clueless1 wrote:

kithylin wrote:

I've spent a lot of time figuring out Jazz Jackrabbit I for MSDOS. The CPU error doesn't require a patch, it's just that it only works up to Pentium P54c cpu's. Pentium-MMX is the beginning of where it gets the "Runtime error 200" error. It doesn't need patching, just run it on an older chip and it's fine. Although, running it on a Pentium chip @ 166 mhz and it's in-game events get "too fast" and have timing issues trying to play it. 486 @ 133 is best.

I see what you're saying now. Although a 133Mhz 486 is not ideal to put for maximum suitable CPU (how many people have one of those?). Since you timing issues start at Pentium 166, if I put Pentium 133 as max suitable CPU, would that feel right to you?

Seems right, right about 120-133 there. Anything beyond that feels too fast. I would update some myself (I have almost all those games and -A LOT- of hardware.. but dunno how to edit wiki's. I'll look for the official thread on it and try to contribute over there.

Playing around today with my Am5x86-133... I've found the GUS Classic doesn't like the faster CPU... more specifically, Digital audio sounds OK, and sound seems fine in Win3.11 as well. But unless I disable the L1 cache, music in DOS games are all horribly distorted.

Unfortunately I've also found that using a software utility (eg CACHECTL, ICD) to enable/disable the cache will cause this system to hang, if EMM386 is loaded.

If I don't load EMM386, and I disable the cache before running ULTRAMID, then enable cache - everything works fine.

I could get around this by setting up a boot menu for the different configs, but I haven't had the need to do this yet - the ONLY game I've wanted to play so far that doesn't work with EMM386 is Ultima 7. Kind of annoying 😒

I might try to track down an Intel DX4 &EW (write-back cache) and see if I get the same problem...

Strange, any chance something is using self-modifying code here ?
That usually interferes with all kind of CPUs which use internal cache.

Because you mention EMM386, here's a quote from FreeDOS' EMM386 developement :

Currently EMM386 attempts to reset the cache after the self-modifying code by the old standby of JMPing to the next instruction. I'm hoping this feeble cache flush/update method still works with all the newest CPU pre-fetch doodads. It did work on my Athlon XP 3000+ so maybe it's okay. If not, we'll probably have to implement code to a detect 486+ level chip and stuff in a leading WBINVD instruction if >386 or JMP if not, which is a dorky hack and I don't want to do it if we don't have to.

There's also an blog called "Self-Modifying Code and the Cache on Intel x86",
which claims that self-modifying code is no problem for modern CPUs, except for debuggers or other low-level software.
Maybe this also applies to memory managers like EMM386, but that's just an idea.

I only mention this, because I also had issues with software from Quarterdeck (DESQView, QEMM),
when L1 cache was enabled. The installation often stopped because of a write error while copying files.
Without internal cache, everything was fine. Was a Pentium-133 machine.

DonutKing wrote:

Playing around today with my Am5x86-133... I've found the GUS Classic doesn't like the faster CPU... more specifically, Digital […]
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Playing around today with my Am5x86-133... I've found the GUS Classic doesn't like the faster CPU... more specifically, Digital audio sounds OK, and sound seems fine in Win3.11 as well. But unless I disable the L1 cache, music in DOS games are all horribly distorted.

Unfortunately I've also found that using a software utility (eg CACHECTL, ICD) to enable/disable the cache will cause this system to hang, if EMM386 is loaded.

If I don't load EMM386, and I disable the cache before running ULTRAMID, then enable cache - everything works fine.

I could get around this by setting up a boot menu for the different configs, but I haven't had the need to do this yet - the ONLY game I've wanted to play so far that doesn't work with EMM386 is Ultima 7. Kind of annoying 😒

I might try to track down an Intel DX4 &EW (write-back cache) and see if I get the same problem...

I don't know much about the GUS or any CPU limitations it might have, but I do know that is a common issue with older Sierra/LucasArts graphic adventure games running on faster Pentium systems, with the fix being to disable cache. I wonder if Setmul will work where CACHECTL/ICD hang the system? Link: SetMul - Multiplier control for VIA C3 / AMD K6+7+8 Mobile / Cyrix 5x86

Strange, any chance something is using self-modifying code here ?

no idea... another thing I noticed is that the GUS setup util will fail on testing DMA channels with cache enabled; once its disabled, the tests pass and I can install normally. I've removed all other cards from the machine and double checked nothing else is using the DMA channel.

I wonder if Setmul will work where CACHECTL/ICD hang the system?

I'll give this a try, thanks. from the readme it seems that only cyrix 5x86 is supported on socket 3?

