Re: Why was 15kHz support dropped from the VGA standard?

Posted on 2016-09-24, 13:07

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've been searching the web to discover why IBM decided to drop support for 15kHz video signals and instead line-double them as a 31kHz signal, but I haven't found anything. Was this just a cost-savings measure? I can't imagine the savings would be significant for monitors that cost many hundreds …

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Re: Firefox drops support for Non-SSE2 Processors

Posted on 2016-09-23, 21:33

by

by Jo22

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

I once heard that the official win32 binary was/is compiled on a Win2000 machine and that they face(d) serious issues with the limited amout of memory. Perhaps, this is another reason to remove unecessary/deprecated features ? I guess the non-SSE stuff isn't in the source code, but perhaps the …

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Re: The Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack (or: Very Old Glyphs On New Systems)

Posted on 2016-09-23, 21:11

by

by Jo22

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Woah, thank you! 😁 I'm glad it worked this time! Yes, I'm sure that programmer will come in handy in the future. Someone can never have enough programmers.. 😉

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Re: Space Quest III on CT-460

Posted on 2016-09-23, 20:58

by

by Jo22

in Milliways

in Milliways

Thank you guys! Yes, I also think the compositions for the Casios could have been done a bit better.. At least, they are more ear-friendly than the Adlib version. When I heared the Casio tunes the first time, it was a mind blowing experience for me. This was before I heard of the MT32, of course. I …

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Re: Could anyone recommend some pc games for girls?

Posted on 2016-09-22, 12:02

by

by Jo22

in Milliways

in Milliways

Hi, I know this thread is old, but I know of a few not-so-popular adventure games which might be fun.. I played most of them in the last decade, so they may also run on your "retro" boxes with Win98SE and XP. Have fun! :) The Breakdown - A Snack-Sized Adventure Game Original page is defunct, here's …

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Re: Which old hard drives were high or low end?

Posted on 2016-09-21, 22:19

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

clueless1 wrote: GuyTechie wrote: I'm someone. At least that's what my therapist tells me. Me too! 🤣

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Re: Most reliable hardware eras?

Posted on 2016-09-21, 22:02

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The NE558 for example, has also a CMOS variant. So is the TTL version still needed ? Yes, because the older model can still operate at higher frequencies. Actually the CMOS 558 ICs are much faster than the TTL versions as well as being lower power. They can't output as much current as the TTL …

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Re: Which old hard drives were high or low end?

Posted on 2016-09-21, 20:55

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the IBM Deatstar so far. 😀 http://www.pcworld.com/article/125772/worst_p … ver.html?page=5

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Re: Using a SD card instead of hard disk

Posted on 2016-09-21, 20:33

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thank you very much for your reply, shamino! You explanation was very well done! A solution would be to do a reset or do some blanking. Note that "erasing" a HDD works in reverse to a "SSD", because their logical values which do represent 1 (one) and 0 (zero) are internally different. Im speaking …

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Re: Most reliable hardware eras?

Posted on 2016-09-21, 17:51

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@nforce4max Yup, but what do we expect ? Nowerdays, electronics are cheaper than food. Back in the day, someone had to sell his car for a computer. Quality products didn't wanish. We just don't see them anymore. Because we look for cheap things and don't want to spend the same money we were once …

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Re: Worst cpus and worst computer builds

Posted on 2016-09-21, 17:40

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@Jo22: Well, interesting! I didn't know that, I was just trying to pick a DOS that was just barely not quite usable for the hardware in question :lol: Same with the AWE64, which combined with a CGA card is ridiculous. Nah, that's fine. DOS 4.0 was considered the "Windows ME of DOS" after all, so it …

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Re: Most reliable hardware eras?

Posted on 2016-09-21, 16:56

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some say Pentium 1 systems can resist ESD versus later platforms, lower heat buildup increases lifespan for any computer, Athlons ran too hot, many millennial mobos had bad caps. Despite this and any other positive or negative hardware claims, the old stuff was said to be more reliable in general. …

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Re: Worst cpus and worst computer builds

Posted on 2016-09-21, 16:16

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

386DX with a CGA card and an AWE64, running MS-DOS 4.0 on XT-IDE with a 128GB CF card, divided into 64 2GB partitions. Yeah, I hope you don't mean the Multi-Tasking MS-DOS 4.0, but the regular version.. ;-) IBM DOS 4.00 was also amazing. It had support for an installable filesystem (IFS). Too bad …

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Re: Using a SD card instead of hard disk

Posted on 2016-09-21, 13:52

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I 2) "Overprovision" (if that's the correct term) the storage. Starting from a pristine or nearly pristine SD card, only partition -part- of the available space, not all of it. As far as I know SD cards don't have any support for TRIM or secure erase, so there's no way to ever invalidate a storage …

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Re: Using a SD card instead of hard disk

Posted on 2016-09-21, 13:19

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does any one know whether modern SD/SDHC/SDXC cards do still use 512 Byte sectors or not ? CF cards and older PATA SSDs usually did use them. I know that alignment can be fixed for 4 Kibibyte media by using gparted (at least for DOS/win9x. I know that MacOS9 didn't like this), but access time/write …

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Re: PC compatibility cards

Posted on 2016-09-21, 12:04

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I agree, the baud rate is a problem. Maybe a Macintosh shareware utility can help or an external microntroller can do the conversion. Or you could try to use an RS232 capable MIDI synthesizer to do the conversation (part of its pass-through ability). I heard some of the Yamaha or Roland modules can …

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Re: PC compatibility cards

Posted on 2016-09-21, 09:04

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Another interesting "PC card", the Master 512 module . It was an add-on for the BBC Master 128 and came with DOS+ and GEM. CPU was an 80C186. A fascinating little thing, I think! http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/8bit_Upgrades/Acorn_ADC08_80186CoProC.jpg And here's the computer.. http:// …

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Re: Amstrad 1512 - CGA(ish?) to VGA

Posted on 2016-09-21, 08:39

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello again, I've just found a page about PC utilities for the PC1512/1640/2086. Among these tools are: Mouse driver NVR program Clock fix for PC1512 (for DOS above 3.x) 1512GFX (C code for 640x200 4bit mode) And several GEM drivers.. Manuals are listed, too.

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Re: DOSBox And Physical Floppy Drive Question

Posted on 2016-09-20, 11:25

by

by Jo22

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

No problems. I'll have a look at it in 1-2 days. 😀

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Re: Space Quest III on CT-460

Posted on 2016-09-20, 11:10

by

by Jo22

in Milliways

in Milliways

New recordings

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