Re: collecting retro midi sound modules

Posted on 2011-08-31, 16:08

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have also orderer a new Roland UM-One USB to MIDI interface for 27 EUR. Just genuinly curious, what is so special about the roland model, vs the much cheaper ones I see listed on ebay ? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/280732620364 The Roland USB to MIDI interfaces are reliable. They do not have latency …

---

Re: 286 Build

Posted on 2011-08-19, 04:40

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

You are obviously knowledgeable enough not to have tried to write to the disks for Loom, Simcity or DOS in the high density drive, as they are all 360K disks. Since the BIOS has always used text modes, except for AMI's derided "WinBIOS", they are going to use the card's default mode. If you have an …

---

Re: Best version of Windows 95?

Posted on 2011-08-19, 04:08

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Even OSR 2.5's USB support was very limited compared to 98 or ME or 2000. 2.5 has that infernal Active Desktop nonsense, the only good thing about it is bug fixes for Pentium Pro and II processors. That would be a nice patch for OSR 2.1.

---

Re: 286 Build

Posted on 2011-08-18, 07:23

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I have to join the chorus of other forum posters in congratulating you on a great job on a post. Originally I was concerned that the content was directed at a rather basic level considering the likely readers who frequent this site. Many of the most knowledgeable people in the world concerning …

---

Re: The Mystery -5V Rail

Posted on 2011-08-17, 23:40

by

by Great Hierophant

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Sorry for digging this up but what was the -5 volt line used for ? All i know is that it's used by some isa cards. Can i use this motherboard without the -5 line safely ? Also that were to happen if i accidentally put in a isa card that used the -5 line ? -5v is only used on the expansion bus, so …

---

Re: IBM PS/1 Audio Card.

Posted on 2011-08-16, 06:06

by

by Great Hierophant

in DOSBox Development

in DOSBox Development

The Texas Instruments SN76496 (IBM PCjr., Tandy 1000/A/HD/EX), clone (Tandy 1000 SX/HX/TX) or integrated (Tandy TL/SL/RL/RLX/RSX series) series use a base frequency of 3.579MHz. If the PS/1 Audio Card does not have an oscillator that is a multiple of that frequency on its board or sent through the …

---

Re: Munt Reloaded - Development

Posted on 2011-08-16, 05:44

by

by Great Hierophant

in MT-32 Development

in MT-32 Development

I have spent some time now checking several hours of MT-32 music, often preparing to post a bug report, only then to find that the error is either with the games' MIDI player itself or DosBox' emulation of it, and not MT32Emu. Brilliant! Are there still issues with DOSBox midi interface emulation …

---

Re: Out of topic : Name of cartoon series with farm animals within Loony Toons?

Posted on 2011-07-28, 14:23

by

by Great Hierophant

in Milliways

in Milliways

The original distinction between the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies brands essentially ceased by 1942. The star characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck tended to show up more in Looney Tunes branded cartoons while Merrie Melodies was often the label put on one-off cartoons.

---

Re: Tomb Raider: PS1 vs PC versions

Posted on 2011-07-24, 21:18

by

by Great Hierophant

in Milliways

in Milliways

Graphics : Tomb Raider could support 320x200 and 640x480 in 2D software mode and 640x480 with a supported 3D accelerator. The game on the PS1 almost certainly used a 320x240 resolution. The 320x200 resolution is very playable even with a modest Pentium, but the 640x480 mode requires something like a …

---

Re: BP6 dual-celeron nonsense

Posted on 2011-07-22, 15:26

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I built a BP6 because I read that Quake 3 could atake advantage of SMP, so I figured that a new wave of SMP games were on their way. They weren't. The Celeron 300As that I overclocked to 450MHz never complained, however.

---

Re: Is There a Way to Differentiate MCGA and VGA 320x200x256?

