Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2020-07-06, 21:57

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Made a mistake in my last reply - the system is targeting year 1994 as stated in the initial post, but not 1993. Thanks for pointing out. Fixed it above. I measured the WT1 vs WB1 perf diff carefully - it varies within 1-4%, depends on the app/game. It totally makes sense to switch to WT1, as you …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2020-07-06, 15:25

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Thanks for the info PC-Engineer. To confirm for the record: Assuming system configuration: AMD BGC 160MHz WB1 CPU, 40MHz FSB, 1024Kb 10ns ISSI SRAM (had to go comb through bunch of chips to find the right ones), VLB VGA, tightest BIOS timings, transparent mode. VLB IDE + WB1 = long term stable. VLB …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2020-07-06, 02:56

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

ok, so, upon closer inspection and profiling the outlined above configuration is not completelly stable. it works most of the time - for example - Doom, quake 1, some apps, etc. seem to be fine, but wolf3d and dune2 can hang the system. i am sure there will be other cases too. bummer. rolling back - …

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Re: The 486DX2/66 Polycarbonat Case project !

Posted on 2020-07-05, 08:11

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Very cool.

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Re: 386 50mhz Overclock: Very Slow, No Cache?

Posted on 2020-07-05, 07:57

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@nscaletransitmodels I posted some notes about fx-3000 here: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=800673#p800673 So far all 40mhz rated PGA and PGFP 386 cups I tried tick reliably at 50mhz. In fact they cope with 55mhz as well, but at that frequency the 386 class hardware is at the limit. Bios …

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Re: 386 50mhz Overclock: Very Slow, No Cache?

Posted on 2020-07-05, 03:35

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

50MHz could be a problem for the FPU. I recommend a black top Cyrix Fasmath based on 387+ core. +1 I think early 386 was something like 1500 nm. Later models went down to 1000 nm. So far all 40MHz rated 386 CPUs i tried handle 50MHz just fine. The main bottleneck is predominantly the motherboard, …

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Re: 386 50mhz Overclock: Very Slow, No Cache?

Posted on 2020-07-05, 01:26

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have FX-3000 working very reliably at 45MHz with FPU and at 50MHz without FPU. At 50MHz i had to lower some of the BIOS settings, but cannot remember anymore which ones exactly. At 45MHz all BIOS settings are to the max. The mobo is not pretentious about SRAM chips. It takes ISSI, UMC, Winbond …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2020-07-04, 21:35

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

@PC-Engineer Spent a moment today to check what is happening with this VLB SCSI + WB1 business. Long story short - for this to work 3 things need to be in place: - the WB-enabled BIOS, obviously - despite using AMD DX5 CPU, jumpers have to be configured for P24T with J20 set to 1-2 for 4x multiplier …

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Re: entry level sound card from year 1993 or early

Posted on 2020-06-30, 23:23

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Ah, great. Thank you. Looks like i will opt for OPTi.

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Re: entry level sound card from year 1993 or early

Posted on 2020-06-30, 20:23

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I looked around for time codes, release dates, magazine references - but couldn't find anything that "confirms" timeframe.

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Re: entry level sound card from year 1993 or early

Posted on 2020-06-30, 20:00

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Thanks for narrowing it down. Very helpful. There is a gap in my knowledge about SB "clones" around 1991-1993-ish. Catching up on it.

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Re: entry level sound card from year 1993 or early

Posted on 2020-06-30, 19:06

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Good call about the OPTi cards. They are abundant out there and fit the need. I was not sure if they are "period correct" to 1993, which paused me on acquiring one. Can you confirm ? Thanks.

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Re: entry level sound card from year 1993 or early

Posted on 2020-06-27, 05:20

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Thanks for the feedback. The master boomer cards today are 2x the price you paid back then. The Crystal clones sport a more sensible prices. Thinking to put together a boring dx2 pc from around 1993. Undecided on audio. Owning a sound card back then was already anything but boring, so I may just go …

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entry level sound card from year 1993 or early

Posted on 2020-06-27, 01:01

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Back then we had Mediavision, TurtleBeache and Creative cards. Some Aztechs as well (?). But can you think of an entry level sound card from that time ? Thanks.

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2020-06-21, 04:12

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

While assembling the clean VLB 486DX4 PC from my previous post, i spent a moment to check how VLB and PCI video cards from 1993-1996 compare against each other. In addition - there were some discussions on the forums about that, which further fueled my curiosity. I have a bunch of 486 motherboards, …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2020-06-17, 01:17

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

It looks like this is Acard scsi2ide related issue that is not present when using SCSI HDDs. For now i will let it slide, since the problem does not affect the WT AMD 486DX4 CPU in use.

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2020-06-14, 22:17

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

@PC-engineer This is how I have the jumpers already. I bet it is an Acard scsi2ide adapter issue (stopped using HDDs long ago). Will strap a scsi drive to verify. @pii_legacy Yeah, the case turned out pretty ok. Glad to see you like it. Matrox Millennium has two flavors. The main chip on some of …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2020-06-14, 19:06

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

A pro tip. I remember reading with great interest your thread https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=70318 about that stuff. I use the BIOS you mentioned already, but at the moment J21's pins 4-5 get shortened for WB on the motherboard all bets are off for IDE bus mastering, regardless if J5 is …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2020-06-13, 22:04

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I like my 486DX5 PCI/VLB/ISA PC from page 1 a lot, but my purist nature has been growing on me and i ended up building a clean VLB system from year 1994. HARDWARE motherboard : ASUS VLI-486SV2GX4 rev 2.1, 1024Kb 10ns L2 cache cpu : Am486DX4-100V8T 120MHz AMD-X5-133ADZ 160MHz ram : 64Mb 60ns parity …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2020-05-31, 03:14

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Something different. I have been slowly setting up a clean 1994 486 VLB system, but had some doubts about the casing. Never owned branded PCs. Custom builds all the way, tuned for maximum performance. All bells and whistles removed - only the essentials left. The standard metal cases were always a …

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