Re: Voodoo5 running Windows 10 & benchmarks

Posted on 2017-02-02, 20:21

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Weren't the specs for some parts of the Voodoo cards open, at least enough to write XFree86/Xorg drivers for them? If so, MS might have been able to reverse-engineer an accelerated driver from those, possibly. Wouldn't be great, but would be better than software rendering + VESA.

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Re: What is the best retro OS 8088-Pentium 4 IYO?

Posted on 2017-02-02, 01:34

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That will run on all of the above? Well... DR-DOS, probably. I know 7.03 would at least /boot/ on a Tandy 1000SL. That's an 8086, not an 8088, but I suspect it would run on an 8088 too. I've also successfully booted it on an Opteron, so I suspect it would have no issues with a Pentium 4. I've …

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Re: Windows 95 or 98 for MS-DOS Games

Posted on 2017-02-01, 19:39

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

In general, I'd say if your primary use case is MS-DOS games, then 98se on a 486DX(DX2,DX4,5x86) or later, and 95c on a 486 with <64MB or any 386 or 486SX. On a 386 I'd actually go with straight {MS,PC,DR}-DOS, maybe dual-booting with Win95 or OS/2 if you really want/need it.

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Re: Earliest multiprocessing (on home PCs)

Posted on 2017-02-01, 19:20

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The era of home SMP was quite short - pentium ii and iii (with their Celeron variants), I suppose you could count the pentium Pro too, perhaps. Tyan did produce some home user accessible dual pentium motherboards, if I remember correctly, but workstation motherboards were affordable in the pentium …

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Re: 1991 Dream Machine (386 DX/33)

Posted on 2017-02-01, 17:57

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Very nice!

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Re: TNT2 Proi

Posted on 2017-01-30, 19:41

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

For the various sorts of machines where a TNT2 Pro is useful, it's a decent choice. I'd probably hang onto it.

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Re: HP Vectra VL5 200

Posted on 2017-01-30, 19:05

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Grub4DOS, XOSL and IBM's OS/2 Boot Manager are all decent. OS/2 Boot Manager needs its own tiny partition, but does not need OS/2 to be installed. There's Boot Magic, too, IIRC - used to be part of Partition Magic, I think.

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Re: Can you show photos from games on your CRT monitors? + need monitor advice

Posted on 2017-01-27, 16:17

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

From my experience, NEC Multisyncs are, in general, outstanding monitors. I had a few of them over the years, and we had tons of them at work until they got replaced with LCDs, and I was never anything but favorably impressed. I had this weird 14" AT&T that came with my old 486DX4 machine that was …

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Re: Choosing graphics card for Pentium 200 rig

Posted on 2017-01-27, 15:36

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

That sounds like it could be a crappy cable, dirty connector or a monitor that's on the fritz, actually.

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Re: Slowest Desktop Processor For Windows 10

Posted on 2017-01-27, 15:28

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by jade_angel

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I think that's broadly true. The class of user that really needs power can never really get enough, but we hit the level of "enough CPU" for J. Random with midrange to high-end stuff from a decade ago. El cheapo machines from back then don't hold up as well, but midrange and up sure do, as long as …

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Re: Why doesn't this exist?

Posted on 2017-01-27, 15:24

by

by jade_angel

in Milliways

in Milliways

There were 486, Pentium, K6 and Athlon cards for Sun workstations to run DOS apps, too (and some Win3.x and Win9x apps, and some folks managed to get Windows NT working on them, IIRC). There were also some 486 cards for Acorns with similar purposes, and there might have been some for Macs. While …

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Re: 10-Way PCI Graphics Roundup - DOS

Posted on 2017-01-25, 20:33

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by jade_angel

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Doom has an internal framerate limit of 35FPS, which a 486DX4/100 will often reach with a decent VLB or PCI graphics card, so on a high-end 486, Doom actually is silky smooth - but you can feel the difference between a DX2/66 and a 5x86/133 during big fights, for sure. To clarify, Doom will …

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Re: Choosing graphics card for Pentium 200 rig

Posted on 2017-01-25, 20:24

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I'd suggest trying the Savage4. Apparently they did quite well in DOS games, and weren't all that pokey for hi-res 2D graphics in Windows.

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Re: Sempron 3200+ 1,8Ghz AM2 vs Barton 3200+ 2,2Ghz

Posted on 2017-01-25, 20:11

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Under Linux, you definitely want to try to find a dual-core one. Linux loves multiple CPUs. (So do BSD, Solaris and honestly, WinXP and later). Between the Barton and the Sempron, the Sempron will likely be a wee bit faster. They're not too skookum, but they are based on the Athlon64 (Clawhammer) …

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Re: Slowest Desktop Processor For Windows 10

Posted on 2017-01-24, 15:57

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

The only thing I would want to add to these before using them for everyday computing like websurfing (Facebooking, YouTubing, iHeart Radioing, etc.) is a smaller (say ~250GB) SSD to move the OS to. Yes, I know I'd be limited by the SATAII interface to only ~300MB/s, but the difference would still …

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Re: My K6 build :D

Posted on 2017-01-23, 16:51

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by jade_angel

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

From Phil's benchmarks, it looks like the K6-III+ will lose a tiny bit of performance when going beyond 128MB of RAM, but the impact will be much less than for previous K6 variants due to the onboard L2. (You'll still lose a lot of the benefit from the L3, but due to the onboard L2, that hurts far …

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Re: Sound Card recommendation

Posted on 2017-01-20, 13:16

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by jade_angel

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

If you're looking to go PCI, the old Aureal Vortex2 is still plenty usable, as is the Audigy2 ZS. The M-Audio Revolution 7.1 is also mighty fine, if you can find one.

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Re: 775/771 systems old school or not?

Posted on 2017-01-20, 13:05

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have found that if you have a bunch of browser tabs open, especially if the browser itself has been running for a long time, it tends to snarf an inordinate amount of RAM. This seems to be the case for both Chrome and Firefox; I can't say I've really used recent IE or Edge enough to see if that …

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Re: New member: DOS & 3dfx PC builds

Posted on 2017-01-18, 18:22

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by jade_angel

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

If you go to http://www.philscomputerlab.com/ and look at his DOS Benchmarks section, there's a program included with it that gives a pretty comprehensive hardware readout. Look at the whole lot for CPU ID, especially with, say, newer 486 chips in older boards. I have one where System Information …

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Re: New member: DOS & 3dfx PC builds

Posted on 2017-01-18, 17:44

by

by jade_angel

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

That's a pretty sweet collection, that it is! Oh, and greetings and welcome! That Slot 2 PIII - it's not a Xeon, is it? If it's not, that's a real rarity for sure. If it is, those were a little more common, but no worries, the Xeon is a mighty fine CPU, always has been other than the Netburst-core …

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