Re: Which to keep ISA=OPTi 82C929A or ESS ES1869F ?

Posted on 2019-08-12, 12:20

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

3 builds with Win98SE? I'd really only do DOS on the P120 build if you already have a 1999 build. Consider that Win98SE was released in 1999, the only thing you gain by running Win98SE on a 5 year older build is the painful experience of how running Win98SE on legacy hardware felt. You've upgraded …

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Re: Which to keep ISA=OPTi 82C929A or ESS ES1869F ?

Posted on 2019-08-12, 10:31

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

...under DOS. We still don't know what OS he's intending to run.

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Re: Which to keep ISA=OPTi 82C929A or ESS ES1869F ?

Posted on 2019-08-12, 08:34

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you have exactly those two cards, or just cards with the same chipsets? If not those cards which ones do you have? And do you intend to use them under DOS or Windows? ESS' chipsets are some of the least troublesome SBPro2-compatible cards for DOS, and don't require a TSR, which means no loss of …

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Re: how to deal with non p&p cards

Posted on 2019-08-11, 16:13

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Tbh, I find PnP ISA cards much harder to deal with. With non-PnP it's quite simple, a card is set for certain resources and that's it. It's up to you to keep track of what uses what. That's actually a big advantage if you don't know what a card is set at. Exactly what your options are depend on the …

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Re: Weames PA-9050-B (AD Echo) ROM (?) sockets

Posted on 2019-08-11, 12:34

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Good know, I see the drivers have been uploaded (though to be clear, Eusynth 1.7 only breaks Descent configured for WSS digital audio, SB works fine). You sure it's Eusynth 1.7 (which shouldn't do anything with the SB/WSS .SYS stuff) and not the 2.23.01 SYS driver itself? I don't have the games …

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Re: Weames PA-9050-B (AD Echo) ROM (?) sockets

Posted on 2019-08-10, 21:48

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Using your driver now, works fine. Can't say I really notice the difference, but good to have correct drivers. I'll upload these to Vogonsdrivers so they'll at least be online in one place now. Looks like I was too quick to blame this card for bad behaviour in MOM and Lasersquad by the way - I just …

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Re: Obscure (Chinese / Taiwanese / ?) memory (DRAM) brands

Posted on 2019-08-10, 14:19

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Certainly used TakeMS and PQI back in the day. Seemed legit, can't remember any problems (beyond a friend's Asus A7N8X-E that refused to eat the TakeMS DIMMs, but that board was the pickiest I ever came across, refusing at least four others as well and the DIMMs ran fine in my Gigabyte GA-7NF400L). …

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Re: Got 2 ISA Cards, What Now?

Posted on 2019-08-10, 11:17

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

That or look into an external mixer. Yep, that's the best way to go - although it can snowball out of control with multiple systems, some with multiple sound cards *and* some MIDI modules as well. When I bought my Behringer 8-way stereo mixer I thought it was complete overkill. Now I'm …

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Re: Any way to run a Voodoo 5 with a Dual Core CPU

Posted on 2019-08-10, 11:12

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] My research on retro PC building was less about what works together and more of what sounds cool? Voodoo 5500, EAX sound card, Athlon64 x2, Windows 2000 on an SSD, why not? And none of the actual informative videos I've watched mentioned anything about incompatible AGP slots, they always just …

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Re: Weames PA-9050-B (AD Echo) ROM (?) sockets

Posted on 2019-08-09, 10:52

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Thanks! Out of interest, where did that driver come from? Somewhere deep in your own local files - or was it online and did I miss it?

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Re: Any way to run a Voodoo 5 with a Dual Core CPU

Posted on 2019-08-09, 10:41

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Indeed. Dualcore is nothing more than dual CPU integrated into one package. You won't find universal AGP with dualcore support. Go for dual CPU. You can do better than dual So370 though, as both i860 (Rambus-based first gen Netburst Xeon chipset) and AMD760MPX support AGP4x and thus universal …

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Re: Got 2 ISA Cards, What Now?

Posted on 2019-08-08, 23:28

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

AWE64 MPU-401 should be fine as they should all have DSPv4.16. If you can confirm any AWE64 models using an earlier version, please let us all know. The other two flaws are, unfortunately, all too true. I wasn't referring to the hanging notes in older DSPs, but to the slowdown/pauses all SB16/32/64 …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-08-08, 23:09

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Picked up some 'new' stuff for first time in a while today. First some cards: https://tweakers.net/ext/f/yl7t2nEq6458AFi41dPbx8oK/full.jpg Expertcolor 3805A (S3 805 VLB, 1MB with what looks like option for a second MB) Expertmedia 3240/41 (OPTi 924 + 941 Wavetable) SMC 8416BT (SMC 83C795 10Mb …

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

Posted on 2019-08-08, 22:39

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The analog input of my SGI Multilink seemed to be dying on me, so I dug out a video card with DVI-D and hooked that up instead. Now it seems it's the whole Multilink, not just analog (screen losing sync all the time, particularly at native resolution of the 1600SW monitor) :( Worse, my DVI card, a …

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Re: IDE controller card for Pentium 70 (ISA) worth considering?

Posted on 2019-08-08, 13:47

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sounds like a rip-off on local sales level. Pentium 75 is a entry-level CPU from 1994 after all. Entry level Pentium, not entry level CPU for 1994. That would have been a 486-33. Exactly - any Pentium in 1994/early 1995 would have been a high-end option, which makes the very low specs of this …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-08-08, 09:45

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] And then this: Think I dont need to comment. The left cooler was removed with a screwdriver, the 3dfx-IC is damaged. Nothing to restore here. Will look through the box if I find the missing part of the Adlib... :dead: Did you give screwdriver guy a heads-up that his screwdriver-happy work …

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Re: Got 2 ISA Cards, What Now?

Posted on 2019-08-08, 09:19

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

In Win98SE you won't notice a major difference, but under DOS this is a perfect pair: The AWE64 does SB16 digital audio, CQM FM synth and AWE wavetable, but buggy MPU-401, no SBPro2 and no true OPL3. The AZT2320 (I believe that's a Packard Bell Rocky 2.5 card) does SBPro2, real OPL3 and bug-free …

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Re: Weames PA-9050-B (AD Echo) ROM (?) sockets

Posted on 2019-08-07, 22:31

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Perfect, that was exactly the info I needed! Given I'm already using the Soundwave32 driver, it stands to reason that it should work with the SW32 ROMs too. (found here) https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=39415&hilit=Orchid+Soundwave#p584850 Now, time to find those 74F174PC chips, get a 1MB …

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Re: IDE controller card for Pentium 70 (ISA) worth considering?

Posted on 2019-08-07, 20:20

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Nope. This is a VERY early Pentium. Remember I said it was a very expensive PC at the time? This one was bought in the first half of 1995 and cost over €2000 which is about €3500 today. The Pentium 75 chip had just been on the market for less than half a year at that time. My father's …

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Re: IDE controller card for Pentium 70 (ISA) worth considering?

Posted on 2019-08-07, 12:49

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] I found no info so I opened up my PC to manually check - took out the sound card since it was blocking the view of everything and ... there's no PCI slots :depressed: . Seems it's the version released after this one (same CPU) that had PCI. No PCI at all? That's odd for any Pentium-class …

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