Re: How to make a MFM HDD image?

Posted on 2016-08-03, 14:50

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I finally did it! :D The xd driver finally worked but not without one more snag. The previous "resource busy" error message was due to an IRQ conflict, but I only figured that out after looking at the output from dmesg where I could see that the driver was correctly detecting the controller card and …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-08-02, 14:38

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by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

TBH while the Virge is useful for DOS stuff, I remember it as being pretty awful for OpenGL or DirectX stuff. The original VGA Decelerator. :) I don't think it even had OpenGL support. I had a Virge GX2 in my second PC ever (Pentium II 266MHz) and when using Direct3D it was either slower than …

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Re: How to make a MFM HDD image?

Posted on 2016-08-02, 14:26

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm guessing that the kernel in Fedora 8 does not have the drivers for MFM controllers built in. I haven't used Redhat or Fedora in ages, but back then their kernels were bare and all drivers were stuffed in the initrd.gz as modules. So using kernel command line options is useless. I've made some …

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Re: Wading slowly into the 486 waters

Posted on 2016-07-31, 18:45

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I couldn't be happier with the performance so far. Here's a progression of BIOS cache timing adjustments: Very interesting! That's a very healthy increase in performance. But, part of the magic of 486 systems is the variety of speed profiles you can run by manipulating Turbo, L1 and L2 cache, and …

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Re: Wading slowly into the 486 waters

Posted on 2016-07-28, 15:55

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've been meaning to ask, was it fairly common for BIOS chips to block ISA slots? It seems all my ISA cards will not seat fully in slots 2 and 3 because of the AMIBIOS chip there. I don't think I have any motherboards with BIOS chips in that place, but I have some with the keyboard controller chip …

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Re: How to make a MFM HDD image?

Posted on 2016-07-26, 13:50

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm guessing that the kernel in Fedora 8 does not have the drivers for MFM controllers built in. I haven't used Redhat or Fedora in ages, but back then their kernels were bare and all drivers were stuffed in the initrd.gz as modules. So using kernel command line options is useless. Oh, didn't know …

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Re: Wading slowly into the 486 waters

Posted on 2016-07-26, 13:42

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It only feels slow now because we know what fast is. Back then, we had a different definition of fast. ;) Speak for yourself :P I always hated mechanical HDDs because of how slow they were, even when I had a 486 and it was "normal", it still felt slow to me and it bothered me having to wait for the …

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Re: Wading slowly into the 486 waters

Posted on 2016-07-26, 09:29

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Without knowing the POH on the Seagate, nor knowing if it's ever had any bad sectors, it's a tough call. I tend to go with the Seagate because it is closer to period correct, being a 1995 drive. The Fujitsu was mfg in 2000. I don't think you'll use this system for mission critical applications, so …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-07-26, 09:21

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

soviet conscript wrote: This monster AT case from a swap meet last week The cat approves. Good job!

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Re: How to make a MFM HDD image?

Posted on 2016-07-26, 09:17

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I succeeded doing this many years ago. I took the Seagate MFM controller and hard drive from the old IBM PC/XT and put them in the new Pentium (it was new back then.) The controller was not recognized be the BIOS on the Pentium and the drive did not show up in DOS. That is exactly what I'm getting, …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-07-25, 13:32

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Vtech/PC Partner TXB820DS w/ Pentium MMX 166MHz (I just love the warranty sticker placement on this one :) No paste either) It's not really required on these low power CPUs, although it doesn't hurt. Thermal paste only became more common on Socket 370 and Super Socket 7 CPUs which used a bit more …

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Re: How to make a MFM HDD image?

Posted on 2016-07-25, 09:23

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you can enter the drive geometry (CHS) manually, then any BIOS that works with IDE will work with MFM/RLL, as long as the controller card is at 1F0h/3F0h where the BIOS expects to find it. Is that the I/O address? Because the only options on this controller card are 320h and 324h. It's currently …

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Re: My P90 restored

Posted on 2016-07-24, 20:44

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by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You don't necessarily need a hot air rework station to desolder through-the-hole components. But you do need a solder pump: I did the procedure on this board, and there's zero room for heating the pins from the component side. You can sort of do it from the other side, but the solder pump isn't as …

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Re: How to make a MFM HDD image?

Posted on 2016-07-24, 20:34

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A parallel port Zip100 drive using the Palmzip driver from http://leute.server.de/peichl/palmzipe.htm would work on your computer, no? Seems about right! With that out of the way I would only need an imaging program for DOS 3.3, or alternatively one that fits in a 720K floppy that I can make …

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Re: My P90 restored

Posted on 2016-07-24, 10:11

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You really have to de-solder it. Replacements are still being sold but you should put a socket in its place so that you can change the RTC easily in the future. Assuming the motherboard will last another 15 years, which at this point is a big unknown. I had to replace the RTC on that exact same …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-07-24, 09:55

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What's that IBM? :exclamation: Ok, you seem to have caused a lot of confusion with that comment :lol: That IBM chip in the graphics card is probably just a RAMDAC which converts the digital graphics output (provided by the other large chip) to analog so it can be used with a VGA monitor. It's quite …

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Re: Wading slowly into the 486 waters

Posted on 2016-07-23, 18:16

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ah, I thought only the power button required a physical switch. Since the turbo button has a motherboard header, I thought the newer ATX-case switches would work on it. Would it hurt the board to try? Nope. The worst that can happen is that it only gets enabled for a fraction of a second, or you'll …

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Re: My P90 restored

Posted on 2016-07-23, 18:15

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A Pentium 90 beige box I bought in '94. It came with only 8 megs which I upgraded to 32 megs when RAM dropped a little in price. The RAM cost as much or more as the P90 and the motherboard; a fortune for a teenager. I can imagine. My 486 bought in very late 1994 came with only 4MB, and I asked the …

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Re: Wading slowly into the 486 waters

Posted on 2016-07-23, 17:51

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Couldn't I just plug the case's power button jumper into the motherboard turbo header? If the button is of the latching type then yes, otherwise (i.e. if it's momentary only) no. Then the front power switch becomes the turbo switch. Or you just ignore the Turbo button for now until you get a proper …

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Re: How to make a MFM HDD image?

Posted on 2016-07-23, 17:44

by

by devius

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

stamasd wrote: Or else, again, consider SCSI. Yes, that's an option, but even though I have the necessary hardware laying around, I don't have any SCSI disk with an OS on it that I can use to boot. Pre-1990 PCs are difficult... 🤣

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