Search \ VOGONS

Re: NEC XR385

Posted on 2011-01-09, 13:22

Mine arrived last week - hooked it up to my CT2290 SB16 and it works perfectly. Not as good, IMO, as a Sound Canvas - but very nice indeed. Between my GUS Max, SC55, MT32 and XR385, I think I've got the MIDI bases covered now 😀

Re: NEC XR385

Posted on 2010-12-22, 22:37

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've got one on the way too - he did say to expect shipping to take 20 days or so.

Re: Deathtrap Dungeon

Posted on 2010-12-19, 10:36

by megatron-uk

in Windows

Is the analogue output from the CD/DVD drive plugged in? Do you get any drive activity when the music should be playing? (ah, just read the laptop part - ignore the first part of my post then!)

Re: Floppy disk thoughts & questions

Posted on 2010-12-09, 19:21

by megatron-uk

in Milliways

If you have a troublesome disk that dd barfs on, try using dd_rescue instead, it can skip over unreadable sectors. You may have to do a bit of repair work on the resulting image (fsck / chkdsk when mounted), but it might help you in reading some disks that are borderline.

Re: external mpu401 and mt32: confused

Posted on 2010-10-18, 14:27

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Anyone see the MPU401 AT that just sold on Ebay? It doesn't bode well for anyone else looking for one.... £205.

Re: FM Synth (Soundblaster) comparison using Monkey Island 2!

Posted on 2010-10-12, 14:57

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hearing Monkey Island / Monkey Island 2 from an OPL2/3 based card after a real MT-32 makes baby Jesus want to cry 🙁 .... we were all young and naive once.....

Re: Ensoniq Soundscape Elite recordings

Posted on 2010-10-12, 14:47

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Has anyone got a later Sound Canvas device, like the SC-88 Pro, SC-8820 or SC-8850? I'd be interested to see (hear!) if there is much improvement over the SC-55 mkII. From the recordings on wavetable.nl, the later SC-88xx series are very impressive (although sadly still rather expensive to buy).

Re: How do you set the PATH variable?

Posted on 2010-10-08, 09:40

by megatron-uk

in DOSBox General

If you're looking at compiling in DosBox be warned that it is *very* slow compared to doing the same in VMware/Virtualbox/Xen etc. I've been doing some playing around with DJGPP and Allegro and found it about the speed of a fast 486 to compile C code.

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2010-10-06, 12:58

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nice. I am tempted to upgrade my PPro 200 with one of those (the 440FX DEC motherboard has solder pads for a second ZIF socket, but only one fitted - I guess it was a at-purchase option)..... but I don't know if I can justify the cost (as you no doubt know they're rather expensive!) when I've got a …

Re: Anyone have a real MPU-401 or MPU-IPC spare?

Posted on 2010-10-04, 09:20

by megatron-uk

in MT-32 General

Excellent - I guess I'll have to find one of those then!

Another games that needs a real MPU-401? - Linewars 2

Posted on 2010-10-03, 13:35

by megatron-uk

in MT-32 General

I think I found another game that requires a real MPU-401 in order to function, Linewars II. Running the configuration (on a real DOS machine) with my SC55 and MT32 attached via SB16 gameport I can select either of them as output devices, or my SB or GUS, but on exiting the config menu and back into …

Wing Commander III / IV - run from hard drive?

Posted on 2010-10-03, 13:19

by megatron-uk

in DOS

Does anyone know if (the DOS versions of) WC3 and 4 can be run entirely from hard drive, rather than CD? Yes it's 10 CD's worth altogether (4 for WC3, 6 for WC4), but with modern drives it's still only single percentage points of the size of large FAT32 partition!

Re: MATH COPROCESSORS: A Question...

Posted on 2010-10-01, 17:35

by megatron-uk

in Milliways

I would be very surprised if all of the i287 and i387 processors are not the same, and are just printed up at different clock speeds for marketing requirements. This was the case with the Motorola 68881 and 68882 floating point processors - a 16MHz labelled 68882 will quite happily run at 50MHz as …

Re: Most disappointing games?

Posted on 2010-10-01, 13:51

by megatron-uk

in Milliways

I've recently bought the XWing collectors CD to try it with the gouraud shaded SVGA TIE Fighter engine. I'm looking forward to hearing the John Willams score through my newly purchased SC55, as opposed to my SB16 that I had back in the mid 90's! You mean the texture-mapped SVGA engine? I have TIE …

Re: Most disappointing games?

Posted on 2010-10-01, 09:34

by megatron-uk

in Milliways

Ah, another games that got me disappointed. I may be branded heretic by mentioning this specific game, but what the hell. X-Wing Burn the heretic! It was a difficult game yes (if you didn't protect what you were supposed to protect you were screwed - you'd be sorry if you let the TIE bombers slip …

Re: Anyone have a real MPU-401 or MPU-IPC spare?

Posted on 2010-09-23, 14:34

by megatron-uk

in MT-32 General

Did you find out if that MM-401 card works properly in intelligent mode? Do the Sierra games and Wing Commander work ok?

Re: My first (crappy) PC

Posted on 2010-09-20, 13:56

by megatron-uk

in Marvin \ System Specs

Jeez, your first PC was a Pentium III? That just makes me feel *really* old..... mine was a 16MHz 286 with 1MB of RAM and a 20MB hard disk (ooooh! a hard disk!). Still got the 286 board somewhere.....

Re: Anyone have a real MPU-401 or MPU-IPC spare?

Posted on 2010-09-10, 13:46

by megatron-uk

in MT-32 General

They're getting quite pricey though... I've been watching the prices of the SCC-1 on Ebay over the last couple of months... and they seem to be now quite expensive (comparatively, to external modules). Last one I saw (US based) finished well over £100. There's a buy-it-now one listed for £142.