Re: Simmconn AWE64 Adapter

Posted on 2015-09-30, 23:25

by

by stamasd

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Xu Wang, I would like to thank you on behalf of the retrogaming community for your project. I'm one of those who ordered a SIMMconn value from you in 2014, and have been using it ever since. Thank you for making your design open, because I am sure it will be picked up and actualized. Speaking of …

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Re: Surviving the late 90's without 3Dfx

Posted on 2015-09-30, 03:16

by

by stamasd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I went through a variety of video cards in the late 90s - early 2000s. I don't remember them all. I never had a 3Dfx card until later, in the mid-2000s I got a V3-3000 mostly out of curiosity, and I was kinda disappointed (at that time my main card was a Geforce4-4200, no wonder the disappointment). …

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Re: Music Quest MPU clone cards, anyone interested in them?

Posted on 2015-09-29, 23:19

by

by stamasd

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Can I call dibs? 😀

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Re: Simmconn AWE64 Adapter

Posted on 2015-09-28, 17:17

by

by stamasd

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

You make it sound very apocalyptic... it's not the end of the world. It's a very open design, he was cool to provide all the data needed for someone to replicate his design, even improve on it... think getting rid of the simm altogether, and using RAM soldered to the PCB. I have priced the PCB to a …

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Re: Simmconn AWE64 Adapter

Posted on 2015-09-28, 11:57

by

by stamasd

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Are we talking about the SimmConn of which I bought one some time ago here: http://simmconn.tripod.com/ ? Because if so, they're still listed as available. And the PCB schematics and GAL code are available in the downloads section. The GAL code comes with source, it's for a widely-available and …

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Re: Music Quest MPU clone cards, anyone interested in them?

Posted on 2015-09-24, 22:24

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by stamasd

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

keropi wrote: ^ done! please do update your exact location in your profile, that's most likely the reason the system did not let you in 😀 Thanks! I couldn't update it while it wouldn't allow me to even access my profile. 😀

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Re: Music Quest MPU clone cards, anyone interested in them?

Posted on 2015-09-24, 20:11

by

by stamasd

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

^ what was your username ? I can approve your account. Admin emails do get read , I guess it was just bad luck. There are cases that the system auto-disqualifies you if you are behind proxies, unresovable IPs, state completely wrong location etc etc, just security measures since AmiBay is a trading …

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Re: Music Quest MPU clone cards, anyone interested in them?

Posted on 2015-09-24, 19:13

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by stamasd

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

When I make the AmiBay sales thread Will this be available outside of amibay at all? I can't register at amibay, have been trying for a few months but for some reason it won't let me; I tried contacting admin@amibay.com numerous times but I never got a reply. I don't think anyone reads those …

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Re: What Videocard or Soundcard you want to see remade?

Posted on 2015-09-23, 17:26

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by stamasd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

shamino wrote: An "ultimate" legacy ISA Sound Blaster AWE32 with low noise, genuine OPL3, no hanging notes bug, simple jumper based configuration without PnP, and quality capacitors. Amen. And intelligent MPU. And supporting larger soundfonts.

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Re: if Intel or AMD decided to make a limited version in 2015 of an oldschool cpu, what would you want to exist?

Posted on 2015-09-23, 11:32

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by stamasd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A 500 MHz socket-3-compatible chip, bonus points if it's based on the Cyrix 5x86. :) To be honest in this day and age it's a goal probably achievable even by an advanced hobbyist. Using FPGAs and cleverly written HDL. I've been toying with the idea for a while. One major obstacle is that none of …

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Re: Cheap USB-MIDI cable

Posted on 2015-09-21, 16:46

by

by stamasd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

These cheap cables are implemented violating the MIDI standard, i.e. with direct connections instead of optocouplers, components missing inside etc. See this for an overview: http://www.arvydas.co.uk/2013/07/cheap-usb-midi-cable-some-self-assembly-may-be-required/ I would check inside the interface …

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Re: what hardware were you using in 1999?

Posted on 2015-09-21, 15:32

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by stamasd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oi! My 300A was not stable enough at 504MHz in Linux, was good enough for games in Windows at that speed but eventually I got tired to go into the bios and change the speeds every time I booted another OS so I kept it at a stable and cool 463MHz most of the time. but it was rock solid at 450. It …

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Re: what hardware were you using in 1999?

Posted on 2015-09-21, 02:28

by

by stamasd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oi! My 300A was not stable enough at 504MHz in Linux, was good enough for games in Windows at that speed but eventually I got tired to go into the bios and change the speeds every time I booted another OS so I kept it at a stable and cool 463MHz most of the time.

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Re: what hardware were you using in 1999?

Posted on 2015-09-20, 23:55

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by stamasd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

-Celeron 300A at 463MHz (103*4.5) -Abit BH6 -started with 64MB RAM, added soon another 128M for 196M total; -started with ATI Rage Pro (ATI Xpert@Play AGP 8MB), upgraded to TNT2 M64 (Guillemot) then Geforce3 Ti-200 and eventually to Geforce4 Ti-4200 (of course not in 1999) -6GB Maxtor HDD initially, …

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Re: Anyone collect foreign computers?

Posted on 2015-09-17, 11:42

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by stamasd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I do have a selection of "foreign" computers, mostly Sinclair ZX Spectrum clones from the Eastern Bloc from the 1980s and early '90s. But then, I was born there and just brought them along when I moved to the US 20 years ago. Adapters for power and video are not a big deal if you know what to look …

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2015-09-13, 21:42

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by stamasd

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

That's great news. There's plenty of space left for code in the 1284's memory, the current code compiles to just below 5kB, or 4% of the available flash memory. I'm still waiting for parts to replicate it.

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Re: Music Quest MPU clone cards, anyone interested in them?

Posted on 2015-09-13, 21:31

by

by stamasd

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

ETA for availability?

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Re: retro pc friends, what were the most powerful graphic agp x4 ???

Posted on 2015-09-12, 22:53

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by stamasd

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had an geforce 4400 back in the day, the 4xxx series was AGP 4x in earlier revisions and then the later models went to 8x.

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2015-09-12, 12:25

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by stamasd

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I agree with the "no combining" this with anything else. It should be an intelligent MPU-401 interface and nothing else. The design is open and adding any extras would be an exercise for the reader. Like the wavetable header noted above. It would take a 26-pin header, 2-6 ICs (depending on the level …

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2015-09-12, 01:10

by

by stamasd

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Adding an amplifier and a headphone jack is trivial. I've made dozens of these CMoy mini-amps that are powerful enough to drive earbuds comfortably; if you add a power amp or a current buffer you can drive speakers easily. They don't take much real estate on a PCB and sound really good if you choose …

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