VOGONS


What retro activity did you get up to today?

Topic actions

Reply 30180 of 30188, by TheAbandonwareGuy

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Is Betrayal At Krondor one of those DOS games that simply doesn't work under Win9x DOS?

I keep getting "Not Enough Memory". Tried EMS and XMS.

RetroEra: Retro Gaming Podcast and Community: https://discord.gg/kezaTvzH3Q
Cyb3rst0rm's Retro Hardware Warzone: https://discord.gg/naTwhZVMay
I used to own over 160 graphics card, I've since recovered from graphics card addiction

Reply 30181 of 30188, by DarthSun

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on Yesterday, 18:58:

Is Betrayal At Krondor one of those DOS games that simply doesn't work under Win9x DOS?

I keep getting "Not Enough Memory". Tried EMS and XMS.

Loew limitmem for config.sys ?

The 3 body problems cannot be solved, neither for future quantum computers, even for the remainder of the universe. The Proton 2D is circling a planet and stepping back to the quantum size in 11 dimensions.

Reply 30182 of 30188, by dominusprog

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Connect the line-out of the AWE64 (MB_PRO) to AUX input of the Diamond MX300. I've used tree jumper wires (L/R and one ground) and use a connector of CD-ROM audio cable for one end (the AUX input).

The attachment IMG_20250925_142808.jpg is no longer available

Duke_2600.png
A-Trend ATC-1020 V1.1 ❇ Cyrix 6x86 150+ @ 120MHz ❇ 32MiB EDO RAM (8MiBx4) ❇ A-Trend S3 Trio64V2 2MiB
Aztech Pro16 II-3D PnP ❇ 8.4GiB Quantum Fireball ❇ Win95 OSR2 Plus!

Reply 30183 of 30188, by NeoG_

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
dominusprog wrote on Today, 11:10:

Connect the line-out of the AWE64 (MB_PRO) to AUX input of the Diamond MX300. I've used tree jumper wires (L/R and one ground) and use a connector of CD-ROM audio cable for one end (the AUX input).

Love to see it, I wish more cards had headers for internal connections

Retro Rig: BabyAT AladdinV, K6-2+/550, V3 2000, 128MB PC100, 20GB HDD, 128GB SD2IDE, SB Live!, ES1868F, PicoGUS, WP32 McCake, iNFRA 6000 CD

Reply 30184 of 30188, by dominusprog

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
NeoG_ wrote on Today, 12:16:
dominusprog wrote on Today, 11:10:

Connect the line-out of the AWE64 (MB_PRO) to AUX input of the Diamond MX300. I've used tree jumper wires (L/R and one ground) and use a connector of CD-ROM audio cable for one end (the AUX input).

Love to see it, I wish more cards had headers for internal connections

Yes, it's great. You can also can connect the header to an amplifier and an internal speaker.

Duke_2600.png
A-Trend ATC-1020 V1.1 ❇ Cyrix 6x86 150+ @ 120MHz ❇ 32MiB EDO RAM (8MiBx4) ❇ A-Trend S3 Trio64V2 2MiB
Aztech Pro16 II-3D PnP ❇ 8.4GiB Quantum Fireball ❇ Win95 OSR2 Plus!

Reply 30185 of 30188, by fsinan

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Opened this non-used, brand new viking edo-ram package for my new 5x86 rig.

They seem to be 60ns and working at tightest timings at 40Mhz bus.

I recommend, if you find one of them, buy them, they are of highest quality.

System:1
Cyrix 5x86-120GP & X5-160ADZ
Lucky Star LS-486E
System:2
Intel DX4-WB & AMDDX4-120
PcChips M912 V1.7
System:3
AMD K6-2-475 & Cyrix 6x86MX PR-233
Asus P5A-B
System:4
UMC U5S-40
486UL-P101
System:5
P3 Coppermine 800EB
Gigabyte GA-6BX7

Reply 30186 of 30188, by Thermalwrong

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
tehsiggi wrote on Yesterday, 10:33:
It in fact does. I just collected some info and did some testing on it: […]
Show full quote
zuldan wrote on 2025-09-23, 19:16:
tehsiggi wrote on 2025-09-23, 17:40:

Found a possible memory tester for R200 based cards. Will verify tomorrow and if successful, add the notes on the usage into the repair collection thread. I'll test a 9100, 9000 and 9200. We'll see..

This would be awesome. I think R6MEMID does older cards than the R300.

It in fact does. I just collected some info and did some testing on it:

Re: VGA Repair report collection

So if anyone needs to memory test R200/RV250/RV280 cards, there is a good way to do it.

