Re: I overclocked my monitor from 60 Hz to 80 Hz, but can't tell the difference in games

Posted on 2021-01-05, 17:19

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by VileR

in Milliways

in Milliways

The human brain doesn't exactly respond to these things in a linear fashion. As frame rates go up, different people will become less sensitive to the improvement at different points. A 33% increase won't be necessarily more apparent than a 20% increase if your starting points are different. Your …

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Re: ID help: Taiwanese CGA/mono(?) video board + ROM type

Posted on 2020-12-31, 17:06

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by VileR

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Ha, I failed to notice the " SM-127 " right next to the 6845 knockoff. Looking that up, I get this: https://www.recycledgoods.com/beltron-sm-127-8-bit-color-graphics-cga-video-card/ ...looks pretty much identical, except that mine doesn't have the "BELTRON" logo. Still can't find any data/jumper …

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Re: ID help: Taiwanese CGA/mono(?) video board + ROM type

Posted on 2020-12-31, 16:54

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by VileR

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

You're right, I should've noted the non-existence of a clock crystal. ;) The 16K RAM doesn't necessarily preclude monochrome, in case one of those jumper blocks can configure it to work like one, but not having an extra crystal is a giveaway. I'll see if I can give it a test later. Still curious …

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ID help: Taiwanese CGA/mono(?) video board + ROM type

Posted on 2020-12-31, 15:51

by

by VileR

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Picked this up locally. The seller had used it ages ago, and as far as he can remember, it was an MDA-type board (monochrome, but no graphics). He isn't sure though... and there are two RCA outputs which might indicate CGA. It's certainly not EGA or anything that would use them as "feature …

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Re: Possible Solution to Youtube and DOS Aspect Ratio Issues

Posted on 2020-12-22, 21:37

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by VileR

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'm actually curious what's the best way to archive source footage for retro content is. I'm guessing ZMBV is optimal for DOSBox and other low color & resolution sources, but it's probably not that good at handling noise (if for example, you're trying to capture from an analog source)? If you've …

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Re: How did scrolling work in Keen 4-6?

Posted on 2020-12-19, 22:45

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by VileR

in Milliways

in Milliways

Have we gained any programming technique or intelligence over the past 30 years that could enable the CGA scrolling to be done better now? or are the hardware limitations already exhaustively explored? For Keen I don't think you could get a huge improvement. Maybe a few small tweaks in case they …

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Re: How did scrolling work in Keen 4-6?

Posted on 2020-12-18, 19:34

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by VileR

in Milliways

in Milliways

There's a description from Romero of how Keen 4-6 work on EGA/VGA, and how it differs from the first trilogy: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?30619-How-mcuh-more-advanced-was-a-NES-to-computers-at-the-time&p=225724#post225724 CGA has a modifiable start-address register, but not a panning …

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Re: What music are you listening to?

Posted on 2020-12-09, 02:49

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by VileR

in Milliways

in Milliways

badmojo wrote on 2020-10-11, 11:36: A lot of Split Enz here recently - been in the mood for something fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxg_oII5qBQ I see your fun new wave and raise you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWMA1hJy678

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Re: Non-US character ROMs from MDA/CGA/Hercules cards?

Posted on 2020-12-05, 18:21

by

by VileR

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@muon: have you verified that you actually need to do this? That image (and .bin) is of the standard CP437 character set, which includes those chars for Spanish. In the other thread, you didn't clarify which character set is already contained in the card's internal ROM (or integrated on the chipset …

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Re: Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack: v2.1 update (2020-10)

Posted on 2020-12-01, 23:56

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by VileR

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

A smaller update - v2.2: v2.2_new_stuff.png Not too much to show off this time, but a few of these things were interesting to look into, nonetheless. It turned out that the Tandy 2000 has a "hidden" 8x8 charset, meant for a low-res "TV" graphics card that possibly was never even shipped. The HP 150 …

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Re: Collecting: Dutch PC warez-scene demo's

Posted on 2020-12-01, 18:21

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by VileR

in Milliways

in Milliways

Nice going. I guess pouet.net is a better place to ask (and you could also contribute the ones you already have, if they're not in their database already).

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Re: english, the planetary language

Posted on 2020-11-24, 01:39

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by VileR

in Milliways

in Milliways

Squabbling over the superiority of measuring systems is one of the most embarrassingly parochial thing to observe. Especially when it's so often a transparent substitute for other forms of jingoism, simply because they're deemed less acceptable these days. ;) I've always been used to metric: that's …

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2020-11-17, 16:15

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by VileR

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

...the way would be to go for the application of a good CRT shader that can be parameterized. For C64 this is employed in some emulators and could in principle also put on top of captured video. Do you happen to know of a good solution for this? As in: applying a shader to a video file and getting …

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Re: Best CGA & Hercules monochrome games

Posted on 2020-11-15, 09:35

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by VileR

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

In other news, here is interesting case of a CGA game totally relevant to this thread - Rockford . Its creators didn't care about the colour mode, but focused on "how is it going to look on a monochrome monitor?" ROCKFORD.jpg That comparison shot looks familiar. ;) Rockford had at least two …

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Re: Retro confessions. What are yours?

Posted on 2020-11-10, 23:41

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by VileR

in Milliways

in Milliways

Some people are probably going to hate me, but I think Amiga's failure was well deserved. Commodore wanted to make the system cheaper to use for a home user and made some technical decisions that really hurt it in the long run (like sticking to NTSC and PAL video modes). The OS was impressive for …

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Re: Good version of FREE DOS for 8088 XT. Memory friendly

Posted on 2020-11-10, 19:12

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by VileR

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Not to be a contrarian, but I don't really see the use of >8GB partitions on an 8088 system other than bragging rights. There's no technical reason that an 8086 build of FreeDOS with FAT32 wouldn't work, but you can probably forget about "fast" or "efficient". PC-DOS 7 / 2000 is leaner and meaner …

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Re: Garbage characters on faulty video card

Posted on 2020-11-09, 22:08

by

by VileR

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Probably bad video RAM. Seems like a plague of "0" bits in at least some of the even bytes (but not the odd bytes, or you'd be seeing weird colors too). Might also be a problem in a part of the chip itself (the vga sequencer) but that's probably far less likely.

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Re: Retro confessions. What are yours?

Posted on 2020-11-08, 02:25

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by VileR

in Milliways

in Milliways

Also, fuck people that take old keyboards and chop them up for any reason besides restoration. Yes, but that should go under "self-evident truths", not confessions. As for prices for vintage hardware, shipping costs are *far* more prohibitive for me than whatever people are asking in general. …

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Re: Retro confessions. What are yours?

Posted on 2020-11-06, 20:04

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by VileR

in Milliways

in Milliways

Never cared for optical PC storage media or optical drives at all. The sluggishness, spin-up/mounting delays, and above all that infernal NOISE. One thing I'm glad we no longer need. Never really managed to get into any of the Wing Commander OR Ultima games.

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Re: Monitor Questions! Trying to use a Tandy VM-1 With a TRS-80 Model 1 - Questions on sync and other Fun stuff!

Posted on 2020-11-01, 20:12

by

by VileR

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Dunno about most, but for that time period probably yes, since most of those machines like the Model 1 and Apple IIc were designed for TV scan rates anyway. No idea about a tube swap - I'd expect that most of the difference is actually in the electronics, not necessarily the tube itself. But it'd be …

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