Re: How low can you go with modern, user-friendly Linux?

Posted on 2021-04-27, 08:01

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also, in my experience, one of those dual Tualatins would probably give a better overall experience than a P4, as long as you are not running anything cpu bound (games, video or, again, modern browsing).

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Re: How low can you go with modern, user-friendly Linux?

Posted on 2021-04-27, 07:56

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A P3 can saturate gig-e, BUT, it depends on what you are feeding it with: if you have a fast disk sub-system or enough RAM to buffer what you are doing, yes. If you have a single IDE disk on a motherboard header and not enough RAM to cache the entire file... Well, your disk read/write speed is going …

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Re: How low can you go with modern, user-friendly Linux?

Posted on 2021-04-26, 18:40

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I started with Linux on a 4MB, 40MHz 386SX. That was very, very early days - kernel 0.99 if I remember right. But I spent a lot of the early period (kernel 1.0 - 1.2 ~ish) running it on a 486 DX2-50 (16MB, IIRC). That was X11, TWM/FVWM, Mosaic and very early Netscape Navigator. These days the …

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Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2021-04-25, 12:07

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

brostenen wrote on 2021-04-25, 08:08: I see Doom and other first gen FPS, as the definitive nail in the coffin. At least we got some nice hardware. I would agree with that; Wolfenstein 3D woke people up to what you could achieve on a (modest) PC, but when Doom came along it was clear that the Amiga …

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Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2021-04-24, 18:15

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Perhaps Cilicon Graphics or HP had something better for the professional market, but I have no knowledge on that market. The main SGI desktop systems, including Indigo, Indy and Indigo2 use a combination of VME, EISA and GIO bus. In the case of the original Indigo (1991) it uses a GIO32 bus ( …

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Re: Need help with old 468

Posted on 2021-04-23, 18:56

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Tough to say whether that's a ram issue or just more signs that the contacts aren't clean or the board corrosion needs further attention I have three sticks, but I'm not sure which way they should be installed. They seem to go in both ways. The RAM is almost certainly not the problem - you've still …

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Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2021-04-23, 15:06

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Auto-config was neat, seriously, but that was done by Amiga OS and could have worked on any bus. In fact, there's something that was missed. If they were putting their hearts into it, they could have stored the device drivers on the cards themselves (in an ROM chip) , as well. Ideally, these …

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Re: Need help with old 468

Posted on 2021-04-23, 15:02

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You shouldn't really need to - as long as you get rid of most of the vinegar, then rinsing it off with IPA should mean that the alchohol will evaporate within a few minutes (as long as it isn't dripping wet). You could use a hair drier if you wanted to speed up the drying, but I don't think it's …

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Re: 286 dead, long live the 286! Sourcing and building a fast 286 replacement

Posted on 2021-04-23, 14:50

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks, those are some additional options to try. I'm convinced it's the deformation of the board that's the issue - other than the warping, there's no corrosion and no broken traces that I can see - it's a damn shame, as this is a pretty rare 286 board.

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Re: 286 dead, long live the 286! Sourcing and building a fast 286 replacement

Posted on 2021-04-23, 14:26

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's a fairly warped board - I wanted to see if there were even 'sane looking' signals present since it won't POST and there's no error codes on the card. The 'scope is only a very cheap 20MHz thing; it was bought specifically for some X68000 repair work - the clocks of which are mainly derived 5MHz …

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Re: 286 dead, long live the 286! Sourcing and building a fast 286 replacement

Posted on 2021-04-23, 13:01

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On the processor, pin 31 (CLK) is showing a 9.996MHz clock - this is a 20MHz processor running from a 40MHz oscillator. 20210423_135456.png This ~10MHz input clock to the processor doesn't seem right to me. The CLK pin is defined as being "DIVIDED BY TWO INSIDE THE 80286 TO GENERATE THE PROCESSOR …

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Re: 286 dead, long live the 286! Sourcing and building a fast 286 replacement

Posted on 2021-04-23, 12:51

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Coming back to trying to get my Biostar MB1220VE working again whilst waiting for parts on my other boards. I'm going back through things methodically; firstly checking for the correct clock signals. ISA B30 (OSC): 14.3MHz clock present 20210423_133918.png ISA B20 (CLK): 8MHz clock present 20210423_ …

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Re: Help with invalid OPCODE error message on Packard Bell

Posted on 2021-04-23, 07:58

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've had a *very* similar issue on one of my 286 motherboards when I was testing overclocking on it (like *way* out of spec). I would get a similar message on the BIOS screen as well as in DOS... so I suspect it is a ROM BIOS error trap that is being raised, rather than something from Himem, emm386 …

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Re: Need help with old 468

Posted on 2021-04-22, 17:32

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Looking carefully, there is also "blue" corrosion on the ISA slot connector itself. You need to remove that battery NOW, otherwise the board may not be able to be saved. Even as it is, it may be quite a bit of work to clean and replace all the affected components.

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Re: Best pci NICs by lowest cpu usage/ highest bandwidth

Posted on 2021-04-22, 07:00

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just my 2p/2c or whatever, but a dual 233 should be able to saturate a fast ethernet link. You've got a bottleneck somewhere, or your cards/switch or whatever are operating in half duplex mode.

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Re: Best pci NICs by lowest cpu usage/ highest bandwidth

Posted on 2021-04-22, 06:55

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I suspect you would get a truer representative of the throughput if the cards if you used iperf or similar. When you say "large" files... 1mb, 10? 100? You also need to run the test in both directions, otherwise you are limiting your test to how fast the IO subsystem can write the data to disk. …

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Re: Can someone identify my old 386 black mini tower?

Posted on 2021-04-21, 08:59

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I do like the look of that Escom unit!

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Re: Life expectancy of an "old" HDD

Posted on 2021-04-21, 08:51

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ok, 3 to 5 years if it is continuous use, perhaps. But that's a very low estimate for general desktop use. I work in a large university and the expected lifespan of our normal office desktop computer is 5 years (and they come with warranty for that period). We buy many thousands of those computers …

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Re: Best pci NICs by lowest cpu usage/ highest bandwidth

Posted on 2021-04-21, 08:38

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

GigAHerZ wrote on 2021-04-21, 08:10: What i want to say is that world is advancing and it's more advantageous to adapt to it, than to be a "dinosaur". Nope, that's me: dinosaur. Well, my kids would have me believe it.

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Re: Best pci NICs by lowest cpu usage/ highest bandwidth

Posted on 2021-04-21, 07:54

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@megatron-uk, that's wrong today. There are different SI prefixes for base-10 and base-2 units. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix Kilo- is always 1000, Mega- is always 1 000 000, etc. This standard exists since 1998, so already over 2 decades. One of the biggest rule-braker today is …

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