ynopot wrote on 2022-08-19, 14:45:

Ydee wrote on 2022-08-19, 14:14:

Maybe not quite period correct, but I think a balanced setup for the games up to the year 2000.

))
I put GF2 MX 400 on my K6-2+ 450 (500-550) and got good performance in Q3, UT99. Before that there was ATI Rage 128 and Q3, UT99 were not very playable. Even Half Life 1 has improved with hardware Transform and lighting (T&L) which frees up CPU time.

I have one too, and I've been thinking about it (or the GTS, V3 2000 or maybe the GF4MX400), but the CPU seems weak for these cards, not right? I think the GF2MX400 will make better use of the Mendocino 433@488 on the 83MHz FSB, which I have in the build on the VIA Apollo Pro.

I've spent most of the day setting up an OS/2 Warp 4 VM, figuring out how to install FixPak 15 (I can not possibly imagine how anyone within IBM thought the fixpak install experience is even remotely acceptable), then trying to figure out why my cross-compiled C-Kermit for OS/2 binaries don't work.

Its taken most of the day but after disabling NetBIOS support at build time and fixing an obscure bug, this is the first open-source version of C-Kermit for OS/2 in over 25 years:

(and also the first time I've ever compiled anything for OS/2)

Well done. I don't think that I'll ever use OS/2, but I respect it from a distance. It looks like a lot of work to get set up properly.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-08-20, 19:28:

Well done. I don't think that I'll ever use OS/2, but I respect it from a distance. It looks like a lot of work to get set up properly.

Yeah, I've never really used OS/2 for anything besides playing solitaire. My main motivation, aside from the challenge, is that the Windows and OS/2 versions are built from the same codebase and I'm making quite a lot of changes for Windows, so I wanted to make sure I wasn't accidentally breaking OS/2 code (which, it turns out, I did in a few places). Stuff like the update and install experience, and all the weirdly formal IBMisms everywhere like the "Problem Determination Tools" makes it pretty clear why Windows 95 won.

Plus in many respects NT 3.1 from 1993 feels like a more modern operating system than OS/2 Warp 4 from 1996. Like the install process - NT 3.1 you just feed it the three? boot floppies, it partitions your disk, it copies its files, done . OS/2 Warp 4 - you feed it the three boot floppies (starting with the "install" disk, not "disk 1") , it *reboots* because its relying on the BIOS still (which also means it has big difficulties with big disks), then you have to feed it the three boot floppies again before it will go and start copying files from the CD. I'm pretty sure NT4, released around the same time, has a bootable CD.

That said, in other ways its surprisingly modern. The first time I installed OS/2 2.0 last year was actually a little shocked. Its the same age as Windows 3.1 but has all this stuff that later appeared in Windows 95 making it fairly obvious where Microsoft got some of their ideas from. Like this is pretty much Network Neighbourhood:

I recently bought this Ti4600, but it's no good. It displays an image, but once its driver is installed, I get a black screen or extremely poor performance; 1 choppy frame appears every 10-20 seconds, and that is just for the desktop. It happens with 98SE, ME, and XP. The fan is failing, so I pointed several fans at the cards as a precaution. I bet this card overheated at some point.

Unfortunately, it's going back to the seller.

I have this ARK 1000pv card and would like to populate the empty memory sockets, would anyone have an idea what 512k ICs would fit this card ?

Would this ARK2000Py take the same modules ?

Edit - I have some V53C16256HK50 ICs in a SOJ package, would two of these work out to 1meg of Vram and how do you orientate them in the socket?

I am not familiar with reading memory ICs, but I know they are 16x256 but thats the extent of my experience in reading and interpreting the codes.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-22, 00:26:

Edit - I have some V53C16256HK50 ICs in a SOJ package, would two of these work out to 1meg of Vram and how do you orientate them in the socket?

I am not familiar with reading memory ICs, but I know they are 16x256 but thats the extent of my experience in reading and interpreting the codes.

Your modules are 50ns while your card have 60 and (if it's -7 in the end) 70ns, so they should work.

2 modules of 512KB (256Kx16 bit) DRAM each - that matches, typical VRAM for old cards (though one of your cards uses different type of modules, 256Kx4 bit, that's why they need 8 per 1MB).

