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Re: What makes (or made) WinME so horrible?

Posted on Yesterday, 01:02

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

There's even a thread on here somewhere about taking a second look at ME because of "quality of life" features like builtin PKZIP extraction support, builtin USB storage support, and of course a broader array of stock drivers for late 90s hardware. Personally, I never used it, but I had already been …

Re: Adding XTIDE Bios to Olivetti Echos 44 Laptop

Posted on 2023-06-07, 03:04

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Dump the XT-IDE ROM from D000: after you've booted into DOS, and make sure it's an exact match with your ide_386l.bin? also: there's a utility out there, I can't remember its name, to make a boot disk that loads an option ROM like XT-IDE into RAM and boots it, so that you can test and make sure it …

Re: Thoughts on Benchmarks for DOS IDE Storage

Posted on 2023-06-07, 00:45

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh, I didn't realize you were using a VLB I/O card. I don't have the M919 but an 8433UUD so I immediately thought of the onboard IDE. The multi-sector part still applies though.

Re: Thoughts on Benchmarks for DOS IDE Storage

Posted on 2023-06-07, 00:43

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The UM8886A/UM8886B as found on your M919 really need the driver to be fully performant. feipoa, mkarcher and I have been discussing and testing this behind the scenes. Unlike other PCI IDE chipsets you can't just turn on FIFO (prefetching) and go. The FIFO has to be flipped between disabled, …

Re: Thoughts on Benchmarks for DOS IDE Storage

Posted on 2023-06-05, 20:04

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Directly sends ATA commands to the storage device, bypassing the file system Are you sure it sends commands directly (as in 1f0-1f7/3f6h io ports) and doesn't just bypass the file system and use Int 13h? For my systems (using HDD) it makes a difference whether you have Block Mode enabled in the …

Re: Nailing CHS for a Pre-Ultra ATA/DOS era motherboard

Posted on 2023-06-03, 19:33

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There should not be a situation where the CHS values reported by the drive in the IDENTIFY DEVICE command are incorrect. If they don't work, it's either a bug in the BIOS or something other than LBA-compatible translation being used in the BIOS. Yes, there are some cases and it's not a fault of the …

Re: Nailing CHS for a Pre-Ultra ATA/DOS era motherboard

Posted on 2023-06-03, 19:33

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Your drive isn't big enough to need translation. Also, it's weird that it is 62 sectors per track instead of 63.

Re: Nailing CHS for a Pre-Ultra ATA/DOS era motherboard

Posted on 2023-06-03, 05:38

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

And here is a better write-up: https://www.os2museum.com/wp/a-brief-visit-to … -geometry-hell/

Re: Nailing CHS for a Pre-Ultra ATA/DOS era motherboard

Posted on 2023-06-03, 05:07

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello Respectfully I believe you are overthinking this. There should not be a situation where the CHS values reported by the drive in the IDENTIFY DEVICE command are incorrect. If they don't work, it's either a bug in the BIOS or something other than LBA-compatible translation being used in the BIOS …

Re: Analyzing old CPUID code

Posted on 2023-06-02, 05:48

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Having rewritten "chkvec" to work on a real 386 (among other things, the osdev example is misleading, you can drastically simplify it with just jmp $+2 and need not reload CS nor have a code segment descriptor) I can confirm that with A20 enabled, and changing it to load [FFFFFFF0h] into BX, I get …

Re: Detecting if a CPU is an AMD Am486 or an Intel i486 from within Windows

Posted on 2023-06-02, 02:10

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

FFD0 means: Model 3, Stepping 0. This does not even indicate the presence of a 486 processor at all. Wouldn't model 3 conform with DX=0430h at reset for a 486DX2? Ah, that makes sense as for it being a 486, that's easy , SYSTEM_INFO->wProcessorLevel is 3 for a 386, 4 for 486, 5 for Pentium and 6 …

Re: Analyzing old CPUID code

Posted on 2023-06-02, 00:47

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This seems like it would have disastrous results if attempted from protected mode thus it wouldn't make sense for the CPU utility running under NT discussed in the other thread where this was coming up. Executing a CPU reset switches it to real mode (and that was the only way to get a 286 processor …

Re: I'm asking about INT13h again.

Posted on 2023-06-01, 18:21

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On your 486 if you go under MSD and then (D)isk Drives, and give us the information under C: (C/H/S values according to FDPT as well as CMOS) it might help in explaining exactly how your bios is doing it.

Re: Joystick and MIDI issues after upgrade to i486DX2

Posted on 2023-05-31, 19:59

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's unclear whether you are saying this stuff definitely worked with the 486DX-33 or not. If it did, then you might consider that this looks like an early 486 board and the BIOS may not know about the DX2-66 and thinks you have a 50 MHz bus, and the ISA slots are running at some unusual speed. If …

Re: Pulling my hair out with EGA programming.

Posted on 2023-05-29, 00:04

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

You might consider MK_FP(0xa000, 0); instead of 0xa0000000 to keep the code even clearer.

Re: Analyzing old CPUID code

Posted on 2023-05-27, 20:52

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I noticed the HWINFO utility (from Mumak, here on vogons) comes with a readme file that talks about ways of obtaining the CPUID from pre-CPUID processors, including temporarily overwriting the BIOS. It also describes forcing a reset with A20 disabled. I suppose that would cause the reset vector to …

Re: VLB Video Cards for DOS Gaming?

Posted on 2023-05-27, 00:53

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The RAM issue only applies if you need to run with a linear framebuffer and the card fails to map the framebuffer above 16MB despite being a VLB card. You can read all the precise details about it here: https://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/cirrus5.html#5 I don't think the Cirrus 542X driver that ships in …

Re: VLB Video Cards for DOS Gaming?

Posted on 2023-05-26, 16:24

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The RAM issue only applies if you need to run with a linear framebuffer and the card fails to map the framebuffer above 16MB despite being a VLB card. You can read all the precise details about it here: https://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/cirrus5.html#5 I don't think the Cirrus 542X driver that ships in …

Re: This Packard will not goto H311

Posted on 2023-05-26, 01:38

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Welcome Be aware that many Socket 7 boards have a cacheable limit of 64MB RAM so going beyond that may not provide the performance benefit you expect. It's out of my range of competence but I read a lot about refurbishing an old power supply like that but it seems like you've already modified the …

Re: Gateway2000 P5-100 IDE HDD Trouble

Posted on 2023-05-25, 03:51

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is the oldest PC I've worked with, but I'm not completely ignorant to IDE and IDE controllers. I feel like these drives are just too new for the motherboard, but I'm unsure what I could do to fix that. The IBM DeskStar was obtained from school also, and the WD drive was from an Xbox. I've …

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