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

Posted on 2019-05-19, 11:43

by

by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Is the ALS4000 fundamentally that bad or does it vary considerably with the card design? I bet it is bad card design, or maybe fake ALS4000. I have an ESS Solo-1 card I bought off ebay a couple years back from a cheap chinese manufacturer. It sounded about as good as the amount I paid for it. It's …

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Re: Socket-3 motherboards IDE controllers NOT working ?

Posted on 2019-05-19, 11:13

by

by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You need to make sure the drives are set to single drive if they have that option, rather than master. Other things: a) If you have ANY known good working drive, you should definitely try it on these systems. b) If you still have trouble, get yourself a copy of XT-IDE onto a rom chip, and put it on …

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Re: Project KA7, yay or nay ?

Posted on 2019-05-19, 11:09

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Your soldering is pretty good if you ask me. I've done much worse jobs that have turned out just fine. Multi-layer board soldering is tough.

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Re: Project KA7, yay or nay ?

Posted on 2019-05-18, 11:47

by

by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

bofh.fromhell wrote: canthearu wrote: Great result. What capacitors did you end up installing. Very pretty result in any case. Mostly Panasonic "FS" series where I could fit them. It's got 8mm dia variants with the appropriate heights (≤15mm) and capacities. Good caps, I used some of these on a …

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Re: Project KA7, yay or nay ?

Posted on 2019-05-18, 04:16

by

by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Great result. What capacitors did you end up installing. Very pretty result in any case.

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Re: Best memories of Windows or OS?

Posted on 2019-05-18, 02:46

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by canthearu

in Milliways

in Milliways

My 2 nominations are: a) Windows NT 4.0 - I used this for a year or so, and it was glorious. Highly stable and decently fast. But then I had to go back to windows 98 for 3d gaming that was taking off at the time. b) Slackware Linux - It's reliability was legendary, with features that wouldn't make …

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Re: Help with Lucky Star LS-486e jumpers ?

Posted on 2019-05-18, 02:41

by

by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Normally they work fine, but it is always worth testing this, as I have seen some weird things when using retro computers.

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Re: PnP Sound Blasters not detected on i430TX

Posted on 2019-05-18, 02:10

by

by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

With the unmodded BIOS, you can try modding it yourself for large hard drive support. http://www.rom.by/articles/BP/index_english.htm http://www.rom.by/book/BIOS_Patcher/ I have had good success with version 4.23 on pentium era motherboards. Of course, you are on your own if you end up breaking the …

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Re: Problems with IDE controller.

Posted on 2019-05-18, 02:03

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What is the difference between the IDE cables with fine wires and the IDE cables with thick wires ? 80 wire IDE cables are required for UDMA33 (mode 2) or higher. 40 wire cables will normally limit the controller to lower speeds to prevent corruption. Actually, 80 wire IDE cables are needed for …

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Re: Market value for popular or rare classic computer hardware

Posted on 2019-05-18, 01:43

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by canthearu

in Milliways

in Milliways

Lol, i'm not smart though, and most of my crap is just old common as dirt crap. You can find good value these days in finding faulty/untested hardware that needs testing/fixing, but you also have to be careful not to buy outright sodomised crap. Ebay is good in that if you buy something that is said …

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Re: A 440BX platform with Asus P3B-F 1.04

Posted on 2019-05-17, 00:21

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

You don't really need retention clips for the CPU on a slot 1 board, as long as you are not throwing the thing around, it will be fine. The slot itself and the CPU card probably need their contacts cleaned. Use a pencil eraser on the CPU card contacts to clean them to a shine, and maybe some contact …

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Re: MV's three retro PC builds

Posted on 2019-05-14, 13:01

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yes, but even after patching the BIOS, so my PC didn't hang while booting I was only able format it to 8GB max and had to use Ontrack SW. But not everytime, it depend on actual motherboard, it seems :( And the patcher doesn't work everytime - see my post above https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php …

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Re: 486dx2 66 intel - do i need cpu fan?

Posted on 2019-05-14, 11:56

by

by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My 486DX2-66's run fine without a fan. It runs a bit hot, but that is not really a problem at all. Don't forget that 486's use a very coarse lithography, at ether 1um or 800nm. Such coarse lithography is not as subject easily failure by electro-migration from running HOT. However, I did sodomize my …

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Re: AWE64 Gold change

Posted on 2019-05-13, 07:41

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Oh, in that case, he needs to setup his hardware correctly: Address = 0x220 IRQ = 5 (or 7, but 5 is pretty damn standard) DMA = 1 low, 5 high MPU = 0x330 FM = 0x388 AWE32 = 0x630 (I think) Any other configuration is going to give more trouble. Dedicated retro gaming rigs should never have any …

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Re: MV's three retro PC builds

Posted on 2019-05-08, 14:11

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Kcil wrote: can you point out where to get such autopatcher? http://www.rom.by/book/BIOS_Patcher/ I found 4.23 works best on pentium boards. Also, take backups of your bios first. Not my fault if you screw it up!

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Re: MV's three retro PC builds

Posted on 2019-05-07, 14:35

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

If your pentium motherboards have an award bios, i've had good success with a BIOS autopatcher to fix hard drive size detection issues, to use larger IDE hard drives in Socket 7 boards.

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Re: A tale of two PSUs

Posted on 2019-05-07, 14:08

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by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No problem leaving an ATX power supply permanently on, then use the PSU rocker switch to turn your ATX power supply on and off, to power your AT motherboard.

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Re: A 440BX platform with Asus P3B-F

Posted on 2019-05-06, 22:02

by

by canthearu

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yeah, that will happen if you disable the onboard amplifier. You will need powered speakers, or an external amplifier for headphones. Onboard amplifiers on ISA sound cards are almost universally terrible, it won't matter too much what card you use. Maybe a PAS16 would be better.

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

Posted on 2019-05-06, 10:42

by

by canthearu

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Having some hard time with Phoenix 286 BIOS. Doesn't let me enter HDD parameters, for the hard disc I have (81Mb) and it is not in the Phoenix BIOS 1-49 list. Any suggestions? Get an ethernet card, install XT-IDE as a boot rom chip on it. I try to avoid overlay software, as you can't grab the drive …

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Re: A 440BX platform with Asus P3B-F

Posted on 2019-05-05, 13:46

by

by canthearu

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

To reduce noise, change JP1 to pins 1-3 and 2-4. This will disable the onboard amp and provide much better sound quality (ESS1868 sounds pretty good, but the onboard amps are typically awful)

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