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Re: Is it really my nostalgia or are you playing it wrong…

Posted on 2024-04-19, 16:45

in Milliways

in Milliways

I can't get to grips with a lot of modern fps, shooter or even action games, despite being there at the founding era of the PC FPS shooter. It seems as though there is a huge percentage of games made now that require the reflexes of a hyperactive flea to play them. I don't 'get' the whole genre made …

Re: What tool debugs a miscalculated area of memory in a game program written in C?

Posted on 2024-04-19, 13:59

in Milliways

in Milliways

Open watcom or GCC (aka djgpp). GCC is probably your more 'modern' of the two. GCC is protected more only though... I do recall some branch which targeted 16bit code, but it's not a very common variant. Open Watcom recently re-emerged after a long retirement. djgpp hasn't seen an update in a long …

Re: Pentium PRO?

Posted on 2024-04-19, 13:52

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The very real drawback for Pentium Pro system is lack of MMX unless you shell out for a Pentium II Overdrive. (Really just a PII Xeon processor) MMX is basically useless for these processors. Useless in what way ? Yes I know that back in the day they were only HEDT machines ...but every single CPU …

Re: Pentium PRO?

Posted on 2024-04-19, 09:12

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I obtained an intel pentium pro from a random assorted box of cpus i bought a while back and ever since i got the processor it has just been sitting on my shelf as a shelf piece. i was wondering if anyone here has had any experience using these processors, is it worth spending the money on a socket …

Re: Pentium PRO?

Posted on 2024-04-19, 08:11

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I obtained an intel pentium pro from a random assorted box of cpus i bought a while back and ever since i got the processor it has just been sitting on my shelf as a shelf piece. i was wondering if anyone here has had any experience using these processors, is it worth spending the money on a socket …

Re: What tool debugs a miscalculated area of memory in a game program written in C?

Posted on 2024-04-18, 18:02

in Milliways

in Milliways

Open watcom or GCC (aka djgpp). GCC is probably your more 'modern' of the two. GCC is protected more only though... I do recall some branch which targeted 16bit code, but it's not a very common variant.

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

Posted on 2024-04-18, 12:34

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Swapped out two ESS1868F soundcards with a Yamaha YMF719 to try to solve a faulty digital sound playback issue on Tyrian, Dune (not the rts) and a couple of others. Surprisingly it works perfectly; which is a real shame, since the same ESS cards work brilliantly with around 220 other games installed …

Re: ESS1868 compatibility issues

Posted on 2024-04-18, 11:18

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Okay, the Yamaha YMF719 card arrived - there's a sticker on the card which labels it as an 'Addonics' brand. Unisound identified it as an OPL3-SAX and initialised it with the same settings as I was using before (A220, I7, D1, T4, P330, J201). No software changes have been made. The difference? - …

Re: SCSI Ultra adapters (Like SATA to IDE, but for SCSI)

Posted on 2024-04-18, 08:47

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is one of the reasons I don't have my older Unix workstations out and used very often: SCSI drives are loud. Not all of them. In particular the 9-18GB Seagate Cheetahs and 18-36GB Quantum Atlas IV are about as quiet as mechanical HDDs can get. The 1.7GB unbalanced jet engine emulator in my …

Re: SCSI Ultra adapters (Like SATA to IDE, but for SCSI)

Posted on 2024-04-18, 07:17

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is one of the reasons I don't have my older Unix workstations out and used very often: SCSI drives are loud. You have the various (slow) SCSI emulators for 5 and 10mb/sec scsi1/2 (depending on if they are sync/async) but above that (eg even for basic wide SCSI) the prices get insane. Putting an …

Re: What Floppy disk drive for BBC Master?

Posted on 2024-04-18, 06:58

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Alternatively, here's a plug and play solution using a Gotek drive from a supplier I have used for Acorn bits (MMC flash drive, replacement battery packs): https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/256443749827?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=_DiwzifJQz-&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=817iOhKdSIe&var=&widget_ …

Re: What Floppy disk drive for BBC Master?

Posted on 2024-04-18, 06:48

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The Master should be largely compatible with most 40 or 80 track floppy drives (both 5.25 and 3.5") as long as they are configured how the Beeb expects them. I don't know the jumper settings, but it should be possible to find a list of compatible drives, or pc compatible drives which can be jumpers …

Re: What tool debugs a miscalculated area of memory in a game program written in C?

Posted on 2024-04-15, 22:34

in Milliways

in Milliways

If you are doing file io, you should always check that what you have intended to do (seek n bytes, read n bytes) has actually done what you expect. Seek, read and friends should, depending on their implementation, return the number of bytes actually read, skipped etc. Check those return values! A …

Re: ESS1868 compatibility issues

Posted on 2024-04-15, 17:44

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Anyway, I can't fit any of my SB16 cards in to test them, so I've just bought the cheapest YMF719 soundcard I could find on Ebay, and which was no longer than a 16bit slot. I'll see if that makes any difference. YMF719 is nice. Two things you should be aware of: 1) Get the version with two seperate …

Re: ESS1868 compatibility issues

Posted on 2024-04-15, 16:22

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I just tested Tyrian with the "tyrian21" package available at many sites on my ES1869, and sound effects worked fine. Something is wrong with your setup, not the soundcard, or maybe both your setup and the soundcard. I have just tried that version: no difference; music is still okay via FM and GM …

Re: ESS1868 compatibility issues

Posted on 2024-04-15, 12:40

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

It seems pointless to source another ESS1868 card, since two now show the same symptoms in the same games. Of the other non-Soundblaster cards, what has the highest Adlib/Soundblaster/Soundblaster Pro 2 compatibility? Crystal or Yamaha based designs? I'm not interested in new cards like the Orpheus, …

Re: ESS1868 compatibility issues

Posted on 2024-04-15, 11:32

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Swapped over to another ESS card... but this one appears to be dead; I'm not getting any sound out of it at all, and upon closer examination it has discolouration on the reverse of the board under the amplifier chip (something the original card doesn't have - it's line-out signal only). I am …

Re: ESS1868 compatibility issues

Posted on 2024-04-15, 10:06

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Update on Tyrian 2000 - even bypassing the startup environment completely; i.e. nothing loaded except ESSCFG (or UNISOUND) the Tyrian setup utility and the main menu itself have the same symptoms. - Approximately 1 time out of 10 it starts up with no digital effects at all. - 9 times out of 10 it …

Re: ESS1868 compatibility issues

Posted on 2024-04-15, 09:28

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

250 games? Amazing work! Just to double-check: in the cases where you've seen issues have you swapped out this card for something else (eg. a Creative Soundblaster) to confirm the issues were actually due to the ESS1868 and not something else? I once spent weeks messing around with a (far less …

Re: ESS1868 compatibility issues

Posted on 2024-04-15, 07:16

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I have completed a big audit of all ~250 games installed on my newly built 486 system. It uses a very basic ESS 1868F card: ... However I have a small number of games where I just cannot get (mainly digital audio) on the ESS card to work properly: You must have the ESS initialization loaded for it …

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