Re: Limitations to building a year 1993 , 486dx-33 ?

Posted on 2019-08-15, 19:57

by

by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A DX33 was pretty medium to high end at the time in 1994 (the first half at least) with the DX2/66 being the "dream machine". Pentiums were only spoken off in hushed tones even by the end of 1994 when Pentium PCs started appearing slowly but surely on the consumer markets. You're off by a year (at …

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Re: How to connect both Roland SC-55mkII and MT32 at the same time?

Posted on 2019-08-14, 14:41

by

by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

What about something like the Behringer U-Control UCA202 Ultra-Low Latency 2 In/2 Out USB Audio Interface ? It's a USB device that provides a line input? I'm trying to avoid having a large mixer on my desk if at all possible, but I don't want the audio to suffer too much. I'm not a huge audiophile …

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Re: Limitations to building a year 1993 , 486dx-33 ?

Posted on 2019-08-14, 13:57

by

by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

HanJammer wrote: Intel486dx33 wrote: EISA was never really adopted in desktop PCs - it lived for a while in servers. I don't know what you mean by "really adopted" but they were sold to consumers by at least one Big Brand. I had to support them. I didn't like it. But no, I don't really suggest …

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Re: Limitations to building a year 1993 , 486dx-33 ?

Posted on 2019-08-14, 02:21

by

by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you really want the 1993 experience, build an EISA system.

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Re: Limitations to building a year 1993 , 486dx-33 ?

Posted on 2019-08-14, 02:02

by

by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In 1993, nobody had a 4X CD-ROM drive. Those didn't become affordable until 1995. 1994 was the year of the 2X CD-ROM drive. In 1993, almost nobody had one, and if they did it would have likely been a 1X model. That was enough to play Sierra games with voice tracks. DX-33 was at least a mid-range …

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Re: Limitations to building a year 1993 , 486dx-33 ?

Posted on 2019-08-13, 18:23

by

by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This depends heavily on what you want to play. Keep in mind that games aren't keyed to the hardware available when they are released; they tend to support a long tail of hardware and there wasn't the sliding scale of performance you see in games today. For the most part, they were either playable at …

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Re: Can't install Windows 3.11 (WFW) on stock dosbox 0.74

Posted on 2019-08-13, 15:07

by

by JudgeMonroe

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

keenmaster486 wrote: You have some kind of issue. There should be SETUP.EXE in the folder with all the install files. He's probably using a localized version, which does have an INSTALL.EXE instead of SETUP.EXE.

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Re: Price of this ISA hub?

Posted on 2019-08-13, 14:23

by

by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is an ISA riser they used to put in ultra-low-profile desktop PCs so the cards could be installed horizontally instead of vertically. The motherboard would have only a single ISA slot, and this riser would expand that to 5. You could use it in a different computer if you had the room, since …

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Re: Best tracker MODS ever

Posted on 2019-08-12, 21:27

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by JudgeMonroe

in Milliways

in Milliways

SirNickity wrote: I'm way more interested in short, curated lists. spacedrone808 wrote: I suspect around 2 thousand files. Good lord. I'm with SirNickity. Try some thematic playlists of 10 tracks each. If you want to be the curator of the "best tracker MODS ever" then you should be able to curate.

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Re: Gateway 2000 P5-90 Restoration

Posted on 2019-08-12, 00:27

by

by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

feipoa wrote: Sorry, I missed a word. I was wondering if you has been able to get an IDE CD-ROM drive working, either in DOS or Windows, on the RZ1000 port? It hadn't occurred to me to try it, but I'm not surprised if it doesn't work.

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Re: Gateway 2000 P5-90 Restoration

Posted on 2019-08-11, 18:33

by

by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

PC Mag September 1994 reviews this system as part of 40 Pentium 90s covered in the issue (one overclocked to 108mhz that later failed despite a humongous heatsink). The list price for Gateway 2000 P5-90 in that issue is $3999. That was the price point for a high-end PC through most of the 90s. I …

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Re: Gateway 2000 P5-90 Restoration

Posted on 2019-08-11, 18:14

by

by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't think I've seen a better looking desktop/monitor combination. Are you using the RZ1000 for the harddrive and the SMC SuperI/O for ISA IDE w/CD-ROM? Your system looks very similar to my Gateway Batman's Revenge socket 4 board, which I outfitted with a Pentium 133 overdrive chip. I've not …

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Re: cf 4gb in dos 6.22

Posted on 2019-08-10, 17:38

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by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

You just need to go into your BIOS and look around. If it supports LBA it's going to say so and have an option to toggle it on or off. Reading the (fake) geometry of the drive isn't enough. A 1994 BIOS on a 486 isn't guaranteed to have it. You can try a User-defined HDD type of 4092 cyl/16 hd/63 sec …

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Re: cf 4gb in dos 6.22

Posted on 2019-08-10, 17:15

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by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

There are multiple variables involved here: 1. BIOS support for large hard drives. Detecting the drive geometry is not the goal line. The BIOS also has to support LBA. It is possible for BIOS to detect a hard drive of arbitrary size, but without LBA no more than 528MB (or so, depending on how you do …

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

Posted on 2019-08-09, 04:54

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by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I set a dial up connection between two USB modems I had around on virtual machines running Windows 98SE. I wanted to go older, but 98SE was the earliest with driver support. That's awesome. I recently did something similar with a pair of Apple //c's with old Apple modems (a 300 baud and a …

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Performance

Posted on 2019-08-07, 19:44

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by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Let's talk performance. Expectations for a P5-90 system with 16MB RAM are pretty broad given the contemporary software requirements. Games generally didn't "require" more than a 486DX/66 until the later 90s when MMX became popular, the Pentium II came out, and titles started running in Windows …

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Re: Gateway 2000 P5-90 Restoration

Posted on 2019-08-07, 16:06

by

by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Are you aware that you linked an old website from Intel ..? Of course they say: "hey, no real issue here". They did the same with the FDIV bug. You may want to read this: http://mindprod.com/jgloss/eideflaw.html DOS and Win3.x are only safe if you use the latest BIOS which disables some of the …

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Re: Gateway 2000 P5-90 Restoration

Posted on 2019-08-07, 14:37

by

by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nice system. I've built a very similar one not long ago. Same mainboard, P75, 16 MB, ATI Mach64. However, a word of warning: the on-board IDE controller is full of hardware bugs and will corrupt data written to the drive, especially when any DMA transfer happens (e.g. copying from/to floppy). The …

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Re: Gateway 2000 P5-90 Restoration

Posted on 2019-08-07, 01:57

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by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've updated the first post with this hero shot of the P5-90 along with a couple pieces of my Gateway swag. IMG_1492.jpg The wallpaper is from the "Gateway 2000 System CD" which they started distributing with their PCs around the time CD-ROMs became mainstream. These CDs contained drivers for all of …

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Re: Gateway 2000 P5-90 Restoration

Posted on 2019-08-07, 01:11

by

by JudgeMonroe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Apparently there are some compatibility issues on the mixer chip, depending on the version. https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=37636#p333125 You know, it's funny. I've read that thread a couple of times in the process of researching this card, but it didn't click until just now -- "the MVA …

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