Thanks for documenting it 😀 I do have a couple of Radeon 9200 type cards to test so a proper memory tester will help a great deal with that.
In regards to card repair, I've been trying to fix a Radeon HD 4650 AGP that had two resistors knocked off of the back. The pictures online are all not great but I found that the two transistors near the back of the AGP connector connect to the last pin, the VREFGC pin. I think that's for detecting the type of AGP slot its connected to and I have a Sapphire HD 1950 which uses the same AGP to PCI-E bridge. Then I worked out that the transistors and resistors are hooked up just the same on that and the HD4650 to work out that I was missing a resistor marked 17A (147 ohms) and a teeny tiny one at 200 ohms. Gotta test that card out soon, haven't got a good test setup right now for AGP cards.

I've been trying to get my Sony PRD-650 working better, I have awful luck with these. They're really cool tiny SCSI CD-ROM drives but it seems like the laser is always cooked on them, see my attempts to repair a PRD-250: Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Got frustrated with that and did some scanning / archiving of documents I've got that aren't online anywhere. I've done this before but was using LibreOffice Draw to make PDF files and didn't know how to optimise the images for PDF usage, so I've been learning how to process the images as 1-bit PNG files and automate the creation of PDF files from those images with OCR. A mix of img2pdf and ocrmypdf have done a fantastic job of putting together space efficient PDF files without manual intervention, once all the images are processed and in the right order. Going over my previous PDFs I was able to get the size of one that was 10MB down to less than 1MB with searchable text and with lossless compression.
Making these PDFs manually is something I've done before but when a document is over 200 pages long, that takes quite a while and has a lot of room for errors to occur.

So now I've shared two new documents I've got that I'm not aware of being online at all til now, those are:
Kapok 6200A (6200AT / 6200AD) user manual, which covers the MMX models and how to set all the voltage / CPU dip switch settings: https://archive.org/details/6200at-user-guide

Toshiba PORTABLE SERVICE BOOKLET - I got this a few years ago on the bay and it's a small handbook covering specs, disassembly and memory maps of Toshiba laptops up to around 1995. I had thought that the maintenance manuals covered all this information already so didn't bother scanning it, til I was fixing a Toshiba T1800 and found that the images showing the screw locations / lengths are all missing from the maintenance manuals.
240 pages covering all these models: T100X, T200 series, T1800, T1850 series, T1900 series, T1900S, T1910 series, T1950 series (same as T1960 series), T2100 series, T2150CD series, T2200SX, T2400 series, T2450CT
https://archive.org/details/toshiba-portable- … e-booklet-vol-1

This is just volume one, Volume Two is longer and covers all these ones: T3300SL, T3400CT, T4400 series, T4500 series, T4600 series, T4700CT, T4800CT, T4850CT, T4900CT, T6400 series and T6600C
I wish I knew how to add bookmark information into these PDF files.

EDIT: Ooh, I can *fix* the maintenance manuals and put those on the Internet Archive too 😁 Just done the Toshiba T1800 maintenance manual successfully which has all the original graphics.
The process is pretty arcane but it works - get the scans from toshiba ATLAS 95, use Irfanview batch convert to make them into PNG because they're crazy fax encoded TIF files. Then use ImageMagick to convert them to 1-bit PNG at the correct DPI, then use img2pdf and ocrmypdf to make a PDF of those. Now to figure out bookmarks!

Last edited by Thermalwrong on 2025-09-25, 17:02. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 30187 of 30188, by Muckrake

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Did some troubleshooting with my IBM PCjrs, one of which has trouble with the monitor display, and the other with the monitor speaker. The display shows about half its colors too dark, and the contrast knob doesn't work. Every so often, the display will suddenly start showing all the colors correctly, then stay that way for a few months before going dark again (for the colors in question). The trouble with the monitor speaker is it sometimes cuts out the PC beeper, so it comes through the CPU speaker, and not the monitor speaker like it should. Turning up the volume seems to fix it, at least temporarily. Not sure why. Got no solutions yet.

Reply 30188 of 30188, by tehsiggi

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
Thermalwrong wrote on Today, 15:15:

The pictures online are all not great but I found that the two transistors near the back of the AGP connector connect to the last pin, the VREFGC pin. I think that's for detecting the type of AGP slot its connected to and I have a Sapphire HD 1950 which uses the same AGP to PCI-E bridge.

The VREFGC and VREFCG pins are used for the reference voltages of the AGP I/O. In spec it's meant to help with offsets in ground voltages. Therefore the graphics card generates a reference voltage it sends to the mainboard (VREFGC) so the board knows the cards reference voltage. Vice-versa the Mainboard sends a reference voltage as well via the VREFCG to the graphics card.
Some mainboards use this, some don't.

The reference voltage should be VDDQ/2 if AGP is not version 3.0. If it is AGP 3.0, the voltage is supposed to be VDDQ*0.233.
Without it, the system basically doesn't know the threshold value between high and low and the data communication is not working.

Glad you got your card fixed!

Attached some reference schematic from one of my projects..

AGP Card Real Power Consumption
AGP Power monitor - diagnostic hardware tool
Graphics card repair collection