Re: Windows 95 full chip requirements?

Posted on 2015-03-11, 21:42

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Real mode support has been dropped since Windows 3.1, so I'd bet on a definitive "no" even though I didn't search for any substantial proof to support my answer. But we just linked to an 8-bit ISA expansion card with a 386 CPU on it, enabling it to run 32-bit software. The only question is: what …

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Re: Planning a retro PC build

Posted on 2015-03-11, 17:39

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You will take a slight hit in the FPU department though. More than just a slight hit. I had a Cyrix 133+ at one time, and a Pentium 120. FPU-wise the Pentium was more than 3 times as fast. Of course, most applications aren't dictated solely by the FPU performance, but there is a big difference. The …

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Re: Planning a retro PC build

Posted on 2015-03-11, 17:36

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

USB support just reaches the level of usefulness in an i440BX motherboard. It is still USB 1.1, so you are limited to 12Mbit speeds. Mind you, you're not limited to the onboard USB ports. There are plenty of PCI cards around with USB2.0 ports. I use one as well in my Athlon and Celeron Northwood …

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Re: What's Your Favorite Socket7 Chipset?

Posted on 2015-03-10, 09:09

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I only had one socket 7 system, which had the original Triton 430FX chipset. Worked like a charm. Still does actually.

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Re: 286 Turbo

Posted on 2015-03-10, 08:59

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What about something like EZ-BIOS? I used that back in the day on my Pentium to bypass the size limits of the BIOS. It should work on most 16-bit IDE-based machines, possibly even 286. It's basically a BIOS extension that is installed in your boot sector. Simpler and cheaper than adding a ROM, if it …

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Re: Planning a retro PC build

Posted on 2015-03-10, 08:30

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think with 200MMX you'll need some hardware accelerated 3D of some sort if you want good fps on quake If you are going for regular 320x200, then a Pentium 75-90 and a decent PCI videocard should be enough. For higher resolutions, the requirements for CPU and videocard bandwidth go up very quickly …

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Re: Anything special about the ATI Radeon 7500?

Posted on 2015-03-10, 08:04

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

havli, I used to have a 8500 as a kid, great card! I still want to get one because of Truform, something to play Homeplanet the way it's meant to be played. I remember 9600 series supporting trueform via software. Do you know if 9800 supports it as well? :) I still have my Radeon 8500 in a Pentium …

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Re: Anything special about the ATI Radeon 7500?

Posted on 2015-03-09, 20:02

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

8500 is a nice chip with interesting features. Its various unique anti-aliasing modes are also notable. The lack of MSAA was a disadvantage however... ... What's particularly amazing is how much better texture filtering quality is with the R300 boards. Trilinear looks better and you don't have the …

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Re: Anything special about the ATI Radeon 7500?

Posted on 2015-03-09, 18:39

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

By the way I've never seen a Radeon 8500 match up to a GF4 regardless of PS1.4's theoretical advantages. The only in depth info I recall seeing about the reason for this was a post by John Carmack regarding his work on Doom3 for the GeForce3/4 and 8500. http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/finger.pl?id …

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Re: Anything special about the ATI Radeon 7500?

Posted on 2015-03-09, 18:16

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

GeForce FX supports PS1.4. Yeah they are PS2.0 cards but that's more of a feature bullet than a practical reality. :) All PS2.0+ cards support PS1.4. D3D enforces that you support all lower pixelshaders as well. But yes, FX was so bad that it was often better to run a game in PS1.4 mode than in PS2 …

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Re: [Build Log] ABIT KT7A-RAID Based System

Posted on 2015-03-09, 15:14

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I know it's far too late for troubleshooting this now, but I have a couple of theories about the problems you experienced. 1 - Your symptoms are very similar to the problems I had with my v1.0 KT7A-RAID when I tried to run more than 512mb RAM in it. After dropping to 512mb RAM, it worked fine. Well …

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Re: [Build Log] ABIT KT7A-RAID Based System

Posted on 2015-03-09, 14:05

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Fun to see an Abit KT7A still working with a Thunderbird 1400. I had a Tbird 1400 system myself, and the KT7A (non-raid edition) was my first board. It was never 100% stable (could be bad caps... if you turned it on, it just didn't do anything... leave it powered on for a few minutes, then reset, …

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Re: Anything special about the ATI Radeon 7500?

Posted on 2015-03-09, 12:33

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

These places seem to sell the same card, a 9000 with PCI bus and 256MB memory: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=V9000-P256 http://www.amazon.co.uk/ATI-Radeon-9000-Video … t/dp/B008R7UJD6 Seems to be the exact same card.

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Re: Anything special about the ATI Radeon 7500?

Posted on 2015-03-09, 08:24

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Radeon 9000 is the cutted Radeon 8500 with half of vertex/texturing units and w/o Trueform. Plus (not sure) there is no DX7 Hardware TCL. The DX7 hardware T&L will run via the vertex pipeline. So it is hardware-accelerated, but it's slightly slower than on the 8500/9100 because it has only vertex …

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Re: Are you also spoilt by high-end retro hardware?

Posted on 2015-03-08, 14:22

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

F2bnp wrote: GPUs have to go below 28nm. If you want a sub-28 nm GPU, just get an integrated Intel GPU 😀 How about one of them nice Broadwells with 14 nm GPU? 😀

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Re: Windows 95 full chip requirements?

Posted on 2015-03-05, 14:52

by

by Scali

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Any 386 will do. Software-wise, you can't tell the difference between an SX and a DX. The SX is just slower because of the 16-bit bus. But it has the exact same functionality. So it's just any 386, not specifically DX. I mean, if I would take a motherboard with only IBM PC components, as given by …

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Re: OpenWatcom 1.9-built binaries lock up on 8088 without FPU

Posted on 2015-03-04, 21:28

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Harekiet wrote: We gotta get some of these active watcom folks working on dosbox, I hear the original devs are way too lazy I heard those devs are too busy doing a Revision prod.

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Re: OpenWatcom 1.9-built binaries lock up on 8088 without FPU

Posted on 2015-03-04, 13:22

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Small update: I've been using my own libs for a while now, and both the -fpc (direct calls to FPU emulation) and the -fpi (emit int call + x87 opcode) compiler options work fine on 8088 without FPU, and on machines with FPU (I have no 8088 with FPU, but I assume that works as well). I have reported …

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Re: Are you also spoilt by high-end retro hardware?

Posted on 2015-03-03, 11:52

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

Actually, for me it's the other way around... Because my hobby mainly revolves around writing code for vintage computers, I have very low demands on a modern system. As long as it can run DOSBox, Vice and WinUAE, it's fine. For example, recently I bought a new laptop because the old one (yes Core2 …

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Re: Are 486 computers easier to work with than 386 machines?

Posted on 2015-03-03, 08:10

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The whole thread is about '320K' disks/drives. These do exist, but the most common format is 360K. Otherwise it is true indeed that 360K disks and 1.2M drives tend to have compatibility issues.

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