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

Posted on 2020-04-28, 18:35

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

appiah4 wrote on 2020-04-28, 16:53: The CL-GD5429 is the better card. The CL-GD5429 places its LFB (linear frame buffer) just below 64 MB. So you have to use less than 64 MB RAM in this machine.

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Re: Super Socket 7 project, need help on video card and sound card

Posted on 2020-04-20, 01:54

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

abasak wrote on 2020-04-06, 17:48: ... There’s 384mb of RAM on the board by the way. ... Have you checked whether your RAM is fully cacheable in L2?

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Re: The World's Fastest 486

Posted on 2020-04-17, 02:35

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

At least the AMD 5x86. The Cyrix 5x86 seem to be another thing.

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Re: Ethernet options for old DOS-machine (8086, 8-bit isa, serial and parallell ports)

Posted on 2020-04-16, 22:48

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There do exist drivers for NE2000 compatibles in 8 bit ISA slots. Use them when you face problems with the MAC address.

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Re: Will this work? Adaptec 1542CF and Cheetah 10k with SCA-2 80-pin hot-swap connector

Posted on 2020-04-11, 01:30

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Please remember that the BIOS of such an old SCSI controller has capacity limits.

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Re: EGA demos?

Posted on 2020-04-05, 17:42

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

leileilol wrote on 2020-04-05, 00:55: EGAROIDS 😀 Indeed!

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Re: CUV4X - Powerleap Tualatin Build

Posted on 2020-03-28, 00:26

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Hi, are there any Tualatin boards with an ISA slot?

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Re: KVM Switch Recommendations?

Posted on 2020-03-21, 01:06

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

... - Rackmountable - Supports at least 8 devices - PS/2 support - Audio support - AT, 5 Pin needs to work with a PS/2 - AT converter ... Please add: - Wheel mouse support Additional information: If you want to run USB based computers too, you can install an USB to PS/2 converter on each USB …

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Re: How important is a PCI graphics card in a 486?

Posted on 2020-03-21, 01:02

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't see a significant difference in performance between PCI ET4000/W32's and VLB ET4000/W32's. You can use any of your sound cards in your 486 project, but I recommend to use either the SB Pro or the SB 16.

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Re: Please explain "cacheable memory" to me

Posted on 2020-03-21, 00:35

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ok, let's do the calculation in bytes for my 486 system. 1 MByte installed cache = 2^20 / 4 Byte (32 Bit) bus width = 2^2 / Burst length of 4 = 2^2 = 2^(20-2-2) = 2^16 Cache lines 2^16: Cache lines * 2^7: 7 Tag-Bits Write Back * 2^4: 16 Byte Burst Length = 2^(16+7+4) = 2^27 Byte cacheable = 128 …

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Re: AWE32/CT3990 issues - IDE

Posted on 2020-03-12, 09:33

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have been trying to connect a SATA SSD to this machine (socket 5, Pentium 133Mhz) in order to store ISO images for mounting with a drive emulator in MS-DOS. Which drive emulator do you use? However, even when you get this solution to work: You will have activated a hand brake on both rear and …

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Re: Problems with Promise Ultra 100 TX2 - 486

Posted on 2020-03-12, 09:25

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have had problems with this controller too. What I have found out is that it makes trouble when the IRQ is not assigned properly (by mainboard BIOS). You may use SpeedSys 4.78 to find out the IRQ assignment. Perhaps it will work in another PCI slot. However, I'm running it in a 486 motherboard …

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Re: Want to mod 486 motherboard (Chicony CH-471B) to support 486 DX4 L1 WB

Posted on 2020-03-12, 09:21

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

...Currently the biggest drawback is the graphics card, which is Cirrus Logic 5429... Well, I've got the Cirrus Logic 5429 too. You cannot go to 64 MB since the LFB is just below 64 MB. I've limited my 486 running the 5429 to 48 MB. ...It's hard to find good VLB cards nowadays though, seems like …

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Re: Storing thy crap safely (ESD, Damage, etc): Opinions? What do YOU do?

Posted on 2020-03-12, 09:16

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you want to stop a motherboard and you'd like to store it in a shelf, you should stop the DALLAS RTC first. Only the CMOS still is powered. But it consumes MUCH less energy than running the RTC. Do not forget that the RTC automatically continues work when getting powered again. https://www.vogons …

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Re: How to (manually) align a FAT filesystem?

Posted on 2020-02-29, 19:04

by

by Disruptor

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

I did a manual edit on 4K/512e disks to get an aligned partition scheme for my DOS compatible systems. The 2 M alignment in partition utility since Windows Vista ignores CHS alignment. DOS fdisk ignores 4 K alignment. In DOS, partition track starts at cylinder 0, head 0, sector 1 and has 63 sectors. …

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Re: 1024k L2 Cache- where can I find it?

Posted on 2020-02-29, 07:35

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You require 8 1 MBit SRAM chips as cache plus 1 512 KBit SRAM chip as tag. I run a 256 MB 486 with 1024 K L2, so all DRAM is cacheable when running in write-through. https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=71074 Even with less DRAM you feel the difference. It's just because the cache hit rate …

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Re: Amd Am486 DX-40 with missing pin

Posted on 2020-02-29, 07:20

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have an AMD 5x86 that has lost 2 pins. Luckily it are one VSS and one VCC pin. I have no problems running it overclocked at FSB 40 MHz.

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Re: DOS 7.1 With Large Hard Drives

Posted on 2020-02-25, 23:50

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've used this configuration for more than five years without any problems.

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Re: DOS 7.1 With Large Hard Drives

Posted on 2020-02-25, 18:46

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Quick piece of advice: DO NOT run anything older than XP with larger than a 128 GB partition. ... This goes for ... Windows 2000. ... This is not true. You can install Windows 2000 without problems on a HDD that already has a NTFS partition > 128 GiB. But you should apply SP4 as soon as possible …

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Re: EISA Graphics / Video Cards

Posted on 2020-02-15, 05:33

by

by Disruptor

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

mpe wrote on 2020-02-14, 15:34: ... My theory why EISA cards perform poorly in DOS is that in order to use the benefits of EISA the app must be doing 32bit writes. ... Indeed.

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