Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-01-08, 01:42

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Compaq Business Wavetable card for my Deskpro 4000. I'll be replacing a perfectly good Crystal 4237b that I've been using, but I can't resist the temptation of an actual Compaq part.

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Re: PCMCIA in DOS

Posted on 2022-07-30, 15:11

by

by lawyerpepper

in DOS

in DOS

I think that what you're looking for is called "card services" - I think that is the general term for PCMCIA driver packages - so maybe if you search for "card services" and "toshiba libretto" it will help. Good luck! As I recall, the OP either needs both card & socket services as well as possibly …

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Re: Fastest storage solution for all ISA systems

Posted on 2022-07-21, 20:34

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

pshipkov wrote on 2022-07-20, 19:25: It is implied that for ISA bus we are talking Adaptec AHA-1542CF. I was a SCSI guy back in the ISA era, and yeah, Adaptec 1542 is the go-to. It's bootable, DMA-capable (although ISA DMA can be twitchy), and supported by anything SCSI from that era.

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Re: Adaptec ASH-1233CS in Windows 98

Posted on 2022-04-16, 18:17

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I haven't used this card, but Microsemi still provides driver downloads for Adaptec products, including Win 98 drivers for this card: https://storage.microsemi.com/en-us/downloads/ms/ms_win_98/productid=ash-1233&dn=adaptec+ultra+ata+card+1233.html I've found Adpatec's drivers to be pretty high- …

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Re: Restoring Compaq Prolinea 4/50 diagnostics partition

Posted on 2022-04-05, 00:20

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Haven't had any luck with this for days, no matter what I try, I keep running into "not enough space on harddrive" problem. Has anyone ever successfully done this ? Any steps one can give ? I tried making fat12 or fat16 paritions at the start of the disk in various sizes from 6MB to 16MB. I also …

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Re: I was offered some free "flat screen" monitors, but it was not what I had expected

Posted on 2022-04-02, 15:34

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If these were offered to me, I'd accept in a heartbeat! I used to have that Compaq (or it's twin) on my desk, and it's a very nice unit.

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Adventures in multi-booting

Posted on 2022-03-15, 12:46

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Finally, after many failures, I have my system (Compaq Dekpro 4000, P233MMX, 128MB RAM, 2 * HDD) quad-booting DOS, Win98, WinNT 4.0, and OS/2 3.0. Each OS is on a primary partition, and there is also a primary partition for the Compaq setup software (thank, Compaq!). The partition layout looks like …

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Re: Resurrecting a Deskpro 4000

Posted on 2022-03-04, 00:14

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Update: Goal: Period-correct system representing late 90's-early 2000's computing. This build is based on the system I actually had at work during that time, a Compaq Deskpro 4000. This will be a multi-boot system running IBM PC-DOS, Windows 98SE, OS/2 Warp, and Windows NT 4.0 For my purposes, ' …

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Re: Best PCI Sound card for a Pentium Pro Server

Posted on 2022-03-03, 17:45

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There were no mulit-core desktop Actially no. Windows XP knows if CPU has internal multi-threading or not, because Pentium 4 had Hyper-Threading technology, but still identified as dual-core. But Windows 2000 Professional can't discern between physical and logical threads and won't fully support …

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Re: Best PCI Sound card for a Pentium Pro Server

Posted on 2022-03-03, 17:00

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Quad Pentium Pro will require Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003. Windows XP Pro can work only with two physical sockets, but maybe there are some hacks to remove that restriction. Yeah, isn’t that just weird that it cares wether it’s sockets or cores? That’s gotta be marketing I’m betting. …

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Re: High End Windows 98 PC - I could use some alternate opinions.

Posted on 2022-03-03, 16:19

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

SCSI drives are heavy and noisy, I don't see the practical (!) benefit in retro PCs. All the stuff you are going to do on these old computers will be random access, you will almost never do stuff that will achieve linear reads and high troughput Everyone should do what pleases them and meets their …

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Re: High End Windows 98 PC - I could use some alternate opinions.

Posted on 2022-03-03, 13:20

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

SCSI is overrated... more a "look how cool I am" feature for retro PCs in 2022 Depends on how seriously you take your retro, I guess. For a late 90's PC, you talking about ATA-4 topping out at UDMA/33 (ATA-5 w UDMA/66 did come around until 2000: https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/a/ata.htm). …

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Re: High End Windows 98 PC - I could use some alternate opinions.

Posted on 2022-03-02, 23:58

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] :), but it's not really that bad. I provided a complete BOM for a basic SCSI storage subsystem with links, and it's not really any harder than dealing IDE primary/secondary channle, master/slave/cable select, UDMA/PIO mode, CHS/LBA addressing limits, etc. It's just a bit different. For a …

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Re: High End Windows 98 PC - I could use some alternate opinions.

Posted on 2022-03-02, 21:39

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

SCSI in 4 easy steps... Step 1: Own a number, n, boxes of SCSI bits, cables, drives, terminators, interface cards, adapters. Step 2: Determine that the number of boxes of of SCSI stuff you have to go through testing everything that plugs into anything else to get a complete SCSI setup is n+1 Step …

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Re: High End Windows 98 PC - I could use some alternate opinions.

Posted on 2022-03-02, 13:39

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

"Operating System and Core Programs Drive: Samsung 60GB 5400rpm IDE, ATA, PATA Internal Hard Disk Drives - $8.67 >My inner modern PC Builder Instincts were figting so hard when choosing this, I know for a solid fact that PATA/IDE is far slower than SATA, and even in the HDD space 5400rpm is slow …

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Re: New power supply for Pentium MMX

Posted on 2022-02-28, 14:07

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also an option, a new AT power supply: https://www.amazon.com/ATHENA-SUPPLY-Athena-C … 43SQ/ref=sr_1_3 Reviews are mixed, so YMMV.

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Re: Picking a video card for a Deskpro 4000 ressurection

Posted on 2022-02-28, 13:47

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Update: the G450 is in. Quake 2 results were initially very disappointing - slower than the G200, and horribly inconsistent such that the game would run smoothly for a while, then turn in to a slideshow during combat. OTOH, it LOOKED great, with richer colors than the G200, which ended up being a …

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Re: Video card for a 98/99 era system…

Posted on 2022-02-26, 03:52

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

My retro DOS/98SE system was originally assembled from random parts I had laying around, and not much thought was put into it. It’s an Asus P2B-LS with a P-II 350, but I will be changing that to a P-III 600. 64mb RAM, changing to 512mb. There is also a Voodoo2 that I plan to continue using, AWE64 …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2022-02-25, 16:27

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

aaaah, SCSI ! Did not notice that.... 😆 I dont think they are worth 200 USD but 50 - 100 seems reasonable for a uncommon NOS drive, 25 for a refurbished one is a steal if you have the setup to support one. This is going in to my Deskpro 4000 P233MMX project, where it will be perfect because: 1. The …

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Re: OPL3 vs. ESFM vs. CQM vs. SBLive

Posted on 2022-02-25, 12:36

by

by lawyerpepper

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Any chance of adding a Crystal 4236b or 4237b? I’m partial to Crystal FM, although the ESS does sound awfully good too.

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