Re: Need PCI SSD controller compatible with Pentium Pro chipsets and Windows NT 4

Posted on 2025-04-16, 18:17

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have the S150 TX2 installed, but can't create an array. "Error occurred when modifying array" Santiy check: Is this a regular S150 TX2Plus or a FastTrak S150 TX2Plus? The instruction that you always need to create an array (even with single drive) only applies to the FastTrak, not to the regular …

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Re: Info to complete this retro pc

Posted on 2025-04-16, 16:41

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Use the integrated audio for Windows, but you need a ISA sound card for DOS games. I would either use a combination of a S3 Virge + Voodoo2 for great compatibility with Glide games of the era, or put in a geforce2 GTS instead (has very early driver support). For sound card you can use something …

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Re: An Isa sound card with high compatibility with earlier games

Posted on 2025-04-15, 19:52

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I've disabled internal and external cache and now I can set the soundblaster in Cannon Fodder. It works like a charm :) I've installed Dosbench from Philscomputerlab and I've run Norton System Information 8.0 with internal and external cache disabled and I have a result very weird. In performance …

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Re: Best Socket 7 CPU, cards for Biostar MB-8500TTD?

Posted on 2025-04-14, 16:12

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Here’s a better pic of the chips used in that stick OK, better pic - but awful typeface :P That first character really looks like a 5, but eventually I was able to make S80016LK7TW-8A out of it, which gets me this datasheet. Spectek doesn't make their own chips; they're Micron's budget label but …

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Re: Best Socket 7 CPU, cards for Biostar MB-8500TTD?

Posted on 2025-04-13, 06:14

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] I did buy a 256MB stick of PC100 (as pictured) we’ll see how well that works. 256MB could be one of three things: - 16 16Mx8 chips. Officially unsupported by i430TX (max officially supported is 8Mx8 64Mb) but will probably work (although 192MB of it uncached) - 8 32Mx8 chips. 512Mb chips will …

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Re: Socket 370 (Non ISA) Pentium 3 still relevant in 2025 ?

Posted on 2025-04-12, 18:11

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There are many PCI sound cards that have driver workarounds to play sound in DOS, as long as the system allows access to internal ISA bus. So the few PCI sound cards talked about on Philscomputerlab that he says support sound in DOS dont? Or they do but only on certain systems? They all can to a …

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Re: Socket 370 (Non ISA) Pentium 3 still relevant in 2025 ?

Posted on 2025-04-12, 17:28

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I forgot about the Geode, I'd like to have a play with one, I like efficient things! I wonder if the whole system would compete with the 20 watts I get from this P3. I've also tried a Cyrix CPU in this machine and it brings the total system wattage down even more but the performance is awful …

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Re: An Isa sound card with high compatibility with earlier games

Posted on 2025-04-11, 18:32

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

What "Blaster environment error"? If you're using Unisound, the SET BLASTER variably is used to set the resources for your PnP card. If using anything else, you need to make sure that what's in the SET BLASTER corresponds to whatever resources are set. To slow down your PC, set External Cache to …

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Re: Socket 370 (Non ISA) Pentium 3 still relevant in 2025 ?

Posted on 2025-04-11, 18:08

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Depends... you only need to slow the system down if you want one DOS machine to do everything. However if you split it in half, with a slower 486 with Turbo button to easily get down to XT speeds and a late P3-era system for the last DOS games (Quake...) the latter doesn't need slowing down, but ISA …

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Re: TV Card / Graphics card, AIW or separate?

Posted on 2025-04-11, 18:05

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Long ago I remember reading about an independent driver somebody made for some Brooktree chips used on many TV tuner cards. It was supposed to be better than the original drivers many BT based cards came with. I think this was probably the project: https://btwincap.sourceforge.net/ If you see a …

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Re: Socket 370 (Non ISA) Pentium 3 still relevant in 2025 ?

Posted on 2025-04-11, 08:39

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's all a question of why you're into retro computing. If you objectively want to cover as many software bases as possible, a P4 or AXP AGP system is superior for Win9x to any So370. However that's focusing purely on hardware as a facilitator for software. If your interest is more related to the …

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Re: How durable are Pentium III crystals, dies? (and other CPUs with heat spreader like Athlon, Duron and etc.)

Posted on 2025-04-11, 08:29

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

FC-PGA dies were a lot tougher (and/or had wider tolerances) than SoA dies, but core crunch was still a thing - I recall once losing a P3-700E (when those things were still worth significant money and I was a poor student :X ) due to slipping when mounting a particularly stubborn heatsink. I very …

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Re: USB on the Intel 430VX (PCIset VX Triton II) chipset

Posted on 2025-04-08, 13:28

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] (pretty sure that was standardized very early on, possibly the very beginning, but just in case) Sadly not - there were various alternatives to what we now consider standard out there, in particular one where the two ports were numbered in opposite directions (so +5V on the one was next to …

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Re: Why do PC manufacturer's use lower end/limiting chipsets?

Posted on 2025-04-06, 23:06

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think it’s funny when you can see the motherboard supports the pinout it but some OEM decided to save $1 by not soldering the physical AGP slot on. It's not just the production cost, it's also support costs - and reputation costs. If you put a slot in there, somebody is going to stick something …

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Re: An Isa sound card with high compatibility with earlier games

Posted on 2025-04-05, 10:26

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

You can really dive down the rabbit hole on this sort of thing (I have three sound cards in my late DOS system and four (if you count an MPU401 as a sound card) in my early to mid DOS build). In general I'm a big fan of Aztech 3rd gen chips (AZT2316) for trouble-free compatibility and agree with …

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Re: An Isa sound card with high compatibility with earlier games

Posted on 2025-04-04, 23:45

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

SB16 should be good.. I know it can have bugs, but if you're not into general midi then who cares. SBPro is also fantastic, but will be harder to find, and more expensive. I don't know of any old game that the SBPro can't support. SBPro can't do 16-bit SFX, so for some later games you will lose …

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Re: 486 sx25 PC

Posted on 2025-04-04, 08:20

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Networking is always a good idea, if only a DOS packet driver and mTCP tools to be able to use FTP for file sharing (tip: run the server on the old system so you can use a nice easy modern client like Filezilla on the other end) I'm old-fashioned and use wired Ethernet for that, but PicoMEM's …

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Re: Pentium II 233 or 266?

Posted on 2025-04-03, 20:40

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Both are Klamath, speed is very similar. I would go for whichever has the cooler (in both senses of the word 😉 ) heatsink.

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Re: How much for an old retro gaming PC

Posted on 2025-04-03, 13:44

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks guys. I decided to not take it and go to a few flea markets around my area. I think this will be a good start. I will start reading for about chipsets and graphic cards to find the best one which fits my needs (Windows 98 and XP compatbility). 98: max i8xx-series (at least, for decent …

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Re: 486 sx25 PC

Posted on 2025-04-03, 06:11

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Note that unless you want to do something very niche (i.e. run stuff that needs/wants an FPU but runs well on a 486-33; even though a handful of games as far back as SimCity could use an FPU, Quake was the first 'killer app' that needed it - and no way will Quake run acceptably on a system like this …

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