Re: 8088/XT build advice

Posted on 2020-02-07, 12:27

by

by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A Sound Blaster or compatible card is still much better than a PWM PC speaker! Many games support it even on XT. NTSC artifacts are hardly used since back then CGA was used mainly with RGB monitors, not with NTSC color TV sets that hardly could display 80 columns text.

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Re: Arrived ISA 8 bit RTVGA boards

Posted on 2020-02-07, 11:59

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by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

jmarsh wrote on 2020-02-07, 11:43: I remember having to use a utility to explicitly switch to CGA mode before playing Digger (the game with the popcorn background music). I know it, of course. Here it is along with the source code: http://www.digger.org/download.html

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Re: Arrived ISA 8 bit RTVGA boards

Posted on 2020-02-07, 11:34

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by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't think any VGA card requires additional utilities to provide CGA/EGA modes. They are just subset of the VGA spec. Generic VGA only offers basic compatibility with CGA modes, far from enough for those interested in playing CGA games. CGA games, when run on a VGA, tend to exhibit various …

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Re: Diamond Trackstar E host system compatibility question

Posted on 2020-02-07, 11:29

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by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I am still looking for a trackstar E 😉 Then I would be able to answer these questions.

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Re: 8088/XT build advice

Posted on 2020-02-07, 11:26

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by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I see no reason why would one torture himself to use a CGA on an XT instead of a VGA. Ebay is full of XT motherboards, HDDs with controllers and very cheap SB compatible sound cards (they cost around $18 incl. shipping)

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Re: A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

Posted on 2019-12-03, 07:20

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by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

maxtherabbit wrote: my 286 is my favorite retro system to mess around with, the 16-bit protected mode thing is just cool to me Have you learnt real mode first?

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Re: Why does EMS suck on my 286?

Posted on 2019-11-24, 22:16

by

by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I guess you can't. But there's one thing you can be sure of, no one likes you Don't speak on behalf of everybody. Your certainty is a cause of very high error rate and bad productivity of yours. Next time use a universal PCB for your useless projects, this at least will shorten your trial and error …

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Re: Why does EMS suck on my 286?

Posted on 2019-11-24, 21:36

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by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well it's finally over. SCSI and EMS coexisting. 16-bit ROM access. Zero wait AST rampage. I'm still ironing out some logic issues on my card design with respect to the use of SBHE# and MEMCS16# that prevent it from being used as a truly general purpose tool like I originally intended. BUT I got it …

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Re: Need some info on a 286/16 SNB-M008 mobo

Posted on 2019-10-27, 21:12

by

by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As long as a new NiMH battery costs more than this board in present condition I don't care about the battery so far. It has several years more until it leaks well enough eventually. BTW there are some brands of NiMH accus that amaze me after 30 years -- they haven't leaked and/or still hold charge. …

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Re: Need some info on a 286/16 SNB-M008 mobo

Posted on 2019-10-27, 20:21

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by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Battery is perfect - has 3.25V after 6 hours. Мore than enough. The board is dead so far without battery leakage.

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Re: Need some info on a 286/16 SNB-M008 mobo

Posted on 2019-10-27, 19:12

by

by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Remove the barrel battery first. Read the ROM with a Programmer and test your image in an emulator. Please upload here if it works https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=60389 Did you try the Supersoft diagnostic ROM? If this does not run, your board has another problem... The battery is not …

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Re: Need some info on a 286/16 SNB-M008 mobo

Posted on 2019-10-27, 13:55

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by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi. The pictures in this topic are no longer available but I think the motherboard which BIOS I need is either the same or very similar. Here is a picture of my dead motherboard: IMG_8446.jpg The BIOS is either corrupted or which is less likely has data bits shuffled due to motherboard track routing …

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Re: Arrived ISA 8 bit RTVGA boards

Posted on 2019-10-23, 20:44

by

by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't think any VGA card requires additional utilities to provide CGA/EGA modes. They are just subset of the VGA spec.

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Re: EGA to VGA converter

Posted on 2019-10-18, 06:50

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by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In case you are using the monitor for PCs and you don't need to explore some undocumented features of CGA/EGA cards I do recommend you to use an industry standard for decades VGA card(s) instead of a converter. The image is better than that of CGA or external converters. The refresh/response is …

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Re: Why does EMS suck on my 286?

Posted on 2019-10-16, 10:22

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by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Scali, you are spreading rumors without analyzing the game at all. This is lie and it is written by you because it exists only in your semi-educated fantasy: When using EMM386, it would have to copy the memory from XMS into the EMS frame first, and then the additional copy to VRAM. How many FPS with …

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Re: Why does EMS suck on my 286?

Posted on 2019-10-16, 10:12

by

by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No way. How did you measure that EMS performance? I explained how: by running Falcon 3.0. It was especially obvious with the animations it played. With real EMS, it would just store each frame in a separate EMS frame, and copy the data to VRAM. When using EMM386, it would have to copy the memory …

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Re: Why does EMS suck on my 286?

Posted on 2019-10-16, 10:02

by

by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No way. How did you measure that EMS performance on your 386? Which application was slowed down like "night and day"? On 286 there is no such thing as software EMS emulation unless it is partial and crippled!

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Re: Why does EMS suck on my 286?

Posted on 2019-10-16, 09:20

by

by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Real EMS usually is located on a separate piece of hardware, even on 286es it's semi-external as a part of the chipset. One of the biggest benefits is that EMS boards do not require the help of EMM386, or more prececisely, V86. The latter causes compatibility issues, as well as a performance hit on …

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Re: Why does EMS suck on my 286?

Posted on 2019-10-16, 06:00

by

by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I also don't understand the need for EMS on a 286 or later machine. If you *really* want to use EMS, why not just use some memory manager to emulate EMS with XMS? Boards with XMS support and expansion cards to add XMS are considerably easier to find nowadays than EMS. EMS was designed for PCs and …

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Re: How to bypas Autoexec/Config in MS-DOS 5.0?

Posted on 2019-10-09, 14:40

by

by georgel

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

maxtherabbit wrote: ...nothing anyone could say would convince me... Rabbit, your own key phrase that is exact description of your usual attitude (at least here).

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