As for key - one of the short sides of your modules is somewhat sloped and has a dot at the corner. The same dot or arrow or triangle is at the corner of your SOJ slot - they should match.

rkurbatov wrote on 2022-08-22, 01:53:

Your modules are 50ns while your card have 60 and (if it's -7 in the end) 70ns, so they should work. […]
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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-22, 00:26:

Edit - I have some V53C16256HK50 ICs in a SOJ package, would two of these work out to 1meg of Vram and how do you orientate them in the socket?

I am not familiar with reading memory ICs, but I know they are 16x256 but thats the extent of my experience in reading and interpreting the codes.

Your modules are 50ns while your card have 60 and (if it's -7 in the end) 70ns, so they should work.

2 modules of 512KB (256Kx16 bit) DRAM each - that matches, typical VRAM for old cards (though one of your cards uses different type of modules, 256Kx4 bit, that's why they need 8 per 1MB).

As for key - one of the short sides of your modules is somewhat sloped and has a dot at the corner. The same dot or arrow or triangle is at the corner of your SOJ slot - they should match.

Did a bit of research and the ARK2000PV requires FPM memory which means the ICs I have are not likely to work in it, do you have an idea what ICs will work ?> would like to upgrade it from 1mb to 2mb.

Actually further reading is confusing as it can also support EDO memory ...apparently both works.

Going to shove two of my ICs in it and see if they works . .whats the worst that can happen.

In case your videocard doesn't support EDO RAM - nothing, it will just not work like mobos that don't support EDO. But ensure you put it correctly, pinout is non-symmetrical. The key is visible both in socket and in IC - either as dot in the corner or arc on the short side of the IC that watches the key on the socket.

rkurbatov wrote on 2022-08-22, 12:34:

In case your videocard doesn't support EDO RAM - nothing, it will just not work like mobos that don't support EDO. But ensure you put it correctly, pinout is non-symmetrical. The key is visible both in socket and in IC - either as dot in the corner or arc on the short side of the IC that watches the key on the socket.

The two version of this card only differ by what Vram they have, the 2000PV core supports either, so in theory it shouldn't have an issue, the question then is can it drive both at the same time or will the two types conflict with each other.

I have no idea how to hunt for FPM ICs so hopefully someone here can point me in the right direction.

Just try it. Some of motherboards don't support EDO ram at all, some allow mixing where EDO modules work as slower FPMs and some allow FPM work as FPM and EDO as EDO while mixed. I suppose the same should work for video cards as also. Just check both modules in both of your cards and you'll know. The only potential problem is to put VCC on data lines of your memory but if you check for keys both card and memory should stay safe either working or not.

My Dell 416P started to have intermittent problems, so I had a closer look. Some corrosion on traces/ICs - cleaned them with Isopropyl, woudln't POST anymore. Washed it in the dishwasher, started having keyboard problems (reported interrupt tick absence) so I checked the fuse. I decided to reflow it - I guess I left it in there too long, cuz when I moved it out of the oven, I set it down a little too hard on the counter - several ICs moved out of position - by a lot.

It's going to become an art piece at this point, at least I was able to salvage 512K of SM video RAM... 😐

davidrg wrote on 2022-08-20, 12:24:

I've spent most of the day setting up an OS/2 Warp 4 VM, figuring out how to install FixPak 15 (I can not possibly imagine how a […]
Show full quote

I've spent most of the day setting up an OS/2 Warp 4 VM, figuring out how to install FixPak 15 (I can not possibly imagine how anyone within IBM thought the fixpak install experience is even remotely acceptable), then trying to figure out why my cross-compiled C-Kermit for OS/2 binaries don't work.

Its taken most of the day but after disabling NetBIOS support at build time and fixing an obscure bug, this is the first open-source version of C-Kermit for OS/2 in over 25 years:
ckwos2.png

(and also the first time I've ever compiled anything for OS/2)

I think there should FP14 with one stop installation. It should be over at Hobbes. I gave FP15 a go but that borked my OS/2 v4 install. I did manage to back track out of that though thank goodness. Still have that hdd around some where.

I have a dedicated OS/2 v3 box. It is DECpc slimline 486DX2/66 system with 16megs of ram, no fixpacks and I use Warp 4 server OS/2 network client because it is full 32 bit and has DHCP available unlike the Warp v3 Connect client.

MarkP wrote on 2022-08-23, 03:07:

davidrg wrote on 2022-08-20, 12:24:

I've spent most of the day setting up an OS/2 Warp 4 VM, figuring out how to install FixPak 15 (I can not possibly imagine how a […]
Show full quote

I've spent most of the day setting up an OS/2 Warp 4 VM, figuring out how to install FixPak 15 (I can not possibly imagine how anyone within IBM thought the fixpak install experience is even remotely acceptable), then trying to figure out why my cross-compiled C-Kermit for OS/2 binaries don't work.

Its taken most of the day but after disabling NetBIOS support at build time and fixing an obscure bug, this is the first open-source version of C-Kermit for OS/2 in over 25 years:
ckwos2.png

(and also the first time I've ever compiled anything for OS/2)

I think there should FP14 with one stop installation. It should be over at Hobbes. I gave FP15 a go but that borked my OS/2 v4 install. I did manage to back track out of that though thank goodness. Still have that hdd around some where.

I have a dedicated OS/2 v3 box. It is DECpc slimline 486DX2/66 system with 16megs of ram, no fixpacks and I use Warp 4 server OS/2 network client because it is full 32 bit and has DHCP available unlike the Warp v3 Connect client.

Yeah, I eventually found an almost one-stop install option for FP15 somewhere. My mistake was probably trying to do it the "easy" way and use RSU? to install the FP from a local mirror of the IBM ftp site - it would just complain about some FTP library being out of date and I could find no documentation on how you were supposed to fix that, everything implied it should just work. It all seems unnecessarily complicated when compared to the almost one click install of the NT service packs - no CSU or RSU utilities or anything else required.

I also spent probably a good half hour trying to get Warp 4 to talk to Samba but gave up in the end. I got it to see other SMB machines on the network but it couldn't login to any of them - I assume its SMB protocol implementation was just too old. So in the end I just stuck with good old Netware - it takes all of a few minutes to install the NetWare client (even less on Warp4 as its on the CD) and get it on the network regardless of OS/2 version - no IBM network extensions or connect editions required. With that in mind I really ought to copy the fixpak and other bits onto the NetWare server - then doing this stuff should be pretty easy in the future.

Funnily enough I also have a DECpc 466d2 running OS/2 - though its got 2.1 IIRC, and I've got Warp 3 and 4 on CF cards for my DEC Celebris GL 5133ST. I wouldn't have liked to compile this app on either of those machines though - takes several minutes to build on my modernish laptop!

Prepared a new switch for an old AT Tower case.

Perfected my 3.5" cooky replacement. Very easy really and didn't need to use my glasses. 😉

Apparently the motherboard I've got in my P4 rig has some coil whine issues and oddly having a HDD in there makes it worse. Took a while to notice it, I'm a headphone user, the case is pretty noise insulated and there's also been some ambient noise lately due to construction going on nearby. Not to mention HDD's aren't exactly silent and the coil whining gets louder only during heavy disk usage. I swapped the HDD to a SSD and the whining, while still being there, got way quieter.

Why I've got no idea. Maybe it's just so much faster the MB gets off easier during disk traffic or something. The PSU shouldn't be the cause, it worked fine without any coil whining on another PC. In any case with the SSD the remaining coil whine kinda sounds like there's a muffled little HDD in there, funnily enough. Like its been wrapped in a blanket or something.

Looks like it's time for me say farewell to HDD's, this one was the last I had been using. I wanted to have one around to sing that iconic crunchy HDD song, but to be honest the novelty had started to wear thin with time. Maybe I'll find a place for it in some future build, but for now it's all SSD's here now.

I was patching the Adaptec BIOS, swapping ICs and running with few floppies from my desktop to my retro 486 all the day long 😀

Learned that 168 pin EDO ECC Dimms are a thing and they are not slot compatible with 168 pin Sdram Dimms, the first notch on the EDO dimms is slightly closer to side of the dimm than Sdram is.

So now I have to source some 168pin EDO ECC Dimms, not even sure what maximum size dimms the NEC Express5800/110A can Pro takes, it came with a 32mb one but tis got a PII 333 Overdrive in it so perhaps it can handle 256mb ones which should be easier to source on the bay.

such a pain in the arse .. I mean why did they make them look identical to SDRAM aside from slightly moving the first notch.

Edit - Found some HP ones that are almost identical, only 20 USD for 2x128 MB dimms, hopefully the NEC coffee Machine doesnt have issues with non NEC Dimms.

This GTX 580 was listed as new and never used. Not only does have video corruption (no matter which DVI or HDMI port is used), but it BSODs Windows whenever its driver is installed, too. I've seen some video corruption cure itself once the card warms up, but not this one. I also ran a Windows repair for the heck of it but matters only worsened. No more tests. Another bad graphics card, and another card going to back to the seller, unfortunately.