Re: SC8500 sound card - what does it do?

Posted on 2009-03-12, 16:53

by

by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, the CS4232 and 4236B have different I/O possibilities indeed, but according to the spec sheets both have just one MPU-401 interface. As we already agreed, The dream synth has it's own interface to the ISA bus which is another MPU-401. AFAIK the CS4232 can only receive and mixdown the Dream …

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Re: SC8500 sound card - what does it do?

Posted on 2009-03-12, 14:45

by

by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I was somewhat annoyed and confused by the windows 2000 behaviour of the Crystal CS4232 sound chipset. This chipset is awesome in DOS. But for windows it still needs the Dos-initializer for the MPU-401 to work, even when using the WDM drivers. This leaves you with a non-working MPU-401 in windows …

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Re: Thoughts on quieting my noisy "OldSchool GXPro" Rig?

Posted on 2009-03-10, 13:22

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by gerwin

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Maybe the newer 'IDE solid state disks' and 'IDE Flash Disks' as offered mainly by Transcend are worth considering? There are SLC and MLC-type solid state disks, I read SLC is the one to get. Unfortunately buying hardware new is more expensive then 2nd-hand bargains: -Transcend IDE Flash Disk 4GB …

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Re: (im)Possibilities wit Slotket CPU adapters?

Posted on 2009-03-07, 16:48

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by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some days ago I stumbled upon another affordable CPU adapter set. A Celeron 1300Mhz with heatsink and fan, mounted on a socket 370 FC-PGA to FC-PGA2 adapter, again mounted on a Gigabyte GA-6R7+ slot-1 adapter. I was mainly interested in the FC-PGA2 adapter. With this I could upgrade my VIA apollo …

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Re: COM ports A and B - are they subtly different to Com ports 1 and 2?

Posted on 2009-03-06, 16:21

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by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

About the danger of frying something when using a mismatched cable: I've used random cables on random mainboards for years and the worst that happened was that the port simply didn't work as long as the wrong cable was plugged in. This doesn't mean it's completely without risk, as the outcome …

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Re: COM ports A and B - are they subtly different to Com ports 1 and 2?

Posted on 2009-03-06, 15:17

by

by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yesterday I changed a pinout for a similar thing, but with two USB ports. You should not just plug these on any mobo and hope it works, there is a real danger for damaging things as you can easily get 12 Volt on the wrong contacts.

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Re: Best/Easiest ISA Sound Card Solution?

Posted on 2009-03-06, 11:08

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by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If anyone disagrees, just download settlers 2 and try out the midis. You will see what I mean. Settlers 2 support natively AWE32, Yamaha db50xg, roland SC and a lot of other midi options (the most complete support i ever saw). The game probably uses a late DOS version of the miles sound system. …

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Re: Moslo deluxe , awesome!

Posted on 2009-03-06, 10:59

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by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some time ago I also decided to purchase moslo deluxe. It says paypal somewhere, but in the actual checkout I can only select creditcard. I don't have a creditcard... :sad: The shareware version is OK, but after some days it gives an expiration reminder screen. It doesn't allow passing of parameters …

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Re: 6 issues of CGW (1993-1998)

Posted on 2009-03-05, 21:15

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by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes that sounds like a good scanning procedure... And put them through an OCR program so the text is no longer bitmapped. 😉 The starfleet issue has a picture of the Crystalake 140, I never managed to find a picture of that sound card before.

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Re: 6 issues of CGW (1993-1998)

Posted on 2009-03-05, 19:14

by

by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Good work swaaye, much appreciated! I already knew the ultimate soundcard roundup, as you posted it before and I saved a copy. I have many old issues of a local computer games magazine myself, very funny, but the few hardware articles in there are a joke compared to CGW. You did a good job with the …

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Re: Slowing a 440BX based PC

Posted on 2009-03-05, 16:41

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by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm nearly tempted to purchase a cheap 400Mhz PII model with a DA0 or DA1 stepping just to test the theory I had earlier about only new steppings being locked. One of the reasons I wanted to get a 350Mhz is because the lvl2 cache chips are rated at 5ns instead of 5.5ns, and they're connected …

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Re: Slowing a 440BX based PC

Posted on 2009-03-05, 16:01

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by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes, but do many sellers include that line of information? Some don't even specify the five digit product code. But it is good to learn these search tricks. I understand your arguments for getting the 400MHz. As such it has just a bit more to offer than the 333Mhz. What do you mean with your comment …

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Re: Best/Easiest ISA Sound Card Solution?

Posted on 2009-03-05, 11:13

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by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is a good overview on roland sound canvas hardware for games: Roland RAP-10, SC-7, SCC-1, SC-55, SCD-15 etc.. To avoid confusion, remember: SCD-10 package contains a daughterboard named SCB-7 SCD-15 package contains a daughterboard named SCB-55 Of course there are also GM or GM+GS sound canvas …

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Re: Most demanding DOS game, resource wise?

Posted on 2009-03-04, 20:23

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by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

CPU speed doesn't matter in this case, because with an uncached framebuffer, the frame rate only depends on the bus and video memory speed, which is about the same both on our machines (~100MHz). That's why the frame rate drops when you lower the FSB to 66 MHz. With write-combining, the picture …

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Re: Hoping to build a fast "P3", with 2 ISA slots mobo.

Posted on 2009-03-04, 13:37

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by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My aim here is to outperform my current 440BX slot 1 mobo (with Intel 800mhz CPU, 100FSB), and also rival the performance of a P3 1000-1400mhz based mobo. You can instead or additionally get these parts for your 440BX: -Upgradeware Slot-T (E 24,- new) or powerleap adapter. -Pentium-III-S SL5QL 1266 …

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Re: Slowing a 440BX based PC

Posted on 2009-03-04, 12:05

by

by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

(I had no time to reply earlier) Nice to read other peoples observations on this topic. Although it is rather disturbing that the L2 cache was not disabled by me at 133Mhz, but as an undesired side effect. I never really noticed this before, also because I was fairly new to speedsys. I fear there is …

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Re: Socket-A AMD Athlon/Sempron system

Posted on 2009-03-01, 20:06

by

by gerwin

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

No, CPU-Z says; code name= Barton.

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Socket-A AMD Athlon/Sempron system

Posted on 2009-03-01, 18:23

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by gerwin

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

As requested by retro games 100, here a bit about the AMD system that I am typing this on. Never intended to be a retro or a high-end machine. Several components were just the best buy at a certain time. This PC is still used daily by me and my family, it is plenty fast if you keep it in order and …

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Re: Most demanding DOS game, resource wise?

Posted on 2009-03-01, 17:01

by

by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Please can you tell me a bit more about your AMD Sempron 3000+/333MHz system? I have never bought AMD (but will soon), and just wondered what types of slots this mobo had? Does it have no ISA slots? Does it support windows 98SE? Thanks. I always like bragging about my own stuff, sure. :happy: I …

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Re: Slowing a 440BX based PC

Posted on 2009-03-01, 12:53

by

by gerwin

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@Farfolomew + leileilol I think you can forget the pentium II Klamath core entirely. In my previous post I concluded: Best choice is an early Deschutes Core (example part numbers SL2KA or SL2QF) So this P-II 333 is one of the most flexible types of Pentium CPU's. It accepts multipliers ranging 2x to …

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