Re: Help - FM music played at slow speed on DOS games.

Posted on 2020-02-18, 22:37

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

On a desktop machine, I got random music slowdowns in Tyrian and a few other games when I used DVI to connect my graphics card to an LCD monitor. Switching to a VGA connection solved the issue. I doubt this is what's causing your issues, but if you want to make sure, try connecting an external …

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Re: hypothetical "new" system for DOS / Win3x / Win9x / WinXP retrogaming

Posted on 2020-02-18, 19:34

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I made some hacked bioses for my KT133A boards which allow changing the multiplier on the fly using Setmul in DOS, enable Cool'n Quiet compatibility, and support newer Athlons up to 3200+ (333), so the correct multiplier can be set at boot, even above 12,5x, sadly i do not own the Soltek. i should …

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Re: hypothetical "new" system for DOS / Win3x / Win9x / WinXP retrogaming

Posted on 2020-02-18, 14:15

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I might have more luck with local ads... I'm finding some Yamaha YMF724s for a few pennies, would they be a good alternative? If you can get it cheap, go for it. It's a pretty good card in its own right, with genuine OPL3 sound and a nice wavetable in Win9x, but maybe not quite as compatible under …

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Re: CD audio vs Roland & General Midi

Posted on 2020-02-18, 12:27

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I shall go listen to Mechanical Man 100 times as punishment Heh, I might just join you in that. The C&C and RA soundtracks are amazing and I keep them in my music rotation to this day. The sequels had some good music too, but they never resonated with me as much as the originals. Probably because I …

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Re: CD audio vs Roland & General Midi

Posted on 2020-02-18, 11:22

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

But then I was blown away by C&C's CD audio soundtrack. While C&C and Red Alert had great sounding music, they didn't use redbook CD audio. IIRC, the music was was in some sort of compressed PCM format. The files were stored on the CD but they weren't standard 16-bit 44.1 kHz stereo redbook audio …

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Re: SetMul - Multiplier control for VIA C3 / AMD K6+7+8 Mobile / Cyrix 5x86

Posted on 2020-02-18, 09:52

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

That's too bad, I was hoping for some K6 style granularity with the slowdown. Ah well, the Duron cost me only 5 EUR, so no big loss.

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Re: SetMul - Multiplier control for VIA C3 / AMD K6+7+8 Mobile / Cyrix 5x86

Posted on 2020-02-18, 08:30

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Aren't all Socket A processors multiplier locked? I can freely change the multiplier on the Athlon XP that I'm currently using. However, that one is detected as "Unknown CPU" since it's too new for the motherboard, so that may be why. Back when I first bought this computer I had an older Athlon …

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Re: SetMul - Multiplier control for VIA C3 / AMD K6+7+8 Mobile / Cyrix 5x86

Posted on 2020-02-18, 07:06

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Anyone tried SetMul with a Duron on a SocketA system? I have an Abit KT7A and I'm thinking about downgrading my AthlonXP 1500+ to a Duron 700 in the hopes of getting more slowdown choices. Currently, SetMul only allows me to disable the L1 cache on the AthlonXP which puts it at around 386 levels, …

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Re: New K6-III+ build with PC Chips M599LMR motherboard

Posted on 2020-02-17, 22:16

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's still pretty decent. Back in the day, I played through the entirety of Quake on my Pentium 133 at 400x300 or some similarly weird resolution, getting barely 10-15 FPS. Still managed to finish it... somehow. BTW, does your Voodoo 2000 exhibit any artifacting in DOS resolutions like 320x200? …

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Re: New K6-III+ build with PC Chips M599LMR motherboard

Posted on 2020-02-17, 21:16

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's pretty much the perfect build for Win98 and DOS gaming. Congrats! With the Voodoo 3 you get 8-bit palletized textures and proper table fog, which ensures that early 3D accelerated games look as intended. And that K6-III can be slowed down as needed using SetMul which makes it a breeze to …

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Re: Recommendation for a pci sound card that will work with a SC-55

Posted on 2020-02-17, 14:20

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I'd recommend an ESS Solo-1. These will work fine and have full DOS support (provided the mainboard supports DDMA or has SB-Link). YMF7x4 cards use DDMA and have SB-Link as well. If none of those are available, the DOS driver falls back to a TSR. However, the Solo-1 might have slightly better SBPro …

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Re: hypothetical "new" system for DOS / Win3x / Win9x / WinXP retrogaming

Posted on 2020-02-17, 11:41

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Video cards old enough to have drivers for Windows 3.x are TOO old for what I want to do A Voodoo 3 2000 can be installed under Windows 3.1 using Velocity 100 drivers. Naturally, this card works fine in 9x using its own drivers, but since you also want to run XP, it might be too slow for what you …

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Re: The SD->CF->IDE nightmare

Posted on 2020-02-17, 11:35

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

How can I install Windows 9x on the secondary master hard drive without messing up DOS? The safest way is to physically disconnect the hard disk where DOS resides and then install Win98 on the remaining, second disk. After Windows is installed, re-connect the DOS hard disk and then select which of …

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Re: CD audio vs Roland & General Midi

Posted on 2020-02-17, 06:19

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

If both are available, I always pick CD audio, in case the soundtrack has vocals. Heroes of Might and Magic 2 is an example where CD audio has amazing vocals, and you would certainly miss out if you just went with General MIDI.

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Re: Recommendation for a pci sound card that will work with a SC-55

Posted on 2020-02-16, 23:13

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

YMF724 offers decent SBPro compatibility for DOS games and has a genuine OPL3 core for FM synthesis, if you ever want to fall back on that. Digital sound effects will play fine on it, but the DOS drivers can sometimes be a bit flaky, depending on your motherboard. You should be able to hook up the …

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Re: Creative's intended market for 16 bit audio?

Posted on 2020-02-16, 22:45

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Most people back then (and today) didn't know enough about hardware to know what they could use it for. They did know numbers though and 16 is bigger than 8. I can absolutely attest to that! As a kid back in the day, I had a SB16 and was super jealous of seeing AWE32 as a setup option in a bunch of …

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Re: ~20 Windows 98 SE Installs later....STILL isn't 100%, ever

Posted on 2020-02-16, 19:36

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I guess asking if I should try Windows ME instead is out of the question? I still remember all the problems everybody was having with that OS back then.... and since the majority of the games I play are later DOS games I don't want to use XP (I have so many games, that for proper midi sound I have …

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Re: ~20 Windows 98 SE Installs later....STILL isn't 100%, ever

Posted on 2020-02-16, 08:28

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I'm using the nubs36E USB driver (and that's how I get most of the files onto this machine...well, all the games are on a 2nd SSD now since I've been switching them back and forth as I format and reinstall windows). I doubt this is causing your issues, since they seem to be much more severe than …

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Re: When did General Midi and Sound Canvas support fall off for big budget releases?

Posted on 2020-02-14, 18:23

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I don't think there's a hard cutoff point. IIRC, 7th Guest had redbook audio back in 1993, and Epic Pinball from the same year used sample-based music. But then you have the Windows port of Final Fantasy VIII which came out in 2000 and still used MIDI music.

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Re: Bunch of soundcards, anything particularly worthy of interest?

Posted on 2020-02-14, 12:14

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Very interesting about the NXPro, particularly WSS and Covox as I have 0 experience with them. Looks like I will be having some fun testing stuff :) I find WSS fascinating because it allows for 16-bit sound sampling on cards that don't otherwise feature SB16 compatibility, provided that the game …

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