Re: Most reliable internal IDE and SCSI CDRW / DVDRW drives
Posted on 2021-10-17, 16:07
Yeah, I'd stay away from 40-50x drives. Noisy and unreliable. Generally I've had bad experience with late NEC, Asus and Sony drives.
GM patches for Gravis Ultrasound GF1?
Posted on 2021-10-16, 23:37
Has anyone managed to find alternative GM patches for GUS cards other than ProPatches/ProPatches Lite? Also, is there maybe an easy way to switch between patchsets other than creating two separate ULTRADIRs?
Re: PC tower cases by year
Posted on 2021-10-16, 22:49
I recently got this pretty cool tower case (ca. 1994, judging by the press clippings in the first post): https://i.imgur.com/4M9FVQWm.jpg Thing is, it has four activity indicators https://i.imgur.com/nhuFaMdm.jpg Three are usual: Power LED, Turbo LED and HDD LED. However, the remaining one is called …
Re: Turtle Beach Soundfonts ??? / WEMP player
Posted on 2021-10-16, 21:39
TB1 has mostly .wav files prepared to be used in wavefront synthesizers (loop points, etc) to view, edit and upload to the synth with Wave SE is the perfect tool. There are also some banks .WBF as well as .WSS (without wavs embedded) the wav files are loaded directly form the specified location The …
Re: Retro Rig Photo Thread
Posted on 2021-09-28, 14:27
How about an actual vintage system photo? This photo is of my first PC, taken in my college apartment sometime between September 1991 and August 1993. Interesting, thanks for sharing! What stands out to me is that you've upgraded to a fairly advanced sound solution (SB Pro 2 + GUS would …
Re: Retro Rig Photo Thread
Posted on 2021-09-24, 12:28
Here's my current work in progress https://i.imgur.com/4M9FVQWm.jpg I've finally found a nice case for my Pentium VLB, the current specs are: - Pentium 100; - Supermicro P54VL-PCI board that has no onboard I/O just like 486 VLB boards, but has 2 VLB slots, 3 ISA and 4 PCI; - 32MB of FPM RAM; - Ark …
Re: A new 95 Build.
Posted on 2021-09-21, 13:52
2-3 FPS isn't enough of a difference to justify the cost of VLB IMHO Pretty much nothing about VLB (or late 486 in general) justifies their price, it's about the cool factor :) But I think a lot of people (myself included) try to squeeze everything they can out of 486, defying any kind of logic! …
Re: A new 95 Build.
Posted on 2021-09-20, 12:41
VLB is 100 times more interesting then PCI but obviously the Diamond Stealth is the better card. If it was a pure dos rig I'd maybe recommend the Trident VLB where you may not really notice the difference outside benchmarks. But as your going to install Win95 I'd go with the Diamond. I think on PCI …
Does the fanless Pentium II Overdrive require active cooling?
Posted on 2021-09-17, 23:49
Hi, all I recently got myself an OEM version of Pentium II Overdrive that only comes with a heatsink. I think it's intended for servers that probably have some built-in case fans, but I'm still wondering whether I need to add some kind of active cooling. Maybe someone has experience with a chip like …
Re: Did you miss any significant period of computer development?
Posted on 2021-09-14, 09:38
how about you - were there any periods in PC development that you missed out on during a lull in interest for example? Have you wanted to close the gap by getting things from that era now? I'd imagine that applies to about half of the people in the hobby :) As for me: I've started gaming in 1996, …
Re: Gravis Ultrasound Ram
Posted on 2021-09-10, 08:42
Uhhh just one other thing , I'm planning on using it alongside a sound blaster pro 2.0 , what jumper settings should I give it so it wont conflict? the sbbpro is using the default A220 I5 D1 T3 I'm generally just using 240/7/7/7/7 for all my GUS cards. Using identical IRQ and DMA sets the card in …
Re: Gravis Ultrasound Ram
Posted on 2021-09-10, 08:41
That's actually an interesting topic. I've been using EDO SOJ chips on pretty much everything in the last five years, including various S3 cards, Primax Soundstorm Wave and GUS MAX, a bunch of VLB cards from Ark Logic, Matrox, Cirrus Logic, etc. So yeah, I can confirm that GUS cards don't have …
Re: Upgrade Path for P54VL-PCI Socket 5 Board
Posted on 2021-09-09, 18:05
So those that could use an AT board looked at the price of a newer 486 board plus POD and the price of a socket 5 board plus P100 and said, NO! to the POD, for which price in the UK I think you could get a P120 plus motherboard even. I think low price motherboard plus P75 was even half that of …
Re: Upgrade Path for P54VL-PCI Socket 5 Board
Posted on 2021-09-09, 16:10
In theory the best upgrade option for these boards is an Evergreen spectra-400, with a K6-III+ instead of K6-2. I've bought one specifically for my VLB boards. The problem is, it requires a BIOS upgrade or at least a BIOS that doesn't prevent the system from booting with a non-Pentium chip. The kit …
Re: Upgrade Path for P54VL-PCI Socket 5 Board
Posted on 2021-09-09, 16:03
Thanks for the reply and for your insight! I really do appreciate your thoughts on this! Thank you so much for the manual — this is simply an insane find! At a quick glance it doesn't offer much insight into those jumpers (I was hoping there's a VLB speed divider somewhere), but I'm sure it will …
Re: Best alternative to CRT for 486/Pentium MMX PC?
Posted on 2021-09-08, 07:43
OLED displays. I mean, you won’t get 4:3, but it will be the next best thing in terms of colors
Re: Upgrade Path for P54VL-PCI Socket 5 Board
Posted on 2021-09-07, 20:53
The fact that Supermicro uses a "mixed" chipset would explain why PC Magazine says this in their review Filename Screenshot 2021-09-07 at 23.50.33.png File size 163.73 KiB Views 1541 views Note that almost all Pentium VLB boards in their review are Supermicro P54VL-PCI.
Re: Upgrade Path for P54VL-PCI Socket 5 Board
Posted on 2021-09-07, 20:46
I also own a P54VL-PCI and an Opti 546/547 board, Biostar MB-1500PCT and I've spend almost a year restoring a tinkering with them. I absolutely love this obscure hardware, and I'm very slowly working towards a finished build and a proper comparison with Intel Zappa (basically the board that killed …
Re: Can't get a PCI network card to work on a PCI+VLB motherboard
Posted on 2021-09-05, 19:58
pyrogx wrote on 2021-09-05, 15:26: Just set the "#INTA Connect IRQ" for Slot 1 to IRQ 11 and put your NIC into Slot1. Am I doing this right? First PCI slot turned out to be Slot 3 according to the motherboard markings. Windows still says the adapter isn't working.
Re: Can't get a PCI network card to work on a PCI+VLB motherboard
Posted on 2021-09-05, 15:24
Sooo, if I need to assign my NIC in Slot 1 to IRQ11 (and it only needs one IRQ), do I set all the lines for Slot 1 to 11 or what? Sorry, can’t really wrap my head around this
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