Built myself a 486

[eightbit]

I used Connor tape drives for a really long time which while slow seemed to do a good job. The Zip drive certainly changed the way I moved around data. I did have an LS-120 drive for a pinch and thought that it was really cool to have a floppy drive that doubled as a "Super Disk"...although now just a 120MB disk just as slow as a normal disk

 

My favorite drives however were first the SyQuest SyDrive (I believe it was called) that used that 135MB platter media see-through cartridge, and then the almighty Jaz drive with a whopping 1GB of space.

 

But in the end CD-R (or CD+R....that whole media war..lol) reigned supreme. I still have disks I burned in the early 2000's that read which I find quite amazing to be honest. Of course I don't trust it and all of that stuff has been backed up.

 

 

Edited March 22, 2022 by eightbit

[Keatah]

11 minutes ago, wierd_w said:

With a multisession disc, the computer has to read all the sessions, with their TOCs, then interpret the filesystem virtually.  This takes lots of read time, is slow and laborious, and as you noted, prone to going FUBAR.

This might have used multi-session on a per-file basis. 1 session per file. I don't recall. But I do have the manual someplace because I never threw it out. I'll check when I come across. But I won't spend hours digging for it at the moment.

[zzip]

21 minutes ago, wierd_w said:

With a multisession disc, the computer has to read all the sessions, with their TOCs, then interpret the filesystem virtually.  This takes lots of read time, is slow and laborious, and as you noted, prone to going FUBAR.

I never actually tried using multi-session CD-R.   It always sounded iffy to me so I avoided it ?

[eightbit]

So, on the topic of game controllers. I know we mentioned that in a previous post whereas there are few "good" PC controllers. I contend with this. There are not very many really good ones and somebody really needs to do something about that one day

 

Ultimately some sort of SNES or Genesis to PC Gameport adapter would be the end all and satisfy most of the retro MS-DOS PC players but until then I had to find something. I do have some controllers here (one that resembles a PS1 controller) that work fairly well although they are old and have been used for decades and are not as "fresh" as a new controller so to speak.

 

So, I went out on the hunt looking for either a new Gravis gamepad or something similar (and more importantly cheap) that is new old stock. Well, the Gravis is out of the question for now. Sellers are asking $60 for "new" examples and to be honest a lot of the pictures I see look as if they cleaned up a used controller and put it back in the package. Regardless, not paying $60 for it and from what I remember it really did not feel all that great when I had one back in the day. The buttons I remember were recessed into the controller body and just felt weird.

 

Anyway, I found this for $10 sealed. I figured "Laing #1" would either do me good or do me dirty....but at $10 whatever.

 

 

 

Button layout is strange to say the least and the d-pad felt floaty when I took it out of the package. BUT, when I tested it with Tyrian...yep...this works great! Very responsive and the diagonals (what I was worried about the most) work perfectly. The buttons are excellent too. This one has my thumbs up....at least if you can get it new like I did.

 

 

 

Edited March 22, 2022 by eightbit

[eightbit]

Looking at this pad I may just rewire it internally to bring C+D to the "TA" and "TB" buttons. Not sure why they would lay it out this way.

 

Are there any games of the DOS period (up to around 1994) that actually utilize more than two buttons? I have a controller with A/B/C/D but it appears C&D are just not mappable at least by the games I have been play testing (Doom, etc). 

 

[zzip]

10 minutes ago, eightbit said:

Looking at this pad I may just rewire it internally to bring C+D to the "TA" and "TB" buttons. Not sure why they would lay it out this way.

 

Are there any games of the DOS period (up to around 1994) that actually utilize more than two buttons? I have a controller with A/B/C/D but it appears C&D are just not mappable at least by the games I have been play testing (Doom, etc). 

 

I don't know of any games that require four buttons, but a lot will allow you to map them to functions.   I think DOS games could use four buttons on a controller, but I think some had a switch on them that determined the behavior of the 3rd and 4th button,  so maybe check for a swtich?

