Re: My 486 build, with some notes and observations

Posted on 2010-05-11, 14:54

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I'm not sure if this will help, but I thought I'd mention it. I used speedsys on a FIC 486 mobo, and got strange results. Here - Re: FIC 486-PIO3 mobo (Page 2 - FIC_AMD.png) A suggestion was to try CTCM.exe; here - http://motherboards.mbarron.net/download/ (ctcm_int.zip)

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Re: My 486 build, with some notes and observations

Posted on 2010-05-11, 04:35

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

swaaye wrote: It's possible that Speedsys is not working correctly... I've often thought that.

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Re: My 486 build, with some notes and observations

Posted on 2010-05-10, 15:36

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I'm pretty sure the PCChips cache sticks are non-standard, at least on their 486 boards. The slot may look the same, may even physically accept a COAST, but I think the only thing that will "work" in them is the official PCChips fake COAST stick. Attention all connoisseurs of sleaze! PC-Chips 486 …

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Re: Guillemot Maxi Sound home studio 64 pro - no music in pure DOS

Posted on 2010-05-10, 11:46

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I noticed that a 486 mobo + extras sold recently on German ebay. Here it is - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130387977019 One of the extras is, I think, a Guillemot Maxi Sound home studio 64 pro card, PCB SC8600 2.0. It would be very interesting if someone on Vogons was the …

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Re: Which Pentium IIs can be underclocked?

Posted on 2010-05-10, 06:52

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

How come we don't have any Katmai fans here? I feel like I was the only guy with a Katmai P3 back in the day. There were even a few steppings that overclocked super well, such as SL35D which was a 450/100 that would happily do 600/133 very frequently cuz it had the faster cache chips. A nice …

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Re: Which Pentium IIs can be underclocked?

Posted on 2010-05-09, 19:29

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It must be a gut wrenching feeling to accidentally destroy new hardware, back in the day. The significantly reduced prices of this stuff on ebay now takes quite a lot of the pressure off! 😀

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Re: Which Pentium IIs can be underclocked?

Posted on 2010-05-09, 19:23

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I haven't stuck my Barton into this board [Kinetiz 7E-A / 2.0(S2.2)] yet. I heard rumours that others fried theirs that way :depressed: Yes. In this post - http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=23674 (Page 3) I said - "I accidentally killed the XP-M CPU. I removed it from the Abit board, and put it …

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Re: Which Pentium IIs can be underclocked?

Posted on 2010-05-08, 12:40

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have not figured out yet, how I can use my Barton XP-M on a KT133 board, which offers 1xISA. Interesting. Are we talking QDI Kinetiz 7E-A mobo here? If yes, there's 3 things to consider. 1) What's the mobo's PCB revision number? You can see this in the bottom right hand corner, I think. (It's in …

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Re: My first 486 rig!

Posted on 2010-05-07, 19:12

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Tetrium wrote: I think I'll build 3 systems, with one each Yes I'm nuts 😜 You remind me of me. 😉

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Re: My 486 build, with some notes and observations

Posted on 2010-05-06, 06:51

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

EDIT: Well, I'll be damned. I swapped out the cache chips for some spares I had laying around, and now I have 128KB of functional L2 cache. (The chips I had were 32kb x 8, not 64kb x 8... but 128KB is better than 0KB.) Interestingly, the BIOS still reports 256KB installed, so they did indeed doctor …

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Re: My 486 build, with some notes and observations

Posted on 2010-05-05, 19:59

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

So... say the chips are fake, or bad, or whatever. That's interesting. I tested a PC-Chips 486 PCI board with fake cache. Inside the BIOS setup area, I maxed out its settings - one of which was setting the RAM to "EDO" which probably helped a bit, and then ran speedsys. I got a perfectly acceptable …

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Re: Roland Sound Canvas SCC-1

Posted on 2010-05-04, 05:58

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

ZacMatic wrote: Is it cool to advertise stuff for sale here? I have an ISA SCC-1 that I'd like to get rid of. (It was in a 486 that I'm giving to a friend.) I'll post photos if there is any interest. Please post a photo, thanks.

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Re: a few quick Winchip benchmarks

Posted on 2010-05-03, 13:20

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

(Sorry bushwack, I should have started my ramblings in another post. I hope you don't mind too much.) Talking about 386 mobos got me searching on ebay. I looked for 386 mainboard, and this thing popped up. (Item 330399153438). You certainly get value for money when it comes to the number of chips. …

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Re: a few quick Winchip benchmarks

Posted on 2010-05-03, 12:21

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I was thinking about the speed comparison of a 486 and a 386. When I was testing undocumented jumper setting for a couple of my 486 motherboards, all were capable of running a 20Mhz fsb. Wouldn't that compare to a fast 386 speed wise? My guess and it is only a guess, is that it would not compare to …

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Re: a few quick Winchip benchmarks

Posted on 2010-05-03, 11:01

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Lately I've been regretting dumping all of my VLB stuff, but I also know in the back of my mind that I got rid of it because I couldn't stand dealing with its flakiness and slowness anymore. Doesn't stop the mind from wandering though.... lol (Apology to bushwack, because my post below isn't about …

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Re: What DOS game are you playing right now?

Posted on 2010-05-02, 19:32

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by retro games 100

in Milliways

in Milliways

I've recently started playing Ultima VII - the black gate. To begin with, I tried "Exult" which is a remake. Unfortunately, this conversion may be a bit buggy. I got to the part where Finnigan, the local Mayor of Trinsic asks you the copy protection questions. I answer him correctly, but Finnigan …

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Re: My 486 build, with some notes and observations

Posted on 2010-05-02, 12:36

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I've been using Superscape 3Dbench (there seems to be 2 different versions, 1 and 1c, I think). This tests VGA. PCPbench. This tests SVGA. Speedsys. This tests CPU, cache, disk IO. Memtest. This tests RAM. RAM speed is shown. There's also some cache testing utilites available on the net. I think …

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Re: My 486 build, with some notes and observations

Posted on 2010-05-02, 11:02

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

This sounds like a fun project. What software/games are you going to install on it? Have you selected this 486/VLB board as your main retro rig, or do you also have a 386 and/or an old Pentium system? Also, it would be interesting to see some benchmarks. 😀

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Re: Sony will stop making floppy disks next year

Posted on 2010-04-28, 09:42

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by retro games 100

in Milliways

in Milliways

I thought this article was interesting - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8646699.stm ("The mystery of the mega-selling floppy disk") Article overview: "Sony has said it will stop making floppy disks, after nearly three decades. Yet millions of them are still being bought every year."

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Re: Sony will stop making floppy disks next year

Posted on 2010-04-27, 07:40

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by retro games 100

in Milliways

in Milliways

There's an article about this topic (Sony stopping floppy disk production) in the newspaper this morning. The end part says "Sony sold 12 million [floppy disks] in its home country of Japan last year." With that in mind, it's curious why Sony are halting production - I think it's in March 2011.

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