Re: 16meg sim on a 386?

Posted on 2010-11-15, 14:26

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I also tried 16MB simms in a board of mine with the same chipset. A friend has 8 16mb simms and thought to give it a try. A month ago I also found it's manual, and it said, maximum amount of memory 32MB. So we tested the 8x16MB, and it posted fine, however it recognized only one bank, so it was 64MB …

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Re: Windows 3.1/3.11 Drivers for the following Graphic Cards...?

Posted on 2010-11-15, 12:01

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you need to run windows 3.0 ? I ask that beause if you say 3.1x I suppose it includes both 3.1(3.10) and 3.11. By the way, on my 286 I have windows 3, and a trident 8900 card, and I thought I should try to install win 3.1 drivers I already had, but I just couldn't. There was not an option "have …

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Re: Fixing an old Packard Bell Legend 316SX, but have hit a roadblock - DOS refuses to boot

Posted on 2010-11-15, 01:14

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's right. See if you can find a similar-era computer with auto detect hard disk option, and it may work. Good luck!

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Re: Fixing an old Packard Bell Legend 316SX, but have hit a roadblock - DOS refuses to boot

Posted on 2010-11-14, 22:53

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think it's not such a good idea to low level format a physical drive if there isn't some sort of serious problem on it. Wait a minute. What's your BIOS setting of the disk? Does it have the standard 46 types, and type 47 that is configured by the user?

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Re: Fixing an old Packard Bell Legend 316SX, but have hit a roadblock - DOS refuses to boot

Posted on 2010-11-14, 10:26

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You should try with a smaller disk. I also think that on these machines, the bios doesn't support disks larger than ~500MB. Yep, you can also use a compact flash or even SD card. It's very quick compared to old disks, and noiseless. I've used both(CF/SD) on my old pcs, however I had a problem, that …

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Re: Fixing an old Packard Bell Legend 316SX, but have hit a roadblock - DOS refuses to boot

Posted on 2010-11-13, 19:01

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Check on the error message. It's going to help. I don't think it's a RAM problem, as the OS hasn't even started to boot yet. You said you formated the partition using fdisk. Fdisk just creates and deletes partitions and defines logical drives on secondary(extended) partitions. After that you need to …

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Re: 386 Inboard

Posted on 2010-11-13, 01:26

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Though even if your old 386s are double Sigmas, they still have the Errata 21 Bug. So f.e. if you have a slow older 386 with Waitstates enabled, a 387 coprocessor, run Win 3.x in enhanced mode, play tracked music with a soundblaster that utilizes DMA for transfer, let the player use FPU …

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Re: 386 Inboard

Posted on 2010-11-11, 03:45

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It actually turns your XT into more of a 286 than a 386, as the 386 CPU that comes with it as marked as "16-bit software only" I think early 386s had a bug that made them halt when trying to run 32bit software. But that didn't affect all of them. The bug-free ones were labeled ΣΣ (sigma sigma), and …

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Re: Dos 6 conventional memory tricks

Posted on 2010-11-03, 18:21

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by Markk

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I remember those days when I used DOS(386- early pentium era), I had a disk with QEMM. I used also memmaker, but qemm was way better. Using that, it is still very clear in my mind the exact amount of free conventional memory I had. 634kB! It was really great back then. And as far as I can recall, I …

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Re: Fixing-up an AB-PN5 Motherboard

Posted on 2010-10-30, 22:20

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you manage to remove the chip, it is pretty easy to "hack" it. I've done it in the past for an old soyo board, on which the dallas chip had died. The problem was that every time before running the POST, it loaded the default BIOS values, on which, the hard disk was set to not installed. So it was …

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Re: 16meg sim on a 386?

Posted on 2010-10-24, 22:29

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have 4x4MB in my 386, but I don't really need them. I would be ok with 8. It's just because of the 32bit addressing of the DX CPU I can't put just two simms, and I have to fill the bank. Another 386sx board I have is ok with 1/2 simms. I could just use 8x1MB, but I don't have 8 identical I think, …

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Re: Joysticks - general advice please

Posted on 2010-10-24, 21:20

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The only PC I've seen having a 9pin joystick port, is the Amstrad 1512, which has the port at the back of the keyboard. And I bet it has nothing to do with 9 pin joysticks from other home computers, as if I remember well, the joystick just sends key codes.

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Re: 16meg sim on a 386?

Posted on 2010-10-24, 16:47

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The maximum amount of memory a board can take will not only depend on the chipset, but also the BIOS. I bet this is very true. That soyo board can take up to 128mb according to the manual. Another board I have right now with the same chipset(ali 1429) can take only 4mb simms, so its 32mb max, and …

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Re: 16meg sim on a 386?

Posted on 2010-10-24, 10:30

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes. If we're talking about the same board after all, the only thing about memory that is written in the manual concerning the simm type, is that suports two banks of 256K,1M,4M and 16M SIMM, and that the mainboard requires SIMM of at least 80ns access time.

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Re: 16meg sim on a 386?

Posted on 2010-10-24, 09:50

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

To be honest Dirkmirk, all I have to remind me my old pcs, are some manuals, and a few parts, so I'd rather not give it away. But I'll be glad to scan it for you. I'll let you know when I have it ready.

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Re: compact flash ide adapters

Posted on 2010-10-24, 09:44

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I use one CF2IDE adaptor in my main retro pc which is a pentium 233. I have fitted a transcend 300x 2gb card. Now in terms of speed, it's really fast compared to the machine's contemporary IDE drives (2-4GB). But I tried it at my Pentium 3, where I have a WD 40GB, and it was slower than the physical …

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Re: 16meg sim on a 386?

Posted on 2010-10-24, 08:24

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Back in 1994, my 386 had a Soyo board with ali 1429 chipset. I don't have it any more, but I've kept the manual. Reading this right now, it's written at the bottom of the first page : version 2.0 19R. It might be the same board. It supports 16mb simms up to 128mb. But it has 128kB cache memory, …

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Re: 3DBENCH CPU Benchmark Database

Posted on 2010-10-23, 23:05

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a couple of different 3dbench results for you! AMD-80286-16-1-16-DFI-286-12/16E-Headland-none-ISA-OAK_OTI067-512kB-Markk-5.9 and another : Intel-PentiumIII-133-7.5-1000-QDI_Advance10F-VIA_ApolloPro133A-None-AGP-GeForce2MX-32MB-Markk-656.6

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Re: Very unique ebay find

Posted on 2010-10-22, 11:43

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

386DX40 (nice nick btw :wink: ) , all my boards have two seperate settings, L1 and L2 cache, and in the deffault BIOS settings the L1 is always disabled. But I'm sure that it refers to cpu cache, as in some boards the setting is named "CPU Internal Cache Enabled/Disabled". But I've never used such a …

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Re: Very unique ebay find

Posted on 2010-10-21, 14:22

by

by Markk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have 6 different 386/40 boards. All of them have the cpu soldered on the board (pqfp if I remember well?), but just one of them has a second socket(apart from the fpu) to install a DLC cpu. However, all of them have the "Enable L1 cache" option in BIOS, even though the 80386 doesn't have any.

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