[MrMaddog]

3 hours ago, eightbit said:

Are there any games of the DOS period (up to around 1994) that actually utilize more than two buttons? I have a controller with A/B/C/D but it appears C&D are just not mappable at least by the games I have been play testing (Doom, etc). 

 

I believe the original Gravis pads used the two fire buttons from the second PC joystick as the 3rd & 4th button, remember that PC controler ports supported up to two analog joysticks via a Y cable.

 

Later on Gravis controllers used the GRiP protocol that used serial signals over the digital pins and needed special drivers to use.  I had a Gravis Xterminator Digital GamePad that came with Windows drivers but nothing to use in real DOS mode.

 

 

Edited March 22, 2022 by MrMaddog

[eightbit]

Well, I stand corrected on Doom. I went back into the settings and enabled C and D on the pad and it did work for mapping. I recall it not working before. Heh. Well, yeah, I was able to map the "strafe" and "forward" (which is basically run when held) to those buttons so thats cool. 

[wierd_w]

The layout resembles snes pads of the era.

 

The two buttons there are placed just like the START and SELECT buttons.

 

 

As for gravis pads... apparently still being made? (Amazon: discontinued:No)

https://www.amazon.com/Gravis-40011-NFR-PC-Gamepad/dp/B00000JKMB

 

 

The QA section at the bottom clarifies this is indeed for PC gameport, not USB.

 

Edited March 23, 2022 by wierd_w

[eightbit]

1 hour ago, wierd_w said:

The layout resembles snes pads of the era.

 

The two buttons there are placed just like the START and SELECT buttons.

 

 

As for gravis pads... apparently still being made? (Amazon: discontinued:No)

https://www.amazon.com/Gravis-40011-NFR-PC-Gamepad/dp/B00000JKMB

 

 

The QA section at the bottom clarifies this is indeed for PC gameport, not USB.

 

 

 

I think it is more likely some private seller had some inventory at some point and was selling NOS units on Amazon. These have certainly been out of production for a very long time.

 

I see stuff like this on Amazon a lot. Some really old hardware still being sold. Highly doubt any of it was fulfilled by Amazon directly when it was available for purchase. Especially considered Advanced Gravis was purchased up and dissolved by Kensington in 1997

 

 

Edited March 23, 2022 by eightbit

[The Usotsuki]

I believe Commander Keen 4 supports a 4-button controller.

[newtmonkey]

18 hours ago, eightbit said:

Ultimately some sort of SNES or Genesis to PC Gameport adapter would be the end all and satisfy most of the retro MS-DOS PC players but until then I had to find something. I do have some controllers here (one that resembles a PS1 controller) that work fairly well although they are old and have been used for decades and are not as "fresh" as a new controller so to speak.

It's not gameport, but there's a PS/2 to SNES/MD gamepad adapter with PS/2 passthrough, developed by a user on VOGONS:

 

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=73775

 

I haven't tried it so can't recommend it one way or another, but it might be worth looking into.

Edited March 23, 2022 by newtmonkey

[eightbit]

Well, I learned something about VLB cards today. Going by benchmarks really gets you nowhere.

 

You can bench one card and the benchmark score could be several points ahead of another card. But that does not mean you actually see that performance (or feel it) anywhere else. When it comes to just playing games like Doom and so on, well, all of the VLB cards I had tested feel the same and do a great job.

 

HOWEVER, there are significant differences in picture quality amongst all of these cards. The Cirrus Logic cards perform great but the picture clarity is a bit muddy. You can really tell in DOS...the pixels are just not as sharp as other cards. Initially this was the only card I had and I thought it was great. Until I tried some others...

 

The S3 cards do a great job and are crisp. But, the drivers at least for the 805 cards I have really suck. I mean all you really have is a driver and a simple DOS refresh app to change refresh modes. You have to run the app every time you boot and check off the modes you want too. The app has no switches and you can't add it to the autoexec to do that for you. There's probably something else out there that can handle this issue but I really didn't bother looking into it.

