BitWrangler wrote on 2024-08-26, 00:07:

Found an additional ... […]
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Found an additional ...

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-03-03, 23:21:

In case anyone was under the impression that I just have to turn around and lay my hand on an awesome piece of hardware, today as part of the investigation into "The Soundcard Situation" I turned around and laid my hand on this... Opti 82C931.. maybe the worst SB clone ever produced according to legend... that's if you discount some versions of the SB16 I guess 🤣 ... can it be alllll that bad? I am getting the feeling it might end up in something anyway as soundcards run away when they see me coming or something.

Is there even an ideal spec to curse with this? 96 card so youdathunk the basics would be getting covered by then, might have to stick it in a Win9x build that doesn't DOS around much.

https://youtu.be/lD_ag67tH3I?si=QR3HKA-1qjDhmfRS

But it is non-identical, just the most no-name, only ID is chip markings and Made in China sticker, 82C931 soundcard that you could imagine.

Stupid question though, are these as bad at Adlib as they are at opl3 type synthesis? .... I haven't done a lot of adlib recently, and back in the day I skipped it, stuck on PC honker for my first few years. So in my mind, basic Adlib is kinda schmaltzy chip tune, not sounding much like real instruments, thus I feel it's simpler and hard to screw up.

If it should be the case that they do well at adlib, then I might stick them in XT or 286 class, since optimum games for those don't tend to need much. Though also thinking of pairing one with the RAP-10 in a better machine, as then I get basic 8 bit and hope I can do GM, MPU401, SC etc on the RAP-10 instead of FM.... which is likely in post 93 or so games.

Personally I think there are far worse OPL clones than the Opti-FM of the 925/931 chips, I like my 931 cards in the systems I've played with them in. Check out PC sound legacy's video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCljlMWbbzQ
It's not quite the same as real OPL3 and checking out another video comparing the 931 to an SB Pro 2 it does sound like there's a heavy low pass filter on the FM sound, but I find that works pretty nicely for later DOS games with FM with a sufficiently bass heavy speaker setup.
Has anyone checked it out for Adlib capability for comparison though? I haven't yet but this video has and again it sounds quite similar but with some high frequency cutoff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poZT12wb9PA
Adlib can sound impressive with the right composition, dune's adlib soundtrack or pretty much everything Stephan Picq made. Haven't tried the 931 with those, that'd be a good test of their adlib sound...

debs3759 wrote on 2024-08-26, 01:31:

I have no space or energy to list them separately or test hundreds of cards and motherboards. I need to regain some floor space and see my carpets 😀 Keeping some stuff for when I've freed up space to be able to test the more valuable items..

That's why I shared my anecdote. It was one "Take what you want. I'm throwing away anything that's left in a week" listing for the entire lot."

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2024-08-26, 02:47:

I still mostly buy DVDs. The premium on Blu-rays, even second hand, just isn't justifiable for 90 percent of movies. I have my favorites and a lot of culturally and historically significant films on BluRay, and I plan to get a subset of those on 4k BluRay, but as long as DVDs continue to be $5-6 per film on eBay, they will probably remain my primary format. Especially with the number of films that are either censored or altered on Bluray (looking at YOU, James Cameron, and your AI based detail destroying digital noise reduction on all your films 4K releases)

Yeah, while I don't have a very large DVD collection, I would like to expand it just to cover all the "old" shows and movies that I really enjoy. I own even fewer BluRay, just a couple of my top tier favorite films like the original Ghosbusters and Jurassic Park films. Price is indeed a huge consideration, I also don't like to pay the BluRay premium when I'm perfectly happy with DVD.

The other pros for me are DVD is vastly easier to play in terms of hardware, only requires free software, and when you rip your disks the files are vastly smaller. I can use a cheap Raspberry Pi to store and play a huge library of media for example, not so much when it comes to BluRay. I guess I just don't really care too much about "up-scaled" versions or any of the other benefits of BluRay.

Today at work I had to connect a PTP clock to its GPS antenna, and for this it uses a BNC cable. Granted this has nothing to do with IPX coax networks I dealt with back in the days but it's been probably 30 years since I last connected a BNC cable so it was a nice feeling.

