You mean monitor hertz rate? Don't know the exact term for this 😀

There was a review of a different GD5428 card, around 2 A4 pages. They say there "It does not have quartz, so the boars runs at VLB clock". I don't know if that's right or not, if I new how to test core frequency, I would certainly find out 😀

This looks like about as good as a 486 can get 😀

Not exactly, don't forget the insane 5x86 chips

Got a couple of things for this rig, here they are:
* Logitech ThunderPad in original package
* Mitsumi CircleSound CS-01 virtual 3D processor (without audio cables)
* Defender 3-button mouse

Now I think I'll go find thouse special audio cables and test CS-01 (and find out what it actually does!).

I know that this is kind of an old thread, but I am looking to nab a Logitech Thunderpad (just like the one pictured here in this thread) and need to know for sure that it will work well in DOS and Windows 95. I saw that you had one for this rig and figured that you would know for sure. Nice trick in the other thread about boiling the plastic parts to loosen them back up again- I will keep that in mind.

So, what's the word- will these work in DOS / Win 95 out of the box just plugging them into the 15 pin game port of my sound card? Or is there a bit more to it than that? Any TSR requirements or special calibration software needed? From what I can find, these were "apparently" compatible with DOS... but I want to know from the voice of experience so I am asking. Specifically hoping to use with games like Doom.

Would it be a safe assumption that any game pad that connects with a game port (15 pin connector) would most likely work in DOS with no extra requirements?

Thanks for any light that you can shed-

JoeCorrado, as far as I remember, it worked in my other rig, P233MMX, under windows 98 out of the box with no drivers. I played TES: Redguard on it and tried it with Tomb Raider. In Redguard it was an improvement over keyboard, but Tomb Raider just felt wrong with it.

I don't know much when it comes to old joysticks, but this one hurts my hands a little and is stiff even after boiling. I thought it was the way it is supposed to be until I got SpaceOrb360 from 1990s, which was much better.

I'll check out if it works under w95 and DOS out of the box, but I need time to set up this system once again.

Feel free to contact me here or via mail avermakov@list.ru

Hey can I join in on this necro? Does that Circle Sound work well? I use a 'Nureality Vivid 3D Pro' which is just an SRS module but I think it sounds great, so I'm interested in what the competition sounds like.

RacoonRider wrote:

JoeCorrado, as far as I remember, it worked in my other rig, P233MMX, under windows 98 out of the box with no drivers. I played […]
Show full quote

JoeCorrado, as far as I remember, it worked in my other rig, P233MMX, under windows 98 out of the box with no drivers. I played TES: Redguard on it and tried it with Tomb Raider. In Redguard it was an improvement over keyboard, but Tomb Raider just felt wrong with it.

I don't know much when it comes to old joysticks, but this one hurts my hands a little and is stiff even after boiling. I thought it was the way it is supposed to be until I got SpaceOrb360 from 1990s, which was much better.

I'll check out if it works under w95 and DOS out of the box, but I need time to set up this system once again.

Feel free to contact me here or via mail avermakov@list.ru

Ordered one of these (mint in box as it is described) and it should work in DOS games to whatever extent the game supports the "joystick" functions- from basic two button x/y control on up- depends on the game itself pretty much and it's configuration utility.

Games that run from inside Windows 95 should be good to go and Windows should be fine without special drivers- just select the generic driver for a game pad from the drivers list.

I will know for sure once it arrives. Thanks for the help.

Joe

Joe,
I'm glad I could help, although it looks like I didn't do much 😁

Rob,
This thingy does not seem to do much... I mean, it works, it changes sound, adds some little noise and I don't get what it does. Tested it in Unreal, near some waterfall. As I rotate camera, the noise from the waterfall travels between left and right channel, yet I don't get what happens. At all. It does not feel 3D, it feels weird. And inside it has a small board with a single IC. Do you want to see a picture?

RacoonRider wrote:

Rob,
This thingy does not seem to do much... I mean, it works, it changes sound, adds some little noise and I don't get what it does. Tested it in Unreal, near some waterfall. As I rotate camera, the noise from the waterfall travels between left and right channel, yet I don't get what happens. At all. It does not feel 3D, it feels weird. And inside it has a small board with a single IC. Do you want to see a picture?

No that's OK thanks, I'll spare you the effort of opening it up again for just 1 IC! I should take a peek inside mine. I'm just interested in these "3D sound" modules because I was an early adopter (read 'sucker') of 3D sound back in the mid 90's. It was mostly just marketing hype but I've since found another example of the module I had back in the day - see below - and it's actually quite good when setup properly (and with more realistic expectations set). But there's a big discrepancy between the marketing and the reality.

Wow! Yours looks way more advanced than mine!

I like SRS a lot, it's built-in into my favourite iriver T30 mp3 player I'm happy to use since 2005. It has 1Gb of memory (very impressive back in the day), which I still find more than enough for 320k mp3s. SRS is certainly a good thing; it improves experience a lot when propperly configured.

badmojo wrote:

RacoonRider wrote:

But there's a big discrepancy between the marketing and the reality.

I imagine so 😁 The thing I don't get is how they even try to make 2D sound into 3D without any actual 3D data. The more I think of it, the more I understand there is no way such things can work as marketed.

From the interwebs:

"This technology creates dynamic, three-dimensional sound from only two speakers by retrieving ambient information hidden in an audio track."

Doesn't really help much either I guess, but with mine - when it's setup correctly - it simply "broadens" the sound. I.e. sound no longer seems to be coming from the 2 speakers I can see sitting in front of me, but rather it's all around. If for example I closed my eyes and pointed to where I thought a particular sound was coming from - and some sounds are more displaced than others - it would be much farther right or left than my speakers actually are.

How effective it is depends on the input, and it works best with stereo sound - great for game like DOOM for example, with the lights down low.

RacoonRider wrote:

I imagine so 😁 The thing I don't get is how they even try to make 2D sound into 3D without any actual 3D data. The more I think of it, the more I understand there is no way such things can work as marketed.

The in-game environment is 3-dimensional, right? So half of the equation is solved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function

Subtly varying the timing of how sound waves enter your ear affects how you perceive them.

In the case of these ones that are implemented completely in hardware, they attempt to position the sound left-to-right based on the balance, whereas the SoundBlaster (or whatever) alone simply varies the Left/Right volume split.

badmojo wrote:

How effective it is depends on the input, and it works best with stereo sound...

I'm not sure how the NuReality units compare (despite owning a Vivid3D Plus myself), but the Hughes AK-100 from which they are derived is capable of working some sort of voodoo magic on monaural sources. I posted a few examples in an older thread, but here are two, "unreleased" recordings:

http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/SRS/TOL_SRS.mp3
http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/SRS/BUBBOB.mp3

I remain baffled by how the AK is able to separate out specific instruments like that.