Sound Blaster Pro 1.0 CT1330 dual OPL2 pieces

Posted on 2020-09-27, 23:38

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

What is the best sound showcase (a game or demo) for dual OPL-2 setup appearing on the original Sound Blaster Pro 1.0 CT1330? I there anything that sounds better on dual OPL2 hw compared to single OPL3?

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Re: Troubleshooting Hercules Dynamite VLB card (Tseng ET4000)

Posted on 2020-09-27, 22:20

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Touching chips had no effect. It happens on at least two different motherboards and without any other cards in the system. It is not text mode specific. Seems to be affecting all modes. This is what happens when starting Windows (standard VGA mode and default colour scheme): DSC_8011.jpeg A hint of …

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Troubleshooting Hercules Dynamite VLB card (Tseng ET4000)

Posted on 2020-09-27, 18:45

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I took my Hercules Dynamite VL card out of the storage to find out it is not working properly :( The image is completely missing red and (mostly) blue parts. It is greenish and text is blocky: DSC_8009.jpeg DSC_8008.jpeg It was working perfectly just a few weeks back before putting it to the storage …

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Re: Good VLB card benchmark

Posted on 2020-09-27, 18:09

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-09-27, 16:28: Have any photos of that NexGen build ? Nexgen - the 486 killer - WIP

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Re: Good VLB card benchmark

Posted on 2020-09-27, 09:45

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Depends on the software. Majority of DOS games use plain VGA modes. No drivers are required, just some cards might have compatiblity issues. Most 1993+ cards have early VESA VBA 1.x in BIOS which is hardly used in games. Typically you can add support for VESA 2.0 using a manufacturer supplied TSR …

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Re: Good VLB card benchmark

Posted on 2020-09-26, 17:50

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

reveals that Cirrus Logic cards access the VL bus with 16 bits only I think it is unlikely (unless you happen to be on a 386SX/486SLC system). Even the entry level (on VL-Bus) CL-GD5424 is a 32bit device. Both towards host as well as DRAM (with at least 1MB). And it shows healthy improvement when …

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Re: 486 VLB Board that will support Running DRAM at 0WS (25MHz FSB)

Posted on 2020-09-26, 17:42

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On the other hand the extra saved cycle would likely have a negligible performance difference. Especially on a cached system.

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Re: 486 VLB Board that will support Running DRAM at 0WS (25MHz FSB)

Posted on 2020-09-26, 17:09

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not sure. Perhaps one of these elusive Octek DCA boards? They shipped with special low latency RAMs and had no L2. Or a motherboard designed for 16-20 MHz bus? A typical 486 chipset supports 25 MHz+ and can be programmed down to 3-2-2-2 with zero one or more of extra cycles.

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Re: 486 VLB Board that will support Running DRAM at 0WS (25MHz FSB)

Posted on 2020-09-26, 15:53

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You need to specify what you mean by 0 WS. RAM is not a directly connected static memory device and by definition needs a few cycles before the CPU can read from it (opening page, setting access strobes, closing, some stretching after read, occasional wait for refresh, etc. These operations needs …

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Re: Good VLB card benchmark

Posted on 2020-09-26, 12:39

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for the appreciation! As for reasons for using the NexGen board as the test platform. Despite 41 MHz I found it to be actually a good choice for testing VL-Bus parts. Performance-wise it is essentially a fast 486 roughly matching or exceeding DX4-100. Unlike a typical 486 board, the bus on …

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Re: Batman's Revenge socket 4 motherboard - need manual

Posted on 2020-09-25, 23:09

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes. All P66 I tested ran fine without the regulator.

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Re: OPTi / Orchid Local Bus variants

Posted on 2020-09-24, 17:33

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Is this any good?

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-09-24, 13:43

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Williwinner wrote on 2020-09-24, 12:41: Very cool guy. Gave me the pin-layout for it. Got one a few weeks back. Can you share the pinout please?

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Re: What size COAST module to go with.

Posted on 2020-09-23, 11:45

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I assume your AST P166 uses an Intel chipset where as far cacheability is concerned the cache size doesn't matter (only cache tag type does). Anyway, 32MB is below cacheability limits of any cache type you can likely get. 512kB is going to give you 2-4% of performance boost in some apps compared to …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-09-21, 07:20

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also arrived today. Micronics-branded dual socket 5 / 430NX. IBM part made by Micronics in full-AT form factor. https://dependency-injection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/DSC_7996-scaled.jpeg I notice the board has two Intel Overdrives. Didn't Intel disable SMP in their overdrives? Or was that …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-09-19, 11:33

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also arrived today. Micronics-branded dual socket 5 / 430NX. IBM part made by Micronics in full-AT form factor.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-09-19, 07:44

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Artex wrote on 2020-09-19, 01:49: Nice!! is that heatsink stock?? It appears to be. Most Socket 7 motherboards had a heatsink like that.

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Re: M912 v1.7 - both caches always perform as write through

Posted on 2020-09-19, 07:33

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You can use a tool like ctcm.exe to find out the write cache mode. Measuring of the benefit of more advanced cache coherency mode by simple cache/RAM benchmark is tricky though. Due to reasons mentioned above most RAM tests will show the same or slightly worse results at writes when the WB L1 or L2 …

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Re: M912 v1.7 - both caches always perform as write through

Posted on 2020-09-18, 22:20

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Again. You cannot detect cache write policy in cachechk. The only way to detect cache in wb mode is to measure latency after experiencing a write cache hit. Cachechk write test measures duration of data transfers increasing in size. Those are guaranteed to be cache misses. Every write results in a …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-09-18, 20:07

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The Opti Viper Chipset is currently trailing my Pentium chipsets comparison . However, I thought the Acer board I have might be a bad apple. So I decided to get this PC-Chips board to find out how bad the OPTi Viper-M really is. https://dependency-injection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/DSC_7984-1- …

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