Re: The Joy of MMX

Posted on 2023-05-26, 14:04

by

by the3dfxdude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

tillamook is interesting but did people actually use them in desktop systems back in the day? compared to K6-2/III it seems like a pretty irrelevant upgrade option. a tillamook 300 potentially matching pii 233 doesn't sound exciting to me because by 1999 the pii 233 was budget range itself and SS7 …

---

Re: I got defeated by a case

Posted on 2023-05-25, 15:19

by

by the3dfxdude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So I do wonder about the quality of the motherboard screw mounts, as I have not seen square ones myself. Do they move when you wiggle them? And with them being squarish, I'd check all of them if they with their screws their metal seem to come close in contact to any solder pads on either side, where …

---

Re: I got defeated by a case

Posted on 2023-05-24, 22:51

by

by the3dfxdude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So when you say you keep it on the "back plane", do mean you keep the board mounted to a removable tray that is part of the case? Do you really mean "random beep codes"? Or that you just don't recognize it? If it's reproducible, then it's not really random. EMI is a thing. What is the motherboard, …

---

Re: This 286 is $3.86!

Posted on 2023-05-23, 20:54

by

by the3dfxdude

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'd like to have a 286 for a $3.86, to put in a motherboard. But the motherboard would probably cost me an ARM, and with inflation, my own leg.

---

Re: Best Linux or Windows OS for a Pentium III??

Posted on 2023-05-23, 20:45

by

by the3dfxdude

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Sorry, my confusement. I only use Fedora/CentOS and was looking around at different distro’s, considering Arch but seeing they only have 64bit with a community port. Then I moved on to Slack and found the 32bit iso. I have 320MB in that computer. I did not see any errors unpacking initrd, but …

---

Re: Radeon X300SE and Linux: web browser question

Posted on 2023-05-23, 18:47

by

by the3dfxdude

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Don’t they maybe blacklist cards based on the driver used? There are different open source drivers depending on the card generation…I have no experience with them since a long time so I can’t help much more. Look at the second post on https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-dev/c/ …

---

Re: Best Linux or Windows OS for a Pentium III??

Posted on 2023-05-22, 20:55

by

by the3dfxdude

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Yesterday I tried booting the community ported 32bit Slackware 15 installer; it boots but there is for some reason no /proc once it finishes booting, so the thing is useless. What community slackware 15.0 installer? There is an official slackware 15.0 32-bit installer. How much memory is installed …

---

Re: Intel publishes a white paper on x86S, a 64-bit only architecture

Posted on 2023-05-21, 21:31

by

by the3dfxdude

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Well it's kind of like the ISA slot. They first made it "optional", and things like -5V not needed anymore. One by one the manufacturers decide to pull it out, and change chip sets breaking compatibility (you have no slot, so it doesn't need to work like a full ISA bus). Now about 2020 on, ISA bus …

---

Re: 5" FLOPPY under modern linux

Posted on 2023-05-21, 21:09

by

by the3dfxdude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do as Deunan says and make sure to use the jumper for 1st DS (follow what he says) for both drives as needed by PC compatibles with a twist cable. If it works on another machine but not this more modern one, please tell us the motherboard you have. Some boards have faults you know, and it wouldn't …

---

Re: Intel publishes a white paper on x86S, a 64-bit only architecture

Posted on 2023-05-21, 15:22

by

by the3dfxdude

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

I don't think that makes sense as if you were to want to access memory using long long pointers, then you'd want to recompile to full 64-bit anyway. There is the ability though, to use 32-bit pointers, and a full mix of 32-bit and 64-bit instructions (again, a recompile, but I guess a partial …

---

Re: Intel publishes a white paper on x86S, a 64-bit only architecture

Posted on 2023-05-21, 15:13

by

by the3dfxdude

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

I'm worried about WINE support on Linux. Linux kernal used to keep 16-Bit/286 Protected Mode support for Windows 3.x applications. Not sure about the recent status, though. https://news.softpedia.com/news/Linux-Kernel-3-14-Breaks-Wine-for-16-bit-Windows-Applications-447273.shtml Wine already uses …

