Re: Micro Firmware BIOS Files

Posted on 2024-10-01, 05:41

by

by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So yes, they are a hassle to work with because you are not their customer, just a user of their products in a niche segment. They are not being nasty, it is that they need to pay the bills and shareholders are always looking whom to blame with CEOs hunting for additional income and cost cutting …

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Re: Micro Firmware BIOS Files

Posted on 2024-09-30, 18:01

by

by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Phoenix BIOSes have always allow to update board firmware in a "per module" basis. This is why "upgrade only" Micro Firmware files based in Phoenix BIOSes need the original chips acquired from them. Them aren't complete firmware images. The same applies to their "INT13H/Y2k upgrade" cards. Unless …

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Re: How to remove DELAYED sectors on HDD

Posted on 2024-08-20, 22:48

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

These days the HDD repair and servicing market is almost like the Smartphone repair market: Lots of incompatible, propietary and highly locked and encrypted tools paired with propietary FPGA specific hardware. The specific knowledge to make these tools, the schematics of the devices and module-data/ …

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Re: IBM-7024 PowerPc

Posted on 2024-08-08, 13:57

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

These days people is getting NT4 for PPC to run even in Big Endian only machines who never ever were meant to run NT4 in the first place, as it is an Little Endian OS. If it still uses the MPC-104 memory controller, maybe someday, someone can port the maciNTosh (ELF) loader and the HAL to your …

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Re: GF1 and OTTO chip comparison?

Posted on 2024-06-24, 13:17

by

by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Actually, isn't the GF1 closer to Commodore's PAULA than anything done by Ensoniq?

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Re: Easier way to install Win 9x ??

Posted on 2024-01-23, 16:05

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just use Sysprep for Win98. It does the deleting of "\ENUM" and starts the PnP detection automatically for you, without resorting to manual regedit and hacks. It also supports MSBATCH and INFINST if you need some more advanced configuration. Once you have configured your image and with Sysprep ready …

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Re: I was finally able to succesfully (mostly) PCI passthrough a real PCI Voodoo 3 2000 to a Windows 98 SE QEMU KVM VM

Posted on 2023-11-22, 14:37

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by hyoenmadan

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

A Matrox Millennium II works without the VGA init workaround. It's also slow in (S)VGA mode, though. This happens because the way VT-x (and the AMD implementation btw) works. It really doesn't like to do bank switching. Check I'm not mentioning VT-d or the IOMMU. This is a purely CPU …

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Re: Amikey-2 pinout

Posted on 2023-09-21, 02:21

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Mask ROMs are essentially forever, but OTP EPROM, like any EPROM and other trapped charges based storage methods, will suffer bit rot as the charge leaks out the cells. Some OTP EPROM families are done with fuse arrays instead trapped charges (them don't have the quartz eye). These will also last …

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Re: Are there Option ROMs that contain only data?

Posted on 2023-07-28, 18:20

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Are there Option ROMs that contain only data?... Yes. But them aren't called "Option ROMs". Usually BIOS vendors call such option "ROM/Resource Holes". These days them are mostly used to store manufacturing and authentication data shouldn't be available to be modified by users but only very …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2023-07-16, 16:47

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

and the only way to let drive know that some space is free without trimming are hacks I described above (zeroing/secure erase, smaller partition, hpa). For the record, I can confirm cheap Sandisk drives don't account the HPA zone for trimming provision. Firmware Bug? I don't know. Ironically, them …

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Re: Actual hardware or software?

Posted on 2023-06-20, 16:37

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Personal curiosity, was the case well cooled? like packed with intake and exhaust fans etc... It was long time ago, when the nvidia 8x00 was the hot thing... But yeh, that case had intake and exhaust fan. It also had only sata "thin" cables, not ide or floppy ribbons. Like I said, when running …

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Re: Actual hardware or software?

Posted on 2023-06-20, 05:17

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

How the hell did you burn a card on direct draw? I can understand not working right, but burning it is puzzling, unless your cooling or OC was not to par. That card was not OCed, but it was using its default cooler. DirectDraw games, specially the ones using the old 5 and 6 versions, made the card …

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Re: Original Voodoo 5 6000 prototype for sale on eBay

Posted on 2023-06-20, 04:58

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Funnily enough Asrock got SLI working on AGP, they had a skunk Works board at a tech demo show displaying it working, it was AGP 8x only since that version did technically support multiple AGP devices as part of the standard. Unless this was done in the Intel 865 or the Nforce 2 chipset, I guess …

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Re: Original Voodoo 5 6000 prototype for sale on eBay

Posted on 2023-06-20, 04:44

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

True but XP allowed SLI and Xfire to happen so the way ATI did it with the MAXX could be simply considered a stepping stone... Ofc. It has nothing to do with the graphical subsystem (Win32k), DirectX, or the graphics driver per se... But with the specific part I quoted in bold font. NT Kernel …

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Re: Actual hardware or software?

Posted on 2023-06-19, 15:35

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Actually, the only reason you would need a wrapper on xp is for glide. Try nGlide or alternatively dgVoodoo 1. For directx, win xp supports dx9.0c very well and it is higly retro compatible with dx6 to dx8. I can't speak for dx5 and below since I mostly play these games on win98, but I know that …

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Re: Original Voodoo 5 6000 prototype for sale on eBay

Posted on 2023-06-19, 15:25

by

by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

wow its a small world, its a great article about how the SLI VSA cards work internally, the Fury MAXX communicates between each GPU via the AGP bus as it doesnt have a bridge chip or any interchip pci lanes , its a truly weird card hardware wise and quite amazing ATI even got it work as well as it …

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Re: SATA optical drives - why no audio interface?

Posted on 2023-06-06, 21:39

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The audio samples on the CD are still just data. It is converting that data sent over the cable back to audio via a D/A converter where previously the D/A converter was included in the drive itself. OS reads the audio data as RAW data packets via specific ATAPI/SCSI commands (it can't be done using …

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Re: Example/How To: DOS/Windows 98 Virtualization+Passthrough (over Thunderbolt!) with Proxmox (QEMU/KVM)

Posted on 2023-05-18, 20:00

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

From that forum, it says: We still need to implement some words to Openbios for nVidia FCode ROM's, and I don't think the patch Zotan commited for the Rage128's words are upstream in Openbios, yet. This means passthrough wasn't working for Nvidia cards at time, only ATI, and looks like only Rage128. …

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Re: PCMCIA Graphics and Video decoding cards

Posted on 2023-04-27, 18:10

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Got VTBook, tried to install on PCG-505tr with 4 variants of W2K SP4/5, 1 WinXp SP3 - no luck, it always BSODs, any order installing the card itself and the drivers. No VTBook inserted - OK, the system boots and works excellent, inserting in Windows or before power on always leads to BSOD. Drivers …

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Re: 486 Intergraph TD1 issues getting network and sound to work (Linux, DOS/Win311, NT4)

Posted on 2023-04-25, 14:43

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by hyoenmadan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

.. not sure how to do it in NT4 and linux EISA DOS ICU Utilities store their values in NVRAM, and good behaved BIOSes take them from there next boot. So, once you change them in DOS, them will be available for NT4 and Linux (on NT4 you will need to install the ISAPnP Driver bundled in the OS …

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