Posted 2017-12-22 7:59 AM (#1114 - in reply to #1113) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK
So it was you who had that? I thought it was. Funny thing is, when I first went in and there was no menu, just the PgUp/PgDn key, my first thought was "Oh, crap, this looks like one of those laptop BIOSes, what a pieceashit!" only to keep pressing the button and seeing more and more complicated stuff come up.
Next job - get it to boot an OS. Battery damage seems pretty minimal, it's eaten the casing off of the keyboard chokes, but they're still working anyway so whatever, guess I could coat them in resin or something after cleaning to keep them safe.
Posted 2017-12-22 3:01 PM (#1115 - in reply to #71) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
Bad news... The shop had listed an ET4000 ISA that they did not have in store. :-( They asked me to check if anything else could be of interest to me. So I am in the process of figuring anything out with them. Have asked about a special item that are of interrest to me. So right now I am waiting for a reply. Hope it will be sorted out. They seem legit and helpfull, so I am really crossing my fingers here.
Posted 2017-12-23 7:13 AM (#1116 - in reply to #1115) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
Intel P5
Posts: 85 Location: UK
I discovered yesterday that UMC made ISA VGA cards, I wonder if they are up to the same standards as the 486 U5S chips? If so that might well be a good candidate for a great ISA card. There seem to be two different UMC chips, both from 1993. Anyone tried one of these? If I can track one down for cheap, I'll grab it.
Posted 2017-12-23 11:30 AM (#1117 - in reply to #1116) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
CyrixInstead - 2017-12-23 9:13 AM
I discovered yesterday that UMC made ISA VGA cards, I wonder if they are up to the same standards as the 486 U5S chips? If so that might well be a good candidate for a great ISA card. There seem to be two different UMC chips, both from 1993. Anyone tried one of these? If I can track one down for cheap, I'll grab it.
Do you have a link for the model that you are considering? As I saw a couple of cards back in 94, that I have not seen before or since. Might be one of those or might not.
EDIT:
Is it one such as this below, that you are thinking about?
I remember these as good for non accelerated Win-3.11 installations. Like Word processing and stuff in that league. This however is only what I remember from back then, and I have never benchmarked any such cards.
Posted 2017-12-23 1:52 PM (#1118 - in reply to #1117) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK
Yeah, I think they made a VLB one too. I seem to think they were reported to be on par with most of Cirrus' older chips, but I would take that with a pinch of salt as people's remarks about obscure hardware have proven completely inaccurate many times in the past now.
Posted 2017-12-25 10:43 PM (#1119 - in reply to #1118) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK
For reasons even I'm not sure of. I warn you, it's awful, but I had fun working on it so whatever. There's a version without words on SoundCloud.
Otherwise, I played with the C&T board, it doesn't like floppy emulators (it'll have to get in the line on that one, not much else seems to either) and it's not liking either the HDD or host adapter, will look into it more another time.
Posted 2017-12-30 12:09 PM (#1120 - in reply to #1119) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
Intel P5
Posts: 85 Location: UK
@Dxzeff Very seasonable song there! Me and the lady had a right good laugh over a few gin and tonics the other night listening to this!
Do you folks know if this Cyrix is likely to work in my opti 386 DX 25 system? I know the cpu is lots newer, the BIOS is from 1990 and the CPU 1992. Never done much research or had experience with the DLC before.
Also how robust are these chips? It's sold as untested(£20 + postage), just want to know if this is worth having.
Posted 2017-12-30 12:57 PM (#1121 - in reply to #1120) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK
In theory it will work in some capacity in most any 386DX board with the right clock (or lower) without any modifications. On the other hand it might not work to its full potential if the board can't 'see' the cache signals from the CPU, check your BIOS for options like "Hidden Refresh / Refresh Type Hidden" for that, I don't really remember what the other options are now or if they have much of any effect. Even without a properly coherent cache it should still give a slight boost if nothing else.
They seem to be fairly robust as they can run quite hot and none of the ones I've got in the tray have broken, just remember not to plug it in the wrong way - I nearly did that once and just caught it in time.
I always liked how you can make out traces in the top of the chip.
Edit: Oh, an update on the Chips board - it does work, just not with drives over 1GB as the BIOS indicates, installing a larger one makes things act strange and prevents the system from booting up.
