Re: What do you drive?

Posted on 2025-03-20, 23:36

by

by megatron-uk

in Milliways

in Milliways

Yeah, pointless to paint or spray over rust. That's not going to stop anything. Remove the rust (chemical converter or physical abrasion down to clean metal or cut and re-weld), etch prime and paint, then apply your sealant. When we bare metal resprayed my Escort, we etch primed then used POR …

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Re: What do you drive?

Posted on 2025-03-20, 18:38

by

by megatron-uk

in Milliways

in Milliways

Yeah, I should have stated - the treatment on my car would have been from some 45-50 years ago (it's a 52 year old car!). I have *no* idea what the quality is like now; the waxy type coatings (such as this was at the time) are clearly the better quality options though. Cosmoline is/was pretty common …

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Re: OpenWatcom - "next generation" test build

Posted on 2025-03-20, 11:02

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

because these are two completely separated teams (the old team restarting with the old 1.9 and naming their new release 2.0 and Malák who started his V2.0 development years ago) the teams seems to not share code which is not a very good idea because Malák put so much workload into cleaning up that …

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Re: OpenWatcom - "next generation" test build

Posted on 2025-03-20, 09:40

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Well that's an entirely unhelpful situation. My install of the Open Watcom v2 fork from Github says: $ owcc -v Open Watcom x86 32-bit Compilers Driver Program Version 2.0 beta Mar 1 2025 02:39:55 (32-bit) Copyright (c) 2002-2025 The Open Watcom Contributors. All Rights Reserved. Portions Copyright …

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Re: What do you drive?

Posted on 2025-03-20, 09:24

by

by megatron-uk

in Milliways

in Milliways

Could you fill your rockers with high density spray foam to keep the water out? Don't do that. It will absorb moisture and hold it in. The best option is to either ensure that any drain holes are clear, to let moisture out, or if you want to - get the interior surfaces sprayed with some waxy …

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Re: OpenWatcom - "next generation" test build

Posted on 2025-03-20, 07:15

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

The Open Watcom source is primarily hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/open-watcom/open-watcom-v2 Releases here: https://github.com/open-watcom/open-watcom-v2/releases The older 1.9 branch is still maintained, but in a separate repo (it mentions it is cloned from the original Perforce system). …

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Re: Part name - 8 way FFC receptacle (Sony Vaio Z505/Z600 repair)

Posted on 2025-03-18, 13:12

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Got a replacement flat cable delivered - part matches perfectly and I don't think there will be any danger of it being too short and getting ripped when opening the case! Filename IMG20250318123807.jpg File size 1.68 MiB Views 22 views File license CC-BY-4.0 Just waiting on the ffc header now.

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Re: YMF 719 and DMA issues

Posted on 2025-03-18, 13:06

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Normally you would want: Interrupt 7 (or 5; these are the two most common hardcoded settings for games) Base address 220 WSS address 530 (unused in the vast majority of DOS games) DMA 1 Adlib 388 You probably don't need to worry about the record settings unless you are planning to do digital …

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

Posted on 2025-03-18, 09:49

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by megatron-uk

in Milliways

in Milliways

Trying to design the filesystem layout for our new super computer / high performance computing facility. Our current legacy system has three main areas: - Personal home directory - Personal directory on the parallel filestore - Shared group directory on the parallel filestore I've run the reports …

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Re: This 5.25 disk is probably destroyed, right?

Posted on 2025-03-18, 08:04

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ah, I see you got the Australian version of the installation manual for that game!

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Re: Timeline of MS-DOS for NEC PC98 and more

Posted on 2025-03-17, 19:21

by

by megatron-uk

in Milliways

in Milliways

I can't remember if I posted this before or not, but I documented setting up a gcc/djgpp development environment for the PC-98 here: https://www.target-earth.net/wiki/doku.php?id=blog:pc98_devtools I also wrote a guide for doing graphics programming on the PC9821 using the packed-pixel mode, …

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Re: Part name - 8 way FFC receptacle (Sony Vaio Z505/Z600 repair)

Posted on 2025-03-16, 15:57

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For my own notes, apparently the keywords to find equivalent replacements are: 0.5mm pitch, 8 pin, "clamshell type", "bottom entry"

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Part name - 8 way FFC receptacle (Sony Vaio Z505/Z600 repair)

Posted on 2025-03-16, 14:57

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I am repairing some damage to a recently acquired Sony Vaio PCG-z600 notebook; it's the top model in the range, and a really lovely machine: - PIII-800 - ATI Mobility M1 8MB - Yamaha YMF-744 I've pulled the parts together from a couple of machines, including one with a lesser PIII-500 CPU and …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2025-03-15, 12:21

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Whilst I'm a big fan of the Sony Vaio PCG-Z505/Z600 machines (and they really all lovely slim little things), having worked on both models quite a bit now (and owning several variations of each), I think I'm coming round to the fact that the Armada is probably the better all-rounder. Granted it's a …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2025-03-15, 12:07

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The Frankenstein Armada 1750 is now assembled: - FDD, CDROM and keyboard from first machine - Case, screen, PSU and plastics from second machine - System board, CPU (a PII-366, but reported in the BIOS as a PII-400?), RAM and battery from third machine That leaves me with two spare FDD modules, one …

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Re: ESS Solo-1 ES1938S vs. Gateway Ensoniq PCI 3000 ES1370 for DOS/Win 3.1 audio and gaming

Posted on 2025-03-14, 21:47

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

With PCI cards it does indeed depend on the motherboard as well. They all have to emulate or mimic to a certain degree the way a real Soundblaster on an ISA bus works, with DMA etc . Some cards work better than other (Yamaha YMF-7x4 and the ESS Solo-1 being two good examples), but final game …

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Re: ESS Solo-1 ES1938S vs. Gateway Ensoniq PCI 3000 ES1370 for DOS/Win 3.1 audio and gaming

Posted on 2025-03-14, 20:35

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The Solo-1 has excellent DOS compatibility (depending on motherboard chipset support) and great sounding hardware FM (OPL2 and OPL3) the same as the earlier ISA based ESS Audiodrive cards.

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2025-03-14, 18:47

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by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Bottom tier I would add Cirrus Logic & Silicon Motion to the Bottom tier. I do have a ThinkPad 240X, in addition to a 240 (bought just for the donor screen - so currently screen-less!), and it has the Silicon Motion LynxEM... but I've never tried it (as in all aspects for DOS gaming the 240X is …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2025-03-14, 17:04

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Bottom tier I would add Cirrus Logic & Silicon Motion to the Bottom tier. Piece of junk! My luck is just not very good at the moment. Unfortunately, many Taiwanese laptops are garbage, didn't you know? It's more that it has the Maestro-2 audio (and not the Audiodrive), than the build quality. In …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2025-03-14, 15:24

by

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I just wanted to mention that the NeoMagic MagicGraph 128XD has both Windows 3.1 and Windows 98 drivers. Although it does use unfiltered upscaling, which can look pretty terrible. I'm not certain about actual DOS games support that makes it "bad". In particular, it struggles when certain 2D …

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