Re: Converting an old 286 into a 486

Posted on 2017-11-19, 18:14

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm thinking I'll need to replace every card inside too since I think these are ISA slots and good 486 boards probably only take PCI, right? Early 486 boards were ISA-only. Then there were the VLB boards, where you can use both ISA and VLB cards. Late 486 boards would have ISA and PCI (stay away …

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Re: 68K remakes demand LOT's of Horsepower, but what causes this?

Posted on 2017-11-15, 21:12

by

by Scali

in Windows

in Windows

You just should keep in mind that they worked 100% OK on a 7Mhz 68K! and now you need 1.000 times faster machine to get them work stutterfree again. :( The magic of the Amiga was in the chipset, not the CPU. Most effects used in such demos are done with the copper and blitter. A PC doesn't have …

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Re: ASUS-P2b - 133 MHZ FSB?

Posted on 2017-11-15, 20:57

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have the P2B-LS variation, and I could never get it working properly beyond 112 MHz.

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Re: TMU & Pipeline Clarification

Posted on 2017-11-07, 09:36

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

This should enable eight full texture blends at 60 FPS. Is this reasoning valid? Well, not entirely. The GeForce256 can still perform two textures in a single pass, if I'm not mistaken. It just has less TMUs. So the second texture read can still be done in just 4 extra bytes. But you will get …

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Re: TMU & Pipeline Clarification

Posted on 2017-11-06, 22:03

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I was under the impression that the Geforce's Quadpipe allowed it to work with multiple adjacent pixels in parallel Yes, quadpipe literally means 4 (pixel) pipelines. Also, why only two textures per pass on a Geforce when it is supposedly a four pipeline chip, like NVIDIA's trademark implies? You …

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Re: TMU & Pipeline Clarification

Posted on 2017-11-06, 19:17

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Yes, but does this then simply waste the resources whether one has one or two TMUs per pipeline? Yes, but if you only want one texture, then what else were you going to do with that TMU? :) Anyway, in the real world it is far more complicated... Different generations of hardware use TMUs …

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Re: TMU & Pipeline Clarification

Posted on 2017-11-06, 18:28

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Multitexturing using three textures when you have something capable of four. That's simple: NOP :) You can use however many textures you like, up to the maximum the hardware allows (if anything, that's required for backward compatibility with single-textured software). So if you have more TMUs than …

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Re: OPL2LPT

Posted on 2017-11-06, 15:59

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

But DSS means "Digisound only", OPL2LPT means FM-Music and no Digisound, two complete different things, or am I wrong here? Yes... however... There is a trick to make OPL2 play digital samples as well. Some games use this (I believe Supaplex is one). In theory you could create a TSR that simulates …

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Re: OPL2LPT

Posted on 2017-11-05, 11:14

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Simply redirecting Port will not work ? Status Lines are used for WR and other Stuff ? So the TSR does more then just redirection of port access. The OPL2 chip has two ports: 388h is the index port 389h is the data port Any register write is done by first writing the index of the register to 388h, …

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Re: Pentium 60/66 VLB board identification help needed...

Posted on 2017-11-04, 20:52

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

kanecvr wrote: Interesting. That means most traces go trough one of the middle layers of the board. But some go to the UMC chip - wonder what it does.. Judging from the datasheet, the UMC chip mostly supplies legacy PC/AT support, like the DMA controller, PIC, timer and CMOS chip.

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Re: Pentium 60/66 VLB board identification help needed...

Posted on 2017-11-04, 18:56

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The wiki page mentions an Opti chip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_Local_Bus Few Pentium motherboards with VLB slots were ever made, and used VLB-to-PCI bridges such as the OPTi 82C822. And a link to its datasheet: http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/opti/dataSheets/82C822_VESA_to_ …

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Re: Pentium 60/66 VLB board identification help needed...

Posted on 2017-11-04, 18:37

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Right now, it seems PCI performance is excellent, while VLB performance is meh. That is also how I remember Pentiums with VLB buses. The VLB bus connects directly to the 486 socket. I don't know how it is implemented on a Pentium, but I wouldn't be surprised if they need some kind of bridge chip. …

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Re: Someone have tried those cheap ebay VGA2HDMI converters?

Posted on 2017-11-04, 18:32

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Please send me the exact model or link. I just checked the Ebay link where I bought it some time ago. It's no longer available. I don't see it listed anywhere else. I'll have to see if I can find the manual somewhere... It's some random Chinese thing, but perhaps I can find some brand and/or model …

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Re: QBasic games.

Posted on 2017-11-04, 14:54

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

BeginnerGuy wrote: I feel like everybody had this game (including me). I think it was included with qbasic disks. Well, QBasic is the stripped version of Quick Basic that came with DOS. So everyone who had DOS 5.0 or later, had QBasic, and therefore gorilla.bas Earlier versions of DOS had GW-BASIC, …

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Re: OPL2LPT

Posted on 2017-11-04, 11:00

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

matze79 wrote: btw. where the hell can i purchase OPL2 IC's ? https://www.utsource.net/itm/p/816077.html https://www.utsource.net/itm/p/1714079.html (the DAC you need, YM3812 only outputs digital audio)

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Re: HX DOS extender?

Posted on 2017-11-03, 15:54

by

by Scali

in DOS

in DOS

What you propose is more like "get the sound card emulation code from DOSBox and run it natively in DOS". That's also theoretically doable. It might be worth looking into SoftMPU: http://bjt42.github.io/softmpu/ SoftMPU basically took the Roland MPU-401 emulation from DOSBox and uses v86 mode under …

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Re: hyper threading is only slower

Posted on 2017-11-03, 15:45

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I also noticed , with every cpu added to the benchmark , they yield diminishing results. Meaning if one cpu alone scores a 250 , adding all 4 yields a 700. It's quite clear they are having to share or fight for resources when all together are taxed. That's what's known as Amdahl's law. Scaling is …

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Re: Vintage amps: my experience so far

Posted on 2017-11-03, 15:34

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

Tubes behave in a far more benign fashion when driven to the limit where transistors (especially BJTs) respond with clipping and extraneous high frequency harmonics. The distortion happens to be more useful for you guitar people. Of course, amplifier design can have a strong influence on the sound …

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Re: Vintage amps: my experience so far

Posted on 2017-11-03, 13:06

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

For guitarists at least, the beauty of tubes is that they distort. The more they distort, the better. It not only gives a particular sound, but it also gives a particular feel to the guitar. As tubes distort, they also compress the signal, which means the guitar effectively becomes more responsive …

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Re: 486 DX-33 question

Posted on 2017-11-02, 20:07

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd like to point out that we are talking about an Intel 486DX-33 here. Other brands may run hotter (back then it was a good way to lower prices: tighter binning of the dies, then adding a cheap heatsink and/or fan, basically a 'factory overclock').

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