Re: 8086 (vs 80286) Popularity in DIY/Clone Systems in the late 80s

Posted on 2023-06-14, 14:54

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

While the machine in question was not likely to be one, the Japanese PC-98 standard also used 8086 CPUs (or their V30 counterparts). Other than that, I agree with the general sentiment in this thread, which seems to be: it's unlikely that the machine was an 8086 one (especially if it was a generic …

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Re: SB16 + GUS Classic + PCMIDI/MT-32 for DOS/Win3.11 - should this "just work"?

Posted on 2023-06-14, 13:36

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I'm not aware of disabling gameports causing any issues. So I would suggest... if you don't plan on using a joystick, just disable all of them. Else, just enable the one that works best on your system. Gameports are speed-sensitive, so depending on the overall system speed, one card may work better …

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Re: SB16 + GUS Classic + PCMIDI/MT-32 for DOS/Win3.11 - should this "just work"?

Posted on 2023-06-14, 13:00

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

[*]I think I need to disable one of the joystick ports, and set the other so that it doesn't conflict with PCMIDI (300 or 330), right? Yes, you'll want to enable only one joystick interface at most. The address of the joystick interface is fixed at 201h though. Perhaps you are confusing it with the …

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Re: What are music trackers? Are they just PCM samples? (re: confused about PCM and sound cards)

Posted on 2023-06-14, 10:14

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

A two-part blog on trackers and related music software and hardware: https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2017/03/29/trackers-vs-midi/ https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/trac … midi-part-deux/

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Re: MUS-1099

Posted on 2023-06-13, 12:44

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

It's a card with SAA1099 chips, so that's what it sounds like.

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Re: MUS-1099

Posted on 2023-06-13, 12:03

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

does the card work with out drivers because my 386 is not seeing the card There are no drivers. Software that supports the card can either autodetect it, or you need to run some setup/install utility to manually set the correct base address. Note that autodetection in many games is rather limited, …

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Re: Emulating Area5150

Posted on 2023-06-13, 10:00

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

This represents a significant performance boost and will be in the next release of MartyPC among with several other optimizations - Scali, I hope it will run at full speed for you after this! Yea, these improvements sound promising! I wonder though... do you actually have a system that runs the …

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Re: CMS upgrade on an ATI VGA stereo FX board

Posted on 2023-06-10, 15:09

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

How come this card does not need the GAL anyway? It's not entirely clear why Creative chose to use a GAL, and make it part of the optional package for CMS. The SAA1099 chips don't specifically need a GAL to use them (the original GameBlaster/CMS card doesn't have it either). You just need some …

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Re: A noob question: Would recompiling the Win9x files make it faster?

Posted on 2023-06-08, 15:54

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

User32/GDI were always accelerated in hardware with the right drivers and hardware. That's why "Windows Accelerator" cards predated 3D accelerators. Companies like S3 and Matrox built their empire on Windows acceleration.

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Re: A noob question: Would recompiling the Win9x files make it faster?

Posted on 2023-06-08, 08:41

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Maybe make use of some technologies that appeared after the development of 9x, like MMX, SSE, 3dnow, VESA, openGL acceleration... I think you are conflating the OS itself with third-party drivers. OpenGL drivers for Win9x do exist, and some of them include MMX and 3DNow!-optimizations (not sure …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2023-06-06, 06:46

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I wrote a PCjr cartridge ROM with some DOS commands.

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Re: MUS-1099

Posted on 2023-06-05, 09:01

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

You have to be careful when selecting the jack. There are various heights available. The ones where the jack is flush with the PCB will sit 'too low' for your ISA bracket. You'll want one that is a bit higher.

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Re: Emulating Area5150

Posted on 2023-06-03, 11:19

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

The GPU is used for scaling the buffer to the window and compositing the GUI debug windows, but not much else at the moment. I eventually want to have a few shaders available for post-processing effects. (CRT emulation, color/geometry adjustments, etc) Okay, that should be trivial enough that there …

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Re: Unknown card: Cambridge Research Systems AS-1.

Posted on 2023-06-02, 23:52

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Looks like they're still around: https://www.crsltd.com/how-to-contact-us/about-us/ And that supports Deunan's guess that it's some kind of scientific data acquisition or control card. Perhaps drop them a line and ask if they can tell you what it is? They may still have documentation on it, or …

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Re: Emulating Area5150

Posted on 2023-06-02, 22:00

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

I've made an initial Windows release of my emulator, available here: https://github.com/dbalsom/martypc/releases/ Interested to see what people think. I'm open to suggestions and feature requests! I've tried it on two machines around here... one is a desktop Core i7 860 with a GeForce 970. The …

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Re: CGA Cursor Hiding

Posted on 2023-05-31, 13:29

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

I believe you need to set bit 5 of the Cursor Start register to 1, and bit 6 to 0 to hide the cursor: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/components … Sheets/6845.pdf

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Re: GloriousCow's PC Emulation Blog

Posted on 2023-05-30, 07:06

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Great work! These blogs explain exactly what I've always been so critical about regarding PC emulators: Firstly, cycle-exactness matters. Secondly, cycle-exactness does not stop with the CPU alone. The CPU does not operate in a vacuum. It interacts with other devices on the bus, so any externally …

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Re: Pulling my hair out with EGA programming.

Posted on 2023-05-28, 21:50

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I'm not exactly sure what's going on in that assembler code. What is the purpose of xor di, di ? XOR stands for Exclusive-Or. It's a bitwise operator. This is a simple trick: when you bitwise-xor any value with itself, the result is always 0. It's a slightly fancier version of sub di, di ( …

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Re: The Joy of MMX

Posted on 2023-05-28, 09:26

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think there are two things here: 1) Intel may have used shady marketing for MMX/SSE 2) MMX/SSE may or may not be valid technologies of themselves As for 2), as I already said, MMX had its applications. I've written my share of hand-optimized MMX back in the day. It's just that around the same time …

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Re: The Joy of MMX

Posted on 2023-05-27, 14:49

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

MMX was great for image processing. Scaling/filtering bitmaps, texturing triangles and whatnot. It was also useful for certain parts of video decoding. But it came a bit too late, as videocards were taking over these tasks.

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