StriderTR wrote on 2024-08-26, 06:38:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2024-08-26, 02:47:

I still mostly buy DVDs. The premium on Blu-rays, even second hand, just isn't justifiable for 90 percent of movies. I have my favorites and a lot of culturally and historically significant films on BluRay, and I plan to get a subset of those on 4k BluRay, but as long as DVDs continue to be $5-6 per film on eBay, they will probably remain my primary format. Especially with the number of films that are either censored or altered on Bluray (looking at YOU, James Cameron, and your AI based detail destroying digital noise reduction on all your films 4K releases)

Yeah, while I don't have a very large DVD collection, I would like to expand it just to cover all the "old" shows and movies that I really enjoy. I own even fewer BluRay, just a couple of my top tier favorite films like the original Ghosbusters and Jurassic Park films. Price is indeed a huge consideration, I also don't like to pay the BluRay premium when I'm perfectly happy with DVD.

The other pros for me are DVD is vastly easier to play in terms of hardware, only requires free software, and when you rip your disks the files are vastly smaller. I can use a cheap Raspberry Pi to store and play a huge library of media for example, not so much when it comes to BluRay. I guess I just don't really care too much about "up-scaled" versions or any of the other benefits of BluRay.

Mostly I'm just picking up BluRay that are both a) cheap b) include the DVD, of films I consider keepers. I am finding DVD adequate at present, don't have any massive high res screens to be worth bothering to go higher. It's also seeming that DVD is going to survive longer in terms of playability, I am rarely seeing BluRay players second hand, DVD outnumber them by a lot, so I think sheer numbers will win and it will remain easier to find DVD players and/or drives in 10 or 15 years.

Though I need to start a project of capturing all my VHS stuff while working players are around. I've got a couple right now, but dunno how many tape plays they've got left "in them" so to speak.

mtest001 wrote on 2024-08-26, 14:44:

Today at work I had to connect a PTP clock to its GPS antenna, and for this it uses a BNC cable. Granted this has nothing to do with BNC ethernet networks I dealt with back in the days but it's been probably 30 years since I last connected a BNC cable so it was a nice feeling.

I should have enough stuff I can get 386 down networked on thinnet, in fact it's a bit easier as I have multiple 8bit cards with bnc and aui and several 16bit, no jack. Also have a hub with a BNC port. Though a question just occurred to me, hubs were never required on thinnet, it's just to uplink the segment to 10BaseT and from there going to a 10/100 switch probably.... but, does it even matter where you put a hub, middle of cable or end, or it's just basically another client/station and it's no difference? ... I guess I always had it on the end when I ran it turn of millennium, but I either forgot if there was a reason or never thought about it or knew. I would guess now, that it's slightly more fault tolerant, that one side of a segment might still get through to the uplink if there's a fault on other side, with maybe packet loss from noise and reflections, but I guess upstream of fault has same chance.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-08-26, 03:12:

Personally I think there are far worse OPL clones than the Opti-FM of the 925/931 chips, I like my 931 cards in the systems I've […]
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BitWrangler wrote on 2024-08-26, 00:07:

Found an additional ... […]
Show full quote

Found an additional ...

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-03-03, 23:21:

In case anyone was under the impression that I just have to turn around and lay my hand on an awesome piece of hardware, today as part of the investigation into "The Soundcard Situation" I turned around and laid my hand on this... Opti 82C931.. maybe the worst SB clone ever produced according to legend... that's if you discount some versions of the SB16 I guess 🤣 ... can it be alllll that bad? I am getting the feeling it might end up in something anyway as soundcards run away when they see me coming or something.

Is there even an ideal spec to curse with this? 96 card so youdathunk the basics would be getting covered by then, might have to stick it in a Win9x build that doesn't DOS around much.

https://youtu.be/lD_ag67tH3I?si=QR3HKA-1qjDhmfRS

But it is non-identical, just the most no-name, only ID is chip markings and Made in China sticker, 82C931 soundcard that you could imagine.

Stupid question though, are these as bad at Adlib as they are at opl3 type synthesis? .... I haven't done a lot of adlib recently, and back in the day I skipped it, stuck on PC honker for my first few years. So in my mind, basic Adlib is kinda schmaltzy chip tune, not sounding much like real instruments, thus I feel it's simpler and hard to screw up.

If it should be the case that they do well at adlib, then I might stick them in XT or 286 class, since optimum games for those don't tend to need much. Though also thinking of pairing one with the RAP-10 in a better machine, as then I get basic 8 bit and hope I can do GM, MPU401, SC etc on the RAP-10 instead of FM.... which is likely in post 93 or so games.

