Re: Orpheus Soundcard: a new DOS soundcard with SPDIF/OPL3/MPU support

Posted on 2019-12-13, 10:40

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

jmarsh wrote: Not true since not every card uses DMA for sampling (e.g. Ultrasound). No shit Sherlock. We were talking about single cycle DMA transfers on SB compatible cards.

---

Re: Orpheus Soundcard: a new DOS soundcard with SPDIF/OPL3/MPU support

Posted on 2019-12-13, 10:16

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

my DOTT makes the same noises, on the SB Pro and the AWE64 (both of which are known to be free of the single cycle DMA bug) No card is 'free' of the single cycle DMA click. And it's not really a bug. It's just a design flaw. That is, you cannot start a new DMA buffer fast enough, so you always get …

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-13, 09:52

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What Amiga could do with video required tens of thousands of investment with PC; this is why TV broadcasting studios were still using Amiga for video editing all the way into the late 90s (maybe in some cases even into the 2000s) until digital video, digital broadcasting and high definition became …

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-12, 22:49

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

But for non-linear editing, you needed lots and lots of CPU power, and in that era it usually meant RISC. You needed processing power, which is not necessarily CPU power. The VideoToaster was what you needed (the second-generation Flyer supported nonlinear editing), and it was exclusively available …

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-12, 18:29

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's brostenen who I can't agree with: Not sure what he refers to specifically, but he does have a point. The Amiga came with a pre-emptive multitasking OS with a GUI since 1985. It also had various advanced features for its time, such as using hardware abstraction and dynamic link libraries. This …

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-12, 18:14

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sure, I know about offloading stuff from the CPU to specialized chips. But in Amiga, obviously it wasn't enough for efficient work with real-world applications. I don't think you can make that argument, really. When the Amiga was originally introduced in 1985, it certainly outperformed Macs and …

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-12, 17:55

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

OK, but was that useful for anything other than games/demos? As I say, Commodore used the blitter to encode/decode MFM, so every floppy access uses the blitter. Clearly that is 'useful'. And yea, memset() and memcpy() could also be done with the blitter instead of the CPU, which any program will …

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-12, 11:29

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Grzyb is right - Voodoo is just for the games. I think you're turning the argument around though. It was not about VooDoo, it was about the Amiga's custom hardware. And in the case of the Amiga, the argument certainly holds: the custom chips were not *only* used for graphics. The blitter was also …

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-12, 10:49

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Interesting. Did Voodoo use any kind of texture compression? If not, I guess the raw screen buffer would have to fit in Voodoo's memory? What kind of resolution limitations did that imply, I wonder.. Could it handle DVD quality video? It's called VooDooMovie, and can be found here: http://falconfly …

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-12, 08:30

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nope. I used it on the Orchid V1, that I had around 2000. I used it in an K6-II-500/Gigabyte-GA5AX setup. I have it on a CD somewere. I might know what you mean. Back in those days, especially scaling video to fullscreen was very expensive without hardware support. I've seen a video player that …

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-10, 13:44

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

brostenen wrote: Every single hardcore fanboy of each platform, refused to talk further, once I stated what the "enemy's" platform were better at. I know how you feel. Nothing has changed since 😀

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-10, 12:57

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That.. is not in conflict with what I said. Does it have to be? 16MHz and earlier 286s are good for games that Amiga are better at Yes, but as I said, that doesn't mean that there weren't millions of people playing these games on 286 machines. Many of them have probably never even seen the Amiga …

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-10, 12:45

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in the US maybe, but Amiga was huge in europe during that time. I should know, I am in Europe, and was/am involved in the (Amiga) demoscene. But I'm being realistic: while Amiga was 'big' in Europe (mostly North-Western Europe actually, the UK, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland... …

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-10, 12:13

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, but those are exactly the kind of games that had the superior versions in terms of graphics and sound on Amiga anyway. They did, but still PCs were very popular in those days for home users. Partly because they could run business applications (WordPerfect, dBase, Lotus 1-2-3, Windows 3.x etc) …

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-10, 11:45

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For example, the 286 had things like virtual memory, an MMU and privileged instructions (ring scheme). In that era it wasn't relevant for games though. We were still using DOS, and there was no use of virtual memory, protection levels or anything. 1 MB was plenty of memory for games of the day. …

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-10, 10:42

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think 16-20 MHz 286 were the 'golden era' for 286 machines. The earlier 286 machines were generally expensive high-end ones. In the early 90s, cheap 286 clones started to replace turbo XTs as the low to mainstream PC for the average consumer, and the 16 and 20 MHz models were most common. They …

---

Re: To end the AMD v. Intel debate.

Posted on 2019-12-10, 10:33

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

Meanwhile... https://www.techspot.com/review/1955-ryzen-3950x-vs-core-i9-9900ks-gaming/ Yea, that shows what was discussed above... Apparently I/O is better on the Intel platform, in this case much lower memory latency by default (their chart says "higher is better", but it shows latencies in ns, …

---

Re: Any of you guys pushing a 430FX?

Posted on 2019-12-09, 08:40

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I got a Pentium 150 with 430FX. Don't need USB. EZ-BIOS fixes my HDD issues. I vaguely recall there's some kind of DMA when you install the Windows drivers. Used to run NT4 on it. HDD performance was never an issue anyway. Now, AGP I would have liked... but hey, it is what it is.

---

Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-08, 22:13

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

But staying generic, the fact it has a 32 Mhz oscillator doesn't seem a contradiction to me for a possible "perfect system asic replica". The Commodore 64 had an oscillator @ around 14.3MHz this didn't mean the system "as a whole" was running @ that frequency obviously. I didn't say it has a 32 MHz …

---

Re: To end the AMD v. Intel debate.

Posted on 2019-12-08, 19:42

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

Maybe I am misunderstanding your point. Maxwell was 28nm, while pascal was 16nm TSMC and then later 14nm Samsung. Maxwell was the second 28 nm architecture. That's what I meant. Kepler was already 28 nm (as well as some late Fermi models), and Maxwell was supposed to be 16 nm. There is always a …

---