Re: In an SMP system how does DOS/98 choose the CPU to utilise?

Posted on 2020-10-16, 20:00

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

After pondering CPUs running at different speeds I am concerned about the QPC . It's possible the TSC get's used for the QPC and suspect the two sockets having different TSCs may cause issues, then again keeping the two TSCs I phase may also be an issue. I also recall XP and 2003 using different …

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performance benefit of dual-channel memory (or not)

Posted on 2020-10-11, 23:05

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I always assumed that running a matched pair of DIMMs for the dual-channel support would be faster. But I never investigated it until now. Since I got another pair of DIMMs and one of them turned out to be defective, I decided to run a few benchmarks. The result is essentially no difference, on this …

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Re: Drivers doing stuff on their own and other horror stories

Posted on 2020-09-13, 00:49

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had a similar experience with an ESS driver, called Maestro or something like that. It was on a Toshiba laptop with Win98. There was a file in CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT that did who-knows-what, it didn't seem to be necessary either in DOS or Windows. I commented it out, and then it reappeared! I …

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Re: How to make NEC V20HL run at 16 MHz?

Posted on 2020-09-09, 05:22

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In the 1987 NEC microcomputer products catalog they list a uPD71011 clock generator for use with V20/V30 CPUs. However it outputs a clock with 50% duty cycle. Looking at the timing specs for the V20 itself, the allowed range for the clock duty cycle is 41% to 51% which is different than an 8088! …

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Re: Regarding SMARTDRV and 16mbs of ram...

Posted on 2020-09-09, 04:24

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You can tell SMARTDRV how much RAM to use. When you have 16MB then it will use 2MB by default, but you could drop to 1MB by doing SMARTDRV 1024 Or you could just leave it out of AUTOEXEC.BAT, and only run it manually when you need it. When I used to install Win 3.x or Win 9x on a system with plenty …

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Re: Sound card for Windows NT 3.51

Posted on 2020-08-20, 05:14

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Did you find NT 3.51 drivers for those cards and try to install them? Or you have no driver at all? I got PCM sound working on Realtek AC'97 by manually installing a driver for NT4 into NT 3.51, but this is integrated sound on an i855 board, not a PCI card.

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Re: Mode Q timings

Posted on 2020-08-06, 19:47

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Most emulators back then (eg. NESticle) had 256x modes that used the same pixel clock as standard VGA and just had fat borders on the left and right. But there were one or two (Magic Engine?) which somehow configured a full screen 256x240 which was cool but didn't work on every system even with a …

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Re: Windows 3.11 + PCMCIA ethernet?

Posted on 2020-07-22, 07:30

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I know I had a batch file that executed DOSENAB, which would detect the card, and then it would execute NET START, and then start Windows. Can't remember if there was more to it than that.

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Re: Nforce 2, change CPU Multipler in Windows XP

Posted on 2020-06-11, 19:56

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

CrystalCPUID works for changing K7 (mobile) multipliers

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Re: The World's Fastest 486

Posted on 2019-12-26, 13:07

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does the MediaGX have a larger cache line size to go along with the 64-bit memory bus or does it maintain a 16-byte line size and shorten the burst length to 2x 64-bit words? Maybe that explains the lackluster memory performance of the MediaGX (that, and the bandwidth-stealing video)

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Re: old x86 memory performance flaw+benchmarks

Posted on 2019-12-23, 12:08

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The main link sounded a bit like snake oil, but after checking out the technical page I decided to experiment on my 83MHz Pentium Overdrive. Reading the first dword of the next line before reading the remaining dwords of the current line does result in higher throughput compared to REP LODSD. 74,000 …

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Re: Overclocking the Cyrix/IBM 6x86MX PR200

Posted on 2019-12-21, 23:35

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I would think that if you can put a socket A cooler or a big socket 370 cooler on there it should be enough to offer peace of mind regarding CPU temperature. In terms of wattage the Cyrix chips would never come close to a 60W+ Athlon, even with a small bump in the voltage. But maybe one of those …

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

Posted on 2019-12-20, 19:59

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Went to turn on my 286 and was greeted with silence. Looks like a PSU replacement in the future 🤦 Also tried to harvest IDE connectors from a scrap motherboard using a hot air blower from a plastic welding kit. Result is a bit messy but probably salvagable.

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

Posted on 2019-12-18, 11:47

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Opened up a Sony CDU33A. The power/activity LEDs came loose somehow. Possibly other problems... large pics of the PCB: http://www.hyakushiki.net/misc/cdu33a-t.jpg http://www.hyakushiki.net/misc/cdu33a-b.jpg

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Re: 430TX (and other chipsets) and 75MHz (and 83MHz) FSB

Posted on 2019-12-17, 06:22

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well.. Are you sure the option to lock it actually works? Because the page I linked above says only VPX and VPX/97 can run 75MHz and only at 1/2 divider or Asynch (whatever that implies?) Well, it's not like I checked it with a scope at the PCI slot, but changing the jumper between 33MHz or FSB/2 …

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Re: using external monitor on iMac?

Posted on 2019-12-17, 06:14

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The LCD is "busted" as in physically, it has a large crack and impact damage on it.

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Re: Fix aspect ratio on Nvidia drivers.

Posted on 2019-12-17, 06:12

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Try using the monitor's OSD to see what resolution it is detecting. That should tell you whether it is the monitor or the video card that is rescaling. My bet is that the 780ti is doing the rescaling from 640x480 to the monitor's native resolution and that's why the aspect ratio is incorrect. …

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Re: How many Amps does a 486 PC use on +12V?

Posted on 2019-12-16, 14:29

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Would all together reach 18A? On the 12V rail? I doubt it would even reach one third of that.

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Re: 430TX (and other chipsets) and 75MHz (and 83MHz) FSB

Posted on 2019-12-16, 14:25

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

nearly no Socket 7 Chipsets that have a 2/5 PCI divider. Actually, nothing aside from Aladdin IV seems to have a divider for Socket 7 PCChips M537 (the one with VIA VP) can set the PCI to 33MHz when using 75/83MHz bus. CPU is an mII-PR266GP (2x75MHz) Surely it's a 2.5x multiplier? 37MHz PCI is …

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using external monitor on iMac?

Posted on 2019-12-16, 03:31

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I know very little about Apple stuff in general, and I received an 800MHz iMac with a busted screen. Small areas of the screen are still visible so I can tell that it boots up, but when I plug in an SVGA monitor using an adaptor for the proprietary Apple VGA port there is no signal. I was wondering …

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