Re: Full-screen mode

Posted on 2016-08-08, 19:55

by

by Scali

in DOSBox Patches

in DOSBox Patches

I think we have to distinguish between aspect ratio and effective resolution here. That is, you can reprogram CGA/EGA/VGA/Hercules in a number of ways, some of which include merely changing the visible window. The aspect ratio is not dictated by the visible window, but rather by the actual scanline …

---

Re: Full-screen mode

Posted on 2016-08-07, 16:41

by

by Scali

in DOSBox Patches

in DOSBox Patches

Flashback was originally an Amiga game, which runs in a PAL resolution of 320x256, so a different aspect ratio than what you'd have on PC. So it always looked a bit 'stretched' vertically on PC.

---

Re: GTX 970 "3.5GB Edition" $30 refund in the USA

Posted on 2016-08-04, 07:47

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'm still waiting for the 3.5GB issue to really surface in a game. Yeah you can test for it with CUDA or whatever, but in games the card has always been a great value for its performance level. Even Tech Report's fancy frame time charts always look good. Indeed, I bought my GTX970 after the 3.5 GB …

---

Re: Full-screen mode

Posted on 2016-08-03, 16:27

by

by Scali

in DOSBox Patches

in DOSBox Patches

Should be easy enough to find games in 320x200 or Hercules 720x350. Most early DOS games will support CGA, EGA, VGA and Hercules. Prince of Persia for example. For 320x240 you could check out Mode X games, I think DOOM uses the 320x240 mode. Else try Quake, it supports various modes. Then you need …

---

Re: DirectX/hardware downgrade

Posted on 2016-08-03, 13:55

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yea might just be a odd combination of GF3, driver and whatnot. Because I remember having DX9 installed with Voodoo cards and the game Incoming never had any issues. Yup, that makes sense, because DirectX is unusual in the sense that each major version has its own interfaces. So having DX9 …

---

Re: DirectX/hardware downgrade

Posted on 2016-08-03, 11:41

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I guess it's obvious that a DX8 card needs DX8 installed :blush: Actually, that doesn't really make sense. For games that use DX7 or lower, you're still not touching any DX8 code. They're even using the same old device driver interface (DDI) to the video driver (you can see which DDI is used in …

---

Re: DirectX/hardware downgrade

Posted on 2016-08-03, 07:23

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Don't new versions of DirectX sometimes include new hardware drivers? If you're talking about the runtime installer, no, that does not include any hardware drivers whatsoever. The runtime is just an abstraction layer on top of the driver model. However, new versions of DirectX sometimes require an …

---

Re: DirectX/hardware downgrade

Posted on 2016-08-02, 16:57

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

swaaye wrote: VXD drivers don't necessarily like DirectX beyond 7.0a. Whatever the reason may be. Perhaps, but even so, as long as you don't actually use any software that tries to access DX8 or higher, it shouldn't matter that you have it installed.

---

Re: GTX 970 "3.5GB Edition" $30 refund in the USA

Posted on 2016-08-02, 13:26

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

They lied about the available ROPs, too. From what I understood, the number of ROPs came from the reviewer's guide, where the specs were accidentally copy-pasted from the 980, without being adjusted in the right places. NVidia does not specify this kind of information in the specs on its websites, …

---

Re: is emm386 essential for loading dos into upper memory?

Posted on 2016-08-02, 09:33

by

by Scali

in DOS

in DOS

emm386 is just a "driver" and enables UMB and EMS. I'd like to clarify this... EMM386 is not 'just' a driver. It switches the CPU to v86 mode (requiring a 386) and then emulates an EMS card by remapping physical memory to an EMS 'window' in a very similar way that a real EMS card would do. It is …

---

Re: DirectX/hardware downgrade

Posted on 2016-08-02, 07:19

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

IMO there is no reason to use a DirectX version beyond what a game requires. And if you really need DirectX 8, just use Windows 2000 or XP. I'd turn it the other way around: There's usually no reason not to use the latest DirectX version, since DirectX is based on COM interfaces. Each version of …

---

Re: GTX 970 "3.5GB Edition" $30 refund in the USA

Posted on 2016-08-02, 07:11

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

The funny thing is that they used to be fine with "odd" numbers (i.e., anything not an integer in GB e.g. 768MB 8800GTX, 896MB 260/275 and 1792MB 295, 1280MB 470/570 and 2560MB version, 1536MB 480/580). So showing/advertising just "3584MB" would have been perfectly alright. But there actually is 4 …

---

Re: Edge antialising before FSAA

Posted on 2016-08-02, 07:08

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Arctic wrote: The Permedia 2 seems to support edge antialiasing as well: ftp://ftp.fau.de/netbsd/misc/cegger/hw_manual … abs/p2_arch.pdf Only for sprites though, not for 3d rendering, it seems. Only does FSAA for that.

---

Re: Lost my colors on my CGA composite output

Posted on 2016-08-01, 21:42

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The only game that did not behave as before was PakuPaku, where the colors are gone. All other games/demos behave as expected. If I'm not mistaken, Paku Paku uses a 160x100 tweaked textmode, which is based off an 80 column mode. CGA does not enable the colorburst signal in 80 column mode over …

---

Re: Full-screen mode

Posted on 2016-08-01, 18:11

by

by Scali

in DOSBox Patches

in DOSBox Patches

Could you name several such ill-fitting graphical modes with corresponding games that I might test them? Wouldn't know any games offhand... but well... your regular CGA/EGA/VGA lowres is 320x200, then various Mode X games are 320x240, Hercules is 720x350, EGA hires is 640x350... So that shows what …

---

Re: is emm386 essential for loading dos into upper memory?

Posted on 2016-08-01, 09:09

by

by Scali

in DOS

in DOS

You can disable EMS memory if some game isn't compatible with it. There isn't a lot of software that takes advantage of EMS. I would suggest not using any EMS unless an application needs it. Most software uses XMS. And yes, there is software that needs a lot of memory and isn't compatible with …

---

Re: AMD DX2 vs Intel DX2 66mhz

Posted on 2016-08-01, 05:43

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Anonymous Coward wrote: There were 5V versions of the am486DX2. I used to have a bunch, and they ran hot. Yea, I had a 5v Am486DX2-66, which needed a heatsink+fan. The CPU died after about 2 years.

---

Re: Full-screen mode

Posted on 2016-07-31, 22:21

by

by Scali

in DOSBox Patches

in DOSBox Patches

You mean non-square pixels? I plan to approximate them by representing each pixel on the display as an m-by-n rectangle, where m and n are small natural numbers. I don't think that's going to work very well, if you use the same m and n for all pixels on screen. The amount of 'non-squareness' of …

---

Re: Full-screen mode

Posted on 2016-07-31, 18:30

by

by Scali

in DOSBox Patches

in DOSBox Patches

In other words, openglnb is not pixel-perfect at non-integer scales Well, it's pretty much a given that if you don't scale with integers, you can't have pixel-perfect stretching, that's by definition :) But I suppose you mean to say you want to have a 'nearest integer fit'. How do you intend to …

---

Re: AMD DX2 vs Intel DX2 66mhz

Posted on 2016-07-31, 15:02

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Its why I don't blame AMD for inventing the PR scheme which many said was a marketing scam, no our chips are just more efficient Cyrix used the PR-rating before AMD did, on their 6x86 series. The rating in itself is not necessarily a scam, although trying to capture the performance of a CPU …

---