Setting up networking between my linux box and wfw 3.11 box. Working quite well.

Added a PS/2 port to my Pentium 233mmx.
So nice not having to use serial port, seeing as my systems are hooked up to a kvm which uses PS/2.

Not strictly retro related, but it can apply. I've developed a new version of the UOC Patch, which is a patch for Mozilla-based browsers that lets them run a little bit faster and more efficiently on old computers, as long as they support a 128-bit buss DirectX 9 capable graphics card and beyond.

Neverthless, with the patch, Roytam1's Firefox 45 ESR SSE runs fast and snappy on my overclocked Tualatin RDD.

More info here: https://msfn.org/board/topic/178306-experimen … r-old-machines/

More cleaning of retro stuff today. I opened up a Sega Master System Model 3060 Control Stick and used some isopropyl alcohol to clean the contacts on the buttons. Prior to cleaning, the buttons weren't responding properly and now it's working fine once again. Not my favourite controller by any means, but good to have it back up and running.

Also tested out a 2nd NES gamepad that I just received. A bit yellowed externally, but functions fine. I can now play 2-player games on my NES! 😎

appiah4 wrote:

That card has no MIDI wavetable so you should NOT be using MIDI for music or sound effects in those games. For Prince of Persia just select Adlib for music, for day of the tentacle it should be 100% compatible with SB Pro for Music and Sound. If it crashes on using digitized SB Pro sounds, try using regular SB option, if that also fails it may be a weird IRQ or DMA conflict, would need to know more about the setup.

It does have a standard MPU-401 interface for connecting MIDI devices through the game port or waveblaster header. This is solid and bug free -- a great option as your primary or secondary sound card.

However, as Appiah noted, by default it doesn't have any hardware for turning MIDI messages into sound by default. Cards that do have MIDI synthesis onboard usually say they support wavetable, general MIDI synthesis, or words to this effect. This one needs extra hardware to make it happen.

In the morning I decided to reorganize my collection. I took everything out of their boxes, sorted them and labelled the boxes to make it easier to find what I look for. Also that made my storage space less chaotic.

Then I thought it's time to do something with the Pentium dream build I put away for a couple of weeks. As a reminder, ►this is the PC in question◄.
The "new" ASTEC PSU arrived to replace the crapy one, so after testing it with more expendable parts, I installed it.
First time turning it on It showed only a black screen, and second time all kinds of graphical artifact. I shat my pants that the Voodoo died from boredom while waiting for the new PSU.
I moved it into my test motherboard, and everything seemd to be alright:

I moved it back and now it booted with no issue first try. Sadly the Windows 95 it has on now doesn't seem to like my Logitech M-SBF90 PS/2 mouse with a PS/2 to serial adaptor. In the device manager it sees that there is a mouse, but it just doesn't work. Since the PC doesn't have any external USB ports (yet) and I don't have driver CDs for most of the pieces I just installed the AWE64 driver and let it some rest.

Next step is replacing the Trio64V+ with a Matrox Mystyque, find an 8pin USB backplate like ►this one◄ and replace the CPU fan and maybe find a bigger hard drive. After spending some time with the ►3GB drive of my notebook◄, it really doesn't seem that spacious. Though a much bigger would make it less period correct.

A question from last time:

retardware wrote:

This JTS "CHAMP" hard drive gives me an even more uncanny feeling than the L&C power supply. The design was done by infamous Kal […]
Show full quote

This JTS "CHAMP" hard drive gives me an even more uncanny feeling than the L&C power supply.
The design was done by infamous Kalok.

Never seen a working drive of this brand.
Does the drive actually sound "Kaaaaaa-looooookkkk" as some people suggested back then?

It really doesn't seem that loud. The Seagate from my test PC (picture above) is much louder. Also some of my Quantum Fireballs.

Last night I was up until 2:00 in the morning programming a "neural network" in Quick Basic.

Yesterday I attended at the local annual carneval, and as it was a tiny bit cold then it was perfect to drink beer.

Today I resumed my K7S41/GeodeNX testing. As it turns out, then most soundcards have trouble regarding Dos titles. The average Sounblaster-Live/PCI-128 and so on, are in no way compatible with anything dos. Yet an YMF-724 gives both OPL3 and XG-MIDI in Dos through Win98. Though most titles are not compatible with this setup. This setup are for Win98 gaming only, and if it can play a few Dos titles, then it is pure luck. Who needs such a fast system for Dos anyway?

brostenen wrote:

Yesterday I attended at the local annual carneval, and as it was a tiny bit cold then it was perfect to drink beer.

