Re: Which CPU for the 694T Pro motherboard?

Posted on 2016-03-05, 18:06

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Honestly, I'm not sure any of those can be slowed down to 386/486/early Pentium levels. The hit from disabling the caches is too big (I've seen people claim 286 levels of speed) and you don't have the necessary granularity. You can always try software slowdown utilities though. IMHO you should …

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Re: Best graphics card for a P3 1.13 GHz?

Posted on 2016-03-05, 17:26

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I find it sad that people simply dislike the FX family of cards despite their merits. As a DX8 card they are fine! Once you go DX9-land they are crap, but for older stuff they are the last retro-friendly (universal AGP+legacy compatibility) GeForce cards.

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Re: SB16+Wave Blaster=AWE?

Posted on 2016-03-05, 13:22

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

AFAIK there are no AWE-enabled games that do not support regular GM through MPU-401 as well.

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Re: For a good DOS gaming machine... is the Pentium III Tualatin overkill?

Posted on 2016-03-04, 17:18

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As long as everyone is using VxD drivers its easy. The AWE64 will be exposed to DOS boxes at the same port/IRQ/DMA channels it really uses, and the YMF7x4's SBPro support should use whatever it is set in its drivers. That way you can still use both in DOS, so for the few games that might have issues …

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Re: For a good DOS gaming machine... is the Pentium III Tualatin overkill?

Posted on 2016-03-04, 10:58

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For DOS gaming inside Win9x I'd get an YMF-724 rather than an expensive and bugged AWE32. True OPL, nice Windows-only XG synth, good SBPro compatibility.

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Re: For a good DOS gaming machine... is the Pentium III Tualatin overkill?

Posted on 2016-03-03, 14:09

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd say CQM is as "wrong" as using a Yamaha DB50XG to play back GM tracks composed with Roland modules. It is "worse" as it is not what the composer intended, but one can still like it better. Also, I've heard AWE64's CQM is more resilient to those speed issues than many other cards.

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Re: dallas rtc

Posted on 2016-03-03, 12:08

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes sir, its all in there.

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Re: Are there any BEIGE 500W+ ATX cases?

Posted on 2016-03-01, 10:50

by

by alexanrs

in Milliways

in Milliways

Besides, even if you DO find a beige case that comes with a 500W PSU, it is probably an Athlon XP-era one, with aged components and unbalanced (for today's computers) power distribution. Get the case, put a new (and good) PSU in it and be happy. Just beware the cooling - most beige cases have subpar …

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Re: Need Help with my Pentium 3 Gateway PC with MS-DOS Mode

Posted on 2016-02-29, 14:01

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

200KB is awfully low for the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files you posted - you aren't even loading that many drivers?! First of all - either remove the "NOAUTO" or use "FILESHIGH","BUFFERSHIGH","STACKSHIGH" and other directives to manually move those things to UMBs Second - add the "/E" parameter …

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Re: Do you use retro keyboards/mice with your retro builds?

Posted on 2016-02-28, 23:54

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I still have the cheap "LINCE" membrane keyboard I got with my mother's first PC (a Cyrix MII 333). Still works fine - and I dare say it works better than some newer keyboards I've got. For now I'm yet to get a mechanical keyboard, and I also never managed to break a membrane keyboard... Guess I …

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Re: Possible to use Compact flash partition as virtual ramdisk or EMS?

Posted on 2016-02-28, 23:47

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just a heads up - you need a 64KB frame for EMS, and it will take it from your conventional memory (since you don't have more than 640KB of RAM). No way around that, no driver will take less than 64kB once loaded.

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Re: AMD K6-2 550 vs Celeron 333

Posted on 2016-02-28, 21:49

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I know that the Celeron 300a was famous for his overclocking's skills but if you push it from 66mhz to 100mhz you will not only increase cpu frequency but even agp and pci frequency. From 66 to 100 agp and pci frequency will work at 100mhz and 50mhz instead of 66 and 33. Only if the motherboard …

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Re: Possible to use Compact flash partition as virtual ramdisk or EMS?

Posted on 2016-02-28, 21:45

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe something like AboveDisc would work? https://books.google.com.br/books?id=_Bg1jlRSiQMC&pg=PA372&lpg=PA372&dq=abovedisk&source=bl&ots=lgoXt7ITGz&sig=wxaEaZfN7AI-0cvz2xpuHBwI95o&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_h7rJtpvLAhWJipAKHe07Dx0Q6AEITDAJ#v=onepage&q=abovedisk&f=false I have no idea where to find …

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Re: P4 and PCI OPL woes.

Posted on 2016-02-27, 12:01

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by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you need good OPL3 then one of the few cards that have it are Yamaha YMF-7x4 based cards. If you don't, I know my SBLive! isn't very troublesome in pure DOS, but do yourself a favour and skip its OPL emulation, and use GM instead.

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Re: Best VGA Card for 386

Posted on 2016-02-27, 03:03

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As far as IDE in ISA goes, I'm confident that the chip has little to no influence at all when it comes to performance. I'm pretty sure the chip doesn't really do moch more than decoding the port address.

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Re: Newly made Gravis Ultrasound compatible cards ... what's the degree of interest?

Posted on 2016-02-26, 22:05

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I'm okay with it =)

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Re: Newly made Gravis Ultrasound compatible cards ... what's the degree of interest?

Posted on 2016-02-25, 00:49

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

It is still a prototype. I don't think he can really give estimates before having a working and fully tested final version of the board.

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Re: What's the best way to get high-density floppy support in an old XT-class machine?

Posted on 2016-02-24, 21:15

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by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I used the setup successfully with CF cards as well as microdrives. Haven't tested on real IDE HDDs because, well, I don't have any. :) Me too. My XT-class machine works with CF cards normally. I've tried IDE HDDs (even old sub-1GB ones) and none of them worked. For a 8088 machine unless you really …

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Re: What's the best way to get high-density floppy support in an old XT-class machine?

Posted on 2016-02-24, 21:08

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just beware that using XTIDE with a regular 16-bit ISA multiIO is no sure way to get hdds going. For that to work the HDD itself must support working in 8-bit mode (the full XT-IDE card has additional logic to compensate for that), and they usually don't. I think CF cards are required to do so, …

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Re: Newly made Gravis Ultrasound compatible cards ... what's the degree of interest?

Posted on 2016-02-24, 20:52

by

by alexanrs

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

shock__ wrote: Two more mockups since I won't be able to solder anything til tomorrow I feel ya. Having the motivation but not the tools is SO frustrating =/ But tomorrow will be a better day!

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