Sarissi Posted December 20, 2004 Report Share Posted December 20, 2004 reb2, I happen to love my Sound Blaster PCI 128. Unfortunately, onboard sound/MIDI, even disabled, seems mess up the SB card's MIDI. Unfortunately, my old MSDOS games require a real SB card, and those so-called compatibles just don't work (addresses and such are not correct for SB). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted December 20, 2004 Report Share Posted December 20, 2004 afaik floppy controllers are seperate from the IDE controllers, and nearly all mobos would have one. ....besides, what do you need a floppy drive for anyway? could always just spend a few dollars and get a usb flash drive or sd card and reader. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted December 21, 2004 Report Share Posted December 21, 2004 Disabling stuff in the BIOS doesn't affect Linux, as it basically ignores what the BIOS tells it and probes hardware itself - if you've got onboard sound, Linux will see it. As for old DOS games - run 'em in dosemu or dosbox! They can play just about anything between them. (I play Doom competitively and rules stipulate the original .exe file must be used - I run the original Doom .exes in dosemu in a vconsole with the -V -k options, sound and mouse support configured in the dosemu config file. It runs flawlessly, perfect sound; much better than WinXP is capable of running the same .exes. This is the best way to do DOS games, running them via xdosemu within X doesn't work as well.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted December 21, 2004 Report Share Posted December 21, 2004 Disabling stuff in the BIOS doesn't affect Linux, as it basically ignores what the BIOS tells it and probes hardware itself - if you've got onboard sound, Linux will see it. As for old DOS games - run 'em in dosemu or dosbox! They can play just about anything between them. (I play Doom competitively and rules stipulate the original .exe file must be used - I run the original Doom .exes in dosemu in a vconsole with the -V -k options, sound and mouse support configured in the dosemu config file. It runs flawlessly, perfect sound; much better than WinXP is capable of running the same .exes. This is the best way to do DOS games, running them via xdosemu within X doesn't work as well.) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> BIOS can affect linux, such as if hardware is disabled in it and such, eg, onboard sound :) Linux cant see it when disabled Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted December 22, 2004 Report Share Posted December 22, 2004 iphitus: as sarissi posted, in most cases that just isn't true...even if you disable it in the BIOS, the Linux kernel will ignore what the BIOS says and find it itself. I think on some boards telling the BIOS to disable it actually makes some kind of genuine quasi-physical change which stops the kernel seeing the device, but I'm not clear on the details. sorry... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarissi Posted December 22, 2004 Report Share Posted December 22, 2004 The games I speak of only accept certain irqs (5 & 7), and certain address (ie 220H), and require a genuine Creative Soundblaster card. These games were out before Windows existed, even before the 80286 existed. Some before VGA (EGA and CGA games) existed. Old, legacy stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted December 23, 2004 Report Share Posted December 23, 2004 (edited) Like I said, run them in DosEMU or Dosbox. They both emulate a genuine Soundblaster card (since it's the most compatible thing), they look to the games like they have proper IRQ and addresses and everything. When you're emulating the entire OS, you can do neat tricks like that. :) BTW, my memory is a little hazy, but I'm fairly sure VGA and the 286 were around and established before the very first Sound Blaster card appeared. Before that came out, the market leading card was the Ad Lib (now that'll be REALLY stretching your memory...) Edited December 23, 2004 by adamw Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sapphiron Posted December 23, 2004 Report Share Posted December 23, 2004 Try a Abit KV-7 It should cost about R300 (south African Rands) thats about $40 it has all the new goodies as well (SATA RAID, optical 5.1 sound, 5 pci slots, onboard 100mb lan and up to 8x USB 2.0 (4 onboard and 4 by cables)) And I'm sure the other users will agree that abit is very good quality. Not some shakey brand like asrock or ECS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted December 24, 2004 Report Share Posted December 24, 2004 asrock isn't 'shakey', it's Asus' budget line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
james Posted January 1, 2005 Report Share Posted January 1, 2005 Just my 2 bits... ECS isnt shaky also. They are ISO certified and they do produce a lot of mobos. ECS mobos are not just overclock friendly. (For example, my current Sempron 2400+ can only reach 2 Ghz as the limit on the ECS KT600A mobo is 200 FSB). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarissi Posted January 1, 2005 Report Share Posted January 1, 2005 Overclocking reduces the life of the cpu and other hardware. RAM included. My approach depends on whether I am upgrading hardware, or, building a new computer. When upgrading, I go for the best mobo that suits my needs and that I can afford. It must also use my current cpu, RAM, and other hardware. If I am building a new one, then I may either go for the mobo or the cpu. I generally get one thing at a time, and there is no hurry. For my CGI box, there are higher specs to be met, and that will take longer to acquire due to higher prices on some things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urza9814 Posted January 1, 2005 Author Report Share Posted January 1, 2005 (edited) I ended up with a QDI KuDoz...seems good...I got no complaints...yet anyways :-P It's nice...and it's cheap, and in my experience, cheap stuff lasts as long as or longer than expensive stuff, so... :-P Like Dell...everyone says their tech support is the best...every time I've called them they've said it's a virus. EVERY time...lol Edited January 1, 2005 by Urza9814 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted January 2, 2005 Report Share Posted January 2, 2005 @sarissi: "Overclocking reduces the life of the cpu and other hardware. RAM included." No, it doesn't. The CPU couldn't give a fig what frequency it's being driven at, so far as its life expectancy goes. Same goes for RAM. What may affect them is the voltage at which they are driven, though even here the effects are likely to be trivial unless you really start jacking up the juice. Besides, CPU lifespans are huge anyway - we've got a 286 laptop at home that still works, and the last I heard of the 8088 desktop I started using when I was practically a baby, it was still working too. In fact every computer that's been in my family's household since I was a kid still works, except the motherboard I killed with a screwdriver once. I don't know where the idea that PCs are fragile little babies likely to die when you say 'boo' came from, they're more like hardy mountain goats in my experience... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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