xjas wrote:

Nice board! You do need the sound drivers, but they're pretty painless to get set up.

Many thanks, this will be useful! I wonder if I should stick to the VIA SB emulation or just stick a spare AWE64 Value I have in there for CQM/MIDI. How good is this chipset's OPL3 emulation I wonder?

appiah4 wrote:

or just stick a spare AWE64 Value I have in there for CQM/MIDI. How good is this chipset's OPL3 emulation I wonder?

The AWE64 delivers in my mind a really good emulation
It is still inferiour to the real deal. Yet it delivers really good results for the price. If I had no real OPL chip on any soundcard or cards with OPL chips were too expensive, I would go for the AWE64.

Anyway.... You have one, and it is a good sound solution.

brostenen wrote:

The AWE64 delivers in my mind a really good emulation
It is still inferiour to the real deal. Yet it delivers really good results for the price. If I had no real OPL chip on any soundcard or cards with OPL chips were too expensive, I would go for the AWE64.

Anyway.... You have one, and it is a good sound solution.

I also have a CT2890 with real OPL3 but they have buggy MIDI. I have a YMF719 but it's in another PC. I have an ES1898 but that's ESFM.

Also, I got a very good deal on a very strange looking mystery computer:

Couldn't resist it.. Any bets on what we have inside?

1) I actually really like the sound of ESFM.
2) my guess would be an small AT board with either a socket 5 or early socket 7 Pentium. No idea on the rest, it looks like it might have seen some upgrades at some point.

Deksor wrote:

Seeing how slow it is, I think it will actually slow down your 286. It's already slowing down my 386SX, so I think the same will happen to a 286

I don't think anyone's running a 286 for speed are they? I had to slow my 16MHz 286 down by adding a wait state for it to play the older DOS games I intended to play on it, so having a slow VGA card doesn't strike me as a disadvantage.

LHN91 wrote:

1) I actually really like the sound of ESFM.
2) my guess would be an small AT board with either a socket 5 or early socket 7 Pentium. No idea on the rest, it looks like it might have seen some upgrades at some point.

I actually think ESFM sounds better than CQM.. But if I am going to use just an emulated OPL I may use the onboard anyway.

Fingers crossed for a Super Socket 7 😀

appiah4 wrote:

Also, I got a very good deal on a very strange looking mystery computer:

[...]

Couldn't resist it.. Any bets on what we have inside?

Non-MMX Pentium running at 0MHz? 🤣

The Continuum Transfunctioner?

badmojo wrote:

Deksor wrote:

Seeing how slow it is, I think it will actually slow down your 286. It's already slowing down my 386SX, so I think the same will happen to a 286

I don't think anyone's running a 286 for speed are they? I had to slow my 16MHz 286 down by adding a wait state for it to play the older DOS games I intended to play on it, so having a slow VGA card doesn't strike me as a disadvantage.

That's for sure ... actually for nowadays, back then, I guess some enthusiasts tried to get the best scores out of their 286 so they wouldn't need to switch to a newer platform.

The same can be said with any retro computer in fact. None of our retro computers are fast, but trying to get the best score out of them isn't totally irrelevant either. That was just for his information, I never said that he should not put it in his 286 at all.

Not computer related but quite retro. I got a Stanton Dynaphase 60 headset. The monsters of headphones.
The monster uses woofer tweeter speaker setup.

gdjacobs wrote:

The Continuum Transfunctioner? http://cdn07.dayviews.com/41/_u1/_u1/_u1/_u0/_u8/u111082/45546_1220391597/Jesse_Look_dude_It_s_th […]
Show full quote

The Continuum Transfunctioner?

🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 😊

And then?

Deksor wrote:

badmojo wrote:

Deksor wrote:

Seeing how slow it is, I think it will actually slow down your 286. It's already slowing down my 386SX, so I think the same will happen to a 286

I don't think anyone's running a 286 for speed are they? I had to slow my 16MHz 286 down by adding a wait state for it to play the older DOS games I intended to play on it, so having a slow VGA card doesn't strike me as a disadvantage.

That's for sure ... actually for nowadays, back then, I guess some enthusiasts tried to get the best scores out of their 286 so they wouldn't need to switch to a newer platform.

The same can be said with any retro computer in fact. None of our retro computers are fast, but trying to get the best score out of them isn't totally irrelevant either. That was just for his information, I never said that he should not put it in his 286 at all.

I had an Oak Technology VGA card in my 286 system back in the day. In addition to building it to be a slower system meant to reach down and grab slower speeds, it would also be a period grab, nostalgia rebuild.

On the subject though, I question the importance of VGA speed for running DOS games that are executable on a 286. I played Wolfenstein 3-D on mine back in the day. I think Star Trek 25th anniversary and Out of this World (Another World) were the last two games I loaded on it prior to getting a 386?

It would be an interesting benchmark/experiment to see how much of a difference faster VGA speed would make on a 286.

I need to fix my new 286 first ... unfortunately, I think that won't come anytime soon, I'd rather buy an oscilloscope first to check for signals (it would be useful to fix my XT as well) but I don't have the money for that ...

Deksor wrote:

... trying to get the best score out of them isn't totally irrelevant either. That was just for his information, I never said that he should not put it in his 286 at all.

Point taken - everyone has different objectives, and I agree that a fast VGA card does make a difference even with a 286. I recall Stunts being almost playable with a Tseng ET4000 based card, but not so much with the Ahead based card I had originally in my 286.

On a subject of slow/fast vga card on a 286 I've done some benchmarks a while ago. I tested only Trident 8900D and Tseng ET4000AX on 286-20. In 3Dbench 1.0 Trident score was 7.1 while Tseng's was 7.8. That's a 10% increase. With even slower vga card like some OAK or Chips difference would be even greater.

Well if I rebuild the 286, I suppose I could do some benchmarking on it. I have a Tseng ET4000AX in addition to that Oak card. I imagine those two alone should cover quite the spread. Specific games to try out (Stunts, for instance) are certainly welcome. 286 love seems to have increased lately on Vogons. Maybe it is time to at least bust out the mobo and get a bench setup and start a new 286 thread.

blurks wrote:

intel 387 sx coprocessor

Yay, now you can draw fractals and use the copro enhanced mode of Moraff's Entrap, and, and, and, um have bragging rights.

probnot wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Also, I got a very good deal on a very strange looking mystery computer:

[...]

Couldn't resist it.. Any bets on what we have inside?

Non-MMX Pentium running at 0MHz? 🤣

A super NEXGEN prototype CPU that was never released, its not running at 0 but at infinity and the other 0 loop on the display has burned out. 😉

kixs wrote:

On a subject of slow/fast vga card on a 286 I've done some benchmarks a while ago. I tested only Trident 8900D and Tseng ET4000AX on 286-20. In 3Dbench 1.0 Trident score was 7.1 while Tseng's was 7.8. That's a 10% increase. With even slower vga card like some OAK or Chips difference would be even greater.

That reminds me, I did some 286 benchmarking a while back - 6.4 in 3dbench apparently. I was using an ET4000AX at that time but only have a 16MHz machine. Even at 16MHz it's quite the hotrod, and as I mentioned earlier I needed to de-turbo it and add a wait state to get some older games running correctly.