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

Posted on 2023-11-27, 01:43

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Testing another Pentium Pro motherboard, a DataExpert EXP8P61. This one has a soldered clock chip, a M48T86PCI. From what I have found online, I think this should be Dallas DS1287 pin-compatible? I'll guess I'll find out once I remove it and install a replacement.

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

Posted on 2023-11-27, 01:14

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

kingcake wrote on 2023-11-27, 00:55: Sorry, I just don't believe a fake UV LED from China that just makes purple light and draws 0.1A will erase any EPROM in 15 minutes. It defies physics. Dunno what to tell you, but it erased an EEPROM in 15 minutes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Re: post up pics of your "computing area"

Posted on 2023-11-26, 21:27

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

My dream upgrade, 30 years delayed, from a 486DX2/66 with 4MB RAM (my first PC) to the Pentium 200 MMX with 128MB RAM shown below. It's a bit of an overcorrection, but now I can finally run those games requiring 8MB RAM. My 12-year-old self would have been ecstatic. While researching, I stumbled …

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

Posted on 2023-11-26, 21:03

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The 1st comment on that video confirms that the device I bought for £5 - the Homedics UV sanitiser's LED does actually work for clearing EPROMs when it's not got a controller limiting the on time :) The sterilizer I bought is intended for sterilizing pacifiers. It was about $20 USD. It has a 1 …

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Re: Current state of the art midi system synth options? Prefereably legal ones.

Posted on 2023-11-26, 20:59

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I believe it was determined that munt was legal, due to the original mt-32 rom technically having no copyright because it was not registered. Registering a copyright isn't required for something to be protected by copyright. I would assume the MT-32 ROM is copyrighted unless it was explicitly …

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

Posted on 2023-11-26, 20:53

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

kingcake wrote on 2023-11-26, 20:27: Maybe after two week of exposure. It takes 15 minutes. I've timed it.

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

Posted on 2023-11-26, 20:23

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

kingcake wrote on 2023-11-26, 20:20: Don't waste your time with LED based devices. Real UV LEDs are mega expensive. The LEDs in those cheap devices are more purple than UV. I have a LED based UV sterilizer. I've used it to erase EEPROMs and can confirm it works.

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Re: Were low prices a part of the fun?

Posted on 2023-11-26, 17:34

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

smtkr wrote on 2023-11-26, 17:23: The retro community, for whatever reason, wants to build systems with 3dfx and GUS so they can play a tiny number of games that need them. The GUS was also heavily used for tracker music and in the demoscene.

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Re: Pentium 200 vs Pentium MMX 200 vs Pentium Pro 200 (256kb & 512kb) DOS Benchmarks

Posted on 2023-11-26, 16:57

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Digging through some old CGW magazines, I attached excerpts from their benchmarks (November 1996) and their write-up on the Pentium Pro from their Ultimate Gaming Rig build (January 1997). They did realize a better performance gain in their benchmarks with FastVid and Duke 3D. However, the Pentium …

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Re: Pentium 200 vs Pentium MMX 200 vs Pentium Pro 200 (256kb & 512kb)

Posted on 2023-11-26, 16:36

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd been reading about FastVid and that EMM386 apparently can interfere with its function. As a result, I re-ran all the FastVid benchmarks with EMM386 disabled. The only significant change was PC Player Bench at 640x480. FastVid and no EMM386 resulted in a 50% performance boost. In contrast, Duke …

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Re: Keeping track of parts and builds - inventory/asset tracking

Posted on 2023-11-26, 14:52

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by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I currently track my builds in a Google Sheet. I list out all the specs, and keep a record of any benchmarks I've performed with that configuration. I've also been further building a general list of hardware and software with release dates. Eventually I'll probably construct something that ties …

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Re: You might about to lose all your games bought from Ubisoft

Posted on 2023-11-26, 14:40

by

by Shponglefan

in Milliways

in Milliways

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-11-26, 08:48: It should be considered them violating their own EULA and grounds for a refund. These are not the conditions we agree to when we buy games. EULAs will typically include clauses that the software or service may be updated at any time. I wonder if such …

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

Posted on 2023-11-26, 00:31

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Bath time!

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Re: Were low prices a part of the fun?

Posted on 2023-11-26, 00:29

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I try not to tie prices to enjoyment. It's really more about what the specific piece of hardware is and what sort of usage I'm going to get out of it. I also consider that on balance things are still cheaper than they would have been back in their hey-day. For example, a $3000 high-end gaming rig …

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Re: Pentium 200 vs Pentium MMX 200 vs Pentium Pro 200 (256kb & 512kb)

Posted on 2023-11-25, 20:27

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A couple additional charts. The first compares performance with the Pentium Pro (512kb) without FastVid and with FastVid enabled. The second chart shows the different in performance between the 256kb and 512kb versions of the Pentium Pro. The extra cache resulted in performance gains from between 2% …

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Re: Pentium 200 vs Pentium MMX 200 vs Pentium Pro 200 (256kb & 512kb)

Posted on 2023-11-25, 20:23

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Terminal Velocity

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Re: Pentium 200 vs Pentium MMX 200 vs Pentium Pro 200 (256kb & 512kb)

Posted on 2023-11-25, 20:23

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Shadow Warrior

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Re: Pentium 200 vs Pentium MMX 200 vs Pentium Pro 200 (256kb & 512kb)

Posted on 2023-11-25, 20:22

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Duke Nukem 3D

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Re: Pentium 200 vs Pentium MMX 200 vs Pentium Pro 200 (256kb & 512kb)

Posted on 2023-11-25, 20:21

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Quake

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Re: Pentium 200 vs Pentium MMX 200 vs Pentium Pro 200 (256kb & 512kb)

Posted on 2023-11-25, 20:20

by

by Shponglefan

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Doom

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