Re: Sound Blaster AWE 32 - Load Soundfonts MSDOS

Posted on 2014-01-18, 23:58

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Davros wrote: F2bnp wrote: You don't! You do! you use sf2load No really, you don't. SF2LOAD is a Windows program. The reason why it doesn't work under DOS is explained in this thread (read gerwin's post).

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Re: 486 Mobos: Can you install multiple VGA cards - like AGP/ PCI switching?

Posted on 2014-01-18, 20:37

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The type of the PSU should be irrelevant. The +5v was taken from one of the molex connectors of the PSU. One reason why I don't use this solution any more is that no single ISA VGA is compatible with all the games/demos/apps I run, so I'll have to swap it anyways.

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Re: 486 Mobos: Can you install multiple VGA cards - like AGP/ PCI switching?

Posted on 2014-01-18, 18:46

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No, switching primary VGAs on different buses is usually not possible on 486 machines, the exception may be boards with integrated/onboard VGA: However: If you have a PCI mainboard and install an ISA(or VLB) VGA alongside a PCI VGA, the ISA card will always be the primary VGA, so you can "switch" by …

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Re: VGA signal quality - Splitters and KVMs

Posted on 2014-01-17, 10:36

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just looking at the pictures, the switch looks cheap, but might actually not be complete crap. Those cables don't seem to be very well made though. For matrix switches, just search "VGA matrix" on ebay. The good ones come in 19" rack format for several hundred dollars. The plasticky ones for 50 …

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Re: VGA signal quality - Splitters and KVMs

Posted on 2014-01-17, 09:55

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If money is no object, get a VGA matrix (switch+splitter in one device). The cheapest option would be to swap cables and test which have the least impact on signal quality. As a general rule, switches and splitters with a higher bandwith should provide a better signal. Unfortunately manufacturers …

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Re: The MIDI General

Posted on 2014-01-17, 08:58

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Cloudschatze wrote: I'd be happy to share the configuration details, if anyone cares. Yes please. We do care about such things 😉 Seeing all those stacked sound boards+DBs, another question arises: What about heat? I've only got half the board count in my 486, and it gets considerably warm when the …

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Re: VOGONS Benchmark archive?

Posted on 2014-01-16, 22:59

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

elianda wrote: GamestarD3D (probably same engine as PCP bench?!?) I just ran into that one while searching for a PCPBench download, and it seems to be a rather ugly hack of PCPBench. The engine was originally programmed for the game Strike Base.

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Re: VOGONS Benchmark archive?

Posted on 2014-01-16, 19:09

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Did you know there was a Direct3D version of PCPbench? It's very old (1997) and probably not very useful, but since it seems to have vanished from the net, here it is:

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Re: Pentium 166MMX tower of power.

Posted on 2014-01-16, 12:00

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Using an ISA video card in order to slow down a faster DOS system is actually not the worst idea. This often yields smoother results than disabling caches or turbo buttons, but it doesn't work universally, since it depends on the way a game is programmed.

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Re: Did I Hit 486 Gold?

Posted on 2014-01-14, 20:11

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For those simple PS/2->serial adapters to work, the mouse has to support both protocols. It's the same with those USB->PS/2 adapters.

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Re: Phil's Ultimate VGA Benchmark Database Project

Posted on 2014-01-12, 17:42

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you mean running a Pentium MMX 233 at 66 x 2 to submit a MMX 133 result? The problem I see with this is that it is easy to produce skewed results without an encyclopedic knowledge about CPUs and their features. Your example is already a borderline case, since the MMX-133 is a rather obscure …

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Re: Phil's Ultimate VGA Benchmark Database Project

Posted on 2014-01-12, 15:13

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

^ agreed.

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Re: 486DX2 66 vs. DX2ODPR66 (Overdrive) re: jumpers?

Posted on 2014-01-11, 23:40

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This doesn't look like a problem with the CPU jumpers. From my experience the board will POST with almost any settings, only some CPU-specific features (like WB cache) would not work if the jumpers are not correctly set. Do you have a different video card (ISA or PCI) and different RAM to try out? …

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Re: A tale of two PSUs

Posted on 2014-01-11, 13:03

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for the info about the cement resistor, I already wondered what that was. Fortunately this PSU has a decent 92mm fan in the lid, so the resistor (and the transformators in the cramped middle part of the PSU) should get enough air flow. You're right about the 80mm fan on the back though, I've …

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Re: A tale of two PSUs

Posted on 2014-01-10, 23:25

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Since the days of hot Athlons being fed through low voltages I've had a habit of buying Enermax units for the computers at work (if the budget allowed it). Most of these still work, but they are useless for powering modern machines, so I kept a few for my retro rigs: http://xover.htu.tuwien.ac.at/~ …

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Re: Sound Blaster 16 DSP Version

Posted on 2014-01-10, 17:17

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by 5u3

in SoftMPU

in SoftMPU

dvanaria wrote: Are a lot of games effected by this bug? No. See here for more info.

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Re: my fast DOS PC

Posted on 2014-01-04, 00:42

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

68-pin SCSI cables often look like that. In my experience these are better than the "flat ribbon"-type cables because they are more flexible and their connectors don't tend to fall off the drives as easily. SCSI signalling is far more robust than ATA, so data corruption is not a problem.

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Re: Phil's Ultimate VGA Benchmark Database Project

Posted on 2014-01-04, 00:12

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Added a few results... @Mau1wurf1977 I tried to add another sheet for underclocked results, but apparently the permissions prevent the proper copying of the table to another sheet (It seemed to work at first, but it went havoc with permission errors after a short time, so I removed it again). So, if …

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Re: PCI/AGP card combo?

Posted on 2014-01-02, 21:42

by

by 5u3

in Windows

in Windows

Kurasiu wrote: [...] will a VGA switcher like this be good enough for a setup of two graphic cards and one monitor? Simple mechanical switches like the one you linked might actually be worse than a pass-through cable. Electronic switches (even cheap ones) offer far better signal quality.

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Re: Phil's Ultimate VGA Benchmark Database Project

Posted on 2014-01-02, 20:14

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

One comment about FASTVID: Since the benchmarks only use standard VGA modes, it is in most cases not necessary to load FASTVID or similar tools. Standard VGA always has the framebuffer at the same address, so the BIOS usually already sets a MTRR covering the VGA framebuffer. However, there are …

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