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

Posted on 2023-12-22, 19:21

by

by Deano

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Started work on my PPro 440FX(Apollo) rig, LPX power supply decided to not play nice (with magic smoke), so had to hack a ATX->AT psu to supply the extra 3.3v header. Everything plugged in and nothing, the Post Card says nothing except the power rails look okay, it looks like the reset line isn't …

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Re: Bought these games today

Posted on 2023-12-19, 11:39

by

by Deano

in Milliways

in Milliways

My birthday and xmas present to myself arrived today (a day before my birthday). Raised bit of smile on a day I got some bad family news. Better pics once I get some space.

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Re: What graphicscard is this?

Posted on 2023-12-16, 14:52

by

by Deano

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Its probably an ancestor of the 2D chip used in the 3DFX Voodoo Rush (yes the one everybody hates).

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-12-16, 10:35

by

by Deano

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some small parts arrived today (themselves not retro but for retro systems, so I think that counts :)) EEPROM is to restore a Pentium mobo that has ROM with a broken leg S2 Dreamblaster is to attempt a 8 pin motherboard (on my PPro build) to normal waveblaster adapter (if not it will go on a sound …

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Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2023-12-15, 06:57

by

by Deano

in Milliways

in Milliways

Started playing (and streaming) Call Of Cthulhu: Shadow Of The Comet. I had it back in the day (I think the CD version) whilst now I'm playing the floppy version, which means no mouse (surprising very usable) and no voice lines. I think the 286-12Mhz I'm playing on might be a little slow for it but …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-12-12, 11:19

by

by Deano

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Need a proper serial mouse for my 286, and wanted some adapters anyway so brought this off Ebay. Surprised how mint it is, wasn't really bothered by that but will now look after it as if it were my 1st born! Its a Genius GM-F303 with 3 buttons, even comes with its own CAD and menu builder software! …

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Re: What do I have here?

Posted on 2023-12-12, 07:00

by

by Deano

in MT-32 General

in MT-32 General

The blue sockets are ZIP sockets, someone has changed the A and B ROMs to a new set. The chips on the black foam are the originals A and B ROMS (C is still installed).

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Re: Keyboard stops functioning when applications are run

Posted on 2023-12-12, 06:56

by

by Deano

in DOS

in DOS

I looked into the USBDDOS project, but I am not sure if that works for me. In the Peripheral section of my mobo, there are options XHCI HANDOFF and EHCI HANDOFF, the former is enabled and the latter is disabled. XHCI is USB 3.x, EHCI is USB 2.x. Its unclear what it means by handoff but my guess is …

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

Posted on 2023-12-11, 08:15

by

by Deano

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I swapped out the original external battery from my Samsung S550 286, replaced with a 4xAA battery pack, patched to 3xAA. Will likely replaced with CR2032 when I get some sockets. Moved it from my XT-IDE CF card to a real hard disk - managed to break a pin on the EEPROM but flashed a new one to a …

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Re: Trouble getting US Navy Fighters to run on vintage hardware

Posted on 2023-12-08, 17:29

by

by Deano

in DOS

in DOS

I'd start by removing all os/drivers that didn't exist in '94, so boot from Dos 6 and use MS mouse driver. Also make sure any EMM386 is period correct. Its possible that is entering protected mode and something isn't set up the way it likes it.

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Re: Trouble getting US Navy Fighters to run on vintage hardware

Posted on 2023-12-08, 17:26

by

by Deano

in DOS

in DOS

Probably the programmer never tested the crash dump facility without a debugger attached so never noticed they had the 'printf' syntax wrong 😁

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

Posted on 2023-12-08, 17:22

by

by Deano

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I ordered a Covox CVX4 for MegaTraveller 1 and a Dreamblaster S2 to be my test waveblaster, when I build an adapter from a motherboard 8 pin header to the normal waveblaster header for my PPro 200 build.

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Re: My Windows 98 USB Keyboard dilemma

Posted on 2023-12-08, 17:18

by

by Deano

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

One HW option is to use a Pi Pico to 'reformat' new USB HID devices into more basic USB HID format supported by older machines. I'm part way through a bluetooth to USB 1.1 HID device for get new Apple bluetooth keyboard and mouse on a old iMac G4. Pico can support both a host and device USB at the …

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Re: DSS / Covox Speech Thing exclusive games

Posted on 2023-12-08, 13:09

by

by Deano

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Megatraveller 1 is covox only (and PC speaker). Just ordered a CVX4 to hear it for my playthough.

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Re: Pentium Pro 200Mhz build, RAM selection

Posted on 2023-12-08, 06:19

by

by Deano

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks everyone, It will be mostly DOS and Win9x with a tiny bit of NT4 (Mostly cos I want to get Powerboat working on it, it did work at some point in development but would like to test it on retail). Maybe even OS/2 Warp as I used a bit back in the day (still have the floppy install disks …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-12-07, 13:56

by

by Deano

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nothing special just Matrox Millennium G450 16MB and 32MB IMG20231207151457_2.jpg Silly story that seeing a pair of Matrox cards remind me of: When Matrox released the first dual output cards (G400 IIRC), we did a promo with them showing the first PC game supporting 4 monitors (over two cards) and …

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Re: PP200 1MB Cache on AP440FX board?

Posted on 2023-12-07, 09:51

by

by Deano

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The Apollo MB has jumpers for 3.5v, a 4x multiplier and 66Mhz. Do you feel lucky punk?! 😁 The manual also has this strange comment (unable to test as 256KB cache PPro for me), "The 200 MHz Pentium Pro processor with 512 KB of cache memory is not supported on the AP440FX motherboard."

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Pentium Pro 200Mhz build, RAM selection

Posted on 2023-12-07, 09:38

by

by Deano

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For my PPRO 200Mhz build, the MB has 4x 72pin RAM slots, using my random RAM box I have SIMMs for two options 1. 64MB EDO RAM 2. 128MB FP RAM I'm leaning towards option 1, less but faster. 64MB feels a lot for late 90s anyway but thought I'd ask the thoughts of the experts here :) I do have a single …

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Re: Problematic Windows games list

Posted on 2023-12-05, 14:19

by

by Deano

in Windows

in Windows

Silent Hill 2 PC doesn't like multicore machines - there is a SH2EE project (https://enhanced.townofsilenthill.com/SH2/) which fixes most of the issues including that. All claims of any bugs are clearly fake news, as we would never had left any bugs in it on release 😉

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Re: ISA MIDI-only wavetable cards?

Posted on 2023-12-04, 07:15

by

by Deano

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Sorry for the necropost but researching my next build which is on a PPro Apollo build, I noticed it has the 2x4 wave header and the manual has the pin out. I don't have a wavetable card yet to try and will be last thing to do on the system. But I intend to give this a go (either buying card with …

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