Re: Need information about this terminal(?)

Posted on 2020-02-14, 16:16

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It looks like a BNC connector, maybe intended for video in/out. The large connector in the middle might be a big RS232 connector, DB-25, maybe. That DB-25 connector is obviously for the keyboard, as it has the matching connector. I'd assume the BNC connector is 10BASE Ethernet, or maybe ARCnet. …

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Re: Weird unknown Xebec ISA card?

Posted on 2020-02-14, 10:32

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I would have guessed SCSI-1 as well, but for that, the card is too dumb. SCSI requires some sort of CPU or micro-controller, but there are only 74LS chips and PALs on the card.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-02-14, 09:47

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Bought a couple of games for my NEC PC Engine. Now have to wait a month for them to arrive.

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Re: To find the right projects and retro computers AKA what should I build or focus on? (486,Pentium 1-4?)

Posted on 2020-02-14, 09:36

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh, Ultima 7. Love that game. Bought the German first release by Mindscape lately, boxed with all goodies, which is rare as hell. I played it back then in 1993 on a DX2-80 with 8 megs and it was still not smooth. Smartdrive with 2 megs cache helped a bit, but it really won't ever stop loading data …

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Re: Sound Blaster 16 Clones

Posted on 2020-02-14, 09:31

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I see. Maybe his ISA bus is clocked too high. Or the card relies on the 14 MHz clock from the mainboard, which might not be present on his mainboard. As for the ISA bus speed in the BIOS: depends on the BIOS. It's normally in the advanced section or chipset features and should be called "AT-BUS …

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Re: PowerBook G4 resurrect

Posted on 2020-02-14, 09:21

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not sure about the G4, but the G3 Powerbooks won't turn on if the PRAM battery is flat. You just need to disconnect it and it will power-on again. Could be the same with the G4.

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Re: Sound Blaster 16 Clones

Posted on 2020-02-14, 09:16

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The downclock is because I get garbled sound in FMVs on all ISA cards (not just this one) at any clock speeds higher than that. This is a very important hint, as it implies that your ISA bus is probably running too fast, which would explain your sound card issues. Make sure the ISA bus is not …

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Re: Any ISA sound card sound as good as the Gravis Ultrasound ?

Posted on 2020-02-14, 09:13

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The Gravis Ultrasound is rare and expensive for collectors. But I just want a good sounding ISA sound card that has the clarity of the GUS. You are comparing two completely different things. The GUS works like an Amiga: it has many separate audio channels mixed in hardware. No other sound card does …

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Re: Star trek a final unity

Posted on 2020-02-14, 09:04

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Planet-Dune wrote on 2020-02-13, 11:43: Using a SBLive which should have SB16 sound blaster support in dos. But only if you have the DOS support files installed and loaded. It won't work out-of-the-box, since it's a PCI card. Also, your mainboard must support DDMA.

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Re: What's the current status on decoding read-protected registered PAL chips?

Posted on 2020-02-13, 20:57

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

keenerb wrote on 2020-02-13, 20:27: I wonder if the guy who decoded the SOundblaster CMS upgrade PAL would be up for trying these? I'll have to find his thread. From what I know, these were never decoded but recreated from observations using a logic probe.

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Re: Converting an SB-AWE-64 into an AWE-64-Gold ?

Posted on 2020-02-13, 20:36

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

if you somewhat want to improve it, replace the jacks with gold plated ones One of many misconceptions of audiophiles. Gold is a very bad conductor. The only advantage of gold is that it does not oxidise, but since its electrical resistance is higher than silver or copper, it will not improve audio …

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Re: Sony 2x CDROM’s worth fixing ?

Posted on 2020-02-13, 18:05

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I simply used tantalum caps in the drives I fixed. Not pretty, but you don't see them anyway.

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Re: Cpu slow down to run "96" app

Posted on 2020-02-13, 18:00

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Why don't you just patch it using DOSBox and copy the patched version back to your P3? Runtime-error 202 is actually a stack overflow and could be due to a wrong or missing stacks statement in your config.sys.

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Re: Bunch of soundcards, anything particularly worthy of interest?

Posted on 2020-02-13, 16:46

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The ALS100 is quite nice, as it has a wavetable with dream soundfont on it. Can't see how large the ROM is, however. Could be only 512 kb. The Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro is also nice. It supports many sound standards incl. Covox and even has SCSI for a CD-ROM. The Sound Blaster Live! Value CT4670 is …

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Re: Bunch of GFX cards, anything particularly worthy of interest?

Posted on 2020-02-13, 16:41

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

What is "worthiness" for you? Usefulness for retro builds or money? As for the latter, none of these cards have much value.

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Re: Sony 2x CDROM’s worth fixing ?

Posted on 2020-02-13, 15:45

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Of course, especially since fixing is easy. I fixed half a dozen Sony drives so far, since they all have that issue.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-02-13, 13:55

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Xicor wrote on 2020-02-13, 12:46: I present to you my latest acquisition, the ultimately pointless Ageia PhysX. Don't really know why, but I'm attracted to this type of acceleration cards. I have one of those, too. Mine is from ASUS and PCI-E, however.

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Re: DreamBlaster S2P : Small form factor General MIDI on parallel port

Posted on 2020-02-13, 13:53

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Could you please elaborate on that? Last time I checked, SoftMPU does not support Windows 3.1/3.11... at all. Something to do with with EMM386 making this impossible, iirc. Not sure what you mean. SoftMPU needs EMM386 and Windows 3.1 even comes with it. I don't see where it should conflict. The …

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Re: Best imaging software for old operating systems

Posted on 2020-02-13, 12:12

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No, this won't give you an *exact* copy of your drive. You can only get an exact copy by using imaging software, not by doing a file-copy. Not to mention that your copy is physical as well - being just on a second hard disk - and nothing you can put on a NAS for later restore, for example.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-02-13, 10:59

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This time it apparently worked. 😀

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