Re: Ultimate Retro board submissions thread: suggest board edits and/or add new boards here

Posted on 2022-04-14, 22:16

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Missing board: PCChips M925ALU. The main difference with the other M925 models is it has the higher 533MHz FSB (P4M266/A northbridge -- the "A"), onboard 10/100 LAN (the "L"), and the onboard USB ports (the "U"). The manual for this model also mentions all of the other M925 models and their …

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Re: VOGONS Driver Library

Posted on 2022-03-03, 03:12

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you're interested, here's a (DOS?) driver for a Pacific Rim parallel port-based floppy drive (5.25" IIRC) I came across on an old hard disk of mine. I didn't see it on your site so I thought you might be interested.

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Re: FAT32 Support for Dos 6.22

Posted on 2021-11-21, 12:38

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

MS-DOS 7.1 (from Windows 98) was the first official MS-DOS version to support FAT32 (out of the box). As far as I know the only existing solution for FAT32 support on MS-DOS pre-7.1 is using DRFAT32, which is a part of DR-DOS. However from what I understand that implementation is buggy (although …

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Re: ISA PCMCIA cards for DOS?

Posted on 2021-11-05, 06:11

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Don't the ESP-8266 based serial to wifi adapters do that already, convert the protocol onboard? I've not seen an ESP-8266 or ESP32-based serial to wifi adapter that provides PPP onboard. Probably due to resource limitations on such embedded devices. Using a Pi would be a lot easier and would much …

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Re: ISA PCMCIA cards for DOS?

Posted on 2021-11-05, 00:25

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Only reason I want to try is that I work in the WiFi business, this system is actually in the lab at work for R&R during lunch breakds (boots to Arkanoid Revenge of Doh :P ) and I really want to see the looks on my colleagues' faces when I show them that 1980s-looking beige box is not just online …

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Re: Does VIA VT1612A have DOS support?

Posted on 2021-11-04, 17:43

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I use an ALS4000 PCI card with the VT8235. It works great, doesn't need a TSR, has SB/SB Pro/SB16 emulation, and has OPL3 compatibility that sounds like the real thing.

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Re: Differences between rise socket 7 cpus

Posted on 2021-10-31, 15:49

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I believe at least one difference (not considering engineering samples) is the iDragon has a 2.0V core whereas the mP6 had 2.8V. It also seems the iDragon used a newer process (180nm) compared to the mP6 (250nm)? Since the iDragon tried to target the embedded/SoC market, both of these changes make …

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Re: soundcard for my setup

Posted on 2021-10-26, 07:07

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It might be helpful to list what requirements you have for these cards (e.g. price, type -- pci/isa/etc., features).

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Re: Commodore 64 video problems

Posted on 2021-10-11, 20:37

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Adrian Black made some mods awhile back that seemed to improve the video quality without needing to replace or desolder the entire rf modulator, which might be of interest.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-10-10, 17:37

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I would recommend using DBAN or some other zero-wipe program to clear at least the first part of any hard drive / solid state storage you want to use in a retro PC. I notice that the BIOS will actually read the partition/disk layout information from the first sectors to determine certain …

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Re: Amiga 500 workbench help kickstart roms

Posted on 2021-10-07, 23:01

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

jcarvalho wrote on 2021-10-07, 07:02: In my experience, to run whdload you will need 2mb chip ram Surely you're referring to specific (newer) games that maybe use higher res graphics modes or something like that? I've played lots of games via WHDLoad on my A1000 that still only has its original …

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Re: Amiga 500 workbench help kickstart roms

Posted on 2021-10-05, 01:55

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Unfortunately, to my experience, the Amiga community is obsessed with upgrading beyond recognition. (*68010 was a common upgrade, like V20/V30 on PCs. 68010 is useful for WHDLoad, too) Edit: Memory upgrades are excepted, they happen on all platforms, as time wents on. Even on the old C64, people …

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Re: How low can you go with modern, user-friendly Linux?

Posted on 2021-09-21, 23:19

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I reckon most commandline based setups are fairly quick on old hardware, exception being stuff that involves crypto (try to ssh on a 386!). If you're using ssh or any other modern crypto-related software for that matter on older (or even some modern -- e.g. ARM) CPUs like that that don't support …

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Re: Replacement for my Jornada 720

Posted on 2021-09-19, 12:50

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As far as staying within the same era and with Windows CE goes, there's the Jornada 728 and the Mobilepro 900/900C. Some things to note if you're not already aware: Both would double the amount of RAM Both can still be bought online from UsedHandhelds (including new batteries) which has sold various …

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Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2021-09-02, 06:57

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My motherboard arrived in the mail today in the retail box. There was lots of bubble wrap on the OUTSIDE of the box. The motherboard I guess got banged around the whole way as it floated around inside. Need to protect the box so it can be used to send the motherboard back when it doesn't work. ;)

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Re: Dillodos issues when starting

Posted on 2021-08-23, 19:55

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Could it be that it does not work with msdos but perhaps only freedos? Also downloaded and ran the doslfnm (v. 0.34) but it made no difference :( I believe I've read about others using it successfully outside of FreeDOS (I think at least MS-DOS 6.22?). My DOS 7.x setup came largely from the Windows …

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Re: Dillodos issues when starting

Posted on 2021-08-22, 20:10

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Additionally the user guide mentions needing support for long file names to be able to load the fonts, so you may also need to make sure your DOS installation has support for it (either natively or via the "doslfn" program). EDIT: Actually, I'm not sure that is the case anymore with the version from …

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Re: Dillodos issues when starting

Posted on 2021-08-22, 20:05

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Since it appears to be having problems starting nano-x, you might try adjusting the NANOSCR environment variable in DILLO.BAT to something your video card/display supports. Here's a description of the format of that environment variable value from here : There is an environment variable which Nano-X …

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Re: Dillodos issues when starting

Posted on 2021-08-22, 16:26

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It works for me on my DOS (7.x) rig. Here's what I did: Downloaded the ZIP from here Copied over just the \NET\DILLO directory Edited the DILLO.BAT to comment out the "search/find" commands near the top as I don't have the vfdutil program it tries to use. Set the SELF environment variable to the …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-08-17, 16:49

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by mscdex

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That is a so called PISA slot, not EISA... I have that board too Ah, interesting. So was anything ever really available for PISA? I have a Pentium board with a PISA slot as the only slot on the board and is thus designed for a riser card with expansion slots. Not sure why a board like yours would …

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