Re: The Pentium P54c, the Turbo Buton and the Internal Cache. And Wing Commander I is Happy!

Posted on 2013-05-30, 20:38

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@archsan: About pipelining... true "tight" pipelining (as in RISC processors) was 1st introduced by i486 in x86 family. Pentium has double-pipelined architecture. The 386, 286, and even the 8086 was already somewhat pipelined, i.e. they all had somewhat overlapping fetch, decode, execution ( …

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Re: Installing PnP Soundblaster in 286/386 system?

Posted on 2013-04-15, 00:54

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

FGB: tried again on one 486DLC VLB and 486DX2 VLB. On DLC it works. On DX2 works too, but if you soft-reset it beeps three times while posting. But it works anyway. It's good to know that it is possible to get PnP card working. I think I previously tried this on a 286 and it also locked the machine …

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Re: Installing PnP Soundblaster in 286/386 system?

Posted on 2013-04-14, 19:15

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

FGB: I think I already tried with CTCM and CTCU... but let me try again... I have several different Soundblasters... mainly Vibra ones.

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Re: Retro Benchmark Recommendations?

Posted on 2013-04-14, 11:11

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I use: Synthetic: - Checkit 3.0 - PMIPS - Sysinfo - Speedsys - 3DBench Game: - F1GP game (Adelaide track - everything ON, press O for processor occupacy before the start of the race - its consistent real world CPU benchmark) - Quake 1 v1.08 Timedemo Windows 3.10/3.11: - Winbench 3.1 - Wintach

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Installing PnP Soundblaster in 286/386 system?

Posted on 2013-04-14, 01:28

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I want to add a Soundblaster to 286 and 386 based system. I only have PnP cards... is there any way to configure them to work? If I use the Diagnose program it says the base address is in use for all addresses (220-280). Or should I get me a non-pnp card?

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Re: 286 Total Conversion

Posted on 2013-04-09, 19:31

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I need help wih configuring Siemens PCD-2. Its a Am286-12MHz with 4x256kb simms. Motherboard version: W26361-D458-Z4-06-05. It looks almost the same as the one in this thread. I would like to expand memory with 2x1MB or more but then it recognizes only 512KB!? There are some dip switches but I can't …

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AMI Super Voyager PCI II S724 - 486 motherboard

Posted on 2013-04-06, 13:55

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have two of these mb with different 486 CPUs. Both CPUs have heatsinks glued on them, so I don't know exectly what they are. One post as 486DX/2-66MHz. Other as Am486plDX2WT. I looked for the manual for the MB and checked the settings: http://www.ami.com/support/doc/Super_VoyagerII_mb_man.pdf …

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Re: Decent small footprint CRT monitor

Posted on 2013-04-02, 00:08

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well... by "slim size" I mean slim as possible. As there where some CRTs with shorter tubes than usual - of curse you can't compare it to LCDs or regular slim size CRTs that are really uncommon.

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Decent small footprint CRT monitor

Posted on 2013-04-01, 22:41

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello! Can someone recommend a CRT monitor that has the smallest possible footprint. Size 15" or 17". I'm using 22" 16:10 LCD at the moment, but some "slim size" CRT would be preferred. 😉

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Re: How about old laptops?

Posted on 2013-03-31, 12:32

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes, I agree. But there is always VGA out.

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How about old laptops?

Posted on 2013-03-31, 12:16

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm wondering if there is any use of old laptops - 386 and 486. These don't use up much space as desktops but have a few limitations about upgrades - usually no sound and cd-rom unit. For example: Compaq Contura 430C 486DX4-100MHz 24MB ram 700MB HDD Your opinions?

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Re: CPU speed detecting program for DOS

Posted on 2013-03-30, 23:23

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A simple DIR command will give you an idea if Turbo button works or not. I got one 386DX40 recently that I couldn't believe how slow the scrolling was... but then I pushed the magic Turbo button and it flew 😀

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Re: PS/2 Mouse port addon, optical mouse with serial protocol

Posted on 2013-03-01, 07:21

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for clearing this up for me. At least I have a trusty old Logitech M-M30 serial mouse that just works. 😎

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Re: PS/2 Mouse port addon, optical mouse with serial protocol

Posted on 2013-03-01, 01:39

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So this simple adapter won't work or what? I've been thinking on buying it.

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Re: Old fart topic: What was your hardware specs in 1992?

Posted on 2013-03-01, 01:20

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

NONAME PC: AT 286-16MHz (later added 287 'couse of AutoCAD use in school) Some Octek motherboard 1MB RAM (later upgraded to 2MB) 256KB TI VGA 40MB Conner HDD 5.25" floppy 13" Color VGA monitor No soundcard until 1994 🙁 - didn't play much games 😎

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Re: Voodoo II headache!

Posted on 2013-03-01, 01:07

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do one thing at a time. 1. format c: 2. install Win98 3. install needed system drivers 3. install Geforce driver - don't install DX yet 4. install V2 drivers (Win98 doesn't have it) 5. try it out only then do what you want, new DX... if it works of curse 😉

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I got weird 486...

Posted on 2013-02-06, 20:50

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello! Over the weekend I got a 486DX4-100Mhz on VLB mobo. I wanted to do some benchmarks on it and to install video drivers for Win311. Configuration: AMD 486DX4-100Mhz Shuttle HOT-419 DZ/R2 (OPTi 895) 486 VLB Motherboard 12MB RAM Cirrus Logic 5428 VLB 1MB Sony CDU55E CD-ROM 2.4X Quantum Maverick …

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Re: Best DOS video card?

Posted on 2013-02-06, 00:22

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Zup wrote: What about a Voodoo Banshee or Voodoo 3? These cards had very good VESA compatibility, but sadly they had no Windows 3.x drivers. Windows 3.x drivers exists for Voodoo 3 😉 http://www.falconfly.de/voodoo3.htm 😎

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Re: Mcdex not noticing new cd-rom

Posted on 2013-02-05, 15:37

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

elianda: there were games that required more than 600KB free. I even used Stacker or Dblspace then and this was not an easy task to achieve. So every free KB was necessary. And usually the more free conventional memory you had, less problems with it occurred.

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Re: Mcdex not noticing new cd-rom

Posted on 2013-02-05, 08:18

by

by kixs

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is a thing of beauty. It works with my drive, is small enough to load in high memory...620KB available now...wow! Believe me that back in the days I was quite a sucker for optimising DOS and Windows 3.1 performance - memory tuning was essential. So I checked every possible driver for smallest …

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