 

The ATI Mach32 scored lower in the benchmarks but wow is it a crisp display! All of the games I have tried feel exactly the same as the other cards but with a much crisper display and better color tones. The drivers here are fantastic. Not only do they provide tools to really test every aspect of the card (ram, modes, eeprom, etc) but you can actually flash the refresh rate you want this to boot with to EEPROM. I would imagine that could be dangerous if you chose something so out of whack that the monitor would not come on afterward. I am not sure if there is a failsafe way to "return to stock". But, its really great. I set the default to 72Hz and my monitor is happy and stuff is really crisp and smooth. 

 

I think I am done here. The Mach32 is staying. I know there are reports of some DOS compatibility issues (like a scrolling bug in Keen) but I think I can live without that game in order to enjoy the wonderful display output that this card provides. Windows 3.11 running at 1024x768 with 16M colors never looked so good btw. Lots of desktop space...lol!

 

 

[wierd_w]

A lot of this is because the VGA font comes from the video ROM.  There are utilities to upload a different one into the CGA/EGA video memory, and tell dos to use it--- (there were some CGA cards that lacked a proper 80col mode, and this was the software fix, IIRC)

 

Refresh rate though I can totally get behind. 

 

My Trident 9440 had very crisp looking graphics, but the refresh rate control left much to be desired.  The next step in the upgrade path I took was an ATI RagePro II, paired with a TV tuner and a 3DFX voodoo II.  (though these were PCI).  The refresh control was much better with the ATI card.

 

 

Edited March 24, 2022 by wierd_w

[Keatah]

In the DX2 days I never payed attention to 2D benchmarks. I always rather assumed everything was processor dependent.

 

Also never payed attention to image quality. I was so busy with the wonders of DOS 6.20 and Windows 3.1. To say nothing of the exploding firehose software library - which was quite different from the clogged straw I was experiencing on the Amiga.

 

I also knew LCDs were around the corner, perfect geometry and sharpness would soon be at hand.
 

Furthermore I knew I couldn’t afford anything better than the 1MB CL-GD5422 I so laboriously saved for. So I suppose any benchmark chasing would’ve been futile.

 

Just happy to have experienced so many of this DOS games firsthand!

 

[Keatah]

I would totally get swept away with benchmarks and fractions of a MHz during the Pentium IV era. A time I’m all too happy to forget!

[wierd_w]

By the PIII era, I had been victimized by the downsizing of the dot-com bubble bursting, and was relegated to the role of "free family babysistter" for several years. (GAK).

 

I kinda stopped caring about things for quite awhile until I got gainfully employed again, but by then, I lacked the convenient "employee discount" I used to enjoy for parts.  I was even more frugal on my purchases, and have been on the "Somebody discarded it, but it is still fully servicable" path basically ever since.  I occasionally splurge, but do so with the intent of the modern "computers can legitimately last 10 years now, who ever would have figured?" reality that now exists.

 

A friend of mine is/was a janitor, and was working for a city hall of a medium-ish sized midwestern city (in another state).  He would dumpster pick when they did upgrades. Lots of P3 and P4 boards and chips that way.  While he no longer does the city hall gig (because it was toxic AF,) I still did the "generally second-hand" route all the way up into the i3-i7 era, before I started doing the "splurge then wait" cycle I am on now, when I splurged on an i7, and sat on it for a very long time, before splurging again about a year ago.

 

I fully expect my AMD Ryzen 5950x splurge to last me about that long, before it becomes "low range" again.

 

(now I just need the crypto morons to stop driving up GPU prices, so I can invest in a vastly needed replacement for my GTX 960... Without having to sell several vital internal organs to pay the current retail price.)

 

 

[zzip]

10 hours ago, eightbit said:

Well, I learned something about VLB cards today. Going by benchmarks really gets you nowhere.

