Descent 1 3dfx beta patch - no music in Win98SE

Posted on 2024-03-15, 10:28

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I'm getting no music (neither FM nor GM) when I start Descent 1 with the 3dfx patch (version post-alpha 2 dated 08/29/98) from here . Descent 1 itself is patched to version 1.5 Following specs: Mainboard Intel AN430TX with Pentium 233MMX and onboard Yamaha OPL3SA and OPL4 GM as well as onboard Ati …

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Re: Throttle CD-ROM drive speed in DOS?

Posted on 2024-03-13, 09:29

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Small issue: Is there a possibility to make the cdbq parameters not case sensitive? Some setup programs like to save the autoexec.bat and change every letter to upper-case resulting in cdbq error messages as the parameters are case-sensitive and need to be lower-case. Is there a way of resetting …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2024-01-21, 20:45

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Intel AN430TX reverse sleeper build alive and kicking. 1000012338.jpg Had to ditch SCSI though, none of my HDDs where identified by FDISK even though they got a SCSI ID and were identified correctly by the Adaptec 2940AU BIOS (which was active). This way I could use a black IDE DVD-drive instead of …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2024-01-15, 09:49

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Getting this AN430TX ready, case is on its way, will be fun getting it all set up. Filename 20240112_094755.jpg File size 480.78 KiB Views 747 views Filename 20240108_161924.jpg File size 838.57 KiB Views 747 views

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Re: Post your 386 Speedsys results here

Posted on 2023-12-25, 18:06

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

clueless1 wrote on 2023-12-24, 11:59: PCPartner VP 486/66: IMG_0520.jpg That's not a 386 😉 486 results go here: The Ultimate 486 Benchmark Comparison

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2023-10-15, 22:21

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finished the Battle Isle 1 campaign. Currently deciding if I play the two mission disks as well or jump straight to History Line or Battle Isle 2.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2023-09-27, 12:34

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finally got around to bringing out the old Tandy TSR-80 Model 1 from the attic, even has the Expansion Interface along with 32K additional RAM as well as the monitor, dual floppy, datasette and tons of floppy discs, datasettes, manuals and stuff. Plugged everything in and it still works, even got to …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2023-09-25, 21:00

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finished Wing Commander: Privateer - Righteous Fire on my 486. Only played the main game as a kid.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2023-08-21, 18:42

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finished the main story of Privateer on my 486 DX2-66. I believe I never finished it back in the day after I got the alien gun as I didn't know how to proceed Now on to Righteous Fire!

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Re: The Ultimate 486 Benchmark Comparison

Posted on 2023-08-20, 19:06

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Basically bottom of the barrel for a change, but rather proud I got the 4386-VC-HD ISA board that once hosted a meager 386DX-40 fully upgraded with a 486 DX2-66 and 256K cache (inkl. Alter RAM): 20230804_132216.jpg 20230804_114331.jpg 20230804_115925.jpg Quake low: 6.5fps, PC Player VGA 8.6 with a …

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Re: MK8330 : new soundcard based on the CMI 8330 chipset

Posted on 2023-08-18, 11:44

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Thanks for the patch, works like a charm! At first I set DMA for 16-bit, instead of 8-bit, so the game started but I didn't have any sound. When I changed DMA to 8-bit (DMA 1 instead of 5 for my setup) the sound worked. Makes sense since only SB16 and up use 16-bit DMA and the patch disables the …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2023-08-12, 06:48

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nothing major, put a 40x40x11mm heatsink on my DX2-66 to keep it cool and then played some Privateer (man I hate its unreliable joystick calibration and the game is harder than I remember) Filename 20230811_130312.jpg File size 109.64 KiB Views 1627 views

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Re: 4386-VC-HD board - Upgrading CPU questions

Posted on 2023-08-05, 18:00

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Siran do you remember when you got your computer and how much was it? Im wondering where combo boards were price wise compared to 386 and 486 ones. It must have been in 1993, the manual I got with the motherboard is dated December 1992, so it must have been later. I believe it cost around 2.000 …

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Re: 4386-VC-HD board - Upgrading CPU questions

Posted on 2023-08-05, 14:18

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just a quick heads-up if someone has the same board and wants to upgrade. A fellow retro fan swapped the Dallas IC with a Necroware battery-replacement and even upgraded the BIOS EPROM from the installed 1.10K to 1.15k (although the 1.10K should also support a 486 without a problem). After this I …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2023-08-04, 19:07

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I could successfully install a 486DX2-66 on my 4386-VC-HD motherboard, disabling the onboard 386DX-40. I had tried last week but the PC wouldn't post. Did the same procedure today - set jumpers, swapped resistors, replaced the quartz oscillator with a 33MHz one, removed the FPU and placed the …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2023-07-24, 10:58

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Replaced the not so period correct Mitsumi CR-48XTCE with an even less period correct LG GDA-4120B in my 386 build since the Mitsumi had more and more trouble reading even pressed CDs. The LG works flawlessly and I can better fine-tune it with CDBQ (the Mitsumi would only let me slow it down to 4x, …

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Re: Post your 386 Speedsys results here

Posted on 2023-07-23, 13:34

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

CPU: AM386DX-40 FPU: IIT 3C87-40 Motherboard: FIC 4386-VC-HD Chipset: VIA VT82C495 (Venus) Cache: 256KB 20ns with 20ns TAG RAM and 15ns Alter / Dirty TAG RAM for write-back BIOS: Award 4.20 version 1.15K with "Fast" DRAM Timings and "Turbo" Cache Timings Memory: 20MB (4x1MB 70ns + 4x4MB 60ns, both …

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Re: Tool to adjust the memory clock on Cirrus Logic CL-GD542x graphics cards

Posted on 2023-07-22, 21:26

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

If the image quality issues are "jail bars", that is vertical stripes of higher and lower brightness, LCDs are often more sensitive to subtle quality issues than CRT monitors. LCDs digitize the analog video signal without doing any kind of oversampling. They just take one sample per pixel. This …

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Re: Tool to adjust the memory clock on Cirrus Logic CL-GD542x graphics cards

Posted on 2023-07-22, 16:13

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Thanks again for the very detailed explanation! That TVGA 9000B was part of my very first PC as a teenager. Didn't know any better back then and since the monitor was some 14 inch low quality noname as well, I guess I never really realised how bad the PQ was. The VGA card was part of a budget 386DX- …

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Re: Tool to adjust the memory clock on Cirrus Logic CL-GD542x graphics cards

Posted on 2023-07-22, 10:13

by

by Siran

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Thanks @mkarcher and @kixs for the detailed explanation! As I will use this machine exclusively for DOS gaming I guess overclocking the memory won't make much of a difference except shortening the lifespan of the card. Even though I plan on upgrading the 386 to a 486DX2-66 I don't think 1024x768 …

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