wierd_w

Once, LOOONG ago, I scored myself a VFX-1 headset. (sadly, no longer have it.) The interface board for the VFX-1 used an IDC header cable to connect with the vesa feature connector of your video card, and is how it tapped into the video signal to generate the stereoscopic view. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VFX1_Headgear Here you can see the VIP card, with the mated pair connector, which you connect to the vesa feature connector on the video card. I hope this answers your question.

for troublesome supports, I will model a support I am "happier with" directly in the model, and leave a small air gap so that the support acts a little like a raft. the amount of air gap depends on the layer height you intend to use. It should be between 2 and 3 layers of air gap. This allows the plastic in the nozzle to still make contact with the surface, but it does not "spread" like a normal layer, and makes only very weak contact. It is sufficient to supply support for subsequent layers, which WILL stick together, but the weak contact with the support lets the support snap off/pop off. I usually only bake-in supports like that, if there are features that I absolutely must not have material generated inside of-- deep holes, or living hinges, for example. Some slicers will allow you to set this kind of air gap yourself with the autogenerated supports. I think the latest version of Cura supports this, but it is an experimental (eg, hidden-- you have to turn it on manually) option. https://support.ultimaker.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012612779-Support-settings

I have done some initial testing with win32s on win3.11 as concerns WinAmp. While older versions "start", they cannot actually PLAY my test MP3. It could be that my MP3 is too modern though. (too hgh bitrate) I will try a lower bitrate one, and see if it still balks. Edit: Nope. Fairly sure it is trying to call directsound libraries, and cant actually find/use them in 3.x. Just use winplay3.

As pointed to-- winplay3 is a very lightweight MP3 player for win3x, that was designed with 486 in mind.

memory is fuzzy. been a very long time--- I think early versions will run in 3x with the win32s pack installed. I could test to see... the tool for 3x is winplay3. https://www.rarewares.org/rrw/winplay3.php

A DX50 (with the 50mhz bus) could do mp3 with a good soundcard. Winamp would do it on such a system if you turned off the visualizer.

I recall my old boss (who ran the mom&pop I worked for back then) was obsessed with benchmark scores. (the vast sums of money he spent on hardware to 'have the best' was sickening.) I was more interested in 'best for best price'. Its not like I got paid a lot back then. The 9440 was decent enough, with a built-in blitter. A proper vesa driver that leveraged the blitter took a lot of strain off the CPU, even if the raw pixel pushing power was lower. It was enough for the games of the era, and did not break the bank. For me at least, its the more nostalgic experience; you dont do a retro build for raw power. (and with the current pricing, its the same price|performance trade all over again!)

'5pts better' seems to be the margin for a lot of things from that era, yeah. One of the reasons I was fine with my old 9440.

Vga museum shows a nearly identical card with a 9440-AGi QFP... When it shows up, see what SDD says it is. You might get lucky? The 9440 was much better than the 9400. I DO note that the opposite ram bank is populate in the vga museum image. Reading the chip markings could give an idea of what ram it expects there, if you do the 2mb upgrade.

Looks like a Trident TGUI9400CX, based on the fccid? Very similar to this card: https://www.ebay.com/itm/124438616934 Preliminary research suggests it does not have/has shitty VESA bios. Will need the free Scitech Display Doctor to do vesa mode games.

This one is reasonably priced... but sadly 3.3v https://www.ebay.com/itm/125121739490?hash=item1d21d63ae2:g:vWIAAOSwOpFh8ysE This cyrix one is 5v though. https://www.ebay.com/itm/133050242660?hash=item1efa699664:g:pGkAAOSw1rpcMWLl

The image of the mobo suggests it is 3.3v capable, yeah... Did they get clever, and call it "cyrix 486/DX2" or something? (the DX2-V66 versions of the cyrix Cx486 were 3.3v)

Is this by chance, the missing regulator? It is not a full interposer, it is some specialty regulator circuit for certain SIS and ECS equipped motherboards from the era. However, it might be what you need, given your board is an SIS one. If nothing else, it is the necessary circuitry to regulate the needed voltages. It could be bastardized with a custom made PCB to get you the components and circuitry you need. *edit Nope. That regulator wont just bolt on, sadly. It could be used to fabricate an interposer, but thats about it. Those regulator interposers are basically unobtainium these days, sadly.

It was universal, yes. As I recall, my dad got a bunch of WYSE systems out of a dumpster from his workplace, after they did an upgrade. Several 286 systems, and I think, 2 386 systems. They were very oddball systems, that were basically a system-on-board coupled with a dumb backplane in a proprietary case. This ram expansion card was tucked away inside one of them, and it was put to better use in my 486. (edit -- Googled to see if I could find the beast-- got a hit on ebay.) Bizzaro system-on-board PC had this as the compute board. Admittedly, those 30pin simms, with their maximum of 16bits wide access (via 16bit ISA bus), were a bottleneck for sure. However, it meant the difference between some games that needed the additional ram running, or not running. (and I had surplus 30pin) I scored a few EGA cards, and some other odds and ends from that dumpster salvage special-- Cooked one of the better looking 386 systems into a clunker for my older sister, who was pining for a computer but could not afford one. "Obsolete but free" was a deal she was willing to accept. I remember that I loaded it up with Commander Keen, and some other odds and ends, and that my nephew really loved playing on it.

