Re: Common old videocard problems?

Posted on 2018-07-09, 10:55

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

1) Some video cards on boot only the letters in DOS have a CYAN color. Is this a fault with the vga connector? gpu? memory? Probably due to bad contacts for the RED signal on the VGA connector, meaning only blue and green make it from the card to the screen. 2) Some video cards on boot, show you …

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Re: Best DOS video card?

Posted on 2018-07-09, 06:31

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Works fine for me: http://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/ I have found that the Nvidia Geforce 4MX is a pretty decent DOS card in AGP format. It also has excellent windows 9x performance (for the PII class of machine) and pretty good RAMDAC output. It is NOT perfect, but it is cheaper than a Voodoo 3 card …

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Re: Getting my P5VB3+ rev C1 Mobo to live again..

Posted on 2018-07-05, 09:57

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, I bought a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP for my P-II 350 setup. Nice match up. You can't have more than 512meg RAM in a windows 98 system, at least not without a whole pile of muck-arounding-ish stuff. So I suggest pulling one of the 256meg chips and leaving it at 512meg.

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Re: Intel 740 and ss7 problems

Posted on 2018-07-04, 12:11

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Yeah, the Matrox and Intel cards would be the most lilely to have problems, neither device got the driver love they needed in the end.

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Re: PCI card faster than AGP for DOS games?

Posted on 2018-07-04, 12:01

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Have you tried using fastvid or some other video optimiser on the AGP system. Often, the AGP bus is not configured properly for maximum DOS performance by the motherboard on bootup.

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Re: Intel 740 and ss7 problems

Posted on 2018-07-04, 07:43

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Ill try to follow this guide but my agp settings are already fail safe: agp 1x, aperture size 4mb and so on.. The i740 is going to really struggle on a 4meg AGP aperture size. Would need a larger size if anything. The entire i740 is designed around texturing over the AGP bus, the local memory on …

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Re: Intel 740 and ss7 problems

Posted on 2018-07-03, 13:35

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

You could try the attached guide for the TNT http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/rivatnt/

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Re: Intel 740 and ss7 problems

Posted on 2018-07-03, 11:44

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The Intel 740 is really the wrong card to use on a super socket 7 system. It is very heavily focused and reliant on AGP features, and ss7 tend to have a lot of trouble with properly supporting these AGP features. You will probably never get it working well. For SS7 systems, 3dfx Voodoo based card …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-07-02, 15:45

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Got a couple of AGP video cards Filename s-l1600.jpg File size 344.43 KiB Views 915 views A Geforce FX5900XT (standard clocks) A Geforce 6800GT A bit dusty, but both work perfectly.

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Re: Testing old caps with an ESR meter.

Posted on 2018-06-30, 02:18

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is a big part of my reason for creating this thread. If we can gather and record some actual data to show how common capacitors on PC hardware have aged, we may be able to minimize the number of clumsy repair attempts that are made unnecessarily. There are lots of highly experienced …

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Re: Realistic Expectations

Posted on 2018-06-30, 01:45

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also, how much of a limiting factor is my integrated video card? Really depends. If the onboard video is using system RAM, then you definitely need to try using a discreet video card. Onboard video using shared memory is a huge parasite on CPU performance on these older systems. Even just the …

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Re: Testing old caps with an ESR meter.

Posted on 2018-06-30, 01:16

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Unless the board is a serious pain to work on (many layers and lots of mass that absorbs heat) That describes about every PC motherboard that was made in the last 20 years. Especially around the VRMs where the caps usually die. The other risk is that you start damaging vias and pads on your board …

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Re: I got Ultimate DOOM to install on my Windows XP machine, but it won't install on my Win95 laptop.

Posted on 2018-06-30, 00:21

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Anyone might know the problem? I'm not 100% sure if there's something wrong with my floppy drive now... Use diskcopy to make a clone of the iffy doom disk on the computer it works in, then install it on Win95 laptop. If most other disks work fine on the Win95 laptop, then the drive is likely fine. …

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Re: Testing old caps with an ESR meter.

Posted on 2018-06-29, 23:24

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My guidelines: a) it is fairly rare to find capacitors that look perfectly fine, but are broken. It happens, but I wouldn't go looking for this problem unless you are explicitly experiencing problems. b) You can't make a blanket statement on a capacitors state regarding the age of capacitors. I see …

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Re: Wow! Is it just me or...

Posted on 2018-06-28, 09:03

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I immediately felt like a fool for replacing a defective VIA motherboard with a working 440BX motherboard. In addition, sometimes people here say bad things about ATI video cards from the 9x-era due to weaker (compared to S3) DOS compatibility, poor 3D performance, and (on newer models) lack of the …

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Re: Windows 98 20th Anniversary All New PC Build

Posted on 2018-06-26, 10:34

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I agree, the struggle is half the fun. Getting it setup the way you want. Dealing with all the weirdness of some of the hardware. In terms of being able to mess around with it, modern computers and operating systems don't have that much to do. Just plug it together, install it and everything works. …

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Re: CT-4810 in DOS

Posted on 2018-06-21, 12:06

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Got my Terratec Promedia (SOLO1-N) and it works perfectly in DOS. Thanks a lot for the help! I have a bit of a soft spot for the ESS cards. Great FM and DOS compatibility on cards that are NOT overpriced. Quality of ESS cards can be a bit hit and miss though. Some have lots of noise or bad builtin …

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Re: Sound card not working + built in audio

Posted on 2018-06-16, 08:57

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You could try some contact cleaner in the ISA slots. Of course, let it dry fully before powering back on. My socket 7 motherboard needed the ISA slots to be exercised a bit before they start working properly.

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Re: CT-4810 in DOS

Posted on 2018-06-15, 09:40

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Yep, different sound cards can use different methods to emulate ISA functions, so compatibility can be better or worse. Another card that might work for you is one of the Aureal Vortex cards. The ES1938S is exactly the same as the ES1938 as far as I know.

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Re: CT-4810 in DOS

Posted on 2018-06-14, 11:34

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Are you running the latest BIOS on your motherboard? That might add the IRQ or DMA stuff to your motherboard ... as your motherboard is fairly new (for a DOS retro board) and getting close to the line where compatibility is lost. (just not sure which side on the line this board falls on) You could …

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