Re: 386SX pin-compatible upgrades

Posted on 2025-03-21, 22:30

by

by rmay635703

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yah, I really think you feel the memory performance deficits on SX platforms. So unless you are stuck at say 20mhz, you will not find 2x CPU much good at all when you have to drop the speed for them. But sx20 vs srx2-40 would show difference. Depending on application though, it might not work as …

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Re: Which graphics card for late 486 and early Pentium

Posted on 2025-03-19, 03:14

by

by rmay635703

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Best video card for late 486/early pentiums are the S3 Virge and Cirrus Logic GD54xx. Great speed, fantastic compatibility, easy to find, cheap. Anything else is nitpicking or compromise. I would also add S3Trio64 cards on the list, but couldn’t agree more. Unless the aim is to build something …

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Re: any users of Office 2019/2021?

Posted on 2025-03-16, 21:58

by

by rmay635703

in Milliways

in Milliways

I still use Office 2k Oops

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Re: IBM 5151 CGA damage + unknown Hercules Graphics Card

Posted on 2025-03-15, 19:29

by

by rmay635703

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Although this isn’t likely the exact card and there are some discrepancies my guess is this lines up IMG_6455.jpeg M/C should be mono/color, PTR should configure the parallel port (enable/disable/address). From there on I can only guess that CG might enable/disable CGA and EMU could be emulating the …

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Re: IBM 5151 CGA damage + unknown Hercules Graphics Card

Posted on 2025-03-14, 15:56

by

by rmay635703

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Volt meter, Scope? Could also trace the pins and what the jumpers bridge together The unpopulated sockets is interesting, possible the card is inop? Though I guess other cards leave those empty, maybe a foreign language bios. https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=77288 https://arvutimuuseum.ee/th99 …

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HP Elitedisplay e231 vga perfectly readable but out of range?

Posted on 2025-03-13, 04:25

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by rmay635703

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I have an HP Elitedisplay that seems to work well and sync to almost anything VGA Ithrow at it BUT. On many resolutions it perfectly syncs up but plasters a non-removable OUT OF RANGE nag box over the image and then shuts off. The old machines I use maxed out don’t really have many resolution …

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Re: Searching for utilities disk of an old CGA card

Posted on 2025-03-10, 17:54

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by rmay635703

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Ive always found it curious that Lotus and Ashton Tate are always listed for the wide array of software support for Plantronix. Must have been an optional driver for specific versions to make graphs that has been lost to time

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Re: Wrong BIOS update = bricked motherboard?

Posted on 2025-03-09, 01:07

by

by rmay635703

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had 2 motherboards of very different generations that used the same bios chip and performed a hot swap after an update failed, (booted it with fishing line under the bios and yanked to out, then installed the bad bios to program) I didn’t need a programmer and actually did many hot swaps after …

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Re: Blue 34 and 40 pin ribbon cable in year 2000

Posted on 2025-03-06, 23:21

by

by rmay635703

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

IMG_6392.jpeg Even in the 80’s boards came in copperish (pcbs ) or green (pcb) colors, the real funky ones weren’t common until 2002ish. The first light blue cables I encountered were from the 1980’s on a proprietary SCSI based photography machine. Albeit rare a little color, even multiple ones …

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Re: Blue 34 and 40 pin ribbon cable in year 2000

Posted on 2025-03-06, 20:37

by

by rmay635703

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oddly 2000 was the start of silly and pretty things in the home built market . Being cheap I ignored round and colored cables but round ones were already a thing as were a few random colors. http://www.dansdata.com/rcables.htm Some of the gimmicky motherboards were already non-green , can’t remember …

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Re: a Voodoo 1 on a Super socket 7 with a K6-2 380MHz cpu

Posted on 2025-03-06, 02:17

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by rmay635703

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

voodoo1 CAN give some problems/corruption on systems around p2-400 and higher. On a lot of systems it runs fine with most software, even with much higher cpu's. I have heard of folks who could not get a voodoo1 working on a Tusl2-c with 1400mhz P3-S . The k6-2 is not fast enough to cause any …

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Re: Any love for Cyrix MediaGX ?

