Re: dISAppointment - LPC to ISA adapter - ISA on modern motherboards

Posted on 2023-11-20, 14:08

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by wbc

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

On the other hand, people have reported success with SBEMU on AMD chipsets (including AM4 ones), although it works in a way different from legacy PCI sound cards. I think I'll take a look at its code to see if there is any workaround involved for AMD chipsets. SBEMU uses 386+ I/O port trapping …

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Re: PicoGUS: ISA sound card emulator with Raspberry Pi Pico (Gravis Ultrasound, AdLib, MPU-401, Tandy, CMS)

Posted on 2023-11-19, 22:38

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Adding USB mouse support is on my list but I don't think I'll be going the route of emulating a serial mouse, which always seemed slow and unresponsive to me. theoretically, it's possible to emulate the 8250 UART in a way it ignores baud rate settings stored in DLAB, and just firing "receive ready" …

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Re: RdosPlay 0.21b (final) WITH sample modules included

Posted on 2023-11-12, 12:47

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

dj_pirtu wrote on 2023-10-19, 06:30: Won't start on Toshiba T3200SX, gives black screen. Is the display mode something else than 640x480 with 16 colors? it seems to run in 360x480 Mode-X, which may not been supported on laptop integrated graphics.

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Re: SBEMU: Sound Blaster emulation on AC97

Posted on 2023-11-10, 12:02

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

anyone know if the SBEMU-X fork is the most recent and updated version of SBEMU? original version seems to have no updates since April, and I would like to help with testing and improving it (including code contributions, of course :). In particular, if time constant set by DSP command 0x40 matches …

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Re: Windows 3.11 and a Nvidia FX3500 card - how to get 32k, 64k, or 16M color support?

Posted on 2023-11-06, 10:13

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Theres no proper drivers for anything newer then a tnt2 by nvidia for win 3.x, it would be a massive downgrade though to goto a s3 virge or similar, Guess it depends what you plan on using the pc for, ...unfortunately, these TNT/TNT2 drivers are very unstable, with font corruption bugs and DCI not …

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Re: Using Hercules Driver and Software on an S3 Virge DX with VESA 2.0 and solved the brightness bug black becomes gray

Posted on 2023-10-14, 15:00

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Is there perhaps another way to get the Herclues drivers and software working under DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 with a bios of s3 Self I suppose Hercules utilities either check for PCI Subsystem ID or Video BIOS content, and refuse to install if these do not match. As these BIOSes predate VBE 3.0, I …

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Re: Snow on ISA vga card

Posted on 2023-09-25, 19:37

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

S3 cards (up to ViRGE/DX, Trio3D/Savage seem to fix that) do have palette corruption at PCI bus speeds above 44-45 MHz; this is especially apparent in Mode 0x13, since S3 cards actually use pixel clock halved (25.12/2 = 12.6 MHz) in this mode, and the RAMDAC seems to not being able to properly …

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Re: The way to detect OPL3 clone

Posted on 2023-09-23, 09:53

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

You probably meant LS262, because LS245 is a mere TTL buffer which is also present on your sound card and externally looks similar. nope, there are no LS245 buffers soldered on my card (although there are footprints to support IDE interface), and that "LS245" chip is sharing traces with YMF262 …

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Re: The way to detect OPL3 clone

Posted on 2023-09-22, 19:33

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Have to bump a thread since recently I did some research around Creative CQM chips, and seems I found the (fully) software way to detect if a CQM chip is used instead of OPL3. As I found out, setting bit 0 of LSI Test register (bank 0 index 1) on CQM chips makes bits 0-6 of status register return …

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Re: Snow on ISA vga card

Posted on 2023-09-12, 15:41

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

yep, the palette SRAM is residing inside the RAMDAC ,otherwise you would need to feed 18 bits of pixel data from the VGA chip instead of 8 :) Speaking of snow itself, there are three distinct RAMDAC classes: - single-ported palette RAM with transparent latch on RGB DAC inputs. During CPU access to …

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Re: S3 ViRGE DX - missing red colour

Posted on 2023-09-08, 20:33

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Looks like this ferrite bead for red went bad somehow. Is it advisable to short it out as a fix, or should I find some SMD replacement? yeah, you can short ferrite beads out; in fact, this (along with RGB capacitors to ground removed) usually fixes image blurring at higher resolutions on cards with …

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Re: Can your VGA card provide a hardware source for random numbers?

