Re: IBM 5170 with CGA card defaults to monochrome?

Posted on 2023-03-03, 20:32

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Sierra's AGI engine games use a 320x200 resolution with 16 colors on EGA, PCjr. or Tandy. This mode requires 32KiB of RAM to hold a page of graphics data, with each pixel taking half a byte to represent (320 x 200 x .5 = 32,000 bytes). Even an unexpanded IBM EGA card with 64KiB can display these …

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Re: IBM 5170 with CGA card defaults to monochrome?

Posted on 2023-03-03, 00:39

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by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Space Quest I and every other AGI game shows only two types of graphics with a real CGA card and an IBM 5153 : This is the default presentation if you run the executable with no switches : sierra_000.png These graphics are only intended for composite color monitors and TVs, are wrong for a 5153 and …

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2023-02-28, 23:40

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by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The Datapath has a known bug in that at 640x480 @ 59.94Hz it will not display the bottom 2-3 lines correctly. The solution that worked for me was to set the refresh rate to 75Hz in Windows. Obviously that will not work in pure DOS but I am sure there is some solution which allows you to change the …

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Re: IBM 5170 with CGA card defaults to monochrome?

Posted on 2023-02-28, 17:36

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by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

You need an EGA card for an IBM 5153, then you can see the game in all its 16-color glory.

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Re: IBM 5170 with CGA card defaults to monochrome?

Posted on 2023-02-28, 17:18

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

There is nothing wrong with your game, your graphics card or your computer, it is your monitor that is lacking the proper functionality in this instance. You need a composite color monitor or TV, then run the game as plugged into the RCA jack on that video card and you will see color. Do not use …

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Re: Tandy sound emulation quality - issues with Skate or Die

Posted on 2021-08-01, 17:02

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by Great Hierophant

in DOSBox Development

in DOSBox Development

You can get Skate or Die to play its samples properly in a fork of DOSBox which has the sampleaccurate patch applied. If the patch is complied into the fork, it works well when set to "true" with samples which play back on the Tandy or Adlib sound chips. It will corrupt PC Speaker sample playback, …

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Re: A thought: SD card reader via parallel port?

Posted on 2020-09-04, 02:24

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No, I did not.

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Re: TNDLPT : Tandy Sound on parallel port

Posted on 2020-03-27, 02:20

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by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

A microcontroller would be required to allow this device to communicate via the USB port instead of just using that port for power. I know the ATTiny13 microcontroller is only used to mute the chips on reset, but a slightly more ambitious design would give us the ability to use these sound chips …

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Re: 8088 MPH: We Break All Your Emulators

Posted on 2020-03-17, 23:55

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by Great Hierophant

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

It won't even work fully on a Tandy 1000, although it comes pretty close on the earlier models. Next month (April 5) will be the fifth anniversary of 8088mph, I hope one could expect some good news regarding its complete emulation. It's worked fine in 86Box for a LOOOOONG time now, several months …

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Re: 8088 MPH: We Break All Your Emulators

Posted on 2020-03-09, 19:55

by

by Great Hierophant

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

It won't even work fully on a Tandy 1000, although it comes pretty close on the earlier models. Next month (April 5) will be the fifth anniversary of 8088mph, I hope one could expect some good news regarding its complete emulation.

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Re: Warning! Sound Crash/Stuck/Hang with Wing Commander 1 and 2 with MT32 BLUE RIDGE Firmware!

Posted on 2019-11-22, 03:31

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Great detective work! The original MT-32 ROMs clear the patch memory on startup, the Blue Ridge ROM does not so you can keep your music patches in memory with a hardware battery backup when the device is turned off. It appears that Wing Commander expects the patch memory area to be clear and if it …

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Re: Loom MT-32 Patch: Where to find?

Posted on 2019-11-14, 00:38

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Look to the read.me file for instructions.

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Re: New sound card project: AWE64 Legacy

Posted on 2019-08-13, 14:36

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Awesome stuff. I wonder if it would be possible to add an option for a YMF289 (OPL3-L) plus YAC516? Following up from Hierophant, instead of the standard Yamaha OPL DAC could you not program a small PLD to convert from OPL output to a standard digital bitstream (I2S or SPDIF for instance) then mix …

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Re: New sound card project: AWE64 Legacy

Posted on 2019-08-12, 17:43

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by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

This looks to be a very promising project, and I have no concerns about sacrificing a few of the non-Gold cards to further it along. Creative made them in vast numbers. I would have preferred an FPGA solution, but this will do. I would hope you add audio input headers for PC Speaker and CD-ROM. Will …

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Re: The "12-bit" Sound Blaster 16 Myth

Posted on 2019-06-07, 19:59

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by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The Sound Blaster was "good enough" for its time. Creative's sole moment of genius was to market a card that offered something to everyone at a reasonable price point. For many people, the Adlib compatibility and the Game Port were worth the price alone. Adding MIDI support, klunky though it was …

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vgaonly - 16-bit RGB?

Posted on 2019-06-02, 18:38

by

by Great Hierophant

in DOSBox Development

in DOSBox Development

I found out yesterday that with all standard machine types in DOSBox, color is output and recorded in an 8-bit palettized format except for vgaonly, which is 16-bit RGB. 16-bit RGB per pixel only covers 1/4 of the colors standard VGA can display. Standard VGA allows the Red, Green and Blue levels of …

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Re: IBM EGA and Commander Keen 4-6, Keen Dreams

Posted on 2019-05-12, 15:43

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by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Two other observations I would note is that I do not recall ever seeing discolored pixels on "sprites". I also notice similar issues in Shadow Knights and Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion, which used earlier versions of the later Keen Engine. Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement showed no …

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Re: IBM EGA and Commander Keen 4-6, Keen Dreams

Posted on 2019-05-12, 13:45

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by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

keropi wrote: GH can you test with other dram ICs? It looks to me one is bad I can, but this card and its daughterboard has 32 64Kx1 chips, so replacing them all is a fair bit of work. 😅

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Re: Replicas of Covox Speech Thing, FTL Sound Adapter and SiliconSoft SoundJr

Posted on 2019-05-12, 13:41

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by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I believe that FTL renamed it to "future expansion port" for liability reasons. If someone fries their parallel port by plugging a joystick into a random "future expansion port", they cannot sue the company. My intention is to write some sort of TSR driver, as well. That driver could then e.g. …

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IBM EGA and Commander Keen 4-6, Keen Dreams

Posted on 2019-05-12, 02:39

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

My IBM EGA card, fully upgraded to 256KB, has an issue with Commander Keen's later graphics engine. The issue is randomly wrong-colored pixels appearing in the main game. These pixels can be "corrected" in many places by scrolling the so that they are no longer visible on the screen and then …

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