The Introduction of the Asynchronous Bus

Posted on 2024-01-19, 14:16

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

While it's safe to assume that all systems with CPU frequency >8MHz used an asynchronous bus, I would think there was a time during the 8MHz era where OEMs had to weigh up the advantages of using synchronous or asynchrous, leading to a mixture of products that either were or weren't. I have very …

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Re: Re-making worst mouse ever

Posted on 2023-09-15, 22:30

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yo, this is SO COOL. An Ambra Sprinta was my first computer growing up and I actually had no problem with the mouse. Sadly my dad threw it all away after I moved out, but last year I found one on eBay for hardly any money. Sadly it had no peripherals, but did have the monitor. Can you share na STL …

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Re: EGA/VGA Issue with 8-bit Machine

Posted on 2023-08-16, 09:24

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Which EGA cards are you trying to use ? It came with your standard PEGA2 Paradise card so that's the first one and the second is an EGA Wonder VIP, which has EGA and VGA. Both cards are known good. The computer has a built-in 'Monitor' program that runs from ROM and can be loaded at startup and at …

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Re: EGA/VGA Issue with 8-bit Machine

Posted on 2023-08-15, 23:09

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Damn, it didn't work. On inspection the switches (labelled "monitor type") were already set to EGA, which I now remember doing previously, even though I was successfully running a CGA cards in there. I will have to investigate further. There exists a manual for the Z-150, but this is architecturally …

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Re: EGA/VGA Issue with 8-bit Machine

Posted on 2023-08-13, 21:36

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's amazing, thanks! I'll give it a shot. 8-bit machines are almost foreign to me and I forget how much changed from PC/XT to AT because I've never had hands-on experience with them.

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EGA/VGA Issue with 8-bit Machine

Posted on 2023-08-13, 21:02

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi all. So I've got this Zenith Z-159, a derivative of the earlier Z-150 turbo XT machine. Had it working great about 7 years ago and it's been in storage ever since. Finally got around to using it again and have encountered an odd issue. I have two different CGA cards for it - one is generic and …

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Re: Weird Mouse/Sound Card Conflict Issue

Posted on 2023-05-20, 11:19

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Edit: I'm a bit confused today, never mind. I just realized you had solved the issue. Good work! 🙂👍 No worries - thanks for the suggestions. I was lucky enough to have multiple serial cards that I could test, so I was able to eliminate the UART as an issue that way - this would be a useful step for …

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Re: Weird Mouse/Sound Card Conflict Issue

Posted on 2023-05-17, 15:23

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In case someone else has a similar issue (or something else that can't be explained or solved through the standard troubleshooting process), a physical inspection of the motherboard revealed that a drop of moisture had caused calcification around some vias at some point. This caused conductivity …

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Re: ECS P5VX-B Rev 1.2 not working.... any ideas please??

Posted on 2023-05-17, 09:51

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Never had any situation with dead bios so don't really know how to reflash it :-/ not sure what I might need of want to do it...? Do you have a network card with a vacant ROM socket? This is the easiest way. If not you can 'hotflash' like Windows9566 said. This requires another working system with …

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Re: ECS P5VX-B Rev 1.2 not working.... any ideas please??

Posted on 2023-05-13, 12:44

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I also have this board. It's extremely fussy about the SDRAM it supports - are you using that or SIMMs? Also, it could be the BIOS has degraded. Someone I know recently had similar symptoms on a different board, reflashed the BIOS and it worked. There are versions available from here.

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Re: UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.80a

Posted on 2023-05-11, 20:43

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Just wanted to say thanks for this program. I've been hearing about it for a while and usually like to use the 'proper' drivers for things when I can, but it has saved me a lot of hassle while using an unbranded AD Chips based card I've never used before (CMI8329A chipset) and it works perfectly. …

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Weird Mouse/Sound Card Conflict Issue

Posted on 2023-05-11, 14:06

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello all. Struggling with a problem that has introduced itself to my 486. This system used to work perfectly, with the following setup: -TMC EISA VLB board (PET48PN), 16MB RAM, 486DX/50, 512KB cache - QDI QD6580 VLB controller (IRQ14) - Tseng ET4000 W32i - Voyetra V-4000 (330h, IRQ3) - Adaptec EISA …

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Re: Promise DC-4030VL Config Issue

Posted on 2023-04-25, 18:33

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, it worked. The default setting of IRQ12 seems to have been the problem as it behaved completely normally with IRQ14 - thank you! I have had this card for nearly 10 years and this is the first time I've really tried to get it working. Just goes to show it's worth hanging onto something and …

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Re: Promise DC-4030VL Config Issue

Posted on 2023-04-22, 14:54

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In my system, both drives on the Promise controller are input to the system BIOS setup Type 47 drives with the same parameters as appear in the Promise BIOS screen. Once again I am grateful for asking here, thank you. This could be the key information I'm missing. I also just remembered that the …

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Promise DC-4030VL Config Issue

Posted on 2023-04-22, 12:04

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello all. Short question: does anyone know how is this card configured as primary or secondary? Long question follows. I've got this really nice caching controller but have never been able to get it working, so I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with this card (or similar issues with …

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Re: Performance Discrepancy Between Frequency and L1 Cache

Posted on 2023-03-11, 16:05

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I suspect the DX2/66 L1 cache may have higher latencies than the DX/50, what are their latencies? There is also write-back vs. write-through to consider. If that's the case only an analysis of the die itself would reveal its secrets. Comparing datasheets might produce something, but unlikely or it …

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Re: Performance Discrepancy Between Frequency and L1 Cache

Posted on 2023-03-11, 13:22

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Without knowing the measured the CPU speeds it's impossible to comment. Maybe the 50 MHz CPU is really running @ 52 MHz or the 66 MHz CPU is @ 64 MHz. On the DX2/66 does the L1 cache run at 66 or 33 MHz? I checked the measurements from CHKCPU - the DX2 runs at 65.4 on my system, while the DX runs …

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Performance Discrepancy Between Frequency and L1 Cache

Posted on 2023-03-11, 11:37

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I really couldn't think of a better title than that, so apologies if it doesn't make a huge amount of sense. The question is pretty simple, though. 66MHz is ~33% faster than 50MHz. I did some tests using CACHECHK 4.0 and measured 52MB/s for an Intel 486DX/50 and 66MB/s for an Intel 486DX2/66. That's …

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Re: The (Almost) Definitive PC Sound Card Article (Pre-1990)

Posted on 2023-03-06, 21:11

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by brassicGamer

in Milliways

in Milliways

Well since it started with other machine sound hardware pre-history it missed the NoiseMaker for S100 bus. The scope of the article was limited to IBM PC compatibles. I would like to write other articles later covering other expandable platforms, though, so I've made a note of that card. Thanks. 🙂 …

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Re: UMC U5S Super40 vs. U5SX-40 + FPU?

Posted on 2022-12-01, 01:57

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by brassicGamer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A slightly late reply to this topic, but I can confirm the chips appear identical internally (stepping may very but impossible to tell). I have a non-super chip, with "U5SX 486-33 markings" and "Windows Compatible" logo, dated week 46, 1994. I also have a model marked U5S-SUPER33, dated week 39, …

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