Finally got some time to mess with the iSiS Imagestream TransPort router - had to finagle up a USB connector and connect a Geforce 6200 so I can have VGA output. Still, not too bad. The device has a 10 pin VGA header but I'll need to order a PC104 VGA cable from overseas to use the onboard Cyberblade i1.

Eh, back to the busted t5720 board. Looks like something is very wrong with the power plane and possibly other problems - the SiS Mirage onboard graphics is conflicting with the ACPI in every OS I tried it on, the VT6107 NIC is showing up as all fs on the BIOS system info screen, and is failing to work. Spent half an evening looking for compatible caps on Digikey, and ordered a batch of them for potential recapping. See if you can spot the bad/bulging cap on the board.

Swapped parts around on the two CR-563-B CD-ROM drives so that the one made in November of 1994 would have a bezel, tray, and volume knob with no yellowing from the 1993 drive and put the yellowed everything on the 1993 drive from the 1994 drive and swapped the brackets and metal pieces since the 1994 drive had so much rust and other stuff on it and I need to fix the laser assembly arm again as it's not catching onto the motor or a loose connection somewhere. Plus, the grinding noise is getting on my nerves.

Received a new game that I bought, so been playing this:

Well I guess this is what you might have called "shovelware" back in the 1970s if that term had existed.

It takes about 30 seconds to win in single player mode and the 2-player mode is not much better. 🤣

It also plays better in black & white, it doesn't like the 3-colours provided by the Prinztronic console.

Yeah, but the condition of the box and that box art are the real winners.

PTherapist wrote on 2020-04-14, 12:22:

Received a new game that I bought, so been playing this: […]
Show full quote

Received a new game that I bought, so been playing this:

Well I guess this is what you might have called "shovelware" back in the 1970s if that term had existed.

It takes about 30 seconds to win in single player mode and the 2-player mode is not much better. 🤣

It also plays better in black & white, it doesn't like the 3-colours provided by the Prinztronic console.

Whoa, that's an oldie! Never played anything that old myself. Reminds me of those Atari 2600 games I used to play.

Just the pic, note the battery (26 or 27 years old):

Also despite the fact that it was supposed to have been purchased *used* in 1983, it's definitely a 4/84. The BIOS is also labeled with a 4/84 code but the chip itself is a 32k chip, which means earlier. It has the pin headers for HDD on J9, which would seem to mean 4/84 with a late board.

These things really were made from whatever parts were laying around, weren't they?

All those tantalums make me a little nervous, tho.

Hoping to replace the BIOS with KayPlus and then maybe see if I can get or make a KayFreHD... which I still need to learn more about. There are some PiZero drive emulators floating around, but not I think for MFM drives.

I’ve finally gotten my “fast” 486 to work. There’s a lot of tweaking to be done and a lot of cosmetic stuff needed - I really want to find a fancy case for this). But it works!

Right now it uses an AMD 5x86 at 160 MHz, 16MB of RAM and an Ark Logic ARK1000VL VLB videocard.

Some might find it in bad taste to overclock a 486 (let alone use a 5x86 on a VLB system), but once I got my hands on the Ark Logic, I really wanted to push it a bit further. And looking at the benchmarks I think the system is pretty stable at 40MHz.

Descent feels very playable with this configuration, as is Duke Nukem. I can even see someone playing Quake at 14FPS back in the day.

The motherboard is QDI V4P895GRN/SMT v1.1 with an Opti 895 chipset and 256 L2 cache. Really love this board — it does everything I need short of supporting EDO RAM and correctly identifying the 5x86 in the POST screen.

