Re: Pentium 200 MMX vs Pentium III 500 MHz - Any reason to NOT use the faster hardware?

Posted on 2022-10-10, 05:37

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh, I just realized that it's an overdrive. Not sure about all the test registers in that case. Clueless1 has (or had) a P55 based POD. Full TR12 register support. I think we tried to say the same thing but you misinterpreted me. Definitely possible. In general, I've found PMMX CPUs to be capable …

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Re: Pentium 200 MMX vs Pentium III 500 MHz - Any reason to NOT use the faster hardware?

Posted on 2022-10-10, 02:49

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Early games aren’t throttled but pentoum 200 is probably already too fast for those. There is a lot that a p3 500 can do. Not much that a 200 can do that it can’t (other than being cooler. ;) Disagree. Katmai has a massive performance gap when disabling caches. Games like Commanche and U7 really …

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Re: Sound Blaster 16 Clones

Posted on 2022-10-10, 02:39

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

This card has few issues : * no way to bypass the speaker amp so it will be too loud and also quite noisy because of it * no proper voltage regulator for analog side, only a zener based shunt so expect digital noises etc. in the output. There is a spot for a 7805 and this can fix at least this …

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Re: RetroNAS - open source server software for your retro machines

Posted on 2022-10-10, 02:33

by

by gdjacobs

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

D'oh! I mean, asking for a friend : what does managing old computers inside modern networks involve? Future plans are to use RetroNAS as a firewall of sorts. The current idea is: RetroNAS will run dnsmasq (small DNS/DHCP tool) on the device itself, to configure all IP level stuff into a separate …

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Re: Socket 7 build, which direction should I go?

Posted on 2022-09-20, 00:13

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I actually don't have any great data on that -- mostly on FSB manipulation. I should take my P55 time machine off the shelf and do some testing with multipliers.

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Re: Trying to build a DOS gaming system, and I'm having a hard time with sound. Can I get some advice?

Posted on 2022-09-17, 01:24

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I've done quite a bit of looking into all-in-one DOS machines. There are machines which cover an amazing range of performance, but they're rare unicorns indeed. https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=53479 K6-2+ based systems can be tuned down to fast 386 speeds. PMMX based systems clock down to …

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Re: Socket 7 build, which direction should I go?

Posted on 2022-09-08, 22:45

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A nice modification is two switches for FSB/multi reclocking. One toggle on JP5B to go from 50 to 66 mhz FSB (switches to 1-2 common from 3-2 common), another toggle on JP7A to switch 3-2 common to 1-2 common again. This gives you 100 mhz, 133 mhz, 175 mhz, and 233 mhz. On top of that, you get all …

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Re: Which is the best and most memory efficient CD-driver?

Posted on 2022-08-26, 01:14

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think it was from the 1.9 series on Freedos. Can't tell you for sure which game version it was.

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Re: Upgrading to ATX power supply, how much 5v amperage will I need?

Posted on 2022-08-24, 02:17

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I made this post in the "AMD K6 3DMARK, aiming for stars" thread about my Super 7 system - when overclocking one and using a GeForce 3 Ti200, my five volt line began to falter. My Epox board is one of a very small number of Super 7 motherboards that has hardware monitoring sensors that allow you to …

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Re: Which is the best and most memory efficient CD-driver?

Posted on 2022-08-24, 01:29

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

CTMOUSE is great, but I ran into problems loading Overlord with it. https://www.mobygames.com/game/overlord-

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Re: Retro OSes for retro computers

Posted on 2022-08-23, 00:11

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I think it's a shame a mega corp like Microsoft can't actually finish porting their Windows control panel functionality over to the new UI after 10 years.

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Re: SB Live! not working in FreeDOS

Posted on 2022-08-23, 00:08

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

SB Live and earlier Audigy cards use EMM386 port trapping to emulate the ISA sound blaster interface. FreeDOS EMM386 and JEMM don't use the same interface as the versions from MS-DOS and PC-DOS (DR-DOS compatibility unknown). MPXPlay supports SB Live hardware natively. If that works, try using a …

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Re: SB Live! not working in FreeDOS

Posted on 2022-08-22, 02:36

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

SB Live and earlier Audigy cards use EMM386 port trapping to emulate the ISA sound blaster interface. FreeDOS EMM386 and JEMM don't use the same interface as the versions from MS-DOS and PC-DOS (DR-DOS compatibility unknown). MPXPlay supports SB Live hardware natively. If that works, try using a …

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Re: Capacitor replacement rules?

Posted on 2022-08-22, 01:41

by

by gdjacobs

in Milliways

in Milliways

I already explained it can throw off a control loop, like a switching power supply regulator feedback loop. Some switching power supply chips have a limit how large (or small) a capacitance you can put at the regulator output or the output voltage won´t be stable, it could start to oscillate or …

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Re: Capacitor replacement rules?

Posted on 2022-08-22, 01:23

by

by gdjacobs

in Milliways

in Milliways

OP here, thanks again for the responses guys. One more thing, why is it wrong (as a general rule) to replace a capacitor with one that has a higher capacitance? Wouldn't storing more charge be better generally (like having a larger battery)? As I said before, it depends but you can generally go a …

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Re: Retro OSes for retro computers

Posted on 2022-08-21, 17:24

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Or DOS. What is "based on DOS" in Windows 11? Kind of the point. DOS was extended into Win 1.x-ME. From there, APIs were ported into NT. Most of the older legacy APIs began to be retired as Windows moved to 64 bit, predominantly starting with Vista (I don't consider XP 64 bit to be mainstream). In …

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Re: Asus P2B-DS Build

Posted on 2022-07-29, 01:09

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I've run NT 3.51, NT 4, and Solaris 8 on my dual coppermine Epox machine. Much the same as yours, except it's fully populated with 1gb of DIMMs. The level of performance is almost pornographic. Enjoy.

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Re: Pentium MMX 166 / PC Chips M571 / S3 VirgeDX / CMI8330

Posted on 2022-06-03, 17:58

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

CPU-Z.jpg And here are some benchmarks. Basically, I get Pentium at full speed, a 486DX2-66 at the next speed level (CCD), a 486DX-33 after that (L1D) and lastly a 386DX-25 (L1D+L2D). I could probably fine tune this even further by applying slower memory timings in the BIOS, downclocking the CPU to …

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Re: List of active MMOs with working 95/98/XP Clients

Posted on 2022-06-03, 05:09

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by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Ultima Online. I lost too many hours of my life to this over 20 years ago. I wonder if it's worth playing now. Lots of community run servers now, so I would guess some are fun and others are not. UO was never my thing, so I can't really judge. Maybe worth a look, though, if you were really into it …

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Re: List of active MMOs with working 95/98/XP Clients

Posted on 2022-05-29, 23:30

by

by gdjacobs

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Ultima Online.

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