Re: What are your minimum Windows system requirements?

Posted on 2011-06-15, 17:55

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have just finished running a disk-based benchmarking test on my 5400 RPM 2.5" HDD, using Windows 95. The drive is 80GB, and it has SeaTools for DOS on it, which currently "caps" the drive's capacity to 8.2GB. For testing, I used "Sandra 99 Standard". I did a fresh install of W95, and then …

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Re: Complete newbie question about 286s and EGA video adapters

Posted on 2011-06-15, 17:33

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by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks a lot for that tip. I will get this game, and test it using those command line parameters. Also, I am interested in h-a-l-9000's observations. I will also test the game Gauntlet. Also, it would be great if anyone can recommend games that cause the problems that h-a-l-9000 mentioned earlier - …

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Re: Complete newbie question about 286s and EGA video adapters

Posted on 2011-06-15, 17:04

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

OT, do you mean this one? (very first pic, at the top). If so, that would be extremely convenient! 😀 Edit: I think you do mean that one! 😀 I can now see what you mean - that code [PVGA1A] is written on the big chip.

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Re: Complete newbie question about 286s and EGA video adapters

Posted on 2011-06-15, 16:02

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Having an ISA VGA card, with both VGA and EGA connectors sounds very useful. Is this type of card, where you have both of these connectors on it, fairly rare? I have a bunch of ISA VGA cards, and unfortunately I don't remember any of them having an EGA connector alongside the VGA connector.

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Re: What other retro computing forums do you frequent?

Posted on 2011-06-15, 15:16

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by retro games 100

in Milliways

in Milliways

You might like to look at QuestStudios.com. It covers old sound cards.

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Re: Help with 286 board

Posted on 2011-06-15, 14:15

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

DonutKing, how is your 286 project coming along? I have got my very first 286 mobo on its way in the post, and I am looking forward to seeing what it can do. Unfortunately, I don't have any EGA (or CGA or monochrome) video cards, and I don't have any CRT either (just an LCD), but I'm hoping that a …

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Re: Complete newbie question about 286s and EGA video adapters

Posted on 2011-06-15, 14:11

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I must say, some of those adapters look interesting. The problem I have is that I don't own a single EGA or CGA video card, and they are probably quite rare now. Some of my ISA VGA cards have a "switch box" near the bracket, where you can push up and down little dip-switches. Are some of these dip- …

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Re: Socket 754 mobo recommendation required please

Posted on 2011-06-15, 09:40

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks a lot for that recommendation. Interesting website! BTW, can you answer this questions please - what came first, socket 754 or socket 939? Edit: I can answer my own question - here. (Wikipedia says that 939 superseded 754.)

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Re: Hercules dynamite VL Pro VLB VGA card - jumper info required please

Posted on 2011-06-15, 09:05

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I thought for a moment there you were talking to me! 😉

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Re: Socket 754 mobo recommendation required please

Posted on 2011-06-15, 09:01

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

OK, thanks a lot. I forgot to mention that I need Athlon 64 CPU support, but definitely single core only, as I want to keep one "foot in the past", with it pointing towards the Windows 98 era. Regarding SATA: I am not going to use SATA drives, of any kind. I have some IDE drives, for my Windows 98 …

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Re: Complete newbie question about 286s and EGA video adapters

Posted on 2011-06-15, 08:22

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Generally speaking, are EGA (also also CGA) monitors a bit poor? And generally speaking, if they are a bit poor, would they be even poorer today, many years after they were originally sold?

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Socket 754 mobo recommendation required please

Posted on 2011-06-15, 07:37

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

About 5 days ago, I spotted a Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro mobo on ebay, with CPU and RAM. It's socket 754, AGP, with a Windows 98 driver. Unfortunately, I got outbid on it. I was really hoping to get that thing ASAP, to test a Radeon 9800 XT in it. Nevermind. So, please can someone recommend a mobo that …

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Re: What are your minimum Windows system requirements?

Posted on 2011-06-14, 22:21

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My requirements for 95 are a Pentium and 16MB RAM, 32MB preferred. With the hard drive it isn't so much about size, but speed. A Pentium system can usually support larger drives and DMA2 transfer mode, so with Win95 and newer systems, I try to avoid anything less than a 7200RPM drive... which …

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Re: Benchmarking with various VIA 4in1 service packs, including the unofficial Win98SE SP.

Posted on 2011-06-14, 21:26

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Re: check memory timing: There's no interleave BIOS option for this board. I think the idea behind the patch is to enable it, but I don't know any more details. Re: Are you sure that 23.11 didn't had a AGP speed fallback? Say if 23.11 has a "speed fallback" (I'm not sure what you mean), I don't …

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Re: Creative AWE64 ISA sound card, quick test

Posted on 2011-06-14, 21:19

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

gerwin, congratulations on getting the card working! Smart move of yours, to use SetVer like that!

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Re: Buying advice required for an 8086 type PC please

Posted on 2011-06-14, 21:16

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Excellent info, thanks people! :happy: I owned an Amstrad 1640HD back in 1989. It had a monochrome display. No good for games, but excellent for text. ratfink, were the screens that you used colour? The "AA" batteries underneath the monitor which powered the CMOS was a good idea. They keyboard and …

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Re: Complete newbie question about 286s and EGA video adapters

Posted on 2011-06-14, 20:57

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks a lot for the info. Am I right in thinking that if I use a modern LCD, I cannot use an EGA, CGA or monochrome video card with it? Or is there a "converter / adapter" that I can attach to one end of a VGA monitor cable, that will allow me to connect it to one of these types of video cards?

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Re: Creative AWE64 ISA sound card, quick test

Posted on 2011-06-13, 21:14

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You could try booting from a DOS 6.xx floppy diskette, with the relevant AWE64 lines put in to its auto+config files.

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Re: Benchmarking with various VIA 4in1 service packs, including the unofficial Win98SE SP.

Posted on 2011-06-13, 20:31

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks a lot. It took ages. On and off, a couple of days to do. Everything was crash free. But the removal of the ATAPI fix was interesting - I rolled back the CF device to the beginning again, so it had a fresh Win98SE installation on it. I then installed the VIA 4-in-1 SP, version 4.37. I ticked …

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Benchmarking with various VIA 4in1 service packs, including the unofficial Win98SE SP.

Posted on 2011-06-13, 19:36

by

by retro games 100

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hardware: Epox 8KTA3+Pro (KT133A), GeForce3 Ti 200 (LeadTek Winfast), 256MB PC-133, ~1.6 GHz CPU, 4GB CF device, 133 FSB, no overclocking. Software: Windows 98 SE (fresh install), DX8.1, two George Breese patches: PCI latency, the memory interleaving. Before running all of the tests below, I …

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