Re: Which hard drives can you use with a Pentium 75 (socket 5) computer?

Posted on 2020-06-01, 09:05

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On Intel boards this is usually preserved during BIOS update as the image is located outside of the area flashable by fmup.exe with default settings. As far as I remember there was a separate utility for flashing OEM logo. But if you care, do a backup. Should live between EC000H and ECFFFH addresses …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-06-01, 08:07

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Technically not a purchase, but an exchange (with a fellow Vogoner and outside of the forum). So other rare parts had to go in the other direction. But this has a new home now:

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2020-05-31, 20:24

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

That' really cool. Love it.

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Re: DACs in early 3Dfx Voodoo cards?

Posted on 2020-05-31, 19:44

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I remember most of Voodoo's 1 coming with ICS 5342. At least those based on reference design. https://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/v … ST/ICS5342.html

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-05-31, 10:32

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Early Diamond Stealth ISA with S3 924 and VRAM. Put it to basket on eBay when it was £50. Forgot to check it out and eventually got £20! offer from seller which I gladly accepted.

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Re: Do 286/386/486 motherboards require -5V from the PSU?

Posted on 2020-05-30, 13:39

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't believe I have any sound cards that require -5V, I doubt even the SnarkBarker requires it. As long as the motherboard plays ball, I'm OK :) Sound Blaster 2.0 doesn't work properly without one. SnarkBarker is a replica of SB 1.0 AFAIK so doesn't need one. There is https://www.vogons.org/ …

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Re: Do 286/386/486 motherboards require -5V from the PSU?

Posted on 2020-05-30, 10:49

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No. It is not needed It is only for small number of ISA boards.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-05-29, 15:56

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also bought this 120W pico-ATX PSU for quick bench testing of motherboards without having to use AT/ATX PSU. https://dependency-injection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/DSC_7375-scaled.jpeg Seems to be working when using my 12-24V 3A power adaptor I use for my soldering iron. Hopefully, I won't blow …

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Re: My Dream High-End Intel 486 Build

Posted on 2020-05-29, 13:12

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yes. That's for sure. PCI was created for a reason and it was a much better bus, more flexible, reliable, scalable, etc. However, in absolute numbers and when transferring data from CPU to slave device the local bus could be a bit faster.

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Re: PCI Riser Card capacitors - required on all thin clients?

Posted on 2020-05-29, 13:04

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Yes. But the -12V is present in the PCI connector, should come from the motherboard and no need to create in on a riser card. Also from which voltage it should be created? With a better picture we should be able to tell for which voltage it is... I googled this specific card and found some hits also …

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Re: My Dream High-End Intel 486 Build

Posted on 2020-05-29, 12:44

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

This is tricky to compare. One could try to use a VIP style motherboard (the one with both VL-Bus and PCI slots). However, that way you are usually penalising one or the other bus. So you have to use two different motherboards designed for VLB and PCI with similar performance. Then you also need to …

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Re: PCI Riser Card capacitors - required on all thin clients?

Posted on 2020-05-29, 12:08

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

In any case I think it is unlikely to be required for ordinary cards.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-05-29, 10:05

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Acquired this WD Paradise Bali32 which some claim is the ultimate VL Bus card for DOS. Can't wait to test it for my VLB VGA review project.

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Re: Early Pentium Chipset Comparison

Posted on 2020-05-28, 21:37

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There are two things in particular that I want to compare: 430NX vs 430FX using Async L2 on both, to see how much the chipset by itself impacts performance It turns out that given the big hit 430FX suffers when using async cache, the overall performance is almost identical to 430NX (also with async …

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Re: Early Pentium Chipset Comparison

Posted on 2020-05-28, 20:53

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I tested all combinations. The above is all EDO. The benefit of EDO is twice as big in a cache-less system though. This is somewhat in line with Intel's marketing message they were pushing back in 1995, that EDO (or hyper page ram how they call it) is a cost effective alternative for expensive SRAMs …

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Re: SIS 85C496 based mainboard question

Posted on 2020-05-28, 17:12

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Might be a LS486e. There were many revisions of that board. SiS496 is the latest gen 486 chipset so it should make for a very fast 486. Installing 486 sideways likely destroyed either the CPU or the motherboard or both. Happened to me as well long time ago. Installing any sort of RAM should be fine …

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Re: IWILL P54TS oddities / 430FX Asynchronous L2 cache vs Pipeline Burst L2 cache

Posted on 2020-05-28, 11:34

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In fact one of the most popular Intel 430FX motherboards used in by many OEMs - Intel Zappa was designed exclusively for asynchronous SRAMs. It is true that it often came without any SRAMs. I think COAST and PB cache was introduced by later boards like Intel Advanced/EV...

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Re: Anyone sold their collections / parts on... any regrets?

Posted on 2020-05-28, 11:15

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For a long time I regretted donating my Gravis Ultrasound ACE to a random guy in about 2004. The one I was actually using in 90s. The person was running a museum website about sound cards, somehow found I had it and asked nicely. I had no interest in it at that time and sent it to him it for free. …

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Re: Mystery 486 co-processor / board ID

Posted on 2020-05-28, 10:35

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The mystery is solved. Got the board. The chip is indeed a 82485: https://dependency-injection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/DSC_7323-scaled.jpeg Which is controlling an unusual 64kB cache SIMM I haven't seen before. Given 2-way set configuration the performance should be equivalent to a bigger …

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Re: Speed issues on integrated VLB IDE controller on 486 board

Posted on 2020-05-28, 09:41

by

by mpe

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes. This is an early IDE controller. So drivers won't be talking about PIO/DMA modes. Most likely you'll be able to change active/recovery clock cycles. Here is the spec. So I believe some tools for programming these registers must exist: http://www.ryston.cz/petr/vlb/adi2.html Depending on your …

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