Re: Easiest way into "authentic" DOS gaming - recommend me some hardware!

Posted on 2018-06-21, 16:57

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

... Trident TVGA9000i-3 SVGA 512kb - £30+ 20% VAT = £36 Trident TVGA8900CL VGA 1mb - £48 + 20% = £58 TSENG ET3000AX - £58 + 20% = £70 Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428 1MB = £58 (no customs) Realtek BT-505B RTG3105 512kb - £34+ 20% = £41 Headland Technology G2 650-0216 12 ???? - £45 (no customs) The trident …

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Re: Which 430hx board to choose...

Posted on 2018-05-27, 07:38

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I second The Serpent Rider's opinion. The Supermicro board is the only one of the three with a coin cell battery. The others have RTC chips which is a call for trouble in my book.

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Re: This P3 die is chipped right?

Posted on 2018-05-12, 15:13

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That doesn't look too severe compared to couple CPUs I have which got all their corners missing (and still work). I usually like to keep CPUs with intact dice in my collection. I have a Duron though, that has all of its corners chipped off. Looks so ugly I was amazed it would still work. Okay, the …

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Re: This P3 die is chipped right?

Posted on 2018-05-11, 20:17

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It is. May work, though. May not.

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Re: Do all old computers go to Africa ?

Posted on 2018-04-14, 04:35

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Old computers are sent to poor countries all over the world, wherever they can make people work for little enough (or nothing) to make it profitable. You're unlikely to find any sweet deals over there, though, because the whole point of sending them there is for the computers to be dismantled and …

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Re: Need idea's for my 486-dx4-120 machine.

Posted on 2018-04-02, 14:25

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I wonder what the worst, but happily tolerated, DOOM frame rate was in 1994? 12 fps maybe? Possibly. I remember playing through the whole game on a 386SX-33 with an abysmally slow Tseng ET3000 VGA. I switched to low resolution, took the screen size down a few notches, then I could play on those few …

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Re: 386 - Should I Add More RAM?

Posted on 2018-04-01, 20:20

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Adding more RAM won't help unless the game(s) are slower because of swapping or extra loading because of the lack of memory. DOS games like Epic Pinball usually either fit in the memory or won't run at all, the operating system itself doesn't do any virtual memory handling. Newer games (like first …

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Re: My CPU Collection

Posted on 2018-03-30, 11:44

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is what I ended up doing with my CPUs. http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=253121#253121 Nice that you have a B1 revision Am5x86. I'm not sure what they changed in the B1, but it seems to be the latest revision of the Am5x86 or AMD DX2 and DX4. I think I'll have to do something …

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Re: Benchmarking DOOM with sound cards

Posted on 2018-03-20, 18:10

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

With AWE32, sample upload is software, and not very fast. Possibly same on GUS, and possibly you are even forced to send 16-bit data through 8-bit ports. Didn't program GUS though. On EMU8000, where writes are always 16-bits, 1MiB of data takes roughly 1 second to upload. Situation with sending 16- …

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Re: Benchmarking DOOM with sound cards

Posted on 2018-03-18, 13:27

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So in order to 'just' play a sample on GUS, you first need to upload it as an instrument, and then trigger a note. There's probably considerably more overhead involved here. It's just not what the GUS was designed to do. Basically it's true, playing a stream is a bit more complicated on the GUS. …

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Re: Benchmarking DOOM with sound cards

Posted on 2018-03-18, 07:38

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What are the SB/GUS FPS with sound only and music only? Just one example, the resolution is 640x480. From an i845 board, with the aforementioned 3066/533 P4, single channel DDR-333, PCI Asus V3000 (because the industrial backplane didn't have an AGP slot. Now I have a Soyo ISA/PCI/AGP board but DOS …

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Re: Benchmarking DOOM with sound cards

Posted on 2018-03-18, 04:24

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Afair Doom's sound engine only does software mixing even with GUS cards. As does Quake. Quake even goes up to 19.3kHz from the default 11 to match the GUS' internal mixing frequency. It still can't explain the massive performance loss (the extreme case being 30% of a Northwood-3066/512) against the …

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Re: Do you remember how/when you began your Collection ?

Posted on 2018-03-17, 08:51

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by alvaro84

in Milliways

in Milliways

I started with CPUs. The first piece I had in my "collection" was my old K6-2/500 that I kept when I switched to Athlon XP. Then I got a few dozen CPUs from collectors or acquaintances who didn't need them anymore - then even from online flea markets. But I could only test a few Socket 7 pieces as …

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Re: Best 386 Motherboard?

Posted on 2018-03-17, 06:48

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A MR BIOS repository is a great idea. That was one awesome series of BIOSes which is at risk of being lost to future's infinity. What we really need is to source and deposit 386 and 486 MR BIOSes as they greatly improved upon otherwise ordinary BIOSes of the era. Should it happen I'm in with an …

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Re: Benchmarking DOOM with sound cards

Posted on 2018-03-17, 05:50

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Here goes a necropost :) Doom has no tearing because it uses triple-buffering and has always-on vsync. 70 FPS was not feasible back then, but 35 perfectly achieveable on DX66/DX2 80 with VLB videocard, so Doom is 35 FPS locked. Mode X drawing routines used in the original Doom (but not Heretic) …

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Re: Processor soldered or stuck to socket 7 ?

Posted on 2018-03-13, 19:55

by

by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

dionb wrote: I've seen LIF sockets on some industrial So5/7 SBC boards, so not impossible. And in laptops.

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Re: TrinityWorks PowerStacker AMD 5x86-133 Broken Pin

Posted on 2018-03-11, 07:56

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I know I won't help with it but... I just love this QFP 5x86 and I hope one day I find one (buying anything has been out of question during the last few years). Once I obtained one from an industrial CPU card but it was so messed up with epoxy(?) that I had to part with it. It would be much nicer to …

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Re: 486 DX-33 question

Posted on 2018-03-10, 17:47

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Something like this? I used to have a 286 with this kind of cooler back in the early-mid '90s. (I know I was late, it was all I could afford.) It also had a 287 and I'm quite sure the FPU could have used a heat sink too. Now I see that 286 chips can run pretty hot too. When I tested my plastic LCC …

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Re: LCD monitor VGA compatibility database

Posted on 2018-03-03, 09:04

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You are aware that stability of the Copper wobbling effects also depend on the video card? Copper is notoriously playing around the limits of VGA compatibility. At pouet someone said that it ONLY works perfectly with one specific revision of the Tseng ET4000 VGA and nothing else. Yet the authors …

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Re: What Monitors Do You Use for Your Retro PC Activities?

Posted on 2018-02-25, 07:30

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by alvaro84

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

This modern bias worked too well for me as I use my everyday monitor for my actual retro build too. My main rig is connected via DVI, D-SUB goes into whatever VGA is in the pile of parts next to my right elbow. I have a few canned monitors (like my previous widescreen one but that's even worse as it …

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