Re: CD Drive issue or Sound Card issue, or maybe something else?

Posted on 2020-05-24, 03:29

by

by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Okay, so the problem is fixed. Describing the solution is gonna be embarrassing. I went into CTMIX.CFG and set bass and treble back to their default settings, and turned CD Audio gain down from x2 to x1. That fixed pretty much everything - no more crunchy SFX in GTA, no more peaking in the intro …

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Re: CD Drive issue or Sound Card issue, or maybe something else?

Posted on 2020-05-24, 00:36

by

by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Okay, back home, fixed the autoexec.bat (which it seems was broken originally by the SB Diagnose program), SC2K could find the card for both music and SFX, but the audio during the intro movies is still the same as it was. Also, kind of sounds like the music was like "peaking" regardless of where …

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Re: Fascination with the lowest end hardware from a given class

Posted on 2020-05-23, 19:03

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by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

One thing that I find interesting is comparing one hardware generation's low-end vs the top-tier performance of a previous generation, so I like to cobble together spare parts not good enough for "high-end" builds and just put them towards lower-power applications. That Allendale Pentium build may …

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Re: Building PC for DOS and Win98 games + Sound Card dilemma

Posted on 2020-05-23, 17:59

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by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I suppose one could simply format it as FAT16 and then copy the files over. I would probably install it in the machine and format/install DOS from FDD like a normal hdd myself

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Re: CD Drive issue or Sound Card issue, or maybe something else?

Posted on 2020-05-23, 15:12

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by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Bios config stuff: Integrated IDE and ports IRQ and DMA settings

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Re: CD Drive issue or Sound Card issue, or maybe something else?

Posted on 2020-05-23, 14:41

by

by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh hey didn't notice that. I had manually changed the IRQ setting in autoexec to 5, because I sometimes use the parallel port with a controller adapter. Maybe the installer for SBMixer changed it back to 7 (or maybe I forgot to save haha). That might explain the SC2K installer not finding the card …

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Re: CD Drive issue or Sound Card issue, or maybe something else?

Posted on 2020-05-23, 13:10

by

by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The CT2940 is a PnP card, yeah - CTCM is called in autoexec with the /t switch to let it run in DOS 7.1, since it thinks I'm running Win95. The 3com ethernet card has not yet been configured, but it requires a driver disk. Isn't the CD Audio Cable also used by games that stream audio from the CD? …

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CD Drive issue or Sound Card issue, or maybe something else?

Posted on 2020-05-23, 05:54

by

by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello all, Wasn't really sure exactly where to put this since I dunno the root cause of the problem I'm having, so apologies if I'm in the wrong spot. I've got a sort of "junker" machine I've been trying to get set up lately, made up of extra parts that didn't make the cut for any of my DOS 486 or …

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Re: Volo's Gampad to PS/2 Adapter. Device discussion (Do you need this thing?)

Posted on 2020-05-12, 15:01

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by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I use a SNES to parallel solution currently, through SNESKey. It's mostly okay. Something like this would be better.

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Re: Intel to remove all BIOS updates on November 22nd, 2019 from their website

Posted on 2020-01-28, 06:22

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by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Looks like a few people did scrapes of the entire Intel download center before it went away, but I haven't seen individual files posted anywhere, just somewhat sketchy 350GB torrents that claim to be the entire archive

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

Posted on 2019-10-28, 18:49

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by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Technically did this yesterday, but I added a network card to my 486 and took it on its maiden voyage online - the entire process was much easier than I remember it being back in the 90s, but I suppose I'm not in grade school anymore either, haha.

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Re: 486 Tower Build!

Posted on 2019-10-22, 19:39

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by toastdieb

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Was extremely busy when I got home, but I was determined to get the LED display set up and run a benchmark last night, so these photos were all taken at about 3am this morning, right before I went to bed/woke up for work, haha. First power on after hooking up the LED display. I guess this case was …

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Re: VTech / Laser computers history

Posted on 2019-10-22, 15:31

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by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nice 386 system! I like your blog page with its good quality photos. My first EGA card in the '80s was Laser branded as well, from Vtech. Funny that they went from making computers to making children's toys... That's actually kind of what they started on. They used to make little Pong TV games in …

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Re: VTech / Laser computers history

Posted on 2019-10-22, 14:35

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by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I remember seeing Lasers in the mid-to-late 90s as a kid at salvage sales in the midwestern US. I'm not sure if they would have been the XTs or the Apple II clones though, it's been a long time and at the time I was just amazed to see a computer with the keyboard built in, and it was powered by …

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Re: 486 Tower Build!

Posted on 2019-10-21, 20:53

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by toastdieb

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I really like the style of the case, but it feels a little flimsy in terms of the construction. There's a lot of flex when it is being moved around, especially now that it's loaded down with drives. The caddy is only held in place by the three pictured screws as well, so if I have the tower on its …

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Re: Purchasing stuff is dodgy on ebay.

Posted on 2019-10-21, 04:36

by

by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I would consider you lucky the sellers you have had trouble with didn't just send you garbage parts and instead cancelled the transactions on their end. Things like that are why generally I try to stick to buying from folks I've bought from before, even if their prices aren't necessarily the …

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486 Tower Build!

Posted on 2019-10-20, 18:44

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by toastdieb

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

So I'm finishing up my first "from-scratch" 486 build (as in, starting from an empty case and a mobo, instead of just upgrading/restoring a prebuilt unit) or at least it's as finished up as any good PC ever is, haha. We'll start with photos - apologies for the size of these, as well as for the poor …

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Re: Using IDE on SB16

Posted on 2019-10-19, 04:01

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by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I was laid out with strep for about a week and then got tied up with home winterization after I recovered, but I finally managed to get back to this project tonight. I don't know exactly what I did, but it suddenly decided to start working without any changes to my CONFIG.SYS. While I was away, I …

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Re: Another IBM damaged!!

Posted on 2019-10-08, 15:18

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by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's how modern TVs are shipped as well. I used to work in recieving at a now-defunct chain, your big flat screen TVs are just set upright on a pallet and wrapped up in plastic wrap. If they are new in box, they'll even stack crap on top of them. Most shipping damage occurs during sorting rather …

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Re: Another IBM damaged!!

Posted on 2019-10-07, 15:23

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by toastdieb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Knocking on wood, but despite buying almost all of my retro components/PCs through ebay, so far the only problem I've had with physical damage was a SCSI CDROM I bought - seller thought a bubble mailer would be good enough, so I received an envelope full of jagged beige plastic shards. Drive may or …

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