Personally I think there are far worse OPL clones than the Opti-FM of the 925/931 chips, I like my 931 cards in the systems I've played with them in. Check out PC sound legacy's video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCljlMWbbzQ
It's not quite the same as real OPL3 and checking out another video comparing the 931 to an SB Pro 2 it does sound like there's a heavy low pass filter on the FM sound, but I find that works pretty nicely for later DOS games with FM with a sufficiently bass heavy speaker setup.
Has anyone checked it out for Adlib capability for comparison though? I haven't yet but this video has and again it sounds quite similar but with some high frequency cutoff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poZT12wb9PA
Adlib can sound impressive with the right composition, dune's adlib soundtrack or pretty much everything Stephan Picq made. Haven't tried the 931 with those, that'd be a good test of their adlib sound...

I was reading elsewhere someone else said it was a filtering thing. Though looking at pics of Opti 82C931 cards, they have a large variety of amplifier chips which may make more or less difference model to model.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-08-26, 14:47:

Though I need to start a project of capturing all my VHS stuff while working players are around. I've got a couple right now, but dunno how many tape plays they've got left "in them" so to speak.

I just started opening this can of worms myself, but primarily for family movies. I have a good working Goldstar VCR stored away and the original, and still in perfect working order, JVC VHS-C camcorder my wife and I used to record all of our family movies. Good thing too since I seem to have lost the VHS-C adapter and I don't want to buy one if I don't have to do so.

I did discover that all the batteries for the camcorder are dead, and at some point over the last 20 years, we misplaced all the cables. So I made both an AV cable and power cable so I could feed the video into my Extron RGB-DVI-300 and capture it using OBS. I just haven't got around to doing that yet. I know it's going to be a very time consuming process.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-08-26, 14:47:

Though I need to start a project of capturing all my VHS stuff while working players are around. I've got a couple right now, but dunno how many tape plays they've got left "in them" so to speak.

20 years ago I specifically purchased the Gigabyte GV-N66T128VP as my GPU, because it had the VIVO function, and I wanted it exactly for this. It was tedious, I had to have a custom cable between the VCR and the audio card (Audigy 2 ZS), connected in parallel to the video-in to the GPU, and then fidget with the drivers and software until I got an acceptable response, but I did eventually transfer my collection of childhood video tapes.

Did a bunch of clean-up and organizing of my basement workshop this past weekend. I wish I had taken some before pictures as things were a pretty big disaster. Much more organized now, especially my projects shelves.

Workbench still needs some clean-up, but it's not nearly as bad as it usually is. I've also been meaning to a build a proper extension one of these days and get rid of those metal shelving units.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-08-26, 14:47:

StriderTR wrote on 2024-08-26, 06:38:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2024-08-26, 02:47:

I still mostly buy DVDs. The premium on Blu-rays, even second hand, just isn't justifiable for 90 percent of movies. I have my favorites and a lot of culturally and historically significant films on BluRay, and I plan to get a subset of those on 4k BluRay, but as long as DVDs continue to be $5-6 per film on eBay, they will probably remain my primary format. Especially with the number of films that are either censored or altered on Bluray (looking at YOU, James Cameron, and your AI based detail destroying digital noise reduction on all your films 4K releases)

Yeah, while I don't have a very large DVD collection, I would like to expand it just to cover all the "old" shows and movies that I really enjoy. I own even fewer BluRay, just a couple of my top tier favorite films like the original Ghosbusters and Jurassic Park films. Price is indeed a huge consideration, I also don't like to pay the BluRay premium when I'm perfectly happy with DVD.

The other pros for me are DVD is vastly easier to play in terms of hardware, only requires free software, and when you rip your disks the files are vastly smaller. I can use a cheap Raspberry Pi to store and play a huge library of media for example, not so much when it comes to BluRay. I guess I just don't really care too much about "up-scaled" versions or any of the other benefits of BluRay.

Mostly I'm just picking up BluRay that are both a) cheap b) include the DVD, of films I consider keepers. I am finding DVD adequate at present, don't have any massive high res screens to be worth bothering to go higher. It's also seeming that DVD is going to survive longer in terms of playability, I am rarely seeing BluRay players second hand, DVD outnumber them by a lot, so I think sheer numbers will win and it will remain easier to find DVD players and/or drives in 10 or 15 years.

