VOGONS


Reply 540 of 781, by maverick85

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pieced together parts from your various videos and was finally able to get windows 95 installed and running whilst circumventing the 504MB fdisk limit. thanks
highlights included:
- limited info in bios regarding to hdd, set to standard ide from eide
- fat16 format using the WD ODD
- msdos install disk from your site
- a 4GB CF-IDE win95 installed hdd to keep swapping whilst making modifications (weirdly it got FAT32 partitioned correctly?!)
- a windows 98se startup disk i luckily had laying around
- mscdex and emm386 file etc placements using your ms dos 7.1 video
- LASTLETTER=K in config.sys (now have access to cd-rom, setup w95 from there)
- delete autoexec.dos and config.dos from c:\
- and finally to remove the vfat error: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000366.htm
complete pain in the ass. logic behind it all. was worried about the disk thrashing on CF and wanted more space

ASRock 98
Win98SE Desktop
ASRock
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz
1 x 512MB 667 MHz DDR2
Soundblaster SB0100 + Altec Lansing ADA885
ATi Radeon X800XT 256MB GDDR3
1 x SATA 120GB HDD
1 x SATA DVD-RW

Reply 541 of 781, by PhilsComputerLab

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Wow, you certainly earned your stripes with that one!

Cyrix M II - 300 Review DOS Retro Gaming

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Reply 542 of 781, by Oldskoolmaniac

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Could you do a video on what would be a good pci video card for a pentium mmx, I see this question all the time, but no benchmarks and comparisons im pretty sure there's a good amount of interest on that.

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Reply 543 of 781, by clueless1

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Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

Could you do a video on what would be a good pci video card for a pentium mmx, I see this question all the time, but no benchmarks and comparisons im pretty sure there's a good amount of interest on that.

More DOS PCI Benchmarks

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 544 of 781, by Oldskoolmaniac

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clueless1 wrote:
Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

Could you do a video on what would be a good pci video card for a pentium mmx, I see this question all the time, but no benchmarks and comparisons im pretty sure there's a good amount of interest on that.

More DOS PCI Benchmarks

Oh!

Motherboard Reviews The Motherboard Thread
Plastic parts looking nasty and yellow try this Deyellowing Plastic

Reply 547 of 781, by M-HT

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I watched your video about Pentium II 233MHz and you said you couldn't overclock the processor.
I used to have Pentium II 300MHz and I "overclocked" it from 66MHz FSB with 4.5 multiplier to 100MHz FSB with 3 multiplier - still running at 300MHz, but with higher FSB - you can read the how-to in this article.
The same should work with 233MHz processor, so you could run it at 200MHz or maybe 250MHz with 100MHz FSB.

Reply 548 of 781, by PhilsComputerLab

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I was testing the unlocked multiplier of the 233, which is a highlight. It didn't take the next highest multi. No big deal, I'll have some more Pentium II CPUs soon 😀

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Reply 549 of 781, by elianda

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Downclocking to 133 MHz is much more interesting as it allows to compare directly to the P1, Cyrix and K5 (well, if you can get it to 133 MHz)...
For higher clocks you can just take some later P2, even when it's locked.

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Reply 550 of 781, by boxpressed

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Yes, I love my PII 233. It would be perfect it I could find a way to passively cool it that did not worry me.

Do you know of any games off the top of your head that run too fast with a 233MHz PII but just right with a 133MHz PII?

Reply 551 of 781, by KT7AGuy

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boxpressed wrote:

Yes, I love my PII 233. It would be perfect it I could find a way to passively cool it that did not worry me.

I run a Slot 1 P3 1000, somewhat passively cooled. I removed the huge passive heatsink from a P2 400 and put it on my P3 1000. Next, I attached an 80mm fan to a bracket and pointed it at the CPU. It works rather well.

Reply 552 of 781, by elianda

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Regarding MTRRs and K6-2CXT and up:
First of all the K6-2 can only set 2 MTRR ranges (PPRO can set 😎. This shouldn't be a stopper since two is enough for VGA and LFB area.

I checked with MXK6OPT and CTU.
MXK6OPT:
Does NOT allow to give memory addresses and ranges manually. Check for execution in Real Mode and drops to back to command prompt early, whereas it might even work under e.g. QEMM386.
It sets WC for the LFB range only.

CTU:
Allows to set memory start and range for both MTRRs. I use a Quadro2 + V2 SLI and it defaults to
MTRR0 at DE000000 with a size of 8 MB in WC mode
MTRR1 at DE000000 with a size of 128 kB in UC mode

However looking at the NVidia Detonator graphics driver and it's used resources it shows that beside the usage of the regular VGA window at 000A0000 it uses a
128 MB large area at 18000000 (to 1FFFFFFF)
16 MB at 20000000 (to 20FFFFFF)
48 kB at 000C0000 (to 000CBBFF) -> obviously BIOS area
64 kB at 21000000 (to 2100FFFF)

It turns out that CTU is rather dumb and DE000000 is the address of one of the V2s. (DD000000 is the other) with 16 MB range each in device manager. Benchmarks show a slight DEcrease in fps on the V2 SLI with WC enabled on their ranges.

