Re: DVD accelerators compared

Posted on 2012-12-23, 21:08

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have used many a ATI card on SDTVs via SVideo. Cards like Radeon 7200, 7500, 8500 and 9600. They tend to work much better than NVIDIA cards of the same vintage for TV output, with better overscan adjustment and picture quality. Many of these cards use the same ATI Rage Theater TV encoder chip …

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Re: DVD accelerators compared

Posted on 2012-12-23, 21:01

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As for Matrox, I have the Marvel G400 even with the DVD decoder module, but couldn't find a source for the DVD player utilizing it yet. The name could have been something like Zoran SoftDVD. . I have the original CD here. Its..... Software Cinemaster branded as "Matrox DVD Player". About 9MB per …

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Re: DVD accelerators compared

Posted on 2012-12-23, 20:46

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Matrox G400, NVIDIA TNT2 and 3dfx Voodoo3 were all offering partial MPEG2 acceleration. Matrox advertised something called DVDMax too which was a special overlay mode on the second VGA output. But G400 doesn't do mocomp or idct so it's barely an accelerator. DVDMax allowed any video in a window on …

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Re: DVD accelerators compared

Posted on 2012-12-23, 20:03

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Those Cinemaster cards were a real PITA to get working as I had to support many a Dell that came with them (usually paired with a Riva 128 AGP card). The fact that the company changed so many hands didn't help matters at all. Finding the right drivers was a big part of the battle. I wasn't very …

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Re: X-Fi and CMSS-3D - start collecting

Posted on 2012-12-17, 14:20

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

CMSS is far from new, they have been selling speakers with it as far back as 1999. My Cambridge Soundworks DTT2500 has a few CMSS profiles and the Live! drivers supported it for many years as well. As far as X-Fi cards go, the PCI ones are the best. They have the most I/O, including MIDI. Creative …

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Re: 775i65G AGP beast

Posted on 2012-11-28, 02:03

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

ASRock also sold a line of combo AGP/PCIe Socket 775 boards using the VIA PT880. http://asrock.com/mb/VIA/4CoreDual-VSTA/ I briefly considered one for an AGP rig but decided against it due to VIA's reputation for stupid compatibility problems. I later went with a period correct Gigabyte i865 Socket …

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Re: Time correct 1995/1996 setup

Posted on 2012-11-09, 21:25

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

We also bought a machine during this time frame. 1995 was a big upgrade year due to Windows 95. Here were its specs. Packard Bell Force 1999CDTW purchased 10/31/1995 Pentium 133Mhz 16MB RAM 2.1GB HD NEC 4X CD-ROM drive built in Cirrus Logic CL-GD5430 video with 1MB VRAM 14.4 Modem/16bit Aztech …

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Re: My retro PowerPC (Beige)

Posted on 2012-10-28, 21:13

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

But to my knowledge, no such issue exists on the 8500/9500/8600/9600 machines. If there is a problem with the Acard controllers, then I'd suspect it's a problem with the controller itself rather than IDE in general. I ran an IDE card in my PowerTower Pro for awhile (which has the same chipset as …

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Re: My retro PowerPC (Beige)

Posted on 2012-10-28, 04:48

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Alright, to answer some questions: IDE Cards: They don't work right on these machines. For some reason the 50Mhz system bus timing causes problems on the PCI bus with IDE cards, at least the ACARD ones. You will get broken/studdering audio and video playback on any connected drive. The onboard 10MB …

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Re: My retro Power Macintosh G3 (Beige)

Posted on 2012-10-25, 22:53

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

That isn't a G3, someone rebadged a PowerMac 8600. It might have a G3 CPU card, but that looks a lot like the stock 604e card. They are easily upgraded to a G3/G4 though. A real Beige G3 has a 3 slot tower and a ZIF CPU socket.

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Re: What's the attraction of legacy hardware?

Posted on 2012-10-25, 03:18

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In practice, having an ISA slot (with DMA support, of course; 875P/ICH5 and prior should allow that) means I can have a proper DOS sound card like an AWE32 installed, while the system is still old enough overall to support Win98SE usage (so long as you either install no more than 512 MB of RAM, or …

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Re: Preparing for potential complications with upcoming build (sound cards, Win98SE)

Posted on 2012-10-08, 20:11

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The chipset for the PCI-to-ISA bridge claims full compatibility, so it should work in theory. Some of the later industrial boards specifically state ISA DMA is not supported which soundcards usually require.

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Re: SCSI/NIC : ISA vs VLB

Posted on 2012-10-03, 02:08

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That same Olicom chip (which isn't all that great to begin with, 16bit interface no bus mastering) also powers a Microchannel 10/100 card. I have never seen a 10/100 VLB card in the wild, its doubtful any were made. Reading newgroup posts from the time, apparently 10BaseT VLBus cards weren't all …

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Re: SCSI/NIC : ISA vs VLB

Posted on 2012-10-02, 20:38

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Stick with SCSI on VLB. There weren't any VLB 10/100 NICs, which would take advantage of the faster bus speeds. If you want fast ethernet on a 486 system, your only option is PCI or EISA.

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Re: Which Linux on a 486 ?

Posted on 2012-09-18, 03:13

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I used to run RedHat Linux 6.0 on my old 5x86 133Mhz rig with a PC Chips M919 board and 16MB RAM. No problems on the command line or in X Windows although it would have been a lot happier with 32MB running fvwm95 as a window manager.

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Re: What's the attraction of legacy hardware?

Posted on 2012-09-18, 03:02

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In my case it was to use period peripherals. I justed picked up an Amiga 4000. Yeah, I know UAE exists, but for many years, accurate Amiga emulation with all its custom chips was impossible and SLOW. That and it will never run a Video Toaster 4000 card! Likewise I'm not impressed with all these FPGA …

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Re: My Pentium MMX gaming rig

Posted on 2012-08-08, 00:04

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Weird. I came across a machine with this very motherboard in it at the local thrift store today! I was wondering about that empty DIP socket and that media bus 2.0 slot.

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Re: The Grand OPL3 Comparison Run!

Posted on 2012-08-04, 04:50

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

There were a few exceptions to PCChips stuff being crap, like the SIS 5597 based M571 Socket 7 board, which was a reasonably good quality, stable, reliable entry level socket 7 board for its time. (except for the late revisions, which were cheap crap apparently) The M590 is essentially a Super 7 …

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Re: The Grand OPL3 Comparison Run!

Posted on 2012-08-03, 14:34

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I have a PC Chips M590 with that re-branded CMI8330 chip. It claims Soundblaster 16 compatibility, but I'm sure its pretty lousy sounding. Nothing PC Chips used could be called "quality". Looks like the 598LMR uses a PCI sound chip. I remember getting a few of those boards at the computer shop on …

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Re: My modest Creative Labs collection (no 56k!)

Posted on 2012-08-02, 22:23

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by NJRoadfan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My Dxr3 card (actually a re-branded Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus) had similar degradation. The MPEG2 decoder quality was excellent however.

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