Re: ISA VGA Card?

Posted on 2013-01-19, 14:46

by

by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So, back to reality. Silentwulf wants to play DOS games with a 486-33. So most games would run in low resolution, maybe 640x480x8bit for strategy games or adventures. So either 256kB or at most 512kB of RAM should be sufficient. I doubt that HiColor or TrueColor would be necessary, equally an …

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Re: ISA VGA Card?

Posted on 2013-01-18, 23:56

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That might depend on what you are looking for. Which of the following is important to you? - Compatibility for DOS games - Speed in DOS - Speed in Windows 3.x (ie. GUI acceleration) - installed RAM (unfortunately this is not specified in most of the auctions so one would have to guess from the …

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Re: Capturing below 640x480 resolutions and CGA/EGA on the Avermedia Gamebroadcaster HD

Posted on 2013-01-17, 15:57

by

by idspispopd

in Milliways

in Milliways

Regarding speaker output: Did you have a look at Recording The IBM PC Speaker, especially section 3. Alternate solution: Hook the speaker leads to a line input?

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Re: The Ultimate 3D Accelerated Supported Games List (Early proprietary APIs - NO 3DFX/GLIDE)

Posted on 2013-01-16, 22:15

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I'm really confused about NASCAR Racing on Matrox Millennium. Most sources I have seen in the past claimed that the Millennium only does Gouraud shading, no texture mapping. The Mystique and the Millennium II had texture mapping. In your video the Matrox version of Nascar Racing definitely uses …

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Re: Cheap laptop recommendations

Posted on 2013-01-16, 07:57

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by idspispopd

in Milliways

in Milliways

The Travelmate 4500 (probably holds true for all notebooks from 2004 and/or with a Pentium M cpu) has an IDE hard disk. Although there are IDE SSDs on the market they are neither particularly fast nor cost efficient. And while IDE-to-SATA adapters exist in most cases you can't even fit the smallest …

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Re: Unreal on a Pentium 166MMX

Posted on 2013-01-13, 19:49

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by idspispopd

in Milliways

in Milliways

Reminds me of the following cartoon: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19980606

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Re: Hardware you wish you'd never bought.

Posted on 2013-01-09, 08:10

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by idspispopd

in Milliways

in Milliways

I found the following description for the current Synaptics drivers: The PalmCheck™ feature guards against operating the TouchPad with accidental contact. PalmCheck allows the TouchPad to recognize when your palm is resting on it or brushing its surface while you are typing. This will help to …

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Re: Hardware you wish you'd never bought.

Posted on 2013-01-09, 07:52

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by idspispopd

in Milliways

in Milliways

My current laptop, I upgraded from a HP workstation 8710w laptop C2D 2.2ghz with a 17" screen and a Nvidia Quadro FX 1600M, to a eMachines E732G i3, 500gb hdd and a ATI 5470, at the time I thought it was great, very cheap, but when I started using it (alas after I already sold my old lappy) it just …

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Re: What happened to my 486?!

Posted on 2013-01-06, 21:28

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The two "cacheable" settings should refer to using shadow RAM to cache the video BIOS or main (system) BIOS. I don't think this would give a big performance boost, especially not for video BIOS.

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Re: VM with old hardware emulation

Posted on 2012-12-30, 06:31

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by idspispopd

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Virtual PC will run Windows 3.1 fine. I don't think that any software (virtualization or emulator) will simulate cache. Virtualization will not simulate any speed limit, and the speed limit in dosbox is quite rough. Usually a finer control shouldn't be necessary since after the first IBM PC there …

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Re: Crazy problem with Via Tualatin board!

Posted on 2012-12-29, 15:47

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a box with a 6VTXE and a Celeron 1.0A@1.33GHz (Tualatin). I most certainly installed the latest available firmware, F9 sounds familiar. I didn't experience any unusual stability issues (98SE, W2K, XP). It also had (at least for some of the time) a SBLive in it.

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Re: Well optimised PC games?

Posted on 2012-12-22, 00:12

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by idspispopd

in Milliways

in Milliways

I beg to differ. Of course the Pentium had a superior FPU, but iD exploited special properties. For example, on the Pentium you have to pair instructions. A FMUL or FADD might be paired with most integer instructions, but then you still need to wait for the whole execution time of the FMUL/FADD …

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Re: Well optimised PC games?

Posted on 2012-12-21, 23:51

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by idspispopd

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'd even say Carmack optimized everything pretty well, and he was always pushing the technology. Wolfenstein 3D and Doom were already mentioned. Quake I is (in)famous for being optimized for Intel's Pentium, especially its FPU. It ran much worse on other x86 CPUs clock-by-clock at the time (AMD K5/ …

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Re: Amiga Classic Port

Posted on 2012-12-17, 12:13

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by idspispopd

in DOSBox Development

in DOSBox Development

Which 68k CPU do you have in mind? Not the original 68000? A 386DX seems to be roughly as fast as a 68020 so even with JIT you'd need a much faster CPU to emulate the whole system. You could try and see which performance you get in DOSBox with a fast 486 or a slow Pentium 1. I suppose it is not …

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Re: Pentium Pro systems

Posted on 2012-12-15, 23:13

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hard to say. The K6-2+ had 128k L2 cache which made it perform more like a K6-3 than a K6-2. On the other hand the K6-2 already had 32k L1 data cache and 32k L1 code cache. AFAIK the L2 cache only became a victim cache with the Athlon so the L2 cache would have to be larger than the L1 cache to …

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Re: Pentium Pro systems

Posted on 2012-12-15, 22:40

by

by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes of course. Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you, I wasn't sure from your wording what your point was. It sounded a bit like AMD introduced on-die L2 cache years after Intel did which would imply this. I think the first Intel CPU with on-die L2 was actually the Pentium II "Dixon" for notebooks and …

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Re: Rendition Verité Speedy3D/RRedline info and pics

Posted on 2012-12-15, 22:11

by

by idspispopd

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Just saw that you asked about drivers here and in the thread you started. Like I wrote there, you can try the 3.0 beta 5 reference drivers but don't expect them to be the best solution for you. I installed them when they came out, and I remember symptoms like icon corruption after running a game. …

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Re: Diamond stealt ii s220

Posted on 2012-12-15, 21:51

by

by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If the Diamond drivers won't work you can use the drivers for Hercules Thriller 3D, or you could use reference drivers. Depending on what you want to play you should probably try different drivers anyway, especially the 3.0 beta driver have several problems (they deserve the "beta" designation). See …

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Re: Pentium Pro systems

Posted on 2012-12-15, 21:23

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

K6 on the other hand was a budget design built to work on the limited Socket 7 platform. If only they could have put some L2 on-die sooner. You do realize that the PPro L2 cache wasn't on die, it was just on package? (That's what made it so expensive.) The first Intel CPU with on-die L2 was the …

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Re: EGA monitors - which one to buy?

Posted on 2012-12-13, 12:22

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by idspispopd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Eh, they do exist monitors with both ega 9pin and vga 15pin input cables? Cause i was living in reality where ega and vga monitors are diffent and each require different inputs. Never heard about hybrids. Take for example the NEC Multisync 3D. My father got one when he upgraded to a 286 with VGA. …

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