Re: 486 PC Hard Drive Troubles

Posted on 2024-01-23, 00:50

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Good luck https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ontrack-disk-manager.html Don't forget to set boot order in BIOS (if available) to C: then A:. The little stub of OnTrack code must load from C: first even if you want to boot from floppy

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Re: 486 PC Hard Drive Troubles

Posted on 2024-01-22, 23:48

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

First I would make sure the drive is truly wiped and gets partitioned, an MBR written, etc. in the machine where it is going to run and not elsewhere. You might try setting the BIOS to 1024/16/63 instead of anything higher, and disable LBA, multi sector, and any autodetection stuff - that might even …

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Re: ISA Modems / DOS & Windows 3.x

Posted on 2024-01-22, 00:47

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There were some ISA "winmodems" with something called RPI (Rockwell something or other). Without their special driver I believe they are limited to V.32bis (14,400) or such.

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Re: Winchester Connector

Posted on 2024-01-20, 01:42

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A lot of MFM/RLL cards call it Winchester too Since this is a (c) 1988 Compaq card, maybe it wasn't called IDE yet

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Re: BIOS Upgrade Diskette, DMP format?

Posted on 2024-01-18, 23:15

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A "1.44" MB diskette is 1,474,560 bytes. Since that is slightly larger, it probably isn't compressed, and likely just has a 162 byte header or trailer (or portions of both) that needs chopped off to get a raw disk image.

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Re: BIOS Upgrade Diskette, DMP format?

Posted on 2024-01-18, 22:53

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What is the exact size of the .DMP to the byte?

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Re: Do any IBM PC Clones exist that are in FPGA form.

Posted on 2024-01-05, 20:33

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The ZFx86?

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Re: Oak OTI087X

Posted on 2024-01-05, 20:29

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Oh! I didn't realize you had a PCI system. That opens up tons of options, especially for plain DOS gaming. I'd just go with a Trio64V+ or Cirrus 5446. note: what is your chipset? early PCI chipsets may be picky about cards. My UM8886A won't accept the 5446, but UM8886B does, for example.

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Re: Oak OTI087X

Posted on 2024-01-05, 20:14

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Since I am stuck with the card (unless I resell it,) I think that I will use it in Windows 3.x alongside another card for MS-DOS and use a VGA switch box. If I do that, then I can experience the "Windows accelerator" aspect of early (0s computing while hopefully finding a VGA/SVGA card from 1993 …

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Re: Midnight Commander

Posted on 2024-01-01, 20:08

by

by jakethompson1

in DOS

in DOS

It is a clone of Norton Commander

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Re: Built a 80406 DX2-66 w/ECS UC 4913 Rev 2.0 Motherboard. MS-DOS shows zero upper memory

Posted on 2024-01-01, 04:01

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Copy code to clipboard 1 DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS (after DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS) and Copy code to clipboard 1 DOS=HIGH,UMB in config.sys If you later need EMS, come back and revisit

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Re: A slim, fast, but does everything DOS Floppy Boot Disk?

Posted on 2023-12-29, 02:33

by

by jakethompson1

in DOS

in DOS

But then I discovered that I didn't have any sound drivers when booting into DOS. I looked it up and found that my Compaq Armada 1750 has a ES1869 sound card. So I did some looking, found some drivers on archive.org (which is becoming the best place for drivers now days, by the way), downloaded it, …

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Re: Check out what I got for Christmas

Posted on 2023-12-28, 02:10

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

It makes a popping noise every now and then, and when it pops the screen flickers, but otherwise seems to work great LOL. (Popping seems to have become less and less now that it has "warmed up"...) I believe that is an intermittent short circuit possibly related to humidity from taking it to a cold …

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Re: A slim, fast, but does everything DOS Floppy Boot Disk?

Posted on 2023-12-28, 01:43

by

by jakethompson1

in DOS

in DOS

If the disk you're using doesn't already decompress to a RAM disk, you might try that technique.

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Re: UM481/UM491 "Always Dirty" modification HOWTO

Posted on 2023-12-27, 04:51

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On the UM481, 386DX-40, cachechk scores improved to 39 uS/KB and 60 uS/KB (60 down from 92). With the modification it is now on-par with my ALi M1429 which uses 7+1. Would you please confirm my result: CACHECHK v4 2/7/96 Copyright (c) 1995 by Ray Van Tassle. (-h for help) CMOS reports: conv_mem= …

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Re: Dell 486 help

Posted on 2023-12-06, 02:07

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Since OEM BIOSes often have settings for DRAM wait states hidden or missing, you might look at a utility like CTCHIP34 if your chipset is capable of going faster than the BIOS allows and your SIMMs are sufficiently fast (60ns) since you're upgrading the memory anyway. That would help close the gap …

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Re: Award Modular BIOS v4.51PGM chip

Posted on 2023-12-03, 20:18

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

i2lgames wrote on 2023-12-03, 15:34: It depletes the battery even when plugged in. Like it wont change from battery to power feed when the power cable is plugged in. AT boards use "hard power"; the power to the board is physically cut via the front power switch when the power switch is flipped off. …

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Re: high speed vanilla pc/xt clones

Posted on 2023-11-29, 21:16

by

by jakethompson1

in Milliways

in Milliways

Only means exclusive of. The presence of a turbo button defies the notion of only. A board can run atb6,8,10mhz... But not 4.77mhz. I get your question and I'm wondering if the issue is that the board inevitably has a 14.31818 MHz oscillator and the 8284 chip anyway, so it wouldn't make any sense …

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Re: gog.com finally collecting sales tax

Posted on 2023-11-28, 00:23

by

by jakethompson1

in Milliways

in Milliways

I do not see anything wrong with it, but again I live in a country. Where we pay taxes on every item we buy from a shop, and so forth. Again I know it is a non issue for me, or am I missing something ? :) The issue is the tax rate and where to remit the tax varies depending on the state, county, …

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Re: Replace DS12C887 Dallas chip

Posted on 2023-11-27, 23:16

by

by jakethompson1

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sounds like a BIOS compatibility issue? I've put DS12C887A+ in place of DS12887A on mid-90s Award BIOS boards and it's always worked. The "C" version is a few cents cheaper if I remember right

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