Re: Help me identify an Aztech sound card

Posted on 2023-09-07, 18:46

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

[...] Can you provide an example? I would like to take some notes for my list. Until now all cards i have always have the same codec for the same fcc id. I am working on a sspreadsheet to identify the all aztech soundcards properly based on the used chips. Couple of examples... MMSN822 AD: https:// …

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Re: Help me identify an Aztech sound card

Posted on 2023-09-07, 17:09

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

FYI Windows 95 recognized it as a Washington 16. It loads the drivers automatically but no sound. If i remember correctly the washington has a crystal codec... The codecs were interchangable and Aztech could & did release cards of the same type with either Crystal or AD codec, just like they mixed …

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Re: Help me identify an Aztech sound card

Posted on 2023-09-07, 06:08

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

[...] You could try the drivers for the MMSN826 (Sound Galaxy Waverider 32+). This card also looks like your card minus the wavetable. The MMSN826 without wavetable is the MMSN824. Agreed that this looks functionally identical to it, so I'd try those tools (no need for drivrs in DOS). Thanks! Do …

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Re: The million dollar question on retrocomputing

Posted on 2023-09-06, 20:27

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Good points!!! Thanks, I'm modifying the survey... So to answer your points: 1) Assume the price of the new replica is identical to the corresponding original old product you'd find in the used market Problem is, there's not one price. A vintage part is generally at its most expensive in 'buy …

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Re: Dual Pentium 133: what to use it for?

Posted on 2023-09-05, 21:26

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not to mention some of the traditional Unixen. Solaris 2.x supported x86 and SMP. FreeBSD did so from 1998 onwards (a bit of a stretch on this hardware), SCO OpenServer from version 5 in 1995 onwards - which would be a perfect match. And BeOS. Always BeOS. Being able to switch CPUs on and off on the …

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Re: Dual Pentium 133: what to use it for?

Posted on 2023-09-05, 11:33

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Chiming in with all the 'this is mainly just good for tinkering' opinions. One thing to be aware of is that this board uses the i430NX chipset, which was Intel's first Pentium SMP chipset. It was relatively high-end, with all 256MB of RAM potentially cacheable. Unfortunately that's about the end of …

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Re: Which of these 3com cards is the fastest for a 486 66mhz? ?

Posted on 2023-09-03, 22:28

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Personally I haven't seen one without a parallel tasking chip. The 3Com 40-0130 chip on the 3C509B and C had 'parallel tasking' printed on it, the older 3C509 (non-B or C) have an AT&T 8350 chip without that imprint. There definitely are differences in performance (and compatibility) between …

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Re: Which of these 3com cards is the fastest for a 486 66mhz? ?

Posted on 2023-09-02, 19:10

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

100Base-T on ISA is not that useful, from a performance point if view. They had a rather niche use-case at the time. https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=70043 Do those cards have any benefits in terms of playing nicer with modern switches, etc? Yes. Particularly as some modern network device …

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Re: Thoughts on these specs for a period correct(ish) 1997 build?

Posted on 2023-09-02, 11:12

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Enough has been said about components and performance. One point that's not been raised (or I missed it) is form factor. 1997 was the year that ATX started to break through, but most systems were still AT. If you have lots of AT cases, PSUs, serial mice or 5V only USB cards, by all means go AT. If …

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Re: Considering building a i486 Computer with either VLB or PCI video card support on slots

Posted on 2023-09-02, 10:26

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I see. Is there an all rounder vlb card that works fine with windows and dos? Most will do so; for DOS bus speed is most important for performance so all VLB cards will be similar. If (but only if) you want to play SVGA scrolling games, VESA support is relevant. Basically, S3 and Cirrus Logic are …

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Re: Would it be worth it?

Posted on 2023-08-22, 09:38

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd see about those G450s - common as muck.

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Re: Looking for IBM Music Feature Card owners

Posted on 2023-08-21, 22:13

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by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

If someone's ordering a load of PCBs I'm also up for building one. Have been extremely busy the past six months but in next two weeks things should settle down when my study/mancave is finished and a nice simple THT soldering project is just what I need to inaugurate it.

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Re: Finding Win95 drivers to this ethernet PCI card nad a USB PCI card?

Posted on 2023-08-19, 23:30

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

DFI was incredibly confusing with their models back then. The DFE-530 range had at least three competely different chipsets. The original DFE-530CT+ used the DEC 21040 'Tulip' chip, the DFE-530TX+ used the Realtek RTL-8139, but the DFE-530TX (without the +) used the Via Rhine controller. In Linux ( …

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Re: Mixing a Gravis Ultrasound with a Sound Blaster?

Posted on 2023-08-19, 19:21

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Are you talking about mixing the outputs? I have both output into a Behringer RX1602 (along with a couple of other vintage PCs and my MIDI sound modules). Much better than connecting output of one to line-in of the other. Or are you talking about having both cards present in the same system? I'm not …

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Re: How to test a lot of hard drives fast?

Posted on 2023-08-19, 00:19

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

When I had a large pile (though not this large), I used a Linux system, where the tool badblocks is great for this. I was able to hook up four drives at once (both IDE channels; OS was on SATA) and with badblock -nsv /dev/sda1 (and sda2 and sdb1 and sdb2) I could get through the drives in decent …

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Re: Using more modern PSU on Pentium II system

Posted on 2023-08-17, 21:41

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In general a modern PSU should be able to power on with an old ATX board attached. Just a single HDD should draw enough on +12V to provide needed load. You may encounter issues with old cards because ATX 2.x PSUs don't supply -5V anymore, but that will generally just cause trouble to some ISA cards …

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Re: Sound Blaster 16 ASP CT2230 - No available DMA Channel

Posted on 2023-08-17, 08:03

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

VLB only? Then it shouldn't be PnP mess. That Aztech card (MMSN822?) works in exactly the same way as the CT2230 - non-PnP software config and if it can use the resources, the CT2230 should be able to as well. Sounds like something on the card failing.

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Re: Sound Blaster 16 ASP CT2230 - No available DMA Channel

Posted on 2023-08-17, 06:23

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Is it a PCI system? If so, have you reserved the resources you want to use for this card in BIOS for non-PnP devices? Could well be the motherboard letting some PCI (or ISA PnP) device take them. Exactly how to reserve resources depends on your motherboard, but usually it involves selecting the IRQ …

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Re: Miro miroConnect 34 and miroMedia Online cards chaos

Posted on 2023-08-16, 08:57

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Regarding the 28k/34 confusion: Firstly, the original ITU-T V.34 standard defined a 28.8kbps data rate. The '34' in the names of these devices referenced that standard, not a 33.6kbps rate, so there's no contradiction there. But... the mWave was an advanced DSP and these cards were basically …

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Re: Most stable plattform/chipset for pentium 3 gaming

Posted on 2023-08-16, 07:43

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] There are other differences, but I think the i815 is generally more enticing to people who don't want to overclock, and the 440BX more to people who do. Indeed - when the question is 'most stable platform', something that requires overclocking to meet the basic CPU spec isn't the first thing …

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