Posted 2017-12-30 1:57 PM (#1123 - in reply to #1120) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
Intel P5
Posts: 85 Location: UK
@DXZeff The BIOS on this thing is well beyond me(it's very complex) & there doesn't seem to be any surviving help on todays's internet, it took me a good few days to get the on board cache working right(something the previous owner didn't manage) and the bus dividers and shadowing and wait states set correctly. Despite the allure of Cyrix I think I'll give it a miss this time, to be honest,now I have it running well I'm not keen on messing with it again, not sure I can do it again as I didn't document the procedure and my memory is none too great these days for something this obscure. It's not even like I can document the current settings as the menu system doesn't work in a way to show what settings you are currently using, it just offers options to change. Best left well alone now I have it running well I suspect.
@Brostenen Yes that looks like the UMC VGA I was talking about, VGA museum has two ISA chipset's listed but I've not managed to find any documentation on the differences or any performance info. I'll keep my eye out for a card, if it's cheap enough then worth a go although the WDC 90C30 I'm using now in the DX is brilliant, faster than TSENG and brilliant compatibility I could use a better card for the SX, the Trident 9000B is dire, and the OAK won't work in that board for some reason, it's fine in the DX though.
Posted 2018-01-04 1:34 AM (#1124 - in reply to #1123) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK
I was running a RealTek in a 486SX-25 recently, man was that poor. On the subject of the BIOS, does yours not have hints to the right like mine?
If it doesn't then I'd advise not just flipping bits in the same register in case it does something different.
Benchmarks and charts for the C&T chips are done so I will try to start on the script ASAP, but I'm busy at the weekend because I've got places to be and someone's PS3 to repair, so that will slow it down a little. It is also one of those where figuring out how the make the information presentable is going to take a while, there's a fair bit to get in and it needs structuring properly. The machine is working though, Windows installed and everything, even a desktop wallpaper and a name swap with another machine.
Otherwise, I bought some stuff;
After having the system for years, I now own an actual Sega Mega CD game that didn't just come with that Japanese system I bought years ago. Hopefully this is good, potential review for this Halloween I guess. Sods law that the one game which interests me doesn't seem to have really come out in the UK, but it turns out regional lockout is easy to defeat on the Mega CD. I have to admit that I am unsure how the mouse support will work in the game due to the movement snapping and railing along, it's like Atlantis without the 360-degree movement.
This should be fine if you don't want to overly spoiler the game;
For all its shortcomings there's a sense of ambition that I get from the game, there are parallels with games that came later and a little hint that it might have actually influenced Silent Hill of all things (due to track naming somewhere) that I can't confirm, looking forward to having a go properly once it gets here from the US.
Posted 2018-01-04 4:24 PM (#1127 - in reply to #1124) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
IDT WinChip
Posts: 237 Location: USA
Cool. Looks like someone is getting into his SEGA stuff again there. I only made it about half way through your live stream recording. I set it to tell me when you go live. It NEVER does, even though it will tell me when others are live, and I didn't have to set the notification icon. Anyway ya, that's cool. I love seeing vintage hardware again that hasn't been seen in a long time. I am not sure if Teddy Rubskin even has a mouse for his.
I am trying to get away from scripting. I find it just as easy to speak it, recording in audacity and just maybe redo things here and there a bit. Record my thoughts I guess instead of writing it first. Do you have any recommendations for a program to make charts? I've been using open office to do it but I'd like to find something a little better, though open office does a good enough job I suppose if I can't find something better. I just got a CAD U37 usb mic from ebay for $15 new, and so far I love how it sounds. Much much much better than the damn headset that was suppose to be good I was using.
I am finishing up a video on my Pentium D rigged up mess that may become a real system, and will get back to the Athlon 64 X2 project after that. I will say, I am quite impressed with how well the Pentium D has overclocked on a, fairly average cooler master cooler, not really keeping up with the heat output as well as I would like, but maybe it will get a water cooler too. I am finding AIO water coolers are cheaper in many cases than a medium range air cooler, and I know the water cooler will be much better.
On the subject of your capturing the input from your Mega Drive, and the mess of hardware you have to do it, I am surprised you never got a nice little USB capture device just for that purpose of capturing sega, vcr,what ever else over composite / svideo directly to your Xeon.
Posted 2018-01-04 5:01 PM (#1128 - in reply to #1127) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK
Never really stopped being into Sega stuff, it was more that I had no reason to do anything with it online that was worthwhile, I could have rattled on about Sonic 3 but it's been done to death, could have rattled on about Ristar but people know what it is now. Plus there was no way to record it properly for years as the Intensity couldn't do it and the WinTV Express has aged badly. Recently a friend and I kept joking about the Sega CD and reasoned that there had to be something good on it, somewhere. Stumbled into that game and it seems decent enough. Wanted to bring the consoles back from time to time, meant to for a few years, it just wasn't feasible. In the case of recording, the Athlon or Dual P3 will be tasked with that in the mean time, the old AverTV 98 is perfectly adequate for such jobs, I just wouldn't want to stream with it due to noise of the machine and lack of real time de-interlacing.
