Re: Not Another Ultimate Windows 98 Build

Posted on 2022-10-16, 07:40

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yup, I confirmed the ASUS drive cannot read Redbook audio. Replaced it with a NEC ND-3550A, now I finally have CD audio. Tested it with Half-Life and it works great with digital out. The 3550A is a nice drive. I'm currently using one in my AthlonXP system as well. The only issue I had with it was …

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Re: Table Fog & 8-bit Paletted Textures

Posted on 2022-10-15, 18:58

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-10-15, 18:54: Spotted this in the Permedia 2 driver panel. Already documented a few months ago.

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Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2022-10-15, 12:38

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Milliways

in Milliways

Finished my Duke Nukem 3D playthrough. The game ran well enough on my Pentium MMX at 640x480, averaging around 30 FPS. This was with an S3 Trio64V+ graphics card and the S3 VBE utility loaded. While I do have faster rigs that could run it at 60+ FPS in higher resolutions, I deliberately chose a …

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Re: Table Fog & 8-bit Paletted Textures

Posted on 2022-10-15, 02:31

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I haven't ever tried Thief. What do I need to do to get to this magical "star" scene to try it out? You need the retail version of Thief 2 + patch 1.18. The GOG release is unsuitable since it comes with a fan made modification pre-applied. Additional instructions and save games are available here .

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Re: Mipmap settings that fix Incoming (DirectX 5) on the GeForce FX

Posted on 2022-10-15, 02:17

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Nice work! BTW, since you're using an FX card, you might also be interested in this: Text corruption in certain games on a GeForce FX 5900XT

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Re: Table Fog & 8-bit Paletted Textures

Posted on 2022-10-15, 02:12

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The issue with the stars on NVIDIA cards may be a mipmap issue. See here for how I tweaked a few settings to fix the HUD in Incoming, a DirectX 5 game. https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=90473&p=1108706#p1108706 Do the stars fail to render properly on a TNT2 or only GeForce and later? It's …

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Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2022-10-14, 09:54

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Milliways

in Milliways

Still on my '90s FPS nostalgia trip, so I played through Doom 2 as well. I'm using the GOG version but I was able to transfer the files over to my Pentium MMX rig, which runs actual DOS 6.22. Basically, all I had to do was erase any extra GOG files which didn't conform to the 8+3 naming convention, …

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Re: Soud Blaster awe64 + MQ MPU clone card sound issue

Posted on 2022-10-14, 09:40

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Only issue stiil present is after playing music in Doom using settings for SBAWE32 and port 300. FX and music in game are ok but after exit, there is no sound at all in other games and mt 32. After reseting system everything back to normal. So I think doom with these settings for music makes only …

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Re: Differences in using analog and digital connection in sound cards

Posted on 2022-10-13, 20:55

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

It's actually just a mixer problem. By default the digital CD mixer source is muted on SB Live/Audigy. But you can enable it even without loading the DOS drivers e.g. by this utility: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=59887&hilit=sb+live+audigy+dos+do+mixer Nice! I was aware of that …

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Re: Differences in using analog and digital connection in sound cards

Posted on 2022-10-13, 16:08

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The emulator description said it: "pretends that there are aux ports dedicated to the sound mixer and the CD device. Some games control the volume level by changing the volume at the aux ports, so this may let the volume control of the emulated CD to work. It should be used when necessary." Do you …

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Re: Differences in using analog and digital connection in sound cards

Posted on 2022-10-13, 15:17

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I guess the important point to note is that in pure DOS only analog will come through. The SPDIF digital CD audio connection will work in pure DOS too, albeit with some caveats. In my experience, how well this functions depends on the sound card. For example, I use an Audigy card in Win98 and have …

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Re: Differences in using analog and digital connection in sound cards

Posted on 2022-10-13, 14:20

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

1) There are CD drives with a volume button in front. Does that change only the CD music volume in application or the volume of entire computer? That's for the headphone jack on the front of the CD-ROM drive. If you plug your headphones directly into that jack, you get (only) CD audio and the wheel …

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Re: 15 FPS Doom 2 with Pentium MMX 200

Posted on 2022-10-13, 08:11

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in DOS

in DOS

Your system is likely too bottlenecked by the ISA graphics card already. I get that it's bottlenecked for what the computer can ultimately do. But why is it slower than a 486 33SX playing Doom 2? I didn't have a PCI card in my 486 in '94, it was a Cirrus Logic 542X something-ISA and I didn't get …

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Re: 15 FPS Doom 2 with Pentium MMX 200

Posted on 2022-10-13, 07:21

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in DOS

in DOS

I think I have a 32MB laying around, I'll test that one out. Thanks for the suggestion. UPDATE: This did unfortunately not improve things one bit. Your system is likely too bottlenecked by the ISA graphics card already. It's still a good idea to keep RAM within the maximum cacheable amount though.

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Re: 15 FPS Doom 2 with Pentium MMX 200

Posted on 2022-10-13, 06:11

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in DOS

in DOS

I concur, avoid ISA graphics cards on Pentium-era systems. They are too slow and will bottleneck the rest of your setup. Also, looking at that Speedsys screenshot, you seem to have 128MB RAM installed. This could also contribute to the slowdown since the Intel 430TX chipset can only cache 64MB. …

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Re: My Matrox Millennium displays vertical bars and doesn't always fit the screen

Posted on 2022-10-12, 07:55

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Maybe the experience is better with the Millennium II. I'm not all that impressed with this Millennium. I have a Millennium II and the image quality on an LCD is excellent all the way up to 1280x1024 when using 16-bit colors. However, if you increase the color depth to 24-bit, some very faint …

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Re: Differences in using analog and digital connection in sound cards

Posted on 2022-10-11, 15:51

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Rare drives however also have an SPDIF digital, which requires a soundcard or onboard sound that can speak that, I think it's less CPU overhead, all being handled by custom hardware, but don't mess with it myself. I don't think the digital (SPDIF) header is rare. Pretty much all of my CD/DVD drives …

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Re: Differences in using analog and digital connection in sound cards

Posted on 2022-10-11, 14:11

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Do CD-ROM drives containing analog audio pins exist? Typically, IDE CD-ROM drives contain two sets of pins for CD audio: a 4 pin header (used for the analog CD audio cable) and a 2 pin header (used for the digital CD audio cable). If they exist, can you do analog -> digital or vice versa? No, you …

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Re: Intel 430VX Triton II SIMM vs DIMM performance

Posted on 2022-10-11, 10:22

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Marvin wrote on 2022-10-11, 09:53: I managed to get my hands on these rare 64MB 32 chip DIMMs a few years ago: I think I may also have one of those. Didn't realize they were rare, I just thought it looked unusual.

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Re: Differences in using analog and digital connection in sound cards

Posted on 2022-10-11, 06:51

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

If we're talking about CD audio cables, the main benefit of using a digital connection is that you get clean, noise-free sound. Analog connections are prone to interference (which adds noise) while digital ones are not (or rather not in the same way). Note that there are two methods to get digital …

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