Re: Opinions on Perfect XP Machine

Posted on 2016-08-14, 22:06

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

so a fanboy I am not. You perpetuate nonsense spread by AMD fanbois. The driver update has optimizations for newer cards, and simply just keeps previous card drivers within itself. Thats a fact, and if you want to deny that or ignore it then you may in fact be the fanboy here. Please, don't try to …

---

Re: Opinions on Perfect XP Machine

Posted on 2016-08-14, 21:36

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh, and newest AMD driver for Win XP is Catalyst 14.4 (date : 04/25/2014). Newest from Nvidia is... 368.81 (date : 07/14/2016). ^^ This. That nvidia driver is a general update and doesnt include any optimizations for older cards. So the point is moot on that front. "I am in denial of your facts." …

---

Re: Opinions on Perfect XP Machine

Posted on 2016-08-14, 18:48

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I would say the XP period ended when market share of Windows 7 overtook XP, that is, late 2011. I guess it depends on context. I suppose in this case it's about a game machine. So the XP period ended at the time when games stopped supporting XP (DX10+ only games). I think that may have been even …

---

Re: differences between GUS / GUS MAX and GUS EXtreme

Posted on 2016-08-14, 18:27

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I want only know what signal is presenteted on a LINE OUT of a sound card when you play some game with FM synthesis. It should be always 8-bit and it does not matter if you use 8-bit or 16-bit card. Or is the signal resampled on 16-bit card like AWE 32 CT-3980 etc. from 8-bit to 16-bit? The line …

---

Re: Opinions on Perfect XP Machine

Posted on 2016-08-14, 14:21

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As we all eventually move towards Windows 10 and beyond it's becoming obvious that there will be an advantage to maintaining an XP machine for compatibility with older games. Slightly off-topic perhaps, but I also see advantages to patching games for portability. For the sake of digital longevity …

---

Re: differences between GUS / GUS MAX and GUS EXtreme

Posted on 2016-08-14, 12:30

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I thought 16-bit sampling not the bus. Are OPL3 chips able to play 16-bit samples or only 8-bit? OPL3 is an FM synthesizer, it doesn't play samples. That's why there's a separate DAC on SB and compatible cards for samples (an SB is basically an AdLib + DAC, because the original AdLib only had the …

---

Re: differences between GUS / GUS MAX and GUS EXtreme

Posted on 2016-08-14, 10:28

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

WSS FM synthesis s not fully supported and if there exists is FM synthesis played as 16-bit? On the original WSS there is a real OPL3 chip at the same address as on Adlib/SB cards, so it is fully compatible. Not sure what you mean with 8-bit or 16-bit. Are you talking about the ISA slot, or about …

---

Re: differences between GUS / GUS MAX and GUS EXtreme

Posted on 2016-08-14, 10:11

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Isn't that why they introduced the "VBE" or VESA 1.0/2.0 standard for higher resolution cards (not the Vesal Local Bus itself)? I recall that with games like Duke Nukem 3D, if your graphics card supported VESA 2.0 (or using UNIVBE), you could play at a higher resolution? Yea, VBE also tried this, …

---

Re: Help me find/estimate some 286 benchmark results

Posted on 2016-08-13, 19:52

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A 286 is just a few % faster(!) than a 386SX at the same clockspeed, so if you have 386SX results, you pretty much know what a 286 would do.

---

Re: differences between GUS / GUS MAX and GUS EXtreme

Posted on 2016-08-13, 17:45

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes, that makes sense. However, considering that most sound cards after 1992 were full 16-bit cards, but only supported 8-bit Sound Blaster "modes", whereas the Windows Sound System offered full 16-bit stereo playback, it would have been nice if it was more widely supported by developers (much like …

---

Re: differences between GUS / GUS MAX and GUS EXtreme

Posted on 2016-08-13, 14:37

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Come to think of it, I wonder why not more game developers directly supported the Windows Sound System under DOS, since most sound cards had either the AD1848 or CS4231 codec chip onboard and therefore had Windows Sound System compatiblity. That would have negated the need to directly support the …

---

Re: Looking for ATI Small Wonder software/utilities disk

Posted on 2016-08-13, 12:36

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's it, MS.COM! Just tried it and it works. You can have the card configured for Hercules from the dip switches enjoying clear text, run ms.com, select #4 and run a CGA game without loading SIMCGA. Yea, I believe you can even pass it command line parameters. So you could make a batch file that …

---

Re: Looking for ATI Small Wonder software/utilities disk

Posted on 2016-08-13, 11:43

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Here's the images of the two floppies that came with my Philips P3105: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1f8g7g0cwdr7ge4/Phi … sP3105.zip?dl=0 See the VIDEO subdirectory on the MS-DOS 3.21 disk.

---

Re: Looking for ATI Small Wonder software/utilities disk

Posted on 2016-08-13, 10:05

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have the contents, but it was not on a separate disk for me. It was a subdirectory of the MS-DOS floppy from my Philips P3105. I'll upload it somewhere.

---

Re: Properly emulating 80286+ multitasking protected mode with all exceptions etc.?

Posted on 2016-08-12, 10:30

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

But that would mean that the pointer it loads from is a signed number? Why? I'm not sure if you fully understand 2s completement notation. There is no sign for pointers, and even if there were, it'd be meaningless, as pointers are only added and subtracted, which is the same for signed and unsigned …

---

Re: Properly emulating 80286+ multitasking protected mode with all exceptions etc.?

Posted on 2016-08-11, 23:44

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Try mov ax,[ffff] in regular real mode (i.e. 64kb segments), you'll see the same thing. If I understand you correctly, mov al, [ffff] would work... but mov ax, [ffff] will read a byte from [ffff], which will work... but then it will read another byte from [ffff+1], and this will cause a fault? …

---

Re: differences between GUS / GUS MAX and GUS EXtreme

Posted on 2016-08-11, 20:46

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

OK. GUS Classic is a 16-bit/44 Khz card. GUS MAX is 48 KHz card. It's not quite that simple. The GUS Classic only has a GF1 chip, which is a hardware mixing device, basically a RAM-based wavetable synthesizer. It doesn't actually have a regular DAC at all (which also means it's poorly supported in …

---

Re: differences between GUS / GUS MAX and GUS EXtreme

Posted on 2016-08-11, 19:40

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A GUS classic is the 'standard' card, with only the GF1 synthesizer, and limited 8-bit recording. A GUS MAX is a GUS Classic with a stereo 16-bit codec on it, capable of recording and playback up to 48 KHz (this was also available as an option board for the Classic). A GUS Extreme is a GUS Classic …

---

Re: PCEm. Another PC emulator.

Posted on 2016-08-11, 17:36

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Looks like it does......according to the datasheet. https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2005/readings/hardware/8259A.pdf See page 9. Of course the datasheet isn't always right (learned that when bug fixing another emulator). It says the mask register is 'cleared'. But perhaps that means a value of …

---

Re: PCEm. Another PC emulator.

Posted on 2016-08-11, 15:17

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Did anyone else notice this? And is there a fix/workaround? I found the problem: the PIC mask is set to 0xFF, so the keyboard interrupts don't fire, which means the menu can't respond to keypresses. I think the problem may be this, in pic_write() (in file pic.c at line 106): if (val&16) /*ICW1*/ { …

---