Re: Which Sound Blaster Card for ISA slot

Posted on 2022-08-25, 21:20

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh yes, see here: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=60063 CT4380 is basically the same as the CT4520. MIDI devices are things like external Roland SC-55 sound moudles, or internal waveblaster modules. Things that make good-sounding music in DOS games. The thing to understand is that old sound …

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Re: Which Sound Blaster Card for ISA slot

Posted on 2022-08-25, 19:21

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The very oldest SB16(CT1730-1790) are similar, but are very noisy. I feel like this is a bit of an overblown issue, yes, they are technically noisy, but that doesn't really take away from how good they sound, personally I prefer the sound of the CT1740 cards to a lot of the "clean" sounding ones. I …

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Re: Which Sound Blaster Card for ISA slot

Posted on 2022-08-25, 14:39

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Every SB16 has bugs, mainly but not exclusively around MIDI playback. Question is what you will be doing with it. If you only intend to use the card for digital audio, the AWE64 DSP-based cards (AWE64 cards but also AWE32 CT4330 and SB32 CT3670) will be effectively bug-free. All the others have …

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Re: NE2000 compatible identification

Posted on 2022-08-23, 23:59

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I recall these things were sold under the "Target" brand in NL around the turn of the millennium. That doesn't help much as Target just bought up big lots of stuff in Taipei/Shenzhen and put them in their boxes. However, take a look here: https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1778& …

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Re: Motherboard advice for Win98SE build

Posted on 2022-08-23, 22:30

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[[...] From this forum. Quite a few people claim that few cards surpass the image quality of the Matrox's VGA output. I'm pretty sure what they mean is the sharpness of the image, and perhaps texture filtering quality as well? No, if it's Matrox, it's about analog filters & circuitry. I'm a bit …

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Re: Thunderbird Athlon 1000 : 200 VS 266 FSB

Posted on 2022-08-23, 16:51

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Well yes, but not the worst marketing tool given that the way computers were marketed to your grandma etc. was always by comparing the amount of MHz. In the minds of most consumers more MHz would equal a faster system. You'd already loose a large chunk of your audience if you tried to tell …

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Re: Thunderbird Athlon 1000 : 200 VS 266 FSB

Posted on 2022-08-23, 16:32

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Am i wrong ? Lies, damned lies and performance ratings... I recall someone did an overview of all SoA chipset platforms around the time of the AXP3200+ and recorded a 50% difference between slowest and fastest - at the same (100MHz FSB) speed. Until the memory controller moved to the CPU, chipset …

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Re: Thunderbird Athlon 1000 : 200 VS 266 FSB

Posted on 2022-08-23, 16:03

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not totally useless, you win about 5% between 100 and 133 on a Via SDR-SDRAM platform: http://www.thg.ru/mainboard/20010104/images/athlon133fsb_17379_image001.gif All things being equal the 1000C is the better choice, so long as your board supports 133MHz FSB of course. Even though the 133MB/s …

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Re: Motherboard advice for Win98SE build

Posted on 2022-08-23, 15:56

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] For the gfx card I could get a Matrox G450 relatively cheaply or a TNT2. The other benefit is that these use passive cooling, and the Matrox at least has very nice image quality (not sure about the TNT2, although I had one 20 years ago, so should remember...) Don't really want a Geforce …

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Re: Strange card connector on this industrial SBC

Posted on 2022-08-23, 14:00

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

PISA. PCI+ISA buses in what mechanically looks like an EISA slot. You need a PISA backplane. Edit: Given the chips on it, I'd say it's Mendocino or Coppermine with an i440ZX/BX or i815 chipset.

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Re: Recommendation/Review For Sound Cards

Posted on 2022-08-22, 22:16

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Also, nothing wrong with using multiple soundcards approach: one for SB/SBpro, another for SB16/WSS. Third one is GUS. 😁 Why go simple? 🤷‍♂️😅 Hey, you're forgetting CMS, Tandy, SSI-2001 and Covox/DSS (and an intelligent mode MPU-401 for your MT-32) :P If you want to dive down the rabbit hole, you …

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Re: olivetti pcs 86

Posted on 2022-08-22, 12:31

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is 30p SIMM, which is basically always FP. Just look for "1MB 30p SIMM".

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Re: ESS Solo 1 different versions

Posted on 2022-08-22, 11:18

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

stef80 wrote on 2022-08-22, 09:18: [...] SB-Link (PC\PCI ??) Yes, PC/PCI was the official name of the interface. It references the ability to us PC ("ISA") DMA controls on a PCI bus.

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Re: olivetti pcs 86

Posted on 2022-08-22, 11:14

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's not an 8088 machine (with 8b external bus), but an 8086-class one, with 16b external bus, and V30 CPU. Much more powerful beast, although in terms of instruction sets it's basically still and XT. Looking at the pics in your own link, it has 30p SIMM slots, so you upgrade the RAM with 30p …

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Re: what can i do with this hardware?

Posted on 2022-08-19, 14:34

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That stuff says late SVGA era DOS :) 2A5K1BOB - that's probably 2A5K I BOB or B0B. Can't ID the exact board, but 2A5KI is the AWARD BIOS code for an ALi Aladdin IV(+) chipset, which is clock-for-clock the fastest So7 chipset. Good pairing for that MII assuming it works and is stable. S3 Trio is one …

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Re: Finally have a DOS sound setup that seems to cover just about all the bases, and actually works!

Posted on 2022-08-19, 01:07

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

[...] Well hot damn you were right, I appreciate the tip! I think the key was setting the high DMA at 5. But either way I mirrored your settings and the DIG is happy now. Thanks! Just curious, do you really need the SBPro2 card if you have a AWE64? Don’t the 64’s have a real OPL? SBPro2 isn't …

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Re: Recommendation/Review For Sound Cards

Posted on 2022-08-19, 00:06

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The thing to understand is that there are different ways to make sound and that each card (apart from the very oldest) combine several of them to differing degrees of quality and compatibility. The fact that there are multiple new sound cards based on different chips and designs being made in the …

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Re: Finally have a DOS sound setup that seems to cover just about all the bases, and actually works!

Posted on 2022-08-18, 19:05

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

[...] For the opti I set it to normal 220/1/5/330 opl 388, and for the 16 it’s set to 280/10/3/7 with mpu and opl shut off. At the end of autoexec I have it set the final blaster env to the opti, since some older games don’t ask and I want them to see the opl. But I never really have to set it for …

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Re: PS/2 keyboard woes

Posted on 2022-08-18, 17:56

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] I have a couple of keyboards that came with such a purple USB-->PS/2 adapter and work with it. It looks passive, and I don't think it works with all keyboards. Furthermore, Startech sells such a PS/2-->USB adapter , which they claim works with the keyboards that originally shipped with a …

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Re: PS/2 keyboard woes

Posted on 2022-08-17, 14:32

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Yeah I prefer the look of the old beige keyboards for sure... although the Cherry mouses I just bought are black :shrug: I think I had a single mechanical keyboard in the 90s, but couldn't get rid of it fast enough... Never liked all the noise that they generate, and pretty much all my …

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