Re: Is Windows pointless on a 486?
Posted on 2017-01-05, 06:01
If you're running a Trio32 you should install the Trio32/64 driver package.
Re: Is Windows pointless on a 486?
Posted on 2017-01-04, 22:12
I can BLOW Duke 3D out of the water with 320x400 res mode (I think it's 640x400 interlaced). Some people would insist that it is pointless to run Duke 3D at such a low resolution. BTW, there is a DOS version of the game, which would probably crash less than the 3.x version. Are you sure about that? …
Re: Is Windows pointless on a 486?
Posted on 2017-01-04, 13:39
In my opinion SimTower should run decently on a DX4-120. I ran it on a DX-33, in 256 colours at 800x600. I thought it played acceptably, but maybe I had a higher tolerance for slowness back then. BTW, there is a DOS version of the game, which would probably crash less than the 3.x version. Are you …
Re: What should I load my 486 NT 3.1 setup with?
Posted on 2017-01-03, 23:19
Er...1997? That's more like NT4. NT3.1 was more like 1993. The best you can hope for from that is Windows 3.x games....like MS Best of Entertainment, Civ and Sim City for Windows or perhaps some FMV games from the early CD-ROM days. NT3.1 was pretty much non-existent on the consumer desktop, …
Re: How ''brand crazy'' are you guys?
Posted on 2017-01-02, 22:38
FIC? Maybe you're thinking of ECS?[/quote] No, I do indeed mean FIC. I rather liked ECS, or at least ECS before they bought PCchips.
Re: Old CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives...which ones are worth keeping ?
Posted on 2017-01-01, 10:45
Plextor SCSI caddy loaders especially. They were really stubborn about giving up caddy loaders, and made them all the way up to 32X. There are a few PX-32CSi drives on ebay right now, but they aren't cheap. I think I paid about $40 for mine. Worth every penny.
Re: Old CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives...which ones are worth keeping ?
Posted on 2016-12-31, 14:48
These are the ones I like. Pioneer, Panasonic and Toshiba.
Re: How ''brand crazy'' are you guys?
Posted on 2016-12-30, 23:38
All I ask is that my hardware has a brand, and is not some weird generic Taiwanese/Chinese crap. There are a few brands that I avoid though, such as VIA/FIC, PCChips and Packard Bell, etc. , if they have a reputation for crappiness.
Re: 5x86 question
Posted on 2016-12-29, 22:47
I've had okay luck with ADWs. I believe I own three, and they all overclock to 160. Funnily enough, I have one ADZ and it doesn't overclock at all. I recommend the BGC which was made as late as 2001 or 2002.
Re: Making Windows 3.11 work in DOS7.10 (patches inside)
Posted on 2016-12-29, 13:16
MS-DOS 7.x supports long filenames, correct? Is it possible to get those to show up in Win 3.x?
Re: Anybody got a Socket 8 machine?
Posted on 2016-12-29, 13:09
That is totally awesome. I've always loved those compaq cases. Don't those date back to the late 80s? I'd never guess there was a PPro inside.
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Posted on 2016-12-20, 06:03
stamasd wrote: The picture is on the previous page of this thread. Yep, it says "Mark III" on the BIOS chip. This board was pretty novel in that you could upgrade it to a 486 with a special CPU card. It's definitely a classic worth keeping, even though it doesn't work with your chips of choice.
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Posted on 2016-12-20, 04:40
More bad news about the AMI 386-XT motherboard. I tried 2 other CPUs in it: a Cyrix 486DLC-33 and an AMD 386DX-40, both of which should have no trouble working at this board's speed of 25MHz. The board doesn't POST with any of those. Moreover, I looked up the extended codes that the ISA POST card …
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Posted on 2016-12-20, 00:37
I never really thought to buy this Mediavision Pro graphics card, but $12 with free shipping seemed like a pretty good deal to just try it out and see what it's all about: http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/SwYAAOSwImRYWBXt/s-l1600.jpg http://www.ebay.com/itm/Media-Vision-ProGraphics-1024-VESA-1MB- …
Re: More DOS PCI Benchmarks
Posted on 2016-12-18, 01:29
How about GX2?
Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?
Posted on 2016-12-18, 01:05
The BIOS is configured as "power on defaults" with cache enabled. I wonder if some one can explain how tag rams works on this particular board. To my understanding, one 8bit tag should suffice in this setup: 2^8 * 128KB = 32MB and indeed other boards usually come with only one 8bit tag chip onboard …
Re: Do I really need a 386 when you already have a 286/486
Posted on 2016-12-17, 01:57
Not only do you need a 386, you also need a 386SX. You can never have too many vintage PCs.
Re: 486 FPU vs 387 ?
Posted on 2016-12-15, 22:33
I haven't read up on the intel 486 in a while, but I don't recall that the 486's internal math coprocessor is really "next generation". I was pretty sure it was almost identical to the i387, with the main difference being a vastly improved bus interface (being located directly on the CPU die). For …
Re: 486 FPU vs 387 ?
Posted on 2016-12-15, 12:40
From what I can remember from various benchmarks I ran, the Cyrix 486DLC w/Fasmath 83D87 at 40MHz was roughly 2/3 of the FPU performance of a real intel 486 at the same clockspeed. However, real world performance could be considerably slower.
Re: 1994 PCI Video Cards
Posted on 2016-12-15, 00:25
Number 9 cards, were indeed quite nice. Usually based around an S3 chip.
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