Re: Retro machines usefulness/connectivity thread

Posted on 2019-04-22, 11:34

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

i do not believe people really need ipv6 on a dos box - anyt translating network device should do, no? i would love to know to what extent mtcp can use offloading with for example a killer NIC; old pc are kinda slow so they can use it; mTCP itself is light enough to work flawlessly on an XT or …

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Re: Interesting results with VGA performance scaling on a Pentium 75Mhz

Posted on 2019-04-22, 10:55

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

VLB is unlikely, that's probably a PB640 motherboard with i430FX chipset. ISA is possible though... Are the CL drivers installed properly? If it's running in unaccelerated SVGA that could explain a lot.

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Re: Trying to get Aztech and Ensoniq cards working in a Packard Bell...

Posted on 2019-04-22, 10:02

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Not entirely sure why, but I have *vastly* more issues with getting sound to work in Win95 than in Win98. Not just multi-card setups either. Either it works first time or I end up giving up after much rending of hairs. However, for multi-card setups, nothing beats good old non-PnP devices and pure …

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Re: Celeron 700 vs Pentium 400

Posted on 2019-04-22, 08:34

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Look at this review: https://www.anandtech.com/show/568/9 OK... but according to that performance should be just a bit slower than an Athlon 500, which is faster than a P3-500. The Celeron is definitely slow, clock for clock, due to its high multiplier and low cache, but a C700 should hold its own …

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Re: SIS6305 16MB PCI

Posted on 2019-04-21, 23:06

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Thing to watch with DOS cards is VESA compatibility. Never seen how SiS 305 does in that department, but ATi Rage chips are decidedly average. According to this matrix, the 315 is much more compatible than Rage, so assuming the 305 has similar behaviour, just slightly slower in the 3D you don't need …

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Re: Trying to get Aztech and Ensoniq cards working in a Packard Bell...

Posted on 2019-04-21, 23:00

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Not familiar with the Opus, but the Aztech 2316R is an old favorite. It's a pretty simple non-PnP card with config program for resources, and is completely SBPro2.0 compatible (except it lacks the bugs and has less noise). The question here is whether the issue is between the two (non-PnP) cards, or …

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Re: Jetway 993AN help

Posted on 2019-04-21, 14:53

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

993AN? Check the caps, most likely everything related to power delivery will have failed and needs replacing before (reliable) operation.

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Re: Help me choice for a VLB, 5V 486 configuration.

Posted on 2019-04-21, 14:32

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If the board takes 50MHz FSB, a 486DX-50 would be a nice option. As for VLB do you already have the cards you mention? And what do you want to run? DOS only or also Windows? WD doesn't do more than 8b, but is very good at that. Ark is also fast but not great in Windows. S3 VRAM chipsets are mediocre …

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Re: Help me make a mean and lean Win98/XP Machine.

Posted on 2019-04-21, 10:53

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe you should drop down to 512MB of RAM for DOS/Win9x. Re cards: for DOS, VESA compatibility is key. Relatively early nVidia cards tick the boxes there. I'm not sure how the 7600 behaves, so for a safe bet, go with the FX5200 or Gf2MX200. As for sound, does that board have SBLink (PC/PCI)? If so …

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Re: Roland SCC-1 for 15 EUR

Posted on 2019-04-21, 10:39

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's a midi sound module on a card, basically the same functionality as a Roland SC55. That makes it the device most game music was composed with/for in the mid 1990s. Sound quality is excellent, but its value comes from scarcity combined with iconic status. You'd normally expect to pay a couple of …

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Re: 32MB showing up as 8MB

Posted on 2019-04-18, 23:19

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Interesting. Made a similar 'discovery' myself years back, that it wasn't just the i440LX and EX that worked with twice the density they officially supported, but the i430TX did so too (so you could use 2x 256MB = 512MB, even if you could only cache 64MB of it...). That said, I've messed around with …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-04-18, 23:10

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Canopus is Japanese high-end stuff. Rare in the day as you paid through the teeth for the privilege. That hasn't changed ;) Postman came here today too. Unfortunately nowhere near as spectacular as Batyra's (drooling for that I-RAM), but nice enough for me to be happy: https://tweakers.net/ext/f/ …

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Re: Tattoo restoration on Packard Bell HDD

Posted on 2019-04-18, 18:38

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Right, turns out I stil have some of my personal documentation. Of course it's incomplete, as it's intended as an addendum to 'official' internal stuff which I don't have. But it might help a bit. I have things from the 5 years leading up to 2000, so basically early Win95 ("Mona Lisa 16 Format") to …

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Re: Tattoo restoration on Packard Bell HDD

Posted on 2019-04-17, 21:43

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not quite. The "tattoo" was a special encoding kept in both hidden sector on HDD and in the CMOS DMI. The restore CDs would only work if there was a copy of the tattoo on both and the copies matched, and it also told the installer which drivers and programs to install. It was a form of copy …

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Re: SIS6305 16MB PCI

Posted on 2019-04-17, 11:16

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

It's not "6305", it's S305, aka SiS 305. You should find more on that 😉

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Re: IBM blue lighting CPU settings ?

Posted on 2019-04-15, 13:22

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This one: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/ibm-blue-lightnin … ds-fastest-386/

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Re: IBM blue lighting CPU settings ?

Posted on 2019-04-15, 08:23

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As I said, it is an IBM - fabbed Cx486DX2.

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Re: IBM blue lighting CPU settings ?

Posted on 2019-04-15, 08:15

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is the later 'fake' Blue Lightning, which is just an IBM-fabbed Cx486DX2. The original Blue Lightning was an IBM in-house design, basically taking a 386 and clocking & tuning it to ludicrous mode. No Blue Lightnings were Intel designs.

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

Posted on 2019-04-15, 07:08

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Did a lot of tidying up yesterday. I spend more time sorting through stuff than actually doing things with it, so things need to go. Sold a set of 1980s-era I/O within minutes, and have someone interested in an AT bigtower and a box of tape drive stuff. He also wanted the MFM stuff, so decided to …

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Re: IDE Card Question

Posted on 2019-04-15, 00:17

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Recently got hold of a CR-562-B with Panasonic controller. Couldn't get it to run in Win98SE at all even after install with the "Panasonic" drivers, but DOS drivers- for Matsushita/Panasonic - worked fine.

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