Re: Information security: the old versus the new, is it a lost case?

Posted on 2024-05-14, 15:23

by

by bakemono

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

The state of "modern" software is abysmal. Yes. But my criticisms of it might be different than yours. There was an article referenced on hacker news entitled "five worst ideas in tech" or something like that. At one point I considered writing a rebuttal, but never did because I couldn't find the …

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Re: VGMSlap - DOS OPL1/2/3 VGM Player

Posted on 2024-05-07, 21:53

by

by bakemono

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

It seems like the player can crash sometimes if the VGM file does not end with a 0x66 command. (This includes all files generated with MIDI-to-VGM translator.) It didn't happen in dosbox, but happened on my 286. The problem went away when I added the 0x66 byte. Attaching VGM test file...

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Re: How important is screen resolution to you?

Posted on 2024-05-06, 19:48

by

by bakemono

in Milliways

in Milliways

Having adequate size and resolution is most important for productivity applications, where one is looking over schematics, charts, text, photos, etc. Otherwise, it's not that important because no amount of resolution makes up for the other problems that exist in video content, broadly. Low …

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Re: Athlon XP performance ratings

Posted on 2024-05-06, 14:28

by

by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The performance ratings became more inflated over time. The 1900+ (which I had back in the day) ran at 1600MHz. The 2500+ (which I had later) ran at 1833MHz. How does a mere 233MHz increase translate into 600 marketing points? Increasing cache and bus speeds mitigates memory latency but it doesn't …

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Re: Destroyed Amiga 386sx Bridgeboard, any value?

Posted on 2024-05-06, 14:11

by

by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

To be honest, I'm not even sure if I had used it if it was working. The Janus software does merely support CGA and MDA (no Hercules!), so there's little of 286/386 era software that would run well. Common use of bridge boards is just to run a shim program which allows the Amiga side to utilize an …

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Re: Looking for a tool which describe MZ, NE, LE, LX, PE executable header content

Posted on 2024-05-06, 13:31

by

by bakemono

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

CFF Explorer is a good tool for PE files. MZ header doesn't really contain that much information. I have a very minimal tool just to display the memory footprint to determine when something will fit in available conventional memory:

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Re: Patching VxD for ES1869 drivers to enable Windows 9x dos box midi support

Posted on 2024-05-01, 19:33

by

by bakemono

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I don't know much about VxDs or win9x but I don't think it disables I/O permissions for DOS programs (?) which would suggest that the ESS driver has disabled the OPL3 by way of a configuration feature in the ESS chip itself. The ESS1869 datasheet is online somewhere, and on pg. 41 it shows a power …

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Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2024-04-27, 12:18

by

by bakemono

in Milliways

in Milliways

I've been playing ToK , a very long JRPG, for over a year. I made it to the (final?) boss on the 256th floor a while ago. On my first attempt I got wiped out by the second form. I carefully reconfigured my party for another attempt, in which I slowly defeated the first and second forms only to be …

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Re: Help in fighting against startup messages in DOS programs

Posted on 2024-04-14, 11:38

by

by bakemono

in Milliways

in Milliways

Maybe hook the BIOS and DOS interrupts for the duration of autoexec.bat? You could pass through all functions unrelated to screen output, but return for any attempts at string/character output.

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

Posted on 2024-04-11, 19:13

by

by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Reminds me of a friend back in the late 90's. He ripped all his CDs at 128Kbps (took 1 night for 1 CD) and then he sold all his CDs. Only a few years later hard drive space was a lot cheaper and he was annoyed that he didn't ripped at a much higher bitrate... :) Oh man, I can't imagine doing that. …

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Re: Can a faster ISA Graphics card be built?

Posted on 2024-04-11, 18:35

by

by bakemono

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

It would be nice to have an FPGA video card that you could swap out cores to turn into different hardware. That way you could also have all the experimental cores that people came up with, perhaps even game specific cores. It would be nifty if there was an ISA card with FPGA, level shifters, RAM, …

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Re: Can a faster ISA Graphics card be built?

Posted on 2024-04-08, 21:02

by

by bakemono

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

While you had one wait state on expansion cards for 16-bit cycles on the AT (just as the AT also used for RAM), RAM cards (and other cards that claim areas of 128KB contigous memory address space) can remove that wait state for memory cycles by activating the /0WS signal, and thus operate at …

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Re: ISA vga card works only in 8-bit mode

Posted on 2024-04-07, 12:26

by

by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Doesn't DOOM use only 8-bit writes in the first place? I think it would be better to use a real video memory benchmark to test this behavior.

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Re: Hex editing a game exe - How do you figure out which parts represent what?

Posted on 2024-04-06, 18:12

by

by bakemono

in Milliways

in Milliways

Under OpenGL 1.x FOV is controlled by a projection matrix which is loaded with glLoadMatrix, so you'd want to look for that in the code for something to modify. In later versions that use vertex shaders, if you run the game in a debugger you can often find plaintext GLSL shader code and it'd be …

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Re: Help ID a video BIOS - which early Trident chipset/VGA card is it for?

Posted on 2024-03-25, 21:12

by

by bakemono

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Looking briefly at the code, it does appear to be a Trident 8800. It uses the "old mode registers" as described in this document: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2004/reading … doc/TRIDENT.TXT

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Re: OPN music on an ISA sound card?

Posted on 2024-03-22, 11:33

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by bakemono

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

A YM2203 based card would have been much less expensive than the Adlib and might have been able to succeed based on the much lower cost How do you know YM2203 would have been less expensive? OPL was already a low-end product line. It's possible that the YM2203 is a smaller die (fewer operators …

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Re: Why might my OAK OTI-037c not start properly at boot?

Posted on 2024-03-15, 14:16

by

by bakemono

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Is it a monitor issue? Does it also happen on CRT? (looks like an LCD in your photo)

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Re: MIDI to VGM translator

Posted on 2024-03-14, 20:05

by

by bakemono

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Updated. Now includes an XM-to-MIDI conversion tool (win32) where you choose a GM instrument number, volume level, and octave for each of up to 16 XM instruments. Supports volume and panning effects. Because some MIDIs hit a drum for a very short duration, eg. 8 milliseconds, a minimum key-on time …

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

Posted on 2024-03-11, 22:35

by

by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Tried to get this http://www.hyakushiki.net/misc/vegavga.jpg to display something on a VGA monitor without using BIOS. (With BIOS disabled, that is.) Partly for the sake of making my 286 drive two monitors at once as per this thread https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=99216 but mainly …

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Re: EPROM Programmer Help

Posted on 2024-03-11, 16:18

by

by bakemono

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some of those chips are in the support list for the T56. Others may work using an equivalent part number, especially for reading. I see no reason why 27xx parts wouldn't be readable in most any programmer, even if there is an ID mismatch or whatever. When it comes to writing you can't always find …

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