Starting to think that #Vogons may be the worst place to go for help with #retroPC issues....
#Vogons
Fuck them all.
Almost as if those making these decisions weren't people.
But Vogons or something.
No. That's an insult to Vogons. Even #Vogons have higher standards.
I'm a fan! :-)
"Ford Prefect shows Arthur Dent The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy"
By @greigjohnsonmaking
The #vogons have arrived. They've found that they don't need to publish new zoning plans in Alpha Centauri, in the basement, behind the broken door and the dragon beyond it. It is clear that humans have not followed the fire code, and Earth can be torn down to make way for that intergalactic bypass
Is #VOGONS full of trolls or something? My use of that site is limited to reading the occasional post when I'm trying to get something working. But I've stumbled on like the 4th or 5th project, which has been abandoned due to harassment coming from folks on Vogons.
#386 #laptop repair and restore complete!
Backlight working again (cable break where it went through the hinge), keyboard ribbon repair.
A #vogons user integrated #xtide into the #bios for me (original bios has fixed parameters for 20, 40, 60 and 80Mb disks only) so now running 512mb CF card.
#floppydisk drive still works.
Dont have original psu and NiCad original battery bound to be dead so converted to usb c power - adding where was a space for a modem expansion
#retrocomputing
@montef Wha'? You don't like the texturized-white bags against the dark brown of my deck? I thought it served to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor...
Nevermind. I am laughing so hard I can't keep typing that sentence! 😂
It's been a while since I updated you on my #vintagerepair project. Last time, I was knee deep in a Commodore PC50 III 386SX16, but things have gone a little out of hand since.
Shortly after I tasted the sweet, sweet flavor of success, I ordered a lot of 3 possibly dead #IBM #Aptiva system. Naturally they were exactly that - dead. One was missing a power supply and another had the wrong one. After a lot of work, I managed to get the beefiest system running - a #Pentium 133. The work is ongoing, and has so far involved ordering weird cable adapters from Germany, washing motherboards in the dishwasher and sourcing an original power supply from the US. Pro tip - if you're ever considering collecting desktop Aptivas, don't. They're incredibly difficult to get parts for, and - so far - pretty tricky to bring back from the dead.
And the BIOS is in Swedish.
If you're curious about the progress, you can follow my thread over at #Vogons: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=102881
Infelizmente, eu gosto de me torturar usando ou jogando coisa velha, mais especificamente, para #MSDOS. Tenho um 486 DX-4 encostado, mas não conheço alguém confiável para trocar os capacitores dele e "socketar" a bateria. Diante do 486 cada vez mais velho e abandonado, fiquei pensando como seria lindo ter um hardware realmente novo para rodar DOS e durar uma década ou mais, até porque, já tinha visto projetos faça-você-mesmo no passado, mas achei a discussão e disponibilidade muito limitadas. Eis a virada: parece que um usuário do fórum #Vogons vai tentar desenhar uma nova versão de um #computador aberto pensado para #jogar no DOS, tentando, desde a concepção, facilitar a confecção da placa: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=100351.
It's not a real change freeze unless it's enforce by the #vogons
I knew that Douglas Adams quote would come in useful sometime...
You are getting pretty sucky these days, @Hetzner_Online
Anyone got any good hosting recommendations? Am I going to have to start looking at the damned #Cloud - I don't do well with change and I have been on Hetzner for over 20 years. When companies start to cut costs for new customers and pass them on to old ones, I get (I think rightly!) annoyed.
TL;DR: Had a dead Mach32 EISA VGA card. Fixed it. Love it. Kthxbye.
Lo(ooo)ng version:
So I had this supposedly-awesome ATI Mach32 #EISA card which I've never managed to get working. And #retrocomputing being an expensive hobby, I haven't been able to get my hands on a second one. So I've kept trying .. every time I got a new EISA motherboard.
Until the other day, when I decided to take it apart - again: Brush and clean the legs of the RAM, the BIOS chips, and the sockets. Go hunting once more for hints about how the DIP switches and jumpers should be set. Finding some similar cards on #th99 (https://th99.preterhuman.net/), scouring various image search platforms, and consulting the always-awesome #Vogons forums, the correct settings turned out to be the dumbest: All switches off (or is it on?), and all jumpers off.
For each step in the process I got closer to bringing it to life: Clean RAM pins and sockets: monitor actually turns on (but no image, and still POST error beeps.) Remove rust from one(!) BIOS pin: Monitor on, no POST beeps, and it's testing RAM - but no image. Flipping all the DIP switches: It's alive!
And I must say.. ATI was in a class entirely of its own back then: Excellent software tools for configuration and diagnostics. Great monitor compatibility, with super flexible custom settings *and* onboard EEPROM to store monitor settings - no need to reconfigure on each boot. Even the OS/2 drivers feel like first-class citizens. Good "on-line" documentation. And for all reasonable intents and purposes - pretty much best-in-class performance. Not to mention 8514A compatibility, which saves the day when you're trying to run that odd-duck piece of software for which there are no other drivers. And - same tools for their entire family: From Mach32 ISA, via EISA and VLB all the way to Mach64 PCI.
This EISA-486 motherboard, running a DX50 CPU, gives exactly twice as good VGA performance (in 3dbench 1.0c) as the other EISA VGA I have, an S3 86C924-based board. And if I remove the CPU bottleneck (plop in a 3x-multiplier 5x86 upgrade CPU, running at 150MHz!), I get another 25-30% out of it. On par with some of the best VLB cards I own.
