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

Posted on 2019-09-11, 18:45

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

SaxxonPike wrote: I have plans to image some other old PC floppies before they rot forever, now that I know what the process is start to finish. I'm working on this for more than a decade now (see http://pcpp.retro-net.de/), but unlike with other systems like the Amiga, interest in dumping PC games …

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Re: Finished build, want to install some voodoo card, will it work?

Posted on 2019-09-11, 14:44

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You only need a card that works with DX9 and the TI4600 does.

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Re: Help to identify ISA video card

Posted on 2019-09-11, 14:32

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The Philips SAA 9051 is a single-frame digitizer, the MCT chip is a video encoder. This is a video capture card, not a VGA card. To use it, you'd need the breakout cable.

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Re: Finished build, want to install some voodoo card, will it work?

Posted on 2019-09-11, 13:23

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Should run fine using KernelEx.

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Re: Finished build, want to install a voodoo, will it work?

Posted on 2019-09-11, 13:16

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On that system, you could just install nGlide to play 3dfx Glide games. It's more than powerful enough for that. A Voodoo1 won't work (and makes no sense). If at all, a Voodoo2 SLI setup would be okay, but even that is way off for a 3 GHz P4 machine.

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Re: Packard Bell 640 motherboard - no video from onboard or PCI graphics

Posted on 2019-09-11, 09:25

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does it even try to boot? You say it emits a beep, what kind of beep exactly? Beeps are used to inform of errors that happen before the display has been initialized.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-09-11, 07:39

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

imi wrote: hmm? I don't really see anything wrong with it apart from some yellowing, which is normal I guess if it was exposed to the sun. I wasn't talking about the SC-7.

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Re: Problem with A-trend ATC-1415

Posted on 2019-09-11, 07:36

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

RiP wrote: I thought ISA bus speed should be about 8-16MB/s 😕 ISA is theoretically able to transfer 16.6 MB/s at most, but that's just a figure. IDE over ISA never reached speed even close to that. RiP wrote: https://i.imgur.com/zw4ixhS.jpg PCI-to-ISA-Bridge with IDE. That's quite unambiguous to me …

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Re: Lowest CPU to play MP3s?

Posted on 2019-09-11, 07:29

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Everthing with the speed of a Pentium 75 is able to play 128 kbps MP3s at full quality. If you half the quality of the decoder, even a DX4-100 will do. This is for Windows. In pure DOS, a DX4-100 can even do full quality decoding using e.g. QuickView.

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Re: Best PAC-MAN game for Pure DOS?

Posted on 2019-09-11, 07:24

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Try Paku Paku. It's a modern clone and it's free. https://deathshadow.com/pakuPaku

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-09-10, 20:03

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Did games of the era use floating-point math? I guess 3D ones could have. Would installing a 387 let me run something that a bare 386DX-40 can't? No. First games to require an FPU came up in the Pentium era. Quake 1 was probably the first not to run without an FPU. SimCity is said to use the FPU if …

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Re: Problem with A-trend ATC-1415

Posted on 2019-09-10, 19:59

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Most likely because the on-board IDE is connected to the ISA bus.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-09-10, 19:44

by

by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

after not finding a soundcanvas forever, I found a white SC-55ST yesterday for 45€ + shipping tho :/... the seller had three and they all were pretty much gone immediately, so who else got one? :D Seeing the ebay pictures, that unit is really done. For that price, I could have sold you an SC-155 in …

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

Posted on 2019-09-10, 15:09

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That is generally for the serial input though. The PCC10XG is a PCMCIA card. Which does not mean a different mode is needed when using the card with a Mac. There was never and MAC drivers/software released for this card. Of course there was! http://nwserveur.no-ip.org/win3xorg/devices/PCMCIA% …

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

Posted on 2019-09-10, 13:57

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That A/B switch is most likely for PC (A) and Mac (B). Some MIDI modules have such an A/B switch for PC/Mac as well.

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Re: What is an acceptable increase in HDD bad sectors?

Posted on 2019-09-10, 12:56

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

precaud wrote: That seems excessive to me for a 44MB HDD. Well, you need to keep in mind that there was no translation to hide bad sectors as with IDE later. IDE drives could have had hundreds of bad sectors when they left factory. But the end user would never see those, as they were mapped out.

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Re: Why isn't this Hercules card working properly?

Posted on 2019-09-10, 12:24

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Since the error pattern is uniform, either a video memory chip or the character ROM has gone bad.

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Re: RIVA TNT 2 M64 garbled output

Posted on 2019-09-10, 11:37

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Seeing how dusty the machine is in the first picture, I recommend giving it a very good clean. It may not make good contact in the PCI slot because of the dust in there.

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Re: How to wire a toggle switch to a jumper?

Posted on 2019-09-10, 08:03

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

These 3-pin switches all work the same. The center pin connects to either the left or right one, depending on the position of the switch. It's a toggle switch. When switching, one closes and one opens connection to the center pin. So you connect the center pin and one of the other pins to the 2 pins …

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Re: 3DFX Voodoo acting weird with textures

Posted on 2019-09-10, 07:56

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by derSammler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's how Quake always looked for me on 3dfx when not changing the completely cranked up brightness the 3dfx driver uses per default. First thing I always do after installing a 3dfx card: setting brightness of it in Windows and in autoexec.bat to 1.00.

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