VOGONS


First post, by Kahenraz

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I purchase a box full of PowerVR PCX2 accelerators as a bulk lot hoping for a Midas 3 or PCX1. Instead I got a lot of various PCX2 boards of different revisions. One of them came with a "mystery" floppy. It contains Apocalypse 3dx drivers for Windows 95 dated June 30th 1997, according to the readme.

This card is particularly interesting because it appears to be a first revision and has a lot of interesting stickers on it that the other cards do not. There is even a sticker on the back that has been covered up by another sticker.

I can't find any copy of these on the Vogons driver page that match these files. I wasn't able to copy all of the files off of the floppy disk without read errors; I tried several different floppy drives without success. I managed to copy a few files and I've attached them here.

Does anyone know of a way to coax the rest of the files off the disk?

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Reply 1 of 25, by Kahenraz

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Here are the files I managed to copy. APOC3DX.INF copied partially and has some corruption.

Reply 2 of 25, by Warlord

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might be SOL, id try win image tho.

Reply 4 of 25, by Stiletto

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Kahenraz wrote on 2021-08-14, 05:24:

Does anyone know of a way to coax the rest of the files off the disk?

It looks like Warlord has you covered, but you might want to try an LS-120 drive if you have one, they can be good with flaky 3.5" disks sometimes.

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 5 of 25, by Kahenraz

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Thanks for confirming that these files aren't important. Now we know. 😀

Unfortunately, I do not have any LS-120 drives.

Reply 6 of 25, by BitWrangler

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Oooo, big spender, went for the LS-240s eh? 🤣

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 7 of 25, by Kahenraz

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I was gifted a Zip drive for my birthday at the time it would have been relevant and used regular floppies for everything else until writable CDs became a thing.

I wish floptical had become more popular. It was a very cool technology.

Reply 8 of 25, by BitWrangler

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I managed to miss out on the whole whack of those, I didn't wanna pay through the nose, the bleeding edge tax, and everything seemed to go unobtanium kinda quick before it came down in price much.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 9 of 25, by dr.zeissler

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Kahenraz wrote on 2021-08-14, 05:24:

I purchase a box full of PowerVR PCX2 accelerators as a bulk lot hoping for a Midas 3 or PCX1. Instead I got a lot of various PCX2 boards of different revisions. One of them came with a "mystery" floppy. It contains Apocalypse 3dx drivers for Windows 95 dated June 30th 1997, according to the readme.

you GOT a PCX1, it's the same card I am using in one of my retro-machines. (K6-2/450)

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 10 of 25, by Kahenraz

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This is definitely a PCX2. The PCX1 does not do bilinear filtering.

Reply 11 of 25, by Putas

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D62011GD = PCX2

Reply 12 of 25, by dr.zeissler

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Never saw a PCX2 that had that board, but good to know.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 13 of 25, by Kahenraz

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Share a photo with us of your PCX1?

Reply 15 of 25, by Kahenraz

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That's interesting. I have a PCX1 but it looks completely different. I never knew knew what was written on the chip because the heatsink is soldered to the board.

The only place I could find mine was as an import from Japan. So it was probably used as an OEM add-in for an NEC computer. Yours would have been out of a Compaq computer in the USA.

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Reply 16 of 25, by Putas

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I wish somebody measured the PC 3DEngine against PCX1, there might be a clock difference.

Reply 17 of 25, by Kahenraz

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The NEC PC 3DEngine is a PCX1 but you're right that we don't know what the clock is. Unlike all of the normal variants there is no quartz clock chip anywhere on the board. I read that the PC 3DEngine is supposed to run at 66Mhz like the PCX1 but I've also read that the PCX1 also came in a 60mhz variant.

Why would the NEC board not have a quartz crystal on it? Where does it get its clock?

Reply 18 of 25, by dr.zeissler

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PC-Engine Games are playable on PCX1 in Win95 ?

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 19 of 25, by Kahenraz

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NEC's "PC Engine" is a product. NEC's "PC 3DEngine" is their brand of 3d accelerators which included the PowerVR PCX1, PCX2, and 3DLabs Permedia 2. Yes. It is very confusing.