Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-08-21, 20:50

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

...the early SB16s just ooze noise. Guess you overlooked the information and initial sample-set of measurements I'd provided in the "12-bit Sound Blaster 16" thread. The anti-Creative bias is real, folks. Steps to reproduce: - take an early SB16 (mine: CT1750MCD) - take a similar period quality …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-08-21, 19:51

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] - noisy (every card is noisy from this age, this is extremely) Disagree. Compare a CT1740 to a ProAudio Spectrum 16. Similar specs on paper, but the PAS16 oozes quality, where the early SB16s just ooze noise. Both have MIDI bugs though... here's some of the other stuff... [...] and now for …

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Re: Suggestion to supercharge a 286 Olivetti

Posted on 2019-08-20, 11:04

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thank you, your reasoning is really complete and exhaustive, I will keep it original, as it comes from the company. I take this opportunity to ask you something: in the Amiga forums (which I frequent a lot) it is said that the compact flashes are not 100% the substitute of the hard disks because …

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Re: Picking a sound card for a low-end 486

Posted on 2019-08-19, 13:25

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Hold up, a new challenger has arrived! [...] My notes indicate 82C929 is SB compatible but a lookup reveals its SB Pro compatible. How about this card then? A few weeks back I got my hands on the ExpertMedia MED3240/41/90/91, which is the MED2000 plus onboard wavetable. It turned out to work pretty …

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Re: Suggestion to supercharge a 286 Olivetti

Posted on 2019-08-19, 10:32

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Back in the early 1990s we had an IBM PS/2 with 386-16 and one of my best friends had a 286-12, so a tiny bit slower than your Olivetti. We used to play Origin games on both, particularly Ultima 6 and Martian Dreams. At one point I bought Wing Commander and enjoyed it on the 386-16, but although it …

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Re: I have a intel motherboard 915 what I can use for?

Posted on 2019-08-18, 18:42

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

PCIe and Win98SE is a pain in the arse to put it mildly. If you don't want XP (or Vista or 7), you could consider MacOS...

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

Posted on 2019-08-18, 18:27

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Good results: https://tweakers.net/ext/f/eoyewb7DGGfpguF5RkKfFitD/full.jpg Still waiting for replacement DIP-32 socket to arrive and EPROM to fill it. Less good: https://tweakers.net/ext/f/VElfffDUPNe8jrd9o97LWWKO/full.jpg First time ever SMD from scratch. Started scruffy, but slowly seemed to be …

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

Posted on 2019-08-18, 11:04

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

^^ I'm curious what part of the boot process failed. I've run Linux Mint 18 & 19 on Athlon 64x2 (AM2) systems relatively recently and have Lubuntu 19 installed on a 2006 Core Duo (32bit!) Mac Mini. Linux devs generally don't "remove support" for older hardware unless there's a very good reason* …

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Re: Need help with DFI P5BV3+ revB5 motherboard

Posted on 2019-08-18, 10:17

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Is there a single voltage / split voltage jumper/switch? If there is and it's set to single, any settings for split CPU voltage will be ignored. I doubt that K5 could run on 2.8V, but 3.3V seems pretty plausible.

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Re: Dual Pentium MMX 233 Motherboard

Posted on 2019-08-18, 00:09

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I own the p65up5, and its big brother p65up8. ^.^ Although I do need to get the p55t2d card. I'm kinda still in the camp of MMX not being SMP. I'm willing to bet the farm, the board might accept a single MMX chip and run fine, but its burned into my brain, SMP wont work with MMX. I'd LOVE to be …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-08-17, 23:53

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Went thrifting today: http://i.imgur.com/WTdnYomm.jpg A crappy Inspiron 530s - useful as a disposal testbed soundblaster midi/joystick cable. nice analog multimeter A "killer network card" 10-pack of BD-ROM disks (just need a drive) All for ~$30. At that price you can't go wrong. That said, resell/ …

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Re: running an AMD 5x86 @ 150MHz

Posted on 2019-08-17, 23:49

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If the rest of the system is stable and runs at sensible speeds, why not. This is a VLB system, so you're running VLB at 50MHz. I'd do some benches to see how that works out. If it's stable, it probably beats 40MHz (which also needs 1WS), but I'd check whether it actually beats 133MHz CPU/33MHz VLB …

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Re: Dual Pentium MMX 233 Motherboard

Posted on 2019-08-17, 23:45

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I am like 99.999% sure there were no MMX dual cpu boards. The best chips those could be are the non-mmx 200. Afraid it's that 0.001% P55C was SMP-capable, and any i430HX chipset will (with suitable VRM and BIOS support) do SMP with them. Years back I ran two myself on a P65UP5/C-P55T2D (weird …

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

Posted on 2019-08-17, 20:19

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Tbh I wouldn't really call this 'retro', but seeing as Mint Linux did, I'll consider it as such :o Knocking together a PC for my youngest son. He's hogging his brother's Core2Duo system to play Super Mario via emulators and is getting a surprising amount of fun out of Minecraft too. So to keep my …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-08-17, 20:04

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

New parcel from the "screwdriver-man". This time he asked if I am interested before applying the screwdriver - and yes, I was. Increased price this time but 60€ is still OK... IMG_7080.JPG If that V3-3000PCI works, EUR 60 is a steal. But yeah, best bit is that he's learnt he can get more cash if he …

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Re: Dual Pentium MMX 233 Motherboard

Posted on 2019-08-17, 18:08

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The sticker on the southbridge is typically Soyo, if dual MMX, this has to be i430HX chipset, so this is almost certainly a Soyo 5TH0/H2/H5: http://www.uncreativelabs.de/th99/m/S-T/34070.htm Agreed that those Gorbs deserve a P3 that actually needs cooling. For P55C, they would work fine as passive …

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Re: Picking a sound card for a low-end 486

Posted on 2019-08-17, 10:38

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

[...] C-Media CMI8830/A C-Media FM Compatibility is weak. Eh? This is about the most trouble-free 'runs anything' card I have. For starters it does both SBPro2 and SB16, does both even in the more troublesome games I have and has an easily usable 'upside down' wavetable header. Not that it's the …

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Re: Suggestion to supercharge a 286 Olivetti

Posted on 2019-08-16, 23:02

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Replacing the CPU is easy - but it won't run any faster unless you also change the clock oscillator. Big question there is what else that oscillator feeds. If the ISA bus runs off a simple 1/2 divider, putting a faster CPU in means overclocking the ISA bus. If the ISA bus has its own 14.3MHz clock …

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Re: help - cache burning up

Posted on 2019-08-16, 19:13

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Fire up the board without cache, get out the multimeter and check whether 5V is really coming out of the pins it should be coming out of. This almost sounds like the sockets are the wrong way round or something...

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Re: New 486 Build — Need SRAM

Posted on 2019-08-16, 17:14

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Unfortunately, I only realized after I bought the motherboard that it doesn't have any SRAM. Could you folks help me source something? I'll be running a 486DX/2-66 and 16 MB RAM, so not sure if I should install 128 or 256K of SRAM. Not sure about exact figures, but the difference between no …

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