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

Posted on 2018-09-25, 11:15

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Merovign wrote: [...] […] Show full quote [...] None of the labels led me anywhere on Gurgle. [...] I'm not sure what it means that almost everything is in English but the label for the serial number is in German. One tip: "löpnummer" isn't German (that would be Laufnummer) but Swedish. That …

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

Posted on 2018-09-25, 08:26

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The "vox" bit combined with the 3.5mm (?) jacks and rheostat sounds like it was some kind of voice/audio system, but that hardware... this is almost a whole Mac / Atari ST on an ISA card - computationally more powerful than the XT-class machine it would have been inserted into. As intrigued as you …

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Re: (Solved) What kind of cache memory is this?

Posted on 2018-09-25, 06:02

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've seen this technique used on DIP type cache chips. Hell, I've even seen offset BIOS chips. It seems that your chips are 3.3v, whereas from what I gather mine need to be 5v. Thanks for digging that up though, I might actually have a use for the 3.3v chips as I just came across something …

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

Posted on 2018-09-24, 22:23

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh the joys of early 00's hardware... Been building my not so totally old stuff into systems someone wants to use for charity. No idea what OS they intend to use, but so as to be sure everything works - and to be able to show that's the case, have installed Lubuntu onto them. Once it's installed, …

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Re: Best PCI sound card for dos/win3.1

Posted on 2018-09-24, 11:46

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

PC/PCI connector ? You mean SB link? "SB-Link" is Creative's name for it. As Soundblaster is a trademark, the rest of the industry called it PC/PCI. Given that Creative themselves stopped using their SB-Link almost as soon as the introduced it, I'm using the far commoner name used by vendors who …

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Re: Is WiFi harmful?

Posted on 2018-09-24, 11:41

by

by dionb

in Milliways

in Milliways

Muz wrote: I think WiFi is harmful, every night I have insomnia. When I wake up after sleep, I feel bit of headache. Did you even read my post immediately above this? If so, what do you think of it?

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Re: CAS latency : PC100 CL3 vs PC133 CL3 @100

Posted on 2018-09-24, 09:17

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is simple to answer if you look at the actual requirements in terms of chip cycle time. PC100 CL2 = 8ns PC133 CL3 = 7.5ns So 7.5ns SDRAM is more than capable of supporting 100MHz at CL2. As for what an SE440BX with limited settings would do in this case - no idea, test and see...

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Re: Socket 370 with BX440 Motherboards?

Posted on 2018-09-23, 21:19

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not familiar with any FC-PGA2 BX boards either. More than enough with So370, and that /4 PCI divider is pretty common too on 1999 boards. I have the Abit BX133 which pretty much does what the name promises. Tbh though, if you want to run Tualatin on BX I'd sooner recommend Slot 1 as you can do the …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-09-23, 21:14

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yep, I really would check for the 5V line before anything else. If you don't have a multimeter, you can always use a LED...

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-09-23, 13:36

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

so normally it will run significantly faster with 64MB than with higher amounts of RAM There's no significant perormance difference between 64mb and 128mb configs. 128 is slower, but just slightly. I recall the impact was pretty severe. If I have time this afternoon I'll give it a spin on my …

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Re: Ulitmate AGP mainboard

Posted on 2018-09-23, 12:00

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For testing *any* AGP card, you want a board with a universal (4x) AGP 2.0 slot that can handle everything from old 3.3V AGP 1.0 cards to the last AGP 3.0 8X things. If you go for a newer AGP 3.0 (8X) board, you can't test AGP 1.0 (2X) cards.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-09-23, 11:50

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Also, I really wasn't aware the 430TX does see 128MB and work well with it. Booted up 98SE perfectly i430TX officially supports max 256MB, using 64Mb chips. However, it's basically the same memory controller as in the i440EX and will happily do 512MB with 12BMb chips as well. Note that the …

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

Posted on 2018-09-23, 10:23

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In touch with someone doing charity work fixing up old-ish but not yet retro PCs for disadvantaged senior citizens. Want to offload all my 'crap' that is too new for my interest and may actually still be useful for somebody as a daily drive to write emails, do online banking & e-government stuff, …

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Re: Anything else besides games on your retro PC? How old are You?

Posted on 2018-09-22, 17:38

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This sounds quite a bit like "You young'uns get off mah lawn!!!" ;) But being of similar age I can certainly sympathise if not agree with most of it. Apart from games (which I actually don't have enough time for usually) I hook up any device remotely capable to my home network (yeah, I'm an in-home …

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Re: Creating 80186 Based System

Posted on 2018-09-22, 16:14

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yea, that's the thing: you can't stick an ET4000 in there. An 8086 at 10 MHz can theoretically pack quite a bit of oomph, and could take on a 286 at 6-8 MHz... but if you can't couple it with a fast VGA card the way you can with a 286, you're bandwidth-limiting it like an 8088 system. You were …

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Re: Creating 80186 Based System

Posted on 2018-09-22, 13:30

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My thoughts here are that the 8086 and 80186 were rather 'unfortunate' products in the history of the PC. That is, they were 16-bit CPUs in an era where the 'real' PC platform was still 8-bit. 16-bit ISA slots and chipsets were not introduced until the PC/AT with the 286 CPU. So I have never seen a …

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Re: Best PCI sound card for dos/win3.1

Posted on 2018-09-21, 20:14

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Not too sure about 3.x specifically, but as for DOS you have a few choices. Question is whether you have a PC/PCI connector on your motherboard. If so, you have a wide range of choices, with the Yamaha XG (744-based) cards probably being the best bet. If not (more likely) you need a card that does …

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

Posted on 2018-09-20, 23:37

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Good cable management behind the motherboard. Separate sides and top instead of those awful U-shaped covers. Increase length of case by a few cm and move HDD from awful location under FDD (and on top of most important bits of motherboard) down to the lower front of the case, in vertical orientation. …

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Re: looking for a decent soundcard

Posted on 2018-09-20, 23:29

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Obvious question: what do you want/expect from your computer's sound capabilities? The more modern you go, the less difference it makes outside of pro audio or audiophile circles, but that Dimension 4550 is old enough for onboard audio to be pretty crappy, and old enough you might want to run DOS or …

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Re: Struggling to find parts.

Posted on 2018-09-20, 21:18

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Be careful of that one. It's got an ODIN RTC battery. If it's not socketed and you're not handy with a soldering iron, that will be a challenge to replace. Also, sticker over chipset suggests PC Chips-style 'fake' stuff. Given the other chip is a regular UMC one, it probably really is UMC under the …

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