DonutKing wrote:

no idea... another thing I noticed is that the GUS setup util will fail on testing DMA channels with cache enabled; once its dis […]
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Strange, any chance something is using self-modifying code here ?

no idea... another thing I noticed is that the GUS setup util will fail on testing DMA channels with cache enabled; once its disabled, the tests pass and I can install normally. I've removed all other cards from the machine and double checked nothing else is using the DMA channel.

I wonder if Setmul will work where CACHECTL/ICD hang the system?

I'll give this a try, thanks. from the readme it seems that only cyrix 5x86 is supported on socket 3?

That might just be for changing multipliers. It should still allow you to disable cache:

SetMul allows disabling the L1 cache on any x86 processor from the 486 onwards.

The P6DNF was being weird. The floppy drive would always fail POST. Drive and cabling was confirmed good. The floppy controller was part of the Super I/O controller and the rest of that worked too. There was three or four pins that were a little grungy form the old CMOS battery but they seemed to have good continuity but I went around the chip and reflowed it anyways. Floppy drives work fine now.

unpacking loads of disk magazines and sorting through my old achive cds to rebuild my diskmag collection now i have a working 486.

i was a huge diskmag junkie, wrote several and collected loads!

Played some Duke Nukem II, still my favorite Duke game for whatever reason.

Also did some work on my book, I wonder if people reading it once it is published (That will probably be held off until next year, even if I finish it this year) will realize that I like computers...

...even the laptop wasn’t really that new, the screen was blue and white, the casing yellowed and beige covered with scuffs and scrapes, it also seemed that the keyboard lettering had long since worn off. Connected to it through several thick wires were two boxes, one containing a small speaker and another connecting several more wires into the wall. The laptop whirred miserably, the hard drive had clearly seen better days having had to serve over a quarter of a century in constant use. A stack of floppy disks littering the top of the table proved that it certainly wasn't built any time recently, one was even labeled DOS 3.21 with a copyright notice of 1987. -(removed as this sentence contains major spoilers)- I felt a strange affection towards this primitive, worn-out piece of technology with its humble, nondescript T1200 marking.

...Assuming anyone ever reads it. I don't really care, I've had fun writing it and there's not too much to do outside of reading through again and again correcting small problems.

Cool. I might read it if there's no explicit stuff in it 😉
I like your style. Will the book be available in the states?

Explicit stuff, that's just a cheap cop out most of the time. So no, there isn't, it probably wouldn't really fly if there was given the lead characters are related anyway. About the worst is that the characters do sometimes cuss more than is probably necessary and one of them makes some rather crude jokes from time to time. They're supposed to be a little unbalanced, in some cases having major personality flaws, plus the idea of people coming from generations of poor workers living in social housing and gypsy camps being well spoken and well mannered all the time didn't seem to fit. I've used the same characters before in something I never published (though may put it on the net for free at some stage for the hell of it) so I know what they've lived through, who they are and where they came from, and I know how they got to where they are now. It only feels right that they'd be that way, that they might say or do questionable things and won't always do the right thing even though they know it is wrong, to me it makes them seem more real, like people you might actually meet in the real world.

As I plan to go electronic (and cheap) there is a good chance it will be available pretty much anywhere. Unless I can find an affordable way of getting it printed, but I have yet to find a solution to that end. The main irritation at present is realizing I initially configured the page size incorrectly and have to change the text size, this involves a lot of playing around in the formatting dialogs and reading the whole thing yet again to spot any text that didn't update - some 75755 words at present.

Keep in mind the computer stuff, whilst used regularly, is really not that important to the story and they could just as easily be using modern equipment, the character merely observes what is there. The bulk of it was written in Word 97 on a Satellite Pro 410CDT though, so there's that I guess.

Last night was building a 2000-2004 era pc out of a QDI Kinetiz 7B Socket A motherboard I found in my grandparents loft which I must of bought over 10 years ago and forgotten about - looked brand new!

Upgraded the 850 Athlon it came with to a Palomino core 1.7 and fitted the spare 384mb ram I had lying around, sadly most of my ide drives are either missing or faulty so I ended up managing to insert a rom into the bios for my Via VT6421 PCI card so it now boots off sata drive as well so at least I can use it 😀

I've also been ransacking local charity shops for old games and now have a large crate's worth to go through, mostly games I used to own and either sold,lost or still have with damaged cd's 😀

Fixing up some hardware, and playing with my Socket 370 Win98 gaming rig.
Changing the hot/cold water thermostat in the shower, so I am basically in the process of doing some plumbing work.
(the old one have begun dripping 3 drops-a-minute, wich makes a lot of money go down the drain)

brostenen wrote:

Fixing up some hardware, and playing with my Socket 370 Win98 gaming rig.
Changing the hot/cold water thermostat in the shower, so I am basically in the process of doing some plumbing work.
(the old one have begun dripping 3 drops-a-minute, wich makes a lot of money go down the drain)

I finished some plumbing work myself about 4 days ago....... but running tubing pump and water system in my most modern computer. Some of my computers require plumbing.

