Re: Power supply gurus, help and advice needed

Posted on 2019-02-06, 18:27

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think modern power supplies have inflated the perceived need for high wattage in the minds of PC enthusiasts. Bear in mind how much heat is radiated from a 120W light bulb. Now imagine 6 of them trapped in the PC's case. Are you able to toast marshmallows from the exhaust fan? If not, the PSU …

---

Re: Why didn't CRTs have digital inputs?

Posted on 2019-02-06, 18:14

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Yeah, if you look at it, every bit of history was a minor innovation over the previous tech -- all the way from black and white broadcast TV through VGA. Early computer monitors were just TVs. Then TVs with special inputs. Then dedicated monitors (but still using established connectivity interfaces …

---

Re: Quality mid to late 90's CD/DVD drives?

Posted on 2019-02-05, 20:55

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Huh. I remember learning that white lithium is the go-to for things like this, but you make some good points. Maybe it's time to revisit some of that cargo-cult wisdom. (However, I did learn long ago that WD40 is not a lubricant! ... or at least, not primarily.)

---

Re: My ongoing 386 build (or: The Disasterpiece)

Posted on 2019-02-05, 20:51

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

...Really? I looked around and didn't see one! Do you have a link? There's one on Ebay now, although that guy also added a ceramic resistor on the 3.3V line to "balance" the PSU. I do seem to remember there being better options available when I bought mine. I think the seller I got them from had an …

---

Re: Sound Blaster 1.x 'seamless' playback investigation

Posted on 2019-02-05, 20:39

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I get the bit-banged DAC thing. It's cheap and cheerful. It works. OK, fine. :-) But, the stepped time constant thing doesn't make sense to me at all. I'm aware they were blazing a trail (and so there was no rule book per se), and I'm honestly not familiar enough with late-80s digital audio to know …

---

Re: 486DX4-100 as a modern machine?

Posted on 2019-02-05, 20:18

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hopefully you never have to pan around the desktop. I can imagine that, for most 486-era GPUs, moving an entire screen full of bitmaps around is not exactly a cakewalk either. (I know games do, in a manner of speaking, but the ones that do are heavily optimized for this as well.)

---

Re: ISA SCSI w/Floppy Controller

Posted on 2019-02-05, 19:50

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Depends on the bus transceiver, I would think. I'm not particularly familiar with common IDE / floppy interface designs, but from a general electronics perspective... A lot of digital inputs can be damaged if voltage is applied without being powered, but because of that, it's super common to harden …

---

Re: "Accelerating" Windows 95 with Creative's Advanced Signal Processor (CSP)

Posted on 2019-02-05, 19:37

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

What's the music from? I like it. Can't say I would pick a 386 as a media player, but that is some impressive offloading there. I used to have a couple ADPCM tracks copied from friends' CDs back in my 486DX2/66 days, just to reduce disk cost. That compression algorithm sounded "different" for sure, …

---

Re: Favourite version of Windows?

Posted on 2019-02-04, 23:15

by

by SirNickity

in Milliways

in Milliways

OSS has done really well in certain markets. For example, appliances -- that is, hardware in a datacenter that isn't a server. Everyone who is anyone runs a variant of BSD or Linux under the hood. Juniper's JunOS is BSD. PANOS is Linux. I think ArubaOS is too. Supervisor modules that require an IP …

---

Re: Hilariously bad stock images of vintage hardware

Posted on 2019-02-04, 21:37

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hey, Jim from accounting lost his laptop, and happy hour was delayed by 45 minutes to get that shot.

---

Re: My ongoing 386 build (or: The Disasterpiece)

Posted on 2019-02-04, 21:35

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh, maybe I misunderstood. There's a version of the common ATX-to-AT adapter cable that has a -5V regulator spliced inline already. I thought that's what you were using, but I guess I missed where you added it yourself. I just have the plain (-5V pass-through) version.

---

Re: Quality mid to late 90's CD/DVD drives?

Posted on 2019-02-04, 21:31

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I use white lithium grease, which I got in a small tube at the local hardware store. Swab on with a Q-tip.

---

Re: Sound Blaster 1.x 'seamless' playback investigation

Posted on 2019-02-04, 21:23

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I mean this endearingly, but the Sound Blaster is such a cobbled together POS... it's better than no sound card, but they did just the bare minimum to qualify. :-D I've done some sound programming with ALSA and early Win API, and have dabbled in embedded hardware for funsies, but I've never worked …

---

Re: 486DX4-100 as a modern machine?

Posted on 2019-02-04, 20:36

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As a Ghia owner, I fit into both. Ah well, I was doomed anyway. While I agree with the general optimization standpoint -- as a general rule, I write all of my code using only what is absolutely necessary, and stress way more than I probably should about allocating memory needlessly -- when it comes …

---

Re: Are any of the optional Windows XP updates worth it?

Posted on 2019-02-04, 20:25

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nice, I'll grab that 2004 update disc for 98. I hope somebody puts together a compilation like that for Win95 and WinME eventually. XP SP3 seems to be pretty OK as it is.

---

Re: Quality mid to late 90's CD/DVD drives?

Posted on 2019-02-04, 20:20

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Glad you found an option. :-) Food for thought... I've always considered slot-loading drives to be more failure-prone. The loading mechanisms are much more complicated than a tray. Sure, you might have to replace a rubber belt every 20 years, or apply some fresh lubricant, but that's no biggie. I …

---

Re: Would you Retrobright?

Posted on 2019-02-04, 20:09

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've only done a couple things -- like the top half of an AV Famicom shell. At my latitude, there's not an abundance of sun, so I had to pick one of the rare gorgeous summer days we get and hope for the best. I used normal liquid hydrogen peroxide like you find at supermarket, because the cream …

---

Re: My ongoing 386 build (or: The Disasterpiece)

Posted on 2019-02-04, 19:44

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The multi-function card I bought was literally just named "Multifunction card" and was a great price =p ...Of course, shortly afterward, my friend found two of them in his own card stash. Oh well. That is exactly how these things go. It's happened to me a few times that I buy something, then run …

---

Re: Hilariously bad stock images of vintage hardware

Posted on 2019-02-04, 19:21

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I prefer to read that series of images as a story. Maybe the dude is just excited about working with narcoleptic soldering girl and sexy soldering girl. That's a higher than average statistic of attractive female engineers who are both clearly down to party.

---

Re: Some questions regarding roland hardware and using it on a modern system

Posted on 2019-02-04, 19:11

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Yeah, I have two of those in my monitoring rig. Drum submix in one, band submix in the other, then off to a set of headphone monitor distribution boxes. Behringer is a mixed bag, but I like that rack mixer a lot. It's simple, cheap, and it works.

---