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Re: Wonders of 486 DX4, Treasures inside

Posted on 2021-09-08, 15:46

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

McCake now has heat sink and rubber pad to support weight of the McCake. I had some problems that rarely sound could not be heard but McCake leds were flashing. After noticing that Roland MPU401AT has shorter pins than the Labway it seemed most likely that there were connection issues. There is no …

Re: WP32 McCake : MT32 compatible waveblaster board

Posted on 2021-09-06, 14:03

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I send PM yesterday but if others are interested this is my setup. I just noticed that Roland MPU401AT has shorter pins on the wavetable header than for example the Labway I have on the same system. If this problem happens again I'll first try to test if the connection is okay. I already placed …

Re: WP32 McCake : MT32 compatible waveblaster board

Posted on 2021-09-05, 15:34

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I'm having a problem that I can't figure out. The problem is that sound rarely disappears completely. This affects both MT32 and Fluidsynth modes and mt32-pi -r or resetting system does not help. Usually powering off the computer helps but not always. This latest appearance was worst of them all. I …

Re: Wonders of 486 DX4, Treasures inside

Posted on 2021-09-02, 17:10

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1admXph7NXB9uOvSGFHU8fOx7BpBGD1mO New CPUs to test! Write-back version of Intel DX4 and AMD 5x86-133. But why? WB-DX4 is easy to explain. I thought I already had one but I did not. AMD 5x86 is harder to explain. DX4-100 is an excellent clock rate. It …

Re: Wonders of 486 DX4, Treasures inside

Posted on 2021-08-31, 18:31

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I've never played Crusader: No Remorse so I don't know how well it plays on a 486 or does it support GUS. Duke Nukem 3D runs on a 486 but only with low resolution so I would play that on a Pentium system rather than on this system. And it supports GUS. Quake is definitely Pentium game but I don't …

Re: Wonders of 486 DX4, Treasures inside

Posted on 2021-08-31, 07:50

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I know that there is no DMA clicking on AWE64 but I just wanted to make sure since I've just recently tested it with one of the best SB16 models. So there you have even more reasons why SB16 support is not necessary and sometimes even worse than WSS support. I'll have to try Turrican 2. I'd almost …

Re: Wonders of 486 DX4, Treasures inside

Posted on 2021-08-31, 05:14

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I found a fix for the non-working WSS support. The Sierra WSS drivers are hardcoded to IRQ7 and DMA1 but my problem was that I had the Sound Blaster DMA set to 1 but it was the WSS DMA that needed to be 1. With Unisound the Labway is initialized with SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H0 (+some other parameters …

Re: Wonders of 486 DX4, Treasures inside

Posted on 2021-08-29, 17:50

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1MridWANlezDi9CkGon1Bmz0xLSOvq2U- Unexpected turn of events, especially so soon after saying that Creative does not belong to this system. So what changed? Well every Sierra game supporting General Midi is hard coded to port 330h so I need to set …

Re: WP32 McCake : MT32 compatible waveblaster board

Posted on 2021-08-28, 15:49

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I have couple of questions about settings in mt32-pi.cfg: Do I need to adjust both gain and reverb_gain under [mt32emu] to change MT-32 volume? And for fluidsynth there is just gain under [fluidsynth]? Then there is resampler_quality under [mt32emu]. It is set to good by default but there is also …

Re: Wonders of 486 DX4, Treasures inside

Posted on 2021-08-27, 07:07

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Many of the games on that list support GUS (at least with update if not out of the box) so with it there is even less need for SB16. That is a good reason why the extra trouble with AWE64 and SBpro clone is not worth it. But once someone makes a new card with SB pro and SB16 support then I'm …

Re: Wonders of 486 DX4, Treasures inside

Posted on 2021-08-27, 05:08

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yes, I'm sure Chill adapter would be great for AWE64 (but the stuttering you mentioned remains a problem) and OPL3LPT could be used to get real Yamaha OPL3 (but TSR driver is required) or if SB Pro support is not needed, any Yamaha OPL3 based card could be used with AWE64 just for the OPL3 so no …

Re: Wonders of 486 DX4, Treasures inside

Posted on 2021-08-26, 09:19

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Now to the sound cards. And I've tried many and there have always been something I'm not satisfied with. This is still not a perfect setup but it is pretty much as good as it gets. Here are the cards: https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1aUhEsdn6UbwWa-EaSLybrOExjrcY67le https://drive. …

Re: Wonders of 486 DX4, Treasures inside

Posted on 2021-08-25, 16:24

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Here are the BIOS chipset settings. I also added Quake results to benchmark spreadsheet.

Re: Wonders of 486 DX4, Treasures inside

Posted on 2021-08-25, 09:05

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Few things first before going to soundcards. Lets start with graphics card. What I have is a #9 GXE 64 and it has S3 Vision864 chip on it and 2MB RAM. That is a fast performer on both DOS and Windows and it is 100% VGA compatible. S3VBE20 TSR can be used for Vesa 2.0 support. So all in all, a very …

Re: Wonders of 486 DX4, Treasures inside

Posted on 2021-08-25, 06:52

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

As seen, this system performs above of what would be expected from 100 MHz 486 DX4. But why is that? Here is what the motherboard looks now . Doesn't look anything special. I've upgraded cache to 512kB by simply placing SRAM chips to free sockets and setting jumpers accordingly. This motherboard …

Wonders of 486 DX4, Treasures inside

Posted on 2021-08-25, 04:57

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

One of my retro systems is above all else. It is this 486 DX4 system. In spring 2003 I decided I need a DOS computer. I think It was sometime in 2002 when I upgraded my Pentium 3 450 MHz to Athlon XP 1700+. The motherboard on the P3 system, Asus P3B-F, was good for DOS. It had two ISA slots so I …

Re: Copam U-series 486

Posted on 2021-08-22, 06:26

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I forgot to mention that I got two new CRT monitors. The older is 14" Hyundai HCM-421E manufactured in June 1991. This is older than Copam but I think its size and appearance is close to the monitor that likely came with Copam. But I think this one is better for my 286, although I really like that …

Re: Weird problem TSENG LABS ET4000AX and NIC with xt-ide bios

Posted on 2021-08-22, 04:28

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That ET4000AX card has three ROM chips. I don't know how common that is for ET4000 cards but it is not common at all for other VGA cards. Two are common for older VGA cards since the BIOS is divided to two 8-bit ROMs for full 16-bit access. That is useful on old systems without shadow RAM. But three …

Re: Sound Blaster 16 Bugs and Deficiencies Summary

Posted on 2021-08-19, 17:12

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I did some more testing. I played first level of Prince of Persia but no clicks until the door at the end of the level. There were also some clicks with DOTT but Jill of the jungle was the best game to test it. So yes, the DMA bug is (of course) present but otherwise this is very good sounding card. …

Re: Sound Blaster 16 Bugs and Deficiencies Summary

Posted on 2021-08-19, 05:15

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Yesterday I tested one of the ALS100 based SB16 clones and compared it to a real SB16 CT2290 (with 4.13 DSP and CT1703-A and I already knew this was a very good sounding SB16) and to Labway A151-A00 (Audician with Yamaha YMF71x). Now the "problem" is that I was not able to hear DMA bugs with real …

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