VOGONS


Reply 21440 of 27170, by Meatball

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Here are some photos for posterity. I normally don't have the "Prevent MS-DOS..." box ticked (to reproduce the error and otherwise), but to keep the window from closing automatically to capture the note, I have it set.

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Reply 21441 of 27170, by Meatball

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Meatball wrote on 2022-04-13, 18:53:

Tested a PowerVR PCX1. I couldn't get Tomb Raider & Unfinished Business to run because the current machine I'm messing around with has a Sound Blaster Live! using SB16 emulation, and no ISA slots. The SB16 emulation requires EMM386, but the PCX1 version of Tomb Raider/UB refuses to run with EMM386 loaded (PCX2 version doesn't have this problem). So, Instead I tried Turok (it won't recognize the card; only PCX2), then I resorted to the PowerVR version of Biohazard (Resident Evil). This version does look the best, no doubt. It's choppy at 800x600, but 640x480 is great. The best part is the PowerVR version on the PCX1 runs at normal speed with even a 2Ghz P4. The Direct3D version flips out when even a 333MHz Pentium II is used.

Well, I decided to put the PCX2 back in since I was curious whether it suffers from too fast of a CPU. The in-game cutscenes do play a little faster (perhaps because the PCX2 optimizations + core & memory are 6MHz faster than the PCX1?), but the audio stays in sync with character movements (at least I can't tell, anyway), and gameplay doesn't suffer. You'd probably never notice it if you hadn't experienced the game playing at its programmed speed. On the plus side, the game can play at its maximum supported resolution without slowdown in-game and during movies on the PCX2, and does it look even better? I think so. With the PCX1 or PCX2, though, the backgrounds, even as compressed as they are look better than the other releases. It appears my PCX1 is destined for a display case.

Reply 21442 of 27170, by Kahenraz

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I've run Tomb Raider with my overcooked PCX2 on a fast Pentium D in Windows 98 without anything playing "too fast". It's not a speed sensitive game, unless maybe the PCX1 is somehow responsible for the behavior you observed.

Reply 21443 of 27170, by Meatball

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Kahenraz wrote on 2022-04-13, 23:37:

I've run Tomb Raider with my overcooked PCX2 on a fast Pentium D in Windows 98 without anything playing "too fast". It's not a speed sensitive game, unless maybe the PCX1 is somehow responsible for the behavior you observed.

You've never played the American version of Resident Evil? It's definitely speed sensitive. To be clear, it is the in-game cut scenes, which mostly suffer. The game will even lockup when you meet the first zombie on a CPU, which is too fast. (To work around this, I think the process is to try to exist the room back into the main hall of the mansion several times. Barry will tell you to get back to work or something like that. Then go through the other door to the right of Barry, return to the room, and an alternate in-game scene will start with the zombie bursting through the door and Barry killing him.) I think even a 233MMX is too fast, but I would have to test that again to ensure I am not misremembering.

The PowerVR version indicates (to me) it was designed for PCX1 in mind, but at least it doesn't go crazy on the PCX2 like the Direct3D version would on other cards of the time if played on a Pentium II or greater.

Reply 21445 of 27170, by creepingnet

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Life's been heck lately outside of retro-technology.....working third shift, still getting my hours right going back to day shift....so my sleeping patterns are screwed....leading me to late night/early morning experiments, last nights experiments....after a 30 minute round trip drive to fix a printer (on call)....HX DOS Extender! And I feel I am now starting to get the hang of it. I'm using version 2.17. The computer - 486DX4 laptop - aka NEC Versa M/75. Maybe this will be an informative post..

For Win32 I've picked a handful of apps to mess with: Civilization II that just happened to already be on the hard disk, I put very old copies of Exult and Scummvm on there, and the Postal demo. I also have Post Apocalyptic Petra and Quake to mess with as well - and a gaggle of Win16 apps.

Let's start with Win16 since that's the one I'm struggling with the most. Still have not been able to get around the NE stub app problem of it saying "This program requires Microsoft Windows" when running those with dpmild16....however i may be able to run Windows 3.1 in standard mode on FreeDOS and use the modified DOSX that came with...so if too much trouble, maybe I'll use that. So yeah, not much movement there. Tried MS Arcade Pack apps, a bunch of random downloaded 3.1x games like Debris and so on.

Now DPMILD32 though - man, were making waves.