Though I need to start a project of capturing all my VHS stuff while working players are around. I've got a couple right now, but dunno how many tape plays they've got left "in them" so to speak.

I don't think that DVDs look bad on high def tvs. In my experience, they look great on both old CRTs and my newer 4K LED. I haven't watched any on anything above 55 inches, so maybe they would look worse on something fancier. Nonetheless, they seem like a good format that bridges the older and newer technologies.

DaveDDS wrote on 2024-08-22, 03:19:

Now that It's working reliably - I've been having a "blast from the past" with
the TRS-80 Model100 for the past few days...

Just in case there's anyone else who sometimes plays with this old early-day stuff:

I've just posted a much improved version of my M100 tools, particularity the loadable
machine language monitor:

- Works from either the Model-100 keyboard/LCD of via the serial RS232 port
- Can display, edit, fill, and execute anywhere in memory
- Can read/write IO ports
- Can do "repeating" read/write/in/out (great for hardware debugging)
- Can upload/download memory as Motorola'S' (text) records
- more .. all this in a small (couple-k) machine language program that lives at the
top of memory and can be download, executed right away, or stored in a .CO file

Source to the monitor (M100MON.ASM) is included, I will publish all the tool
sources as part of my "release everything in retirement" project in the next
little while!

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-08-26, 23:37:

Did a bunch of clean-up and organizing of my basement workshop this past weekend. I wish I had taken some before pictures as thi […]
Show full quote

Did a bunch of clean-up and organizing of my basement workshop this past weekend. I wish I had taken some before pictures as things were a pretty big disaster. Much more organized now, especially my projects shelves.

The attachment Computer Storage Shelves - Organized.jpg is no longer available

The attachment Projects Shelves - Organized.jpg is no longer available

Workbench still needs some clean-up, but it's not nearly as bad as it usually is. I've also been meaning to a build a proper extension one of these days and get rid of those metal shelving units.

The attachment Workbench.jpg is no longer available

I can't believe you have a Tatung 286. And multiple Epson Equity's. I've been looking for an original 1 for a while. Have a real nice keyboard to go with it.

Still watching Knight Rider as I work on projects, and I had forgotten in a lot of episodes when they wanted to show "scrolling information" on a computer monitor, it was often just a BASIC program being listed.

Even back then I never understood why they just didn't write a simple BASIC program and run it to display the information they wanted, or even "technobabble" to look cool, rather than someone just typing "LIST" and recording that. I assume it's likely becasue a majority of viewers at the time would have no idea what they were looking at anyway, so it didn't matter. It was geeks like me that noticed. I went so far as to write some simple BASIC programs as a kid on both my TI-99 and Commodore 64 and pretended it was from the show. I thought it would have been cool back then to work in special effects and just work on the displays and screens you see, similar to what Michael Okuda did on Star Trek TNG.

Really brings back memories!

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-08-27, 00:43:

I don't think that DVDs look bad on high def tvs. In my experience, they look great on both old CRTs and my newer 4K LED. I haven't watched any on anything above 55 inches, so maybe they would look worse on something fancier.

Everything looks great until you compare it side-by-side with something that looks much better. 480p/576p vs 1080p/2160p - the difference would be easily noticeable even on a 20" screen, if one sits close enough. Am I still able to enjoy blurry, low-resolution content? Of course. But if there is at least a Full HD remaster - I prefer that most of the time.

I do have a fairly large collection of original movie DVDs and I appreciate them for their extra content - commentary, deleted scenes, production documentaries. Sometimes I just feel like watching these, and they are almost never available in digital releases (and if available, then in the original low-res quality).

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-08-27, 00:43:

I am finding DVD adequate at present, don't have any massive high res screens to be worth bothering to go higher. It's also seeming that DVD is going to survive longer in terms of playability, I am rarely seeing BluRay players second hand, DVD outnumber them by a lot, so I think sheer numbers will win and it will remain easier to find DVD players and/or drives in 10 or 15 years.

I think it is true and has to do with the fact that the move to BluRay happened around the same time that optical drives were being phased out in general, and everyone went full digital. The market was much smaller to begin with.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-08-26, 14:47:

It's also seeming that DVD is going to survive longer in terms of playability, I am rarely seeing BluRay players second hand, DVD outnumber them by a lot, so I think sheer numbers will win and it will remain easier to find DVD players and/or drives in 10 or 15 years.

