Re: Syndicate DOS / Win98 Problem

Posted on 2024-08-30, 08:31

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by vstrakh

in DOS

in DOS

Macroblock? Macroblocks are the square areas (8x8,etc) that video codec operates on. The bitrate was kept low to allow realtime decoding on the hardware of the era, so when there's lots of motion in the scene - there are not enough bits to express all the changes in a frame, the video codec has to …

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Re: Acer RT-286-12/16 - beep codes but no post

Posted on 2024-08-22, 08:11

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by vstrakh

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

MikeSG wrote on 2024-08-22, 07:43: How much total RAM is in the motherboard, and how much total RAM is in the GPUs? The motherboard may work with 1MB for the faulty GPU, but need at least 2-4MB for the good GPU. ? How is that related to anything?

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Re: Clarify relationship of the M16# and IO16# signals on the ISA bus

Posted on 2024-08-01, 14:37

by

by vstrakh

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The address lines on the ISA bus are shared between memory and I/O accesses. The slave device is supposed to signal its datapath width when the address decoder on the device recognizes the address belongs to the device, it's just the address, not the access yet. Now remember that the I/O space is …

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Re: When PC became soulless for you?

Posted on 2024-07-29, 05:43

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by vstrakh

in Milliways

in Milliways

I've lost the touch somewhere around Celeron 300A and Windows 98SE. My previous PC was slow enough (Cx486SLC2-50, Trident 9000, 350MB hdd) that I could feel every aspect if its workings, I felt tiny delays, the patterns in sounds system makes. I did recognize the virus (unknown to me at that time …

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Re: screen size and eye strain

Posted on 2024-07-25, 11:11

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by vstrakh

in Milliways

in Milliways

With age you'll come to appreciate the size and distance. Unless you have myopia 😀

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Re: Video stutter and shadow ram (Dos 6.20)

Posted on 2024-05-26, 08:23

by

by vstrakh

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

OK, but how do I write these disk images? I do have an USB floppy drive and am on Win 11. Most of the times the DOS software could be copied from floppies into HDD folder, and setup ran from HDD. Far Manager can 'enter' these .img floppy images, same way it does for .zip archives. You can copy …

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Re: Video stutter and shadow ram (Dos 6.2)

Posted on 2024-05-23, 09:02

by

by vstrakh

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Deunan wrote on 2024-05-23, 08:56: And lastly there are memory managers made by others, Quarterdeck QEMM was a great thing.

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Re: [SOLVED] What does "IOCHREADY" mean and what is its purpose?

Posted on 2024-05-13, 08:14

by

by vstrakh

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

analog_programmer wrote on 2024-05-13, 05:44: And it's actually backwards of what I thought according to vstrakh's explanations. It's just my first reaction to the overall 386sx environment case. It's definitely pre- ATA-2, where PIO 3 was even defined 😀

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Re: What does "IOCHREADY" mean and what is its purpose?

Posted on 2024-05-11, 08:12

by

by vstrakh

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So, Is this setting for some older drives compatibility or what? Are this cycles chipset related or they're HDD dependent? This line is driven by the devices, the chipset will be listening it to give devices more time. It's not that it is required. It's not really needed at all unless you're …

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Re: What does "IOCHREADY" mean and what is its purpose?

Posted on 2024-05-11, 07:50

by

by vstrakh

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Input Output Control Hub or the South Bridge in most cases controls access to all IO systems on the Motherboard 386 is _way_ before any of those things. I'm using some ISA I/O+ATA controller in my old 386SX system and on its settings jumper are missing two pins corresponding to "IOCHREADY (Optional …

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Re: Writing a TSR that stores/restores the video screen (C with inline Asm)

Posted on 2024-05-08, 10:05

by

by vstrakh

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

WhiteFalcon wrote on 2024-05-08, 08:10: And I solved it! 😀 Congrats 😀

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Re: Writing a TSR that stores/restores the video screen (C with inline Asm)

Posted on 2024-05-07, 18:49

by

by vstrakh

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

Also, we've established the DS gets loaded with the program's data segment by borland, so you can drop "mov ax, SEG screen_state; mov ds,ax" as superfluous in StoreScren/RestoreScreen.

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Re: Writing a TSR that stores/restores the video screen (C with inline Asm)

Posted on 2024-05-07, 18:33

by

by vstrakh

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

I take it by acknowledging the PIC you mean outputting 0x20 to port 020, right? Yes, correct. I rewrote the program to use the typical simple game key handling. It not longer freezes unless I try to wait for ESC to be pressed. I cannot figure why its not changing the keys[] array to correspond to …

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Re: Writing a TSR that stores/restores the video screen (C with inline Asm)

Posted on 2024-05-07, 12:15

by

by vstrakh

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

I have narrowed it down to one line, surprisingly its nothing to do with the store/restore or interrupts per se, its this line: while (inportb(0x60) != 1) oldKeyHandler(); I didn't look into this before. This feels very wrong. First - you can't (or rather shouldn't) spin any long task in the …

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Re: Writing a TSR that stores/restores the video screen (C with inline Asm)

Posted on 2024-05-07, 10:48

by

by vstrakh

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

Alright, I removed the CLI/STI, it was just a precaution anyway. It's not a precaution if it's not needed and damaging things when used :) Share the updates. The (...) is there because I was compiling is as CPP and it otherwise complained, wanting the ... to be there. Ok, I see in the doc getvect/ …

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Re: Writing a TSR that stores/restores the video screen (C with inline Asm)

Posted on 2024-05-07, 09:39

by

by vstrakh

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

So far I don't like the use of CLI/STI within the interrupt handler. When interrupt handler is entered the interrupts are disabled already, so no need in CLI. When you exit the interrupt you don't need STI, because flags will be restored by IRET. If you enable interrupts before entering the original …

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Re: Writing a TSR that stores/restores the video screen (C with inline Asm)

Posted on 2024-05-07, 08:38

by

by vstrakh

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

WhiteFalcon wrote on 2024-05-07, 08:32: So I changed it to static Post the code 😀

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Re: Writing a TSR that stores/restores the video screen (C with inline Asm)

Posted on 2024-05-07, 08:00

by

by vstrakh

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

Thats strange, it seems to work now in both EDIT and BC++, with dynamic allocation. "Seems to work" is a bad argument with dos :) It works until conditions change radically enough to break your assumptions. There is a more complex alternative with XMS - allocate as much extended memory as you want, …

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Re: Writing a TSR that stores/restores the video screen (C with inline Asm)

Posted on 2024-05-07, 07:50

by

by vstrakh

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

WhiteFalcon wrote on 2024-05-07, 07:43: For the record, I changed it back to dynamic, but allocate/free it every time the TSR is called and it works too now. Amazing. You cannot allocate/free the heap memory after you exit - there is no heap to allocate from.

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Re: Writing a TSR that stores/restores the video screen (C with inline Asm)

Posted on 2024-05-07, 07:48

by

by vstrakh

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

at first I had the malloc/free placed in mainTSR so that it got allocated every time the TSR was activated, maybe thats a better approach? You can't use malloc() after you exit the app. The memory is already not yours, it belongs to the app running after you exit - either transient part of command. …

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