Re: Graphical issues with open GL on a Geforce 256

Posted on 2016-09-18, 14:50

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm using the original drivers from asus (asus provides custom nvidia 43.x drivers for this card). A likely culprit. OpenGL tends to be rather buggy. So the game probably only works correctly with certain versions of the drivers, and your custom drivers probably aren't among them. I would suggest …

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Re: i486 DX2 66 vs Am486 DX2 66 and the winner is...

Posted on 2016-09-18, 10:12

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No, not quite. The cross license was originally in place as a condition of IBM using Intel technology in the PC. That's not a cross-license. That was the original license for production of second-source x86 CPUs. It was about chip designs, which is why it had to be renewed for every new CPU. The …

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Re: i486 DX2 66 vs Am486 DX2 66 and the winner is...

Posted on 2016-09-18, 08:41

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So... a "reverse engineered" Intel 486 DX2, is as fast as the original chip. Or did AMD had a license to made 486 clones ? Nope, AMD never had a license for using Intel's 386 or 486 designs. AMD claimed they did, and just cloned the CPUs. Intel sued them, and AMD was found guilty of using Intel's …

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Re: i486 DX2 66 vs Am486 DX2 66 and the winner is...

Posted on 2016-09-18, 08:34

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What strikes me about intel's DX4 chips is how poorly they overclock - if at all. A 66MHz AMD DX2 will often OC to 100MHz Oh really? That's more of a 'luck of the draw', or at least having a very late model, built on a mature process, more than anything. I had an early Am486DX2-66 back in the day, …

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Re: i486 DX2 66 vs Am486 DX2 66 and the winner is...

Posted on 2016-09-18, 08:30

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's in that 3% margin of error, so I consider it a tie. Interesting though, that when there is a difference, it's always the Intel that is on top. :) Not surprising, since AMD basically just reverse-engineered the 386 and 486 designs from Intel. They're pretty much a carbon-copy. They didn't …

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Re: Pipeline Burst Cache (Pentium COASt Module era)

Posted on 2016-09-18, 07:56

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had two Pentiums with a burst cache module. Never had a problem. Perhaps some boards and/or modules had lousy quality connectors. But mine didn't suffer any problems. It's very similar to a PCI slot, just a tiny edge connector. It's used for tons of hardware, and generally not very troublesome.

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Re: IBM PC AT&Generic Super PC/Turbo XT BIOS hangs on UniPCemu's 286 emulation?

Posted on 2016-09-16, 07:15

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Which ones are used in the IBM PC(/AT)? Do I need to worry about interleaved reads/writes(including BIOSes)? The PC and XT use 8253's. The AT system manual is strange. It says 8253-5 in the system diagram, but 8254-2 in the paragraph about the system timer. I think they should use 8254's, and the …

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Re: IBM PC AT&Generic Super PC/Turbo XT BIOS hangs on UniPCemu's 286 emulation?

Posted on 2016-09-15, 19:42

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Yes, the latch command should only 'freeze' the counter value until the bytes are read. It should not affect the configuration of the PIT. That's what 'latching' means: it copies the current counter value to an internal register, and the next read command will get the value of that register (rather …

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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 2016-09-15, 19:23

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

Interesting, this model looks slightly similar to the Amiga 1500/2000 series! The 386SX-16 we got after that was a Commodore as well, it was similar to the Amiga 4000 styling: http://www.richardlagendijk.nl/foto/cip/computer_pc386_16_01.jpg And yes, the PC10/20-III actually used a MOS chip for the …

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Re: Release: RATillery, an artillery game for PC

Posted on 2016-09-15, 18:57

by

by Scali

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

The game waits for vsync by polling port 3DAh, however it seems that on a Hercules card, it is in fact port 3BAh bit 7 that should be polled. The status bit is also 'inverted' compared to the vsync status on CGA... So Hercules sets the bit to 1 when it is not in vsync, while CGA sets the bit to 1 …

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Re: EGA monitor backwards compatibility (with CGA)

Posted on 2016-09-08, 14:33

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes, EGA in 200-line mode is the same as CGA. So an EGA monitor will work on CGA... And most EGA cards can be configured to only support 200-line mode, so they can be used with a CGA card (of course you won't have the extra resolution and colours).

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Re: Got some 8088 stuff today: now what?

Posted on 2016-09-08, 07:17

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

AFAIK only the resistors impacted on 8088MPH. Scali does mention the Hitachi CRTC's Hsync width difference on his blog , but I don't know if it impacts on the demo. Yes, the difference in the resistors (it's the DAC ladder that converts RGBI colours to analog) results in slightly different colours …

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Re: Release: RATillery, an artillery game for PC

Posted on 2016-09-07, 09:00

by

by Scali

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Very nice, I will have to test it on my IBM PC/XT soon. Also: I composed the music using MONOTONE. I use the Disk Writer function which saves the values one must write to the registers controlling the PC speaker to reproduce the music. I hope you took a recent version of MONOTONE from the GitHub: …

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Re: GUS MAX 2.1 installation problem

Posted on 2016-09-04, 18:30

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

CD-ROM drivers eat up a lot of memory. You'll probably want to use EMM386.EXE to allow UMBs, and then you can load the drivers into 'high memory', leaving more free conventional memory. Pretty advanced topic, there's probably some guides somewhere on this or other sites.

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Re: Got some 8088 stuff today: now what?

Posted on 2016-09-03, 09:23

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

GPIB is mainly used for industrial/lab type equipment. Eg, connecting an oscilloscope or counter to a PC. I've used GPIB at work with some Agilent (formerly HP) equipment not too long ago. So the fact that this card came with the batch is an indication that the PC has been used in some kind of …

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Re: Any opinions on this VLB video card?

Posted on 2016-09-02, 21:32

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It looks like I might go with this card if someone can just clarify whether or not this is an OEM card or retail card. I think it's impossible to tell. Back in those days, the difference between OEM and retail was often how things were packaged. OEM was just a bunch of cards in antistatic bags, …

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Re: Any opinions on this VLB video card?

Posted on 2016-09-02, 16:24

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yup, I have a Diamond SpeedStar Pro VLB in my 486, which uses the same CL chip. They were very good performers back in the day. 1 MB is probably enough for a 486, because most games only support 320x200 or 320x240... or they would be too slow to run in the kind of high resolution that would require …

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Re: You don´t know Jack 3 Windows 3.x????

Posted on 2016-09-02, 14:46

by

by Scali

in DOSBox Games/Apps

in DOSBox Games/Apps

Yup, some early Win95 games could also be run with Win32s, and some of them even made use of 'WinG', which can be seen as the predecessor to DirectX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinG Both can be installed on top of Windows 3.x, perhaps that makes Jack 3 work.

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Re: Got some 8088 stuff today: now what?

Posted on 2016-09-02, 10:06

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It looks like a clone board since I don't see IBM anywhere on it, but some of the chips are labeled IBM, so I don't know. Indeed, both the motherboard and the CGA card are original IBM. IBM didn't label the PCBs for some reason. I suppose one reason why could be that it is IBM: what else could it …

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Re: Got some 8088 stuff today: now what?

Posted on 2016-09-02, 07:37

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Amd was making Intel processors under licence, because ibm only wanted to use the x86 processor when there was a second source they could use. Yup, the AMD CPUs were exactly the same, transistor-for-transistor (as were the other second-source CPUs from eg Siemens and Harris). In fact, it's rather …

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