Re: Looking for a fast vesa local bus card for DOS gaming

Posted on 2019-12-31, 16:06

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The Diamond Viper VLB Witek 9000 isn't even used in DOS, you have a cheap Weitek VGA chip or an Oak Technology OTI087X using its RAM under an 8 bit path so DOS speed sucks. I have one of those IDE/Serial/VGA boards from Seanix Technologies with the WD90C33 VGA chip and didn't know it was decent in …

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Re: Looking for a fast vesa local bus card for DOS gaming

Posted on 2019-12-30, 21:10

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I own at least two dozens of VL-Bus card. My experience is that in DOS, unless you pick a really wrong one there is nothing to write home about. It is all about interface speed and several cards can saturate that and give you almost identical performance. In Windows there are more substantial …

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Re: ATI mouse

Posted on 2019-12-28, 23:40

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The bundled mouse and connector were advertised by ATi as "Microsoft compatible bus mouse and port" so nothing ATI specific. So your best bet is Microsoft InPort mouse.

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Re: Welcome to the updated VOGONS

Posted on 2019-12-27, 21:36

by

by mpe

in Milliways

in Milliways

Change the default purple colour to dark grey or black (or enable such theme) and it'll be perfect 😀

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Re: This 486, can mount the pentium overdrive?

Posted on 2019-12-27, 14:53

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've just tried to stick the POD in the Socket 1. Mechanically there is no problem expcept for it is tricky to remove from the LIF once you put it in. Don't have any Socket 1 mb right now. However, as derSammler mentioned, I would be concerned about power draw as whatever built with Socket 486/ …

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Re: This 486, can mount the pentium overdrive?

Posted on 2019-12-27, 14:25

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes the 487SX is just a 486DX with a extra pin to disable the on-board 486SX. Kinda a scam if you ask me, but ofc there are some 486 Overdrive chips that have that extra pin to disable the 486SX. I wonder why this misinformation keeps spreading again and again... Neither the 487 nor any overdrive …

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Re: Socket 4 motherboards/ Chipset comparison benchmarks Pentium 60 and 66Mhz (6 motherboards)

Posted on 2019-12-26, 12:05

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I finally got the Batman's Revenge board which is a kind of reference board for Socket 4. So I was able to calibrate my results against s.mouse's results (despite a slightly different VGA which is S3 868 in my case. It looks like the MSI/ALi board at default settings is slower than 430LX, but given …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-12-25, 18:38

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Love the Indigo. I had a blue Indy on my desk in my first job. I hate IRIX since then 😀

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-12-24, 23:05

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nice find! That SX753 is a pretty rare very early Socket 4 Pentium too. So not only a nice board, but a rare CPU too. Thanks. The CPU actually did not come with the board. It is from my collection. I thought it would complement nicely the board. Isn't this a Dell OEM board (because of the AUX power …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-12-23, 15:50

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My board appears to be actually just "Batman". "Batman Revenge" should have an extra voltage regulator next to the power connector designed to run early P66 chips a little more stable at 5.27V. That place is actually to provide 3.3V and was later populated for the socket 5 version of the board ( …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-12-23, 12:15

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

jheronimus explained it well. My board appears to be actually just "Batman". "Batman Revenge" should have an extra voltage regulator next to the power connector designed to run early P66 chips a little more stable at 5.27V.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-12-23, 11:27

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Early Christmas present - Intel Batman Likely a dead non-socketed Dallas chip so there should be a minor soldering work. But other than that looks OK.

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Re: 486 - single bank vs dual-bank L2

Posted on 2019-12-17, 23:40

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's Shuttle HOT-419. I suppose I could do the benchmarking, but I am currently out of 128Kx8 SRAMs so was hoping someone already checked that. My expectation is that the bigger cache should win supposing it is able to maintain the same L2 timing as dual-bank (which shouldn't be taken for granted). …

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486 - single bank vs dual-bank L2

Posted on 2019-12-17, 14:37

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a 486 board where the L2 cache configured either in single-bank 512kB (4x 128Kx8) or dual-bank 256kB (8x 32Kx8) configuration. It doesn't look like the board supports 1024kB as there are only short DIP28 sockets in bank 1 limiting the maximum size of chips. So the option is either 512kB or …

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Re: AMD K5 case basge/sticker

Posted on 2019-12-12, 10:53

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for the opinions. I am leaning towards the black K5 badge (2). But what if the 3dfx badge was black? . Still the K5. In any colour. But perhaps not due to its design. I just don't identify with the 3dfx brand enough. The ADM K5 is much more appealing for me. But of course this is your case …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-12-11, 15:14

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

how it compares to the arklogic in dos? i give up the trio/virge cards - the visions have better output quality with the dedicated dacs. Unfortunately, I don't have any VLB ARK card in my collection. My experience after testing about 10+ different VLB models is that DOS performance is exclusively a …

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Re: AMD K5 case basge/sticker

Posted on 2019-12-11, 13:07

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I like the 2nd option. Plays nicely with the black turbo display. I am inspired by the idea of making badge by using metallic tape & label maker as shown in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYeIr1fPHHU

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Re: Differences between 3Com 3c905-tx, 3c905b-tx, 3c905c-tx

Posted on 2019-12-11, 10:01

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hard to tell what's wrong. However there is actually a long list of 900b/905b features that should make it clearly superior to 900/905. Such as: - 2 KB transmit FIFO and 2 KB receive FIFO - dual-channel DMA engine - improved scatter-gather engine that reduces the number of I/O operations required to …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-12-10, 22:28

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Got this VLB card. After testing It turns out to be my fastest VLB card yet. Especially in Windows. In DOS all decent cards performs about the same.

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Re: Differences between 3Com 3c905-tx, 3c905b-tx, 3c905c-tx

Posted on 2019-12-10, 20:29

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Interesting. I'd expect newer cards to be be better. But it all depends on the use pattern. As for the HW checsum ( Scatter/gather and TX checksums) is not meant to be improving throughput. It is a kind of processing speed/throughput tradeoff. It can only improve TX and only if using specific kinds …

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