Posted on 2011-07-20, 07:24

by

by Great Hierophant

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

I have not read whether there is a definitive answer to whether Rastan supports 4 or 16-color using MCGA. There is no reason why Rastan could not support a custom graphics resolution using the adapter, as its CRT controller values can be changed. Games that used a 320x200 graphics mode in 16 colors …

---

Re: Is There a Way to Differentiate MCGA and VGA 320x200x256?

Posted on 2011-07-15, 06:54

by

by Great Hierophant

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Since MCGA was only used in PS/2s Model 25 and 30, which use an 8086 processor, exclusionary tests include : If the game requires DPMI operation, XMS memory or uses the unreal mode. None of these work with an 8086 or its 640KB limitation. One test is whether the game uses 286 opcodes, but this is …

---

Re: "Enter Your Age" for entering a site or viewing specific pages - Purpose?

Posted on 2011-07-12, 15:22

by

by Great Hierophant

in Milliways

in Milliways

The Larry questions were difficult for persons trying to play the games today without a good knowledge of American history and popular culture of the 60s-mid 80s. These things a reasonably well-informed adult like Al Lowe would know but a child probably would not.

---

Re: "Enter Your Age" for entering a site or viewing specific pages - Purpose?

Posted on 2011-07-11, 15:22

by

by Great Hierophant

in Milliways

in Milliways

At some point there may be a National Age Verification System for the Internet. You show proof of your identity and age and receive a unique ID code which you input into a site that asks for age verification. The site would verify once that the person's age is over 18 or 21 and then that user could …

---

Re: CGA w/ Monochrome Monitor Support (Work in Progress...)

Posted on 2011-07-05, 14:58

by

by Great Hierophant

in DOSBox Patches

in DOSBox Patches

The hard-coded settings for shades and brightness/contrast are a toughie. I'm going by memory here, as well as a picture and a video that i managed to find (check out 2:31-2:47 in the video). Seems that there's no corellation between the RGBi color components and the resulting monochrome shade - …

---

Re: Voodoo 5 Reliability

Posted on 2011-07-02, 00:36

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I haven't had much luck with vintage Voodoo parts. In addition to the bricks described above, I had a Diamond Monster 3D which worked for a while then started showing a blank screen with a block of white stripes. I put the computer in storage for a while, then it worked again briefly, then began …

---

Voodoo 5 Reliability

Posted on 2011-07-01, 17:43

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

is it just me, or does the Voodoo 5 series seem a bit lacking in variety? I have had two cards, and both I have had to throw out because they broke. The first card was a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI MAC Edition which I flashed with a PC BIOS. It worked fine for a while, but then I noticed that the analog VGA …

---

Re: IBM PS/1 Audio Card.

Posted on 2011-07-01, 05:02

by

by Great Hierophant

in DOSBox Development

in DOSBox Development

there is an inaccuracy in the gamelist: King's quest 5 also uses DAC, start a game and go 2 or 3 screens to the west (where there are the gypsies) and wait, you'll hear a cow bellow sometimes. Actually, I do not think the cow bellow sound effect is a digital effect but an FM effect, because it can …

---

Re: What other retro computing forums do you frequent?

Posted on 2011-06-16, 04:56

by

by Great Hierophant

in Milliways

in Milliways

http://www.uncreativelabs.net/phpBB2/ also focuses on early PCs, XTs and ATs, but not so many posts as in Vintage Computer forums.

---

Re: CGA COLOR SCHEME IN WIN XP??

Posted on 2011-06-11, 06:29

by

by Great Hierophant

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Here are the RGB values for the 16 CGA colors : Color Hex Value R G B Black 00h 0 0 0 Blue 01h 0 0 170 Green 02h 0 170 0 Cyan 03h 0 170 170 Red 04h 170 0 0 Magenta 05h 170 0 170 Brown 06h 170 85 0 White (Light Gray) 07h 170 170 170 Gray (Light Black) 08h 85 85 85 Light Blue 09h 85 85 255 Light Green …

---