The first problem was getting the right Windows resources. I'm just running these dpmis from c:\fdos\bin directly - just makes things easier and saves me an environment variable. I started by copying a bunch of files (several msvcrt.dll type files, mssi.dll or something like that, Kernel32, and a bunch of others), then when those were having trouble working, I downloaded others. Only to give up and download HX 2.17 from Sourceforge via Links (which was upgraded to 2.26 this week as well) and use that as it came with special versions of the needed files - only then did we start getting somewhere.

The next issue was getting the programs to work, doing more reading of text files found me figuring out I needed to setup UniVBE - which I have version 6 of. Okay, no prob, already have that on tap. Brought up UniVBE.....

Now here's the fun thing about using a early-mid 90's PC with an Active Matrix 800x600 screen only capable of 4096 maximum colors - getting UniVBE to play ball with said LCD. So now started the somewhat unnerving process of seeing your LCD panel fire up, work, then turn stark white like someone poured milk between the LCD layers.....CIV 2 was trying to start, Exult was trying, and I think Scummvm was working but just forcing the poor thing to display outside it's limits of color depth. Same thing with Quake. Petra worked somewhat, with what I could only describe as being my versa M/75 trying to emulate a VR headset with 2 simultaneous instances of the same screen on each side, with a "nuclear puke" color palette. I then figured out that most of these were actually dumping me back the DOS prompt as I could faintly see the directory behind the milk pour of white pixels gone overdrive - my DOS prompt with the path, especially if I messed with mode co40 and mode co80 a few times or CLS.

So then of course - my logic took over - there must be some kind of *.cfg/*.ini/*.con file I can edit that tells this thing what to do. I can't think that something that has a GUI helper would not have some kind of configuration - and sure enough, I found it - HXGUIHLP.INI - popped that puppy open in edit....and after some tweaking of settings, Mr. 65545 stopped dumping milk in my screen for changing from a VESA graphics mode back to 80x25 column text. Turns out the setting was save=1 - changed it to save=0 and that worked.

So where were at now with each application?

CIV2 - starts up, loads the HX GUI, then dumps me back out, no errors

Exult - same as Civ2

ScummVM - Actually loads, still does the milky thing IIRC, I think this one is just throwing up too high a color depth so it might bet worth plugging into an external monitor to see what's going on as it appears to be working.

Quake - same as Exult and Civ2

Petra - still Nuclear Puke

Postal - now this one looks really promising. Postal loads up into the HX GUI but it seems the command line is popping up behind it to whine that there's no audio device.

Other games/software I want to get going under DOS: Sim Tower, Diablo, Beachhead2000, Microsoft Golf 3.0....and I'm determined to get Exult working because Ultima VII and Serpent's Isle do not work in FreeDOS - Jemmx, Himemx, and EMM386 all wreak havoc on both the memory count reported by freecom.c and probably the Voodoo DPMI that Origin Systems used. Which brings me to another crazy experiment I plan to try.....

Since these are WINDOWS apps, and the M/75 has a Windows Sound System chip on it......Im getting a few ideas. It could possibly be possible to get Windows Sound System working under DOS using HX - or at least, the SoundBlaster emulation part of it. See, Windows 3.1x uses Windows Sound System software in conjunction with EMM386.EXE to trap the ports and WSSXLAT.EXE to translate to SoundBlaster for the software - and Windows 9x has this kind of functionality baked into it for these cards - so now I'm thinking, if I can be using mscvrt.dll and kernel32.dll withHX and getting Postal to darn near run, what's stopping me from getting WSS SB Emulation running in DOS - and furthermore - if Exult or Scummvm work (if I can get the resolutions right) - it may even be possible to virtualize MiDi using something like timidity. Just some thoughts.

Granted, I'll probably hit some roadblock that will make all this impossible, but the fun is learning that the hard way for me.

~The Creeping Network~
My Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/creepingnet
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The Creeping Network Repo - https://www.geocities.ws/creepingnet2019/

Reply 21446 of 27170, by 386SX

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Today still testing the dual core Atom running with this big 8GB DDR3 amount of ram and Win 8.1 x64 and the GT610 512MB PCI card on it. The Directx11/OpenGL4.6 gpu sure make a difference in everything but too bad the mainboard installed a single old PCI bridged bus while the board could have used its PCI-EX native x4 rail for a PCI-EX video card that would run much faster even on such slow cpu. The "chipset 'PCI-EX to PCI' <> 'PCI IC bridge to PCI-EX x16@x1' gpu", seems like a big bottleneck even on such slow config. Most late Atom itx boards were mostly similar to the reference one configured this way, only few had an ATX like PCI-EX x1 bus instead. And while the bios seems like oriented to an external VGA for its usage, it is clearly too much limiting for many old 3D games even the Directx9 ones.

