Bringing up a Pentium system...

[Chuck(G)]

Yes, Vodoo and some other early 3D video cards only did 3D - the 2D portion required you to use another card and hook up a pass thru. I had an Encore DVD card that let you play DVDs on a machine as slow as a 133 MHz Pentium. How can a 133 Mhz Pentium decode DVDs without dropped frames or slowdowns? Well it had a special add-in card that did the MPEG2 decoding in hardware. It also thus needed a pass-thru. Strange times.

At one time, this was the only (legal) way to play DVDs on a computer, as the decoding algorithm was treated as secret and proprietary by an industry consortium calling itself DVD CSS.

The remainder of the story is a fascinating story filled with lawyers, judges and hackers.

 

[Raven]

I have three of those decoder cards and not one of the special cables needed to use them.

I really want to toss one in my hotrod Pentium system - plus it'd be amusing since it's already AGP 2x Matrox G250 -> Voodoo 2, so it'd have dual passthroughs then.. xD

 

[commodorejohn]

So here's an idle question - I'd like to tweak the BIOS so that it doesn't reject non-Intel CPUs (I've got an AMD K6 and a couple Cyrix MIIs it'd be fun to try out.) I figure if I trace things from boot in a disassembly, it can't be too far in, hopefully, and I can dike out the relevant instructions and re-flash it. The problem is, the ROM image for the BIOS update, used with Intel's iflash.exe utility, is divided into four BIN files (three 64KB files and one 40KB,) four REC files (correspondingly-sized,) and one RCV file (16KB,) and I can't figure out where the initial BIOS segment (F000:0000-FFFF) is in these. If I look at that segment on the actual computer, via DEBUG, I see an AMIBIOS header, but that's nowhere to be found in the ROM files. I don't think they're encrypted, since there's copyright notices sprinkled throughout, but there's no other text visible.

Is there a good guide to Pentium-era BIOS hacking out there? How does iflash.exe's file format work? Is what's provided the complete BIOS, or is there another, non-flashable part that's what's mapped in the F000 segment?

This isn't vitally important, but it would be nice.

 

[Neon_WA]

I can't seem to upgrade higher than 133mhz on mine though but otherwise it's still a good box.

Interesting that the screen shot lists as Pentium MMX
or is it a faster MMX Pentium under-clocked on the board?

 

[SpidersWeb]

Could also be using the mobile/low power version, was available as 133 MMX.

 

[Unknown_K]

I have three of those decoder cards and not one of the special cables needed to use them.

I really want to toss one in my hotrod Pentium system - plus it'd be amusing since it's already AGP 2x Matrox G250 -> Voodoo 2, so it'd have dual passthroughs then.. xD

I still have my Sigma Designs Hollywood+ with cable around here somewhere. The passthrough cable is kind of crappy so if you do high resolution on the primary video card the output is fuzzy.

Lots of Pentium 1 based Thinkpads (76x, 77x) could also decode DVD with a built in DSP chip and an external dongle cabe to rca/svhs output to a tv.

 

[twolazy]

Yep! Mine even has tv out, and joystick connections, 166mmx. 365XLD. Very similar to the 760 line. If anyone is looking for either cable let me know , I have a spare of each.