Re: Any ISA sound card sound as good as the Gravis Ultrasound ?

Posted on 2020-02-15, 01:11

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

What to avoid: - SB 2.0 - yes, it's one of the worst cards, yours probably isn't broken - other 8-bit cards - some of them may have decent SNR when playing FM, but 8-bit DAC is inevitably noisy - early SB 16 What is worth trying: - late SB 16, based on Vibra - single chip solution usually helps …

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Re: Building and installing XT-IDE-CF-OPTIMA in an Amstrad PC1640

Posted on 2020-02-14, 21:21

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Looks interesting! Thanks for the video! 😀

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Re: Discwashers (tape deck care sets) - any experience ?

Posted on 2020-02-14, 20:42

by

by Jo22

in Milliways

in Milliways

Thanks a lot for the tip! 😁

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Re: Voyager probes 40th anniversary

Posted on 2020-02-14, 20:03

by

by Jo22

in Milliways

in Milliways

Tiny update. February 14th 2020 (news): 30 years ago, Voyager 1 took a picture of „ Pale Blue Dot “, earth, in a distance of 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles). Sources: https://earthsky.org/space/february-14-1990-pale-blue-dot-image-voyager https://www.space.com/pale-blue-dot-voyager-1-photo- …

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Re: Need information about this terminal(?)

Posted on 2020-02-14, 17:44

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It looks like a BNC connector, maybe intended for video in/out. The large connector in the middle might be a big RS232 connector, DB-25, maybe. That DB-25 connector is obviously for the keyboard, as it has the matching connector. I'd assume the BNC connector is 10BASE Ethernet, or maybe ARCnet. …

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Re: Star trek a final unity

Posted on 2020-02-14, 13:14

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I've played A Final Unity since about the mid-90s and never encountered major issues (though I admit, the game/installer wasn't 100% bug-free, either). Sure, it ran slow during the 3D space combat scenes on my 486DLC-40 system with 387 co-processor and the VGA graphics required a good card and VBE …

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Re: Can you run DOSBox in Windows 98 (NOT run Win98 in DOSbox!)

Posted on 2020-02-13, 23:57

by

by Jo22

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

Hello, I've got an related question to "Can you run DOSBox in Windows 98".. Do the known builds of DOSBox take care of 4KiB alignment out-of-the-box or do they plan to do so in the future ? If so this would be neat, so they could benefit from Win98's CacheMap feature.. https://www.techrepublic.com/ …

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Re: Need information about this terminal(?)

Posted on 2020-02-13, 23:23

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

interesting, because while the screen looked 70-ish the keyboard keys distinctly seemed older to me ^^ I even started searching for pre 70s stuff because of that. I've also noticed that the keyboard has QWERTZ layout, so it might originate from Germany. Another thing that took my interest was the …

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Re: Retro machines usefulness/connectivity thread

Posted on 2020-02-13, 04:49

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

What is the best Virus scanner for DOS ? Not sure, but probably anything was better than what shipped with DOS. ;) I believe I used Carmel Turbo Antivirus (TNT) in the 90s (knew 853 viruses). Another cool one was on a shareware CD-ROM and had a cool virus database, with lots of background …

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Re: Help Flashing XTIDE Universal bios

Posted on 2020-02-13, 04:32

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Kids, XTIDE Universal BIOS is great, but it's not the only solution in town. ;) IDE Enhancer cards with their own Option-ROM existed years before XTIDE development had even started. These looked like this -> https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=559691#p559691 Search for "LBA-Enhancer-Card" to get …

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Re: Best imaging software for old operating systems

Posted on 2020-02-13, 04:22

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

windows 2000 - acronis true image 10 w/bart's pe builder, has a few different boot and recovery options to run from windows or other bootable environment. also useful if you need to above) - macrium reflect . whatever the latest version is. still runs on xp. love those guys. I'm speaking under …

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Re: svga/vesa emulator for dos?

Posted on 2020-02-12, 13:12

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I second that. VGA clone cards were almost all SVGA cards from the start, since even after the VGA release in '87, when many EGA clones started to feature 800x600 pels resolution as an optional feature. To give an example, the Paradise Professional VGA (PVGA1A) and Video 7 VEGA. On the otherhand, …

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Re: Connecting old machines to the internet: dispelling the superstition

Posted on 2020-02-11, 20:11

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Then there's the Flash problem...which you can better just not install as each version has tons of security issues, no matter the OS. I've pretty much killed it (Flash) from all the machines I use regularly. I was never a fan of Flash, never. When I started my career as a web designer, I had a lot …

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Re: PCEm. Another PC emulator.

Posted on 2020-02-10, 14:21

by

by Jo22

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

I'm also impressed by 86Box/PCem and I think there is still a lot of room for improvement also. Like FPU or serial port support, just to name two examples that come to mind. (And last but not least, V20/V30/186 support for XT machine types, heh. 😉 )

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Re: Help Flashing XTIDE Universal bios

Posted on 2020-02-09, 01:06

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In order for Windows 9x to show 32bit access for the drives, you need to select one of the 47 pre-defined drives or put in any random CHS values in the "Custom Drive Size" in your BIOS. If you don't, the esdi_506 driver won't load and reverts to compatibility mode. I second that. There once was …

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Re: What is the name of this 'futuristic' racing game?

Posted on 2020-02-08, 22:45

by

by Jo22

in Milliways

in Milliways

Zone Raiders ? https://www.mobygames.com/game/zone-raiders/screenshots There also was a beta/prototype version without weaponery, ads and opponents, I remember. just you, the night and foggy bridges in the sky. I wished I had kept a backup..

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Re: Voyager probes 40th anniversary

Posted on 2020-02-08, 15:37

by

by Jo22

in Milliways

in Milliways

Thanks for the replies, folks! 😀 February 3rd, 2020: According to some Austrian news page, Voyager 2 is operating normal again. Englisch translation available here.

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Re: 8088/XT build advice

Posted on 2020-02-08, 12:33

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[..] back then CGA was used mainly with RGB monitors, not with NTSC color TV sets that hardly could display 80 columns text. Interesting. That's why I love vogons forums. You always learn something new. I was under the impression that CGA color-wise was such an eye cancer that people back then …

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Re: 286 PC won't boot from HDD or Floppy

Posted on 2020-02-08, 10:52

by

by Jo22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Don't despair! That's a common issue, probably a compatibility issue of the controller card or each of the other parts in respect to each other. Also, some floppy drives or HDDs might make use of some pins that this specific controller card doesn't like to be used. I'd try each component on its own, …

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Re: VGA games with only 16 colors

Posted on 2020-02-08, 10:23

by

by Jo22

in DOS

in DOS

Oh I wished I could remember now all my DOS games from 90s that I played on my 286. :sad: Several of them were from the shareware scene and featured 640x480 as it was the most natural thing.. Anyway - here's something more to test. A Win 3.x driver for palettized VGA in 640x480@16c (can do color …

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