Reply 21447 of 27170, by holdencars11

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Decided to have a relaxing day doing a build that I wanted to get done for a while:
ABIT BE6
Pentium II 400
768MB
Riva 128 ZX (I have many others I could use, just wanted to try the 128ZX)

Reprogrammed the BIOS using the TL866 as it was suffering an bad Bootblock that casused it to not boot at all. Maybe thats why it was thrown out?

The motherboard was missing the standard ATX I/O shield when I trash picked it more than a year ago, so I made up a new one.

Getting the install to work on the HighPoint HPT366 was kind of a nightmare. And the controller can't be disabled in the BIOS (that i can see anyway).
Ended up being a huge troubleshooting mess. Switched from IBM DeathStar to a Seagate Barracuda IV and the HotPoint was happier, but not perfect.

Ended up changing the UDMA mode from Mode 4 to Mode 3, and then Windows 98 managed to complete the installation.
I was reading some other period correct forum posts and HPT366 it seems should have been renamed "HotMess" to put it mildly.

EDIT: Just updating this post. I managed to solve the compatibility issue with the HighPoint HPT366 by switching to another hard disk - a Samsung drive.

Others I tested that caused Windows 98 install freezing, or boot issues once the HighPoint HPT366 drivers were installed were:
- IBM DeskStar DPTA-372050
- Seagate Barracuda IV ST340016A
-Western Digital 400BB

Drive that finally worked with the HPT366 driver loaded at UDMA4 (ATA 66) was: Samsung Spinpoint SV0411N

I guess Red Hill guide was right, Samsung drives are really quite good!

I hope this comes up in a Google search when some other poor soul tries to get the HPT366 working!

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Last edited by holdencars11 on 2022-04-15, 14:43. Edited 1 time in total.

Ryzen5 1600AF/ASRock B450Mac/16Gb/HD7750
i7 2600K/P67A-C43/16GB/GTX560
i7 960/MSI X58 Pro/8GB/8800GTS
Athlon II x4 620/GA-M56-S3/8GB/8800GTS
Duron 1300/A7S333/512MB/MX440
6x86MX PR200/PC Chips M571/64MB/ET6000
NEC PowerMate1 268 10MHz
And another 40 rigs.

Reply 21448 of 27170, by appiah4

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I've decided my collection is getting out of hand so I'm going to take apart any WinXP+ system and decomission most WinXP+ hardware I have lying around; I'll sell off a good deal of them. I had too many XP/Vista/7 systems doing nothing, and they all need to go. I will set up a single Athlon II X4 640 / GTX 780 WinXP system and wash my hands clean. That means my beloved Socket 754 AGP project is also getting the axe, but so be it..

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 21449 of 27170, by Shponglefan

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Think I may have fried a processor today (Athlon XP 2500+). Forgot to re-install the heatsink and tried it powering it up.

While the computer did shut down almost immediately, after re-establishing the heatsink & fan I couldn't get it to even POST.

First time in over 30 years of tinkering with computers that I have made that mistake. 😒

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Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 21450 of 27170, by Shponglefan

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On a more positive note, I did manage to upgrade my ESS Solo-1 card by adding a wavetable header connector.

Tested it out under Windows 98 (both in Windows itself and DOS) using a Yucatan FX wavetable card. It worked perfectly and sounded great!

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Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 21451 of 27170, by Tetrium

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Shponglefan wrote on 2022-04-15, 22:27:

Think I may have fried a processor today (Athlon XP 2500+). Forgot to re-install the heatsink and tried it powering it up.

While the computer did shut down almost immediately, after re-establishing the heatsink & fan I couldn't get it to even POST.

First time in over 30 years of tinkering with computers that I have made that mistake. 😒

The caps also seem to start bulging.

What board is this btw? It looks like an ASUS but not sure.

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 21452 of 27170, by Shponglefan

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Tetrium wrote on 2022-04-15, 22:56:

The caps also seem to start bulging.

What board is this btw? It looks like an ASUS but not sure.

It's an Asus A7N8X-X

You're correct, the caps are a bit bulgy on it. I'm not too fussed about this board though as I just replaced it due to its chipset (nForce2) lack of DOS capability for PCI soundcards.

