I try to get some old MFM and rll hard drives running, but I never have done that before. So I'm not successful at all.

@dormcat: Is there a CPU-Z which will work on a 386 as well, eg DOS or Win3.11? Or is it possible to get 95 on a 386 to work?

Iarsin wrote on 2023-04-07, 12:13:

@dormcat: Is there a CPU-Z which will work on a 386 as well, eg DOS or Win3.11? Or is it possible to get 95 on a 386 to work?

You can get windows 95 installed on a 386 machine. Just make sure you have at least 8 if not 16 Meg's of ram for a better experience.

Why less memory? Is it a cache thing? Tag ram... Or something where more memory makes the system slower.

At last I was able to set SB0220 (Dell) to work fine both in Win98 dos box and pure DOS 😀

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-04-07, 06:19:

I wonder why it needs that synthesizer specifically. Isn't the AWE64 synth General MIDI without extensions? Maybe it loads a soundfont.

The \gdata\sound directory has .SF2 and the same files encoded as .MID. Combined with the Red Book Audio, Croc is a rich and musically delightful experience.

Here's an exerpt from the Readme.txt:

17. Croc does not play ambient sound effects or plays random MIDI notes

Ambient sound effects are only supported on AWE32 and AWE64
SoundBlaster sound cards (when properly configured). If you have one
of these cards but are not hearing ambient sounds (such as tweeting
birds, wind, etc.), open the 'Multimedia' Control Panel, select the
MIDI tab and check that you have either the 'MIDI for Creative
Advanced Wave Effects Synthesis for AWE32' or the 'Creative MIDI
Instrument Mapper' selected.
If these options are not available, you may need to reinstall the
drivers which were supplied with your sound card. The latest patches
and updates to Creative Labs drivers are available from their web
site at http://www.creativelabs.com

18. Croc does not play reverberating sound effects in the caves

Ambient sound effects are only supported on AWE32 and AWE64
SoundBlaster sound cards (when properly configured). In order to
support this function the 'Creative Mixer' must be installed from the
disc that came with your sound card and the 'Full Duplex' operation
must be disabled. From the 'System' Control Panel, select the Device
Manager tab, and expand the 'Sound, Video and Game Controllers'
section. Open the audio device: for example, 'Creative AWE64 Gold
16-Bit Audio (SB16 compatible)' and select the Settings tab, ensuring
that the Full Duplex checkbox is cleared.

Bought an AMD DX2 66 because I thought my PC didnt come with a CPU. Wrong. It came out during shipping and I just discovered it inside the cable salad. Bend the pins straight, install it and then setup with Windows 95, now it works like a charm.

I very nice person gave me these yesterday for free. I am setting up the Imac right now. They both work perfectly . The mans father passed a while ago and these were his. I formatted the imac right away as the man asked me to because his fathers files were on it including pictures and emails and who knows so I did as he asked . In the process of reinstalling OS el capitan on it. Cant wait to dig into the Mac SE.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-04-07, 14:06:

Why less memory? Is it a cache thing? Tag ram... Or something where more memory makes the system slower.

I could be wrong, but he said " at least 8 if not 16". Maybe you read "at least 8 but not 16" ? He's saying more is better.

Yes, I misread that.

There are definitely some boards that get slower when you add too much memory. That's what I was thinking of.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-04-07, 23:49:

Yes, I misread that.

There are definitely some boards that get slower when you add too much memory. That's what I was thinking of.

I figured that's all it was. 😁

Yes I meant minimum of 8 megs but 16+ would be better.

I got some parts in the other day and started on trying to repair some stuff. I've got an Abit AG4 motherboard that's not giving POST codes and I thought that pulling the 85C407 chip would help - putting an all new chip in did nothing though. Here's the pinout of the SiS 85C407 pulled from the Arcom schematics that afaik are the only ones available for the SiS 85C471 chipset:

I saw it referred to as a buffer chip but this thing looks like it's doing the same job as an 82C206 with handling RTC, CMOS battery and maybe DMA functions?. Atleast now I know where to check for the various signals if it's not just falling over on something like reading the BIOS.

Tried a different project instead, got a broken onboard VGA back to working on this little Packard Bell 386SX motherboard:

Somewhat happier with the outcome from this repair attempt.

Got one of my Dell Dimension XPS R400 towers mostly put back together after a complete disassembly and cleaning (seems that's all I'm doing these days!) Just need to add a hard drive and get Win98 installed, then I'll post it in the system specs thread. It's very "1998."

Been trying to get an Athlon XP-M 2600+ to work on two nF2 mobos - a MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR and a Epox EP-8RDA6+ Pro.

Both identify it first as a 600MHz Mobile Athlon, then subsequently report as "Unknown CPU Type" on the POST screen after setting up.

