AMD x5 133 - the Mystery of Abysmal Performance

Posted on 2012-07-18, 17:39

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Recently I stopped fiddling with the easy and straightforward Pentiums and ventured to explore more of the world of 486 quirks and horrors. It lives up to the reputation! ^_^ Amazingly, the matter of performance was of grave surprise here. 1. The best I managed to get from A-Trend ATC-1415 UMC PCI …

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Re: Identifying a rebranded Aztech

Posted on 2012-04-11, 23:27

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

sure thing, it was a good idea, many Aztech cards that I've seen photos of had the parts number exactly here, close to the ISA connectors. This one was different though :) Wonder why they were concealing Singapore *_* Old marketing mysteries. Well I might! Will have to verify how is its sound …

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Re: Identifying a rebranded Aztech

Posted on 2012-04-11, 02:25

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Look like it a Sound Galaxy NXII Extra Yes it is ^ ^ Stason.org (or the other sites hosting this legacy device database) was perfectly right. There is just no separate driver for this model because the standard NXII driver works well with "NXII Extra". As for the "Extra" additional CD types and IRQ …

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Re: Identifying a rebranded Aztech

Posted on 2012-04-11, 02:12

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

hi if you remove that white strip with the bar code then you ought to find the Aztech model id underneath it. the nx2 is the I38-MMSD801 according to this document: ftp://ftp.aztech.com/SUPPORT/DOWNLOAD/sg/index.txt i quite like the OPL2 chip which suggests this card is a clone of an early sound …

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Re: Identifying a rebranded Aztech

Posted on 2012-04-10, 14:23

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's likely not PNP but uses the eeprom to store IRQ/DMA/IO settings so it's mostly jumper free. Win98 might detect it with its add hardware wizard... It could be "16bit" like a SBpro (8bit card with 16bit electricals). I think it is some kind of Sound Galaxy NX. Thanks for the reply. Indeed …

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Re: Identifying a rebranded Aztech

Posted on 2012-04-10, 02:25

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well it should not be a non PnP, the only jumpers present here are identified by these two stason.org links, should be the Parallel port emulation, 'EEPROM enabled' feature (should we try it? ^^) and the pointless CDROM IRQ selection. Unfortunately, what I currently have running is only DOS6.22 and …

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Identifying a rebranded Aztech

Posted on 2012-04-10, 02:02

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Came across a sample of Aztech legacy sporting a real OPL chip. No defective Aztech wavetable connector, no Crystal chip. Unfortunately, there are reasons why I doubt I identify this card correctly. http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/7829/dsc01966s1.jpg BIG size, no ads: http://img17.imageshack.us/ …

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Re: Super Fast 486 Cache - 10 ns

Posted on 2012-04-02, 12:02

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

no wonder I think that there was no comment from California division... They can't possibly track any Asian activity :) Also they will not probably say bluntly that "such items you are having might be fake", so no comment :) Should we try to stick with the official claim and look for the 12ns chips? …

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Re: How important are early Pentiums?

Posted on 2012-03-17, 15:14

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is Vogons, everyone here at least has two of those. And starting in MS-DOS mode doesn't help for me The 486 and Pentium I played it on are both Win98SE systems now I performed this experiment with a Pentium and the bug is dead :) At least for me, it is. The lack of a Pentium patch that seemed …

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Re: How important are early Pentiums?

Posted on 2011-12-09, 14:50

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That blurb was meant for something like, taking your DOS Blackthorne back for the Macintosh Blackthorne Yes, making this kind of offer would be reasonable on their part. Just calling it a "System Upgrage" policy sounds strange to me. That's rather a System Exchange ^_^ What is wonderful, I see no …

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Re: How important are early Pentiums?

Posted on 2011-12-09, 01:03

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

... starting in MS-DOS mode doesn't help for me The 486 and Pentium I played it on are both Win98SE systems well I've come over something special about this game. Its manual has this section: (pic) http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/3485/bthorne.png http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/3485/bthorne. …

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Re: i486DX4-100 vs AM5x86-P75

Posted on 2011-12-02, 01:47

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Better get a K6 for Socket7 systems, it goes all the way up to ~500 MHz. Sorry for a bit of offtopic, but that's an interesting alternative, the Super S7 platform. It tends to have ~lots~ of ISA slots, like 3 or 4, which is just great for the sound cards. and yes, it's up to 500 or 550 MHz. But …

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Re: How important are early Pentiums?

Posted on 2011-12-02, 01:13

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Remember that things moved a lot slower back then. In my part of the world 486's were being sold well until the end of 1996. Intel's flagship product line was always exotic and expensive and the Pentium was no different. Thanks to increased competition from AMD and other companies like Cyrix, IDT …

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Re: How important are early Pentiums?

Posted on 2011-11-30, 00:52

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Pentium 60,66,75, and in some cases 90 are too slow for many Pentium era games. 90 is ok with some games but 100 and up seem to be where the Pentium started to become really good for games released during that time frame. Yes I have to confess I like Pentiums more than 486. The latter are venerable …

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Re: How important are early Pentiums?

Posted on 2011-11-30, 00:35

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also cache matters a lot for a Pentium using it without a cache module is like using an AM5x86 without a cache module indeed. Unfortunately, I can not measure what ~exactly~ this game could do to the typical P-1 cache. Matter is, considering the Pentium history, Blackthorne should have actually …

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Re: How important are early Pentiums?

Posted on 2011-11-30, 00:13

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

CPU power can't compensate. Oddly this also affects the AMD k6 as well, so K6-2 500 gets the slowdown The Blackthorne slowdown should be something that needs to be BullShitTested across various systems. Yes it needs. :angry: Because these are just a few games it seems that behave like this. Lost …

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Re: How important are early Pentiums?

Posted on 2011-11-29, 20:40

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by Mithloraite

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Pentiums can have timing problems with some games like Blackthorne (causing the game to run 50% of its speed) That's scary news for prospective retro Pentium builders. :dead: Really no way to launch Blackthorne on Pentium without this 50% / "crawling" bug? I wonder if a later P-II (with all proper …

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Re: DOSBox Feature Request Thread

Posted on 2011-11-29, 18:54

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by Mithloraite

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

oops, I didn't see this message. something wrong with my e-mail notifications :s-face: Sorry!) Some modern soundcards can do this. On my Audigy soundcard it works for all of the sound that DOSBox produces (except MIDI, of course). Probably not identical to the post-processing done by older Creative …

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Re: DOSBox Feature Request Thread

Posted on 2011-11-24, 22:12

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by Mithloraite

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

Hello, I am new here and, to start, I can not say how great is the Marvel of Dosbox. You have my deepest gratitude. Having an MT-32 connected by an ordinary MIDI cable and seeing all sysexes working is like magic indeed. It's simply great ^^ Sorry for the slightly too loud words, these things are …

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