Re: The Unofficial OPL2LPT and OPL3LPT demopack (for convienient testing of Adpatch)

Posted on Yesterday, 17:36

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Still, it would be nice if someone developed a new parallel port audio device that would somehow allow the use of FM music and PCM output at the same time. Perhaps some reverse-engineered clone of the Digispeech DS301 or DS311 devices.

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Re: Retro flight sim playthroughs

Posted on 2021-04-09, 17:45

by

by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

Interestingly there is EGA version of F-117 Stealth Fighter 2.0 This is certainly the first time I hear about this! You mean like it was sold separately? How odd. Not that odd, actually. At least within the adventure game genre, it was quite common for game publishers to release separate 16-color …

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Re: Creative Sound Blaster 855216 MP3+ Win 98 Compatibility IBM T43

Posted on 2021-04-07, 00:23

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Is this about being able to run DOS games with sound under Windows 98? Why not try something like VDMSound for that?

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Re: Can you hook up a Trident TVGA 8800CS to a CGA monitor?

Posted on 2021-04-06, 23:11

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

It would be beyond my skills for sure, but at least in theory, wouldn't it be possible to hack a CGA monitor to bypass the TTL logic, so it can take an RGB signal straight from a VGA card? Somewhere inside the monitor, the discrete logic in the monitor ends up converting the digital color …

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Re: Fic FTP site is gone. We lost most of the drivers

Posted on 2021-04-06, 22:47

by

by digger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Would Filecoin be a nice affordable and decentralized solution for safeguarding up all of these FTP backups?

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Re: *The big list of 8086 real-mode Windows 3.0 compatible software - please contribute*

Posted on 2021-04-03, 00:02

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I remember playing Tetris from the first Microsoft Windows Entertainment Pack (WEP) on Windows 3.0 on my Dad's Olivetti M24, in a nice crisp 640x400 2-color resolution. The M24 originally had an 8086 CPU that we later swapped out for a NEC V30. So naturally, the only way Windows 3.0 could run on …

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Re: Newly made PCMCIA sound card

Posted on 2021-04-02, 22:42

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Wait, but how is the fact that PCMCIA does not have access to the DMA controller overcome without any form of emulation? Wasn't that the major innovation in those IBM patents? Perhaps I've misunderstood this.

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Re: Retro flight sim playthroughs

Posted on 2021-04-02, 22:32

by

by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

On PCs without sound cards, F-19 did try to squeeze the best out of the PC speaker it could. It would simulate polyphony on it in the intro. It was quite speed-sensitive though, as you can hear here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_f8v2Xd6wg (the three concluding notes in the end appear to be …

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Re: Newly made PCMCIA sound card

Posted on 2021-04-02, 11:32

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

PCMCIA lacks ISA DMA mechanism, this makes it difficult to achieve compatibility with SB, WSS and others which use DMA to play back the sound streams. Some sort of software solution is necessary that simulates DMA controller and passes data to the card. Bus mastering is also unavailable so the card …

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Re: Bruninho's Virtual Machines (Windows, Linux, Mac)

Posted on 2021-03-22, 23:24

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by digger

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

AH yes, QEMU should indeed alsof support the VMWare SVGA2 driver. But I haven't been able to find the Windows 9x VMWare driver. It only shipped with VMWare up to a certain version. If somebody could point me in the right direction w.r.t. where to download the installer, I'd appreciatie it. 😀

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Re: Black Bessy, the Goth-64....

Posted on 2021-03-20, 13:36

by

by digger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Retro Recipes did it years ago, I see. Still no key caps that look like the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UX-gqylYgQ

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Re: Black Bessy, the Goth-64....

Posted on 2021-03-20, 13:29

by

by digger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

14 months is a lot of dedication, by the way. Kudos!

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Re: Black Bessy, the Goth-64....

Posted on 2021-03-20, 13:27

by

by digger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've also been toying with the idea of building a C64 from scratch, using only modern components, so without having to cannibalize any original C64s or components. I know the idea isn't new. You just did something close to that, and I believe Jan Beta recently tried something like that on his …

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Re: Bruninho's Virtual Machines (Windows, Linux, Mac)

Posted on 2021-03-20, 12:34

by

by digger

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

By the way, have any of you been able to get the SciTech Display Doctor driver working with QEMU? No matter what I tried, on each boot it would display the message "there is a problem with your display driver/adapter" and would refuse to switch to anything higher than 16 color 640x480 mode. I know …

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Re: SoftMPU project needs your help! (game & sound card testing)

Posted on 2021-03-20, 12:19

by

by digger

in SoftMPU

in SoftMPU

That makes sense, elianda. And now that you mention it, I believe there were also some protected mode games that used the real mode MIDPAK and DIGPAK drivers from The Audio Solution. DOS extenders typically pass INT 10h calls (video BIOS routines) and INT 21h calls (DOS disk access routines) on to …

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Re: Fastest CPU Descent 1 can handle?

Posted on 2021-03-20, 11:54

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

You'd really think that by the 32-bit DOS extender era, all newly released games would be using proper timing routines that wouldn't depend on the clock speed of the CPU. :confused: It's crazy how there are games, some of which are much older than Descent 1, that still work perfectly at the same …

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Re: Black Bessy, the Goth-64....

Posted on 2021-03-20, 11:46

by

by digger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What a beauty. Nice work!

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Re: Does cutting (standby) power to a CRT affect it's lifespan?

Posted on 2021-03-20, 11:13

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Well, this is the monitor of my Dad's Olivetti M24, the first computer we had at home when I was a kid. I have quite a nostalgic fondness for it. :hugging_face: As you can imagine, I really don't want to damage it beyond repair. Not only because monitors of this type are quite rare these days, but …

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Re: Does cutting (standby) power to a CRT affect it's lifespan?

Posted on 2021-03-17, 13:44

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Okay, but if I haven't done that, and I want to turn it on again, should I just do so and then troubleshoot if it doesn't work (or blows out a cap when it switches on)? Or would it be better to open it up and to examine the caps first? Is there a risk of any irreparable damage?

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Re: I need help with picking a psu for my Pentium 3 build?

Posted on 2021-03-16, 23:41

by

by digger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If your intent is also to do DOS gaming on this build, keep in mind that neither the AWE64 nor the Audigy 2 have an actual OPL3 FM synthesizer chip on board. The AWE64 has a Creative-produced clone chip that doesn't exactly sound the same. For newer DOS games that support General MIDI, this might …

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