I'm tinkering with DirectMusic, using the Simple Direct Music Player, by Russell Hicks, which completely bypasses the deficient Microsoft Waveyable Synth in favor of it's own DirectMusic session, which also offers Reverb, though it apparently has no Chorus, despite that being built into DirectSound. It's sad to see how much potential DM had or could have had, if it had been handled right. I've been testing MDI files using both the XG-Lite DLS set (DLSbyXG.DLS) and the Microsoft Wavetable Synth DLS file (GM.DLS) that has been in every Windows release since 98 and the results are somewhat mixed, depending on the type of MIDI and the instruments used, with both sets showing clear deficiencies in instrument selection and the so-called GS bank being the better of the two, by far. In fact, the Microsoft file is quite passable with game MIDIs, when run through this DM synth instead of the MWS, which lacks the reverb and chorus functions that have to be called forth through DirectSound, something that the MWS cannot simply do on it's own and the main reason why it sounded so awful. I think they could redo it now and have it be much better than it was in the late 90's, given the advances in sample sets and computing.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-09-21, 20:56:

Indeed, very useful, there's some stuff expecting a 2x drive that stutters on faster because reads a chunk, drive spins down, ta […]
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Indeed, very useful, there's some stuff expecting a 2x drive that stutters on faster because reads a chunk, drive spins down, take 2s to use chunk, needs the next chunk, disk spins up, pause, gets going again, repeat, aaaargh.

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Another small aaargh, it never rains but it pours as they say, or nothing for hours then three buses come at once... that sort of thing. Not sure whether to spend evening clearing space, and if and how much space I might need, and whether preparing is a jinx.... etc... Anyway, item one, EGA monitor a shortish drive away, cheap, will go with my Packard Bell 12Mhz 286. item two, a Compaq Presario CDS 520 going cheap not very far away either, item 3..n "Gotta recycle some old PCs" said the guy, "I could take them" I said...

Anyway, maybe call it rain, last day of summer though and summer rain, quick downpour and the pavement dries up real quick, so don't know if these will just evaporate on me or not. Angel on one shoulder "You should deal with all the parts and projects you've got, don't need more." Demon on the other "How often do EGA monitors or CDS 520 come up though and you know you'd think an EGA 286 or a CDS 520 is really cool." Angel "Yeah he's got a point there..." .... and the other stuff, there is rumor of a part I particularly want in one of the PCs so dunno if I gotta take a pile of junk to get it, or will get actually useful stuff as well, or what.

So train of thought at 100mph going "a tackety tick, tickety tack, EGA, tickety tack, CDS, tickety tack, Free PCs, tackety tick...."

"There has been some dewellopments Captain."
"Thank you Mr Chekov, report.."

Recycling PCs guy got back to me, I'm picking stuff up tonight. Rumored unicorn-ish part might not be amongst it though. We will see what I get. I rejigged some stuff in a closet and put a couple of machines in there, so space found I guess. Kinda want the 1156 looking box now, didn't got one... other P4ish looking... says cases undamaged and PSUs working so I guess everything else is gravy really. Though usual problem of "need case" "get a case" "it has parts in it" "those parts deserve a case too" "need case" 🤣 IDK what the worst thing an 1156 can have in it is, but I've got an i3-540 CPU that's gotta be at least third above worst....

I learned that while a small heatsink with a thermal pad is enough to get an LGA775 board into the BIOS with an E8400, a QX6700 overheats so fast that it triggers thermal shutdown before one can enter the BIOS.

Just to be sure, I reinstalled Win10 and disabling Fast Startup also solved the problem with Windows 10. I really let myself get dragged off the trail on that by assuming that it was a hardware problem, but that was partially because at one point it was. I have some DDR2 1066 memory, and it had issues with the last motherboard I tried it in even at 800. I assumed that it was some sort of memory incompatibility with that motherboard, but now that it also had issues with this one I'm thinking that one or both sticks are likely bad. So I was getting weird issues until I swapped out those sticks for some other DDR2, only to realize that while the memory was a problem, it wasn't the only one.

Just for the heck of it, I installed my 6000+ and GTS 250.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-09-24, 12:17:

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-09-23, 14:22:

IDK if I'm just adding confusion 🤣 I'm trying to lay it out as simple as it seemed when I first looked at it a few years back, and it's gone bloated and "idiotproofed"

Heh, no worries. It's all good info. 😀

Everybody is at it, making a disk interface, http://boginjr.com/it/?sort=1 though the article linked further down that page doesn't seem to call out Amiga use, but there's another on using it with a 2.88.... However, I thought you might like the one at the top about webmasters first go round with an A500... I think yours will have OCS though original chipset vs the enhanced chipset ECS he mentions.

