Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2019-09-09, 23:16

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I found this... thing. No idea what a THMAG Translation Controller is, but I couldn't get over the fact that someone making industrial prototypes for a freaking space agency saw fit to etch the front panel entirely in Comic Sans. CameraZOOM-20190909123249731.jpg CameraZOOM-20190909123951319. …

---

Re: ITX format DOS / W98 gaming

Posted on 2019-09-05, 11:48

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If your VIA motherboard has onboard audio, there's a good chance it's the 82C686B southbridge which has really good built-in DOS support. Use the PCI slot for a video card instead & you'll have a decent little system.

---

Re: Doom 4 Vanilla

Posted on 2019-09-04, 19:37

by

by xjas

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

MS-DOS VERSION RELEASED! PREPARE YOUR 386!!!! My 386 would choke on this but my 233MMX sure is ready! Neat project.

---

Re: Off the grid

Posted on 2019-09-04, 18:32

by

by xjas

in Milliways

in Milliways

^^ To make it worse, I'm on an island & a lot of people here seem to hate anything modern or anything associated with 'the mainland', so there's no real incentive to upgrade infrastructure when you can just charge people more to use the same old crap. Just to clarify, you can get WAY faster internet …

---

Re: Anything worth keeping from this lot?

Posted on 2019-09-04, 08:00

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The weird case on top of the desktop Compaq is actually a very odd system - some sort of 1990 terminal designed to send and receive Fax and Telex stuff. Everything is super proprietary, and I have no idea what kind of CPU is even in there. It actually still works - I've advertised it locally but …

---

Re: Show us your IBM Compatible PC games collection

Posted on 2019-09-04, 06:50

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

You changed the title to "IMB Compatable." I've done the heathen thing and mixed the games for all different types of PCs, including Macs, Amigas, C64s, "IBM compatibles", etc. together on the same shelf, so I guess I'm disqualified from this thread.

---

Re: Off the grid

Posted on 2019-09-03, 20:29

by

by xjas

in Milliways

in Milliways

I hate "talking on the phone" too. I would happily ditch my phone & carry around a wifi tablet all the time if there were a convenient way to send text messages over the internet (and have them appear on the recipient's phone as a normal SMS coming from "my" "number".) Anyone know a non-sleazy way …

---

Re: The most RAM I have ever had in a computer

Posted on 2019-08-31, 19:56

by

by xjas

in Milliways

in Milliways

There are some Linux distros (i.e. Puppy) which create a RAM disk on boot and then load themselves entirely into it. I wish the "big" OSes would start doing that. They could keep a 'mirror' of themselves on disk and rsync all changes to the disk mirror every 10 mins or on shutdown. We're finally at …

---

Re: Socket A and AGP Voodoo 3 ?

Posted on 2019-08-31, 05:09

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't see why you'd worry about it; if you want to drive a Voodoo3 with a fast machine, this is the way to do it. Sure, the V3 will bottleneck the system a bit, but it does scale & it'll play Glide games at higher framerates than any "period correct" platform could. There wouldn't be any advantage …

---

Re: Super Mario 64's source code has been decompiled and officially released

Posted on 2019-08-31, 00:22

by

by xjas

in Milliways

in Milliways

^^ YES PLEASE.

---

Re: I got a Dell 486 - my ultimate 486 build log!

Posted on 2019-08-30, 23:45

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Nice find, love that caddy-load CD-ROM drive with the MPC logo. You're lucky you got a caddy along with it as those are pretty hard to find. I think that drive was offered along with the SB16 as a Creative "Multimedia kit."

---

Re: Super Mario 64's source code has been decompiled and officially released

Posted on 2019-08-30, 21:01

by

by xjas

in Milliways

in Milliways

Somebody in the GBAtemp thread made a snark about an RTX port. I would LEGIT LOVE to see that happen. I had to look up 'RTX'! It's ray-tracing, for anyone else who didn't know. What I don't know is why they used Quake 2 to demonstrate ray-tracing, as it wasn't exactly the most colourful game to …

---

Re: Super Mario 64's source code has been decompiled and officially released

Posted on 2019-08-30, 00:39

by

by xjas

in Milliways

in Milliways

Somebody in the GBAtemp thread made a snark about an RTX port. I would LEGIT LOVE to see that happen.

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-08-27, 03:04

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks man! Still doesn't tell me how to open the thing, but I'll take it. Apparently the WL5 5 is a slightly revised model with at least one feature mine doesn't have: DOS disk compatibility. Oh well, my drive doesn't work yet anyway... I don't think it will turn out to be particularly useful as-is …

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-08-27, 01:12

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

oh no, now I have to sort through all of these :lol: Gravis Grip Multiport including 4 gamepads a bunch of Saitek pads, Logitech Wingman, several other multi-adapters and pads 2x Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro, 1x Sidewinder Joystick Gravis and several others... not pictured: I also got a CH …

---

Re: Anyone have SounDWorX MIDPlay v1.0?

Posted on 2019-08-26, 10:02

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I searched for permutations of "soundworx midplay". Didn't try searching by author. I hate the internet... v1.0 seems to have completely fixed the frequent lockups I was having with 0.63 & works great. Thanks for tracking it down!

---

Re: Anyone have SounDWorX MIDPlay v1.0?

Posted on 2019-08-26, 08:52

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Maz-sound literally did not show up in Google or Duckduckgo results for me. I got less than a page of results from each engine. I swear search engines are omitting things on purpose now...

---

Anyone have SounDWorX MIDPlay v1.0?

Posted on 2019-08-26, 08:37

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

As the title says. Looking for a late version of this program. This is a freeware MIDI player with some nice features. Archive.org hosts version 0.63 , which is the highest version I can find. An old Hitsquad page for 1.0 is still up, but it directs you to the author's former site for a download. …

---

Re: Mini retro PC for old games

Posted on 2019-08-24, 09:06

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Tip: thin clients (or anything) with the VIA 82c686b southbridge will have excellent DOS sound compatibility and good Win98 support too. No need for an ISA slot. It's usually found on Kx133/PLE133/sometimes Kx266 chipsets & paired with Socket 370 VIA C3 CPUs or Celerons. I have one of these Termtek …

---

Re: SIV support for 386/486/586 class + DEC Alpha CPUs and 3Dfx + Matrox GPUs

Posted on 2019-08-23, 23:27

by

by xjas

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

red-ray wrote: Thank you for checking things out and all now looks to be OK. The SIV start-up time is rather longer than usual which I think is down to the speed of the D: flash drive. ^^ yeah, drive D is a really slow USB stick. C: is only a 1GB IDE flash & is mostly taken up by Win2K so I make do …

---