Re: 2 very different computers to cover many years

Posted on 2021-01-20, 16:16

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Considering that the fm2 motherboard has a PCI slot, inserting an old PCI video card, could the system work under windows98 too? The bus is less relevant than if there are drivers for the card - and little things like I/O ((S)ATA), sound and network drivers. It has been done, but you can run into …

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Re: Weird black smudges in relative "high" resolutions in Windows 3.1 with a VGA LCD

Posted on 2021-01-20, 16:13

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Looks like a bad cable, or bad analog circuitry in card and/or monitor. Given you've tried five different cards, including the known excellent Matrox G200, I doubt it's primarily in the cards. So I suspect a bad cable, or otherwise two bad monitors. What happens if you hook it up to a recentt, known …

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Re: Maxing out the ram capacity on my motherboard

Posted on 2021-01-20, 16:08

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Gosh, I hope you’re wrong about having to choose but unfortunately I think you may be onto something. In such a case, I hear using EDO may allow the best of both worlds? What do you think? Highly unlikely. Anyway, good luck finding the 64MB or 128MB 50ns SIMMs for that. Have done rest of …

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Re: E-Wave : an ESS based waveblaster card

Posted on 2021-01-20, 12:57

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Haha a Hamster, but it has no stuffed bake! heh it is supposed to be an otter -> E-Wave "McOtto" If that's an otter, he's probably called "Hamtaro" :P Like the sound - it's not a Roland/Yamaha, but sounds very different to a lot of the other 'budget' options. I might be forced to make you take my …

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Re: Maxing out the ram capacity on my motherboard

Posted on 2021-01-20, 12:14

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Hey, I learned that a 430TX could support 512MB, I likely never knew because I never looked into pushing one to its limits and I did not know anyone else who did . I played a lot more with 440BX boards, both mine and a few belonging to others . I hope you get chance to test on one of your …

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Re: 2 very different computers to cover many years

Posted on 2021-01-20, 10:34

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What do you want to play? And what features are important to you? A P75 is great for mid to late DOS stuff, but is too fast (and an OEM system like an IBM isn't great for clocking back) for the really old stuff. It's also a bit slow for the very last DOS games. Sweet spot for old DOS is about 486-33 …

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Re: Maxing out the ram capacity on my motherboard

Posted on 2021-01-20, 10:00

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] I have no idea why it will only boot in Safe Mode other than it has something to do with more than 256 megs of memory on this board. The board's cache is disabled, K6-3+ 450 @ 500, and it's ordinary SDRAM I'm using - 16x8 on the 256, and I tried both PC-100 and PC-133. Take out either stick …

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Re: Maxing out the ram capacity on my motherboard

Posted on 2021-01-20, 09:48

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Hey, I learned that a 430TX could support 512MB, I likely never knew because I never looked into pushing one to its limits and I did not know anyone else who did . I played a lot more with 440BX boards, both mine and a few belonging to others . I hope you get chance to test on one of your …

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Re: Has anyone have experience with those ALIexpress PCI to isa cards

Posted on 2021-01-20, 09:29

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The USB one is specifically for USB storage, so only for USB sticks. Still useful if it works though... so I guess using it to boot ubuntu live sticks and windows 7 install sticks won’t work? Without a bootROM: definitely not. With one... I'd still doubt it, as the storage driver needs to be loaded …

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Re: Maxing out the ram capacity on my motherboard

Posted on 2021-01-20, 00:41

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-01-20, 00:32: So does this bios patch apply to my board? How can I find out? I’ve been able to get 256mb in it before but no more than that. Question is, is that because I didn’t try the correct parts? Depends on the parts...

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Re: Maxing out the ram capacity on my motherboard

Posted on 2021-01-20, 00:20

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Thank you. The reason I mentioned BIOS is because of I know that at least some 440BX boards, for example, required BIOS updates to recognize 256MB DIMMs at full capacity (I am referring only to DIMMs that should be compatible, according to https://web.archive.org/web/20180103032407/ht … ram_ …

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Re: Possible to flash this BIOS chip with an external programmer or some other way?

Posted on 2021-01-20, 00:15

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Try and see. You already 'bricked' the system, so you don't exactly have much to lose. No luck? Grab any other suitably-sized EEPROM (2Mb by the look of it) and use that instead. I think it might be hard to find a suitable replacement which is pin compatible and has the same functionality. The chip …

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Re: Maxing out the ram capacity on my motherboard

Posted on 2021-01-19, 22:09

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The middle two are registered, they're not going to work on a non-server board. Desktop chipsets only eat unbuffered DIMMs. ECC or not is irrelevant. Bottom one is iffy, for starters it's 128MB, and looking at the datasheets of those HYB39S64800CT-8 chips shows they can be configured either as 8Mx8 …

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Re: Spring Circle SF586 Socket 5 VLB motherboard

Posted on 2021-01-19, 21:43

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Another update: Still haven't figured out cacheable limit. Did try some different CPUs and bottom line: this is one of those boards that refuses to boot with unidentified CPU. Cyrix 6x86: C0 POST, no boot. Pentium MMX on Powerleap adapter: no POST at all. K6/3-450 on Powerleam adapter: C0 POST, no …

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Re: Maxing out the ram capacity on my motherboard

Posted on 2021-01-19, 21:37

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The memory controller in the 430TX chipset is limited to 256MB RAM maximum, there is no workaround for that . Not quite. Intel's official specs give it max 256MB with 64Mb chips. But... the memory controller is identical to the i440EX's and can take 128Mb chips too. So with two double-sided 256MB …

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Re: Another Aztech card and it's driving me crazy. Is it broken and need to be fixed or did I screw something up?

Posted on 2021-01-19, 21:24

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

These 2nd gen Aztech cards are tricky - I have an MMSN822 (FCC ID is a much more solid way of identifying them than whatever weird and interchangeable marketing names people thought up) with the same AZT1605 chipset. Same issue. Maybe the card is dead, but wouldn't surprise me if the driver is …

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Re: Possible to flash this BIOS chip with an external programmer or some other way?

Posted on 2021-01-19, 21:15

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Try and see. You already 'bricked' the system, so you don't exactly have much to lose. No luck? Grab any other suitably-sized EEPROM (2Mb by the look of it) and use that instead.

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Re: Maxing out the ram capacity on my motherboard

Posted on 2021-01-19, 21:10

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello :-) So I have a p55xb2 socket 7 motherboard with two sd ram slots and four simm ram slots. I’ve previously been able to get 256mb into it and that’s about it. What I understand is the chipset seems to only like 256mb Obviously I could install 2 512mb sticks but those woupdn’t work and I have …

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

Posted on 2021-01-19, 21:07

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Broke two pins. On a Powerleap PL-Pro/MMX Plus Ver4.0 :'( Bodged an attempted repair too, looks like it's a write-off :'( :'(

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Re: Looking for network card driver

Posted on 2021-01-18, 22:05

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also, which OS you want drivers for is also usually a good idea...

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