Re: 486 VLB/PCI Motherboard: Go VLB or PCI

Posted on 2019-08-07, 08:05

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

PCI (the original variant) works at 33 MHz. VLB works at the same frequency as CPU's FSB. If you have a DX4-100, ie. 33 MHz FSB, then go PCI. VLB may be better for CPUs with 40 MHz FSB.

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Re: Can you identify this NIC for me?

Posted on 2019-08-06, 05:19

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Miphee wrote: NE2000 compatible didn't work but I'll try NE1000. NE2000 is 16-bit, so that card can't be compatible. But it's safe bet it's compatible with NE1000.

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Re: 286 “Turbo” Speeds

Posted on 2019-08-06, 05:14

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

walterg74 wrote: 20MB of RAM installed You mean 2 MB, right? It would be interesting to see if that board supports 4 MB SIMMs, for a total of 16 MB.

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Re: Games that benefited from having a NEC V20?

Posted on 2019-08-04, 00:51

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No games benefited from a V20 alone. Games designed for 8088@4.77 can only exhibit some timing problems when run on V20@4.77 Games designed for later CPUs will be too slow on V20@4.77 Games using 186/286 instructions may run on V20@4.77, but again - too slow. However, V20 CPUs are usually coupled …

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Re: What sort of PC is this

Posted on 2019-08-01, 21:41

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Anders- wrote: As for solaris not supporting suns own hardware, where did you get that idea? Do you refer to a particular sparc model? Indeed, current Solaris version (11.4) does support current SPARC hardware, not just x64. They only removed support for some earlier generations.

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Re: So Realtek made a Video chip: RTG3105iEH

Posted on 2019-08-01, 15:26

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Yes, there's no doubt the CARD is from 1995, but the CHIPSET itself was introduced earlier. I've found the drivers diskette (see the attachment) - most of the files are from 1992, some from 1993, notably the drivers for the brand-new Windows 3.1, obviously added after the initial release. Anyway, …

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Re: So Realtek made a Video chip: RTG3105iEH

Posted on 2019-08-01, 03:27

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

It seems to be a rather LATE chipset for the ISA bus, introduced in 1994, well after VLB and PCI were a thing. Where have you found that date? The copyrights on that chipset are from "1987-1990", and the FCC ID is from 1992-07-17. Anyway, as already mentioned, there's nothing interesting about that …

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Re: 286 “Turbo” Speeds

Posted on 2019-08-01, 01:30

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think I have one of those "AT 12/16" machines... The crystal is 24 MHz, therefore the CPU runs at 12 MHz, but the LED display on front is set to "16" - yes, this may be considered fake, but that's also the speed reported by Landmark, a benchmark which in the era was ubiquitous. Genuine IBM AT was …

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Re: What sort of PC is this

Posted on 2019-08-01, 01:08

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Deksor wrote: Can't you run NT4 on Sparc CPUs ? (Sure it's not as good as on x86 but well ...) No. Windows NT did support some RISC architectures, but not Sparc.

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Re: What sort of PC is this

Posted on 2019-07-31, 16:38

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sparc, not x86. Can't run Windows. Can run Solaris, Linux, and probably some BSD.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-07-31, 16:29

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

OK, then it must be Opti Local Bus. BTW: that card has VRAM, rather than regular DRAM, right?

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-07-31, 14:33

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

HanJammer wrote: Yeah, I did some more 'research' on it and it's OPTi Local Bus. Which is even better because I have fitting graphics card (S3 911) from which came with my other OLB motherboard. That card may be EISA, be careful - Re: EISA Graphics / Video Cards

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Re: crt resolution issues

Posted on 2019-07-28, 21:18

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The other thing I noticed that, when I start pc, on post screen the monitor reports 640x350 Yes, since around 1994, BIOSes use the 640x350 graphics mode to display that "Energy Star" logo, even though eg. CMOS Setup displays in 80x25 text mode. I always thought that ms-dos shell was 640x480? If you …

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Re: crt resolution issues

Posted on 2019-07-28, 21:01

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not just guesses. It knows the vertical and horizontal refresh and it knows the number of horizontal lines - so it can infer the horizontal resolution from them. Just guesses. Indeed, HSYNC frequency divided by VSYNC frequency gives (more or less) the number of horizontal lines, ie. vertical …

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Re: unidentified 8088 board

Posted on 2019-07-25, 06:13

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You can try searching here - https://www.stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/m8088_1.html Anyway, looks like a pretty generic turbo XT board, can do without the manual. As with all XT-class boards, for IDE drives you need an 8-bit IDE controller (eg. XT-IDE), 16-bit ones won't work. As for other 16- …

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Re: Lowest CPU to play MP3s?

Posted on 2019-07-24, 16:58

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, I'm waiting for somebody to do this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jj97NXgHw4 ...but without an FPU.

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Re: Lowest CPU to play MP3s?

Posted on 2019-07-24, 15:11

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hard to believe it, I was under the impression that all the MP3 players heavily used FPU... Heh, I recall playing MP3 on some Pentium 1 machine (133 MHz or so), and it was OK... then I tried it on a WinChip C6 200 MHz (known for poor FPU), and it was much worse, hard to do anything else while …

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Re: Lowest CPU to play MP3s?

Posted on 2019-07-24, 13:54

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Wait a min... Do you mean that integer decoders can be faster than floating-point ones? Originally, all the decoders were floating-point, and the required hardware was: Pentium 486DX2-66 486DX-50 486DX-33 MPEG-1 stereo ok - - - MPEG-1 downmix* ok ok - - MPEG-1 mono ok ok ok - MPEG-2 stereo ok ok ok …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-07-22, 22:59

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

GUS PnP clone, but with only 1 MB RAM max?

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-07-22, 16:49

by

by Grzyb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

imi wrote: I'm fond of old gpus Nice, an S3 911 accelerator, possibly with VRAM... and wow, a Spea Graphiti based on HD63484 ACRTC, a high-end card from the pre-TIGA era... have fun running these!

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