This is the first time I’ve overclocked a retro system (let alone a 486), so I’m a bit worried whether I’m risking killing the machine. I know that 5x86 at 160 is a very popular overclock, but what can I lose in worst case? The CPU itself is kind of expandable (I have a few spare 5x86 lying around), but the mobo and videocard are not. Could anybody please comment on this?

jheronimus wrote on 2020-04-15, 02:31:

This is the first time I’ve overclocked a retro system (let alone a 486), so I’m a bit worried whether I’m risking killing the machine. I know that 5x86 at 160 is a very popular overclock, but what can I lose in worst case? The CPU itself is kind of expandable (I have a few spare 5x86 lying around), but the mobo and videocard are not. Could anybody please comment on this?

Yes, it's a risk, but: cooling. Measure temps, add heatsinks and fans, measure temps again.

jheronimus wrote on 2020-04-15, 02:31:

I’ve finally gotten my “fast” 486 to work. There’s a lot of tweaking to be done and a lot of cosmetic stuff needed - I really wa […]
Show full quote

I’ve finally gotten my “fast” 486 to work. There’s a lot of tweaking to be done and a lot of cosmetic stuff needed - I really want to find a fancy case for this). But it works!

Right now it uses an AMD 5x86 at 160 MHz, 16MB of RAM and an Ark Logic ARK1000VL VLB videocard.

D2BF1C9A-F460-4657-9D16-E0328290AC55.jpeg

9EF851B1-D485-48BB-B3A9-FE8DB2CDFEAC.jpeg

Some might find it in bad taste to overclock a 486 (let alone use a 5x86 on a VLB system), but once I got my hands on the Ark Logic, I really wanted to push it a bit further. And looking at the benchmarks I think the system is pretty stable at 40MHz.

FBF15AD1-5FC4-484B-9DC4-D444F4E357DC.jpeg

Descent feels very playable with this configuration, as is Duke Nukem. I can even see someone playing Quake at 14FPS back in the day.

The motherboard is QDI V4P895GRN/SMT v1.1 with an Opti 895 chipset and 256 L2 cache. Really love this board — it does everything I need short of supporting EDO RAM and correctly identifying the 5x86 in the POST screen.

This is the first time I’ve overclocked a retro system (let alone a 486), so I’m a bit worried whether I’m risking killing the machine. I know that 5x86 at 160 is a very popular overclock, but what can I lose in worst case? The CPU itself is kind of expandable (I have a few spare 5x86 lying around), but the mobo and videocard are not. Could anybody please comment on this?

I did not find a significant performance difference between running AMD 5x86-133 at 160mhz over the stock 133mhz.
So i put mine back to 133mhz.

Can you play MP3 music without it being choppy?

I was running win95b

So i have moved on to Pentium class CPU.
The 486 and 586 in not powerful enough to play modern dos games in good quality.
I am experimenting with Pentium 75mhz right now.

gca wrote on 2020-04-12, 21:43:

Just saw a couple of videos on the topic of sharpening up the C64 video output. Not sure if they would be any help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTn36UaUfrk

That's part 2 anyway, he provided a link to part 1 in the description.

That's why I did it. His PAL C64 with the R1 VIC II is exactly as mine, and he did not notice such a big improvement compared to the other ones either. That's because the R1 VIC II does not provide a good video signal to start with. But it's still an improvement nonetheless.

Got two replacement laser units for my Playstation 1 (SCPH-1002) today and started fixing it. A quick test with one of the new lasers was promising, I could load the Demo 1 disc, though video was choppy. Need to carefully adjust the voltages to make it work with no issues. But first is disassembling and cleaning.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-04-15, 04:14:

I did not find a significant performance difference between running AMD 5x86-133 at 160mhz over the stock 133mhz.
So i put mine back to 133mhz.

The difference really depends on the game. I think the Doom timedemo went from roughly 1500 realtks to 1200, that's a 20% increase.

I don't think AMD 5x86 at 160 makes this an "ultimate" DOS machine capable of running every DOS game under the sun. Really, I simply wanted an interesting VLB videocard (only had Cirrus Logic and S3 805 cards) and since Ark Logic is one of the fastest cards for VLB I wanted to see how fast can I go. It was interesting to see that this machine is really comparable to Socket 3 motherboards with PCI cards. I was also delighted that I could switch to 40MHz FSB without changing waitstates or losing system stability. I kind of want to see how far can I go — maybe through tweaking BIOS, getting more L2 cache, better RAM and a cacheable IDE/SCSI controller.

