Re: Smartdrv.exe Alternatives

Posted on 2008-08-25, 18:30

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does DMA really benefit DOS at all? I can understand that it might if you have a UDMA controller, a fast HDD, and a fast sys. I don't know if the UDMA controller itself will configure for the proper UDMA speed. So maybe it gets you out of PIO4 (16MB/s) and up to UDMA xxx? However, it seems to me …

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Re: Slow video performance

Posted on 2008-08-25, 18:28

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

nice work there, eh.

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Re: Compiling for an EeePC (Celeron M) : Results

Posted on 2008-08-22, 21:07

by

by swaaye

in DOSBox Development

in DOSBox Development

I've found that my Athlon 64 3000+ in my big notebook is a little over 2x faster than this EeePC at 1000 MHz. Going by a Quake timedemo. With the same compile optimized for a Pentium M 🤣. Poor little Dothan CPU misses its 2MB cache I think. The A64 is an old Clawhammer with 1MB L2 @ 1800MHz.

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Re: FoxPro 2.0 for DOS

Posted on 2008-08-22, 19:16

by

by swaaye

in DOSBox Games/Apps

in DOSBox Games/Apps

What about trying MS Virtual PC, Bochs, or VirtualBox?

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Re: Compiling for an EeePC (Celeron M) : Results

Posted on 2008-08-22, 19:07

by

by swaaye

in DOSBox Development

in DOSBox Development

Actually, on the Eee900 it starts at 900 MHz. There is an option in the BIOS for "power save mode" which puts it at 630 MHz and undervolts everything. On "performance" mode, it starts at 900 Mhz and I've found that it'll do 1000 MHz fine. On power save, it can only handle 750 MHz oc.

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Re: Smartdrv.exe Alternatives

Posted on 2008-08-22, 19:04

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Disk caching makes a huge difference in DOS regardless of how fast the drive is. I've always used Smartdrv because it's probably going to be the most compatible option. Disk caching will cause problems with some apps and drivers though. For example, the DOS driver that comes with Ensoniq AudioPCI …

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Re: Best/Fastest ISA GFX Card?

Posted on 2008-08-22, 18:56

by

by swaaye

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

You'd probably be pretty well off with a Cirrus Logic ISA card. ISA is so slow that there just isn't much that can be done. Unless you definitely want GUI acceleration, but ISA cards are not what you want if you desire that.

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Re: Nominations for the best all-rounder graphics card for a 486

Posted on 2008-08-21, 19:27

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I used to have a Herc Dynamite Power VLB. Excellent card. Was superior for DOS compared to a more expensive #9 Motion 771 (S3 968) I got later on. I was hunting for VLB vid cards in 1996 cuz I was a poor kid. Ebay got me these things for ~$40. :) I had a friend with a crap Trident 9400CXi VLB that …

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Re: Best/Fastest ISA GFX Card?

Posted on 2008-08-21, 19:21

by

by swaaye

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

I "upgraded" from a Trident 8900C ISA to a Diamond Speedstar Pro ISA (CL GD5426) back in the day and saw a major performance jump. Anyway, here is an article from an ancient CGW that will do the trick hopefully. http://thumbnails2.imagebam.com/344/ca8a353434351.gif (links to a gallery at imagebam)

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Re: S3 graphics card recommendation for DOS please

Posted on 2008-08-20, 18:59

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

ViRGE is VBE 1.2 too. There is UNIVBE and the S3VBE TSR to use though. Even without VESA 2.0, they are still more compatible than plenty of cards with 2.0 and 3.0.

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Re: Slow video performance

Posted on 2008-08-20, 18:58

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

COAST they were called. Cache On A STick. 😀

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Re: Windows 98SE and Large Hard Drives

Posted on 2008-08-20, 18:57

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I made a 180 GB FAT32 partition for 98 to read. :) I have a 200 GB drive on a Pentium Pro (VS440FX) mobo. 20GB for 98 partition, ~180GB for CD ISO storage (I hate using the actual CDs.) Works fine. I used a Promise Ultra 66 and Partition Magic to get the partitions made and then switched to the old …

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Re: Best AudioPCI card?

Posted on 2008-08-20, 18:52

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Did they just tell you to buzz off with your unrecognized card? Or did nasty things happen?

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Re: Compiling for an EeePC (Celeron M) : Results

Posted on 2008-08-20, 18:44

by

by swaaye

in DOSBox Development

in DOSBox Development

Yeah that's what I'm seeing. The only time compiler options that made a tangible improvement were O2 + profile guided optimization + omitted frame pointer with GCC 3.4.5 and DOSBOX 0.72. That gave me a small improvement of about 5% over the 0.72 compile on the DOSBOX site. Everything else, even …

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Re: Compiling for an EeePC (Celeron M) : Results

Posted on 2008-08-19, 18:54

by

by swaaye

in DOSBox Development

in DOSBox Development

Yeah I did some file compares and rigged up a 0.72 with some fixed CPP files with the added includes. It worked. The compiler was warning about some sort of typedef mis-use too but it didn't seem to cause anything to fail. GCC 4.3.1 won't make me a faster EXE though. I tried lots of stuff. Used the …

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Re: Fastest 2D ISA, VLB, PCI, and AGP graphics chipsets?

Posted on 2008-08-19, 18:48

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

NVIDIA's chips from TNT onward usually run DOS games pretty well from both the speed and compatibility angles. They are actually very fast DOS cards. Maybe the fastest. I ran a whole slew of different cards in a P3-600 months ago and found the these NV cards to work almost as well as the S3 cards …

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Re: Slow video performance

Posted on 2008-08-19, 18:31

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do the cache chip traces actually go to the chipset? Some of the fake cache boards had fake traces too that went in loops back to each other 🤣.

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Re: 3D cards in 486s

Posted on 2008-08-19, 18:16

by

by swaaye

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

i740 was designed around AGP. It's a strange chip. The PCI version has to use a bridge chip to map the chip to PCI. And they have extra RAM onboard to make up for the lack of AGP texture memory.

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Re: Compiling for an EeePC (Celeron M) : Results

Posted on 2008-08-15, 20:08

by

by swaaye

in DOSBox Development

in DOSBox Development

core-inline doesn't help because you are running a game with the dynamic cpu core. core-inline inlines the memory read and write functions in the normal cpu core only. So to test the effect of that you have to set core=normal instead of core=auto. Ok. Thanks for the heads up. I'm experimenting with …

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Compiling for an EeePC (Celeron M) : Results

Posted on 2008-08-14, 19:53

by

by swaaye

in DOSBox Development

in DOSBox Development

I've spent a few hours compiling DOSBOX. I have a EeePC 900 and wanted to see if I get get a bit more speed out of the little 900MHz Celeron M inside it. I've only compiled DOSBOX one other time, years ago, so I needed to relearn how to do it. The wiki and some forum threads here were invaluable. I …

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