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Post by Tom Maneiro on Nov 19, 2005 11:22:27 GMT -5
And now, some action pics of Windows 95 on the "bare minimun": My actual desktop (Note, that yellow doubledecker bus is not a school bus!)Now running something serious: GenRomSuite 2.8.2! VB apps seems to run fine there, although painfully slow due to the lack of a big RAM. Also, it is almost useless since there are no Genesis/MD emulator that can run on a 386 (at least on my 386), so it only can be used to edit and patch ROMs (untested yet due to bad floppies!). Credits scroll fine, but it takes at least 10 minutes to load! (normal machine load these in 30-50 seconds, using slow VB routines). BasiEgaXorz does not run due to a missing MSVCRT.DLL, required by CMCS21.OCX. I will retry soon, since after a failed Office 97 install i got that damn DLL. It should run, but it will be almost useless, again because there are no emulator to test programs. (you may want to point that in the BEX FAQ)
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Post by GiGaBiTe on Nov 22, 2005 16:43:02 GMT -5
theres a notoriously bad emulator called megasis (the ym2612 and vdp are extremely glitchy) i have gotten it to run at full speed on a p90, and im sure it will run on something like your 386.
i lost the link ages ago, but im sure the page still exists, just do a search for it.
i also had a dos emulator, but i dont even know what its called anymore that runs on something incredibly slow.
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Dec 2, 2005 16:43:18 GMT -5
I managed to found a camera cellphone with MMS support, and took some crappy photos of the real thing. Now there are, the first live action shots of my 386 box! (Sponsored by Nokia, their cameras sucks like no other! ) The machine with another fancy bus as wallpaper (UPDATED!) Inside the box, the I/O card is on the top, that fancooler is from the 386Blurry shot of a authentic Am386SX/SXL-33. Raw power, baby!Closeup of the HMC I/O board. This sucker costs $225 today, but it got it for free...I/O board plus processor with fancooler (and lots of adhesive tape), Dallas RTC chip, 80c42 keyboard chip, 64K BIOS (covered by the serial port cable), and 80387 FPU socketExtreme closeup of memory banks: 2MB on board and FOUR 1MB 30-pin SIMMsFront without cover. I put a extra external 12V-5V connector to use it as a external supply for my wacky experiments with stuff (it was for the second HD, but i got no luck with the I/O card)Running Scandisk... personal note: NEVER, EVER remove the case from a working PC without shutdown first! This monitor can show up to 1024x768x16(?) bit color.Running GRUB from a super-boot-floppy. Ready for Linux?and even MORE pics! (again, sponsored by crap Nokia cams)UPDATE: more picz.
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oompa loompa
I AM THE GOVERNATOR
"Git 'Er Dun!"
Posts: 1,301
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Post by oompa loompa on Dec 2, 2005 19:10:54 GMT -5
not gonna get any good pictures because the focal length of the lens was made for pictures far away . nice computer though =D, that's really pushing a 386. you gotta get more ram, since you're probably using an overwhelmingly amount of virtual memory. i think i have a buncha 4mb and 1mb 30 pin simms, but they're for macs (no parity), since i was gonna use them for some homebrew dram projects
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Dec 2, 2005 19:15:25 GMT -5
nah, just 8-16 megs of pagefile...
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Dec 6, 2005 8:18:16 GMT -5
Yesterday i managed to solve the BIG low mem problems... sort of ;D
I mentioned earlier in another thread that in my university we have a lab full of old computer pieces (ISA cards, 286 boards, 30-pin SIMMz). They lent me about 30 30-pin SIMMs, unknown size. These resulted to be 1MB SIMMs, and even after everybody have touched these with no ESD protection, i got only 4 damaged sticks. Now i have 6MB on my machine, plus 2 replacement sets of 4 sticks each one.
Now i got something strange: when i install more than 4MB of RAM, machine "steals" 384 KB for something called "Shadow RAM", while if i have less RAM, it uses 144K for unknown purposes (DOS base mem?). So i got either 5760K or 3952K for boot into Windows. I checked in the BIOS, and while i can shadow BIOS into RAM, i did not enabled that. Why is this happening? I want my 384K back to Windows!
