Re: Speed sensitive games suggestions to test throttling methods?

Posted on 2024-05-07, 20:57

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Might & Magic Book One text speed is not only speed-sensitive, but also doesn't respond very well to throttling via cache disables. It works correctly with a Turbo XT's deturbo mode.

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Re: QUARTERDECK QEMM products ... Good? or Garbage?

Posted on 2024-05-07, 07:25

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by wbahnassi

in Milliways

in Milliways

QEMM back in the days was the only way to get darn Lemmings 2 to work with Sound Blaster effects on my 386. Nowadays, QEMM is able to run Curse of Enchantia on my Pentium MMX. No other configuration was able to make it run. I don't use QEMM by default, but I do respect it 🙂

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Re: Space Quest 1 VGA Sound Format

Posted on 2024-04-25, 04:54

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Did it actually have any digital effects besides the timer countdown in the start of the game? The rest were all adlib sounds IIRC.

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Re: Whats the best 5.25inch drive installation configuration in a XT class machine.

Posted on 2024-04-21, 04:19

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thought XTs can't handle high-density at all. I would go with 2 360K drives because that's how my XT used to be, so lots of XT software were built with that in mind. But if the machine had an HDD, typically they'd keep only one 360K drive. 3 or 4 floppy drives doesn't compute with me 😅 and I'd be …

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Re: turbo segment display

Posted on 2024-04-20, 09:01

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you really want 66 and 33? I checked my DX-2 66 and the Mobo's de-turbo brought it down to ~25MHz actually, so I configured my display as 66 and 25. Try running benchmark tools to see what they estimate for you on de-turbo.

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Re: What tool debugs a miscalculated area of memory in a game program written in C?

Posted on 2024-04-20, 08:47

by

by wbahnassi

in Milliways

in Milliways

I think the tools of the time were perfectly capable of allowing you to discover the problem. As others mentioned, first file I/O should be always guarded with checks because that data could easily be corrupted or invalidated. Second, once you are at the crash site with CodeView, it would have …

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Re: Online copies of games are not owned

Posted on 2024-04-16, 12:40

by

by wbahnassi

in Milliways

in Milliways

Command & Conquer 4 comes to my mind as the first example of this crap in games. I hated that game. It played crap, and it installed and ran even crappier. Back then I didn't have internet connection always available even. Since then, we've been going down non-stop as it seems.

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Re: Throttle Blaster

Posted on 2024-04-09, 19:21

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Running them is not the problem. They will run on a P3... but too fast 🙂

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Re: Throttle Blaster

Posted on 2024-04-09, 13:52

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Neither DOSBox* nor SetMul** are good solutions for XT booter games. And I'm hoping that this device is able to apply its slow effect from the moment the computer turns on. * My booter games are original and disk-protected, which isn't supported by DOSBox. ** Not possible since you don't even get to …

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Re: Floppy disk problem

Posted on 2024-04-09, 13:44

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If it's a 5.25" drive, wipe the connector with alcohol. It might have some dirt or residue that's preventing proper connection. If it's a 3.5" drive, ensure all connector pins are in good standing and not bent or broken.

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Re: Multimeter recommendation

Posted on 2024-04-09, 03:12

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's the one I have too. Works great, enjoy!

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Re: Multimeter recommendation

Posted on 2024-04-07, 09:50

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Dunno man. I had one of the cheapest, and it always had a ~1 second delay in continuity mode. That is, you need to hold the probes for over 1 second to make it beep. Was very happy when I got rid of it and went for something a little bit better for about 30$ USD: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/aw/d/ …

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Re: Config.sys and autoexec.bat for Dos 7.1

Posted on 2024-04-06, 14:35

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I guess it depends on how you use the system. I don't like menu clutter, and when I want to play a game I commit to it. So if said game requires a certain config/autoexec, I just go ahead and REM lines from my "do it all" default config. After a few days when I'm done with the game, I revert my …

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

Posted on 2024-04-06, 14:31

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by wbahnassi

in Milliways

in Milliways

FOV will be a floating point value. These are much harder to hunt out in a hex editor. Your best bet is to attach a debugger and change the FOV in the game via some mechanism (menu option? console?) and watch the memory to see the locations that are changing data. Floats are 32-bit values, so you …

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Re: List of games that benefit from SMARTDRV?

Posted on 2024-04-06, 14:18

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

My theory on why CD drives run slower with caching: 1- It is reading ahead data that probably won't be used. 2- If the cached data was indeed being used, the CD won't be accessed, which sounds good, but then the drive might have the time to trigger spin down, which makes the next uncached access …

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Re: Config.sys and autoexec.bat for Dos 7.1

Posted on 2024-04-03, 12:47

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

A generic config cannot always get the best out of the machine. Applies to both EMM386 and QEMM. That's why both have this rigorous setup where they try many combinations before deciding in the best. Each machine has its own particularities that could eat out of the UMBs or fragment them. You have …

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Re: Do DC-DC AT PSUs exist? PicoPSU for older PCs?

Posted on 2024-04-03, 09:41

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I use it in my P233MMX build as well (the 120w version): https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=91280 It's holding up quite well. Never failed me. My build has 2 floppy drives and a DVD drive. On the otherhand, no mechanical HDD nor a dedicated graphics card. So I'm not gonna claim it will hold …

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Re: AYMO - Accelerated YaMaha Operator

Posted on 2024-03-31, 22:44

by

by wbahnassi

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

3x sounds like a reasonable target if you are going for 4-component-wide SIMD. There will always be overhead when moving data in/out of SIMD registers, so 4x is kinda theoretical.

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Re: Old Creative CD Drives MK4140 Needs Help

Posted on 2024-03-31, 22:39

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Creative moved to IDE with 4x and up. Only 2x and 1x used Panasonic and required MK driver. Just try a regular driver like OAK.

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Re: How to get a list of available DirectSoundBuffer caps?

Posted on 2024-03-30, 14:00

by

by wbahnassi

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Not sure what specifically are you looking for. DSCAPS has quite a bunch of flags and values about the sound device. But they won't be as many as D3D caps of course because there are a lot of individual 3D features compared to sound features (esp. that DSound is just for PCM playback, without any …

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