Re: Let's improve video output quality of VGA ISA/VLB cards (First success !)

Posted on 2021-08-14, 13:35

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by digger

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

It makes me wonder... Assuming that many of those different legacy and vintage graphics cards used the same interchangeable RAMDAC chip, how feasible would it be to design a drop-in replacement chip (perhaps using an FPGA) that would convert the image to a digital DVI/HDMI (or DisplayPort) signal …

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Re: Windows Me - "Misunderstood Edition"

Posted on 2021-08-14, 13:04

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

Microsoft already wanted to move on from DOS back in 1987, when OS/2 was supposed to be the "follow up" of DOS. They even ran advertising campaigns stating that "DOS is dead". With DOS, Microsoft had competitors in the market (most notably DR-DOS) which potentially hurt their sales. That is why …

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Re: Most important games

Posted on 2021-08-14, 12:24

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

The Sierra graphics adventure games with text command input, starting with King's Quest I, really did wonders for my English language skills, back when I was a kid. Some notable cases I remember: Wanting to climb the tree in King's Quest I, but constantly failing, since I wasn't aware that there was …

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Re: PC/XT bus for Commodore C64/C128

Posted on 2021-08-12, 12:37

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

It's just bootstrapping/initialization code, so maybe it won't matter if the emulation is slow?

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Re: PC/XT bus for Commodore C64/C128

Posted on 2021-08-11, 18:44

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

Unfortunately, you are going to hit a brick wall as soon as something comes with an option ROM for hardware initialization. Most pre-EGA graphics cards and early sound cards should work, though. I'm not sure that's true. Weren't all early PC graphics standards, up to and including regular VGA, …

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Re: Impractical Computing and Retrocomputing Ideas (Humour)

Posted on 2021-08-11, 17:42

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by digger

in Milliways

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Bitcoin mining on a Commodore 64. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JGNaeLMS1ZI&t=0s (I know, this post is not original, since someone actually went and made it happen, but it's just too awesome not to share here. 😁)

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Re: suggestions for windows XP

Posted on 2021-08-09, 12:29

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

I remember using this tool called NTSWITCH. I found it had the ability to turn server 2003 into a later xp pro codebase (than the original 2001) but turning xp pro into server 2003 presented a major memory leak prior to SP3. The updated xp base had superior kernel to original xp being from server …

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Re: PC/XT bus for Commodore C64/C128

Posted on 2021-08-08, 22:40

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

ISA slot are just that-slots. They can be use for whatever purpose on decides to do with them. I'm rather impressed they were able to use an IBM Monochrome Display Adapter with the C-64. That's a pretty neat trick getting it to work, even if the MDA is text only. Of all the ways of getting a C64 to …

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Re: SoftMPU project needs your help! (game & sound card testing)

Posted on 2021-08-08, 20:24

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by digger

in SoftMPU

in SoftMPU

Question: has anybody tried using SoftMPU with the 386MAX memory manager? And if so, did it work? 386MAX is supposed to be compatible with the I/O port trapping API of Microsoft EMM386. I'm asking this, since 386MAX might eventually be made open source, and bundled with FreeDOS. See https:// …

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Re: PC/XT bus for Commodore C64/C128

Posted on 2021-08-08, 15:31

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

Amazing. The DEC Alpha XPpci33 "NoName" OEM motherboards already proved that the ISA expansion slot wasn't exclusive to the x86 architecture. But getting it to work with a much older 8-bit architecture such as the C64 is mind-blowing. It makes for some interesting possibilities.

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Re: Change a game's name by one letter, to make it something completely different (just for fun!)

Posted on 2021-08-07, 09:38

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

Dude: The Battle for a New Rug

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Re: Olivetti monitor pinout (DB25 -> DB9)

Posted on 2021-08-06, 01:13

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by digger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Getting the Olivetti M24 monitor working with an EGA card has been a long-term project of mine as well! This monitor actually expects a 25 kHz signal, which some EGA cards support with a jumper setting, notably the STB Multires and the EGA Wonder 800 (although not the 800 Plus, AFAIK). By the way, …

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Re: Windows 3.1 on FreeDOS

Posted on 2021-08-06, 00:38

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by digger

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

In addition to Jeremy's patches, for Windows 3.x to work in 386 Enhanced mode under FreeDOS, you'll have to use Microsoft's EMM386 with FreeDOS, since JEMM doesn't currently support GEMMIS . Unfortunately, the JEMM maintainer isn't keen on implementing this any time soon. It would be nice if …

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Re: Impractical Computing and Retrocomputing Ideas (Humour)

Posted on 2021-08-05, 21:20

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

Make mandatory to include B+UEFI (BASIC+UEFI) on every motherboard. So any computer (even servers!) can boot to BASIC like 8 bit home computers. To ensure compatibility, that BASIC should be Sinclair BASIC (with all features like numbered lines). That's a genius idea. And to make it even better: …

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Re: Mipmapping under Glide games broken using Steam Proton for Linux

Posted on 2021-08-05, 20:58

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by digger

in dgVoodoo General

in dgVoodoo General

An issue was created on GitHub regarding dgVoodoo2 support in Proton in general, but it was closed, because it was considered "out of scope": https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/3516 Although I understand the focus on Direct3D games, particularly more contemporary ones, it's still a shame …

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Re: Change a game's name by one letter, to make it something completely different (just for fun!)

Posted on 2021-08-03, 06:04

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

SherbertWest wrote on 2021-08-02, 21:00: Cattlezone - Are you cowpoke enough to round up and drive your herd to Cheyenne riding...a tank? That one was already mentioned. I guess the thread is getting long enough that duplicates are becoming increasingly unavoidable.

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Re: Change a game's name by one letter, to make it something completely different (just for fun!)

Posted on 2021-08-02, 19:50

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

The funny thing is that I just looked up some YouTube videos with scenes of her in the movie, and it turns out that my "mind's ear" had pretty much picked a well-matching voice. :grin: Okay, sorry for the tangent, back on-topic. My turn again, I suppose. Mech Harrier - control a well-armed walking …

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Re: Change a game's name by one letter, to make it something completely different (just for fun!)

Posted on 2021-08-02, 19:37

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

Especially not Evie ... https://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/tumblr_obwolcO6aM1r9gqxqo1_400.gif Evelyn from "The Mummy" (1999) Did anybody else "see" her British accent, just through lipreading? Especially when she appeared to utter the words "got" and "first"? :grin: Yes, yes I did. Can …

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Re: os/2

Posted on 2021-08-02, 19:25

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

Speaking of BBSes, OS/2 was popular with BBS hosters in particular, exactly because of its robust multitasking. It was quite suitable for hosting a BBS with multiple dial-up lines on a single computer.

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Re: os/2

Posted on 2021-08-02, 19:21

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

I remember briefly running OS/2 (not sure whether it was 2.x or 3.x Warp) on my Pentium 100 PC and being amazed how solid and snappy it felt. I also rembee downloading this BBS client for OS/2, and whenever I would download a JPG image from a BBS with it, it would pop up a preview window, gradually …

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