---

Re: Intel publishes a white paper on x86S, a 64-bit only architecture

Posted on 2023-05-21, 14:13

by

by the3dfxdude

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

"Using the simplified segmentation model of 64-bit for segmentation support for 32-bit applications, matching what modern operating systems already use." I wonder if this means under this architecture, 32-bit programs on Windows x64 will be able to access as much memory as 64-bit ones, rather than …

---

Re: The Pentium 3 makes your internet faster!

Posted on 2023-05-18, 15:30

by

by the3dfxdude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I suspect it's mainly the FSB and the cache. Firefox 2.0.0.20 came out in Dec 18, 2008. Granted, the 2.x series began on Oct 14, 2006. The P3 came out Feb '99, with that marketing campaign, which is over 7 years earlier. I'm not sure if the first releases of Firefox always was optimized with SSE, or …

---

Re: Willow - Windows 3.0 Real Mode applications on OS/2 1.x and up (and stuff)

Posted on 2023-05-18, 02:39

by

by the3dfxdude

in Milliways

in Milliways

An 8088 PC was dog slow, even with a Turbo mainboard. That made the 80286 very attractive at the time. 8086 upgrades didn't really exist, it seems. So users essentially ripped apart their existing XT PC and recycled as much as they could, including DIL/DIP RAM, drives and slow MFM hard disks.. This …

---

Re: Aliexpress XT Laptop

Posted on 2023-05-17, 22:22

by

by the3dfxdude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The screen seems odd though, looking at the last screenshot - it's missing a column on the left. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgl7pmDJAy4 about 10 sec in, same kind of issue. Not sure I'd appreciate that for $320 CAD. Gotta get one of these to phils or LGR to review :) The screen auto-adjusts, …

---

Re: Willow - Windows 3.0 Real Mode applications on OS/2 1.x and up (and stuff)

Posted on 2023-05-17, 13:55

by

by the3dfxdude

in Milliways

in Milliways

The very last 286 boards probably were no different than a 386. It's easy to find examples of this looking in the hardware database or seeing a video of someone's build. The 286 12 mhz boards I had collected were used, likely came from when some company decided to upgrade their systems. In terms of …

---

Re: Willow - Windows 3.0 Real Mode applications on OS/2 1.x and up (and stuff)

Posted on 2023-05-17, 01:25

by

by the3dfxdude

in Milliways

in Milliways

Here is someone saying that Windows 3.x's kernel was faster on a 286 than OS/2... https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2023/04/27/microsoft_windows_rust/#c_4658370 The 286 processor supported 24-bit addressing in protected mode, but since it was incompatible with the real mode (8086), few …

---

Re: Willow - Windows 3.0 Real Mode applications on OS/2 1.x and up (and stuff)

Posted on 2023-05-16, 21:47

by

by the3dfxdude

in Milliways

in Milliways

I was running a 286 in the early 90s. In fact I had several boards. Some had SIPP sockets. The problem for someone like me at the time was finding memory for it. I even had an Intel Above Board, but didn't have any memory on it. I wanted to get some more memory to run Windows. But never got around …

---

Re: Win 95 + browser

Posted on 2023-05-14, 16:40

by

by the3dfxdude

in Windows

in Windows

This article lists Firefox 1.5.0.12 as the last version that supports Windows 95 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_early_version_history

---

Re: CGA vs Composite

Posted on 2023-05-10, 18:20

by

by the3dfxdude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Considering I played SIMCGA games on hercules on XT and 286 into the early 90s in the US, probably more common than you think. It wasn't long until the bottom of the market dropped out and VGA/SVGA cards became dirt cheap affordable. Although the monitor was the largest price shock for some time …

---