Are there better/faster EISA VGA cards out there? Undoubtedly. I have another S3 86C928 with 4MB RAM, for example - but it's a nightmare to configure and won't play nice with LCD monitors. Is EISA worth the trouble? Well.... Quirks and qualities, right?
Anyway, all is good that ends well. I have a working Mach32 EISA and it absolutely made my day. :)
#Retrocomputing #Retrohardware #Gotnothingbettertodo #Midlifecrisis
Lo(ooo)ng version:
So I had this supposedly-awesome ATI Mach32 #EISA card which I've never managed to get working. And #retrocomputing being an expensive hobby, I haven't been able to get my hands on a second one. So I've kept trying .. every time I got a new EISA motherboard.
Until the other day, when I decided to take it apart - again: Brush and clean the legs of the RAM, the BIOS chips, and the sockets. Go hunting once more for hints about how the DIP switches and jumpers should be set. Finding some similar cards on #th99 (https://th99.preterhuman.net/), scouring various image search platforms, and consulting the always-awesome #Vogons forums, the correct settings turned out to be the dumbest: All switches off (or is it on?), and all jumpers off.
For each step in the process I got closer to bringing it to life: Clean RAM pins and sockets: monitor actually turns on (but no image, and still POST error beeps.) Remove rust from one(!) BIOS pin: Monitor on, no POST beeps, and it's testing RAM - but no image. Flipping all the DIP switches: It's alive!
And I must say.. ATI was in a class entirely of its own back then: Excellent software tools for configuration and diagnostics. Great monitor compatibility, with super flexible custom settings *and* onboard EEPROM to store monitor settings - no need to reconfigure on each boot. Even the OS/2 drivers feel like first-class citizens. Good "on-line" documentation. And for all reasonable intents and purposes - pretty much best-in-class performance. Not to mention 8514A compatibility, which saves the day when you're trying to run that odd-duck piece of software for which there are no other drivers. And - same tools for their entire family: From Mach32 ISA, via EISA and VLB all the way to Mach64 PCI.
This EISA-486 motherboard, running a DX50 CPU, gives exactly twice as good VGA performance (in 3dbench 1.0c) as the other EISA VGA I have, an S3 86C924-based board. And if I remove the CPU bottleneck (plop in a 3x-multiplier 5x86 upgrade CPU, running at 150MHz!), I get another 25-30% out of it. On par with some of the best VLB cards I own.
Are there better/faster EISA VGA cards out there? Undoubtedly. I have another S3 86C928 with 4MB RAM, for example - but it's a nightmare to configure and won't play nice with LCD monitors. Is EISA worth the trouble? Well.... Quirks and qualities, right?
Anyway, all is good that ends well. I have a working Mach32 EISA and it absolutely made my day. :)
#Retrocomputing #Retrohardware #Gotnothingbettertodo #Midlifecrisis
...And today's book recommendation is:
"Vogon Poetry", foreword by Oolon Coluphid...
#scifi #sciencefiction #hitchhikersguide #vogons #vogonpoetry #poetry #books #bookrecommendation
A ešte jeden tip pre bláznov, ktorí sa radi hrajú s #retropc. Moja mašina má absolútne prestrelenú kapacitu RAM, v tomto prípade 1GB. To je maximum, ktoré dokáže #Windows98 pojmúť bez toho, aby vôbec zlyhala jeho inštalácia (s chybou nedostatku pamäte 🤷♂️). Problém nastal po inštalácii. Nevedel som z prostredia Windows spustiť žiaden DOS program. Chyba znela "There is not enough memory available to run this program" 🤦♂️ Pomoc pomerne jednoduchá, na #vogons je návod: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=1091306#p1091306
...his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
Sometimes i feel like i should set the record straight on #Intel 80286 extended memory modes.
#Vogons has a pretty good table on them. 80286 is a 16-bit #CPU with 24-bit address space accessed through 4(!) different methods below with each having its own pros and cons. #DOS #Emulator development is hardcore:
DOSBox Staging Basics
Today: ripa PC Speaker patch
We’ve integrated ripa’s impulse-model PC speaker patch alongside DOSBox’s existing (discrete-model) PC speaker implementation, which is still the default.
To use it, set the config setting 'pcspeaker=impulse'.
James-F and VileRancour have mentioned in the linked thread that it generally improves the accuracy of square-wave effects, such as in Commander Keen and Duke Nukem. This patch also can produce sounds when none previously existed, such as in Wizball, as noted by ripsaw8080.
Wizball (1987) — using discrete PC speaker emulation
https://archive.org/details/dosbox-staging-v0.79.0-pcspeaker-impulse-wizball
Original thread on Vogons
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=23371
#dosbox #dosgaming #msdos #emulation #retrogaming #linuxgaming #macgaming #foss #audio #pcspeaker #wizball #vogons
DOSBox Staging Basics
Today: Configuring MIDI device
DOSBox Staging supports the following MIDI devices for music playback:
-System/Host MIDI (default)
-FluidSynth for using SoundFonts
-mt32emu/MUNT for emulating Roland MT-32, CM-32L and LAPC-I synthesizer modules.
DOS-Retro-Sound with Roland MT-32 (Part 1/3)
(german video, translation available through YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKkjSfy4mic
"Unmissable MT32 experiences" thread on Vogons.org
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=77567
Phils ultimate MT-32 video, running time 3,5 hours!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLvsaJ4h-VY
See our WIKI for more information and setup guides
https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/wiki/MIDI
#dosbox #dosgaming #msdos #emulation #retrogaming #linuxgaming #macgaming #foss #MIDI #Fluidsynth #mt-32 #mt32 #Munt #Soundfont #philscomputerlab #vogons
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