Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on Yesterday, 02:45

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

"Buying a system? Sure, you want price and performance. Support? Too often it's an afterthought. Problem is, too many direct order companies treat support the same way. They make the sale, then disappear. At AMBRA...."

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2025-05-14, 08:38

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

While it brings interesting details about brand, products, business dynamics, it does not mention "Ambra Lightning 100" which i found strange. There is no record online about it either, other than some magazine where a pre-production prototype was tested, or something like that. Makes me wonder if …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2025-05-14, 01:19

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Two companies - Ambra (IBM in disguise) and Alaris - aimed at that base with two offerings. It was pretty common knowledge back in the day that Ambra was part of IBM. My memory might be bad, but I seem to remember it was even advertised in the commercials. Alaris on the other hand is an interesting …

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Re: Cyrix DX2-80 slower than DX2-66?

Posted on 2025-05-01, 23:48

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It would seem I misremembered L1 being faster on Cyrix. It's actually the memory bus that's faster, and L1 being slower. So depending on the size of the code/data Cyrix might end up slower or faster. Doom, which was apparently written to maximize 486 cache, ends up being a tad bit faster on Intel: …

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Re: Cyrix DX2-80 slower than DX2-66?

Posted on 2025-05-01, 12:02

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's a pretty interesting article. It explains why the Cyrix DX-50 was a thing. Cyrix was hoping VLB 2.0 would take off...

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Re: SotaPop card - an 80286 daughtercard w/ EMS ?

Posted on 2025-04-29, 08:50

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Great job! Do you have any All Chargecards to sell me?

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Re: Cyrix DX2-80 slower than DX2-66?

Posted on 2025-04-29, 08:48

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Disruptor wrote on 2025-04-28, 15:54: And, perhaps the FPU of the Intel processor is faster than the one from Cyrix. Perhaps you bench Doom too 😉 I thought it was pretty well established that the FPU on the Cyrix is actually stronger than the Intel...

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Re: Difference between DX2 and overdrive

Posted on 2025-04-03, 14:01

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The "Overdrive" name just means "upgrade chip", and what exactly the upgrade did changed from product to product. The original overdrives ran natively at 5V just like regular 486s, and the big upgrade was clock doubling.

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Re: I've got the Blues...

Posted on 2025-03-26, 07:49

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I realise that. It just looks very silly. Not to mention that they probably misspelled it, as it should be "Tower SystemS".

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Re: I've got the Blues...

Posted on 2025-03-25, 05:08

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I find the badge that says "Tower System" to be extremely irritating when installed on a desktop case.

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Re: How To Remove Glue From CPU

Posted on 2025-02-06, 07:02

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't think those are glued on. The heatsink should be held on with double sided tape.

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Re: Keyboard error or no keyboard present

Posted on 2025-01-27, 06:00

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Have you checked the connector? Maybe you have a broken joint.

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Re: Signs Your an Old Geek

Posted on 2025-01-15, 01:50

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sometimes when I'm looking for information on old hardware, I learn something new from a thread I posted over 20 years ago.

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Re: CD-ROM on a 386, how hard can it be? SB16 SBCD.SYS not working

Posted on 2025-01-05, 11:49

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I would think Sbcd.sys from 1993 is likely too early to support IDE/atapi. I’ve never used a creative card with an ide port, but it’s probably a matter of finding the correct driver.

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Re: Upgrading to a 486 (or 386) on an IBM 5162 using an upgrade card.

Posted on 2024-12-31, 23:35

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The link above isn't going to be of much help, since that system is 8088 based, and the board in question is 80286 based.

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2024-12-31, 07:42

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Kind of a bummer. It's a nice looking board. Are any of the locked options worth unlocking with MODBIN?

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Re: Upgrading to a 486 (or 386) on an IBM 5162 using an upgrade card.

Posted on 2024-12-31, 03:00

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've had pretty good luck upgrading 5170/5162 to to Cyrix 486SLC/DLC using cpu kits. There's a good chance it will work, but perhaps not at the full 25MHz, as it will depend on how the manufacturer carried out the clock multiplication. On the other hand, working cache will provide way more benefit …

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Re: DTX 486 DX/33

Posted on 2024-12-30, 13:55

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Their 8088s were pretty popular too. I think the last DTKs I saw in my area were Socket 5 Pentiums. Apparently they continued to make systems at least into the PII/III era, but I've never seen one in person.

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Re: AMD K6 3/III + Price

Posted on 2024-12-24, 06:03

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Until recently, I didn't even know that 500 and 550MHz K6-III+ existed. I always thought that the K6 III+ topped out at 450, and if you wanted faster you had to step down to the K6-2+. Just get one of those low voltage K6 III+ 400 chips and overclock it to 600.

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Re: Mitsumi 6x CDROM acting weird depending on OS

Posted on 2024-12-24, 02:54

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you have any ISA slots to spare, you can just get some run of the mill ISA multi I/O card and use that. Most of the ones I've seen allow you to set them as secondary.

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