Re: Pentium PRO?

Posted on Yesterday, 20:58

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

rmay635703 wrote on Yesterday, 20:30: [...] The “mistakes “ Intel made [...] The discussion you are quoting me from was specifically about the lack of MMX support in PPro being called a mistake, not any of the other things you are referring to.

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

Posted on 2024-04-25, 08:06

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Slight disappointment today - was looking to build a high-end Win98SE build, as I currently only have some compromise ones. Intended to use an AM3NF2 for it, but after digging though all my stuff I discovered I sold that a few months back. Oh well, back to the drawing board. Does give me the chance …

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Re: PCI IDE Controller Card Question

Posted on 2024-04-25, 05:56

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] I bet the card will workfor you as long as your board supports PCI 2.1 or newer, which would be socket 7 or newer. Getting it to work on socket3 or 4 might be difficult. Not PCI 2.1 - from the manual: PCI Specification, revision 2.2 That means it probably won't work on i440BX either - at …

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Re: Help identify old hardware

Posted on 2024-04-24, 18:44

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] 20240423_213328[1].jpg Probably ECC SDRAM. It doesn't work in boards that don't support ECC.[/quote] ECC SDRAM works fine in boards that don't support ECC, just like parity SIMMs work in non-parity boards, you just don't get the error detection/correction. You're probably thinking of …

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Re: Benchmark SCSI vs IDE @ 386SX

Posted on 2024-04-24, 14:12

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Why don't you use a 15k scsi hard disk? i think the result will be different Short update: tested also this recommendation: results are similar to the ZuluSCSI. Case „SCSI performance increase“ then closed for me finally :) Did you actually check access times as well as throughput? I've been …

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Re: Need Driver CD for Philips Acoustic Edge PSC706 PCI Sound Card

Posted on 2024-04-23, 20:52

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

baracoota wrote on 2024-04-23, 17:21: Thanks, Pickle! That would be amazing! Also thanks to dionb for the link. I think these are just the DOS drivers though. Always helps to specify which OS you're looking for drivers for...

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Re: Need Driver CD for Philips Acoustic Edge PSC706 PCI Sound Card

Posted on 2024-04-23, 12:47

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Take a look here, fourth download listed looks like the PSC70x driver you need: Re: VOGONS Driver Library (can't confirm the contents of the Google Drive links as on my company laptop where Google is blacklisted...)

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Re: Looking for information about ISA Media Magic sound card

Posted on 2024-04-23, 12:27

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Looking at the location of J3, I'm guessing it's PC Speaker Out. The two wavetable headers (or something that looks a lot like it) are very unusual, I'm willing to wager that J1 is related to the function of the second header. As for confirmation that it's an OPTi 928 / MAD16... try and run the …

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Re: What are your thoughts about the Gigabyte GA-7IXE mainboard?

Posted on 2024-04-22, 14:28

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Do you guys have any experience with Gigabyte GA-7IXE or Slot A boards in general? There are two chipsets for Slot A, the AMD 750 and Via KX133. You can compare them to i440BX and Via ApolloPro133a for P3 - the 750 is a bit lower spec (AGP 2x, SDRAM only synchronous i.e. 100MHz), the KX133 …

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Re: Can anyone help identify this exact vintage PC?

Posted on 2024-04-21, 10:15

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That second drive is not part of the original machine (4863 is the monitor for the 4860 computer, like the 5153 is the colour monitor for the 5150), but is in an expansion chassis. I'm no PC Jr expert, but judging by the "Quadram" logo on the second FDD, I'd assume it's a Quadram Expansion Chassis, …

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Re: Additional RAM needed for my 486

Posted on 2024-04-21, 10:08

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thank you guys for your help and comments. I just found this website: https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/Z/ZIDA-TECHNOLOGIES-INC-Pentium-5DHX-VER-1-20.html They say that the following combination (among many others) is indeed possible: Size Bank 0 Bank 1 64MB (2) 8M x 36 none Ah, good old …

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Re: what is the funniest or oldest cpu/watercooling combo you have ever seen?

Posted on 2024-04-20, 14:55

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oldest... Surprised no one posted this yet: Cray-2 with Fluorinert liquid cooling in 1985.

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Re: Additional RAM needed for my 486

Posted on 2024-04-20, 14:34

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Odd table... it shows support for two double-sided 8MB SIMMs and for four 32MB and 128MB SIMMS , but then neglects to mention support for two 32MB double-sided SIMMs. That "*32" notation is also highly confusing and I don't blame you for not being sure what it's trying to tell you. I'd be highly …

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Re: Weird cards found inside Dell Dimension M233a

Posted on 2024-04-20, 10:15

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The dual Cirrus Logic card might be usable as an ordinary VGA card as there is a VGA BIOS ROM which likely inits one of the chips. Assuming that it is the case, then it would be a question mapping which pins are used for its RGBHV output. I suspect that card works that way or there would be no easy …

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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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