Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2013-03-19, 14:30

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

how much are MT-32s going for these days? Well I'm in the UK, this one was £32 from eBay. If you're going to the US why not get a CM-32L, they seem to be a lot easier to find over there.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2013-03-19, 11:06

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

An MT32 sans box/manual/psu. This one is a little beaten up but is still going strong 😀 I'm using an old printer PSU to power it.

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Re: Bought these games today

Posted on 2013-03-19, 11:02

by

by bjt

in Milliways

in Milliways

More new games 😀 My style is to bid for the 99p jewel cased only games most of the time. Boxed seems to command quite a premium and I just want to play the games... Any game with Shatner's floating head on the cover is worth 99p I'd say 😉

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Re: Back from the garage (Pentium MMX build)

Posted on 2013-03-19, 10:55

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

The Eizo monitor has started crapping out, unfortunately. Reading around, the flyback transformer often goes on these. Right now it'll last about half an hour from cold until it starts spontaneously turning itself off, with a yellow blinking status light. It's a shame as it's just about the right …

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Re: Bought these games today

Posted on 2013-03-08, 16:59

by

by bjt

in Milliways

in Milliways

Yeah, it's a budget re-release of the DOS collector's edition.

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Re: Back from the garage (Pentium MMX build)

Posted on 2013-03-08, 16:56

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I guess if they use the BLASTER env variable, or look for a Sound Blaster at the standard 220h address, they'll work on the SB16. Otherwise, who knows 😀

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Re: Back from the garage (Pentium MMX build)

Posted on 2013-03-08, 10:28

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I received a replacement for the first, faulty YMF card yesterday. It's a SB16 CT2940 with a Yamaha OPL-L chip. This card has the Vibra Pro ASIC and apparently is pretty good noise-wise. http://imageshack.us/a/img138/4197/dsc02041e.th.jpg The Vibra 16S is good too, but it has this issue where after …

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Re: Bought these games today

Posted on 2013-03-08, 10:17

by

by bjt

in Milliways

in Milliways

Bought these over the last week. Someone needs to take away my eBay account 😉 I played X-Wing loads back in the day but it's good to have a CD copy. The others I missed the first time round. The music in TFX is pretty awesome!

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Re: which VGA card for a Pentium 233 MMX?

Posted on 2013-03-07, 10:15

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If it's for Windows only, a Matrox Millennium/Mystique would be an option. They have great image quality and good speed.

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Re: Back from the garage (Pentium MMX build)

Posted on 2013-03-06, 14:00

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Really only for compatibility reasons... the YMF is only SB Pro compatible (8-bit). Whether this actually makes any difference is another question 😀

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Re: no sound with ensoniq soundscape 2000

Posted on 2013-03-06, 09:57

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had the same problem with a Yamaha card I bought recently. I believe it's a symptom of the on-card amplifier having failed. If you're handy with a soldering iron you could try fixing it yourself, the amp is probably an off-the-shelf part.

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Re: Back from the garage (Pentium MMX build)

Posted on 2013-03-06, 09:47

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Took a little while, but I got the XR385 working with the YMF card. http://imageshack.us/a/img515/9844/dsc02038ys.th.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img541/8866/dsc02039li.th.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img716/1017/dsc02040uy.th.jpg I'm sure there's an easier way to build a rigid adapter like this (IDC …

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Re: Gateway 2000 4DX2-66V

Posted on 2013-02-28, 10:16

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Pics of inside the case please 😀 Sounds cool though. What are your plans for keyboard/mouse/display? I always think these old PCs deserve some retro input devices and a CRT.

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Re: My mobile DOS system, IBM ThinkPad 600E

Posted on 2013-02-28, 09:56

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Big Thinkpad fan here too. Had a 240 which eventually died and now an X24 which has been going strong for 10 years now. It's our free-for-all living room laptop and gets shoved under the sofa when not in use. The old Travelstar hard drives do get very noisy. A fluid bearing Travelstar (40GN onwards) …

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Re: Back from the garage (Pentium MMX build)

Posted on 2013-02-27, 09:59

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

The BIOS setting is there to reserve IRQs for legacy (non-PNP) ISA cards only. It is a way to tell the BIOS not to use an IRQ for PCI or ISAPnP cards, because it is already occupied by a non-PnP card. Unfortunately, if I don't reserve IRQ 9, the BIOS gives it to either USB or the video card. PnP …

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Re: Back from the garage (Pentium MMX build)

Posted on 2013-02-26, 11:03

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Might be worth a try to run it with my OPL3SA.INI. Thanks gerwin. Seems to be toast though. I've now got an Audician 32 which works great, although I need to make an offset bracket to mount the DB... The YMF-718 seems to work quite well for this MPU-only application. SB16 (Non-PnP): Base 220h, FM …

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Re: Back from the garage (Pentium MMX build)

Posted on 2013-02-21, 22:53

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

This card has seperate line & speaker outs so no jumper. Very very quiet in both and I can't get anything through the wavetable header either, so back to the drawing board. Here's the speedsys results:

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Re: Pentium Restoration Project

Posted on 2013-02-21, 14:14

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Nice build! I think getting a new PSU was a good idea, most original AT PSUs are over 10 years old now. The power requirements of these machines are relatively modest so even the cheapest modern PSU should be fine.

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Re: Back from the garage (Pentium MMX build)

Posted on 2013-02-21, 11:35

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Pretty nifty, very fine card then. Now the question is why they couldn't make all of them like that... Unfortunately it looks like the card may be faulty. At first I couldn't get any output at all, but it seems it's actually just extremely quiet. I have to turn my speakers up to full to hear …

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Re: Back from the garage (Pentium MMX build)

Posted on 2013-02-20, 14:46

by

by bjt

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I found (modern) laptop harddrives to be the cause of annoying sound precaching slowdowns, and avoid them since. Might be due to their power saving functions e.g. drive unloading heads or spinning down? On this one I wasn't able to disable power saving completely, but I could turn it down to its …

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