Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2024-01-20, 14:25

by

by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

Heh, I rarely do gaming these days, but earlier this week, I finally got around to dusting off my old PS3 after almost a decade since I last used it. I put in a newer and bigger SSD (I love how easily you can do that with this console), reinstalled the OS and popped in Diablo 3, one of the few games …

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Re: When Microsoft has a go at Tetris...

Posted on 2024-01-20, 12:02

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by digger

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Heya, something that made me smile today.. I recorded a small gameplay clip of Tetris for Windows from my 486, and had a funny observation in their Help file :) Hey, that's the version of Tetris that came with the first volume of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows, right? It's actually a …

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Re: FastDoom. A new Doom port for DOS, optimized to be as fast as possible for 386/486 personal computers!

Posted on 2024-01-20, 11:06

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by digger

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

SBEMU compatibility is still an issue, Sound Blaster initialization is not working properly. For now I've discovered that the DSP version is read as FF.01 instead of 3.01, so I need more to time debug what's really happening. As always, any help is appreciated. EDIT: DOS sound code is the worst …

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Re: FastDoom. A new Doom port for DOS, optimized to be as fast as possible for 386/486 personal computers!

Posted on 2024-01-20, 11:03

by

by digger

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Kamerat wrote on 2024-01-18, 01:44: Not a developer myself, but by using this method it looks like SBEMU present DSP 3.02 as default (/T5). Hey, that seems useful for anyone working on Sound Blaster emulation! Thanks for sharing. 🙂

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Re: FastDoom. A new Doom port for DOS, optimized to be as fast as possible for 386/486 personal computers!

Posted on 2024-01-15, 17:30

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by digger

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

The new modes are native resolution VESA 2.0 modes. The video card decides if it uses double-scan or not. Right now these resolutions are available: - 320x200 - 320x240 - 512x384 - 640x400 - 640x480 - 800x600 - 1024x768 - 1280x1024 2.0? So with linear frame buffer support? Does it fall back to bank …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2024-01-15, 17:27

by

by digger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Long time reader, first time poster here :) I've bought this interesting ISA video card recently. It has a weird COLOR/MONOCHROME switch on it and an odd video connector. Honestly, I don't know what this is, any has ever seen one before? Reminds me of the monitor connector on an Ollivetti m24 or AT …

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Re: Sound issues with Westwood Studios games on a G41 machine

Posted on 2024-01-09, 21:32

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Another approach would be to try SBEMU or VSBHDA to emulate a Sound Blaster and have the audio played back through HDA, or through another PCI sound card currently supported by SBEMU. 🙂

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Re: Sound issues with Westwood Studios games on a G41 machine

Posted on 2024-01-09, 20:32

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

To be honest, I haven't yet tried this trick with other games, but it should work with any game that uses (real-mode) AIL v2 drivers or DIGPAK drivers. (DIGPAK drivers can also be used as drop-in replacements for AIL v2 drivers.) But there are different ways in which games package the drivers. Some …

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Re: Sound issues with Westwood Studios games on a G41 machine

Posted on 2024-01-08, 09:58

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

There is a workaround for (real mode) games that rely on either Miles (AIL) or DIGPAK drivers, such as Dune II. You can patch them to work with Covox or the Disney Sound Source (and clones), by replacing the Sound Blaster DSP driver with a Covox or DSS DIGPAK driver . That way, you could get digital …

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Re: Best CGA & Hercules monochrome games

Posted on 2024-01-08, 09:32

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by digger

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Edit: Hercules maybe was common in the XT days, but Hercules does really start to shine on an AT class PC, btw. Say, an early 80386 PC from the mid-late 80s. Such a PC could better compensate for the slow and taxing 8-Bit i/o that Hercules uses. Especially if such a PC's system memory i/o is …

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Re: Best CGA & Hercules monochrome games

Posted on 2024-01-04, 16:17

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by digger

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

dr.zeissler wrote on 2023-12-29, 21:24: Now on Nec 71vm instead of Nec 1970nxp...slighlty more problematic (last lines are always doubled) but hercules is no nice...to me better then CGA. Anything is better than CGA. 🤣

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Re: Covox and Disney Sound Source from ESP32

Posted on 2024-01-04, 16:12

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

It might be possible to add output support for the Disney Sound Source (and clones such as this one) to SBEMU . Not sure how well the performance would be on older CPUs, though. How efficient is emu8950? I know that for instanced Nuked-OPL3 has pretty demanding CPU requirements as a price for its " …

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Re: Patch for Windows 95/98/98 SE/Me to run on newest CPUs

Posted on 2024-01-04, 16:06

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by digger

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

A virtio-snd sound driver for Win9x might be useful. (Even though VMWare unfortunately doesn't support VirtIO devices yet, at least to my knowledge.)

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Re: SoftGPU: OpenGL + DirectX + Glide driver for Windows 95/98/Me

Posted on 2024-01-04, 16:01

by

by digger

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Now that QEMU has gained support for virtio-snd (a standard paravirtualized sound device that is part of the VirtIO suite), and VirtualBox may soon gain support for it as well , it would be nice if a virtio-snd guest driver could be developed for Win9x as well, to compliment SoftGPU and make for …

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Re: Best CGA & Hercules monochrome games

Posted on 2023-12-29, 16:27

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

It's really a shame that the Hercules Graphics Card didn't support a graphics mode that allowed for mixed high and low intensity pixels. As I understand it, it certainly had the video memory for it. That, combined with dithering, would have resulted in even more amazing high-res monochrome graphics …

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Re: Will the Book 8088 be a future classic?

Posted on 2023-12-27, 20:13

by

by digger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, with some intelligent circuitry in between the the ISA bus and the non-VGA LCD controller, I guess it could work. It could then also handle things like scaling non-native resolutions and such. But it would also add more complexity and make it more expensive.

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Re: new Windows 2000 fan project writes drivers for modern hardware

Posted on 2023-12-26, 16:43

by

by digger

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Same requirement for new account registrations, apparently. Discord is a barely-searchable, not-publically-indexable information black hole anyways, and should not be used as a project's knowledge base. Good riddance. At the moment we have no other solution to replace Discord. We are still planning …

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Re: post up pics of your "computing area"

Posted on 2023-12-23, 11:48

by

by digger

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Stephen Hawking looks an awful lot like Albert Einstein on that book cover, @mgtroyas. 😉

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Re: Will the Book 8088 be a future classic?

Posted on 2023-12-23, 11:43

by

by digger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a quick thought about the graphics in the book 8088 and the possible use of only using a LCD controller for graphics? I know there is a new version of the book 8088 that uses a real VGA controller. I only found out recently about the new VGA version and had this thought before I knew the VGA …

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Re: MT-32 is no longer receiving data

Posted on 2023-12-17, 19:29

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by digger

in MT-32 General

in MT-32 General

I hope you can get it fixed! I haven't used my MT-32 in ages. I've been wanting to hook it up to a system for some retrogaming, but I kept putting it off. If they are prone to certain failures over time, I'd like to learn of them as well. Good luck.

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