Re: Mini ATX motherboards for old PC?

Posted on 2018-05-23, 09:34

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Both close, but still no cigar. The 'choose any two' triangle still stands :cry: It's uATX, Slot 1, has ISA, and supports 256 MB RAM. What else..? 256M b RAM density, not 256MB total RAM. So you can use/test 256MB 8-chip DIMMs and 512MB 16-chip ones. Only the very last generation of Sl1/So370 …

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

Posted on 2018-05-22, 23:44

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Testing floppy drives is pretty frustrating when both your 'known good' drive and floppy turn out to be dead... Changing to a different floppy and re-testing all the drives that failed first time showed much better results - 5 out of 8 working perfectly, 2 mechanically OK but not reading correctly ( …

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Re: Mini ATX motherboards for old PC?

Posted on 2018-05-22, 22:19

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Both close, but still no cigar. The 'choose any two' triangle still stands 😢

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-05-22, 22:12

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] The previous owner had actually managed to downgrade the motherboard to something close to what would have been found in a low-end Packard Bell at the time: a Gigabyte GA-6VMML (Via PLE133, no AGP and generally crappy). The low-end PB would have had GA-6WMM7 (the i810 version of the same). Oh …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-05-22, 13:55

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Compensated for my bad luck with old hardware this week by buying an Asus P5A system. Not picking it up till the weekend, so don't know the revision, but regardless it's a board I've wanted since these things were new (even if I now know a late rev GA-5AA is technically better). Also getting a nice …

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Re: Mini ATX motherboards for old PC?

Posted on 2018-05-22, 09:30

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Little update: I still haven't founf the holy grail of an uATX board with Slot1, ISA and 256Mb mem support, but getting close. Haven't closed the deal yet, but I've found two very close approximations: - MSI MS-6198 (uATX, So370 FC-PGA, Via 694X (ApolloPro133A) chipset and that ISA slot) - Tyan …

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Re: Hercules graphics on VGA monitors (mod)

Posted on 2018-05-22, 08:13

by

by dionb

in Milliways

in Milliways

Wow, it does indeed work! Colour in photographs is always tricky. I would expect it to be green mono, but some screens detect mono and output white instead. These could be either, what is it like iRL?

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Re: XT build, need graphic/display advice

Posted on 2018-05-22, 07:59

by

by dionb

in Milliways

in Milliways

I don't know the CGA card prices, I never intended to have one really, but what I have is an Oak VGA with 8/16 bit operation (auto detect), hardware switches for CGA, EGA, MDA modes. and two sockets for monitör connection (15 pin VGA and 9 pin TTL for CGA/MDA/EGA). Oak VGA cards was not being …

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Re: R.I.P. SoundBlaster AWE32

Posted on 2018-05-21, 22:27

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Working CT3670 here too. Agree that one card could be fluke, but two cards showing same error suggest problem isn't in the cards themselves.

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Re: Choice of GPU for Socket 7 build

Posted on 2018-05-21, 22:21

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Looking for recommendations on a 3D GPU for a 1997-ish Pentium 1 gaming build... obvious choice would be a Voodoo 1 (or perhaps 2) but are there any really worthwhile alternatives performing similarly? In case of DOS, forget the Voodoo. The DOS games supporting it can be counted on the fingers of a …

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Re: (Apparently) Dead Socket 370 and 7 PCChips mobos

Posted on 2018-05-21, 20:06

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you have visibly bad caps, do something about that before considering baking or other more exotic things. Most boards of that age that spontaneously die have bad caps and most others have a corrupt BIOS. Reflashing the EEPROM (or using a new one) is a good second step after checking the caps.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-05-21, 20:04

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just received confirmation I can go pick up two totally unknown old boxes for free. The seller posted a stock pic of an Amiga 1000 and stated "similar, but not the same, photo from internet" but added "extremely heavy", which is hardly how I'd describe an Amiga pizza box and 12" monitor. The mind …

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Re: Socket 4 Pentium

Posted on 2018-05-20, 19:19

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Interesting results, although as you say it's slightly comparing apples to oranges with different VGA card. I suspect the board vendor also makes a difference - even back then Asus was known for stability and good BIOS, ECS less so. Thinking of it, my experiences were probably also coloured by that …

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Re: Socket 4 Pentium

Posted on 2018-05-20, 12:35

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm interested in that original P5 hardware too. The platform really needed to be refined. The early Pentium chipsets are quite unexciting with features not much different than 486 boards. Intel chipsets (i.e. the i430LX) were unexciting as in dog slow and almost no features. But this was before …

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Re: How to use wireless USB mouse in DOS?

Posted on 2018-05-19, 22:35

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

By the way, just out of curiosity, why wired mice is so unacceptable?? Because I've been using a Logitech M570 trackball for so long that I've become accustomed to never having to reposition my hand while holding it. So use a wired trackball? I use a mix of Logitech and Microsoft (yes, the …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-05-19, 21:45

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just received confirmation I can go pick up two totally unknown old boxes for free. The seller posted a stock pic of an Amiga 1000 and stated "similar, but not the same, photo from internet" but added "extremely heavy", which is hardly how I'd describe an Amiga pizza box and 12" monitor. The mind …

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Re: Contiguous Extended Memory

Posted on 2018-05-19, 21:36

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

squiggly wrote: [...] Well to be super-duper-technical it would be 8GiB. Now I want to kill myself for bringing that up. Which I suppose could then be expressed as 2^14 nibbles - which is fitting as I'm more than a bit peckish at present 😉

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Re: Contiguous Extended Memory

Posted on 2018-05-19, 10:43

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

8 Gb of RAM and DOS 5.0? Typo? 8G b ? I think he means 8G B - more typo ;) not that 8Gb=1GB would be any less overkill But yes, limit with HIMEM.SYS, and limit it hard. It's a rare DOS program that uses more than 8MB, or 1/1024 of what you have. I've already seen flaky behavior in programs with > …

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Re: Help me pick parts for 486dx4

Posted on 2018-05-18, 23:01

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Rare no but price considerations yeah. It may be cheaper for him to hunt down a Gateway 2000 with a 486 where he is. My case + PSU was by far the most expensive part of my 486 build. Then again some people here manage to find beautiful cases in local trades or recycling, I can only look upon them …

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Re: Help me pick parts for 486dx4

Posted on 2018-05-18, 16:54

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Why do you need adapters? Just buy period-correct case and PSU. They're no rarer than 486 motherboards...

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