Re: How fast is the nec v20 compared to a 286?

Posted on 2016-08-25, 13:17

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

I have a 10mhz v30, and the benchmarks I ran put it in the same league as a 10MHz 286. And how does a regular 8086 at 10 Mhz compare in those benchmarks? Another issue with '286' is that it's rather meaningless. There is so much variation in chipset/motherboard performance from that class of …

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Re: PCI-E soundcards with FM chip?

Posted on 2016-08-25, 08:50

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, I don't know much about the intricacies of the PCI-E, PCI and ISA BUSes or how games work with those... but I'd lean toward that information being incorrect. Soundblaster\Pro compatibility would imply that you could install that into a PCI-E slot, install DOS and use the card with a …

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Re: Duke Nukem 2 ADPCM fix?

Posted on 2016-08-25, 08:10

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

By the way, I'll have to check my SB Pro V2 software. I seem to recall it had some software to record, compress and play VOC files, including ADPCM ones. Might also have a decompressor in there.

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Re: How fast is the nec v20 compared to a 286?

Posted on 2016-08-25, 07:34

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by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

I think a V20 8mhz should be even fast as a 286-6 mhz probably. Not a chance. Why do people hype these V20/V30 CPUs so much? In a lot of software you can't even tell the difference between a regular 8088/8086 or a V20/V30. A 286-6 is probably twice as fast as an 8088 at 8 MHz on average. A V20 …

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Re: DOS on a Mac Mini

Posted on 2016-08-25, 07:19

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by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As I said on other post, DOS won't work with USB keyboards. On PC it can work because most BIOS have a legacy option that re-routes keypresses through standard PC ports (0x60?), but that option does not exist on Mac. In theory you can make this work in DOS as well. I mean, if the BIOS can do it, …

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Re: DOS on a Mac Mini

Posted on 2016-08-25, 07:17

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What I meant was that you would have a fast, but very limited DOS box. Why? Because you don't have drivers? That doesn't make sense, as you can see. As for the drivers, you would need them for Windows or other GUIs that run on top of DOS. Yes, but the topic was never "Windows or other GUIs", and …

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Re: 486 DX4 100Mhz - which brand to buy

Posted on 2016-08-24, 09:23

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Anonymous Coward wrote: All have 16kb, but aren't many of them actually WT? It was my understanding only the &EW models support write back. You're right, the earlier 'P24C' models are WT, the later 'P24D' ones are WB.

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Re: DOS on a Mac Mini

Posted on 2016-08-24, 07:13

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

HAHAHAHaHaHahahaha... Fueh... If was so easy, Marvin section wouldn't exist at all :-P. It's true though. DOS only uses BIOS routines for video and disk IO. DOS applications that use graphics or audio will poke the hardware directly. Which is why your hardware generally needs to be register- …

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Re: DOS on a Mac Mini

Posted on 2016-08-24, 07:09

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

hyoenmadan wrote: VESA modes are broken. Sounds like the perfect early 90s DOS experience if you ask me 😀

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Re: 486 DX4 100Mhz - which brand to buy

Posted on 2016-08-24, 07:07

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you go for a DX4-100, then Intel is a safe bet, because they all have 16KB write-back cache, the best possible configuration. With AMD, there's both 8KB and 16KB variations. The 8KBs will be slower than the Intels. Not sure if the 16KB are as fast as Intel, but probably close enough. So you have …

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Re: DOS on a Mac Mini

Posted on 2016-08-23, 15:00

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As far as I have heard, bootcamp need X86 cpu's. Yup, it's just a 'shim' to boot a regular x86 version of Windows, and run it 'natively'. On PowerPC Macs, you'd use VirtualPC to run DOS/Windows: https://www.microsoft.com/australia/office/mac/virtualpc7/default.aspx This was a dynamic recompiling …

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Re: Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea

Posted on 2016-08-23, 14:27

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

People should be required to have a clue about the things they want to vote about. Having an opinion based on ignorance and cluelessness is bad enough... Using such opinions to cast votes about important decisions should be a crime.

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Re: DOS on a Mac Mini

Posted on 2016-08-23, 14:21

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Even if you have DOS booting, it would be useless because you don't have any drivers for sound, video, or lan. VGA support is limited. You'll end up with one speedy little command.com box. DOS doesn't need drivers. It accesses hardware directly. As long as you get register-compatible VGA support, …

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Re: PNY Geforce 6200 and AGP

Posted on 2016-08-23, 12:03

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It has the usual AGP 4x connector but the chip should support the AGP 8x? Can I use it with a AGP 1/2/4x mobo without breaking anything? AGP is backward/forward compatible to a certain extent, so you can make AGP slots and cards that support multiple speeds. The general rule is: if the card …

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Re: What is this card?

Posted on 2016-08-23, 08:55

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's a high density 15 port connector, so maybe some special type of game port breakout? That is also my guess. It looks like they had trouble fitting the volume knob and all the inputs-outputs on the back, so they used a smaller VGA-style connector rather than the regular 15-pin D-sub connector …

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Re: DOS on a Mac Mini

Posted on 2016-08-23, 07:14

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

How does Bootcamp work on a Mac? I mean, if they put Windows on a separate partition, then do some stuff so that they can go from EFI to the NT BOOTMGR, then in theory you should be able to make a multiboot BOOTMGR configuration, and add a DOS installation to it. If they replace the NT BOOTMGR with …

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Re: How fast is the nec v20 compared to a 286?

Posted on 2016-08-22, 22:34

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

i think you cannot compare mips numbers directly; their meaning for real performance depends on width of the machine word at least; i also think there will be machines which will do more with less instructions especially if were looking at a given set of problems to solve for that given machine; I …

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Re: How fast is the nec v20 compared to a 286?

Posted on 2016-08-22, 21:44

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

Heh, that seems rather crazy. The V20 is the 8088-compatible version, so it is limited by an 8-bit bus and chipset. It's a few percent faster than a regular 8088 at the same clockspeed, but still way slower than a 286. Even the V30 (8086-compatible, so 16-bit bus) will be slower than a 286. The 286 …

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Re: Using custom bytecode to implement CPU cycle accuracy?

Posted on 2016-08-22, 11:46

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Would this result in better and more accurate CPU emulation than a simple function doing all above(except the ModR/M instruction reading)? I think the main advantage would be that it's easier to develop and maintain. Instead of having a function for each instruction, you just write a list of ' …

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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 2016-08-22, 09:22

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by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'm not sure what the question is exactly... But 1990 was the year that I upgraded my XT-clone to a 386SX-16. So in 1990 I still had an 'XT'. However, it was a turbo machine, 8088 at 9.54 MHz, and I had it upgraded with a Paradise VGA card, 20 MB HDD and a joystick card. So quite a bit more capable …

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