The scripts act more as a guide and often miss out actual wording for things. For example, the voice over might say "The OPTi 929 is a good Sound Blaster compatible which was even available with real Yamaha FM chips onboard, it also provides ample options for installing a CD-ROM drive and Windows Sound System compatibility. Continuing down from there is the video card, a Trident 9000i which weren't the fastest boards on the planet, but they were comparatively cheap and outpaced RealTek's offering if nothing else, though as PCI was already around you might be suffering for running an ISA card anyway." where the script would only read "...the system has a sound card. OPTi 929. About that. The video card. About that..." as I've no reason to write it and may as well just let it flow naturally. Had a Samson Go Mic for a year now, cost around £20 and has worked well up to now, there may be some which sound better but it's as good as it needs to be.
Watercooling wouldn't go amiss at all, mine was on an XSPC Rasa block but how much they cost now is unknown, they weren't cheap at the time. Looking forward to seeing what you've come up with and where it sits versus mine.
Back on capturing, it did also turn out OBS had updated and never told me that it needs two additional MSVC runtimes now, this was causing weird things to happen, so it should get easier in future and the camera should return too. It may even be possible to patch up the EasyCap as I know people have successfully captured Mega Drives with it before, so further investigation is needed before it is written off, the StarTech is still being awkward though, it's just that the Intensity 4K has some limitations that need workarounds to be found and it would mean throwing away all of my existing Vegas presets as I'd have to scale everything to 720p instead of 480... Might have to spend a lot of time in the 'Mask" controls. Still, for now, there was something kinda novel about streaming with an ancient capture board like the WinTV Celebrity, almost wish the VideoSurge in the 386 worked with old consoles, but they're just out of range of its tolerances. The K5/CinemaPro could actually stream directly to the internet, but the quality would be crap and it'd have to be self-hosted, maybe some day it should be done for sheer novelty value.
Posted 2018-01-05 3:25 AM (#1130 - in reply to #1129) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
IDT WinChip
Posts: 237 Location: USA
I can't think of the last time I've seen or heard you talk about SEGA, except we had a brief go back and forth about the Everdrive, and then you do a live stream and also bought some goodies, It seems you got a hair up yer rear end to dig the ol' girl out and buy some new toys for it. I have to say, I really have no interest in the Sega CD beyond having that extra bit to plug into the Genesis, and that goes for the 32X adapter as well. I never experienced either personally and haven't seen anyone that really could convince me there was anything made that really made spending all that extra money for the CD was actually worth it. I'd much rather have the version 1 Genesis again over the extra's.
I should have guessed you were using Power Point to do those.
I just watched Jayz video about the new Intel bug. Sure it's not limited to Intel per se, but the performance hit for Chipzilla processors is going to be YUGE! Seems to me the fix is going to be worse than just a performance hit. I really hope it doesn't affect my Linux machine here too much, cause boy, if it does, Ryzen here I come!, which was probably going to end up being the case anyway as I can't see a performance boost going to LGA 2011 Xeons over what I already have, which in itself is really kind of sad, at least according to cpu boss, for what that site is worth. I told him a few weeks ago when he was asking people if he should build his new system with either Intel or AMD to use AMD and be different and not such an Intel fan boy. Well he wen't Intel, and I think he will be regretting that after this news.
Here is a couple video snap shots of my "Ricer" X2 build, which Ricer is a term I never heard before until recently as it related to computers. I am use to that related to japaneese imports with under lights, and coffee can mufflers, big wing of course sometimes as well.
One of many Video capture test videos I did of the Pentium D system. Probably going to have to figure out what is causing the frame capture / dropping issue again. Seems to come and go with this thing. Probably not a big deal though, not really noticeable. What i did notice though is, I just uploaded the captured file, and it is really amazing how much quality is lost just from Youtube's re-encoding crap. Anyway if anyone wants to listen to the Pentium D sing a song, clicky - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1szWYgd7Mw
Posted 2018-01-05 4:50 PM (#1131 - in reply to #1130) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
Finally back with a sharp mind, after new years eve. I have been a bit sick on and off, and not 100% in fighting spirit as of now. Yet I am able to dwelve into computing stuff again. So in the comming days, I will be testing more RaspberryPI images. That is Combian64 (C64 RPI Image), Amibian (Amiga RPI Image), playing a bit more with my RetroPI setup were I have it installed with Mastersystem, Megadrive/Genesis, NES and Snes games. All european games for the 4 systems on a single 16gb SD Card.
