partner fell asleep so i gotta quietly move this stuff out of the living room ๐Ÿ˜„
for the VM route i guess i first need a SATA AHCI driver for the controller VirtualBox emulates and then another one post installation for the actual mobo. urgh
now making an ISO containing ICH8M driver using nLite...
"Don't contact Microsoft for troubleshooting nLited installations" dont tell me what to do!!
yes hello john microsoft. kindly fix my XP installation
man Disk Management sucks (on Windows 10)
progress!
The most dependable Windowsยฎ for business computing
wow theres installation music? i dont think ive ever had working audio at this point before

i believe i have the correct driver installed now but the Athlon machine will not boot from the SATA drive

fine. i will try IDE

Your computer will be faster and more reliable
VM-installed XP on an IDE drive gets a bit further, to the "Windows failed to start up" screen where it offers safe mode and such. but no luck from there, safe mode or not
in order to feel like i accomplished something before i go to bed i installed Debian 12. but i accidentally accepted the default GNOME install option. it takes several eternities to boot and runs at 1 frame per sometimes. lol
anyway sleep now, more suffering later
is this good
this is me trying to install FreeDOS to the IDE drive, which unlike SATA was at least detected. but.. yeah
i did the minimal install and that seems to have finished ok
i was internet-brainedly looking for a FreeDOS beginner's guide today but there is of course documentation built in
the next thing is to transfer files to the machine somehow. probably over USB or LAN. but im sleepy
okay USB just works, at least if i have the drive plugged in on boot. nice
learning about DOS reminds me of my networking classes back in the day. all these acronyms
i seemingly got SBEMU working but when i try running Doom with it, depending on DOS startup settings and SBEMU card type, it either crashes on launch or during gameplay. and in either case there is no sound
maybe i need a simpler sound test program..
VSBHDA doesnt crash but still no sound, in either Doom or legendary finnish game Wings
this *is* supposed to be one of the supported chipsets (VT8237). hmm
tried disabling the USB2.0 controller as it shares an IRQ with the onboard audio, but no difference

hmm some unresolved VT8237 issues here https://github.com/Baron-von-Riedesel/VSBHDA/issues/23

so maybe it just doesnt work

Not working on VT8237 (Asus mobo) ยท Issue #23 ยท Baron-von-Riedesel/VSBHDA

Even though the initialization is successful and the protected mode support is enabled, the PM app I am using to try the emulation is saying "Hardware init failure" and refuses to start. It is the ...

GitHub
not sure what the next thing to try from here would be. do i get a SB Live or Audigy for PCI?
remember when i owned a SB Live until less than a year ago? ๐Ÿ˜‚ https://anticapitalist.party/@ahihi/114428907529749496
pulusound (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image here is a tough one though. do i bring these PCI cards over to the new place just in case i might one day decide to get into retro non-mac PCs

ACP
(i am pretty sure we sold it, but not 100%)
moral of the story: never get rid of anything
since i dont have audio i might as well look into the AGP GPU flashing thing. it seems the system will not start up with the Radeon connected, or at least i get nothing from the onboard VGA
this is a problem because the AGP card's firmware is currently fucked, so it of course also gives no video
BIOS is configured to prioritize PCI graphics over AGP. not sure if that also is supposed to apply to the onboard graphics or if i actually need a separate PCI card
apparently i ordered a PCI GPU in december. tracking says "Last-mile supplier received" in january, unclear if there are supposed to be updates after this. i dont think i received it..
it is hard to rule out completely since everything is chaos around here but i cant find it in any of the obvious places at least
i ordered another very cheap ATI Rage XL PCI just in case. it was from a different ebay seller than the first one, but according to finnish post the sender was the same. today i received both cards. lol

the time has come to fuck around with DOS again

test 1: can i boot with either of the Rages (and no AGP card) installed

yes! both cards appear to be functional :)

test 2: can i boot with both a PCI and AGP card installed

yes!!

test 3: can i find my USB drive with the flashing files, and does atiflash see the AGP card

yes indeed. it says AT25F1024/C here but i know thats a lie
maybe we can make it less of a lie
the operation might be a success
dual wielding soldering irons was very helpful again :)
it looks like i can indeed write the full 128KB ROM ๐Ÿ‘€
G4 does not like it though
tried also the 136 ROM with similar results. hmm

i flashed a PC ROM to check that the card is not generally fucked. nope, works fine in the DOS machine

im pretty much out of ideas :/

there is still the question of this MF/SF switch thing.. but again, this does not exist on my card

HMM

this person mentions having to move some resistors under the heatsink https://68kmla.org/bb/threads/radeon-9000-pro-agp-flashing.51727/

Radeon 9000 Pro AGP Flashing

I was buying stuff from Japan a while back and threw in a cheap Radeon 9000 Pro AGP card. My half-baked plan was to steal its 3.3ns RAM and try to build the world's fastest Radeon 8500. I'm not up for that tedious (and probably pointless) of a project right now, but I wanted to do something with...

68kMLA
i am willing to give it a try but how the fuck do you figure out this kind of thing lol
mine are not labeled with numbers but i guess itd be these two in the center of the photo
i was not prepared for how tiny these resistors are
the good news is flux is magic and i may have succeeded
HOLY SHIT ITS REAL
@ahihi hooray, through all my wincing I was hoping youโ€™d get there in the end ๐Ÿ˜๐Ÿ’—๐ŸŽ‰โœŠ๐Ÿป
@ahihi male/female/san francisco
@ahihi also: doesn't exist and needs to? solder it! exists and doesn't need to? snip it!

@ozzelot yes. but nobody on the searchable internet appears to have an explanation for what the switch does

i already soldered a header onto an empty spot on the card which is located in basically the same spot as the MF/SF switch on other cards. but jumpering it has not had any effect. im not sure this is even connected to anything

@ahihi
You gotta give it a ginger little tug and say "that's not going anywhere" to be sure
@EndlessMason it definitely is not going anywhere. the question is whether i can make the card work