Need BIOS for DTK TK83305

Posted on 2019-02-22, 20:18

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I bought this one on Ebay recently to have a board with a socketed 386. Seems to work otherwise, but I can't get it to read or write from/to a hard disk. Tried different ISA controllers, cables, and one each 80MB Conner and 402MB Quantum -- both work elsewhere. It boots fine from a floppy. The BIOS …

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Re: SB 2.0 CT1350 CMS chips dumped

Posted on 2019-02-22, 19:41

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by SirNickity

in Milliways

in Milliways

You know, I guess I kind of get it, that he went to the trouble to fix something that's been an issue for years, and so he technically has the right to keep it proprietary. OTOH, everyone here benefits from standing on the shoulders of giants, and we're all in this niche community struggling against …

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Re: Would you Retrobright?

Posted on 2019-02-22, 19:20

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Has anyone ever damaged anything from store-bought liquid hydrogen peroxide and some time in the sun? I know there are all these high-powered creams and tricks with heat and all kind of other crazy things, but for me, it's not worth the risk just to bleach faster. Low and slow, and she'll be right. …

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Re: Zeck AT Power supply

Posted on 2019-02-22, 19:15

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Lead colors don't necessarily mean anything. I have several different Delta supplies that were recovered from various OEM machines. (I bought them on Ebay, so I don't know where exactly they came from.) On one pair of AT supplies I have, the +12V rail is blue instead of yellow, which of course …

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Re: Would it be a good idea to Defrag Old Hard Drive?

Posted on 2019-02-22, 18:52

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Depends a bit on what you're running, too. DOS benefits from optimizing the on-disk layout because it's so bad at caching. So, if you have a game with a crap ton of files (like Wing Commander, for e.g.), then using something like Norton Speedisk to put the directory entries in consecutive clusters …

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Re: Replacement Voodoo5 fans

Posted on 2019-02-21, 19:08

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Here's one option: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=64689#p727135 - It's a 2-pin fan, though, and you'll have to splice the connector from the old fan. You can use other 40x40 fans (10mm, for e.g.) but you might need different screws. Your local Fastenal or equivalent might have what you …

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Re: What will we do when IPv6 is fully adopted?

Posted on 2019-02-21, 01:08

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by SirNickity

in Milliways

in Milliways

We will all be dead and gone long before IPv6 reaches critical mass. ;-) It reminds me of a joke I once heard: "IPv6 walks into a bar. Nobody notices it." Seriously though, with NAT, you don't technically need to run IPv6 on an internal network, and by the time we've outgrown IPv4 entirely, there …

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Re: programming environment for dos

Posted on 2019-02-21, 00:57

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by SirNickity

in Milliways

in Milliways

The only IDE for me is KDE's source editor, Kate. <3 I haven't found ANY other editor that behaves more intuitively for me (wrt indents, tab/space handling, folding, etc.) It's just sympatico. I'm building a 386 dev box where I'll use MS C, MASM, and Watcom, but I suspect most of my coding will be …

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Re: Blown Fuse In New AT Power Supply

Posted on 2019-02-21, 00:32

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I would concur. The first pic did look like one of the mains-side reservoir caps was failing. If that's the case, it could have failed short, and that would explain the fuse. Now hopefully the fuse failed without any of the other active components getting damaged in the process. If so, it should be …

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Re: The Soundblaster DSP project

Posted on 2019-02-21, 00:24

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So, given that the MCUs are read-protected; that Creative produces like a gazillion variants of any given model that probably all require different FW versions to accommodate different board topologies; and that the microcode only has a few relatively simple things to do... wouldn't it just be …

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Re: My ongoing 386 build (aka The Disasterpiece, aka Phoenix) - it's alive!

Posted on 2019-02-21, 00:12

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

AFAIK, there's no way for a floppy controller to identify the type of drive, and I would imagine USB adapters would need to know what kind of drive it is to pass that on to the OS. Ordinarily you would provide that detail at the BIOS setup screen, but that doesn't apply when attaching via USB. I.e., …

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Re: Zeck AT Power supply

Posted on 2019-02-21, 00:02

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Never heard of 'em. Let's see the guts.

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Re: Replicas of Covox Speech Thing, FTL Sound Adapter and SiliconSoft SoundJr

Posted on 2019-02-15, 18:47

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Is there something specific that supports this rare DAC, or is it just for funsies and the sake of preservation? Just curious. I don't recall hearing much or anything about the Sound Jr.

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Re: MIDI intelligent mode: Seventh Guest

Posted on 2019-02-15, 18:35

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by SirNickity

in DOS

in DOS

There was a Roland-branded CM-32L? Aw man, I wish I had known that before I bought mine on Ebay.

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Re: Capacitor with exotic rating

Posted on 2019-02-15, 01:18

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't like to stray too far, as sometimes the circuit is tuned somewhat for a specific capacity. Although in power-decoupling circuits, anything larger (within reason) is usually fine, if not better. That said, keep in mind, capacitors usually come with a +/-20% rating. So, 180uF is expected to be …

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Re: 386 motherboard not cooperating with IO controllers

Posted on 2019-02-15, 01:12

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Are there any other cards in there? Sounds kinda like the boot interrupt is being usurped by something (maybe with its own BIOS?) and never getting to the floppy / HDD. I assume you've set the boot order to A: or C:? I know, dumb question, just checking the obvious stuff.

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Re: Help with Pro Audio Spectrum CD-ROM

Posted on 2019-02-15, 01:04

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Looks like the common *34*-pin Sony CD interface that was popular on the Sound Blaster 16 and such. I don't know what drivers you would need for that, specifically. Have you tried just loading the standard PAS16 drivers? IIRC, mvsound.sys loaded support for my SCSI version automatically, so there …

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Re: Floppy drive pins ?

Posted on 2019-02-14, 22:07

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh... well yeah, I guess you're right. Good point. 😀

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Re: Floppy drive pins ?

Posted on 2019-02-14, 19:08

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Define "did not work". Can't read disks? Or POST error "Floppy drive fail (40)"? Is that a bent pin? Bottom right on the top one. I've never seen a drive with (nearly) all the pins removed on the bottom row, but I do have one where every other bottom pin is gone. I would think removing the whole lot …

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Re: Various Soundcards into a 5.1 Receiver Options

Posted on 2019-02-14, 18:52

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

That's news to me. I thought some of the Audigy cards had DD licenses as part of the higher-end bundles. (The non-Value versions, e.g.) I only recently got hold of some Audigy / Audigy 2 cards though, and haven't done anything beyond install the software and play a few games over 2-ch line-out.

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