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

Posted on 2020-02-11, 21:09

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I am realizing I need a serial mouse for my DOS computer and then also realizing how annoying it would be to have multiple peripheral sets for multiple computers. Time for KVM research! Let me save you some time! The Belkin Omniview Pro will translate PS/2 input to serial. If you use a USB …

---

Re: TANDY Dos-Gaming-Thread (1000RL/HD)

Posted on 2020-01-26, 00:29

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Not sure how likely a scenario it might be, but it's possible the system's EEPROM contents are corrupt. Any change in behavior if you run SETUPTL /A, toggle between DISK > ROM > DISK, save, and reboot? I tried what you suggested and it was no good. After hours of fighting with it, I did what I …

---

Re: TANDY Dos-Gaming-Thread (1000RL/HD)

Posted on 2020-01-24, 01:53

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

So I have once again been fiddling with my Tandy 1000 TL. On boot it totally skips the XT-IDE BIOS and goes straight to DOS-in-ROM. My A: drive and B: drive still work fine, the VGA card works fine (and always displays in color now when it was graying out somewhat commonly before), and nothing else …

---

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

Posted on 2020-01-23, 19:09

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-01-23, 18:56: MrSmiley381 wrote on 2020-01-23, 01:05: My wife walked in and asked, "Oh, what hentai game music is this?" Right platform, wrong genre 😜 Did you know this cultural exposure of hers before you married? That's why I married her 😁 The opening theme of Bible Black …

---

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

Posted on 2020-01-23, 01:05

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Started removing rivets in a rusted case yesterday while listening to the PC-98 soundtrack for Sorcerian. My wife walked in and asked, "Oh, what hentai game music is this?" Right platform, wrong genre 😜

---

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

Posted on 2020-01-20, 04:14

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I tried running Ultima II with the upgrade patch on my K6-III+ machine today. Still no good. I suspect whatever the developer did to make it work without a DOS protected mode extender in DOSBox broke functionality on actual DOS machines, or that it's using newer instructions that the CPU can't …

---

Re: FMonster, the monster of sound synth

Posted on 2020-01-19, 16:02

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Dude, that's some cool stuff. Watching you adjust wiring connections while debugging the Police Quest audio was impressive. I can barely see the back of my computers to connect an LPT device sometimes, and here you are with video capture of you adjusting an ISA card while it's still in the slot. …

---

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

Posted on 2020-01-17, 11:43

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Managed to do some more with the Tandy 1000 TL last night. Attempted to install Sim City, but it refused to run after install. Gave up on that and installed VSWITCH to test VGA and Tandy video mode flipping, which worked fine. Installed Wings of Fury and determined that the Tandy DAC enhanced sound …

---

Re: Aureal Vortex vs Vortex 2

Posted on 2020-01-16, 11:55

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Personally, I'm running some sort of Aureal Vortex 2 SuperQuad card in one of my machines and it works fairly well. Do other Vortex cards support four speakers natively? The card I have can run digital output but the manual says that if I go digital all four audio channels are mixed down to two. I'm …

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-01-14, 18:03

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-01-14, 17:20: Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-01-13, 18:46: cyclone3d wrote on 2020-01-13, 15:51: Have this bad boy on the way! An 8-bit MediaVision Pro Audio Spectrum. That looks like a rare card. That is an an understatement. Come to think of it, haven't we seen more AdLib …

---

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

Posted on 2020-01-14, 00:23

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

After a long and arduous battle I managed to remove the 286 from my Tandy 1000 TL and install a Make-It 486, including the terminator pack for the math coprocessor. Cache program seems to have worked fine. Floppy drives still work, especially since I removed the terminator jumper on the 360K drive. …

---

Re: What should I be looking for?

Posted on 2020-01-12, 04:03

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

And no, there is no real reason to get a 3dfx card unless you really care about it. Lies and slander! I don't care if Glide wrappers are totally indistinguishable from original hardware, it's just not the same :P Kidding aside, Phil made a decent video on a Voodoo 5500 alternative. Wanting to play …

---

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

Posted on 2020-01-10, 14:46

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I engaged in some bizarre shenanigans involving a Lexmark Model M, a Microsoft Intellimouse USB, a PS/2 -> USB adapter, and three KVM's. The USB mouse works fine in PS/2 mode if it's connected to a computer or the janky IOGear KVM , but not the fancy Trendnet TK-801R or Belkin F1D104, the latter of …

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-01-09, 03:30

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Brand new Make-It 486 has arrived today! After three or four missed opportunities to grab one of these I'm lucky to have scored this one at all. I'm excited to see what sorts of shenanigans I can undertake now.

---

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

Posted on 2020-01-09, 03:23

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Last weekend I replaced a DIN keyboard connector on a Tyan S1590 baby-AT socket-7 board. I noticed it would be possible to install a pair of PS/2 connectors for mouse+kb, but doing so would require switching to an ATX case. That's a problem for this board because the layout puts the AGP slot too …

---

Re: Orpheus Soundcard: a new DOS soundcard with SPDIF/OPL3/MPU support

Posted on 2020-01-03, 22:09

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

it is possible to switch from external to internal FM , we can provide a small script to flash the card's eeprom , on next reboot the change is active Both at the same is not possible when the external synth need to do FM work Here's a weird thought; can you flash the card's EEPROM to disable FM …

---

Re: K6 III + Faster if disable L3 Cache??

Posted on 2019-12-14, 03:00

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My Tyan S1590S with a modified BIOS refuses to load DOS if I have the L3 cache enable and at the very least my Gravis Ultrasound MAX installed. Not sure if it's a hardware conflict or not, but when I performed benchmarks with the conflicting hardware removed the machine was only ~1% faster with the …

---

Re: Orpheus Soundcard: a new DOS soundcard with SPDIF/OPL3/MPU support

Posted on 2019-12-11, 19:09

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Man, I really picked a good time to start exploring DOS games. I've already got a Sound Blaster Pro 2 but this looks like it'll do everything it does and then some. Quick question technical question: if I run this alongside a GUS Max, which also has a CS4231, this shouldn't cause any immediate …

---

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

Posted on 2019-12-10, 11:49

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I spent most of my weekend reorganizing my office and turning my server rack into something far more presentable. Pretty sure I was moments away from being trapped behind it every time I tried to remove a rear-mounted bracket. Regardless, it's more organized, there is a proper rack-mounted PSU in …

---

Re: PowerVR Fun Thread

Posted on 2019-10-26, 13:42

by

by MrSmiley381

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Some games can be patched if you have an original copy. i.e. Tomb Raider, Mechwarrior 2 Win9x, MDK, etc. A few were exclusives that you have to track down with persistence and guile. Resident Evil and Cyber Troopers Virtual On are probably two of the sneakier ones to find with PowerVR support. If …

---