Re: Windows 7 Retro?

Posted on 2021-06-09, 15:28

by

by firage

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

The term is totally subjective, and different from vintage . Since Windows 7 only has retro purposes and no other future facing value to me, I'll happily call it retro. I'm sure you could still use Windows 3.11 to make a lot of your documents, so even an objectively vintage system isn't retro in …

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Re: Utsource.net selling fake stuff

Posted on 2021-06-02, 19:29

by

by firage

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Utsource is flooded with Chinese rebranded refurbished and fake stuff same as all the other available sources for old chips. I wouldn't expect much trouble getting a refund.

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Re: Which software to preserve CDs?

Posted on 2021-02-13, 10:46

by

by firage

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Hate dealing with Alcohol 120% sometimes, but I've ended up buying it. Haven't come across problem software that you mention, but don't doubt there are some such issues. I think it's worth it for my own archival. MDF/MDS for discs with protections or audio tracks on them, ISO for simple images.

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Re: Roland SCC-1 price

Posted on 2021-01-24, 05:19

by

by firage

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Yeah, enjoy it. It's a great card. The prices have gone up since this thread from 2018. Pricing on this stuff is so much harder to estimate these days, I don't even try.

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Re: 486DX PC running really slow. Thoughts?

Posted on 2021-01-17, 19:18

by

by firage

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

DX-33 is going to be working at the bus clock, whereas the DX2-66's cache is twice as fast. I don't think there's supposed to be as big of a drop between the L1 and L2 here. You're hitting the expected rating, so things are close to optimal.

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Re: 486DX PC running really slow. Thoughts?

Posted on 2021-01-17, 18:39

by

by firage

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Try a jumper across the turbo switch pins.

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Re: 486DX PC running really slow. Thoughts?

Posted on 2021-01-17, 18:28

by

by firage

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Turbo switch the wrong way, classic stuff. The next thing would be to check your CPU type jumpers.

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Re: My Big Red Switch 486

Posted on 2021-01-13, 20:03

by

by firage

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I've tested a mechanical Fireball disk and switched the system to a faster CF card. The Promise EIDE2300Plus controller is set to "DMA Speed 7" which is MWDMA-1 (13.3 MB/sec). There is a Speed 8 available, but it doesn't change from MWDMA-1 and shows no measurable difference. MWDMA-2 (16.7 MB/sec) …

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Re: CD/DVD drive selection for Win 98 SE build....does it matter?

Posted on 2021-01-11, 22:57

by

by firage

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For 98SE and DOS, you might pay some attention to picking a drive with functional Red Book audio via analog out to the sound card. There's no CD audio via the bus in DOS, and even in 98SE it depends on your sound drivers. SATA as well as many late PATA drives don't necessarily offer that.

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Re: MechWarrior 2 Windows 98SE in 800x600 Crashing

Posted on 2021-01-06, 07:57

by

by firage

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

A quick general thing to check with environment variables since it wasn't mentioned: make sure you're not out of environment space and the variables are in memory.

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Re: (The Tuala-Bus) Pentium III-S 1.4ghz, AWE64G+Audigy 2 ZS, Voodoo5 5500, Chieftec Dragon Rambus rig

Posted on 2020-11-22, 16:01

by

by firage

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Love the Tualatin + V5 build with RDRAM and an ISA slot, an Intel chipset and Asus board. Impressive. Very nice.

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Re: New sound card(s) project(s): Vortex2 Tribute

Posted on 2020-11-15, 13:33

by

by firage

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The codec on the old cards was the same as on the Live 5.1, surely put a hard limit on the quality you could get. Wonder if there's something that could be improved in 44.1 kHz resampling in Vortex2 cards; I don't know anything about how it's implemented.

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Re: Recommendations for Windows 98 Games That Make Good Use of Force Feedback (Or Any) Driving Wheels

Posted on 2020-11-15, 11:13

by

by firage

in Windows

in Windows

Rally Trophy is at the top of the list technology wise, then there's at least Mobil 1 Rally Championship, Colin McRae Rally 2.0, Grand Prix Legends, Need for Speed series esp. Porsche.

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Re: Hello from a former Creative Labs tech ('92-'94 ish)

Posted on 2020-11-03, 03:58

by

by firage

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Very cool, great to have you! Welcome to VOGONS! 1992-1994 is a really fascinating timeframe for PC sound. Creative is the standard for DOS audio and everyone here has been learning a lot about those cards.

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Re: In summary: the top 10 DOS games 1981-1991

Posted on 2020-11-01, 03:26

by

by firage

in Milliways

in Milliways

I feel pretty strongly about: 1987 - Sid Meier's Pirates! 1989 - Sword of the Samurai 1990 - Red Baron 1991 - Sid Meier's Civilization

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Re: 2 Gravis Gamepads Possible?

Posted on 2020-11-01, 01:11

by

by firage

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is what is says on the box http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Wiki/images/3/ … _Box_-_Back.jpg

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Re: 2 Gravis Gamepads Possible?

Posted on 2020-10-31, 23:13

by

by firage

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeap, gameports provide two X/Y sets of directional inputs and four buttons in total. The gamepad's button mode switch sets the two extra buttons up as turbo fire, and then it should only use two per controller. I suppose it is just a matter of having the properly wired splitter. On yours one of the …

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Re: PCI Soundcard impact on PCI Videocard performance (gaming)

Posted on 2020-10-31, 01:18

by

by firage

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Well, I know the AWE64 and YMF718 ISA cards didn't do badly when Phil did his sound card performance comparison for Win98: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC01uiyuJxI (albeit, with AGP graphics.) Wouldn't go looking there for a performance boost, though. Better options sound quality wise in the PCI …

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Re: My youtube channel: Necroware

Posted on 2020-10-21, 23:12

by

by firage

in Milliways

in Milliways

That's a sweet name for your channel. Nice! 😀 A bunch of cool videos already.

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Re: Should I build multiple PCs to play different era pc games or just one?

Posted on 2020-10-21, 16:31

by

by firage

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm pretty sure just the presence of ACPI will already limit a set of old games that are hardcoded for a conflicting MPU IRQ, among any other similarly reserved resources. Newer systems reserve adapter ROM areas and can be exploited for a lower amount of conventional memory in DOS. You may need a …

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