Re: PS5 gonna be PS4 fully compatible

Posted on 2019-06-07, 17:41

by

by SirNickity

in Milliways

in Milliways

Sorry for moaning, but it's a situation that really annoys me. Me too, particularly because I haven't even caught up on all the 8-bit era games in my backlog, much less started on PS2, PS3, and PS4. I finally got around to surveying what's out there and spent about two years buying it all up, so …

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Re: The "12-bit" Sound Blaster 16 Myth

Posted on 2019-06-07, 03:17

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I think you're just going out of your way to try and miss the point I'm making. Frankly I find your line of reasoning to insult my intelligence. OK, well, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe you're just looking for a reason to be offended. At any rate, I'm not explaining it TO you, I'm stating a …

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Re: ZIDA 4DPS – the story of repairing

Posted on 2019-06-06, 18:19

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm not a fan of SIS chipsets in general either but for 486 they are very good. SIS471 is probably the fastest for VLB, and the 496 is among the best for PCI. Intel's 486 chipsets on the other hand... ughhh. But it all changed after the Pentium though. Hm, maybe I need to let go of some old …

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Re: NuXT - MicroATX Turbo XT Motherboard - 9.55MHz, UMBs, XT-CF, SVGA, HD Floppy, Serial

Posted on 2019-06-06, 18:15

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen this morning. 🤣 Somebody with significantly better FPGA skills than me needs to get in there and clone those ICs. What's the story on the BIOS? Was it hand-crafted or ported from some existing hardware?

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Re: The "12-bit" Sound Blaster 16 Myth

Posted on 2019-06-06, 17:59

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

this doesn't really put the SB Pro in a class of elite professional audio hardware. I never said it did, and I already corrected you at least twice on that. I said it is *semi-*professional, as in: the most expensive option that we find here, listed in a regular PC magazine, aimed at consumers and …

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Re: What program can do this, please?

Posted on 2019-06-06, 17:40

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by SirNickity

in Milliways

in Milliways

How large are the drives? You can nix the offline cataloging if there's any possibility of copying their contents into one place. I used to have a Windows 3.1 program that found duplicates within a volume. Not sure if this is retro related or post-LFN / post-NTFS though.

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Re: PS5 gonna be PS4 fully compatible

Posted on 2019-06-06, 17:37

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by SirNickity

in Milliways

in Milliways

Heheh.. yeah, I dunno how I feel about the ".5" generations of consoles. Fragmentation is no good. OTOH, there's a lot of pressure to keep initial release prices well below equivalent PCs despite being based on the same hardware, while making it viable for ~4-5 years. What to do.

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Re: ZIDA 4DPS – the story of repairing

Posted on 2019-06-05, 18:28

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Those Zida boards are freakin aDORable. I don't have one -- I've never been a fan of SIS chipsets -- but at some point I'll probably get one, if only to put it in a picture frame and hang on my office wall. Anyway, if it were me, and this had been a board with a VLSI / UMC / Intel chipset, I would …

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Re: Your worst "terrible packaging from eBay sellers" experiences

Posted on 2019-06-05, 18:07

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I always thought the Japanese had the utmost care in packaging. A friend of mine always buys something form jp and always comes well packed. Generally I have found that to be true. The stuff I've gotten from Japan is consistently in better condition, more complete, and packaged way better than an …

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Re: The "12-bit" Sound Blaster 16 Myth

Posted on 2019-06-05, 17:52

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

That's a lot to pay for an SB Pro. But..... I mean... PC stuff really WAS expensive back then. Like I said, I still remember seeing the AdLib on the shelf at the time for something in the neighborhood of $75-100, give or take. (I apologize -- it's spongy. I'm trying to accurately place the price I …

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Re: PS5 gonna be PS4 fully compatible

Posted on 2019-06-05, 17:29

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by SirNickity

in Milliways

in Milliways

Xbox Two? No, the next logical number in sequence is Xbox π. 😉 Anyway, good news! I already bought a Pro, but.. eh.. maybe I'll just keep a Slim. I wonder what the VR situation will be like?

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Re: Need help from Soundblaster Pro CT1330A owner!

Posted on 2019-06-04, 20:43

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Yeah, that was a neat surprise. I'm not sure what all they're doing with it. My test bench speakers are the rears from a plastic HTIB crapfest connected to a little (couple watts) class-D amp, hastily thrown together and sitting wherever they aren't in the way. I could hear the left-to-right sweep …

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Re: Upgrade to EPYC for home server. Dissuade me.

Posted on 2019-06-04, 19:39

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by SirNickity

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'm all about having the right tool for the job. I have three Supermicro boards in 1U rack enclosures. One is a low-power Atom that hosts my NAS (software RAID-5), another of the same model for my router / firewall, and a third multi-core board with a bunch of RAM for a VM host. One big reason to …

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Re: What PSU to use

Posted on 2019-06-04, 18:27

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I found it pretty easy to cut a reasonably smooth line on the outside of what would be the outer end of the 20-pin plug. YMMV. The newly-freed +4 side will be worthless, which is why I just bought a new plug for it. I don't need it now, but might some day. You may as well snip the wires as close to …

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Re: What to do with old jailbroken iPad and iPhone 4?

Posted on 2019-06-04, 18:16

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I understand the cynicism, but I think it's unfounded. "Jail" is a term often used in computing to describe a sandboxed environment. E.g., "a chroot jail" in Unix, used to run a process in a contained filesystem so any exploit against that process doesn't have access to the full system. Since modern …

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Re: Your worst "terrible packaging from eBay sellers" experiences

Posted on 2019-06-04, 17:44

by

by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I ordered a Famicom from Japan that arrived kind of like that. The outer box (if you can call it that -- very light cardboard) did nothing to protect its contents, despite a generous amount of cling wrap ( :blah: ) around the console itself. After unwrapping the shell, I was left with what looked …

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Re: Need help from Soundblaster Pro CT1330A owner!

Posted on 2019-06-04, 17:31

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

OK, well.. short answer: It works the way you expect it should. On the SB Pro installation disk, test-sbc.exe plays the 2-operator test in stereo -- which I didn't know before. The high arpeggios are played on the right channel, for example. The lower riffs are panned center. So that's Dual OPL2 …

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Re: Tick tock

Posted on 2019-06-03, 22:42

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, I have no interest in getting in the kits business. :-) But, I'm happy to make it available for anyone who's interested in making their own. If anyone happens to have an online store and wants to carry them (or whatever), you have my blessing. OSH Park: https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/ …

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Re: Tick tock

Posted on 2019-06-03, 18:38

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Since I was ordering from OSH Park anyway, I put together a replacement front panel PCB for my Antec VSK case. I really like this case. It was about $35 locally, without a PSU. It's definitely not built like a tank, but it seems the corners cut were reasonable compromises. Everything fits nicely and …

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Re: Tick tock

Posted on 2019-06-03, 18:21

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by SirNickity

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I replaced the previous version in my 386DX/40, since the pins were only tacked onto the bottom surface of the PCB. This one has large enough holes so the pins can actually go through the PCB. ;-) RTC-386.jpg And now, let's try to get that PS/2 Model 30 - 286 running. I probably should've used …

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