The PCMIDI card I ordered a short while ago arrived safely today, so I stopped everything I was doing to install it and test it out.

My reason for wanting this card was to deal with four issues I'd experienced when piping MIDI into the gameport of my soundcard (AWE32, then AWE64, then ESS Audiodrive) using a Gameport-MIDI cable:

• SoftMPU works fine, but I would rather not have to rely on it for games that require an intelligent MPU interface
• Games that run on the Spirit of Excalibur engine (SoE and Conan the Cimmerian, probably also Vengeance of Excalibur) will not work at all if MT-32 is selected (music will play VERY slowly, then the game will crash) no matter how I configured SoftMPU
• Some Lucasarts games (most noticeable was Sam & Max Hit the Road) had a strange hanging note bug when using my SC-55 plugged into the gameport on even sound cards without the infamous "hanging note bug")
• Some games mute the LINE IN on the soundcard (examples: Might & Magic III and Prince of Persia 2) requiring me to plug my MT-32/SC-55 directly into my amplified speakers

After installation, I found it to work without a problem. No drivers or anything required of course.
It obviously takes care of my first issue, but I was especially happy to boot up Conan the Cimmerian and hear its wonderful MT-32 music playing without an issue. I'm also happy to report that Sam & Max plays fine now without any hanging note issues!

Unfortunately, certain games still mute the LINE IN on the soundcard, though I guess in hindsight I shouldn't have expected this to be resolved. I suppose the developers of these games assumed that, if had enough $$$ to own an MT-32, you probably had it plugged into hi-fi system haha. I do wonder though why on earth these games do this.

I tried installing an Opti 82C931 sound card into a 486 build. Could not make the drivers work. So I tried installing a Crystal CX4235-XQ3 sound card and again I could not make the drivers work. Then I installed SB16, worked like a charm no problem.

Working on a new home for my AOpen AX6B Pentium II based system. Cleaning the very dusty case atm. The front face panel is slightly yellowed.

To retro bright or not to retro bright 🤔

pan069 wrote on 2020-10-03, 07:34:

To retro bright or not to retro bright

If you think it, do it, otherwise it will be bugging you. The yellowing is so decent that there is no chance to mess it up anyways, it will always be an improvement..

I've been battling with this fucker this afternoon after putting it together. Had a right game trying to get the CD-ROM to recoginse, but i got there in the end. Then it was trying to prep the Hard Disk. Because i had to boot from floppy to get the CD-ROM to show up could i find FDISK on the Win98 CD? Nope! Eventually I bit the bullet and fired up a Win98 machine and copied FDISK to a floppy. It's now installing Win95.

Specs

AMD 486 DX4 100
Gigabyte GA-486IM Rev 2
64mb Ram
Ark Logic ARK2000PV
Promise Ultra66 IDE Controller
ISA Winbond I/O Controller (Floppy & CD-ROM)
ESS Soundcard with Dream SAM9233 Wavetable
Teac CD-RW
Seagate 4gb HD
Floppy Drives
250 Watt AT PSU

I need to change the MHZ readout

assasincz wrote on 2020-10-03, 07:43:

pan069 wrote on 2020-10-03, 07:34:

To retro bright or not to retro bright

If you think it, do it, otherwise it will be bugging you. The yellowing is so decent that there is no chance to mess it up anyways, it will always be an improvement..

It very sunny here atm so I'm going to try the direct sunlight approach...

Trying to get a board to POST. I turned it over and realized it had some partial (and sloppy) recapping done in the past. And then there is this strange decoloration next to an apparently replaces capacitor’s legs. What am I looking at here?

Corrected the way I install MS DAO 3.5 for an old game to run on Windows 10 in my inno setup script...

appiah4 wrote on 2020-10-03, 20:51:

Trying to get a board to POST. I turned it over and realized it had some partial (and sloppy) recapping done in the past. And then there is this strange decoloration next to an apparently replaces capacitor’s legs. What am I looking at here?

That looks like there was significant heat around the capacitor area. It's probably from the heat of replacing the capacitor, but it could indicate a short potentially.

Even at 700C this should not do that with most soldering stations using typical tips around 40-70W, mine is 90W and couldn't get that kind of damage. It looked like very, old fashioned, powerful heavy soldering iron was used.

Cheers,

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-10-02, 07:58:

Iv never bothered to retro-brite any of my cases. I know it can get monsterously ugly at worst (Some of the yellow'd SNES consoles iv seen).

But for computers? It's....kinda charming in a way. Makes it feel a bit more rough and industrial. Especially with a little bit of yellow on the front panel and some woodgrain on the side panels. Just the right amount of ageing. It really screams "classic old"computer personality!

I like my yellow'd cases 😁

🤣 I retro brited my Unisys ELI 46665 (486 DX100) and within a year it re-yellowed. Odd thing is where the original Windows sticker on the front was (that fell off before retro-briting) that small rectangle part never yellowed.
But being a mid 1990's plastic computer case what do you expect. I have considered painting it but like you, a little yellow makes it more real as to being classic old (I am more interested in making sure it runs 100% than looks 100% 😀

appiah4 wrote on 2020-10-03, 20:51:

Trying to get a board to POST. I turned it over and realized it had some partial (and sloppy) recapping done in the past. And then there is this strange decoloration next to an apparently replaces capacitor’s legs. What am I looking at here?

Looks like cold solder joints to me ! Wow what happened to the board mask ? Maybe someone used a heat gun a little to close to the board ?

Semi retro/modern.

Star Wars Squadrons is really making me want a Descent remake under the same engine.

The movement. The controls. Everything just feels very much like it could transition over to a modern Descent.