Then I have finally recieved the new sim card, for my new phone, that I bought for the X-Mas money. I did however pay a little more out of my pocket, in order to be able to buy a Motorola G5s smartphone. It's pretty awesomme. 3gb Ram, 32gb storage, NFC and Gyroscope. Now I can finally have all the apps I need for everyday use, have RealRacing3 with all upgrades and an Mp3 collection plus I have enough space for a lot of pictures too.
Anyway...
Hope that you all, have had a very good new years eve, and that you had a good X-Mas.
Posted 2018-01-06 12:14 AM (#1135 - in reply to #1131) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
Found it.... Finally found an easy to use Linux program, that are used from the command line. They are plentifull on Win and Mac, just not that many for Linux. What I searched for, was basically a Linux program, that I can use to test if an SD card, bought on eBay, are fake or the real deal. As a bonus, this program can be used on any type of flash storage. Stuff like USB flash drives and SSD-Drives. Ohhh yeaa....
Looks to me like a 64 bit SOC for notebook computers Opti released. Datasheet indicates this might use a Cyrix core of some type, stating Cyrix Linear Burst Mode for L2 cache. I don't see a mention of integrated graphics however, though I haven't gone into great depth into this data sheet. States the processor is both 586 and 686 compatible. Curious oddity I never knew Opti had developed. I'd be curious to find a working example of this.
Posted 2018-01-11 6:59 AM (#1138 - in reply to #1137) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
Intel P5
Posts: 85 Location: UK
Hmmm, that is interesting, I didn't know OPTI made a x86 CPU of any kind and was not aware they had a link to Cyrix. Be nice if we could find what systems this was actually used in. On the surface it has similarities to the MediaGX so it seems very odd that Cyrix would also be involved in a competing product & if it is 6x86 based then it is more advanced than Cyrix's own SOC of the time. Would be nice to find a working notebook with one of these as you say, if I had to guess I'd say they were South East Asian market only, much like the RiSE MP6.
Anyhow a very interesting find and worthy of more research
EDIT: A bit more digging suggests it does not have a x86 core but interfaces to 64-bit CPU, it does also indeed support Cyrix linear burst mode, I found mention of a compaq armada laptop with it, using a AMD K6 CPU. That would explain why there is no mention of it I could see on CPU world etc.
Posted 2018-01-11 9:05 PM (#1139 - in reply to #1138) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK
Seems like a regular mobile (as in laptop, as that definition should probably be made today) chipset to me, on Page #33 the block diagram indicates the CPU is external. 5th generation CPUs use a 64-Bit data bus which is likely what "64-Bit" refers to. I'm sure you know, but for those that don't, this is why Pentium machines need paired of 72-Pin sticks, because each module is only 32-Bits wide - had fun explaining 30-Pin SIMMs to a guy in Maplin once when pairing DDR2 came up, he looked horrified at the idea of pairing for 8-Bit modules to get the 32-Bit 486 running.
There were other SOC's out there, but finding info on them isn't always easy. A few that I'm aware of are;
STPC (Cx486DX - already know about this one)
AMD Elan (Am486 / X5 - an ATX board of sorts existed for this)
RDC 8610 (486SX)
ALI M6117 (386SX?)
ZFx86 (Some kind of 5x86? Still seems to be produced, ESAPC sell AT boards with this SOC)
Intel made one I don't remember.
The rest seemed to be MP6 cores or later, such as the SiS 55X SOCs. There are probably more, but those are the ones I had jotted down.
Posted 2018-01-13 1:05 PM (#1142 - in reply to #71) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
Slow 8088
Posts: 2
Despite my health state i'm gonna try to bring my NEC XR385 to life. This is a licensed DB60XG daughterboard which is infamous for using AK4510-VS that ultimately fail. Sourcing these DAC's seems to be impossible, can't find them anywhere. The problem is that every power on cycle the DAC needs to be reset. That happens by pulling pin 8 high (5V) and then it will resume its normal state only at 0V. The problem is that i always read 1.5V on that pin, which means it is not getting reset. So i' gonna try to give it 5V manually and remove it just to see what happens, maybe i'll get sound back again.
Posted 2018-01-14 2:43 PM (#1145 - in reply to #71) Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
TM Crusoe
Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK
Probably wouldn't be hard to cut a trace and make your own circuit up if the worst comes to the worst, assuming these aren't using some kind of tiny SMD footprint. My suspicion at this point would be that power is leaking from somewhere.
Recently Played/Bought/Messed with
cyrix 486 dlc 25.jpg (220KB - 473 downloads)
