Re: Is 486 DX the ultimate DOS machine?

Posted on 2019-09-13, 02:43

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

've seen video of Descent running rather well, though not perfectly, even on a DX2 66. You're kidding? It looks extremely choppy even on level 1. It would be completely unplayable later and on higher difficulty. Hexen also feels barely playable. Considering it's on a DX2 66, not a DX4 100, which we …

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Re: Is 486 DX the ultimate DOS machine?

Posted on 2019-09-13, 00:01

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

486 33Mhz is good for at least 95% of dos games. I would say it's completely opposite. Too fast for the 286-386 era timer sensitive games and too slow for anything past 1992. At least with my 33Mhz 486 if I turn off turbo, I have 386 speed and if I disable L1 cache too, I have a 10Mhz 286 speed and …

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Re: Is 486 DX the ultimate DOS machine?

Posted on 2019-09-12, 22:47

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

maybe playing Doom and Descent and so on. Descent is far from comfortable on DX4. Vanilla Doom 1-2 or Heretic runs fine, but mods or especially big and busy maps are completely different story. 486 33Mhz is good for at least 95% of dos games. I would say it's completely opposite. Too fast for the …

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Re: Is 486 DX the ultimate DOS machine?

Posted on 2019-09-12, 20:27

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

it struck me how some people seem to be suggesting here that there is no point in going with a DX4 100 486 system when you could just get a Pentium system instead Pentium MMX is just very flexible* and more or less enough to run any DOS game. Not to mention integrated PS/2 and USB support. It's …

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Re: Is 486 DX the ultimate DOS machine?

Posted on 2019-09-12, 07:02

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's the ultimate DOS machine but its far from the ultimate DOS gaming machine. The thing I always question is how many games that are speed sensitive are really worth playing on real hardware. People always talk about this point but its probably closer to a couple games and the rest no one cares …

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Re: Is 486 DX the ultimate DOS machine?

Posted on 2019-09-12, 06:41

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

DX4 is not Pre-Pentium thats where your argument falls apart. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not saying that the DX4 is pre Pentium; I'm saying that it doesn't matter that it's not. It's all just arbitrary thresholds we set for ourselves based on our own goals and criteria. Its not …

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Re: Is 486 DX the ultimate DOS machine?

Posted on 2019-09-12, 06:15

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

appiah4 wrote: DX4 is not Pre-Pentium thats where your argument falls apart. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not saying that the DX4 is pre Pentium; I'm saying that it doesn't matter that it's not. It's all just arbitrary thresholds we set for ourselves based on our own goals and criteria.

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Re: Is 486 DX the ultimate DOS machine?

Posted on 2019-09-11, 22:49

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Having read this thread recently, it struck me how some people seem to be suggesting here that there is no point in going with a DX4 100 486 system when you could just get a Pentium system instead, but then the same applies to Pentium II, VLB or PCI, and so on down the line. Point being, it's a …

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Re: S3 Vision 864 card questions

Posted on 2019-09-10, 17:37

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Miro Crystal 20SD VLB – you're right, it is very similar to that. Likely a variant of it then. Designed in Germany, apparently. Pretty cool. I got my Sound Blaster 16 CT2230 from France, so it's a global effort building this 486 computer. 😁 Thanks for mentioning it.

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Re: S3 Vision 864 card questions

Posted on 2019-09-10, 02:03

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Good to hear that it should be more than capable enough for my uses of it and I look forward to testing it out and using it. I'll report back if I find out anything more about it and maybe provide some benchmarks run on it, or I might start a build log and link to it here. Thanks for the responses …

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Re: S3 Vision 864 Purchase – Is this really a 2MB video card?

Posted on 2019-09-09, 21:46

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Well, with that sorted (thanks again), it's curious that I'm not seeing much of any make and model branding on this card beyond the chips themselves. You guys have any ideas who made this card or whether or not it's an OEM component and if it is what machine it might have been used in? Just curious. …

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Re: S3 Vision 864 Purchase – Is this really a 2MB video card?

Posted on 2019-09-08, 23:15

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

cyclone3d wrote: It is indeed a 2MB card. The socketed RAM chips are 256kb x 16, so each chip is 512kB Oh good. Thanks! Seems I was getting my bits and bytes mixed up, for starters... 😊 Cheers.

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S3 Vision 864 card questions

Posted on 2019-09-08, 22:45

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I ordered this just yesterday from eBay, but on closer inspection, it looks like the two expansion memory chips are 256KB each, or maybe I'm not interpreting them correctly. eBay Listing Link → https://www.ebay.com/itm/2MB-Vintage-S3-Vision864-86C864-P-VLB-vesa-local-bus-video-graphics-card-w-AT-T-/ …

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Re: New DreamBlaster S2 !

Posted on 2019-04-05, 06:17

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I bumped into this new S2 demo on youtube today : It shows S2 on a soundblaster 16 https://youtu.be/cDm8bDvxclc The video also briefly shows the jumper settings on SB16 (FYI) : jmpsettings.png Nice. I have that same SB16 model with some minor variation differences. Hoping to pick up the S2 for it …

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

Posted on 2017-05-01, 15:41

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Floppy disk restoration... Yes, I can now tell the number of bad sectors on a disk and where they are by the sound of a floppy being formatted. 😵

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Re: If you were to build one system to do it all....

Posted on 2017-05-01, 14:30

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a bunch of half assembled systems and a few parts going back to 8086 CPUs. My three main era specific computers I'm working on and use are a 486 EISA/VLB 128MB RAM MS-DOS 6.22 Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (early to mid '90s), Pentium 4 PCI/AGP 8x 2GB RAM Windows XP Pro 32bit (early to mid …

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Re: Where to find old cases?

Posted on 2017-04-18, 22:57

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd love an internal PCIe to floppy, IDE, SCSI, etc. adapter card for my newer computer... :depressed: At least I'll be able to use floppies and such on my new old 486 computer. But I digress. Carry on. Oh yeah, and an old IBM horizontal desktop style case would be pretty sweet too. And I'm …

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Re: New/unused older hard drives; are they of particular value?

Posted on 2017-04-14, 01:36

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In older DOS 6.22 systems 2GB or so is the practical limit, though SCSI drives and controllers might need to be use depending on the motherboard. I'm looking for an older SCSI 2GB drive myself and there are several listed at over 100 USD on eBay used. I'm in no rush really though. Cheers.

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Re: SIMM Memory Speed

Posted on 2017-04-12, 18:37

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I actually went with that same seller too. http://www.ebay.com/itm/32MB-1pc-72-pin-FPM-non-parity-60ns-SIMM-8X32-60-MT16D832G-6-Gold-/391727145120?hash=item5b34c1e0a0:g:aCoAAOSw4A5YxkEa Or at least they look to be the same... Prices seem reasonable. Haven't gotten the memory yet though, so I can't …

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Re: What's a good way to replace barrel batteries?

Posted on 2017-04-12, 18:27

by

by WR3ND

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Check out this thread. → About removing and replacing barrel batteries.. I'll be going with a 3 cell pack of Eneloop AAAs myself, but there are several options to choose from.

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