I had such a board back then also. Some variant of a BocaRam card. Got it second hand, as I recall. had 30 pin SIMM slots on it. Vaguely similar to this card.

I think I used Trident cards back then. Trident 9440, as I recall, but I dont think it looked like this one... Oh well I forget if Diamond had any VLB cards or not... Yeah, looks like there were Stealth64 cards in VLB, as well as Power9000. Looks like there *WAS* a VLB version of Mach64 from ATI. Anyway, in the 486 era, I rocked that 9440 VLB, until I upgraded to a pentium with PCI-- then upgraded to an ATI Rage Pro, then a TNT-2.

I only ever used these at school. I was riding the PC bandwagon very early on, simply because it is what I had. (was a little kid at the time. Not much choice in what my folks bought.) Dad had a Tandy, then an IBM PCjr, which kicked it around until about 1993. Got a 486 after mom finally relented to my endless pleas. Apple machines were things I felt I could have used at home (because the school's software ecosystem was very standardized on apple products), but it was never to be. I do remember playing some fun games on the Apple 2GS systems in the computer lab though.

Ok.. @Keatah Yes. Its just not loading them high. Also, insufficient UMB free. Suggest using ctmouse instead. It will all fit if you do. needed changes in bold. Config.sys EVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS /V /TESTMEM:OFF DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM I=B000-B7FF V M3 BUFFERS=4,2 FILES=20 DOS=UMB LASTDRIVE=Z FCBS=4,0 DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\DMDRVR.BIN DOS=HIGH BREAK=ON STACKS=9,256 REM DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\MOUSE.SYS DEVICEHIGH /L:2,35776 =C:\DOS\DBLSPACE.SYS /MOVE DEVICEHIGH /L:1,9072 =C:\DOS\ANSI.SYS DEVICEHIGH /L:1,13904 =C:\SB16\DRV\SBCD.SYS /D:MSCD001 /P:220 rem devicehigh=c:\dos\ramdrive.sys 10000 128 /e rem device=c:\dos\interlnk.exe /LPT Autoexec.bat @ECHO OFF PROMPT $P$G PATH C:\DOS;C:\WINDOWS;C:\NU;C:\ SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6 SET SOUND=C:\SB16 SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E SET TEMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP C:\DOS\SBSET /VOC:220 /MIDI:220 /CD:180 /M:215 /BASS:220 /TREBLE:157 /OPGAIN:4 C:\SB16\SBCONFIG /S /D LH /L:2,23456 C:\SB16\DRV\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001 /V /M:25 /E /l:g LH /L:0;2,45456 /S C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE A+ B+ 1024 768 /V /N LH C:\DOS\CTMOUSE.EXE DBLSPACE /RATIO /ALL MEM /c showtime WIN

It does, but I find it also just decides some things should not be loaded high for no apparent reason. Sometimes just changing the order things get loaded helps too.

let me see the new config.sys and autoexec.bat I want to see if memmaker simply decided to not load stuff high.

OK, just try a simple move of the pageframe. Instead of M9 make it M3 DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM I=B000-B7FF V M3 That will move it from E000 to C800, which is the next unallocated block after the video bios (which is present). That will likely change the way DOS loads stuff high, and let smartdv load completely high, especially after running memmaker. (see for instance, how my virtual machine refused to load the cdrom driver high until I moved the pageframe.)

Any version of MSD will work. Needs to be loaded with no memory managers though to get a good view of the memory map. No hurries on it or anything. Whenever you get around to it.

I would need to see a picture of his memory map, but I suspect that his ram allocation gets fragmented because of the placement of the pageframe. I suspect that if he moved it to the bottom, say C000, (or C800, if there is a vga rom-- need to see that memory map!!), then ran memmaker, he could get smartdrv entirely into upper memory.

Need to see the memory map. Is this legit DOS 6.22? If so, load it after pressing F5 on bootup, and check out the memory map for me. Need to see what your UMB region looks like. (though, with what I am seeing there, it looks like your system has a very nice, and uncomplicated adapter region. Nothing of any major importance could be in there, if you have that much in UMB. ) The location of the pageframe might be problematic. Is there a specific reason you have it at E000? Strangely enough, I have found that having the page frame BELOW the dos UMBs, lets DOS handle them better. (for example, the trial and error I went through with the VM I did the primer with.) Putting it at C000 (if it is free) might let you load smartdv entirely into UMB. Adittionally, if you want to get RECKLESS-- there is an old vintage package called DOSMAX, that will relocate parts of the DOS kernel and parts of the DOS environment (Stacks, Files, etc..) into the UMB area, and claw back ~5kb. Like this: That VM has the SB16 drivers, atapi driver, MSCDEX and a mouse driver, all living in UMB, with less available than your system does. (though I see you are using the monochrome video memory region for UMBs.... Naughty. Play an old hercules monochrome game, and that system will lock up hard.)

Ahh, the 3rd party version of the Intel Overdrive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486_OverDrive