Today I resumed my K7S41/GeodeNX testing. As it turns out, then most soundcards have trouble regarding Dos titles. The average Sounblaster-Live/PCI-128 and so on, are in no way compatible with anything dos. Yet an YMF-724 gives both OPL3 and XG-MIDI in Dos through Win98. Though most titles are not compatible with this setup. This setup are for Win98 gaming only, and if it can play a few Dos titles, then it is pure luck. Who needs such a fast system for Dos anyway?

GeodeNX -YMF724.jpg

Use a Fortemedia FM-801 card.

I continued my unsuccessful struggle to figure out how to get DOSbox to play the music tracks during "WWF In Your House" game play.

appiah4 wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Yesterday I attended at the local annual carneval, and as it was a tiny bit cold then it was perfect to drink beer.

Today I resumed my K7S41/GeodeNX testing. As it turns out, then most soundcards have trouble regarding Dos titles. The average Sounblaster-Live/PCI-128 and so on, are in no way compatible with anything dos. Yet an YMF-724 gives both OPL3 and XG-MIDI in Dos through Win98. Though most titles are not compatible with this setup. This setup are for Win98 gaming only, and if it can play a few Dos titles, then it is pure luck. Who needs such a fast system for Dos anyway?

GeodeNX -YMF724.jpg

Use a Fortemedia FM-801 card.

What makes it a better choice compared to the other cards that I have when running Win98-only software?

brostenen wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Yesterday I attended at the local annual carneval, and as it was a tiny bit cold then it was perfect to drink beer.

Today I resumed my K7S41/GeodeNX testing. As it turns out, then most soundcards have trouble regarding Dos titles. The average Sounblaster-Live/PCI-128 and so on, are in no way compatible with anything dos. Yet an YMF-724 gives both OPL3 and XG-MIDI in Dos through Win98. Though most titles are not compatible with this setup. This setup are for Win98 gaming only, and if it can play a few Dos titles, then it is pure luck. Who needs such a fast system for Dos anyway?

GeodeNX -YMF724.jpg

Use a Fortemedia FM-801 card.

What makes it a better choice compared to the other cards that I have when running Win98-only software?

It works much better than YMF-724 in the PCs I used it with, bot has an OPL3/Win9x card as well as a pure MS-DOS card through its great implementation of DDMA.

Was playing around with sound cards. Wanted to give my Cx5x86 both SBPro and SB16, so stuck my AudioExcel AV310 (C-Media 8330 chipset) in it. Various reviews call it "the least problematic ISA PnP card ever". Well, YMMV it appears. Somehow it manages to get its own WSS and SB (low) DMAs in a twist. DMA 1 doesn't work in any event and if choosing 0 and 3, it works on the one (WSS or SB) until the other is used, then neither works until a reboot.

First thought was a conflict, but there are no other devices using DMA and a non-PnP SB16 happily works on DMA 1 or 3 in the same system if I swap cards. So seems like either the card is misbehaving or ISA PnP prayers have failed. Oh well, time to find some different drivers/init progs for it and try again.

Made a group chat client in Visual Basic 6.

Sort of retro related today. I received a cheap spare power adapter for my Sega Master System. Plugged it in and noticed it was emitting a high pitched whistle. I went ahead and tried it on the Master System anyway and whilst it did work, there was a faint scrolling band of interference over the RGB connection. Safe to say that power adapter is not getting used, I'm not risking it!

FINALLY got a WPA2 enabled WiFi card to work in Windows 98 after suffering in driver hell for hours.

(thanks dr_st for the tip about the RT2561 chip!)

keenmaster486 wrote:

FINALLY got a WPA2 enabled WiFi card to work in Windows 98 after suffering in driver hell for hours.

(thanks dr_st for the tip about the RT2561 chip!)

You could always use a cheap Chinese mini wifi bridge instead; no drivers no headache.

appiah4 wrote:

You could always use a cheap Chinese mini wifi bridge instead; no drivers no headache.

This is what I do for my desktops (house not wired for Ethernet 😢 ) and for DOS/Win3.1/Win95 laptops... but for Windows 98SE I like a more integrated experience if possible. Plus those Chinese bridges are very flaky to configure.

Got my new Atari 2600 hooked up and we played some Donkey Kong, Missile Command, Lilly Adventure and a couple of other classics.

How good (bad?) is the 2600 version of Pacman?