Re: Matrox G200 PCI 8MB video card, quick test

Posted on 2017-03-27, 13:16

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In my experience, Matrox cards have never been stellar with actual performance. Come to think of it, I can't remember a time a current generation Matrox card was not outperformed by many cheap budget cards. However, they have always been the best money can buy for analog visual quality. In its day, …

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Re: Attic find - 286-16, that's right

Posted on 2017-03-27, 13:04

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, the good news on that card is that the major jumpers are self-documenting, other than JP1 and JP2 (which might have something to do with the gameport). Looks like there's two blocks for the COM port number and IRQ for the serial ports, and for the parallel port, and then primary or secondary …

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Re: VLB 486 memory weirdness

Posted on 2017-03-26, 01:47

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What board is it? It may be possible to chase down another BIOS, or someone may have one lying around.

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Re: Attic find - 286-16, that's right

Posted on 2017-03-25, 23:40

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It'd be a tossup between MS-DOS 3.3 (especially on an AT-era boxen), MS-DOS 5.0 (which is what my 286 PS/2 came with, back in the day) or PC-DOS 2000, for the features.

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Re: How you define a 586

Posted on 2017-03-24, 20:39

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, there were certainly the AMD and Cyrix 5x86 chips, which were not "586-class" at all. The Cyrix had some features in that vein, the AMD was basically just a 486DX5. I forgot about the WinChip - I thought that had all the Pentium instructions, but apparently not. Code compiled with -march=i586 …

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Re: Am I missing something?

Posted on 2017-03-24, 20:24

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Then it's *probably* farkled, yeah. Try the reflash, just in case, but it sounds toasty.

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Re: Floppy drive cleaners; what was the cleaning fluid?

Posted on 2017-03-24, 19:08

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The one bottle I have floating around from one was 96% ethanol; isopropanol should work just as well.

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Re: Am I missing something?

Posted on 2017-03-24, 19:06

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you boot into Linux (from a CD, say) and run lspci or lshw, can you see the RAID controller on the PCI bus?

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Re: How you define a 586

Posted on 2017-03-24, 17:05

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

From my perspective, it's any post-486 CPU with integrated FPU and which supports the new instructions specific to the Pentium, but which does not support P6-specific instructions. So, that includes the Pentium, Pentium MMX, K5, K6, K6-2, K6-III, WinChip C6 and a few others. After that but pre- …

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Re: Attic find - 286-16, that's right

Posted on 2017-03-24, 13:28

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It sure looks that way, but the page was last updated long ago, and I haven't actually tried to order one. It might be an old derelict, still floating around the net, or maybe they really are still for sale. I don't have anything with MCA slots currently, but if I ever come upon any, I'll try to …

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Re: Attic find - 286-16, that's right

Posted on 2017-03-24, 12:55

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

PROTIP: DON'T The level of commitment to get a ps/2 system going is quite high compared to average white-box stuff. Yeah - good luck finding an MCA Sound Blaster. Huh, they actually make one! https://www.chipchat.com/mca/soundcard/soundcard.html . Well, it's not an SB, and the page, while still …

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Re: Attic find - 286-16, that's right

Posted on 2017-03-24, 01:06

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I wanna say that just in the PS/2 line they offered ST-506, ESDI, IDE and SCSI, with a mix of ISA, EISA and MCA expansion. Can't recall if they ever offered one with VLB or PCI, though. My second computer ever was a PS/2 - almost has me wanting to find another one, now...

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Re: Attic find - 286-16, that's right

Posted on 2017-03-23, 14:05

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Is that an ESDI disk?

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Re: Any reason to keep old ISA or PCI modems?

Posted on 2017-03-23, 14:01

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There's no really good reason to hang onto them, no. Maybe the non-Winmodem ones, especially if you have a PCI non-Winmodem (which were rare). The only ones I keep anymore are external serial modems.

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Re: Modern sound cards for DOS?

Posted on 2017-03-22, 16:55

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Much to my surprise, my current Win10 gaming box - Skylake i3 - has headers on board for both parallel and serial. Most modern boards don't have parallel anymore, but a few still do. Also, there are PCIe parallel port cards, but I'm not sure if they use the standard hardware resources or not.

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Re: Modern sound cards for DOS?

Posted on 2017-03-22, 15:11

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The reason why is that "DOS sound card drivers" mostly don't exist (*). There are configuration utilities for plug and play cards, but those aren't exactly drivers. DOS doesn't have a sound API, unlike Windows, OS/2, Mac OS, Linux, etc, so DOS apps have to talk directly to the sound card - looked at …

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Re: Possible problem with an old AT Power Supply Unit?

Posted on 2017-03-21, 19:28

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some pictures of the PSU after I had opened it up. First picture is the PSU on its side - the switch is on the top. WP_20170321_001.jpg The two capacitors on the right hand side seems a bit bloated. Maybe I should start there and perhaps just replace all three of these. It appears they "bonded" …

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Re: Voodoo 3 3000 and pass thru cable?

Posted on 2017-03-21, 15:01

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I would say no, unless there are games you want to play that support GLIDE, but not DirectX or OpenGL.

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Re: should I keep ISA network cards?

Posted on 2017-03-21, 12:35

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Actually, that might be a token ring card. I can't quite tell if that middle port is a DE-15 or DB-9. Either way, it might well be interesting, hang onto it!

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Re: Next project - Gateway 2000 486DX2

Posted on 2017-03-21, 12:26

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I do have a spare AMD K6-2/475 floating around if you manage to find a Super Socket 7 board (and some AT examples did exist, I think, though the one I have is ATX). I've got a PCI Matrox G550 that I could spare too, but it's got a low-profile bracket, which is probably none too helpful.

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