This means an actual senseful setting for the MTTRs would be
MTRR0 at 18000000 with a size of 128 MB in WC mode
MTRR1 at 000A0000 with a size of 128 kB in WC mode (128 kB is the smallest range)

This gives for the command line tool ctuclwin the following line:
CTUCLWIN /WA 384 1 /L1 1 /L2 1 /DP 1 /MTRR0 18000000 128 MB W /MTRR1 000A0000 128 kB W /M 6.0 /WO 2

with K6-2+ at 600 MHz 6x100 and 384 MB of RAM.
edit: just noticed the the CL utility does not allow to use 128 kB as size, whereas the graphical tool does.

Result is, that also for low Res modes that use the regular 64 kB VGA window write combining is active as well as for the LFB.

so PCPBENCH /VGAMODE goes from 176.7 to 187.0
3DBench 1.0C goes from 476.3 to 713
PCPBENCH 101 in 640x480 goes from 49.3 to 77.3 and
QUAKE in 320x200 from 90.3 to 93.1

So setting MTRRs works for VGA as well as for LFB.

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Reply 553 of 781, by PhilsComputerLab

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Nice.

Did you have luck with Dos tools?

So the 2 addresses that setk6 outputs are not correct, one should check in the driver?

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Reply 554 of 781, by elianda

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Well no.
SETK6D supports only up to K6-3 and not the plus CPUs.
MXK6OPT does not allow to give memory addresses and the two start addresses it finds automatically are one Voodoo2 and Quadro2. It doesn't even target the regular the regular VGA window. I am half way lucky that it doesn't use the first and second Voodoo2 for the two MTRRs. So for LFB only and some flaky auto detection.
CTU graphical utility works, but needs to be set manually as the auto detection fails as well and targets the same Voodoo2 twice.
CTUCLWIN does fail as it doesn't allow the 128 kB size range as given by CTU. So also automatic Startup setting with CTUCLWIN fails.

Actually a quite bad situation since the benchmarks show that setting the MTRRs work well, it lacks only good working tools.

edit: If you use a non Plus K6 then it is much easier as SETK6D can be used that allows to give all important parameters manually.

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Reply 555 of 781, by elianda

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K6WCX.COM works in DOS, however I think Phil will cover details some of his next videos.

topic change: About the Quadro2 Pro vs. GF2 Ti Video

One thing I can not agree is your approach to force another driver (GF2Ti) on the Q2Pro to accomplish a difference.
The way it works is that the driver is identical and when it boots up it sets depending on the PCI ID of the card the code path in the driver. You see this that even with the forced GF2Ti driver the panel reports a Quadro2 Pro. So nothing gained here and you still have for e.g. the Workstation OpenGL ICD.
The way to go is to use Rivatuner install the NVSTRAP driver and fake a different PCI-ID. As shown here:
http://retronn.de/ftp/pictures/hardware/K6-2p … p_gf_quadro.png
You did the overclock with Rivatuner, so I was a bit wondering why you didn't used that feat. as well. This fakes the PCI-ID of the card and it should appear afterwards as the other flavor. Only then the performance differences should resemble the different driver code path.

My Quadro2 Pro goes up to 290 MHz Core / 530 MHz Mem (DDR)
300 MHz core runs too but when it drops back to Desktop I get no signal anymore. I have to open a DOS prompt blindly to recover the desktop screen.
At 310 MHz core it freezes.

I can't tell about speed gains as I use the card in a K6-2+ 600 MHz.

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Reply 556 of 781, by PhilsComputerLab

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Elianda, it's not "my approach". Like I said in the video, when you look around the Internet, often people suggest doing it this way. So I wanted to to try it out and show that it didn't work.

As for not (yet) showing the RivaTuner method, I have my reasons 🤣

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Reply 557 of 781, by gdjacobs

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Just finished watching the FreeDOS 1.2 review and had a few comments:

While the criticisms of FreeDOS are absolutely valid and should be taken to heart, I disagree that modifying FreeDOS for improved compatibility is difficult enough to be disqualifying. DOS 6.22 requires significant tuning beyond stock configuration to become what I consider useable. DOS 6.22 also does not support modern install methods, although builds of "MS-DOS 7.1" do somewhat alleviate this, dubious provenance or not. In short, there's no free lunch whether you're running FreeDOS or something else.

If the community can come up with a versatile and compatible set of base utilities much like your starter pack, I don't see much functional downside to using the FreeDOS kernel versus MS-DOS 6.22+, as most (perhaps all) of the compatibility issues listed are specific to the CD-ROM drivers and CD extender or the extended/expanded memory manager. Perhaps the kernel does have some hidden issues, but I think it's reasonable to assume there isn't a significant compatibility problem in the kernel based on the testing an errors I've seen personally or noted by other users (correct me if I'm wrong).

As for some specific issues, SoftMPU depends on MS-DOS EMM386 port trapping which is not compatibile with JEMM386's method. EMM386 would have to be used, SoftMPU would have to be patched with another trapping routine, or a normal mode MPU-401 hardware interface would have to be used. Also, JEMM386 requires the use of the NOVME flag to be compatible with the Origin DOS extender used for Strike Commander and Privateer. I haven't encountered the same issues with optical drives, but these are still resolveable by at most including the requisite utilities and base configuration files. If the necessary changes can be included as a starter pack or a remastering of FreeDOS (FreeDOS Retro Edition?), most if not all of the downsides of running FreeDOS would be eliminated with little to no inconvenience for the user.

I don't have a lot of time, but if there's interest elsewhere, I would certainly be willing to help with testing as time allows. Providing another option for the retro gaming community can't help but be a good thing, right?

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder