assasincz wrote on 2020-11-11, 23:32:

Spent a very pleasant evening building a Pentium 166 MMX based system from scratch. Cut my finger only once!

Nice system! The MMX is very versatile and can be slowed down as necessary to run speed sensitive DOS games. I'm looking into getting one myself.

And yeah, those old PC cases were death traps with their razor sharp edges. I had my share of cuts as well back in the day, and I'm grateful that most modern cases have rounded (sanded down) edges nowadays.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-11-12, 05:30:

It ran perfectly fine with an AWE64 with default alsa sound modules.

The AWE64 is PNP, so of course it's automatically detected. My AWE32 however, is non-PNP, which should make things a bit more involved.

EDIT: Aaaaand Puppy indeed refused to see it, even after trying to run that ALSA tool from the menu. At first it complained about not detecting any ISA PnP or PCI sound cards, which is to be expected because of the non-PnP AWE, but when it asks me if I want to probe for legacy ISA cards, it quits saying it didn't detect anything.It could be because the version I tried was 4.3.2, but it doesn't seem likely to have radical enough changes from 4.3.1 to actually break ISA sound. I might be able to figure something out soon, however. Maybe AntiX Core and slowly building my way up? If I do that, I might compile a more stripped-down version of the kernel so that it's as minimalist (and lightweight as such) as possible. Insane, I know, but I relish the challenge. Plus, with the second lockdown, I need to find something to do, or I'll end up even more insane than what I'm trying to do 🤣
NetBSD is also on the table, even though I know even less about ISA sound card support on *BSD than on Linux

More software tweakery last night on the M/75 with the CD-ROM Drives.....got all the current stuff running off of Virtual CD's in FreeDOS (somewhat).....using SHSUCD utilities of course

- Castles II - 100% working as it has one CD-ROM
- Under a Killing Moon - This one may still need some work, I still hit Disc swap messages, but I have been able to roam around Tex Murphy's office a bit via VCD...so maybe...
- Lighthouse - This one is working fairly well but I'm having problems with it hanging at launch time at the Sierra logo in most if not all boot configs....not sure what's up...works sometimes
- The 7th Guest - I got this one running....had to set the batch file for install to load Disc 2 first, then swap it around to Disc1.iso for playing the actual game...also, no WSS, req. SoundBlaster

I think next will be dabbling in e-mail.

I just got a Radeon x800 XL (PCI-E) in the mail to test with my Windows 98 overkill system. I've tested a number of games with it, and it appears much more stable than the GeForce 6800 GS (PCI-E) I used previously. I got excellent results gaming in 1080p.

This card does have a couple of quirks. My widescreen monitor often doesn't sync correctly to the VGA port's signal at 1080p. I can usual get it to sync by power cycling the monitor a couple of times. Oddly, the monitor won't sync with the DVI port using a 1080p resolution at all (the DVI port seems to work with all 4:3 resolutions, though). I wonder if the ATI catalyst driver stores the video signal parameters in a file that I can edit to get both ports to sync with my monitor. I didn't see any registry keys that would adjust the signal properties.

I tried two motherboard repairs. Removed a KBC and replaced it with a socket on a 386SX motherboard. Made things worse, junked it.

Tried to troubleshoot a 486 board with no success, junked it.

Bad night.

I started playing through Star Trek 25th anniversary today, though I'm doing it through DOSBOX this time because of the MT-32 soundtrack being great, and my SC-55 not being able to properly replicate even the title song. Once I get to Judgement Rites, I'll be doing it in real DOS, since that game supports GM.

Replacement laser for my SCPH-1001 PSX didn't work, but I should have expected as much from gray market replacement parts from China. The laser positioning motor even fell out of the housing, and had no evidence of anything from plastic tabs, to adhesives, to screws holding it in. Even manually fixing it in place to test it didn't help, as it gave up trying to read a CD before the SCEA logo finished animating. At least I have a PSIO as a much more expensive option, but I wanted to use that with a different PlayStation.

Any good utilities for sprite-work/general graphics creation that work for MS-DOS? MIDI creation software? Just looking for recommendations.

RetroLizard wrote on 2020-11-13, 22:18:

Any good utilities for sprite-work/general graphics creation that work for MS-DOS? MIDI creation software? Just looking for recommendations.

I can't recommend anything specific, but there are loads of free or shareware graphics apps at http://www.lanet.lv/simtel.net/msdos/graphics.html and other Simtel mirrors. Editors, viewers, converters, etc

Okay. And what brand of AT-type Power Supply should I go with for a 486 build? Are there any good ones, or any way to recognize the good-quality ones?

RetroLizard wrote on 2020-11-14, 00:33:

Okay. And what brand of AT-type Power Supply should I go with for a 486 build? Are there any good ones, or any way to recognize the good-quality ones?

Seasonic, Enermax...

Actually I would go with anything that works and is in the 'shiny' case (the later, in the dull/matte one are usually crap). Make sure it's 200W, and check if the voltages are OK and you are good to go. If it dies - replace it. I'm yet to see (in my 30 year 'career' as PC user and system builder) a motherboard or a card killed by AT power supply going bad - and I've seen some going in flames literally with no damage to anything else. ATX PSUs are totally different animal though (and only real advantage of using ATX PSUs in the vintage builds over AT PSUs is that the high voltage is contained in the PSU's case).

Are there any ATX power supplies that have all the same rails AT power supplies do?

HanJammer wrote on 2020-11-14, 00:53:

RetroLizard wrote on 2020-11-14, 00:33:

Okay. And what brand of AT-type Power Supply should I go with for a 486 build? Are there any good ones, or any way to recognize the good-quality ones?

Seasonic, Enermax...

Actually I would go with anything that works and is in the 'shiny' case (the later, in the dull/matte one are usually crap). Make sure it's 200W, and check if the voltages are OK and you are good to go. If it dies - replace it. I'm yet to see (in my 30 year 'career' as PC user and system builder) a motherboard or a card killed by AT power supply going bad - and I've seen some going in flames literally with no damage to anything else. ATX PSUs are totally different animal though (and only real advantage of using ATX PSUs in the vintage builds over AT PSUs is that the high voltage is contained in the PSU's case).

+1

Other good brands: Delta, Lite-On, Astec

RetroLizard wrote on 2020-11-14, 00:58:

Are there any ATX power supplies that have all the same rails AT power supplies do?

Early ATX power supplies have all the same rails than AT (+5V, +12V, -5V, -12V) plus a 3.3V line. That's why there are such simple adapters (even though since the mid '00s the -5V line was removed from the ATX standard).

Alright. And for early ATX power supplies, which brands should I look for?

Just finished doing two cirrus logic video cards, both had 1MB with two empty sockets each and same type of VRAM so I transferred the two VRAM ICs from GD5436 to GD5430, soldered directly without sockets. Same with GD5436 but I supplied 4 pieces of 50ns for total 2MB, soldered and of course, no sockets used.

Used the circuit board heater and hot air station at work when I had spare time after finished my work queue spread out several days. Turned out beautiful, have to test both later.
My work is phone repair (microsoldering) and game console repair and anything in between if they happens to fall into my lap. On top of it, had experience as TV tech repair years prior and before that, repaired and
made electronics kits, disassembled old TVs and generally electronics including few dial phones at grandma's house since when I was a kid. I was lucky since Grandma hoarded stuff that people gave to her over the years.

Cheers,

My wife and I decided to do something completely nerdy and different this morning: a Monster Bash race!

We absolutely adore the Monster Bash DOS games, so we got up super early, made like a gallon of hot chocolate, and fired up two computers old enough to have floppy drives in them. Then we raced through all three episodes to see who could rescue those poor cats and dogs first.

What a fun morning! I won, but not by much. She was giving me the excuse that her 66MHz museum piece wasn't loading levels as quickly as my Windows 98 PC, with its speedy 80GB UDMA disk drive and 1.4GHz of back-to-the-future processing power.

Whatevs. Personally, I think it was just raw, standard def talent.

That sounds like one hell of a Saturday morning Steve. I'm glad I was able to get my wife into video games we've had some fun times.

Today I found time to test a 386 motherboard that I recently purchased, with a 386SX 25MHz CPU. Inserted a couple of 30-pin SIMMs and powered it up and happily it POSTs ok -

Motherboard seems to be from some kind of Ambra-branded LPX PC. I'd actually never heard of Ambra before.

So I spent a couple of hours testing a bag full of 30-pin SIMMs. A few 4MB modules it would not POST or recognise correctly, no idea if they're bad or this board just doesn't like them. All the 1MB modules worked fine and I did find a working combination of 4MB modules to max the RAM to 16MB!

Also connected up a 130MB IDE HDD I had and was able to boot into DOS & Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

Had some trouble getting into the BIOS at one point, it would just freeze, so I had to short the RTC reset jumpers. That worked and got me back into the BIOS again.

I'll probably just use this board for testing purposes, as I don't have any spare LPX form-factor cases to set it up permanently. This board is currently the fastest 386SX I have in my collection.

Wrote this to run the PC port of Garfield - Caught in the ACT in fullscreen on startup of Windows 3.11 inside DOSBox :

1#include <windows.h>
2
3int main(void) {
4	STARTUPINFO si;
5	PROCESS_INFORMATION pi;
6
7	ZeroMemory(&si, sizeof(si));
8	si.cb = sizeof(si);
9	ZeroMemory(&pi, sizeof(pi));
10	CreateProcessA("C:\\SEGA\\GARFIELD\\GARFIELD.EXE", 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, "C:\\SEGA\\GARFIELD", &si, &pi);
11	Sleep(5000);
12	HWND handle;
13	handle = FindWindowA("Garfield", 0);
14	SetForegroundWindow(handle);
15	MoveWindow(handle, 0, 0, 640, 480, 1);
16	SetActiveWindow(handle);
17	PostMessageA(handle, WM_COMMAND, 301, 0);
18	CloseHandle(pi.hProcess);
19	CloseHandle(pi.hThread);
20	while (1)
21	{
22		if (FindWindowA("Garfield", 0))
23		{
24			Sleep(400);
25		}
26		else
27		{
28			ExitWindowsEx(0, 0);
29		}
30	}
31	return 0;
32}

Built with Microsoft Visual C++ 4.1, the last version to target for Win32S.

Then I mapped the keyboard keys to my Xbox 360 controller.

Now the game runs in fullscreen inside DOSBox right away, with its own version of WinG, and CD music without any problem.
I had to use those settings :

1cycles=max
2cputype=pentium_slow

And I don't have to play a platform game with a keyboard like some sort of caveman.

Good times !

PTherapist wrote on 2020-11-15, 19:03:

Today I found time to test a 386 motherboard that I recently purchased, with a 386SX 25MHz CPU. Inserted a couple of 30-pin SIM […]
Show full quote

Today I found time to test a 386 motherboard that I recently purchased, with a 386SX 25MHz CPU. Inserted a couple of 30-pin SIMMs and powered it up and happily it POSTs ok -

Motherboard seems to be from some kind of Ambra-branded LPX PC. I'd actually never heard of Ambra before.

So I spent a couple of hours testing a bag full of 30-pin SIMMs. A few 4MB modules it would not POST or recognise correctly, no idea if they're bad or this board just doesn't like them. All the 1MB modules worked fine and I did find a working combination of 4MB modules to max the RAM to 16MB!

Also connected up a 130MB IDE HDD I had and was able to boot into DOS & Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

Had some trouble getting into the BIOS at one point, it would just freeze, so I had to short the RTC reset jumpers. That worked and got me back into the BIOS again.

I'll probably just use this board for testing purposes, as I don't have any spare LPX form-factor cases to set it up permanently. This board is currently the fastest 386SX I have in my collection.

That is the same as my Ambra Sprinta board. I would advise you remove the battery. I didn't and now I have the joy of fixing all the vias and traces that got death by Varta. Word of warning, it does not like MS-DOS 6.22 (at least mine didn't when it was alive). Some odd incompatibility with the BIOS, if you try to warm boot it just beeps and locks up. And if its any help you can retro fit an reset switch using the header JP11 which is useful.