 

You can bench one card and the benchmark score could be several points ahead of another card. But that does not mean you actually see that performance (or feel it) anywhere else. When it comes to just playing games like Doom and so on, well, all of the VLB cards I had tested feel the same and do a great job.

These cards have various levels of accelerated draws, blits, etc.   But you need the Windows drivers to take advantage.   Most games don't implement accelerated draws for specific cards so the only performance gain is the increased bandwidth of the VLB bus.   So I suppose it's not surprising that DOS games perform about the same

[Keatah]

14 hours ago, wierd_w said:

By the PIII era, I had been victimized by the downsizing of the dot-com bubble bursting, and was relegated to the role of "free family babysistter" for several years. (GAK).

During the P3 and P4 eras I splurged a-left and a-right! Complete contrast to saving weeks and months to get a 14.4 modem. Let alone a hard disk - which was why DoubleSpace, affliction or not, was a godsend.

 

A P4 I made ran me nearly $5,000. Partly because "early adopter" of premium parts, and partly because the Myoda sales guy took so much advantage of me. Not sure how I let that happen.

 

But so many other things made the P4 times quite lousy and unmemorable. The constant back-n-forth between AMD and Intel was in full swing and quite annoying. And it really became fatiguing chasing benchmarks. And that's all these magazines back then was compare benchmarks and make you feel bad if you had hardware older than 6 months. Ugh..!

 

14 hours ago, wierd_w said:

I occasionally splurge, but do so with the intent of the modern "computers can legitimately last 10 years now, who ever would have figured?" reality that now exists.

Today I will also occasionally spend big, but it is nice to see that CPUs I purchased in 2019 are still relevant, usable, even desirable if coming at them from a "last-year's tech" budget view.

 

14 hours ago, wierd_w said:

(now I just need the crypto morons to stop driving up GPU prices, so I can invest in a vastly needed replacement for my GTX 960... Without having to sell several vital internal organs to pay the current retail price.)

I've been seeing some titles of youtube vids saying the GPU market is collapsing, or about to collapse, with many boards approaching MSRP or even going below it. Search "GPU scalp" or just "GPU price".

 

I have yet to actually try and buy a GPU this year. And not sure why that's happening. Crypto fallout/churn? Mid-range is good enough? Intel entering the market?

[Keatah]

6 hours ago, zzip said:

These cards have various levels of accelerated draws, blits, etc.   But you need the Windows drivers to take advantage.

That's absolutely right. I was doing Windows 3.1 when this state of affairs arose. And I didn't care. I just wanted billions of colors on-screen at once. So I was just thrilled to see the hundreds and thousands of .GIFS (The creator of the GIF standard died yesterday) in full color, at 1024x768, or 800x600, on something other than the Amiga.

 

Even more thrilled I was able to have transferred them via a bare wire "cable" I taped and press-fit together. So proud of myself on that one.

 

If there's one thing I dislike about modern graphics cards and drivers IS the drivers. I suppose it all started around the TNT2/Voodoo time. Having certain driver revisions run so much better than others was an annoyance. We still this today when nVidia talks about which AAA game received improvements in performance with driver revision xxx.xxx. And driver sets are now approaching 1GB in size!

 

6 hours ago, zzip said:

Most games don't implement accelerated draws for specific cards so the only performance gain is the increased bandwidth of the VLB bus.   So I suppose it's not surprising that DOS games perform about the same

When trying out other more expensive 16-bit ISA graphics boards, I noticed at best a 2-4 FPS variance in speeds. Quickly seeing minimal change I began focusing on CPU. I was surprised at the headroom even a lowly CL-GD5422 had. Going from a 50MHz DX2 to a P90 resulted in double the framerate in Descent. Maybe more?

