Looking for Alex Mina's AC97 Mixer

Posted on 2020-07-26, 14:46

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I've been looking everywhere for Alex Mina's AC97 Mixer for Windows 9x but it seems that all trace but one has disappeared. The program was quite well known in the Aureal Vortex community so it surprises me that there were almost no mirrors. Most people just linked to Mina's website instead. The …

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Re: Compaq N600c: hangs on playing audio in DOS, music works

Posted on 2020-07-25, 21:02

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I will make one tomorrow (Sunday). I'm still running into issues but so far everything has been playable, even games that have traditionally (in my experience) been a bit weird with sound like Skyroads and Syndicate. It's just that the MIDI quality is horrible in DOS (with the exception the Duke3D …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2020-07-25, 09:59

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You've got completely different IRQ/DMA settings than what my drivers gave me. Interesting. I did make some progress and I now got sound to work reliably in Rise of the Triad, stuttering sound in Quake (edit 2: fixed 99% of stuttering) and no sound in Doom (edit: got sound working in Doom). I will …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2020-07-24, 15:12

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes, I had the same. For the unknown device you can manually pick the ESS ES1989 PCI audio device from the list. Then it automatically installs a DOS emulation device, a gameport and then you should have sound.

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2020-07-24, 10:59

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I found one on this driver CD at Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/mmcd9v22 Should you get it working btw then I would very much like to get your ESSAUDIO.INI (which is created by the non-WDM drivers) and perhaps everything that Compaq Diagnostics (https://driverscollection.com/_ …

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Re: Compaq N600c: hangs on playing audio in DOS, music works

Posted on 2020-07-24, 10:46

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I played around with a custom init script that was made by Kamarat (posted in this topic ) that uses an utility called PCISET to directly set registers on the card, instead of via ESSAUDIO. After much trial and error I found a combination that actually worked(!) and gave me music and sound in Rise …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2020-07-24, 10:36

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm dealing with exactly the same problem atm (Compaq N600c: hangs on playing audio in DOS, music works) I'll update the topic because I had it working for one boot yesterday. And then suddenly the I/O, IRQ and DMA combination didn't work anymore. Sigh.

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Re: FastDoom 0.3. A new Doom port for DOS, optimized to be as fast as possible for 386/486 personal computers!

Posted on 2020-07-23, 08:09

by

by HandOfFate

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Did you see the release of the source code for the SNES port? I saw some people saying that those optimizations could be useful for older PCs as well because of some of the lookup tables it used, I think?

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Re: Compaq N600c: hangs on playing audio in DOS, music works

Posted on 2020-07-22, 12:42

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by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I tried it but still nothing. I managed to find some non-WDM drivers over at Archive.org that adds a "DOS Emulation" sound device to Windows. I'm guessing it is there to add sound support for running DOS programs under Windows, but it also creates/updates the C:\ESSAUDIO.INI and C:\ESSAUDIO.SYS …

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Re: Compaq N600c: hangs on playing audio in DOS, music works

Posted on 2020-07-20, 18:28

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No, the Compaq BIOS is very simple. Unless there's some advanced mode hidden somewhere there are no IRQ settings of any kind.

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Re: Compaq N600c: hangs on playing audio in DOS, music works

Posted on 2020-07-20, 16:05

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Please read my post 😀

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Compaq N600c: hangs on playing audio in DOS, music works

Posted on 2020-07-20, 15:54

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a Compaq N600c with an ESS 198x audio chip (probably ESS 1989, aka Maestro 3/Allegro-1) that plays audio fine under Windows, plays music fine in Doom but crashes hard when Doom is about to play a sound effect. Same thing with Quake (which I think just takes the values from BLASTER) There have …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2020-07-15, 11:54

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

HP still does host at least one Presario 1800-series service documentation (or some HTML-to-PDF conversion of it), and I found two others at elhvb.com: Presario 1825 and 1800T Presario 1805 and 1810 Presario 1800XL280, XL380, XL381 and XL390 I didn't find the one for the 1800 itself yet.

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Re: Trying to get my Win 95 machine online...

Posted on 2020-07-15, 10:35

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

90skidJohnny wrote on 2020-07-15, 03:15: [...] Subnet is just using 255's [...] Do you mean 255.255.255.255? In that case it could be that you need to change it to 255.255.255.0

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Re: Have you opened your SC-55 to check the battery inside?

Posted on 2020-07-15, 09:17

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Yeah, I guess I'll have to take it out then. I always try to avoid any chance of damaging things, but I guess it's unavoidable here 😀

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Re: Have you opened your SC-55 to check the battery inside?

Posted on 2020-07-14, 19:12

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Well, my SC-88 Pro battery seems to be fine. I'd like to remove it (it doesn't have it to remember any settings anyway) but I'm not sure how to get it out? I can move it a little when I put a flat screwdriver under (or above) the battery, but it's difficult to see what I'm doing so I don't want to …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2020-07-14, 12:10

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, N600C is already bought for 15USD and I'll try fighting with it. Presario 1800 from what I see is 56USD. Maybe later... Can you share your best M1 driver? Cause link posted here earlier with all M1 drivers is not working anymore :( I also got a N600C today (and also on the lookout for a …

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Re: Have you opened your SC-55 to check the battery inside?

Posted on 2020-07-14, 10:43

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Jackhead wrote on 2020-06-14, 12:36: i checked my SC-88 Pro when i bought it, and the battery was leaking. Lucky there was no damage on the board.. *Gulp*. I didn't know the SC-88 Pro also has one. I'll have to check tonight. My SC-55 did have a swollen battery but no corrosion or other damage, …

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Re: RUDE: new Doom sourceport

Posted on 2020-07-14, 10:20

by

by HandOfFate

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Very cool, I'll try it out. Is it still compatible with Windows 9x? I saw in at the beginning of the DoomWorld thread that you tested it on Win9x, and the zip has 'win32' in it, but does it still or does it need XP or higher?

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Re: Newly made Gravis Ultrasound compatible cards ... what's the degree of interest?

Posted on 2020-07-10, 11:46

by

by HandOfFate

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

This also piqued my interest. Do I understand correctly that https://chipkin.ru/product/konstruktor-gusar-m/ (once available) would contain everything to solder a complete board together? Are there any restrictions in shipping things to Europe currently? I have the GUSar lite from that same site …

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