Re: New Project - Early 1991 i486 Build

Posted on 2016-07-21, 15:23

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

No, I don't think dropping $800 on computer upgrades was a top priority for families in 1991, especially considering most weren't even fortunate enough to own a 386 at that time. 4MB was considered a lot, and there wasn't much you could do with more unless you were a developer.

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Re: New Project - Early 1991 i486 Build

Posted on 2016-07-20, 11:41

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I was curious, so read a couple of magazines from 1991. The answer is that it depends what month of 1991, and also what type of memory you want. An 80ns 1MB 30pin SIMM without parity would indeed be closer to $50. But, if you wanted a 60ns 1MB 30 pin SIMM with parity, the price would be closer to $ …

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Re: New Project - Early 1991 i486 Build

Posted on 2016-07-13, 00:22

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I believe memory at that time was around $100 per meg.

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Re: Memory running at half speed?

Posted on 2016-06-23, 06:27

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I always said that DDR was a big marketing scam that only serves to confuse people. CPUs and memory should be advertised at their actual clock rates. HDDs should also be advertised with their actual formatted capacities. None of this 1,000,000 bytes = 1MB bullshit, or how 1GB is defined as 1,000,000 …

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Re: Benchmarks for high-end VLB graphic cards - ET4000W32P/ARK1000VL/Trio64/S3 Vision968/Mach64

Posted on 2016-06-22, 08:11

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I've never owned a CL GD5434 based VLB card, only the Speedstar64 ISA. Even if I had one, there's no way I could test as all of my stuff is sealed in wooden crates.

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Re: Most useless/undesirable piece of vintage computer hardware

Posted on 2016-06-22, 06:27

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Errius wrote: OT: I've noticed that some of the newer USB drives, if you open them up, use hard drives with native USB interfaces. No SATA at all. It's USB all the way through. It really pisses me off. I always recommend people buy standard SATA drives and their own enclosures rather than the …

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Re: Benchmarks for high-end VLB graphic cards - ET4000W32P/ARK1000VL/Trio64/S3 Vision968/Mach64

Posted on 2016-06-22, 06:25

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I believe the CL 5434 isn't spectacular in Windows. It's probably a little slower than the DRAM based Mach64. I remember either the 16-bit or 24-bit mode was really slow.

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Re: ASUS 386/33-64K - cache upgrade?

Posted on 2016-06-21, 23:50

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You can swap BIOSes on older boards, but at the very least they will need to be chipset specific. MR-BIOS makes a great replacement, but it's pretty difficult to track them down these days.

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Re: New Project - Early 1991 i486 Build

Posted on 2016-06-17, 11:40

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

8MB was fair game in 1991. It would have been expensive, but some people had it. For a 1991 sound card an SB Pro or original PAS would be what you want (Ultrasound and Adlib Gold are also fair game). The CD-ROM drive should be 1X SCSI, and it should take caddies...not sure if 2X was available yet.

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Re: EISA Graphics / Video Cards

Posted on 2016-06-17, 11:06

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

If there's only 1 slot, it's almost certainly OPTi local bus or proprietary expansion bus. If it were HiNT mini-EISA, half the slots would be 32-bit. Generally on real EISA boards all or most of the slots are 32-bit.

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Re: EISA Graphics / Video Cards

Posted on 2016-06-17, 10:40

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Has anyone had a chance to try the 2MB Compaq QVision EISA SVGA cards? I once had the 4MB Elsa Winner 2000, and I found it didn't really seem to take advantage of the EISA bus. I seem to remember Qvisions being held in fairly high regard, and the fact that Compaq was in the gang of nine gives them …

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Re: ASUS 386/33-64K - cache upgrade?

Posted on 2016-06-17, 09:08

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

TH99 lists the max RAM on the 386/33-64K as 8MB without the memory expansion board. Can you confirm whether or not it works with 4MB SIMMs? If it only accepts 8MB, then a cache upgrade would be pointless anyway.

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Re: ASUS 386/33-64K - cache upgrade?

Posted on 2016-06-17, 08:37

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also, why would they put cache in sockets and not just solder them? SRAM is highly sensitive to electrostatic discharge (easy to fry). They're in sockets so they can be easily replaced. The change is detected automatically by the chipset - possible sis 85c310 controller feature? I'm skeptical of …

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Re: ASUS 386/33-64K - cache upgrade?

Posted on 2016-06-16, 23:49

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I was pretty sure that there was a member on vogons that upgraded their 386C to 256kb. I want to say that it was Amigaz. The SiS Rabbit chipset does support 256kb.

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Re: Benchmarks for high-end VLB graphic cards - ET4000W32P/ARK1000VL/Trio64/S3 Vision968/Mach64

Posted on 2016-06-16, 21:49

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I don't believe VBE was loaded for the tests. As far as I know the only major change to the Trio64 over the 864 was the RAMDAC. Many 864s used an 8-bit RAMDAC, so compared to those cards the Trio64 should offer a better windows experience on a CRT due to support for higher refresh rates. Most of the …

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Re: ASUS 386/33-64K - cache upgrade?

Posted on 2016-06-16, 21:43

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

How do we know for certain the board can't be upgraded to 256kb cache? It looks very similar to the ISA-386C (which supports 256). Are the jumpers to set the cache size from that board present on the 33-64K?

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Re: Benchmarks for high-end VLB graphic cards - ET4000W32P/ARK1000VL/Trio64/S3 Vision968/Mach64

Posted on 2016-06-16, 13:32

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The 868 is on my list, I just haven't found one at the right price. I would guess that 868 DOS performance should be identical to Trio64. Adding the 805 to the list would be interesting too.

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Re: Xi 8088 by Segey Malinov

Posted on 2016-06-14, 23:51

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In my experience an 8087-1 will not run at 12MHz reliably, and because of the way it is connected to the 8088 it will make the entire system unstable even if you're not using it. I couldn't even squeeze 11MHz out of mine (I tried 2 of them). Supposedly in the mid 80s there was a company that …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-06-13, 22:20

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Looks like a Sony 2X caddy loading CD-ROM drive (likely SCSI). Those are nice.

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Re: Stealth64 DRAM T VLB Trio64 86c764-P vs. 86c764X

Posted on 2016-06-13, 12:01

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As far as I know the Trio64 should be more or less identical to the 868/864 in DOS. The Windows performance would depend on which RAMDAC the 86x was equipped with. If it has a 16-bit RAMDAC, then the performance should be similar, however I believe there is at least one 86x based card that supports …

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