[eightbit]

Well look what I got. A big box of e-waste for $70

 

The Diamond Stealth64 in there is what really caught my eye. I know that's worth more than $70. And, after testing it and seeing that it is bar none the fastest card I have used to date in this system (scoring MUCH more in each benchmark category) well...yeah...the Mach32 is leaving. Not to mention I see the "tearing" bug that plagues Keen with that card in other things as well. I started to investigate the MS-DOS demo scene (which is awesome by the way) and a few of those demos just don't run right on the Mach32 with the same type of screen issues. On the S3 chips however they are perfect. Probably like someone else said the reason DOSBOX uses the S3 chip as a reference in that emulator....that is it's excellent DOS compatibility.

 

I didn't expect to get any more parts really but this seemed like a pretty good deal and there are some other cards I need in here too such as the AGP cards for some other systems, the firewire card (I use that for my good old DV camcorder and all of the tapes I have from my first kid's birth and early years), and some wireless N cards I needed. There's a super long Tseng ISA video card here too that looks interesting. So most of this other stuff will have its use as well. 

 

Not pictured is a brand new sealed "Hi-Val" ISA PnP Soundblaster compatible video card the guy threw in as well. Not sure what I will do with that but its cool to have something like that sealed...even if it was just a budget clone sound card.

 

 

Edited March 25, 2022 by eightbit

[eightbit]

Speaking of the MS-DOS demo scene by the way....it is something I never investigated. I have always loved the art of demos. I was a member of a few demo groups back in the C64 and Amiga era (Entity, Elixir, Awesome) and I never really even knew there was a really active MS-DOS PC demo scene (although I should have known):

 

https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?type[0]=demo&platform[0]=MS-Dos&page=1&order=thumbpig

 

Second Reality by Future Crew is really an amazing demo. There are so many more that I have been trying in recent days. AND, I found that 16MB is actually not enough to play some of these today with one of the demos requiring 18.9MB. So, the 486 is back to 32MB of memory now just so that I can enjoy these.

 

 

Edited March 25, 2022 by eightbit

[wierd_w]

15 hours ago, zzip said:

These cards have various levels of accelerated draws, blits, etc.   But you need the Windows drivers to take advantage.   Most games don't implement accelerated draws for specific cards so the only performance gain is the increased bandwidth of the VLB bus.   So I suppose it's not surprising that DOS games perform about the same

 

Yes and no.  Duke3D specifically uses VESA mode calls, which call either the card's rom handler, or univbe. (Warcraft II also uses vesa modes, but calls univbe to be sure a vesa handler is ALWAYS present. Duke just makes blind vesa calls. Quake I think, also makes vesa calls for higher res. Doom is too old, and does mode X, as does Heretic, IIRC.)

 

Assuming the driver servicing the call is written right, 2D acceleration should be in play.

 

The bigger issue is/was getting data into the card. This was before bus arbitration, so the CPU had to do that lifting. The cards could not bus master, nor DMA that data.

Edited March 25, 2022 by wierd_w

[Keatah]

Love the red VIA-based 1394 card. These were the ones I had the most success with.

 

Nice e-waste pile. So which graphics chip are you keeping in this build?

Edited March 25, 2022 by Keatah

[zzip]

8 hours ago, wierd_w said:

 

Yes and no.  Duke3D specifically uses VESA mode calls, which call either the card's rom handler, or univbe. (Warcraft II also uses vesa modes, but calls univbe to be sure a vesa handler is ALWAYS present. Duke just makes blind vesa calls. Quake I think, also makes vesa calls for higher res. Doom is too old, and does mode X, as does Heretic, IIRC.)

 

Assuming the driver servicing the call is written right, 2D acceleration should be in play.

 

The bigger issue is/was getting data into the card. This was before bus arbitration, so the CPU had to do that lifting. The cards could not bus master, nor DMA that data.

Yeah towards the end of the DOS gaming era you had the VESA stuff.  You're right DOS games couldn't even easily get high resolutions,  since SVGA wasn't an actual industry standard and it just meant "better than VGA" with each manufacturer implementing their own SVGA modes.   VESA unified all that.   But a lot of games were switching to Win9x by that point.