That's because no one except movie enthusiasts uses dedicated Blu-ray players. Everyone else (myself included) just pops the disc into their gaming console of choice. The PlayStation 3 came out in 2006 and made the format widely available to the masses. Xbox was slower to catch up, due to the whole HD-DVD fiasco, but eventually they got on the Blu-ray bandwagon as well. This is slowly changing due to consoles going all digital, but right now, it's still the most common way to watch Blu-ray content.

As for Blu-ray vs. DVD, I suppose it depends on the TV screen size and viewing distance. Siting three meters away from a 42" LCD TV, I can definitively see the increased sharpness and clarity that Blu-ray brings to the table. In fact, I can even see the higher quality (more detail, preserved film grain, no compression artifacts) that using the physical disc has over streaming via Netflix or whatever. But that's just me.

dr_st wrote on 2024-08-27, 06:22:

Everything looks great until you compare it side-by-side with something that looks much better. 480p/576p vs 1080p/2160p - the d […]
Show full quote

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-08-27, 00:43:

I don't think that DVDs look bad on high def tvs. In my experience, they look great on both old CRTs and my newer 4K LED. I haven't watched any on anything above 55 inches, so maybe they would look worse on something fancier.

Everything looks great until you compare it side-by-side with something that looks much better. 480p/576p vs 1080p/2160p - the difference would be easily noticeable even on a 20" screen, if one sits close enough. Am I still able to enjoy blurry, low-resolution content? Of course. But if there is at least a Full HD remaster - I prefer that most of the time.

I do have a fairly large collection of original movie DVDs and I appreciate them for their extra content - commentary, deleted scenes, production documentaries. Sometimes I just feel like watching these, and they are almost never available in digital releases (and if available, then in the original low-res quality).

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-08-27, 00:43:

I am finding DVD adequate at present, don't have any massive high res screens to be worth bothering to go higher. It's also seeming that DVD is going to survive longer in terms of playability, I am rarely seeing BluRay players second hand, DVD outnumber them by a lot, so I think sheer numbers will win and it will remain easier to find DVD players and/or drives in 10 or 15 years.

I think it is true and has to do with the fact that the move to BluRay happened around the same time that optical drives were being phased out in general, and everyone went full digital. The market was much smaller to begin with.

I can certainly see the difference between a DVD and higher resolution content like a Blu-Ray. However, I wouldn't consider a DVD to be blurry, at least on my setup. Maybe my Xbox or TV is doing some processing on my DVDs, but I'm not seeing those awful artefacts that are really noticeable on lower quality YouTube videos for example. It's like comparing a Corvette to a Formula 1 car. I'd still consider the Corvette to be fast even though there are much faster racing cars out there.

In terms of quality, sometimes I think it's just that many of grew up on much less and are more "forgiving" that someone who was born into the "HD" generation. Then again, just looking at Knight Rider again since it's what I have playing at the moment. I just captured and cropped out the VLC player in the two images below and did no other post processing or compressing, and I think they look pretty good considering they've been stretched to fit my 1080P monitor.

It also pays to note that these are being played back on displays of higher quality than what was available at the time. What was it in the 80's? 480i was the best if I recall correctly for televisions? Still, many people were using console televisions from the late 70's well into the 80's. You often didn't buy a new TV until yours died and didn't want to have it repaired. Basically, I think viewing 480i on a modern display verses a TV from the 80's is going to look "better".

StriderTR wrote on 2024-08-27, 07:18:

Basically, I think viewing 480i on a modern display verses a TV from the 80's is going to look "better".

It may depend on the TV's built-in scaler, or an external scaling device if you're using that. But it may also come down to personal preference.

For me, any Standard Definition content (including DVDs) looks best on a nice Sony Trinitron from the late 90s or early 2000s. A CRT TV smooths over any imperfections of lower resolutions, making them nearly imperceptible. I prefer that look for SD stuff, rather than viewing it upscaled on a modern display. But CRTs are dying off due to age and wear, so that's not a sustainable approach.

I'm currently watching Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman. I downloaded it - the resolution is 512x384. Full screen on a 22 inch 1080p monitor, it takes me back to the good old days of VHS on a worn out TV, but as that was what I was brought up with, it's bearable (except in scenes where clarity matters, of course).