Posted on 2025-02-28, 04:37

by

by rmay635703

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I stand corrected! Vanilla FDOOM is slow, FDOOMX is slow... But FDM240R is quite fast. 35 FPS! with minor slowdowns (~31 FPS). Full detail. I get 34.1 FPS on DEMO3. If there are any tweaks that you can think of, please share them. Try FDOOMVBR.EXE, it uses VESA mode 320x200. In my tests, this is …

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Re: OT and Obsolete: Better text compression?

Posted on 2025-02-27, 04:04

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by rmay635703

in Milliways

in Milliways

I took a better look at PrintTok2's output earlier today and confirmed that the tokens gathered in Pass 1 are realistic, but, after sort, I'm getting very few tokens. :( Every tweak I applied to the sort function, even when they gave more tokens, cost me in overall compressibility. I really don't …

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Re: MMX vs Non MMX for Gaming

Posted on 2025-02-25, 19:41

by

by rmay635703

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On my to-do list is to some day test a K6-233 ANR or APR in a socket 7 (not super 7) motherboard. Those are theoretically split-voltage CPUs, but the Vcore is actually 3.2 and 3.3V respectively for the ANR and APR, so they wouldn't even run out of spec. :) The main issue is that the linear power …

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Re: Video card for Windows 98, with support for DVI Dual Link, for a modern DVI-D monitor (144Hz+).

Posted on 2025-02-23, 20:33

by

by rmay635703

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Something is clearly wrong here... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface#cite_note-6 Example display modes (dual link): QXGA (2048 × 1536) @ 72 Hz with CVT blanking (2 × 163 MHz) HDTV (1920 × 1080) @ 144 Hz[6] https://zowie.benq.com/ru-ru/support/faqlist/troubleshooting/faq049.html …

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Re: why were these vesa modes unpopular from start?

Posted on 2025-02-20, 18:11

by

by rmay635703

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

You’re not living until you’ve done 1600x1200 in monochrome. Sadly it was a fixed frequency card Yes, hi-res monochrome was very useful for DTP. No need for color when the final result is supposed to be a black-on-white printout, and it's natural for a mono monitor to have 3x more pixels than its …

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Re: Influenza A this year is brutal. Please stay safe, everyone!

Posted on 2025-02-20, 17:56

by

by rmay635703

in Milliways

in Milliways

I was in bed 2 days in a lot of pain but based on the steady ongoing congestion and coughing + extreme fatigue it looks like I’m going to have at least a full week of being almost non-functional. Day 5 and I’m able to get around, try doing the simplest of tasks for a half hour and I knod off. …

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Re: why were these vesa modes unpopular from start?

Posted on 2025-02-19, 02:49

by

by rmay635703

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Actually, I suspect that any card with an appropriate clock source can provide that mode. There must be some circuitry supporting 4-color modes even in standard VGA, for the basic CGA compatibility - and it's logical it can be enabled in high-res as well. Actually, it's not the CGA 4-color mode …

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Re: why were these vesa modes unpopular from start?

Posted on 2025-02-18, 18:37

by

by rmay635703

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

It may have even handled one of the kitty whumpus modes where the vertical was higher res than horizontal. (320x400 ?) The most extreme aspect ratio generatable by a standard VGA in a standard VGA video frame would be 320x480 (at 60Hz), not counting "fake modes" like the CGA 100x160 16-color pseudo …

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Re: why were these vesa modes unpopular from start?

Posted on 2025-02-18, 18:12

by

by rmay635703

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

My little Tandy 1000rlx with a normal VGA monitor could handle 320x240 360x240 It may have even handled one of the kitty whumpus modes where the vertical was higher res than horizontal. (320x400 ?) I remember playing Ken’s Labyrinth all the time and never had performance issues. (Rose tinted glasses …

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