Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-04-12, 16:37

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Inspired by some positive reviews I bought this desoldering gun. Quickly tried to remove a few caps and NiCD battery from my boards and it makes an amazing difference compared to the butchering I've done before. I should have bought this years ago! Filename DSC_9595.jpeg File size 813.11 KiB Views …

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Re: Chips & Technologies F64300 VLB vga question

Posted on 2021-04-08, 19:57

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The cache only works for GUI acceleration and improves performance by about 15%, depending on resolution. DOS is not constrained by the video memory bandwidth and thus there is no improvement.

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Re: ABit AB-PT5 CMOS battery?

Posted on 2021-04-07, 15:41

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I got a ABit AB-PT5 rev 2.11 mobo a few months ago but now I am getting the dreaded error (at boot time): CMOS checksum error - Defaults loaded CMOS battery failed Ok, I get it, the battery is dead but where is the battery? I cannot find anything like a battery in the mobo to replace :| The battery …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-04-07, 15:24

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have no use for another SCSI RAID adaptor. But I was trying to source EDRAM modules for my Octek Hippo-VL DCA board for a while and recently bought two SCSI adaptors that might come with some. I hope that's what I need (seller's picture). Filename s-l1600.jpg File size 88.35 KiB Views 345 views

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-04-04, 08:35

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

kixs wrote on 2021-04-04, 07:34: Recently bought this CIB beauty! 😁 Amazing. Must have cost a fortune!

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Re: 486DX-50 MHz EISA system

Posted on 2021-04-03, 21:38

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Congrats to acquiring it! Yes. I measured performance of the DPT PM2022 controller. I measured 3329 kB/s linear (unbuffered) speed. For comparison Adapec AHA2742 (EISA) on the system can do almost double - 7217 kB/s with everything else being equal. However, please note that I am not using regular …

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Re: The World's Fastest 486

Posted on 2021-04-01, 07:26

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe you can get a different version of Quake binary or tweak arguments to get slightly better results. But the beauty of the Phil's pack is it allows for a easy direct comparison. So whenever I share Quake/DOOM/PCBench/... results I always use Phils pack and urging others to do the same. The point …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-03-31, 07:26

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have always wanted a ATi Winturbo card with ZIP VRAMs. Most likely it is the same as the one with TSOP, but looks cooler and more proper.

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Re: 486DLC cache coherency blues and headaches

Posted on 2021-03-29, 13:20

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Found the datasheet. It looks like 82C480 chipset does support 486 signals. In fact it is a hybrid 386/486 chipset. So you problems might not be L1 cache related....

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Re: Early Pentium Chipset Comparison

Posted on 2021-03-28, 20:33

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by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On OEM boards and where chipset datasheet is available I am always checking/re-programming chipset registers to make sure the tightest possible memory/cache/PCI settings are applied (just in case the BIOS doesn't enable everything). That's being said there is very little to tune on a 430LX board. …

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Re: Early Pentium Chipset Comparison

Posted on 2021-03-28, 11:06

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I finally got a motherboard with VIA Apollo Master Plus chipset - FIC PA-2000 and updated the article . It looks like the VIA took the crown for the slowest Pentium Socket 4/5/7 chipset I tested. But I am sure there are even slower chipsets, just need to find them :) https://dependency-injection.com …

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Re: ISA GUI Accelerator with NT 3.5 Driver Support

Posted on 2021-03-27, 18:15

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I think anything with Cirrus Logic GD542x or GD543x should do the trick and generic drives can be easily found.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-03-27, 12:46

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Octek Hippo DCA board. Some mild corrosion and NiCD battery still installed. But working. Obviously no ED RAM modules 🙁

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Re: 486DLC cache coherency blues and headaches

Posted on 2021-03-26, 10:41

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The 486DLC might be tricky to get working with cache enabled. It is not compatible with all 386 chipsets and specifically needs some cache specific signals (KEN#, FLUSH# and A20#) which only late 386 motherboards specifically designed for 486DLC have. I am not sure where to get UMC481 datasheet to …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-03-25, 20:45

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nobody can have too many Socket 5 so I bought this FIC PA-2000. It is going to be first VIA chipset covered in my Pentium Chipset comparison. Several people asked be to add VIA. This one has Via Apollo Plus (575MV) which is actually cost reduced version of the Apollo Master (575M) chipset without …

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Re: Running an Am5x86 at 5v?

Posted on 2021-03-25, 13:28

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Cyrix 486 has quite a different pinout to other 486 CPUs. It doesn't have VOLDET pin. That pin on Cyrix is used for cache invalidation as far as I remember.

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Re: MB and RAM for 486 DX-50

Posted on 2021-03-21, 22:08

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

EDO on 486 is a bit out-of-place technology. Yes some late boards do support it, but there is just no need for it (unless overclocking or running Cyrix 5x86 2x). In Pentium world, the EDO can make it possible to use x-2-2-2 burst cycles on 60/66 MHz. However late 486 chipsets using 25/33 MHz bus …

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Re: MB and RAM for 486 DX-50

Posted on 2021-03-21, 15:19

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

IMHO none of the above boards is a good choice if you want to replicate history as you say. it is not they can't run it, but it is just pointless and sometimes troublesome. A period corrrect setup for DX-50 is either early 486 EISA or ISA motherboard. That's what was state of the art for a short …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-03-20, 14:06

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Got PC-Chips M912. I know these boards have somewhat bad reputation. But if you happen to snap one with real cache chips then you are actually getting a decent VL-Bus motherboard with good compatibility, lithium battery, easy to tune/configure, etc. Funny thing that in PC-Chips fasion, even those …

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Re: Have anyone actually gotten hardware damaged due to using old PSUs?

Posted on 2021-03-19, 13:09

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I haven't had any hardware damaged by old PSU. At least not knowingly. But surely I had a number of hardware pieces saved by using ATX2AT adaptor with overcurrent protection. As I often handle old hardware, doing repairs, etc. it is easy to install CPU, SRAM chip or EEPROM, power connector, etc. …

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