Re: what do you think is the best 440bx mainboard in the world?

Posted on Today, 04:28

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'll take whatever can run a PIII-S at 150fsb, handle an overclocked GF4600 for AGP power demands, and run 1GB RAM unbuffered. Though oddly I like my P2-99 with the ZX... coz it's the only one out of 7 P2B series turkeys that will run. Yeah so highest preference in a BX board is that I already have …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on Today, 04:12

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by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Very interesting, I thought AHA-1542 cards were meant to be kind of crappy, but they do okay here. I have a couple kicking around. May have to plan to put one in my potential ISA 486DX50 build...... Might be an idea for my 386DX40 board as well, but I was tending toward keeping that "middle of the …

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Re: Do you think prices will stay high?

Posted on Yesterday, 14:18

by

by BitWrangler

in Milliways

in Milliways

I can usually finagle 20% or so off the buy it now price, but sometimes I'll find a seller who won't accept offers that are even slightly lower. What's the point of making your item OBO if you do that? Hah, I've challenged ppl before on the use of words like "OBO" "Mint" etc, and got back snotty …

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Re: Clever / hacky usage of the ISA/PCI modems?

Posted on Yesterday, 14:14

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The "Hardware" modems might just look like a PCI bridge and a serial port still. Theoretically a winmodem is a programmable DSP kinda thing though.

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Re: Intel wants to drop 16/32bit. A possible opportunity...?

Posted on 2024-05-07, 14:25

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's about time. The faster Intel removes backward compatibility, the faster people will start moving to AMD processors. I've been thinking about this for a while, but so far there's been no major cause for concern. And maybe the next system will be just the same AMD. AMD already had their "go …

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Re: Intel wants to drop 16/32bit. A possible opportunity...?

Posted on 2024-05-07, 14:23

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you wanna do a proof of concept, you could drop a Next 186 FPGA core into one of these puppies https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=92437 ... which theoretically fits in the bare device, but not sure how much will be required to do the PCI interface. Thing is... it all seems a bit …

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Re: Dead super socket 7 ASUS P5A

Posted on 2024-05-07, 13:39

by

by BitWrangler

in Milliways

in Milliways

A new twist in the mysteriously dead Asus phenomena, dead RTC crystal Re: What retro activity did you get up to today? different board, but since a lot of Asus of the era share the same persnickety-ness about needing a fresh battery to come alive, then they may well share the dead clock issue.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2024-05-07, 02:29

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Think I did that once, years back when a 240/120 switch was on the wrong setting... but I think it can also happen if someone REALLY messes up the power switch wiring on an AT

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Re: Clever / hacky usage of the ISA modems?

Posted on 2024-05-07, 02:04

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Stick these number strings in text files with an ATDT in front and pipe it to the serial port.... might need massaging with commas for pauses/timing. https://dumb.com/touchtones/ I would like to make more use of the digital sound capabilities of voice modems though, they seem a bit wasted normally. …

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Re: Pocket 386, the brother of Hand386 and Book8088, the story so far ...

Posted on 2024-05-06, 18:24

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What size drives and what C/H/S do they detect as? It's probably those parameters that determine whether LBA is used or not.

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Re: Im unable to add network Card to 486 Siemens Nixdorf Scenic 4L

Posted on 2024-05-04, 22:34

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Is your RTC functional and not too terrible? ie losing time drastically.. remember some DHCP lease problems in machines with whacky clocks.

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Re: Im unable to add network Card to 486 Siemens Nixdorf Scenic 4L

Posted on 2024-05-04, 17:53

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does it have any way to set ISA bus speed? If it's on a cpuclk/3 setting it might be too fast. edit: nevermind, looks like you must have a DX2-50 as only 25 and 33 bus speeds listed. If it doesn't work on 25Mhz setting it's likely not a speed problem.... unless it's set at clk/8 and wayyyy too slow …

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Re: Intel 486DX4 vs Cyrix 5x86 showdown (at high FSB frequency)

Posted on 2024-05-04, 17:49

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

DId you have a fan on the cyrix? passive cooling from the stock heatsinks isn't enough really on 100mhz parts at 120.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2024-05-04, 17:40

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I went to a local flea-market to try to find some vintage computer stuff but did not find anything interesting. It's not even possible to find a DIN keyboard these days, all the beige keyboards I spotted were PS/2 :-( Yeah I struck out today too at the thrifts, saw an EVGA box, which turned …

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Re: Dead super socket 7 ASUS P5A

Posted on 2024-05-04, 17:26

by

by BitWrangler

in Milliways

in Milliways

should be the standby power 5V, but, it could be disabled by KB/USB/LAN etc power up jumpers.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2024-05-04, 04:22

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have found all sorts of cool PC hardware lately (will post more at some point), but this one caught me off guard. I bought a Sound Blaster 2.0 box with most of the disks and other stuff in it, and the seller included this as a surprise freebie: 20240503_153406 (Custom).jpg Anyone ever seen one of …

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Re: Dead super socket 7 ASUS P5A

Posted on 2024-05-03, 22:28

by

by BitWrangler

in Milliways

in Milliways

Ah the classic mysteriously dead Asus challenge... fresh battery, check it hasn't been set for keyboard, USB, modem or LAN wakeup, then go on to make sure the mosfets are mosfetting the vreg is voltage regulating, and so on...

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Re: SD vs CF Stability in 2023

Posted on 2024-05-03, 21:28

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There are few "pro-grade" CF readers left these days and few were ever intended for anything more than quick copying of media files, so you won't get much out of them. Try these instead. https://www.addonics.com/product/intro/18 https://www.addonics.com/product/intro/20 https://www.addonics.com/ …

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Re: Pentium 60/66 are DOS Only?

Posted on 2024-05-03, 03:58

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you bought a P60 to game on in 1993, and your buddy bought a DX2-66 at the same time, he would have been laughing at you for 2 years right up until Descent came out. Descent didn't use floating point math. It was all integer / fixed point and was "playable" on a 386 (provided you could put up …

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Re: Pocket 386, the brother of Hand386 and Book8088, the story so far ...

Posted on 2024-05-02, 15:22

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's gonna be 2M16 we'd be looking for I think. That was my impression of the banking too. Still stuck with pollen brain though, I'm like "brain go down rabbithole" brain is like "no rabbithole, watch fluffy baby bunnies, scamper scamper heehee."

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