Re: Turbo switch functionality on high end 486 & early Pentium 1 systems

Posted on 2015-02-15, 14:03

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Moreover, it's a function of chipset and motherboard implementation. Indeed, the classic turbo switch just switches the clockspeed. On early 8088 machines you could generally switch it back to 4.77 MHz, so you'd get more or less the same speed as the original IBM PC/XT. On 286/386/486, it usually …

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Re: Programming... Would appreciate some advice from the experts and ideas for a simple DOS tool.

Posted on 2015-02-13, 10:46

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

There must be a reason why one is not readily available for DOS. My bets are on difficult Yup, for 640K machines, you can't even mount most floppy images in memory in the first place. So you'll need to do some kind of system that reads/writes sectors to/from HDD on-the-fly. For systems with EMS/XMS …

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Re: cutting edge 1993 video/sound

Posted on 2015-02-13, 07:46

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I could be mistaken, but I don't believe you need hardware MPEG decoders on a P120 for running 320x240 full screen video. Decoding Video-CD quality MPEG was possible on a P120 in software. The problem was the upscaling though. It helped if your videocard had hardware upscaling/filtering. I remember …

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Re: Pentuim 4 (478) need ideas?

Posted on 2015-02-11, 09:45

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Okay curiosity: what earlier than GF4 actually did MSAA? AFAIK GF4 was the first from nVidia, but did someone else actually get there first? Afaik the GF3 already had the same thing... I don't really count them as MSAA though. It's more of a hacked SSAA (afaik they only do the texture fetches once, …

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Re: cutting edge 1993 video/sound

Posted on 2015-02-11, 07:59

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think that you'll find graphics cards from 1993 all had their flaws. They were either fast in windows or fast in DOS, and some were just so so at both. I guess you could argue that Windows performance isn't very interesting, if you're looking mainly at a box for playing (DOS) games. I know I …

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Re: Pentuim 4 (478) need ideas?

Posted on 2015-02-11, 07:55

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

To note, GeForce 4 does support MSAA and AF (or do you mean that the R300 does those more efficiently?). Yes, that's what I meant. The Radeon 9500/9700 was the first to have efficient MSAA/AF, which you could actually use. GF4 and earlier had very bruteforce implementations that took a huge hit on …

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Re: Pentuim 4 (478) need ideas?

Posted on 2015-02-10, 22:30

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I'd keep the GeForce 4 over the Radeon 9550 - performance between them really won't be a lot different, and if the 9550 is a "cut down" 64-bit variant it may even be a downgrade. The only thing the 9550 may have a consistent advantage with is DVI compliance, but you'd have to know more about both …

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Re: The best way to get Quake up and running

Posted on 2015-02-10, 22:11

by

by Scali

in DOS

in DOS

I prefer to emulate it in DOSBox for purist reasons. Why emulate at all? WinQuake still works. It's pretty much the same as the DOS version, just running inside a simple DirectX-wrapper. Of course, GLQuake also works, which would still qualify for some values of 'pure', since it is an official ID …

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Re: cutting edge 1993 video/sound

Posted on 2015-02-10, 21:50

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not sure about "cutting edge", but, at least for me, Roland MT-32 and Sound Canvas were the devices you would read and dream about when I was a teenager. Why? MT-32 was quite outdated by 1993 standards, and Sound Canvas had decent quality sound, but wasn't quite as flexible as the Gravis UltraSound …

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Re: Innovation SSI 2001 re-engineering and/or conclusions

Posted on 2015-02-10, 16:13

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I would think the PC's PIT would take care of most basic CIA timing duties. However, if a SID tune relied on 6502 cycle exact code, then converting that code to 8086 machine instructions would prove very problematic. Digital sampling with the SID, like the stuff from Impossible Mission "Another …

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Re: Innovation SSI 2001 re-engineering and/or conclusions

Posted on 2015-02-10, 08:04

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

so it utilizes 6502 based instructions and relies on either the VIC or the CIA for timing. Normally a SID just contains an entry point that needs to be called at a given interval. The actual timing is not done by the code in the SID file, but by the program using the SID music. This is what it …

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Re: Innovation SSI 2001 re-engineering and/or conclusions

Posted on 2015-02-10, 07:52

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

If all else fails, wouldn't it be an option to create "sid dumps" (being just basic timing info and sid data) from .sid files, so you'd just have to send data to the ports on the card, rather than emulating a whole c64 enviroment at the same time. That's one way, but I think it would be difficult …

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Re: cutting edge 1993 video/sound

Posted on 2015-02-10, 07:46

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In 1993 I suppose the Gravis UltraSound was the card to have, especially for demos. Pair it with a Sound Blaster Pro/16 for Adlib/SB compatibility and you'd have a fine setup. That's what I was rocking around 1993 😀

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Re: Innovation SSI 2001 re-engineering and/or conclusions

Posted on 2015-02-09, 12:42

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Yes, I suppose the cards are not that expensive anyway, so you could just buy two cards, one with 6581 and one with 8580, and swap the cards, not the chips 😀

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Re: Innovation SSI 2001 re-engineering and/or conclusions

Posted on 2015-02-09, 10:51

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

For fully-assembled cards I also need to know, what SID will be installed in it. Because with 8580 there must be a 78L09 reg and filter caps 6.8nF, but for 6581 there must be short on +12 and 1nF caps. Would it be possible to design this in a way that you can easily switch between SID types using a …

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Re: Squeezing the absolute most performance out of a 486 system

Posted on 2015-02-08, 13:30

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

RacoonRider wrote: (as you remember, the original Socket 4 Pentium featured 2 FPUs). Hum, not sure what you mean here. Are you confusing FPUs with pipelines? All Pentiums have two integer pipelines (U and V pipe) and one FPU pipeline. There is no optional FPU socket or chip for any Pentium as far …

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Re: Squeezing the absolute most performance out of a 486 system

Posted on 2015-02-08, 11:53

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I wonder how well a PCI-based GeForce card would work in a 486 actually. A GeForce 2 MX400 worked well in my tests using an Am5x86-160 on a UMC8881-based Biostar MB-8433UUD. Using graphics cards which are more modern than the socket 3 generation of hardware is well documented in this thread, …

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Re: Squeezing the absolute most performance out of a 486 system

Posted on 2015-02-06, 10:58

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The 3D would struggle, because, in other words, it would be held back by FPU. That's what I meant :) Yes, but I think smeezekitty means that GPUs have taken over the role of the FPU by the time the GeForce arrived, with hardware T&L. If GPUs would evolve, they would just take over most of the FPU …

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Re: What's the deal with the SVHS-out in vga cards?

Posted on 2015-02-03, 14:40

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As far as resolution and whatnot - there isn't a fixed resolution for CVBS or Y/C, and especially with Y/C the card may be trying to send out something that's beyond what your tuner card can handle (usually videocards with Y/C output can do up to 800x600 on them, which some tuners, TVs, etc may not …

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Re: Got an Amiga?

Posted on 2015-02-03, 14:37

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

It was definitely a distant third-place after PC and Mac; It was quite popular here in the late 80s to early 90s, as was the Atari ST to some degree. PCs didn't really take over until 1993-1994 I guess. You guys had more of a scene dedicated to pushing the last ounce of those machines, as I recall. …

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