CGA Compatibility Tester vs. VGA cards

Posted on 2011-06-23, 18:07

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Here is a table of test results conducted with the CGA Compatibility Tester on various VGA chipsets. Generally, VGA cards emulate CGA well enough to be considered compatible, but some older games show graphical glitches or just plainly won't work with VGA cards. Some VGAs are better in emulating CGA …

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Re: Epox 8KTA3(+)Pro mobo - onboard sound options - MPU401, is it intelligent?

Posted on 2011-06-22, 20:54

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The sound chip is a VIA VT1611A, it's left of the audio/gameport connector in the photo. It is indeed AC97 and SB Pro compatible. I haven't tested it much (my own EP-8KTA3+ Pro has come down with the plague), but from what I remember it was pretty good. About the options in the BIOS: The first one …

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Re: SB Vibra 16S - CT2800 vs CT2860

Posted on 2011-06-22, 08:57

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by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

sliderider wrote: TheMAN wrote: what's wrong with using the MPU401 on the AWE64? Having too many things going on at the same time with a single card can cause bugs to creep in like the hanging note bug. Assigning functions to two separate cards can prevent this. AWE64 doesn't suffer from the …

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Re: Videos grabbed from real Retro PCs.

Posted on 2011-06-21, 11:13

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't think a scandoubler is needed, according to the specs the PCIe card syncs down to 15 KHz.

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Re: Videos grabbed from real Retro PCs.

Posted on 2011-06-20, 14:58

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just realized that elianda's VGA mode captures are 70Hz - that's awesome! And I agree that the $800 card plays in another league, just look at the driver support.

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Re: Videos grabbed from real Retro PCs.

Posted on 2011-06-19, 23:39

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

elianda wrote: I bought this one: http://www.epiphan.com/products/frame-grabber … specifications/ Well, the hardware specs certainly are impressive. Unfortunately so is the price...

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Re: Videos grabbed from real Retro PCs.

Posted on 2011-06-19, 16:17

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nice quality, but how come Crystal Dream 2 has a wrong aspect ratio?

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Re: AWARD BIOS 4.50PG vs. 4.51PG

Posted on 2011-06-18, 18:05

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

feipoa wrote: @5u3 Does your Asus PVI-486SP3 BIOS allow for L2 write-through mode at all? Yes, the L2 cache can be toggled between write-through and write-back in the BIOS setup.

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Re: (Solved) What is this ISA card - it looks like a network card.

Posted on 2011-06-17, 12:15

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Correct. At this point, consider getting a network hub/switch along with some normal network cables instead, as it will allow you to connect more than two PCs. Used 10/100Mbit network switches are very cheap these days...

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Re: How to prepare memory, so I get an error during the POST memory test?

Posted on 2011-06-17, 10:07

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Put adhesive tape over some of the memory modules contacts.

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Re: AWARD BIOS 4.50PG vs. 4.51PG

Posted on 2011-06-16, 11:38

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

retro games 100 wrote: Does this CPU load with IDE bottleneck diminish, once you move away from 486s, and in to Pentium class systems? CPU load is reduced once you move from the programmed I/O (PIO) modes to (U)DMA access. This feature started to show up during the Pentium era (Socket 5,7).

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Re: AWARD BIOS 4.50PG vs. 4.51PG

Posted on 2011-06-16, 09:12

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sorry, no experience with Cyrix CPUs. I only have Intel and AMD chips. The PS/2 connector works. It uses the same pinout as other Asus boards. No idea, since I have only 256 KB. Once I tried to upgrade to 1024 KB, but failed (probably faulty cache chips). Yes. Nothing out of the ordinary. On …

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Re: AWARD BIOS 4.50PG vs. 4.51PG

Posted on 2011-06-15, 15:15

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You might want to consider a different motherboard. "CMD640, the CMD Technology Inc product 0640, is an IDE interface chip which has a data corruption bug." Unless you can handle the possibility of powering up to a corrupted hard drive one day. Just wanted to point out that you can't conclude the …

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Re: AWARD BIOS 4.50PG vs. 4.51PG

Posted on 2011-06-15, 11:00

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Asus PVI-486SP3. Some of the limitations probably come from the onboard IDE controller (CMD640).

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Re: AWARD BIOS 4.50PG vs. 4.51PG

Posted on 2011-06-15, 09:35

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My 486 has an Award 4.51PG, and it only supports 8 GB IDE drives. It also can't boot from CD.

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Re: Sector not found reading drive A

Posted on 2011-06-09, 18:21

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Check BIOS settings for the floppy drive.

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Re: Creative Sound Blaster 16 ISA sound card, quick test

Posted on 2011-06-08, 20:39

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If the big "Creative" chip in the lower left quadrant of the photo is a CT1747 (can't quite read it on the photo), then the OPL3 is in there. And it's the real thing, not the cheap CQM emulation. 😉 The recording sounds just as I remember it. 😀

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Re: Gravis Ultrasound - speaker jack question?

Posted on 2011-06-07, 08:48

by

by 5u3

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Both of my classic GUS have the same problem, they just used crappy 3.5mm jacks on these cards. I solved it by bending the contacts inside the jacks a little, so they can "grip" the plug better.

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Re: Creative AWE64 ISA sound card, quick test

Posted on 2011-06-07, 08:40

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, AWEUTIL /S is also needed for initializing the FM chip. With AWEUTIL /C:xx and /R:xx you can set the amount of chorus/reverb. If you want to make out the most of this feature, there is an utility to change the chorus/reverb parameters and save them into presets (AWE32FXWorkshop), and a mixer …

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Re: K6-2 Blues

Posted on 2011-06-06, 15:51

by

by 5u3

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Iris030380 wrote: I then set the frequency back to 100 and the multiplier to 5.5 (can't find the 6x setting, maybe there isn't one). Set the multi to 2x on the board, and the CPU will interpret it as 6x.

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