Re: Has the age of the "Vista" retro PC arrived?

Posted on 2017-06-08, 14:15

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Get people together for whom vista is endurably nostalgic, and you'll have a community in which the idea of a retro vista feels at home. But whether that perception can 'arrive' to vogons and at what rate seems to depend in large part on whether the temporal aspect of retro catches up even semi- …

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Re: VOGONS Benchmark archive?

Posted on 2017-06-08, 02:48

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I just ran into that one while searching for a PCPBench download, and it seems to be a rather ugly hack of PCPBench. The engine was originally programmed for the game Strike Base . Seems to only use strike base's polygon engine, though. Makes you wonder why the guy dumped the voxels, especially …

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2017-06-04, 21:05

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

strygo wrote: This is with an XPC-4? (Sorry, it wasn't clear to me in your reply.) Nope. I recommend a capture card that has an API you can program so you can write your own scaler and adapt it as needed.

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2017-06-04, 17:34

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Delta force https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zujK14VL2uE Tomb raider https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps85KIx2uKw Tomb raider at 320x200 has thin horizontal artefacts, delta force at 320x240 does not that I notice. Whether this is an issue with the capture card or the voodoo is unknown. Both videos at …

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Re: PCEm. Another PC emulator.

Posted on 2017-06-02, 21:16

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by vvbee

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9f9r0ah7VA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz0vgv9wShE Surely to do with timers.

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Re: Repairing a Texas Instruments TravelMate 4000M laptop?

Posted on 2017-05-31, 17:42

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Replaced the last cap, but same deal. Given all, can conclude that assumptions b and c were likely correct, c more so, while assumption d was likely not. Good effort, but whoever broke it did a better job.

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Re: Repairing a Texas Instruments TravelMate 4000M laptop?

Posted on 2017-05-31, 04:17

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Replaced the resistor and three of the four oscon capacitors. Was hoping to get away with not replacing the fourth capacitor furthest from the burnt resistor, but no. Still no apparent boot besides lights on, still no image on screen, and still no response to keyboard input. On the other hand, the …

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Re: Repairing a Texas Instruments TravelMate 4000M laptop?

Posted on 2017-05-21, 17:36

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On further inspection, the pcb may be salvageable. Some darkening on the backside, but the surface is good. Whether the pcb is charred underneath I don't know, but given that nothing sparked or appeared to short while I had it running, I assume it's ok. For safety, scraped off pcb charring on the …

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Re: Repairing a Texas Instruments TravelMate 4000M laptop?

Posted on 2017-05-20, 22:11

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Resistor still within its 5% spec but physically done. Removal of some components in the area shows the pcb is a charred write-off. Unless someone in europe is looking to sell a full working power board, #9792511-0001, this one's for parts.

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Re: Repairing a Texas Instruments TravelMate 4000M laptop?

Posted on 2017-05-20, 02:08

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, maybe the fact that there are scorch marks on the power input board has something to do with the thing not working, huh? [images] Images from the back and front of the board, centered on the same area. Looking at the side of the oscon capacitor on the left (the red smudge on top of it is …

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Re: Repairing a Texas Instruments TravelMate 4000M laptop?

Posted on 2017-05-18, 20:46

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Video of the laptop trying to boot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hWaYjWiLD4 (one of the capacitors has a smudge on it - that's not leakage) The red light blinking is the battery indicator. No battery is connected. The manual says an amber light here means the battery is charging, while a red …

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Repairing a Texas Instruments TravelMate 4000M laptop?

Posted on 2017-05-17, 18:00

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Have a TI TravelMate 4000M laptop (486) that doesn't work, and am looking to either fix it or strip it for parts. Was sold as non-working, and got lots of cosmetic damage in shipping. What it does on power-on is it illuminates the power light and the keyboard leds, and spins the hard drive. No image …

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Re: Replacing the GPU cooler on a GeForce 256 - how does this thing come off?

Posted on 2017-05-16, 17:00

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I have some doubts whether the hairdryer with "could barely touch it" (<60 c?) got it notably warmer than what the gpu pushes in normal operation. My dryer can barely get a temp sensor to 80 c if I stick it inside the nozzle and wait around, so it for sure takes some time and effort to heat things …

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Re: Replacing the GPU cooler on a GeForce 256 - how does this thing come off?

Posted on 2017-05-15, 15:05

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

There's no epoxy there unless someone went to town on it. Just warm it up and take it off as the first guy said, though I wouldn't lever it.

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2017-05-15, 05:01

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Use this utility to test the visionrgb's capture fps with whatever resolution it's tuned to: http://personal.inet.fi/muoti/eimuoti/vrgb_fps/vrgb_fps.zip Run with 'vrgb_fps.exe 0 32' from the command line (give the last argument as 16 for 16-bit color rather than 24-bit). Tells you the number of …

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2017-05-15, 03:21

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The manual probably says lots. The card pushes the 70 fps of vga 13h and 60 fps at 640x480, but at higher res you probably take a hit. I run it in odd ways that limit performance for other reasons, so can't say for sure. I use a custom program - what's wrong with the card's own viewer's format? It …

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Re: VGA Capture Thread

Posted on 2017-05-11, 21:17

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by vvbee

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Bios capture with the visionrgb-pro2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x033S3s8qQA The regular pro's going for $30 shipped on ebay for yanks. I still see blurry capture in new videos on youtube - doesn't need to be, not for $$ anyway, unless you're outside the us or do obscure stuff. I wouldn't get …

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Re: DOS path tracing CPU benchmark

Posted on 2017-05-06, 17:12

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by vvbee

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

I originally wrote the path tracer core here for the game boy advance (it was slow), so the 386 is in a sense still pulling in screaming figures. Even if you converted to fixed-point, though, I'm not sure how capable e.g. a 386 would be for path tracing, in particular. The path tracer here, as …

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PATH_BENCH - DOS path tracing CPU benchmark

Posted on 2017-05-05, 23:27

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by vvbee

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

PATH_BENCH is a simple path tracing benchmark for DOS. Renders a basic scene and outputs the time it took to do so. Requires a math copro and can be quite slow on pre-pentiums. What's path tracing? Like ray tracing, but better and more computationally demanding. Heavy on floating-point math. Look it …

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Re: PCEm. Another PC emulator.

Posted on 2017-05-04, 05:47

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by vvbee

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Some further observations along those above. - d3d doesn't always repaint after portions of the pcem window have gotten clipped by other windows, need to either give mouse lock or toggle to ddraw and back to get the screen to clear - mouse lock doesn't prevent certain ubuntu (mate) hotkey …

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