Re: Matrox videocards - functional test (Mystique, G100, G200, G450 etc).

Posted on 2023-05-03, 21:57

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Even if the card was said to be more "gaming oriented", they barely admit it on the box. The Parhelia is very quirky. It supports Vertex Shader 2.0, and I believe it was actually the first card on the market to do so. But it 'only' supports Pixel Shader 1.3, which means it's not a 'full' Shader …

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Re: Matrox videocards - functional test (Mystique, G100, G200, G450 etc).

Posted on 2023-05-03, 13:21

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I'm not sure how I feel about my Mystique. I see it more as a dos card, something like a Socket 7 build. In DOS though, Matrox has a somewhat limited implementation of VESA BIOS Extensions. They only expose modes of 640x480 and higher, where you usually want 320x200 or 320x240 truecolour modes for …

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Re: Technically impressive FM synth music

Posted on 2023-05-03, 13:06

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

Yeah, those VGM rips have YM2203 commands (0x55) and YM2608 part 1 commands (0x56) mixed together. I don't know if a PC-98 can have both sound chips installed at the same time or what. But the header doesn't have a YM2608 clock so it doesn't even make sense. The YM2608 is backward-compatible with …

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Re: CGA vs Composite

Posted on 2023-05-02, 21:13

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A complication that CGA has, is that it uses 16 colours RGBI, and has the 'brown' hack for what would normally be 'dark yellow'. I've looked at some monitors and terminals from the late 70s and early 80s, and it seems that it was common that they had 8-colour RGB... so no intensity. I haven't yet …

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Re: CGA vs Composite

Posted on 2023-05-02, 15:00

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Since I'm European, I can't say much about it, I guess. I vaguely remember a story about the creation of the SMB3 clone, though. The people involved had stolen, err, borrowed their office PCs from workplace over weekend to finish the game. Or so I heard. Maybe they had EGA cards, thus, which had no …

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Re: CGA vs Composite

Posted on 2023-05-02, 13:43

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Many Commodore monitors, including the popular 1084, were made by Philips, which was one of the leading brands of CRTs and broadcasting equipment at the time. I have a Philips MDA/Hercules monitor in the same look as the 1084, and it's the best I've ever seen. It's an amber screen with relatively …

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Re: CGA vs Composite

Posted on 2023-05-02, 12:39

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Interesting theory, except that composite output wasn't even available on many CGA clones. I have seen a few monochrome CGA monitors, but they just used the 9-pin RGBI connector. Here's an example of a monochrome CGA monitor (actually it is dual-sync, it can do both MDA and CGA, which was common for …

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Re: CGA vs Composite

Posted on 2023-05-02, 11:14

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

CGA (as in RGBI). Composite monitors weren't much of a thing for personal computers. They mainly existed for broadcasting. There were some available for home computers, but since most home computers had an RF output built in, most people would just use a television. A monitor was a luxury item for …

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Re: The year is 1990 and you still have a PC/XT and can't upgrade. Which games are you playing?

Posted on 2023-05-01, 15:52

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

And I've seen plenty of HGC/CGA clones in the wild, but never a single Small Wonder. My Philips P3105 came with one as standard. Unfortunately, CGA over RCA/Cinch output was often monochrome only, so no Composite CGA. At least here in Europe/PAL countries. The color-burst circuit was missing, I …

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Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2023-05-01, 11:12

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

But that's exactly my point of critique. MDA and CGA were sub standard. Not useful. Blame IBM, it's their standard. Hercules was the defacto standard in real life, not plain MDA. Period. Not really. That's why *all* the third-party companies did support at least something in addition. They did it …

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Re: The year is 1990 and you still have a PC/XT and can't upgrade. Which games are you playing?

Posted on 2023-05-01, 08:33

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

Some rare Hercules/CGA combo cards apparently even supported Hercules mode over analogue RCA/Cinch connector, I heard. Not rare, the rather common ATi Graphics Solution/Small Wonder can do that. It supports both Hercules and CGA modes, and it can output CGA on MDA/Hercules monitors (without needing …

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Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2023-04-30, 17:36

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As already said: the point was that you could run PC software, using the Amiga display. If you also had to buy a separate monitor it would mostly defeat the point, as it would make the solution even more costly, and it would also require more desk space. The MS-DOS sessions can even run in a window …

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Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2023-04-30, 15:22

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The PC standard reserves all memory from segment A000 and beyond for BIOS and memory-mapped hardware. So the limit for conventional memory has always been 640k, officially. EGA was the first device popular device that used A000, so this also made 640k the practical limit for conventional memory. As …

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Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2023-04-30, 14:55

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I guess you had to be there. I've never even seen an AT&T 6300 machine. Yes it was supported on paper, but who was actually using one? Most people used a PC clone with either CGA or Hercules. EGA was only used on expensive high-end PCs. EGA never was very successful. I've only ever seen a single …

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Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2023-04-30, 14:12

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't think so. They were useful for productive software, the often mentioned purpose of the sidecar/bridgeboard. Except most software didn't support them out-of-the-box, and patches/drivers to use these special modes were rare. I had a Commodore PC10-III with Plantronics support, and I rarely …

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Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2023-04-30, 12:54

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There's something about Commodore I didn't understand, though. Their PC range of computers of the 1980s had an "AGA" graphics card installed (not to be confused by the Amiga's AGA chipset). And this card/chip was clearly supperior to CGA. The "AGA" is just a Paradise PVC2 or PVC4, depending on the …

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Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2023-04-30, 10:59

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

To me, these comparisons between C64 and Amiga are somewhat strange and anachronistic. The C64 is an older machine, and was in a completely different pricerange by the time the Amiga came around. A lot of people who owned an Amiga, had had a C64 before. It's like the Amiga was the 16-bit upgrade to …

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Re: Computer hardware 20 years ago.

Posted on 2023-04-28, 18:19

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

To me a wider architecture means doing more things in parallel, more pipelines more execute units and so on. While I will not argue that there is a real point in comparing CPUs and GPUs I do consider GPUs in general to be wider architectures but as you say not necessarily in bits of addressing …

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Re: Computer hardware 20 years ago.

Posted on 2023-04-28, 17:34

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On the GPU-side wider architectures are more common. That's because they count differently. '64-bit' in terms of x86 CPUs means the register size and address space. More specifically, it means register size for general purpose integer instructions. x86 also supports SIMD extensions like MMX, SSE …

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Re: YouTube-commenter claiming "SLI"-support on PowerVR PCX2

Posted on 2023-04-28, 10:17

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Well, based on their documentation here: https://github.com/powervr-graphics/PowerVR-Series1/blob/main/Documentation/1995-05-04_PowerVR_PCX1_Brochure_for_CGDC.pdf The architecture is actually designed to be 'scalable', and they show an example diagram of an 'arcade design' which uses 4 ISPs and one …

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