Re: A Farewell to the ATi Brand Name

Posted on 2011-01-18, 17:53

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by Anonymous Coward

in Milliways

in Milliways

Does anyone on here own rare or uncommon ATi graphics cards? I am particularly interested in obtaining photos of early and unreleased Mach64 cards for VLB. Examples include a VLB Mach64 with the old style ceramic memory chips (like on the mach32 VRAM) and a MAch64 DRAM card that can be expanded to …

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Re: Interesting eBay pickup: Octek Hippo DCA1 board...

Posted on 2011-01-18, 17:36

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't have any first hand experience with the boards, but they just seem a bit scammy to me. I would guess that Octek should have had access to the same DRAM and SRAM as every other manufacturer at the time. That would be 15ns for SRAM and 60ns for DRAM. It seems to me all they did was move the …

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Re: A Farewell to the ATi Brand Name

Posted on 2011-01-13, 17:44

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by Anonymous Coward

in Milliways

in Milliways

Ah. ATi has been officially dead to me since the AMD buyout. I'm glad they've decided to drop the ATi name rather than continue to drag the name down into the gutter. In all honesty though, I haven't really cared much for ATi's products since the RAGE II. For anyone in here that's interested in …

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Re: Complete newbie advice on ISA video cards required please

Posted on 2011-01-12, 23:08

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe you can pair it up with an ATi VGAWonder XL24. That would be a pretty sweet combo.

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Re: Complete newbie advice on ISA video cards required please

Posted on 2011-01-08, 19:40

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No special 3D support on the Ultra "Mach8" chip. It just does accelerated graphics in 4 and 8-bit colour depths. It should be quite a bit faster than whatever you get with a trident, cirrus or tseng however.

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Re: Post your list of (un)favorite motherboard manufacturers here!

Posted on 2011-01-08, 04:02

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I can't believe nobody in here mentioned American Megatrends. I believe they no longer manufacturer motherboards, but I always found their boards to be top notch. Fast, stable, lots of options and built to widthstand a nuclear holocaust.

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Re: Complete newbie advice on ISA video cards required please

Posted on 2011-01-08, 00:07

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I can confirm ATi Ultra is indeed a coprocessor only, though certain Ultra models allowed the addition of a VGA core. I believe these units were known as ATi Ultra +VGA. Soon after ATi released the Graphics Ultra, which was basically the same as the Ultra +VGA with the VGA module built in. You …

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Re: 286-to-386...or...286-to-486 Adapters...GOT ONE??

Posted on 2011-01-01, 06:48

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by Anonymous Coward

in Milliways

in Milliways

I have an original IBM AT that has an Evergreen 286-->486SLC2 upgrade. This is just about the fastest upgrade module available for 286. I think the only thing that could possibly be faster is a 486SLC3 upgrade. IBM 486SLC series are chips are modified intel 386SX. They have the 486SX instruction set …

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Re: EARLIEST CD-ROM Drives that could Read CD-R's ???

Posted on 2010-12-09, 22:53

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by Anonymous Coward

in Milliways

in Milliways

Sony CDU-541 can read CD-Rs, but does not support multi session. It is a 1X drive. Must have been one of the first on the market.

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Re: Compatible chips to upgrade Hercules Dynamite Tseng ET4000 w32/p memory?

Posted on 2010-12-08, 14:35

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think I remember reading once that ET4000W32P was capable of addressing 4mb DRAM, but to the best of my knowledge no such card was ever produced. You can forget about upgrading your card beyond 2MB, it's just not going to happen. In order for us to help you out, you're going to need to help us out …

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Re: Old Expensive Windows Accelerators

Posted on 2010-12-04, 15:52

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My first PC from late 1992 had the ATi Graphics Ultra for ISA bus. It was a VGA Wonder with 512k + ATi Mach8 "Ultra" with it's own dedicated 1MB VRAM. The card was insanely expensive (retailed for something like $500 at the time) and was paired with an $800 Sony 14" display. While it was cutting …

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Re: 486 mobo + 586 chip

Posted on 2010-12-02, 15:09

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does this board have an option in the BIOS for setting the PCI/CLK ratio?

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Re: 16meg sim on a 386?

Posted on 2010-11-25, 20:44

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Assuming the CPU speed and number of wait states are held constant, I don't see what good having faster memory will do. A 40MHz CPU has a cycle time of 25ns. Subtract 10ns for decoding and buffering and you would need 15ns DRAM in order to run zero wait states. This is where SRAM cache comes into …

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Re: 16meg sim on a 386?

Posted on 2010-11-16, 14:23

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My 386sx board is fortunate enough to have both cache and interleaving. It's surprisingly fast for what it is. I have not heard of anything called "pipeline mode configuration" on old boards before. One way you could test your theory is to run a memory benchmark before and after. If it interleaves, …

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Re: 16meg sim on a 386?

Posted on 2010-11-15, 22:27

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It might be good to have 8 matched SIMMs installed rather than four. Some of the better motherboards support memory interleaving, which requires all 8 SIMMs be installed on a 386DX/486 motherboard. It is fairly uncommon on 386 systems, but not non-existant. For example, I have an American Megatrends …

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Re: 386 Inboard

Posted on 2010-11-10, 19:59

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I used to have one of these but sold it recently. It's an interesting toy, but ultimately I didn't like having it installed in my XT. It's not exactly a motherboard on a card. It still relies on most of the components on the XT motherboard. To the best of my knowledge it only works in 4.77MHz XTs. …

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Re: 16meg sim on a 386?

Posted on 2010-10-24, 18:14

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, I would provided I had a 386 board that could take them, and enough cash on hand. I dropped some cash on eight 16meg 30 pin SIMMs for my 486 several years ago. I'd like to buy another eight, but I won't pay more than $20 per set of four.

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Re: 16meg sim on a 386?

Posted on 2010-10-24, 16:23

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The maximum amount of memory a board can take will not only depend on the chipset, but also the BIOS. I would guess that support for 16mb SIMMs on 386 motherboards is even more limited than the 486 boards that support it. In my experience though, if you plug 16mb SIMMs onto a board that doesn't …

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Re: Why an EISA 486?

Posted on 2010-10-19, 17:15

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I saw that enterprise IV on ebay. It looks like a pretty nice board. AMI is pretty much cream of the crop for quality. But the previous poster is right, you have *almost* nothing to gain unless you have EISA cards. That being said, EISA SCSI controllers and network adapters are pretty easy to come …

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Re: MATH COPROCESSORS: A Question...

Posted on 2010-10-01, 17:37

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by Anonymous Coward

in Milliways

in Milliways

On 8088/86 systems, the FPU always runs at the same speed as the CPU. On early 80286 systems, the FPU usually runs at either the 2/3 the speed of the CPU, or in sync. Apparently that is a built-in function of the 80287 rather than the motherboard. On later 286 boards, it was more of a function of …

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