Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2016-11-12, 06:36

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

At last I got around to trying this ESS card. Cool. ESS cards indeed have a very good SBPro, OPL3 and Wavetable compatibility on board. The digital PCM audio sounds great because of dynamic filtering like the SB16 but with a SBPro, so the ESS is much better in this matter than other clones which …

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Re: Yamaha S-YXG50 Portable VSTi (a software MIDI synth)

Posted on 2016-11-12, 06:28

by

by James-F

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

You already did Phil. It is exactly the same as SC-VA, just load it into SAVIHost and point DOSBox to the right input of LoopMIDI.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-11-12, 06:20

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A pretty special day for me having finally replaced the long lost PAS16... Neat! Vogons painfully lacks some recordings of PAS16; I think it will be nice to have some real reference with common games like Doom, Duke3D, Warcraft2, which have a lot of digital PCM sounds that supposed to be the strong …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-11-11, 20:24

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks keropi. Actually, I have the exact same board in my current machine but rev 01 (this one is 04), and on the PC PARTNER website they still have all the Manuals, Bios updates, header pinouts, and jumper configurations, very well documented and reliable Socket 7 board. It also has low thinking …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-11-11, 19:59

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm building another Socket 7 machine. PC Partner 35-8333-04, Intel 430TX: S7mb.jpg I'm also modding one of these to include -5v using a LM7905. atxtoat.jpg I also bought a bunch of related stuff like heatsink, fan, USB PCS cards, USB header bracket, Serial+Parallel Bracket, PS/2 to AT adapter, and …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-11-10, 16:58

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A GTX580 is retro? I'm still using a GTX660 in my current i7 3770K which does the job 100% for all my needs and purposes. Ironically I don't play games older than 2004 which is where I stopped playing games... But I still love Emulators, DOSBox, and of course my retro Pentium build.

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Re: What is your favorite or must have pieces of hardware?

Posted on 2016-11-10, 05:18

by

by James-F

in Milliways

in Milliways

Although I think you're underestimating the fun you can have in finding the right graphics card for a retro build, particularly in a VLB or ISA based machine. Image quality, compatibility, speed, SVGA capability are all factors and I went through half a dozen in my 486 before finding the right one. …

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Re: Patch for pixel-perfect scaling [was:Full-screen mode]

Posted on 2016-11-09, 18:50

by

by James-F

in DOSBox Patches

in DOSBox Patches

KainXVIII wrote: surfacenp is slow for me, especially when screen fades. Yeah, this is the single reason I still use opengl with forced normal4x.

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Re: What is your favorite or must have pieces of hardware?

Posted on 2016-11-09, 18:43

by

by James-F

in Milliways

in Milliways

If it would have to be only one piece of hardware it would be the Sound Blaster Pro CT1600. Judging on how DOS games respond to different parts: Graphic cards all look pretty much the same. CPUs run pretty much the same for DOS games above certain MHz. The sound card has the most significant impact …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-11-09, 17:56

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

+1 on NC. I have been using it since 1994, still do today in DOSbox and retro PC.

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Re: History of VOGONS

Posted on 2016-11-07, 07:01

by

by James-F

in Milliways

in Milliways

Back in 2002 most people were still rocking a Pentium III which on OGONS... sorry, VOGONS it is considered as a dusty old retro computer these days. :happy: I definitely agree that Vogons lacks a Poll feature, this is a great way to visually gather information. https://zetafleet.com/about.html I …

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Re: Covox speech thingy!!!

Posted on 2016-11-07, 05:03

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@GH To me the Speech Thing sounds like the PC speaker but with added lowpass filtering, both have some kind of distortion on top of the audible music. I don't agree about ST sounds better than SBPro, it is much more distorted as already said. As an audio hobbyist I don't equate more Treble as better …

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Re: Pentium with no L2.

Posted on 2016-11-06, 07:32

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I assume that with faster CPUs L2 is much more significant, but for a Pentium with SDRAM is right on the edge of L2 speeds. This is only an assumption as I have no EDO ram to test. EDIT: Alright, I have 2x32 dual-sided and 2x16 single-sided EDOs on the way.

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Re: Pentium with no L2.

Posted on 2016-11-05, 17:46

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hmm, this is interesting. I was more inclined to believe that L1 is sufficient enough to not need L2 cache help, but I did not consider the other side of the coin where the RAM performance is fast enough to minimize the benefit of L2, good to know. That means when disabling L1 and L2 the resulting …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-11-05, 15:27

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Artex, you never buy just one thing do you... 🤣

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Re: Pentium with no L2.

Posted on 2016-11-05, 11:58

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I wouldn't say so. L2 is just much less significant in DOS gaming, so L1 alone whether 16K (non-MMX) or 32K (MMX) does the job very well without "skipping a beat" and needing L2 to "fix" that. Pentium non-MMX 100Mhz: Doom benchmark: L2 On: 1230. L2 Off: 1297. Quake benchmark: L2 On: 29.8 fps. L2 Off …

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Re: Pentium with no L2.

Posted on 2016-11-05, 10:50

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On a Socket 7 Intel 430TX motherboard and Pentium MMX 233 when I only disable external/motherboard cache (L2) which is 512K on my system, there is an extremely tiny performance hit, insignificant. Doom benchmark: L2 On: 795. L2 Off: 844. Quake benchmark: L2 On: 53.3 fps. L2 Off: 48.9 fps. Here is a …

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Re: Covox speech thingy!!!

Posted on 2016-11-04, 12:30

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I just read the article about Covox on Nerdly Pleasures http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-mysterious-covox-pc-sound-devices.html Man, if Covox was a little smarter and included the YM-3812 and a Gameport in their Sound Master card (1989), Creative would have been doomed. But luckily …

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Re: [SOLVED] Small question about Mozart ISA soundcard.

Posted on 2016-11-03, 19:40

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yep. The Aztech NX Pro for example will freeze the machine with anything faster than a 486 with games like PoP and Supaplex.

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Re: Which SB for my 486 DX2

Posted on 2016-11-03, 16:28

by

by James-F

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Your best bet would be the CT2740 SB16, it has the CT1747 Bus Controller with OPL3 integrated, and no hanging note bugs if you eventually decide to use the MPU-401 interface. But, it is a noisy card because of the old CT1701 codec chip and the volume control. Make sure you set the mixer with Voice …

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