Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-03-17, 12:38

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I am somewhat skeptical that memory expansion card goes with that motherboard. Although they are both Micronics, the motherboard has an extra small connector at the end which will likely prevent the RAM card from being able to seat properly. I suspect the correct expansion card for your board should …

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Re: Best 386 Motherboard?

Posted on 2018-03-17, 12:32

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The more MR BIOSes, the better. The results for the OPTI 391 are not nearly as crappy as I expected. It's actually decent. Maybe unlike the 495SX it actually works with SCSI controllers.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-03-15, 13:32

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's an older model. I think it's probably an Asus. Looks like it uses the Neptune chipset, which means it's a Socket 5 board. The fastest on these is generally 133, but sometimes you can get away with 166. Dual Pentium is definitely not common. I'd keep it.

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Re: Post your 386 Speedsys results here

Posted on 2018-03-15, 00:13

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Maybe your board has a 286-type BIOS which requires some kind of reconfiguration when the memory configuration has been altered.

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Re: Post your 386 Speedsys results here

Posted on 2018-03-13, 12:11

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Not bad memory scores for a 20MHz 386SX. I've seen 40MHz DX systems that barely do better than that.

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Re: Generic Cyrix 486 Restore

Posted on 2018-03-13, 04:07

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

That's funny. I had a friend who had the exact same case and the same IBM AT model F keyboard...only his system has a 386DX-40.

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Re: ISA RAM Expansion card

Posted on 2018-03-12, 13:12

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Correct. Without the configuration software or the documentation, the card will be useless. It's a rather common and unfortunate problem with those old 286 RAM expansion cards. I once had a 4MB board from Tecmar, but in 10 years of searching I could never find the the stuff I needed to get it …

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Re: Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429 vs Trident 8900D - disappointing

Posted on 2018-03-11, 09:51

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I have two theories. The first is that it's fake. The problem with this theory however is that at the time this would have been a very low end card (most people were into VLB and PCI), so there wouldn't be much point to faking. The second theory is that towards the end, Trident wanted to eliminate …

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Re: Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429 vs Trident 8900D - disappointing

Posted on 2018-03-10, 23:25

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Doesn't this 9000i have 1MB? http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/component … ent-tvga9000i-3

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Re: Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429 vs Trident 8900D - disappointing

Posted on 2018-03-10, 10:26

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The 8900DR is actually written as "8900D-R" on the chip. It's not clear how it's better or different than a regular 8900D. Also, I am pretty sure later revisions of the 9000i could support 1MB. Is the 9000i really worse than the 8900D when both are equipped with the same amount of memory? Does the …

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Re: Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429 vs Trident 8900D - disappointing

Posted on 2018-03-10, 03:29

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

So the 9000, 9000B and 9000C do predate the 9000i afterall, but it seems the 9000 series was being sold alongside the 8900 for some unknown reason. Which series was supposed to be better? The integrated RAMDAC of the 9000i supports 15/16-bit colour modes, but strangely almost all the cards that …

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Re: Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429 vs Trident 8900D - disappointing

Posted on 2018-03-10, 00:03

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Weird. I didn't even know there was a 9000B. I always assumed the 9000i was the only member of the series, which itself was pretty uncommon compared to the 8900 series. I always assumed that the main difference between the 8900 cards and the 9000 cards was that the 9000 integrated the RAMDAC, but I …

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Re: CRT - no green in 640x400/60hz mode?

Posted on 2018-03-09, 23:53

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I once had a 20"electrohome VGA monitor that had a very similar problem. It turned out that the fancy "BNC" cable it used was defective.

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Re: What are the Windows 95 and 3.x video standars or best specs?

Posted on 2018-03-09, 23:49

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

From what I remember, most people I knew with a PC during the Windows 3.x era had no idea what a "driver" was, and normally just left their screen set to the default resolution....640x480 in 16 colours. People who knew what they were doing ran 800x600 in 256 colours, but some software required a …

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Re: Looking for BIOS image for ASUS ISA 386C

Posted on 2018-03-08, 13:01

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't actually have an Asus 386C. I have a very similar board that has an older BIOS that I was trying to upgrade, but unfortunately it didn't work as my chipset revision is too old. I was able to determine support for 4MB SIMMs by examining the BIOS in a hex editor.

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Re: Best 386 Motherboard?

Posted on 2018-03-05, 23:40

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Indeed. It would be nice to have that one, but seeing that the Topcat was not widely used outside of OEMs, I doubt it's ever going to pop up. timb.us, please post speedsys results of your OPTI391 after the MR BIOS is installed and tuned.

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Re: Best 386 Motherboard?

Posted on 2018-03-03, 06:18

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I saw one on ebay the other day for around $100. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Alaris-Cougar-II-Motherboard-IBM-Blue-Lightning-486BL-CPU-Vintage-386-486-w-16MB-/132521881738?nma=true&si=wNgDXF17mF4klMmXAgbDMSz5HoU%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 I see a funky blue ZIF. Do you think a …

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Re: Best 386 Motherboard?

Posted on 2018-03-03, 01:12

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I saw one on ebay the other day for around $100. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Alaris-Cougar-II-Mot … =p2047675.l2557

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Re: Best 386 Motherboard?

Posted on 2018-03-03, 01:00

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have that board in my 386, with the same ULSI 387 and 20MB RAM. 64KByte SRAMs are physically larger so they will not fit the sockets but with mods it would be possible to have up to 512KB cache (I have seen industrial boards with the chipset that have 512KB cache). Now if pinout could be located …

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Re: Pentium OverDrive and VLB ?

Posted on 2018-02-25, 21:03

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

From what I understand, there was a sample version of the POD that was available to OEMs for compatibility testing sometime in late 1993 or early 1994. That version was reportedly 5V and ran at a clock doubled 66MHz. I suspect it likely did not support writeback internal cache, and was 16KB like the …

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