Re: Sound blaster 16 with CR-563-b

Posted on 2020-05-23, 05:56

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

They changed the media color on the newer faster blank cd's so only those rated at max of 8x or 16x will read properly on older 1x, 2x, 4x, 6x, etc drives. Retail disks should not be a problem though IF from late 90's or earlier (based on my experience, not a hard rule). More importantly, I do not …

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Re: Pentium 133 DOS gamer dream machine (1995 ).

Posted on 2020-05-19, 14:24

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

For a '95 build I'd probably go with a 430FX motherboard with a COAST module even though they're less reliable, because it's the "wave of the future". The Trio64 is a good choice, but I think in 1995 everybody wanted a Matrox Millenium. SB16 was popular, but wavetable cards like the AWE32 were the …

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Re: Hyper386sx 286 Upgrade CPU

Posted on 2020-05-16, 11:14

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Don't count on the clock doubling doing much of anything. Without cache, clock doubling doesn't seem very effective from what I've seen with TI486SXL CPUs. The more important features in this upgrade are improved memory management and 386 protected mode (if you have enough RAM).

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Re: ATi Mach8 Graphics Ultra ISA VGA card, quick test.

Posted on 2020-05-16, 04:48

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sound getting screwed up when the ISA is running at more than 8MHz is a well known problem.

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Re: Standard 386SX-16

Posted on 2020-05-15, 15:42

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

SIPP *sockets* were very common on 286 boards, SIPP modules themselves not so much. Most 286 boards that could accept SIPP also accepted far more common DIP RAM. Almost every 1MB 286 I have seen used the DIP sockets and not SIPP.

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Re: MICROSOFT MACH 10 - 8086 upgrade for 8088 - missing parts

Posted on 2020-05-15, 12:45

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I could be mistaken, but I thought that the Mach 10 used an 80186 rather than an 8086. *edit* My mistake. I was thinking of the Orchid card. It seems weird to use what's basically an SBC to upgrade an 8088 to an 8086.

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Re: Standard 386SX-16

Posted on 2020-05-15, 09:53

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I can't speak for the Bigfoots, but during the early 90s Quantum 3.5" IDE drives were definitely the way to go. At least at that time, I always felt they were more performance oriented (but also reliable). Plus the silver tops were super sexy. SIPP was already obsolete by the time I got into PCs, …

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Re: Hyper386sx 286 Upgrade CPU

Posted on 2020-05-15, 09:43

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't see why it wouldn't work. That's how I use 386 upgrades on my 286 board. The real issue is that the pins on the PLCC socket are flat not round, so it's not as secure as I'd like. Ideally you should remove the PGA socket and solder the PLCC socket directly to the motherboard.

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Re: First graphic card with passive / active cooling

Posted on 2020-05-14, 13:19

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Ahh, and i found several pictures from the CARDEX ET4000/W32 VLB, all with applied, same looking heatsink. And i found one on ebay Australia - for 198 AU$ ... Seems to be a series heatsink. And i have a Gainward, formerly CARDEX Voodoo2 (Dragon 3000), with series heatsink. I have a slightly newer …

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Re: How about a MR-BIOS ROM file repository?

Posted on 2020-05-14, 10:17

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

My SiS Rabbit board is a fairly old one. Looks to be 1990 vintage. It was made by a company called CTI Electronics in Connecticut. Surprisingly the company is still around, but doesn't make PCs anymore. I might try contacting them since my board is not listed on TH99, but I am skeptical they have …

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Re: First graphic card with passive / active cooling

Posted on 2020-05-13, 14:35

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I'm not aware of any mainstream VGA chips (as in the graphics standard, not the umbrella term for all graphics adapters) which *required* heatsinks for normal operation. The Olivetti Mach32 cards must have been in systems that had really poor ventilation for the OEM to feel a heatsink was necessary. …

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Re: UMC8881/8886 Datasheet

Posted on 2020-05-13, 12:42

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

CuPid wrote on 2020-05-13, 09:18: Still there are the ctchip config files that provide interesting data. Not a complete datasheet, but it seems that most populated registers are described (if this is what you are looking for). Those are useful, but what would also be really nice are the pinouts.

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Re: 100X CD-ROM Drive

Posted on 2020-05-11, 13:59

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ha, nice false advertising. From what I remember those 72X drives didn't actually spin at 72X, they just had many read heads.

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100X CD-ROM Drive

Posted on 2020-05-11, 13:39

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do these really exist? I thought 52X or 56X was about as fast as they got before the disc shattered. https://www.ebay.com/itm/NOS-DIGITAL-RESEARCH … EAAAOSw6D9c9qvy

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Re: Identifying Old 386 Board

Posted on 2020-05-08, 14:48

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm glad you dumped the BIOS. Think this one is older than the one we currently have on file. It might come in handy with baords that fail to work with the later version.

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Re: Project: First Person Shooter History

Posted on 2020-05-07, 16:48

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

What about stuff like Star Wars: The arcade game, F/A-18 Interceptor, Death Track, Mechwarrior 1 and Red Baron? Do those count as FPS? They're 3D, first person and you shoot things. I would think especially if you include flight sims you could dig up lots of first person shooters from the 80s. Hell, …

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Re: Replacing my Pentium 75 - what's the worst that could happen?

Posted on 2020-05-07, 00:08

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they actually started locking chips in 1997. As the poster above stated, it was PMMX. I remember some PMMX chips were locked and others not. Maybe original Pentium chips produced in 1997 were too, but this is new to me.

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Re: Help me to identify this strange VESA card

Posted on 2020-05-06, 09:27

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The card clearly sold under the Paradise brand (owned by WD). It's possible that they outsourced the card production to this Fountain Technologies, Inc company though. Your card is similar to the Paradise Accelerator VL Plus, but the layout is different. Maybe a later revision?

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Re: Is it common for slot A 1 GHz Orions to work on a board but not 1 GHz Thunderbirds?

Posted on 2020-05-06, 09:07

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by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

feipoa wrote on 2020-05-05, 23:53: Only concern is that the hydrogen peroxide removes the Gateway logo and the SELECT sticker. This Gateway logo sucks anyway, so no real loss. The old Gateway 2000 logo with the big 'G' was much cooler.

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Re: How about a MR-BIOS ROM file repository?

Posted on 2020-05-02, 13:45

by

by Anonymous Coward

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I tried SiS Rabbit, C&T Peak/DM and Topcat MR-BIOS. None of them can enable the cache on the boards. It's kind of disappointing because these are all high performance chipsets that could have really benefited from MR-BIOS tweaks. Only the Topcat chipset can be excused, because this chipset doesn't …

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