I'd like to water cool my AthlonXP computer, if I ever find parts for it.. still on the look out for it some day.

So I only recently re-entered the retro-gaming/computing hobby. Over the last few weeks i've gone on a spree of finding and buying stuff. Locally I spent about 200 bucks on a total of 21 towers Including a couple very choice retro 486 early pentium systems all the way to a Intel Core 2 Duo that I will probably mod to put a Xeon in.

To fill in the blanks I been buying up part lots of ebay and coming across some really good deals. I think I went a little overboard with it though. Think I have ended up with 30-40 video cards PCI,AGP, and PCI-E. 10 or so motherboards and 20 or so CPUs and a LOT of memory. I was basically on an kick where I was grabbing up everything that was either cheap,usefull, or otherwise worth buying.

Now it's time to calm down a bit and actually build some systems!. Before I do that though i need to change the starter on my lawnmower! SO for Today I'll take a break from retro activities.

kithylin wrote:

brostenen wrote:

I'd like to water cool my AthlonXP computer, if I ever find parts for it.. still on the look out for it some day.

80mm, 92mm or a 120mm rad with a chipset block and diy mount/clip and a newer pump. All that should not be hard to find.

Oh and a site call performance pc's has a lot of older water cooling stuff, might be worth looking into.

Jade Falcon wrote:

kithylin wrote:

brostenen wrote:

I'd like to water cool my AthlonXP computer, if I ever find parts for it.. still on the look out for it some day.

80mm, 92mm or a 120mm rad with a chipset block and diy mount/clip and a newer pump. All that should not be hard to find.

Oh and a site call performance pc's has a lot of older water cooling stuff, might be worth looking into.

The hard part to find for it is a cpu block that allows using the 3-ear'd mounting bracket for AthlonXP as my board doesn't have the through-holes for waterblocks. So I have to some how find an actual older one from that era that's not aluminum. So still on the look out for it. Even then most of them will just be 1/4" tubing and likely incompatible with 1/2" tubing that's standard today, so no idea what I'll do with that.. find an adapter or something. I still haven't ever figured it out yet.

Could be worse, when I assembled the loop in my 775 machine (current workstation) I used an unusual variant of 3/8" (Something like 9mm ID 14mm OD) which used brass barbs nobody makes anymore. The loop leaks, but I cannot get parts to repair it short of replacing all of the tubes. Then there's another problem, because some of the parts use a thread pitch which is also no longer available. Sucks really, considering the machine runs 24/7 and the loop could break at any second if the brittle tubes decide to finally give way.

Nobody makes the same formula of fluid anymore either, so if I run out and cannot top it up (currently I am using reclaimed fluid from another person's loop to top it up) I'd have to replace the fluid. Problem; there's no drain valve, so I'd have to detach tubes and as already stated, the tubes are brittle and cannot be replaced, what if it breaks? I knew I should have used 1/4 threads and 1/2" tubing, but I had no room to route it and when the system was made a much smaller tube with thicker walls and smaller inner diameter was fairly normal. I do have some spare left, not enough to fix the loop should it break, but I have often wondered if I could stretch another size over the barbs or else make an insert and jubilee a thicker tube over the existing pipe to replace parts that leak. I seem to think 10mm copper for gas appliances was a snug fit inside the tubes, that it could be forced down them, so that may be an option should it come to that. With any luck I will have the Xeon machine up by the end of the year, so I only need the loop to last me that long, because once the Xeon is in place I will just be running this machine into the ground, it's all too far worn out to get much of a second life anyway.

So yeah, at least yours is just a hypothetical loop, it could be much worse.

As a last note, I have a Socket A water block, in fact I have a complete cooling loop for one, but annoyingly I do not have the backplate for it so I cannot mount it. I was tempted to just be silly with it and glue it to a Pentium 1 or something, you know, for the lulz and all that.

kithylin wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Fixing up some hardware, and playing with my Socket 370 Win98 gaming rig.
Changing the hot/cold water thermostat in the shower, so I am basically in the process of doing some plumbing work.
(the old one have begun dripping 3 drops-a-minute, wich makes a lot of money go down the drain)

I finished some plumbing work myself about 4 days ago....... but running tubing pump and water system in my most modern computer. Some of my computers require plumbing.

I'd like to water cool my AthlonXP computer, if I ever find parts for it.. still on the look out for it some day.

If you want a picture of my new shower, then I will gladly post one. 😀

What began as a single thought over the transfer of data from a single ZIP disk to my harddrive has escalated into a guide which will probably cost my life a million years.
I've all but exhausted the resources of my poor shoulders and wrists in my struggle to get my Windows ME guide out the door, but it's done! 😁

Tetrium's guide to Windows ME