Re: What a nice socket 7 board!

Posted on 2011-05-01, 08:37

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've bought a few things from ebay that when they have turned up had postage costs stamped on them that were more than the cost I had paid for the item + shipping. In most of those cases I then sent the seller a few £ extra (not a lot, but enough for a drink or two at the pub!)... I figure it's …

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Re: Need advice about migrating Win7 x86 -> x64

Posted on 2011-05-01, 08:20

by

by megatron-uk

in Milliways

in Milliways

Compiling to x64 gives access to the increased register set of the AMD/Intel x64 architecture - that's a *significant* benefit to most code in having more data available directly on-chip in another register (and not just spatially local in the cache). Modern compilers will automatically optimise to …

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Re: Sound card help

Posted on 2011-04-30, 19:32

by

by megatron-uk

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

I would reccomend just trying a *single* SB16 first. You may find that you don't have any issues with stuck sounds in music playback as the problem is not universal - I have card with the chip version that is supposedly problematic, but have not encountered it. If you go with an SCC-1 for MIDI …

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Re: Sound card help

Posted on 2011-04-30, 19:11

by

by megatron-uk

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Wow, thanks everyone for their quck replies. It sounds like I might get more out of the SB 16 CT2800. Any disadvantages to getting this card over the SB Pro 2.0? Music maybe? Any hanging note issues with the CT2800? Also, can I connect a Roland SCC-1 to the CT2800 to get better sounding music? …

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Re: I broke down and bought a POD

Posted on 2011-04-30, 18:59

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I popped over my parents place yesterday to see if I could find one of the earlier systems we had (well, it was originally my sisters first pc), it was a desktop DX2-66 that I upgraded to a POD to use as a web proxy/spam filter when we had dial up.... I was hoping to get another system midway …

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Re: Graphics card ISA

Posted on 2011-04-28, 13:23

by

by megatron-uk

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

What do you want it for? DOS games, Windows 3.1/95/98, Windows gaming, applications/productivity?

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Re: Time to backup my entire CD collection

Posted on 2011-04-27, 17:49

by

by megatron-uk

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

One thing you need to consider is the longevity of your CD backups - will the software that created them still exist to read them in 5 - 10 - 15 years time on perhaps a completely different operating system and architecture? iso9660 format is, well, a standardised format. MDF/MDS, CCD and the others …

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Re: Two video cards in one Windows system?

Posted on 2011-04-27, 14:26

by

by megatron-uk

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

I don't think you'll achieve what you are looking for. Multiple video cards in previous versions of windows were largely for extra screen real estate.

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Re: memorable CPUs

Posted on 2011-04-27, 14:19

by

by megatron-uk

in Milliways

in Milliways

Totally OT, but I heard about this data migration company from New York a while ago. Basically imagine yourself hording all this vintage hardware. And in 50 years nobody has this kind of hardware anymore, but there are important historical documents, which libraries and other bodies really really …

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AWE32 with RAM and OPL?

Posted on 2011-04-27, 10:04

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Is there a definitive list anywhere that shows which AWE32 models had all three of SIMM sockets, WB header and a real OPL chip? From searching the forum it seems that the CT3900 is one that fulfils the criteria, unfortunately I've yet to see one of those on Ebay. Are there any others? I'd like to …

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Re: Two video cards in one Windows system?

Posted on 2011-04-27, 09:48

by

by megatron-uk

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

It worked in 98 and 2000 - I used to run a TNT2 AGP and a Matrox Millenium PCI to get a dual monitor setup.

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Re: Crazy speed 486, comparable to a Pentium III

Posted on 2011-04-26, 12:43

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some sort of buggy timer that things seem to appear quicker than they really are? Must be one of those curious Cyrix bugs acting up again :P And memory bandwidth 100.16 mega bytes per second?? Yeah, it all looks really screwed - nearly 5Gbytes of cache bandwidth - and 180Mbytes/sec from an IDE disk …

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Re: memorable CPUs

Posted on 2011-04-26, 10:18

by

by megatron-uk

in Milliways

in Milliways

Are you purely talking about PC's? I think it's highly dependent on what systems you used, and what your first computer experiences were. You've got a bit of a compromise to make if you want 'retro' but still 'modern' feel. Anything prior to, say the later P2 or P3-450 is going to be pretty much …

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Re: Roland SC-8820 under DOS/Win98

Posted on 2011-04-25, 21:28

by

by megatron-uk

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Great news. Let us know what the SC8820 sounds like for general midi DOS games!

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Re: The Bus Mouse and Bus Card - Why were they overshadowed and replaced by PS/2?

Posted on 2011-04-22, 09:53

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well a big reason must have been the integration into the ATX form factor and PC97 specification. Why bother with another interface card when the specification had PS/2 mouse and keyboard? I'd imagine it's also the reason why serial mice died out too.

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Re: DVD hardware decoder cards

Posted on 2011-04-21, 13:08

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@sliderider How did you use a dxr2 without a pci slotted motherboard? The DXR2 is a PCI dvd decoder card. Also, I don't think the DXR2 works in Win3.1X. I am confussed, can you clarify how you got DVD playback working on a 486? It had to be ISA because like I said I never had a PCI 486 board until …

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Re: Yamaha S-YXG50 and DB50XG

Posted on 2011-04-17, 07:30

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Quake 2 did indeed use Redbook CD audio. I wasn't even aware you could get music from it in any other way!

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Re: Question about oldish lcd monitor and DOS

Posted on 2011-04-17, 07:27

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, at the worst you tend to get "Signal out of range - please use X Khz - Y Hz", as the screen is not directly driven by the input signal.

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Re: DVD hardware decoder cards

Posted on 2011-04-17, 07:24

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've still got a Creative DXR3 kicking around somewhere in my spares box. I remember that the output using overlay on my monitor scaled to the native res of the screen (I could have used the TV out - but I only had a 14" portable tv at the time!) was really very nice compared to software decoding on …

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Re: DOS game programming

Posted on 2011-04-16, 17:52

by

by megatron-uk

in Milliways

in Milliways

Also, since I'm going to be compiling DOS programs, I downloaded VirtualBox, but which DOS version should I run in it? 6.2 or 6.22 are your best bets since you're making modern, protected-mode software. You could always use DOSBox as well. The only reason you would want to run an earlier version is …

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