Posted on 2023-09-07, 19:47

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

One more interesting tidbit - Matrox Millennium programming manual states that CRTC register 0x03 bit 7 (which routes CR10/11 reads between Light Pen Position and Vertical Blank Start/End) is used "for chip testing on the IBM VGA": Снимок.PNG perhaps we have to test it on an actual IBM VGA card (and …

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Re: S3 ViRGE DX - missing red colour

Posted on 2023-09-07, 18:06

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I would also suggest checking traces between pin 1 on the VGA connector and pin 168 on the ViRGE/DX chip with a multimeter, including ferrite beads (marked as FBx on the PCB). In your case, check if FB1 and the resistor placed at Q1 are 0 Ohm and R33 (the load resistor) is measuring as 75 Ohm - …

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Re: Can your VGA card provide a hardware source for random numbers?

Posted on 2023-09-07, 16:36

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

By the way, I've also tested Intel 865 integrated graphics in RNG.EXE, it says there is no PRNG, and my utility comfirms that - reading CRTC index 0x10/11 returs Vertical Retrace Start/End register contents, as usual. Which is at least unexpected, since some sources claim that Intel VGA core is …

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Re: Can your VGA card provide a hardware source for random numbers?

Posted on 2023-09-07, 15:36

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

seems I came late to the party :D Indeed, as mkarcher already pointed out, this Light Pen posiiton readback basically works as Current CRTC Position pointer readback, allowing to find out where the CRT beam is, theoretically with 8/9 pixels and 1-2 line precision, depending on . Actually, as VGA …

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Re: FastDoom. A new Doom port for DOS, optimized to be as fast as possible for 386/486 personal computers!

Posted on 2023-07-24, 18:39

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by wbc

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

that looks awesome, does it work by iterating over entire framebuffer and finding pixel-wise differences (like "dirty rectangles" but "dirty pixels" instead) between current and previous frame or it does take geometry data into account? (so flat visplanes could significally boost "dirty pixels" …

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Re: NVPatch - making UniVBE work on NVidia cards

Posted on 2023-06-03, 18:47

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by wbc

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Notice the overscan borders where the copyright screen should appear since I'm using a CRT monitor. Doesn't appear when it is displayed properly. Can confirm the white overscan between "Detecting Video" and the copyright screen, but otherwise it seems to work for me (also, additionally tested on …

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Re: NVPatch - making UniVBE work on NVidia cards

Posted on 2023-06-03, 15:09

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by wbc

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Mine is patched to version 2.0, TRILOGY.EXE being dated Dec 23 1996 16:06. Tried booting DOS with just HIMEM.SYS and CD-ROM support, still freezes the computer with SDD 6.53 after the passing the "Detecting card" message. :( installed the 2.0 patch, seems to work OK on my configuration :/ (UPD: …

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Re: NVPatch - making UniVBE work on NVidia cards

Posted on 2023-06-03, 08:48

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by wbc

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Unfortunately I cannot confirm that this can work beyond Geforce FX. I have tested Geforce 6600 AGP and 6600GT AGP and none of them worked with patched 6.53 univbe. The patched univbe can run without problems and vbetest also shows working univbe with VESA 3.0 8MB but none of the selected vesa …

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NVPatch - making UniVBE work on NVidia cards

Posted on 2023-06-02, 20:22

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by wbc

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

This utility allows to use certain DOS VESA and Win3.x drivers on newer NVidia GPUs, such as Riva TNT family and GeForce 256 up to FX series (theoretically up to 7xxx). Supported drivers: SciTech Display Doctor (aka UniVBE) 6.53 and 6.7 Riva TNT/TNT2 Windows 3.x drivers, v 1.55 (untested) DISCLAMER: …

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