Can you play MP3 music without it being choppy?

Kind of a weird use case for me 😁 Then again, I once listened to a Pink Floyd album on CD using a 486 computer — for no apparent reason.

So i have moved on to Pentium class CPU.
The 486 and 586 in not powerful enough to play modern dos games in good quality.
I am experimenting with Pentium 75mhz right now.

I think that 486 is not a platform people build because of practical reasons. It's hardly even enough for Duke Nukem 3D or Descent, let alone Quake or later DOS games. It's simply a platform people use because it's challenging and the cards look cool. 😀

I bought an old 486! A Compaq Presario 425.
486 sx 25 Mhz, 12 MB ram, 107 MB hard drive, 0.5MB video ram 😀
It boots OK, all the hardware looks to be working.
I've cleaned it up.

Now, it's time to get files in and out of it.
My initial plan of using an IDE-USB adapter to read the IDE-drive from my new computer failed, as the drive is using the older CHS addressing mode, not LBA (which the adapter supports).
I'm eagerly awaiting a Compact-Flash adapter and a 3c509B network card. And a DX2-66 CPU, and more ram 😀

Had to fix the power connection to the main 60GB HDD in my Socket 370 machine (PSU might be going out or too weak to handle 2 HDDs, 2 optical drives, floppy drive, and SB IR Drive front panel since the PSU is only 250W). I can get the old 520W from the Socket 7 system and swap the PSUs around and fix the fan on the Ti4400 AGP as the fan's bearing is too dry again or order a replacement fan, or even better: add a bigger fan to it from a broken computer.

Spent the whole evening benchmarking my VIA Epia 800 motherboard.

It's very flexible for DOS games.

Tore down an AT box that was better as parts than as a computer, due to its battered and generally awful case.

If anyone wants a Tyan Trinity 100AT, now's your chance!

Replaced the Matrox Millennium + Voodoo 1 combination in my 1997 Budget Gaming build with an ATI 3D Rage Pro PCI - a much cheaper option at the time that feels a lot more fitting for the build.

Besides, I'm in love with the way it renders GLQuake - weird/no bilinear filtering, no mipmapping, it looks a lot like software rendering at 640x480 but at double the speed!

that sounds interesting, I really prefer the sharp pixelated rendering over early texture filtering in a lot of games.

Sorry I went silent here. Life has been very distracting.

That said, I thought you guys'd appreciate what I got up to today:

I nerd-sniped myself and implemented a one-click aspect ratio correction userscript for 320x200 screenshots on MobyGames based on this Gamasutra post.

It doesn't do 640x400 though. My enthusiasm was waning by the end.

Well, I found the problem with the fancy ass mid 2000s 500W PSU.

It was set to 230V. That's a problem, in Murica we use 115.

Unsurprisingly, flipping that switch solved the problem. Works fine now.

I've never seen a PSU set to 230 so I never thought to check it.

Still haven't managed to identify the problems with the Gigabyte AM2+ motherboard thats stuck at its splashscreen.
I feel like it has to be something simple.

First post on this thread. I tried MIDI for the first time!!!

Never tried it growing up. Decades later... I got a Yamaha YMF719 ISA card and put it in my Pentium 60 / W98se computer. Today morning I received the game port/midi cable... whereas as a kid I didn’t understand and couldn’t afford MIDI devices, now I realized my wife has Yamaha electric pianos with MIDI input. I brought one over connected it, set thr output to the MPU401 and tried the Canyon MIDI file in WMP... and the sound played on the keyboard 😁 super exciting. Curious to know now what further sound quality I can get with this setup... and need to find really good demo .mid files