Re: TIL the 640k barrier is not set in stone (in theory)

Posted on 2014-09-30, 15:54

by

by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, A000-AFFF = EGA/VGA, B000-B800 = MDA/Hercules (B000-BFFF when using both Hercules pages), B800-BFFF = CGA (all modes) and EGA/VGA text modes. 768k means A000-BFFF used for normal RAM. So this is only useful for text mode applications or CGA/Hercules games, which probably don't need that much …

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Re: Any Voodoo 3 Voltmods and BIOS editors?

Posted on 2014-09-29, 22:14

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

With that CPU I don't think overclocking the Voodoo 3 makes sense. Of course that always depends on the resolution so you should benchmark the games you want to play at different resolutions and see how performance scales. Keep in mind that at 1600x1200 texture memory will become scarce, ie. …

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Re: Wasn't 3DFX related to Sega becoming a third-party software developer?

Posted on 2014-09-18, 14:13

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by idspispopd

in Milliways

in Milliways

Re: PowerVR: I would be interesting in actual sales numbers. Surely PCX2 must have been sold much less than eg. Voodoo1? Hard to compare it to other chips/cards, it is the only relevant add-on 3d accelerator asides from Voodoo1/2, and m3D was much cheaper. The Apocalypse 5D integrated 2D and 3D, but …

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Re: Matching hardware with software?

Posted on 2014-09-17, 09:14

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Various flavors of Linux and OS/2 Warp were available, but I don't think any major manufacturer other than IBM preinstalled OS/2. Highscreen computer from Vobis (Germany) had OS/2 preinstalled. Pretty silly since they even did this with 4MB machines. It had WinOS/2 but they boot time was pathetic. …

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Re: Can't install WinXP SP1 on AsRock K7S41 Mainboard

Posted on 2014-09-17, 09:11

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My first suspect for a problem like this would be unstable hardware, and the bulged caps just adds to that suspicion. I'm not sure of exactly why, but it seems to me that Windows 9x is more willing to try to run on flaky hardware. That's an impression I've had from long ago, and maybe it's just my …

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Re: Crazy system requirements for its time

Posted on 2014-09-16, 06:47

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote: Not even 512MB of ram, the original Xbox only had 64MB of DDR. 😳 A fair amount for a console of its time, but a tiny amount by PC standards, especially considering what the rest of the machine's specs are. And even this 64MB are shared with the GPU.

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Re: Testing AGP cards in a 133mhz FSB Intel 440BX system

Posted on 2014-09-15, 21:37

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe transferring lots of data over the AGP port? Wasn't there some benchmark with huge textures which shouldn't fit into the card's RAM to test AGP texturing speed? The question is what exactly is supposed to cause the issues, just the high clock presented to the card, or the high clock during …

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Re: games that use EMBM

Posted on 2014-09-15, 21:08

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@leileilol: It seems that ATI_envmap_bumpmap was implemented, but I don't know if developers would have used a vendor specific extension. OTOH ATI TruForm was definitely used. @soviet conscript: 2D image quality supposedly only became better with Matrox cards, that was their most important selling …

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Re: Old harddrives -- any love?

Posted on 2014-09-15, 08:34

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

2fort5r wrote: Does anyone else collect the platters and magnets from dead drives? Magnets. Very useful since they are so strong.

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Re: Senrew's Retro Rigs

Posted on 2014-09-12, 11:18

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Are there any options for turning off the L2 in software for this kind of setup? I know it's doable if I were to rebuild my SS7 and K6-2 machine, but that's underpowered for what I was going for with this one. I don't think turning off L2 and leaving L1 on is not very useful. Since L1 cache is 16 + …

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Re: Fast Single Core vs Low-end Dual Core on Old Games

Posted on 2014-09-11, 13:54

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Mau1wurf1977 surely doesn't use any modern patch/engine for this video, wouldn't make sense in Glide mode. When combining a P4 2.4 and a single Voodoo2 then the Voodoo2 is probably the bottleneck, even in a game with high CPU demands like Unreal. I suppose the game would run just as fast with a …

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Re: Optimal cache speed for 386/486

Posted on 2014-09-11, 13:36

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

- IIRC the tag RAM chip(s) needs a faster access time than the other chips. Of course it doesn't hurt if all chips have the same short(er) access time. - At least for 486 some people have posted here about setting cache access times (latency cycles or something like that) in the BIOS setup. I …

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Re: Fast Single Core vs Low-end Dual Core on Old Games

Posted on 2014-09-10, 10:25

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Doesn't OldUnreal include a frame limiter? I'm pretty sure I read something in this direction, and Google seems to agree. Maybe read the docs? (Reason is that Unreal has some physics bugs with high frame rates so a limit is a good workaround. IIRC binding the process to only one CPU is also …

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Re: Game collection

Posted on 2014-09-10, 07:36

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by idspispopd

in Milliways

in Milliways

Blame the poor photos on a mix of my non existant photography skils, awkward positioning behind furniture and other stuff and I wasnt prepared to start clearing out cupboards to get a shot of everything also a crap old camera that only works properly with expensive aaa batteries not the cheapo ones …

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Re: Rage 128 vs TNT2 line compared?

Posted on 2014-09-09, 08:44

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Rage 128 has paletted texture and 32-bit color support. It's a real bottleneck with svga or higher modes on DOS games however (it gets choppy once you start playing build engine games at 640x480, and even Doom 95 at 640x480). TNT2 also has 32-bit color support. The advantage of Rage 128 in this …

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Re: USB 2.0 PCI card not working properly on Win 98SE. How to fix?

Posted on 2014-09-08, 14:08

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My guess is that you experience the old problem of SB Live! not playing nice with VIA chipsets. (Can result in sound problems or data corruption for other PCI devices.) The problem was at least partially solved in certain versions of the VIA 4in1 drivers, it might also help to set PCI latency …

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Re: powervr not working with tomb raider

Posted on 2014-09-08, 12:52

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

soviet conscript wrote: software version runs fine. as a matter of fact Ive gotten just about every other accelerated version to work with the exception of CIF though that's probably due to using the wrong drivers and I did kind of got it working. You did consider the information on http://gona. …

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Re: Win95 vs. Win98 for pre-Pentium 200 games

Posted on 2014-09-08, 08:52

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think it's BS WinME was tossed so quickly. Windows ME is proof that you can make a next generation OS without removing legacy compatibility, and if it was bad for people (for whatever reason) there was still room to make something similar and better. When microsoft added legacy Microsoft GM Synth …

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Re: Apparently GOG is in the movie distribution biz now

Posted on 2014-09-05, 08:30

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by idspispopd

in Milliways

in Milliways

I actually think it's a REALLY stupid idea for companies to rebrand themselves and their image just because their focus shifts. Brand loyalty is built upon a foundation which starts with a name. If you change the name, you change the foundation and alienate people in the process. Borland, anyone? …

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Re: Socket 370 - VIA Apollo Pro 133 vs Intel 440BX

Posted on 2014-09-05, 08:04

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

http://pclinks.xtreemhost.com/chipsets_pentium.htm some comparative data, including 440BX and VIA chipsets. Interesting for supported memory. I think most points have been made. It should be mentioned that there may be problems when using a Sound Blaster Live card with a VIA mainboard (both sound …

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