One can dream! 😎

Spent the last few days going thru some of my old boxes of floppy and CD archives. Found things had long forgotten about. Old lady pointed me to the box with original Word for Windows with it's hard bound book and MS Access v1. Had totally forgotten about them....guess it is time I retired.

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-10-04, 01:49:

Semi retro/modern. […]
Show full quote

Semi retro/modern.

Star Wars Squadrons is really making me want a Descent remake under the same engine.

The movement. The controls. Everything just feels very much like it could transition over to a modern Descent.

One can dream! 😎

Did you change the control scheme much? I know I had to change my stick to "inverted" and make the yaw actually be on the yaw for my stick.

BetaC wrote on 2020-10-04, 05:34:

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-10-04, 01:49:

Semi retro/modern. […]
Show full quote

Semi retro/modern.

Star Wars Squadrons is really making me want a Descent remake under the same engine.

The movement. The controls. Everything just feels very much like it could transition over to a modern Descent.

One can dream! 😎

Did you change the control scheme much? I know I had to change my stick to "inverted" and make the yaw actually be on the yaw for my stick.

Iv had to switch mine too. Although iv heard controls in general where all kinds of messed up on PC atleast ATM.

Tore down my 486 today to replace with a PMMX-200. Just hitting a little retro spice in my life and changing things up every now and then.

Apperently the motherboard I got hates my 500GB SSD (Where as my Slot 1 board reads it to 120gb or something fine) so I gotta figure out a way to use my compact flash without killing it from Windows 95 swap.

I really need a second AT case to house my upcoming 286 project. I know giving in to the expensive cases on eBay sucks, but there are some reeeaalll good looking oldies on there I'd love to grab x_x

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-10-04, 06:10:

BetaC wrote on 2020-10-04, 05:34:

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-10-04, 01:49:

Semi retro/modern. […]
Show full quote

Semi retro/modern.

Star Wars Squadrons is really making me want a Descent remake under the same engine.

The movement. The controls. Everything just feels very much like it could transition over to a modern Descent.

One can dream! 😎

Did you change the control scheme much? I know I had to change my stick to "inverted" and make the yaw actually be on the yaw for my stick.

Iv had to switch mine too. Although iv heard controls in general where all kinds of messed up on PC atleast ATM.

Glad I'm not the only one who was having issues for a bit. If you ever get the chance, give the VR mode a try. I think you get a far better field of view in it.

As for what I am up to, I decided that I am going to be putting together a Socket 7 system soonish, and realized that, assuming I can find a good ATX board, I can totally build it using parts that I already have sitting around. I really just need a board, and maybe a secondary PS/2 connector so that I can avoid needing to find something AT.

1997 is the cutoff point, for the sake of fun, so the Permedia 2 Graphics Blaster I have is gonna be doing the 3D when I bother with Windows 95 era stuff. I'll also be moving my AWE in at some point, just for the sake of it.

Horun wrote on 2020-10-04, 01:11:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-10-03, 20:51:

Trying to get a board to POST. I turned it over and realized it had some partial (and sloppy) recapping done in the past. And then there is this strange decoloration next to an apparently replaces capacitor’s legs. What am I looking at here?

Looks like cold solder joints to me ! Wow what happened to the board mask ? Maybe someone used a heat gun a little to close to the board ?

The joints are fine as far as I can tell but the solder mask is weird. It's either the work of a very high wttage (possibly industrial as someone above mentioned) soldering iron's work or someone tried to use a heatgun to melt the old solder. Either way it's at least cosmetically damaged but the (visible) traces seem fine. The board won't POST but I'm not sure if it is due to the sloppy recap job or due to the BIOS not recognizing a C3 CPU. I will try a Celeron 1300 and a Pentium III 866 tomorrow.

On that note, is it worth trying to OC a Celeron 1000A to 133MHz FSB, or should I just use a Celeron 1300? Is there much practical speed difference?

BetaC wrote on 2020-10-04, 06:23:

As for what I am up to, I decided that I am going to be putting together a Socket 7 system soonish, and realized that, assuming I can find a good ATX board, I can totally build it using parts that I already have sitting around. I really just need a board, and maybe a secondary PS/2 connector so that I can avoid needing to find something AT.
image0.jpg
1997 is the cutoff point, for the sake of fun, so the Permedia 2 Graphics Blaster I have is gonna be doing the 3D when I bother with Windows 95 era stuff. I'll also be moving my AWE in at some point, just for the sake of it.

Matrox must have hit the extra mass produce button on those IS-STORM / MGA-2064W cards. I have a stack of them and run into them all the time in hardware lots. Probably a popular business graphics card back in the day.

liqmat wrote on 2020-10-04, 13:21:

BetaC wrote on 2020-10-04, 06:23:

As for what I am up to, I decided that I am going to be putting together a Socket 7 system soonish, and realized that, assuming I can find a good ATX board, I can totally build it using parts that I already have sitting around. I really just need a board, and maybe a secondary PS/2 connector so that I can avoid needing to find something AT.
image0.jpg
1997 is the cutoff point, for the sake of fun, so the Permedia 2 Graphics Blaster I have is gonna be doing the 3D when I bother with Windows 95 era stuff. I'll also be moving my AWE in at some point, just for the sake of it.

Matrox must have hit the extra mass produce button on those IS-STORM / MGA-2064W cards. I have a stack of them and run into them all the time in hardware lots. Probably a popular business graphics card back in the day.

image0.jpg

Well they were designed more around professional level stuff than games, so it makes sense. Also, good lord why are Socket 7 boards so expensive?