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oompa loompa
I AM THE GOVERNATOR
"Git 'Er Dun!"
Posts: 1,301
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Post by oompa loompa on Dec 7, 2005 22:29:18 GMT -5
if you're not using any legacy programs, like those made for the 8086, it is safe to turn off all shadow ram, and shadow vram from the bios
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Dec 8, 2005 8:19:22 GMT -5
The problem is, although i have it off in the BIOS, it remains on for that 384KB chunk...
In other news, my 5.25" floppy drives are experiencing certain problems: i found a bunch of old floppies, started to do some SpinRite on these, and then, poof! floppy drive started to fail. It refuses sometimes to read even good floppies! (yes, i have sane 5.25" floppies there) What it could be? Dirt heads? Magnetism? Or just bad luck? I just want to recover some data (i got three SEALED, UNUSED Windows/286 install sets ($$$), and some BTOS disks)
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Post by jlf65 on Dec 8, 2005 12:52:39 GMT -5
Could just be dirty. Those old floppy drives needed cleaning quite a bit. I had both 5.25" and 3.5" cleaning disks and used them regularly. Had to use one just a month ago on the 3.5" in my current system. I don't clean very often now because I rarely use floppies anymore. I haven't had a file that fit on a floppy in YEARS!. ;D
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Dec 8, 2005 19:47:50 GMT -5
A good Genesis ROM fits into a 1.44MB floppy, zipped, but not the emulator. It's fun to load ROMs from floppies, it's like using a oldskool dumper.
And, hey, thanks! the head cleaning did the trick! I disassemblied both floppy drives, and did a MASSIVE cleanup (the Chinon drive was easy, but the Mitsumi was a real challenge, it failed after cleanup, so it required more intensive cleaning) with q-tips, alcohol, and oxygenated water (the magic of the H2O2!).
I checked the local auction site (MercadoLibre.com.ve), and only found a Chinon drive for sale, very expensive (about $20). Cleaning the Mitsumi drive was very fun, it's easy to dissasembly, very well designed, but a nightmare to get it working OK...
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Post by GiGaBiTe on Dec 8, 2005 21:43:14 GMT -5
uhm, its actually called hydrogen peroxide, heh.
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Post by jlf65 on Dec 8, 2005 23:40:48 GMT -5
You sure take your cleaning seriously. I don't think I've ever taken a floppy apart to clean it. Good to hear that took care of it. I guess putting a rom image on a floppy would be like the good old days when games came on floppies. I have a BIG box full of Atari games (on 5.25") and another of Amiga games (3.5"). I guess I probably spent a few thousand bucks on them back when I got them, and now they're worth about $5. ;D I love it when I see ads in the paper for someone trying to sell there 386 for $3000. Maybe they paid that much for it when it was new, but now it's only worth maybe $10.
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Dec 9, 2005 9:02:39 GMT -5
I've developed a strange routine with the Mitsumi drive to read floppies: it reads 3 or 4 disks, then, the dreaded "can't read sector zero":
0 Take a good floppy 1 Insert and try to read. Got error 2 Remove, reinsert, remove, reinsert, ..., reinsert 3 Insert and try to read. Read sucessful. 4 Take a fuxored/damaged/crappy floppy 5 GOTO 1
What i can do now with 50 5.25" floppies? Anyone wants a SEALED, NEVER-USED Unisys-branded Windows/286 copy? It could raise some $$$ on eBay or MercadoLibre....
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oompa loompa
I AM THE GOVERNATOR
"Git 'Er Dun!"
Posts: 1,301
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Post by oompa loompa on Dec 9, 2005 11:48:56 GMT -5
i had a version of windows 386 (like version 1.0 or something), and i tossed it away =D
i was gonna say, i burned up one of my floppy disk controllers back when i had a 486, and i was formatting disks for mac computers using some special program from the internet =P
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Post by jlf65 on Dec 9, 2005 16:41:40 GMT -5
I've got a nice copy of Windows 3.0, but my pride and joy is a copy of OS2/Warp vers.3. It comes on 21 3.5" floppies. I got it at St. Vincent DePaul for $5. ;D
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