Re: jwt27's Retro Laptops

Posted on 2013-11-06, 18:38

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Just took the Dell apart, mostly because I wanted to check if the BIOS chip was socketed (or if it can be replaced)... and because I was just curious to see what's inside. The top part was surprisingly easy to remove. It took only three screws to remove the keyboard and trackball, and another two to …

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Re: jwt27's Retro Laptops

Posted on 2013-11-05, 14:32

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

The connnection is not very reliable though. Once I load the packet driver, it connects to the other laptop, and I can run one mTCP program. When it's finished it closes the connection and I have to reload the packet driver to connect again. Maybe MS Network Client will keep the connection open. I …

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Re: jwt27's Retro Laptops

Posted on 2013-11-03, 21:55

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Great... It seems NDIS drivers for this wifi card are hard to find. Now I have to use some stupid (= memory hungry) kludge like PD -> ODI -> NDIS2 shims to use MS Network Client. Maybe someone can help me find them? It's a Dell TrueMobile 1150 card, an Orinoco Gold clone. Also produced under Agere, …

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Re: jwt27's Retro Laptops

Posted on 2013-11-03, 01:55

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Aww that sucks. I haven't seen any on these laptops, but it wouldn't surprise me if the ICL screen has some. I did notice most pixels don't have equal brightness, which makes the display look very grainy. It's hard to capture that on camera though.

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Re: FM emulation accuracy?

Posted on 2013-11-03, 01:52

by

by jwt27

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

If any sound card doesn't sound like it should it is either shitty or broken or both. Different types of cards may use different (analog) filtering, Sound Blaster cards for example use some radical low-pass filtering which is completely absent in YMF71x cards. But if you can hear a difference …

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Re: Apple Design M6082 Speakers

Posted on 2013-11-03, 00:24

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I personally wouldn't spend any time restoring plastic speakers... and I'm not an Apple fan either. But each to their own, of course. If I had to give an opinion I'd say white would fit better with old computer gear. Unless your PC is also black. Did these speakers have foam surrounds? Good luck …

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Re: jwt27's Retro Laptops

Posted on 2013-11-03, 00:08

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Wifi appears to work... somewhat. http://imageshack.us/a/img14/470/m6n6.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img405/7495/ji9t.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img404/3199/2hh2.jpg Dell laptop (10.0.0.157) running mTCP FTPSRV here, connected over WEP encrypted wifi to my sister's laptop (...156), which is connected …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2013-11-02, 23:49

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What's that CRT in the corner? 21" shadow mask?

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Re: jwt27's Retro Laptops

Posted on 2013-11-02, 00:54

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Now that you mention DSTN, I see I confused the LCD types. The ICL screen is a passive-matrix TSTN, while the Dell actually has a TFT panel. But the LCD is not the worst part of this display. The ugly scaling and weird font is. Why did they even bother to use some custom font? What was wrong with …

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Re: jwt27's Retro Laptops

Posted on 2013-11-01, 22:21

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Great. I can't use the 20GB drive because the BIOS will only see 8423MB. And it says 2013-11-01 is Saturday... Yeah right. Maybe it needs a BIOS update? Well that's easier said than done.

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Re: what programming is worth learning?

Posted on 2013-11-01, 21:26

by

by jwt27

in Milliways

in Milliways

To add another Basic variety: I have used FreeBasic some time ago, which started out as QBasic clone but quickly developed into a more modern language (with multithreading, OOP and all that stuff), keeping the simple Basic syntax. The main thing I liked about it was that you could use C/C++ …

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Re: DOS/win utilities to get the most out of MIDI hardware?

Posted on 2013-11-01, 19:34

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You're welcome :) It was a pretty stupid bug though... Any raw midi bytes were saved up in a string and sent all in one go. Of course, the maximum string length in Pascal is only 255 bytes.. And the file I posted above (MT32.CFG) already used 384 in a row. It's now sending every line separately. So …

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Re: DOS/win utilities to get the most out of MIDI hardware?

Posted on 2013-11-01, 18:44

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Here's an updated version of MIDICOM. I just discovered and squashed one bug which actually broke the MT-32 emulation stuff somewhat... Games that use the last midi channels might not have sounded correctly with the previous version. Also added some new convenient commands like BANK_MSB=cc=nn to …

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Re: Duke Nukem games

Posted on 2013-11-01, 15:53

by

by jwt27

in Milliways

in Milliways

I guess I'll never understand this hype around true 3D back then, or any hype around new features in video game graphics for that matter. It all seems to be done to promote new hardware, and also results in "eww, this is not 3D" reactions from some people (critics included as it turns out). It …

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jwt27's Retro Laptops

Posted on 2013-11-01, 15:23

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Copy/paste from the other thread : Here are my retro laptops: http://imageshack.us/a/img809/7562/2w3z.jpg On the left is an ICL N4/25, powered by an Intel 486SX-25. It has only PC speaker with no upgrade options, and a monochrome LCD which displays 256 colours as 64 shades of grey. So it's pretty …

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Re: FreeDOS and Windows 98 SE - Dual boot and USB support

Posted on 2013-11-01, 15:04

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

USB support is very hard in DOS. I messed around with it a bit but could never get it to work. Ethernet (even wifi) is much easier and even faster to copy files from one PC to the other.

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Re: Decent retro gaming laptops

Posted on 2013-10-31, 23:53

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It sure looks like it didn't see much use. I even have the original suitcase, manual and power supply with it :) But the monochrome LCD is just... horrible. It's extremely slow, has low contrast, and very bad ghosting problems: http://imageshack.us/a/img811/769/fx2s.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img822 …

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Re: Decent retro gaming laptops

Posted on 2013-10-31, 17:44

by

by jwt27

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Here are my retro laptops: http://imageshack.us/a/img809/7562/2w3z.jpg On the left is an ICL N4/25, powered by an Intel 486SX-25. It has only PC speaker with no upgrade options, and a monochrome LCD which displays 256 colours as 64 shades of grey. So it's pretty much worthless for gaming. The laptop …

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Re: DB60XG / XR385 repair

Posted on 2013-10-30, 20:14

by

by jwt27

in Milliways

in Milliways

Well there's the solution then 😀 They do call it a "3V 16BIT ADC&DAC WITH BUILT-IN PGA" though, maybe they confused it with another AK chip? edit: Yes they did, but the part number is correct so I placed an inquiry anyway

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Re: DB60XG / XR385 repair

Posted on 2013-10-30, 19:36

by

by jwt27

in Milliways

in Milliways

That's what I'd like to know. All voltages on the other pins seem okay. Maybe it's caused by ESD damage. Anyway, pin 8 should be a high impedance input pin, not a voltage source. I don't think connecting this pin permanently to GND would be a good solution. The DAC requires a short pulse on this pin …

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