Re: Anyone know the polarity on the 3 leg tantalums in an IBM PS/2 type 8525 (Model 25). Color monitor/8086

Posted on 2022-02-13, 03:35

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

you can't be sure that in each and every case both outer leads are connected on the PCB. If they are - great, I was worried for nothing. But it has to be checked for every capacitor that will be replaced, to be sure. And it's not like this is a difficult or time consuming task to test that. on the …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2022-02-13, 03:31

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-13, 02:44: Awww... maybe it's pining for the fjords. Page 58 of this says you weren't all that near the max yet (4.6V) https://en.wikichip.org/w/images/f/f0/Am5x86_ … %2C_1996%29.pdf Exposure to Absolute Maximum Ratings for extended periods may affect device reliability …

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Re: Is there such a thing as a usb-to-serial mouse converter?

Posted on 2022-02-13, 03:15

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

what a hot load of BS, I've ordered dozens of times from JLCPCB and the special price is good everytime just put in an order yesterday for 5 ps/2 interposer boards I designed and the total was $5.90 including the cheapest shipping

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Re: Single board computer 386-sx40 skipping VGA BIOS?

Posted on 2022-02-11, 16:54

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's just par for the course with trident

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2022-02-11, 16:24

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Have you guys tested a Promise Ultra100 TX2 on any of the LS boards? Cant seem to get it working, almost makes it to dos prompt or windows boot animation but hangs. Might not be compatible with this board. yes actually I'm using one with my LS-486e that board is really fickle about PCI busmaters, …

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Re: Single board computer 386-sx40 skipping VGA BIOS?

Posted on 2022-02-11, 01:29

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Those trident cards use the -12V rail in the current reference circuit to the DAC. Are you sure that rail is present on your backplane?

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Re: Thinking of acquiring a pair of studio monitors - what else is required to use them as PC speakers?

Posted on 2022-02-10, 18:44

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by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Plasma wrote on 2022-02-10, 17:47: Not good if you are trying to enjoy the actual music and not the quality of the audio mastering. It's like watching a movie 2 feet from your TV and looking for compression artifacts. I also support pixel peeping

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Re: Thinking of acquiring a pair of studio monitors - what else is required to use them as PC speakers?

Posted on 2022-02-10, 17:18

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Depends on if they are powered or unpowered and if they have unbalanced or balanced inputs. If they are powered and they have unbalanced inputs, you can use them just like regular computer speakers. That said, studio monitors are designed for accurate sound reproduction, not entertainment. The …

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Re: Fixing SB AWE64 Gold

Posted on 2022-02-10, 16:06

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

ESFM sounds good, crystal FM is tolerable, CQM sucks huge balls

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Re: Fixing SB AWE64 Gold

Posted on 2022-02-10, 15:49

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

pretty easy to disable CQM on the AWE64 and pair it with another card for OPL

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Re: No apparent way to attach floppy drive in old 586 case.

Posted on 2022-02-09, 14:41

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

LGR just cut some rails by hand out of a sheet of plastic in one of his videos, seemed to work well enough

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2022-02-09, 14:40

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

@chadti99 After good effort with 2 LuckyStar LS-486E rev:D boards and big stack of RAM modules I was unable to get DRAM SPEED = FASTEST (all other BIOS settings on max) to work stably outside DOS interactive graphics. Calling it a day, moving on. BTW, chadti99 and feipoa, what are the date stamps …

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Re: Early P5 + P54C (Socket 4 + Socket 5) mainboard

Posted on 2022-02-08, 22:04

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Try replacing the 82c206 already

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Sergey's Floppy BIOS

Posted on 2022-02-08, 18:42

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does anyone have any experience using Sergey's ROM for >2 floppy drives? How does it perform on fast machines (shadowed)? Does it play nice with SCSI BIOS?

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Re: PCChips M218 286 motherboard info needed

Posted on 2022-02-08, 15:55

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by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Can't really help with the jumpers but I do have questions: - Is that an 80287-10 next to 20MHz 286? This actually works? - There seems to be 1MiB of DRAM in sockets? I don't see parity chips for the on-mobo DRAM so it's a good candidate for those "new" 4MiB SIMM sticks? But then again it would …

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Re: 286 pc

Posted on 2022-02-08, 14:18

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by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Best video card is a Tseng ET4000AX It's definitely not. Overpriced and not that great when it comes to performance and compatibility. I can hardly find justification for using it in any vintage PC build - for faster machines there are better ISA options. For slower - as well. So it's a bit like " …

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Re: Which video card for Quake 2? (1997-era 3D accelerators; Canopus Pure3D?)

Posted on 2022-02-08, 04:20

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Finding a PCI banshee cheap is no easy task

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Re: 286 pc

Posted on 2022-02-08, 00:02

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Best video card is a Tseng ET4000AX For hard drive the easiest thing would be a compact flash card, as mentioned earlier. Don't use XTIDE though, you're crippling a 286 with an 8 bit disk interface. Just get a CF to IDE adapter on Ebay for pennies and a standard IDE card

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Re: Help with XT-IDE on a network card

Posted on 2022-02-07, 19:26

by

by maxtherabbit

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The XTIDE images as released DO NOT include a checksum byte, without which your BIOS will not load them. I have argued with the project maintainers at length about this and they will not listen to my pleas. You must configure the binary with the provided utility or checksum it manually using a hex …

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Re: Descent 1/2 control scheme

Posted on 2022-02-07, 14:59

by

by maxtherabbit

in DOS

in DOS

For that reason I've always wanted a compact one, maybe even something you could cup your hand over like a big trackball (but it tilts on axes, doesn't spin). I've never come across anything like that. Modern Xbox/PS gamepad works quite well with Descent. this, after playing the original xbox …

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