Re: S3 Virge Graphics Card RAM Upgrade/Overclock

Posted on 2020-10-17, 11:32

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

ViRGE cards were sold in a wide variety of configurations by third party manufacturers. The best cards have 35ns RAM whilst the worst have 60ns stuff. Most have generic BIOSes with a 55MHz clock regardless of the RAM that is actually on the card. Cards were built with whatever RAM they had on hand …

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Re: BIOS image collection - requests, discussion etc

Posted on 2020-10-17, 11:27

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by mkarcher

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

(from the EGA thread) #17 Manufacturer/Identifier: NEL ELECTRONICS / "ULTIMATE EGA+++" Chipset: "UDL" C3 (8737KK) BIOS-String: NEL INTERNATIONAL 1987 IBM EGA COMPATIBLE SMART BIOS 5.93 11/17/87 Status: working in XT systems at 4.77Mhz and 8Mhz, display corruption at 10Mhz [...] Writes to display …

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Re: Sigma Designs EGA cards - a deep dive

Posted on 2020-10-17, 11:18

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

With the switches set to SW1:4=OFF:ON:ON:ON, the expected value (0x01) is stored in the low nibble of 0000:0488 (the INFO_3 byte of the BIOS data area). I would expect this switch setting to mean "MDA is primary display, EGA configured as secondary display in 80-column 200-line colour mode". Here's …

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Re: SB16 Value (CT2770) has different IRQ & DMA in Windows

Posted on 2020-10-17, 11:11

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by mkarcher

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Windows 95/98/ME has its own resource management and initializes Plug-and-Play cards when the Windows core boots (i.e. not when you boot "command prompt only"). When you boot command prompt only, the Sound Blaster card is initialized by the BIOS instead. You can't configure much in the BIOS, but if …

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Re: MCGA monitor at 15 KHz?

Posted on 2020-10-16, 21:46

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

As long as the registers can be read back, a timer-triggered TSR should be able to bend everything back to 15kHz. This would also be useful for VGA cards in combination with a TV set. I'm able to test whether registers can be read back in some months in a hands-on experiment on a PS/2 model 30. I'm …

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Re: UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.75e

Posted on 2020-10-15, 18:31

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Then JazeFox recommended I basically tried all timing settings and the bottom line is: 1/2 1/3 1/4 1/5 don't work, 1/6 1/8 1/10 do. is it 66/6=11mhz the new setting? Yes! No. Your new timing is 33/6=5.5MHz. The CLKIN is the FSB frequency, not the internal core frequency of your clock-doubling …

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Re: Adding a serial port to a controller card with a game port

Posted on 2020-10-15, 09:22

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A better pic could help us help you. I think there might be a fatter bit of white silkscreen on one corner (which is a typical way of indicating pin one). Failing that, if we can identify the exact card we might be able to find documentation indicating pinout/orientation. I don't think we even need …

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Re: Adding a serial port to a controller card with a game port

Posted on 2020-10-15, 06:07

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No, you can not unplug the game port from the controller card and expect your serial cable to work at the same electric connection. But there are two connections for serial ports directly behind the parallel connector. If your serial cable is of the right type (there are two incompatible pin-outs, …

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Re: Adding a serial port to a controller card with a game port

Posted on 2020-10-14, 23:07

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have this ISA controller card with a parallel and game port: https://i.imgur.com/nuI8IED.jpeg I already have one game port on my sound card and I want to use a mouse with this build. So I removed a serial port from a broken controller card: https://i.imgur.com/YsqcUH3.jpg So I was thinking... can …

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Re: Octek Rev 5.2 286 PLCC board

Posted on 2020-10-14, 21:29

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

When I plug my graphics card before the controller card, image is always good. If I plug it after the image can be corrupt like showing in different colors (usually green and dark blue) or nothing at all. Is there something wrong? Sounds like a contact problem in the slot the graphics card doesn't …

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Re: Info needed on 286 board

Posted on 2020-10-14, 11:37

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

When I do so, after post, it comes to the point where it should boot from the CF. All it does however, is showing a blinking cursus in the upperleft corner.. Then nothing.. When I boot from a floppy it works and I can browse/copy/whatever to the CF card (c:). Also, FDISK confirms the partition is …

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Re: Info needed on 286 board

Posted on 2020-10-13, 15:55

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

MaTi wrote on 2020-10-13, 15:30: Stupid quick question.. jp5 has 4 legs, my battery has 2. Which pins are + and -? The outer two. - has continuity to ground.

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Re: most compact 8088/8086 board you've seen?

Posted on 2020-10-13, 09:46

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

(about splitting 8-bit accesses into two 4-bit accesses) In order for this to work, you either need fast memory, or a slow CPU. FPM RAM is going to help a lot here. I bet the board requires page-mode support, as page-mode access was universally implemented in RAM chips at the very end of the XT era …

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Re: Locating belt for Citizen W1D floppy drive belt.

Posted on 2020-10-12, 22:33

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Damn, you are right! I swapped two belts last June. One drive is from a 386 notebook. I'm pretty sure it was W1x something. Maybe A or B. Sorry. The drive on your picture looks identical to my Citizen U0DA-31A from a COMPAL BC380 series notebook (my copy has a "Peacock" label on it). My drive is …

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Re: Difference between Ensoniq Soundscape ROMs?

Posted on 2020-10-12, 22:02

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by mkarcher

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

In case you are collecting part numbers, maybe this one (currently at my hand) might be interesting, too: Spea Media FX (S2000 OEM edition, sold e.g. at Vobis in Germany) P/N 4001022801 Rev D Assy Number 40900228 01 Rev E ROM: 1350901601 Size: 2MB The main difference between the Media FX and the …

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Re: VIASBCFG - VIA SBPro configuration tool for VIA VT8231 & VT82C686/A/B chipsets (v0.12d)

Posted on 2020-10-11, 08:56

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Hello, thank you very much for VIASBCFG, it's awesome! :D On my HP T5710 I have a problem with Hexen when VIAFMTSR is loaded: the game hangs after the DOS4GW screen. No problems if only VIASBCFG is loaded (but of course I get only sfx). Any suggestions? Thank you! My first reaction was "tough luck …

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Re: S3 Virge/DX with two different type of ram chips

Posted on 2020-10-11, 06:48

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

See chip ratings as speed limits on a road. You're the one doing the driving, but if you exceed the limit for the road (chip), you might crash - although sometimes you can go quite a bit over the limit before that happens. You say you want to run the card at stock, that's like saying you want to …

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Re: S3 Virge/DX with two different type of ram chips

Posted on 2020-10-11, 06:36

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hehee good way to explain it ! Have a S3 VLB with two diff speed sets of ram and it never gives me issues but am running it at 33Mhz bus, if I ran it at 40Mhz (it is rated for that) would probably have to add 1 wait state since the add-on ram is 10nS slower than the soldered...or maybe not. Most …

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Re: Sigma Designs EGA cards - a deep dive

Posted on 2020-10-11, 06:25

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

But those 29khz and 23khz modes will likely be a real problem for most VGA displays... From what I can tell most of my vga screens didn’t have enough trim to properly display CGA but from what I could tell EGA high res was fine after adjusting. I believe that it worked fine for you, but I think …

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Re: Cardbus voltage on old laptops

Posted on 2020-10-10, 19:43

by

by mkarcher

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Mainly I am trying to figure out if it works in some of those or if all Pentium 3 laptops have the 3.3V slots and if there is a way to figure it out by looking at the slot in the laptop. Have a look at this image on wikimedia commons comparing the keying of a 3.3V cardbus and a 5V PCMCIA card . You …

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