Re: Pentium with no L2.

Posted on 2019-03-04, 21:49

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If I recall the idea was that EDO without L2 was about as quick as FPM with L2, when they were dropping L2 to cut costs Before putting away my 430HX motherboard, I decided to test this theory using Quake's timedemo in DOS with a K6-2 (no integrated cache) at 500 MHz (6x83.3). The results were: EDO …

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Re: Can you identify these three graphics cards?

Posted on 2019-03-04, 18:29

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The Voodoo3 looks like a V3-3000 PCI OEM version. I have the exact same card. The other two are the Diamond V330 and Monster3D indeed.

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Re: Cascading regular/low end KVM switches

Posted on 2019-03-02, 13:20

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

First off, Aten isn't low-end stuff. At least you have two of the best devices in their category to start with. I hate shortcuts and try to disable them on any stuff I use, so I can 't offer any advice there. As for the image quality bit - that would be my prime concern. VGA is analog, so the signal …

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Re: Authenticity vs Power

Posted on 2019-03-02, 13:01

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Tbh, that whole "these days 10yo parts are still usable when in the past they wouldn't do half that" only applies if you focus on CPU & GPU. With other parts, maturity was reached much earlier. It's entirely true that in say 1999 (20 years ago) you wouldn't have been able to run anything current on …

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

Posted on 2019-03-02, 11:50

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Funny how completely unrelated hardware sometimes shows identical issues. Last night was corroded contact night. I had a pile of I/O controllers and an unresponsive motherboard to test. Nothing worked first time and every single one had at least one contact issue. The board (the last of my Morse 486 …

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

Posted on 2019-03-01, 21:47

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Deksor wrote: There's no room underneath, it's a desktop tower and the plate where the board sits on can't be removed ... Right, but there are spacers between the plate and the board surely? I'd expect to be able to fit two flatcables in that space between plate and board easily.

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

Posted on 2019-03-01, 21:19

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Deksor wrote: So I improved my cable management, it looks even cleaner now 😁 Still room for improvement though - I'd route those IDE & floppy flatcables under the motherboard instead of over it for starters.

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Re: Authenticity vs Power

Posted on 2019-03-01, 20:59

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Of course if you're talking about authenticity, don't forget the monitor. If you were running Win3.x, chances are you have a monitor that couldn't decently display 1024x768 anyway, at least not at a refresh rate that wouldn't induce headaches within a few minutes. I had an S3 868 card with 1MB that …

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Re: Pentium with no L2.

Posted on 2019-03-01, 12:33

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Did you create a chart or graph? Nope, just the raw data. I think I'll need to use 133 MHz because Socket 4 is either 60, 66, or 133 MHz POD. Or will the POD drop to 100 MHz with the fan removed? If it does, that would be even better so I don't have to use a socket 5 upgrade module for the other …

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Re: Pentium with no L2.

Posted on 2019-03-01, 10:46

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Great! That's what I used to have, before I was forced to offload it all when I moved to a tiny apartment in the big city. I did the same, benching everything with a P100 at 66MHz FSB (the one speed every board could do) Here's the raw data I still have: http://dionb.eu/chipset1.html

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Re: Pentium with no L2.

Posted on 2019-03-01, 00:56

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In cases whereby one motherboard shows a marked improvement when using SDRAM over EDO, it would be very interesting to compare such a board with another of an identical chipset which did not show improvement when using SDRAM. It is possible that the board which you suspect is dodgy may just be able …

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Re: Pentium with no L2.

Posted on 2019-02-28, 22:48

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I assume that with faster CPUs L2 is much more significant, but for a Pentium with SDRAM is right on the edge of L2 speeds. This is only an assumption as I have no EDO ram to test. On my 430TX board, SDRAM did not offer any speed benefit to EDO. In fact, I was able to set the RAM timings faster …

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Re: Authenticity vs Power

Posted on 2019-02-28, 16:37

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yep. And in fact even back in 1996/1997, the difference in CPU and VGA might have been huge, but if you had an 'old' Gravis Ultrasound and/or Sound Blaster AWE32, not to mention a good mechanical keyboard, there would have been little reason to upgrade those parts even if you'd just upgraded your …

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Re: Game pads for DOS ?

Posted on 2019-02-28, 16:26

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You know, we'd be a lot more likely to help you if you gave the impression of at least having Googled the question before dumping it here... Game controllers were invented in the DOS era and as with most DOS stuff, games need to address the hardware directly, but pretty much any one will work, …

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Re: Intel 82706 Graphic Card

Posted on 2019-02-27, 20:28

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Interesting beast! It's a Hercules card, and if that's an Intel 82706 (can't make it out on the picture), VGA. The right-hand side of the card is pretty standard, the left less so. That 50p connector at the top looks SCSI-ish, but the socketed chip is a TMS34010 i.e. TIGA, which would suggest SVGA …

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Re: Authenticity vs Power

Posted on 2019-02-27, 16:25

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] That is so pointless it is funny again! :D But no one beats Windows XP on 7 MHz: https://www.winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini.htm Yep, my setup was basically the 16MHz he did there - not 100% sure, but probably also a late SiS 486 chipset - just with more RAM. Tempted to start looking for an …

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Re: 8BIT ISA SERIAL I/O TO PS2 MOUSE

Posted on 2019-02-27, 16:17

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Great idea. I'd be happy to help too - my love of old computers does not extend to old pointing devices, and whereas I can get my preferred trackballs down to PS/2, they don't talk native serial. Also, PS/2 plays nice with my KVM-switch. All in all lots of PS/2 things I could plug into it to check …

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Re: Authenticity vs Power

Posted on 2019-02-27, 16:07

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

486 with 32MB RAM? Amateur! 15 years ago I was running one with more than that, I found one that would take 128MB 72p FP SIMMs and did 256 MB :P (also installed Windows XP on the system using a PODP83, then clocked it down to 16MHz for the most pointlessly slow experience I could generate :dead: ). …

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

Posted on 2019-02-27, 15:50

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I love my MCE2VGA :) Been playing around with mono modes on an ATi Small Wonder (CGA+Hercules). With Hercules the difference between analog and TTL mono is striking; TTL is crisp and clear, analog is downright fuzzy, although it looks fine if you switch to CGA (i.e. low-res) output. Of course, this …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-02-27, 08:35

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So, it's time for mine january-february haul report: [...] Aztech Sound Galaxy Basic 16 Lots of stuff happening here. Still, sadly there's no geniune OPL3 here Ooh, that's a nice one. It may not have an OPL3 with genuine Yamaha markings, but that LS-212 is an exact 1:1 copy so should sound exactly …

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