Ended up swapping it out for an Asus A7V600. Now I can at least get sound in DOS games with the new board.

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 21453 of 27170, by mastergamma12

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Setting up another Windows 98 machine with an Asus SK8V, an AMD Opteron 254, a ELSA Gladiac Ultra and an SB Live, wanted to use a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz but I can't get MPU401 working for Dos games under Windows 98.

NNH9pIh.png

The Tuala-Bus (My 9x/Dos Rig) (Pentium III-S 1.4ghz, AWE64G+Audigy 2 ZS, Voodoo5 5500, Chieftec Dragon Rambus)

The Final Lan Party (My Windows Xp/7 rig) (Core i7 980x, GTX 480,DFI Lanparty UT X58-T3eH8,)
Re: Post your 'current' PC

Reply 21454 of 27170, by FioGermi

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I spent 3 hours diagnosing this FIC PA-2000 that i bought "NOS OEM" off ebay:

Second IDE port is flakey. MB will often loose connection with ram (even after i gave both the slots and sticks a good clean), PC is slow to post, medium scratch underneath board with transparent green tape covering it despite being "new", and sometimes board will just refuse to post at all.

I'm starting to doubt this bored was really NOS oem leftover stock. Well shit. I had it in storage for a long time so i can't exactly get a refund. Guess my P75 system will have to wait till i can order something else. Anyone got any good suggestions for a 1995 era Socket 5/7 motherboard? I got this one specifically because it had 1995 as the date of bios revision.

Reply 21455 of 27170, by Joakim

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Backing up data from some double density disks I bought for my Amiga via null modem cable and Amiga explorer on a windows 98 machine.

Retro within retro. <Insert Inception gif here>

Reply 21456 of 27170, by ODwilly

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I accidentally had my Dell Inspiron 7000 hauled off to Goodwill in a big refuse haul last week (sitting on the wrong shelf).

Thinkpad 770 OG is being a spoiled brat with a flat cr 2025 I know I need to replace to get full keyboard functionality again. (maybe need to look into a new PSU and rebuiling the battery) Iv got 6 compatible HDD's, but the current 8gb with 2k sp4 is corrupt.

Rescued a Celery IBM T41? With working PSU in swap for a childrens pedal car while in line waiting to dump off a Goodwill load. Works but hasnt been used since 2008 apparently. Wet. Letting it dry out in front of a heater.

If nothing else hopefully it will provide a laptop IDE interface to format and mess with 44pin IDE drives for the Thinkpad. Came with a busted screen Vista 17inch Acer craptop with a busted screen, dry, single core Celery with PSU as well guaranteed working since theyd been using it with a external monitor for ages.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 21457 of 27170, by holdencars11

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Revived and Recapped a Soltek SL-65KV2-T with Nichicon HN and Panasonic FM....

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Ryzen5 1600AF/ASRock B450Mac/16Gb/HD7750
i7 2600K/P67A-C43/16GB/GTX560
i7 960/MSI X58 Pro/8GB/8800GTS
Athlon II x4 620/GA-M56-S3/8GB/8800GTS
Duron 1300/A7S333/512MB/MX440
6x86MX PR200/PC Chips M571/64MB/ET6000
NEC PowerMate1 268 10MHz
And another 40 rigs.

Reply 21458 of 27170, by Merovign

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ODwilly wrote on 2022-04-16, 11:23:

I accidentally had my Dell Inspiron 7000 hauled off to Goodwill in a big refuse haul last week (sitting on the wrong shelf).

I've been trying without much success to find out what Goodwill does with computers around here. I have found some parts and even a box of software or two, but I haven't seen an actual computer at Goodwill in probably 8-10 years.

The staff doesn't even seem to know. They have pointed me at some specific stores but none of them have anything. I will try to ask at more places, I probably need to start calling their corporate offices - it's not that I'm going to buy a bunch of them but not knowing is bugging me. There are supposedly special Goodwill computer stores, the nearest of which is hundreds of miles away. I find it hard to believe they just ship every donation hundreds of miles, but I guess it's possible (if annoying).

*Too* *many* *things*!

Reply 21459 of 27170, by BitWrangler

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I have tried finding that out too, I get directed to the shop Goodwill auction site, but in Ontario it seems only the London store participates and only does pickup no shipping. The occasional one gets through here when it's donated direct to the store, not through any of their other collection programs. US auctions of anything electronic on there usually say shipping to Canada is "prohibited" or something, even if the same listing location will ship you delicate glassware... kinda odd.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.