Re: Chinese FX5500 PCI

Posted on 2025-03-15, 03:38

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

What games are you running? The cards being pci is a big bottleneck, and I wouldn't expect them to perfom much differently after a certain point, regardless of what memory they use. Matrox for instance in their last genetations of pci cards only ever used sdram, even if the equivalent agp version …

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Re: Strange MIDI synth behaviour

Posted on 2025-03-06, 04:06

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The playback issues I have had are missing instruments, too quiet instruments, corrupted and incorrect instruments. It seems to get worse the more MIDI files I play almost like it is not getting reset or something. I am using Windows Media player to play the files. I also have had the volume go to …

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Re: Best BIOS for PC-Chips M919?

Posted on 2025-02-15, 02:06

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

- CTCM doesn´t report correctly here, if you run "cachechk" you see the MBs that don´t get cached: 56-64MB. All the rest is o.k. This probably is some BIOS bug... Doesn't the message "56 Mbyte, Cache Area < Main memory!!" mean that? I'm using CTCM 5/98 v1.6n It's surprising that they didn't test it …

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Re: Modding and enhancing *Some generic brand* MS-420S MUTI-media speakers

Posted on 2025-02-15, 01:23

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Nice to see you got these done. Yeah no doubt those full range speakers sound a lot better then what was in there originally. What are you powering these with? A little class d amp?

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Re: Getting Diamond Monster Fusion AGP working in Win95a

Posted on 2025-02-14, 20:15

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

If I'd have to live with 95s I'd probably abandon the whole AGP thing and just toss a decent matrox pci card in there. Since you have a backup of this anyway- have you considered trying to install windows 98? I am thinking your CNC software would work just fine on it

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Re: Cyrix 100GP 4x multiplier?? Unexpected find

Posted on 2025-02-14, 02:51

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

... unless of course my hardware is glitchy and some boards may be able to run faster settings with some bios, which can certainly be the case May be. This is something I need to test for again. It may be an edge case situation. My board can do 180 Mhz with 1024K L2, and 128 MB EDO with 2-1-2 SRAM …

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Re: Cyrix 100GP 4x multiplier?? Unexpected find

Posted on 2025-02-12, 04:38

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

bertrammatrix: What BIOS are you running with that single 64 MB module? If you are using any of the BIOSes later than 5/6/96, check your DOS Quake score with the 64 MB chip, then test it again with a 32 MB chip (or even 96 MB total). If your Quake score is substantially lower with 64 MB total, you …

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Re: How to supply power to socket 4 on DEC Celebris 560?

Posted on 2025-02-10, 17:42

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by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't think that regulator should be there at all for 5 volt operation, I find it really unlikely for it to be intended to be over the a cpu with no heatsink. Like mentioned there should be a way to just jumper that connector for it to work without the regulator card, unless it's a little more …

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Re: FSP300-60GTF repair - blown transoptor, resistors, worth it?

Posted on 2025-02-10, 17:27

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As someone who worked in electronics repair, toss it, or keep it for parts. Unless it's something unobtainable or weird form factor from a specific system that absolutely has to be repaired. Those things are a rabbit hole once they fry. The only thing I MAY bother with is replacing the odd capacitor …

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Re: Cyrix 100GP 4x multiplier?? Unexpected find

Posted on 2025-02-10, 02:17

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Your results with the enhancements enabled, or as to which one exactly may cause issues may vary wildly across hardware, I now fully understand why cyrix/IBM just decided to keep them off by default. On several LS486 boards I would get occasional freezes during the launch of Road Rash or Worms …

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Re: Cyrix 100GP 4x multiplier?? Unexpected find

Posted on 2025-02-09, 22:03

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm glad to announce that fortunately this chip is completely stable @133MHz 3.65v It's been working for many hours under heavy load with the modified registers for S0R5 (win). What motherboard are you using? Not all motherboards support all the register enhancements of this CPU, particularly …

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Re: 98SE - Scandisk requiring Surface Scan every boot

Posted on 2025-02-08, 04:41

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That sure sounds like a bad drive to me, even though I have zero experience with using ssd's for this. For whatever it's worth I've seen more mechanical hard drives last 15-20 years then. I've seen any other technology last half that time. It shouldn't take that long to do a surface scan on a …

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Re: CMI8738 - How to remove 3D effects in Win98?

Posted on 2025-01-19, 17:40

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by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I've installed the CMI8738/CD3X drivers in Windows 98 SE. The sound card is exactly this: https://theretroweb.com/chips/3629. I've tried installing both VxD and WDM drivers, and in both cases, I get this weird echo-ey and incomplete sound through my headphones. The headphones are connected to the …

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Re: Repairing onboard audio

Posted on 2025-01-15, 16:30

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by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Update: I tested the caps around the audio codec IC as well as one between the ATX connector and the gamport output using a dedicated capacitance meter. One 22uF cap measured at 40 uF . The next 22uF cap was 4 uF . The final 22uF cap was around 5 uF. One 100uF capacitor was 4 uF . All other caps …

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Re: New project : MixerBay - audio mixer for the 3.5" drive bay

Posted on 2025-01-02, 01:48

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

My immediate suggestion would be to replace the 3.5mm internal jacks with 4-pin headers instead. Good idea. We all have a bunch of those wires. Or better yet a combination, like a few at least with jack and 4pin, it would make it more universal. Personally I'd also welcome a dedicated sub-out on …

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Re: Win98SE: constant exception 0Es opening folders?

Posted on 2025-01-02, 01:25

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Harry Potter wrote on 2024-12-28, 12:16: Umm...the problems are picking up again. 🙁 Have you tried a full reinstall yet? Complete with a good hdd redo with fdisk first. Often, if it's the hard drive failing it may become obvious at this stage with hangs or fdisk errors or formatting errors after

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Re: Aureal Vortex 2 (AU8830A2) problems!

Posted on 2025-01-02, 01:15

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

This thread: Quake 3 and A3D mentions that there are several versions, some with A3D, some not, some better then others, maybe worth looking into. It sounds like the implementation may have been buggy and removed from game options in later versions as a result.

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Re: Aureal Vortex 2 (AU8830A2) problems!

Posted on 2025-01-01, 21:21

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I have two fully functional Aureal Vortex 2 cards with the AU8830A2 chip. One is a Diamond MX300, and the other is a product by Aureal. I’m using Windows 98 SE on a retro PC with a Pentium 3 1.4. Generally, both cards work great in Windows and DOS. However, when playing certain games with A3D sound …

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Re: Using the PC speaker and sb as output speaker simultaneously

Posted on 2024-12-31, 21:48

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

If your SB16 has an onboard amplifier chip then that's no problem- you may even be lucky, some cards had jumpers to switch output from amplified to line level, you could probably tap in there to connect to the speaker. You may have to steal ground pin from a different header, like from unused cdrom …

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Re: Aureal Vortex 2 (AU8830A2) problems!

Posted on 2024-12-31, 21:42

by

by bertrammatrix

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I have two fully functional Aureal Vortex 2 cards with the AU8830A2 chip. One is a Diamond MX300, and the other is a product by Aureal. I’m using Windows 98 SE on a retro PC with a Pentium 3 1.4. Generally, both cards work great in Windows and DOS. However, when playing certain games with A3D sound …

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