Re: Guillemot Maxi Sound 64 Home Studio

Posted on 2020-05-31, 15:06

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

And the lesson is: double check. There are of course two jumpers that need to be set, but my card was missing one of the shorts, so once a new was installed, it seems to detect the installed SIMM.

---

Re: Guillemot Maxi Sound 64 Home Studio

Posted on 2020-05-31, 12:05

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Yes, I made sure to set the jumper in the appropriate position for each of the RAM modules I tested.

---

Guillemot Maxi Sound 64 Home Studio

Posted on 2020-05-31, 11:29

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I recently got a Maxi Sound 64 Home Studio sound card. On paper it seems like almost a little brother to the mighty Terratec EWS64, using the same SAM9407 chip. I've been trying to add a SIMM module to it, but regardless of which module I am trying (FPM, EDO, 4MB, 16MB) it doesn't seem to register …

---

Cache and "Alter ram"

Posted on 2020-03-05, 16:55

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a SiS471 based 486 motherboard. This has the regular cache setup with 8 sockets for cache + 1 socket for tag ram. There is also a marking on the PCB for another socket, and according to the manual, the board requires an Alter RAM for write-back caching. But going by the fact that the BIOS …

---

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

Posted on 2020-03-03, 08:11

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This weekend I replaced the keyboard controller on a 486 motherboard. When I bought it, years ago, I found that it would always stop POST because of keyboard error. I've basically just put it aside and not fixed it until now. Because I don't have a proper desolder station, it took quite some time to …

---

RamDAC upgrade

Posted on 2020-01-29, 10:19

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Right, this may not be something that is commonly done, but I thought I'd ask anyway. I own a VLB ELSA Winner 1000PRO (S3 Vision 864), which comes with a STG1700 RamDAC. I've noticed that the AT&T PrecisionDAC (ATT21C498) is pin-compatible with the STG1700. I know that the AT&T was commonly used by …

---

Re: "Fat Face" Compaq Presario: why?

Posted on 2019-10-31, 13:46

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

My guess would be that they just wanted to make it a bit more "interesting" than just a plain rectangular box. They failed.

---

Re: Faster - SCSI or IDE-CF

Posted on 2019-10-17, 15:06

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

most of my dead drives have either been DOA or died in their first few months of use or due to improper handling, so I agree that natural end of life is probably not the vast majority ^^ Somebody breaking a drive by improper handling is a competely different thing. This is something the …

---

Re: Faster - SCSI or IDE-CF

Posted on 2019-10-17, 15:01

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I understand mechanical wear, but my contention is that this: The vast majority of drive don't die because of manufacturing faults, but rather as a result of natural end of life. is simply untrue. I know all mechanical devices will someday wear out, but in my experience that's not what kills the …

---

Re: Faster - SCSI or IDE-CF

Posted on 2019-10-17, 14:10

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for the information.... This is an old 386 DX-33. The SCSI Card is an Adaptec AHA-1522A currently. I think I am going to switch over to CF Card just for peace of mind that the drive wont suddenly crash as the drive is years old.... my argument would be: "if the drive has survived this long …

---

Re: Faster - SCSI or IDE-CF

Posted on 2019-10-10, 13:20

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The IDE interface, especially pre-udma, is a limiting factor for cf-ide solutions. It will generally be very fast for typical system/boot drives though, since you almost never reach peak transfer rates for those use cases. Lots of random access of smaller files is really quick with cf cards. But …

---

Re: Advice about retro speakers

Posted on 2019-09-25, 11:12

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I think one of the major changes that has happened is in the choice of colours used. If my Gigaworks T20's were beige, you could almost have believed they were retro. Their form factor is roughly similar to my Rolands. Also, if you can find a pair of Roland MA-12's, they supposedly sound really good …

---

Re: Advice about retro speakers

Posted on 2019-09-25, 10:50

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The big questions is this: What kind of sound do you want? If you're after having the best possible sound, then you should avoid pretty much any genuine retro speakers. I have a pair of Roland MA-7 for my 486, and although they are better than probably 90% of the "beige 90's pc speakers" out there, …

---

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

Posted on 2019-05-25, 15:04

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Added a PS/2 port to my Pentium 233mmx. So nice not having to use serial port, seeing as my systems are hooked up to a kvm which uses PS/2.

---

Re: Your (feasible) dream retro PC(s).. do you have them?

Posted on 2019-05-25, 15:02

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In all honesty, aside from a couple of individual parts to perfect my builds, I probably have more systems than I need. In fact, I am thinking of trying to sell a couple of systems... We shall see. My current lineup is as follows: Acer 1120SX - 386SX 20MHz, 8MB ram, 1.6GB HD, vga card, ESS1868 sound …

---

Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2019-05-16, 18:00

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think every Amiga user feels that the Amiga is the computer that should have won the home/personal computer wars of the 80s and early 90s, not IBM clones. Truthfully, I'm more of a PC person than an Amiga person, but despite that, I never saw the point of the PC until the days when 486 was the …

---

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

Posted on 2019-05-16, 15:32

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today, I've rearranged my retro PC collection. I've moved the 486 tower to the floor, to make space for my Commodore 1084S-D2 monitor and my Amiga 1200. I've always wanted an A1200, but the prices have gone up so much that I'd basically given up on getting one. Well, yesterday, a client of mine (I …

---

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

Posted on 2019-05-08, 18:36

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Been playing around a bit with the system I put together yesterday. I finally got a nice AOpen HX45 case for my AOpen AP53 motherboard based Pentium mmx system. This system turned out annoying nice. It covers a larger time period than my 486, which means that if I am totally honest with myself, it …

---

Re: Video card newbie here, have Pentium II machine, AGP 2x

Posted on 2019-03-27, 13:24

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I ended up going with a Quadro2 MXR card. Initial testing looks promising - the slowdown I was experiencing on Duke Nuke'em 3d and Commander Keen 4 on the GeForce FX5200 is gone completely. Now I can play Duke 3d in full 800x600 resolution mode without any slowdown and Keen plays great as well. …

---

Re: Best "modern" GFX card and driver for K6 system

Posted on 2019-03-27, 13:20

by

by LunarG

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Your Runnings windows 2000? Give XP a try it could be a driver combo problem. This is starting to sound like a very odd system. A K6-2 gaming in Windows XP or even 2000 seems like an experiment to find the absolute limits of what is functional on socket 7, rather than a usable gaming system. Unless …

---