

in DOS

PowerVR or Glide are the way to go for Mech2.

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Re: PSU for Athlon XP 3200+, Radeon 9800 XT?

Posted on 2016-02-06, 19:31

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

386SX wrote: So, which brand you can be sure you'll probably always get high quality psu/components, without having to search for each capacitors inside each psu? 😁 Good luck with that. Every brand has their hits and misses, although OEM companies and platforms show general reliability trends.

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Re: Doom reboot

Posted on 2016-02-06, 18:53

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by gdjacobs

in Milliways

in Milliways

Go play Red Alert if it makes you feel better.

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Re: hybrid computer

Posted on 2016-02-06, 18:10

by

by gdjacobs

in Milliways

in Milliways

for Word documents there is... Antiword. Not sure what the support level is for docx, though. http://www.winfield.demon.nl/

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Re: CMI-8786 and Win 9x/ME

Posted on 2016-02-06, 17:15

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Doesn't look good. I'm seeing only Win2k/XP drivers as the earliest.

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Re: CMI-8786 and Win 9x/ME

Posted on 2016-02-06, 16:31

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You sure that isn't a CMI8768?

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Re: Mechwarrior 2 DOS performance

Posted on 2016-02-06, 16:23

by

by gdjacobs

in DOS

in DOS

there was a special VIRGE version of Mechwarrior 2 There is, but I'd need to install Windows 95 and find a special S3 Virge copy of the game. I actually have an ATI Rage Pro specific version of the game that I found buried in a pile of CDs. I'm not keen on either hunting down an S3 Virge copy of …

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