Re: Old scsi peripherals on modern PC?

Posted on 2023-06-06, 21:38

by

by davidrg

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hmm, so if I understand correctly, there is no easy way to connect a SCSI device to a more modern rig except for the USBXchange USB1.1? I wonder if it has any quality penalty except for lower speed? There are PCIe SCSI cards too though they're probably not cheap and you'll probably need a VHDCI-to- …

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Re: Calcification on definition of abandoneware on Vogons.

Posted on 2023-06-05, 05:32

by

by davidrg

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Sometimes software can be in copyright limbo and nobody could claim it. For example, No One Lives Forever, by all definitions, is abandonware. It happens sometimes during company bankruptcies and mergers. And after certain period of time, it will become public domain. In the USA that certain period …

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Re: Network Booting (and some NetWare stuff)

Posted on 2023-05-18, 23:36

by

by davidrg

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

yeah, they might work. I've tried 86box in the past and it didn't - the NIC emulations either didn't support an option ROM (AMD PCnet) or were too buggy and didn't work with ODI drivers whether under DOS or embedded into the option ROM (Realteak). It's also possible VirtualBox may have more NIC …

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Re: Which DR-DOS?

Posted on 2023-05-18, 02:57

by

by davidrg

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Caldera DR-DOS 7.03 was pretty much the last full version for desktop use - later versions were targeted at embedded/industrial use and lacked many things. You can get a (fully functional and 100% identical to the real full version) trial version of Caldera DR-DOS/OpenDOS 7.0x (plus Enhanced DR-DOS) …

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Re: Network Booting (and some NetWare stuff)

Posted on 2023-05-18, 02:38

by

by davidrg

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Attached are some boot images I pulled off my NetWare server. These are the same images I created as part of this process which will describe what all the files are: https://www.zx.net.nz/netware/client/dos-netboot/ I've got a few ROMs collected over here as well if you happen to have an EPROM …

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Re: Netwoking on a Windows 98 PC - Security concerns

Posted on 2023-05-08, 01:56

by

by davidrg

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No way of running modern SMB on vintage windows. No way of securely providing network drives to vintage windows from anything modern. FTP is probably no better than SMBv1 from a security perspective either, same goes for WebDAV. I use the NetWare file & print services which run over IPX/SPX. While …

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Re: Why floppy drives are important

Posted on 2023-04-21, 23:10

by

by davidrg

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

And some just refuse to believe the floppy drive isn't present. For example, in the BIOS there are no drives at all (this system is booted and runs entirely from the network): Filename img-90.png File size 105.22 KiB Views 766 views File comment BIOS: No drives Meanwhile Windows 95 insists there is …

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Re: Unknown scsi tape drive ? help !

Posted on 2023-04-03, 03:00

by

by davidrg

in Milliways

in Milliways

Found a picture of the inside of an ADR tape cartridge: Filename EU-KwnjUUAEWW-J.jpg File size 256.33 KiB Views 121 views File comment stolen from twitter Looks like my guess was right - physically it's an incompatible/proprietary variation of the extended mini QIC/Travan cartridge. Will probably …

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Re: Unknown scsi tape drive ? help !

Posted on 2023-04-02, 20:42

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by davidrg

in Milliways

in Milliways

Weird - never seen one of those before. Seems to share some design similarities with QIC so presumably shares its flaws too - tension band in direct contact with the oxide layer of the tape that will eventually perish and either glue itself to the tape or fall to bits and lose its ability to advance …

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Re: History Of The SPARC CPU Architecture and scoring some Spar Stations

Posted on 2023-03-30, 21:39

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by davidrg

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've got a couple of SPARCstation 4/5/20 and never had any trouble with the purple trim on them - it's all quite solid still. Perhaps sun exposure matters? The tabs on the front of the lid however - those are broken off on some machines. As for which machine? If you want a SPARCstation 20 you'll …

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

Posted on 2023-03-16, 00:06

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by davidrg

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Firefox 52 ESR is apparently the last release for Solaris 10 - according to the readme Oracle laid off the team as soon it was done. Its from 2017 so for now at least its still new enough to load and render all websites I've tested so far. The machine is a Sun Blade 1500 with a 1GHz UltraSPARC IIIi …

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

Posted on 2023-03-15, 20:46

by

by davidrg

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Been fixing up some old SPARCs lately. This one is fast enough to run a web browser! Filename sparc.png File size 194.7 KiB Views 479 views

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Re: EtherDFS - a network drive for DOS

Posted on 2023-02-28, 04:05

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by davidrg

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

EtherDFS is a very slim DOS network solution. It uses the network filsystem interface Microsoft introduced around DOS 3.x, and slightly adjusted in DOS 5.0, and just forwards whatever MS-DOS 5.0 requests from the network driver. The limitation is that this interface between MS-DOS and the network …

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Re: Windows 3.11 driver for ESS Audiodrive

Posted on 2023-02-14, 22:33

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by davidrg

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Without knowing where the drivers on vogonsdrivers or phils computer lab came from, it might be worth trying the drivers direct(ish) from the source: https://www.zx.net.nz/mirror/www.esstech.com/ … pp/drivers.html

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Re: I found an open FTP with lots of software and drivers

Posted on 2023-02-08, 19:57

by

by davidrg

in Milliways

in Milliways

If you want you can also upload it to ftp.zx.net.nz/pub/incoming with an FTP client or rsync (ftp.zx.net.nz::incoming) and I'll see if I can make it available alongside what I've already got archived. Or I can pull it from archive.org once its uploaded there. Edit: ftp.zx.net.nz is back online (13: …

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Re: Has anyone got PC-NFS working in DOS?

Posted on 2023-02-06, 03:15

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by davidrg

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I doubt you'd need the full Lanman or MS-Net client for DOS (those suck enough conventional memory on their own without adding an NFS client on top!), you probably just need the underlying TCP/IP stack and NDIS driver for whatever NIC you're using if even that. I would have thought the PC-NFS client …

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Re: Willow - Windows 3.0 Real Mode applications on OS/2 1.x and up

Posted on 2023-02-05, 21:10

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by davidrg

in Milliways

in Milliways

I think WLO was Microsoft's strategy to porting Win16 stuff to OS/2, not IBMs. At first they used it to port their own products (Word, Excel) to OS/2, and later just before the split they released a more polished beta that was a bit more flexible. According to Gordon Letwin (the lead OS/2 architect …

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Re: Willow - Windows 3.0 Real Mode applications on OS/2 1.x and up

Posted on 2023-02-05, 01:02

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by davidrg

in Milliways

in Milliways

if you're interested, there is a bunch of OS/2 research going on in NCommanders discord server (https://discord.gg/V8esNah) and being documented on the associated wiki.

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Re: Willow - Windows 3.0 Real Mode applications on OS/2 1.x and up

Posted on 2023-02-04, 10:04

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by davidrg

in Milliways

in Milliways

IIRC, WLO doesn't have any fancy stubs or anything like that. It's even simpler. 16bit OS/2 and Windows 3.0 use the same executable format - NE. If you try and run a 16bit windows exe on OS/2 it will load the exe, try to load all the DLLs it references just as it would with any other native OS/2 …

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Re: How to configure Nobell RPL network boot

Posted on 2023-01-24, 21:37

by

by davidrg

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ah, yes - I've done something similar. I've got a floppy disk that will boot a machine, attach to a NetWare Server, and if there is no DOS installed launch the DOS 6.22 installer (using a floppy drive emulator to mount the DOS 6.22 disk images as the installer insists on being fed disks). If there …

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