Finally managed to fix the MS-6340 a few pages back. Swapped polys for green Chemicon KZE, fixed a few ripped SMDs near the DIMM2 slot, and it runs fine. I do have to set SDRAM to run at 100MHz forced tho, or else it's a crashfest again.

I was testing some games for EAX compatibility and noticed this in Rainbow Six Lockdown:

That game is from 2006, but it had fully functional and nice looking water reflections. Even the helicopter flying overhead is reflected by that puddle in real time! Yet today's modern games struggle with implementing this stuff for some reason, even with raytracing. So weird how game graphics have regressed in certain ways over the years.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-09-25, 09:19:

I was testing some games for EAX compatibility and noticed this in Rainbow Six Lockdown:

The attachment Rainbow_Six_Lockdown.jpg is no longer available

That game is from 2006, but it had fully functional and nice looking water reflections. Even the helicopter flying overhead is reflected by that puddle in real time! Yet today's modern games struggle with implementing this stuff for some reason, even with raytracing. So weird how game graphics have regressed in certain ways over the years.

It's screen space reflection. And i'm on your boat in terms that 99% of times it is sufficient as a reflection method.

But,
Imagine a bridge going over water. You are at same height as the bridge so you won't see the underside of the bridge. But through water reflection, you should see it. Screen space reflection can not do it - it "copies" image that already exists "somewhere" on the screen. Raytracing on the other hand does "a real bouncing" and can therefore render the under side of the bridge into the water reflection.

Usually it's really minor thing and therefore i share your feelings - i feel the same.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-09-25, 08:14:

Finally managed to fix the MS-6340 a few pages back. Swapped polys for green Chemicon KZE, fixed a few ripped SMDs near the DIMM2 slot, and it runs fine. I do have to set SDRAM to run at 100MHz forced tho, or else it's a crashfest again.

If it's marked PC133 but has 8ns chips it might be too near the edge for that board, or was a total scam that only worked in winter. If chips are 7.5... they're pretty much likely to be remarked 8ns for ppl that actually check and same comment applies*... if they are 7ns then that should be a 100% great PC133 under all circumstances, and probably overclocks too... that would mean it's the board being the problem.

*Though I think late in SDRAM days micron were marking some as 7.5/75 but with micron being a reliable source, they would probably be 7ns that failed by a tiny margin, not 8ns that can only do 7.5ns if the ambient is no higher than 20C... though earlier in the PC133 days there were 8ns that were 7ns that only failed by a tiny margin, which is why anyone ever got away with 8ns on PC133 modules.

Lately I've been getting too many Slot type motherboards which are missing the retention mechanism or the mechanism is broken. So I've been making repair parts, here's the replacement for the top half of a "hometom" branded SECC 2 clip:

Then I started making complete replacement brackets since I want to sell off some of these boards but they have no way to properly attach the CPU, so far I've made a working SECC 1 type bracket but I've got plans to make that a SECC-2 type and hopefully make a folding version after that based on the AMP design:

That secures onto the motherboard at the moment using the UNC 6/32 screw posts that were already attached to the boards. I don't have any UNC 6/32 nuts so I'm using standoffs that I've collected over the years instead, works well, is very secure.

And these cool clips that fit in the top of the retention mechanism to really securely hold a celeron / SECC-2 CPU in place. I'd really like these to just have a clip but none of those designs worked yet so there's this simplified one that sits in the top of the bracket as a friction fit then can be screwed into place with an M3 thread screw where the SECC-1 retention clip normally goes:

You can see on there there's two types, one to fit regular CPU cards that fit the celeron / SECC-2 PCB areas, then one to fit stuff that doesn't even both with that design and just does its own thing by being too tall. So there's a design with an open top to fit the edge of the MS6905 slotket 😀

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-09-25, 11:56:

PcBytes wrote on 2024-09-25, 08:14:

Finally managed to fix the MS-6340 a few pages back. Swapped polys for green Chemicon KZE, fixed a few ripped SMDs near the DIMM2 slot, and it runs fine. I do have to set SDRAM to run at 100MHz forced tho, or else it's a crashfest again.

