Re: Weird cards found inside Dell Dimension M233a

Posted on 2024-04-19, 22:26

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The cards with the Cirrus Logic chips are multi-display adapters. GD5428 VGA controllers (with build-in RAMDAC) with 1MB each. As there was no native OS support for multi-display when this stuff was new, it will have relied on specific application software.

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Re: Pentium PRO?

Posted on 2024-04-19, 22:23

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yep, often the desire for something is far more interesting than the possession of it. A bunch of French novelists have made that theme their life's work. I can think of lots of examples where I lusted after some unusual old hardware, eventually found it - then lost a lot of interest. I'm looking at …

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Re: Pentium PRO?

Posted on 2024-04-19, 15:19

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Pentium Pro and Socket 8 were short lived technologies Short-lived? PPro was introduced in 1995 and superseded by P2 in 1997. That is as long as Intel's flagship as the P2 managed and longer than the P3. The reason PPros are so rare isn't that they were on the market for a short time, it's that …

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Re: SCSI Ultra adapters (Like SATA to IDE, but for SCSI)

Posted on 2024-04-18, 09:08

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] I guess I am just now attuned to the (lack of) noise from 2.5" drives and solid state. I spent a large portion of the early part of my career with SS 5's and then Ultra 1's and the occasional SGI Indigo 2 on my desk.... and I have no desire to replicate the noise of those drives. Believe me, …

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Re: Need info on type of chip used for Award Bios rom

Posted on 2024-04-18, 09:06

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

True, but we're going based on something on the silkscreen, which almost certainly does not indicate exact brand+type but just generic "a 29EE010 goes here", which could just as easily be the Winbond part.

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Re: SCSI Ultra adapters (Like SATA to IDE, but for SCSI)

Posted on 2024-04-18, 07:53

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is one of the reasons I don't have my older Unix workstations out and used very often: SCSI drives are loud. Not all of them. In particular the 9-18GB Seagate Cheetahs and 18-36GB Quantum Atlas IV are about as quiet as mechanical HDDs can get. The 1.7GB unbalanced jet engine emulator in my …

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Re: Need info on type of chip used for Award Bios rom

Posted on 2024-04-18, 06:00

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for all the responses, and sorry I haven't gotten back to this yet. I popped the chip out of it's socket and the number was printed on the board under it. It's a '29EE010'. I'm going to try flashing the bios and testing the board again tomorrow. Wish me luck. @dionb , I'm going to be using a …

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Re: Looking for IBM Music Feature Card owners

Posted on 2024-04-16, 11:50

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

rkurbatov wrote on 2024-04-15, 15:21: [...] It is. Scg's goal was to make the exact replica - that's it. As exact as possbile. Tnx. Then I'm going to get building 😀 - using florian3's spares if shipping across the Atlantic makes sense, otherwise I'll source stuff myself.

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Re: Are VIA chipsets bad for retro games?

Posted on 2024-04-16, 07:20

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Intel was messing around with Rambus (google 'Caminogate' for an example of Intel stuff you want to avoid) Avoid? Rambus P4 systems sell at a significant premium these days. You'd be lucky to have one. But ironically, FDIV Pentiums are also more valuable than their fully functional replacements. …

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Re: Are VIA chipsets bad for retro games?

Posted on 2024-04-15, 18:22

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I might be in the market for another motherboard soon, and I recall reading something along those lines once. It's a rare chipset vendor that never had any compatibility issues... The most famous Via issue was that the VT82C686B southbridge (found on late P3 and early Athlon and P4 boards) had …

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Re: Are any new Baby-AT boards being made that support 500MHz or faster CPUs and will fit in an IBM 5160 chassis?

Posted on 2024-04-15, 09:59

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

New? In 2024? Not very likely except at extortionate prices. Instead, take a look at a PICMG 1.0 backplane, many will fit in the case. Then get a PICMG 1.0 SBC with desired CPU/chipset on it. Prices aimed at B2B market can be horrendous, but I frequently spot them at more reasonable rates. I …

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Re: Is there any guide for installing Windows 3.11?

Posted on 2024-04-15, 09:55

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] I mean which version of windows 3.11, there are 3.1, 3.11, 3.1 for workgroups, 3.11 for workgroups etc... probably different subversions like windows 95 osr2, osr2.1, etc... I wanna know which is better and why "Better" is always a subjective qualification. Windows for Workgroups has …

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Re: Windows XP on 486

Posted on 2024-04-15, 09:37

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] If you have a 486 computer and a Pentium Overdrive CPU for it, you're welcome to try to install Windows XP with the Pentium Overdrive CPU installed then replace it with a 486 afterwards to see if it would still boot. I did that in the early 00's. Installed WinXP on a late PCI-based 486 board …

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Re: ESS1868 compatibility issues

Posted on 2024-04-15, 06:05

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

250 games? Amazing work! Just to double-check: in the cases where you've seen issues have you swapped out this card for something else (eg. a Creative Soundblaster) to confirm the issues were actually due to the ESS1868 and not something else? I once spent weeks messing around with a (far less …

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Re: Pentium iii roadmap

Posted on 2024-04-14, 12:26

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Consider that release date doesn't tell the whole story: - frequently there were 'paper releases' of CPUs only available to a few reviewers. Mass availability came months later sometimes many months. - on release, all these CPUs were eye-wateringly expensive and only sold in small quantities to …

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Re: Looking for IBM Music Feature Card owners

Posted on 2024-04-14, 11:53

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I will probably build one more card for myself, that leaves me with 3 more bare PCBs and some parts in case anyone is looking to build one. Maybe I'm a bit slow, but has the design been finalized/known-good? If so, I'm definitely up for one, although looking at your Chicago location it might be …

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Re: Upgrade to AWE64, or keep SB16 + Wavetable board?

Posted on 2024-04-14, 11:49

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by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Which SB16 are we talking about here? And which AWE64? As already pointed out there are big differences between models, which could materially affect the answer to your question. In particular how bad the MIDI bugs are on them and whether the SB16 has real OPL3 or CQM That said, why "or"? You can …

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Re: Drivers/Questions about ESS488

Posted on 2024-04-14, 11:39

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by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Jumpers and dipswitches might well be relevant here. Challenge is finding the settings. That FCC ID shows it's a Labway card (JV7 is the grantee code for Labway), but it isn't one of the cards on TH99 and googling it just shows this earlier Vogons thread and your VCF thread from a few weeks back ( …

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Re: sound cards and music production

Posted on 2024-04-11, 17:53

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by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Friend of mine was a keyboard player in a symphonic black metal group in the late 1990s (not exactly techno, but it's still music ;) ) and he wrestled and got hopelessly frustrated with a Terratec EWS64XL which theoretically should have been able to fulfil all his MIDI and sampling needs but in …

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Re: List of VLB IDE Controllers

Posted on 2024-04-11, 11:20

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The cached transfer speed of BT-410A is epic. Non-cached speed is the deep opposite. Another caching paper tiger, but i admit these complex assemblies are quite interesting. One of my (many...) long term project ideas is to do some benchmarks of a couple of cached controllers (and the fake cache …

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