Re: Newly made Gravis Ultrasound compatible cards ... what's the degree of interest?

Posted on 2021-12-29, 08:26

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

If we forego the original chipset, I would just focus on the synthesizer aspect of the GUS. Most software that requires GUS is not concerned with the other features like game port, ide controller or codec. As most people combined the GUS with another card anyway, why implement features that will be …

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Re: Questions on Sound Card DSPs

Posted on 2021-12-29, 08:19

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by digistorm

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The AWE isn’t a MIDI card at all, just like the GUS. They are sample players, because it was maybe believed that hardware based music and sound effects playback would be more versatile and lead to better music (if you consider what was already possible with 4 sample voices on the Amiga). But the …

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Re: Sonic the Hedgehog released on the Commodore 64.

Posted on 2021-12-22, 12:13

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by digistorm

in Milliways

in Milliways

Maybe… I think the assets have to be loaded in RAM because the disk drive is way to slow for that. A ROM cartridge can achieve much faster speeds.

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Re: Which Soudtracker / Mod-Player to use with MS-DOS

Posted on 2021-12-13, 16:03

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by digistorm

in DOS

in DOS

Open Cubic Player 0.2.6 works quite well for most ITs, XMs, S3Ms and MODs. It supports filters and NNAs, but it has some little playback differences. They are quite subtle though. 0.2.5 is more stable, but doesn’t support IT filters.

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Re: Must have / Must see Scene Demos on a 80386-33 ?

Posted on 2021-12-13, 00:54

by

by digistorm

in DOS

in DOS

Hmmm… second reality does run with emm386, is that not an option? Also, I thought it needed ems memory when you use soundblaster as the music card, do you have sound with only himem? Panic and fishtro (also of Future Crew) should also run on a 386-33.

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Re: How over powered are modern PCs?

Posted on 2021-11-25, 15:50

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by digistorm

in Milliways

in Milliways

I don’t think it is just the assembly that makes it fast, but rather the minimal use of libraries, frameworks and in particular all kinds of abstraction layers. It is not only to “speed up development”, some coders seem to get a kick out of making this “elegant” solution that can do most anything so …

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Re: UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.76f

Posted on 2021-11-22, 07:00

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by digistorm

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

My feeling is that something is wrong with the PnP implementation of the Realtek card, as the author of Unisound tried all kinds of things and nothing helped in the end. So I ended up getting a 3Com card from EBay and that solved my issues 😕

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Re: ARM based CPU on IBM compatible PC

Posted on 2021-11-17, 13:21

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by digistorm

in Milliways

in Milliways

I don’t think that would be IBM compatible, isn’t it? It would probably be “windows compatible” but the whole idea of IBM compatible was that it is able to run IBM PC software written for the x86 😉

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Re: Can the attachment size limit of 5.00 MiB be increased to at least 5.50 MiB so I don't need to use work arounds?

Posted on 2021-11-12, 16:52

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by digistorm

in Milliways

in Milliways

Apple just got rid of this nonsense some years ago and uses decimal disk sizes. Much easier to do calculations too.

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Re: Is there a way to prevent DOS games from changing your sb mixer settings?

Posted on 2021-10-30, 06:44

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by digistorm

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

It is only problematic if you own a SB revision that has a crappy mixer chip that will clip in the analogue domain when you maximize the volume of the DAC.

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Re: Random weird PC tales

Posted on 2021-10-24, 08:32

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by digistorm

in Milliways

in Milliways

Don’t underestimate how manufacturers can skimp and save themselves some money on cables. I have encountered an HDMI extender over UTP cables that only want to works with AWG24 cables (and they are hard to find, almost no one advertises that spec). All cables I got earlier were AWG27 or 28 and …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-09-24, 07:57

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by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Pulled a Pentium200 PC from storage for a Win95 install. During Windows and other installations I got some error messages about not being able to write to disc C, as well as the drive just being sluggish in general. Ran checkdisk and found this:P_20210922_204918.jpg OOF. When 1 appears, more will …

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Re: Gotek floppy emulator and Linux?

Posted on 2021-09-23, 05:22

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by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Honestly, I think you are approaching it totally wrong. If your goal is to manage files on your Linux machine, you are better off with either 1) a CF (or SD) to IDE adapter in your retro machine and a card reader for your Linux machine, or 2) a network card in your retro machine in combination with …

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Re: I have a strange problem with my 286. I never seen this before in my hundread build since 30 years.

Posted on 2021-09-11, 10:29

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by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Did you try FDISK /MBR ? Maybe the Master Boot Record was corrupted somehow? Have you checked in FDISK that the partition is active?

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Re: PC tower cases by year

Posted on 2021-08-16, 08:16

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by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If it was a diamondtron, you could see the shadow of the very thin wire that was needed to hold the shadow mask in place. Without it, it would vibrate too much and cause color distortion. The larger the tube, the more stabilization wires were needed.

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Re: Anyone ever paint their cases back in the day?

Posted on 2021-08-08, 08:10

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by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes, I painted my Inwin A500 case in the year 2000 with car paint in a black/green color scheme. It was quite satisfying back in the day to have a distinct pc case when you went to LAN parties and such.

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Re: Retro paradox?

Posted on 2021-08-04, 23:03

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by digistorm

in Milliways

in Milliways

In the Netherlands it is also sometimes used for subtitles, as it supports transparency. It works because teletext can be updated “live” and the subtitles are on page 888 that is sent multiple times instead of in order.

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Re: Two VGA cards in Vintage PC? (AGP + PCI?)

Posted on 2021-08-01, 22:36

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by digistorm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

AGP+PCI works on my Slot-A motherboard with Win98 installed. You can choose which card you want to boot with in the BIOS and that is the card that DOS will use. Windows 98 supports both if you enable them. I don’t use it because my PCI card is too slow, I use it only for VESA modes that my AGP card …

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Re: Best tracker MODS ever [1988-2020]

Posted on 2021-07-23, 07:24

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by digistorm

in Milliways

in Milliways

I denied the permission and it still downloaded successfully. But that makes it even more shady, because… what is it using the permission for if not for storing the file?

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Re: Newly made Gravis Ultrasound compatible cards ... what's the degree of interest?

Posted on 2021-07-04, 13:32

by

by digistorm

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

If the goal is preservation, it would maybe be better to preserve the original GUS (GF1 chip) because that one is more essential to run demo’s. And maybe reimplementation would also be a good idea because Interwave chips will not be around forever.

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