If it's marked PC133 but has 8ns chips it might be too near the edge for that board, or was a total scam that only worked in winter. If chips are 7.5... they're pretty much likely to be remarked 8ns for ppl that actually check and same comment applies*... if they are 7ns then that should be a 100% great PC133 under all circumstances, and probably overclocks too... that would mean it's the board being the problem.

*Though I think late in SDRAM days micron were marking some as 7.5/75 but with micron being a reliable source, they would probably be 7ns that failed by a tiny margin, not 8ns that can only do 7.5ns if the ambient is no higher than 20C... though earlier in the PC133 days there were 8ns that were 7ns that only failed by a tiny margin, which is why anyone ever got away with 8ns on PC133 modules.

Not at home rn but the sticks I used were mundane Samsung and Kingston KVR sticks. The best I can explain the issue, it's because I have the original KT133 chipset. KT133A works with PC133 sticks flawlessly, as is the case with most 133As I have - Biostar M7VKD, ECS K7VZA and IIRC Amptron IS-MK7AV.

Ah right, yeah no guarantees if it's not the "A" most of them would do 124/125 though.

FWIW I don't see much OC options on the 6340, and given its rather wide instability at anything past 100MHz (*cough* Cypress clockgen *cough*), it's only wise that I keep it at 100 FSB for a normal operation. For whatever reason MSI loved to use those Cypress clockgens that can't even do 133 without crashing and burning - experience which came from a Soyo 6BA+IV and a EpoX EP-7KXA.

I don't know it counts as retro activity, but today I turned on my X360 the first time since the marketplace was shut down and surprised how much snappier the dashboard is without it having to load al this "buy this bullshit" ads.

An another note, I turned it on, because I got a copy of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. I've been looking to own that game, but the limited edition is uncommon in my country. I got mildly disappointed in more ways than one. The copy I picked up online was the continental European version. The box has some English text, but the manual is all Spanish, French and German. I only understand some very-very-very basic German I've learned in elementary school. The box has one of the manual holder clips broken off, and I've seen discs in better condition, but the game installs and plays in English and I haven't seen any language changing options, so it either uses system default or the game itself has no localization on Xbox. I asked the seller about details regarding the languages, but didn't receive a reply for 2 weeks so I just risked it. If I know about the localizations, I would have thought twice.

As for the other front. The game still looks good after 14 years, but it's horrible how much online stuff was forced into it. I would have loved a split screen multi at least and aside of the carrier mode, everything is locked behind an online account. I've only played one race, but it seems it has an interesting kind of rubber banding where during like 90% of the race your opponents are faster than you and you have to drive near flawless to not be last, but the last 10% they slow down and let you win unless you don't mess up bad.

As for the MS/Xbox profile, it still syncs. I didn't unlock any achievements yet, but it's safe to assume, those too.

I still have my original X360 with the Xenon mainboard, running that older "Blades" dashboard. Far better than what MS did with the latest dash.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-09-25, 18:16:

The box has one of the manual holder clips broken off, and I've seen discs in better condition, but the game installs and plays in English and I haven't seen any language changing options, so it either uses system default or the game itself has no localization on Xbox.

Yeah, I've seen a few EU Xbox 360 games that do this.

I think the same happened with my copy of Risen. It's the German version (says so on the box), with the manual in German but it installed in English because my Xbox 360 was set to English. Had to change the system language to get German voice overs and text in that game. On that note, the Risen Xbox 360 port is terrible, with low-res textures that would look more at home on the OG Xbox and some pretty bad LOD pop in. Ah well, at least the disc was only 6 EUR or something.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-09-25, 12:43:

Lately I've been getting too many Slot type motherboards which are missing the retention mechanism or the mechanism is broken. So I've been making repair parts, here's the replacement for the top half of a "hometom" branded SECC 2 clip:

The attachment replacement hometom folding secc 2.png is no longer available

That looks great! Is that 3d printed? Can you share a link to your design?

We have a thread here: Retro 3D print topic

Pew pew pew pew...

Sorry, I thought they were about to swoop on me.

Restored a lot of mobos. So far these are restored, and there's a few more to go thru.

Restored:
- ABIT BH6 V1.02 (thanks @soggi for the latest BIOS)
- Azza PT-5VMD
- ABIT AB9 Pro
- HP Brio OEM mobo w/ i815E
- Luckystar 6VA694 ver1
- Intel D815EEA

Unrestored yet:

- Gigabyte GA-6VA
- DFI P2BLX
- Soltek SL-65LIV-T
- MSI H61M-P20 (G3)

You win the internet for today. Saved for posterity.