Any ideas? The MSI might be SOL in my case since I already updated it to the latest BIOS available soon after I got it (it originally came to me with a corrupt BIOS chip), but I do have some hopes for the EPoX (and a user from another forum has told me the Epox might be the best suited board for the XP-M I have.)

Iarsin wrote on 2023-04-07, 12:13:

@dormcat: Is there a CPU-Z which will work on a 386 as well, eg DOS or Win3.11? Or is it possible to get 95 on a 386 to work?

Win95 can work on a 386 but the performance wouldn't be practical for apps and games (probably better than Win10-x86 on an Atom N280 with 1GB RAM, though). IMHO using DOS-based benchmark software (such as Phil's DOS Benchmark Pack) would make more sense for any pre-Pentium build. After all the score wouldn't be accurate if the OS alone is draining too much computing power from the CPU.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2023-04-07, 12:25:

You can get windows 95 installed on a 386 machine. Just make sure you have at least 8 if not 16 Meg's of ram for a better experience.

That Pentium 120/133 had only 16MB RAM back in 1995. 😅 Finding appropriate 30-pin SIMM and corresponding 386-era motherboard that could accommodate 16MB RAM would be a very challenging task; my first 386 had only 1MB RAM (4 x 256KB) in 1990 before upgrading to 4MB (4 x 1MB) two years later.

dormcat wrote on 2023-04-09, 04:55:

Win95 can work on a 386 but the performance wouldn't be practical for apps and games (probably better than Win10-x86 on an Atom […]
Show full quote

Iarsin wrote on 2023-04-07, 12:13:

@dormcat: Is there a CPU-Z which will work on a 386 as well, eg DOS or Win3.11? Or is it possible to get 95 on a 386 to work?

Win95 can work on a 386 but the performance wouldn't be practical for apps and games (probably better than Win10-x86 on an Atom N280 with 1GB RAM, though). IMHO using DOS-based benchmark software (such as Phil's DOS Benchmark Pack) would make more sense for any pre-Pentium build. After all the score wouldn't be accurate if the OS alone is draining too much computing power from the CPU.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2023-04-07, 12:25:

You can get windows 95 installed on a 386 machine. Just make sure you have at least 8 if not 16 Meg's of ram for a better experience.

That Pentium 120/133 had only 16MB RAM back in 1995. 😅 Finding appropriate 30-pin SIMM and corresponding 386-era motherboard that could accommodate 16MB RAM would be a very challenging task; my first 386 had only 1MB RAM (4 x 256KB) in 1990 before upgrading to 4MB (4 x 1MB) two years later.

Yah, throw all the RAM you can at it and it ain't too terrible on 25mhz or above, but you can't really DO anything on it, maybe only want to run a utility or two, set up a PnP weirdy card with no DOS setup, maybe network some files across, but not much will have adequate performance for interactive use.

I'm more interested in a CPU-z DOS version to identify for example the Mainboard of the Unisys pw² 500 16A. I need a manual for it's dip switches/jumper settings. The imprints are a bit unclear for me to make sense of.

But I actually doubt, that some sort of diagnostics tool can identify the Mainboard, and I think, it's really only build for this PC. A 386 doesn't come with dmi or the like.

There is a manual of the pw² 300 in the driver section, though.

Anyway, a DOS version would be cool, or at least for win 3.* ...

Would it take 4*16MB fpm SIMMs 30-pin? I got some handy.

Yah there's only a very few late chipsets that can be positively IDed, then BIOS string search will prolly just tell you it's Unisys, i.e. about as much as MSD or Norton Sysinfo will tell you.

I was inspired by OMORES to push my Windows 98 experiments a little further. I finally managed to install Windows 98 SE on my Core i7-4790K retro rocket I normally use with Windows XP and Windows 7. I just needed Rloew’s PATCHMEM and SPLIT8MB utilities to get past a VXD error during the install.

Here’s my new Windows 98/Me Retro Rocket:

- Asrock H97 Fatal1ty Performance
- Core i7-4790K Stock (4.0GHz Base, 4.4GHz Turbo)
- 16GB DDR3-1600 RAM (Limited to less than 4GB in 32-bit software)
- Radeon x800 XL
- Sound Blaster Live!
- Realtek 8139 10/100 Network Adapter
- Via PCI-E USB 1.1/2.0 Adapter
- LG BD-RE Drive
- LG DVD-RW Drive
- Generic 64GB SATA SSD

I also posted a new score to the Win98SE 3Dmark 2001 drag-race for fun:

3DMark 2001 SE+Windows 98SE Benchmark competition/scoreboard?

Edit: I played around with the system some more, and I reverted to a Sound Blaster Live! from an Audigy 2ZS. The Audigy just produced a lot of noise in some situations, and older SB Live! drivers seem to work better if I have the card in a certain slot. I bet the Audigy doesn't play well with the PCI-E to PCI bridge on the motherboard.