Re: Any memory optimizations on 8086 CPUs with EMS ?

Posted on 2021-03-04, 05:02

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Are you aware of any software tools or trickery so i can increase my conventional memory to be more than ~580, by using the expanded memory that's available ??? Thanks, Terrence Hi Terrence! I see, makes sense. You can try out "The Last Byte Memory Manager". It turns the EMS page frame into an UMB, …

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Re: Any memory optimizations on 8086 CPUs with EMS ?

Posted on 2021-03-03, 21:30

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi, yes. Some programs can use EMS, which makes them use less conventional memory. Some motherboard chipsets do feature EMS, but also can repurpose the EMS page frame (the EMS "window") as a 64KB UMB. UMBs are also available in a PC/XT system. However, it often requires installing a physical RAM …

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Re: Gravis GamePad Pro Floppy Drivers

Posted on 2021-03-03, 08:27

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I'm sorry, but I for one only have the disk of my non-Pro Gravis gamepad. 😅 Maybe another Vogon has those disks?

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Re: Quality HD 3.5" floppy disks?

Posted on 2021-03-03, 07:35

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

To be fair, they were crap when they were relevant. If we're speaking of the 2000s onwards, then yes, I agree. Not in the 70s, 80s and 90s, though. In that time line, quality still mattered. Any manufacturer who tried to sell low quality floppies would have had been boycotted by users. Because, …

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Re: *The big list of 8086 real-mode Windows 3.0 compatible software - please contribute*

Posted on 2021-03-03, 01:45

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Hi everyone, If any of you are wiling to join to help finding more Win 2.x/3.0 Real-Mode compatible games, please check some old compilations at the internet archive: https://archive.org/search.php?query=windows+shareware+cd&&and[]=year%3A%221992%22&and[]=year%3A%221991%22&and[]=year%3A%221990%22& …

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Re: Retro Development

Posted on 2021-03-02, 02:36

by

by Jo22

in Milliways

in Milliways

^Personally, I really like vcfed.org, too, but I also always feel unconfortable posting there on a casual basis, so I only do if I carefully prepared myself. Always makes me feel disturbing the super users and gurus over there.. The x86 asm magic they practice is just way over my head. Couldn't …

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Re: (SOLVED - defective FPU) How hot should an 8087 FPU be at idle? I'm getting 55-60 deg C... And other 8087 questions

Posted on 2021-03-01, 17:13

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sounds cool! Good luck! 😀 Btw, the included Win progs will run on either Win 2.x or Windows 3.0 Real-Mode..

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Serial port pinout for Nixdorf PCs?

Posted on 2021-03-01, 04:40

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi everyone, I'm looking for a pinout for my Nixdorf M35 PC.: The serial port is DB25, but female, like a parallel port. Does anybody know the pinout or if a simple gender change works? I don't want to break the RS232, but I'd also like to use a serial mouse. Best regards, Jo23

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Re: (SOLVED - defective FPU) How hot should an 8087 FPU be at idle? I'm getting 55-60 deg C... And other 8087 questions

Posted on 2021-03-01, 02:49

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You're welcome! ^^ That is the NCC-1701-A - the nacelles have swept back pillars :D Ah, I see. Thanks for pointing that out. ^^ I've been watching TOS, TNG, VOY since I was little, but I'm still learning. The books/novals of the TOS era, for example.. Really fascintating, IMHO. (Btw, if you like TNG …

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Re: Any others given up on the hobby?

Posted on 2021-02-27, 12:45

by

by Jo22

in Milliways

in Milliways

Collect less, play more, do you must. Rather good advice. These days you have to maintain what hardware you have as it certainly won't improve over time. All the hoarders with piles of crap they have no time to restore ... won't work next time they look. I often collect parts, too. But not as a …

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Re: Can 1.44MB 3.5" Floppy Drive read 360K, 720K, 400K, 800K disks?

Posted on 2021-02-27, 11:43

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

An 1.44MB 3,5" HD floppy drive can read 360KB and 720KB formatted floppies for sure. Even some old USB floppy drives still support these formats (bulky models often). However, it may be unable to do so sometimes if the floppies were formatted in another 1,44MB floppy drive. 360KB/720KB disks that …

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Re: Best OS for a 286?

Posted on 2021-02-27, 02:35

by

by Jo22

in Milliways

in Milliways

Sorry to hear! :( Unfortunately, I don't have got a T3200 for testing at hand.. So I can't really make any recommendations. However, I found a site of a user that says Windows 1.0 was officially supported. : http://oldcomputer.info/portables/t3200/index.htm Maybe you can take advantage of this …

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Re: AMB - the Ancient Machine Book format

Posted on 2021-02-26, 12:58

by

by Jo22

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

That's very interesting, IMHO! 😎 Your work reminds me a bit of the old DXF and HPGL graphic formats, by the way. (In the spiritual sense.) They used to be in plain ASCII, too and were meant to be platform independent. Another program thing that comes to mind is the SFML description language in LCARS …

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Re: Do you want an EGA monitor?

Posted on 2021-02-25, 15:12

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

So not only does CGA have snowy artifacts and limited color graphics modes, it also shows scanlines? It truly was a shitty graphics standard. Yes, yes, it kinda was! 😁 To be fair, though, the original CRTC chip, the Hitachi HD46505, wasn't really designed with graphics in mind. It was more of a …

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Re: IRC clients for old systems

Posted on 2021-02-24, 20:59

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

On PC/GEOS platforms, there are also.. - WebChat - BBX Ensemble - Meeting Room IRC - IRC BreadboxChat On OS/2, there are.. - Quassel IRC - OpenChat - AdilIRC - ChatIRC ..

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Re: Winevdm

Posted on 2021-02-24, 16:56

by

by Jo22

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

OTVDM being acknowledged on an article on Microsoft.com gave me the chance to mention it on Wikipedia in the Windows 3.1 article. Although some idiot there on Wikipedia is causing problems saying it is not relevant. 🙄🙄🙄 I'm with you. Long long ago in a galaxy.. WAIT! Wrong story! :blush: Well, long …

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Re: (SOLVED - defective FPU) How hot should an 8087 FPU be at idle? I'm getting 55-60 deg C... And other 8087 questions

Posted on 2021-02-24, 16:30

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

https://dougx.net/gaming/coproc.html The old ceramic NPUs draw ~2,5 ampere and get quite hot, I think. Not sure if this a bad thing per se, though. I'd be worse if the heat produced by these NMOS designs would stay in the casing. In this context, It's perhaps good that no plastic package was used. …

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Re: [Offer] FloppyBootWriter - Application to write and read the boot sector (MBR) of floppy disks.

Posted on 2021-02-23, 12:44

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Thank you very much! ^^

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Re: Making DOS 6.22 recognize all extended memory

Posted on 2021-02-23, 04:15

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi, you can use QEMM v7 or higher, for example. Or the Himem.sys file from Windows 9x. There's also HimemX, or how it was called.

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Re: muti boot idea for windows 3.x

Posted on 2021-02-22, 19:20

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Windows 3.1 needs a bit of memory below 1MB. This memory should be contiguous, also. Another utility, Fix1MB also tries to help here. For the inner workings, please have a look at the help file of that WMI program in this link: Re: Viewing the Upper Memory area

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