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Topic: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95) (Read 2008 times) previous topic - next topic
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Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Hi there,

I have an old K6-2/350 with Win95b and want to use EAC to encode opus because it seems much better than vorbis/ogg which I used before. I downloaded the codec but it refuses to start "opusenc.exe" the later win32-versions seems to require a newer windows-version and the very old version starts but throughs some execution-errors at me. So is there a version of opus that can encode on my machine K6/win95? or are some additional dll's required for the very old opusenc.exe to start? (did not read that in the manual).

If opus will not work, what would you suggest as next best option?
Thx!

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #1 –
I'm not aware of any Win95 compiles of Opus, but I guess the AMD K6-2 is especially ill-suited for the task: It has a rather weak floating point unit, and its 3Dnow!-SIMD-extensions are very likely useless, as Opus doesn't have 3Dnow!-assembly. Opus-encoding may be horribly and unusably slow.

IMO, the next best option is sticking with Vorbis.

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #2 –
On opus codec, you can compile a encoder/decoder with fixed-point arithmetic only, as opposed to the usual floating-point version.
If you have trouble running the floating-point version, maybe fixed-point version can be worth giving it a try.
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,114284.msg941407.html#msg941407

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #3 –
Official opus-tools is dependent on wide char based Windows APIs that weren't present in Windows 95.
So you have to hack the source code and remove all the dependencies that didn't exist in Windows 95, and build binaries yourself. You need compiler toolchain that support targeting Windows 95 (Visual Studio 6... or  MinGW may be enough).  You also need things like cmake or GNU auto-tools (which implicitly requires Unix-like shell environment).
Most likely you need to cross compile from a different, modern environment.

Finally, why on the earth you want to *encode* on Windows 95?
You have an access to the internet now, so I bet you have an better option.

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #4 –
I'm far from sure this CPU is capable of decoding Opus in real time.

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Kamedo2 on
On opus codec, you can compile a encoder/decoder with fixed-point arithmetic only, as opposed to the usual floating-point version.
If you have trouble running the floating-point version, maybe fixed-point version can be worth giving it a try.
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,114284.msg941407.html#msg941407

requires a newer windows-version too.

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #6 –
Quote from: nu774 on
Official opus-tools is dependent on wide char based Windows APIs that weren't present in Windows 95.
So you have to hack the source code and remove all the dependencies that didn't exist in Windows 95, and build binaries yourself. You need compiler toolchain that support targeting Windows 95 (Visual Studio 6... or  MinGW may be enough).  You also need things like cmake or GNU auto-tools (which implicitly requires Unix-like shell environment).
Most likely you need to cross compile from a different, modern environment.

Finally, why on the earth you want to *encode* on Windows 95?
You have an access to the internet now, so I bet you have an better option.


I am a retro user, I have lot's of different machines but I tend to make use of old machines as much as possible. so I setup a machine and install software that makes it usefull as gaming/retro-emulation/office/multimedia machine, but I am not experienced in making a "building-environment", so I 'll have to stick to already compiled binaries/libraries.

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #7 –
Quote from: birdie on
I'm far from sure this CPU is capable of decoding Opus in real time.


that is an important information...so I will fallback to vorbis q4 which is better than mp3 at 128kb.
I use version 1.01 of vorbis (2004) I'll have to check if this supports the 3dnow/fpu extensions.
The actual encoding-speed is nearly 1.x in Q4. Files sound good on pc.

If there is no better option for smaller filesize with equal quality, I 'll stick to vorbis and the encoder-version I actuall use.
Because other ripping tools are hardcoded for cddb (wich is offline since 2020) I use EAC and configured the new GNU-DB.
This works on that machine quite good. I am only using the access to my NAS on that machine, no other ethernet is used.

thx guys!

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #8 –
If you are interested, this is the machine; https://youtu.be/7iVYgQYeCp0?si=wa6ALq0U8c5Tn9gK

I downclocked the CPU to 350Mhz in order to make the system more stable. I am looking forward to make a tutorial on how to setup quadboot including amiga-os 3.9 on such a PC.
Next thing is looking for the ultimate video-codec on that machine. mga can accelerate video-cd mpeg1 and I still have to option to put a hardware mpeg1 accelerator (rainbow-runner) on that mystique...but the cpu is fast enough, so perhaps no benefits using the rainbow-runner-addonbord. Divx is too slow, mpeg1 acceleration does not make things better for dvd/vob. Best video-quality has quicktime5 but there are lot's of dropping frames on 480p content like 007-trailer...so not a clear winner yet.

Thx guys.
Doc!

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #9 –
The easiest would probably to compile opus for DOS with djgpp like I did for FLAC here: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,123374.0.html

Performance would definitely suffer, because the executable would be 16-bit instead of 32-bit, but the should be possible without any changes to the code.
Music: sounds arranged such that they construct feelings.

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #10 –
thx, but I will fallback to ogg/vorbis. I have
oggenc.exe 259.584 08.06.2003
oggenc.exe 162.304 22.09.2004

Don't know what the difference is here, but I think I should make a thread within vorbis in how to find the best oggenc.exe for my setup.

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #11 –
A 350MHz K6-2 can run Windows XP. Sure, it's not as "retro" as Windows 95, but you'll be able to run more software that way.

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #12 –
Quote from: Octocontrabass on
A 350MHz K6-2 can run Windows XP. Sure, it's not as "retro" as Windows 95, but you'll be able to run more software that way.

I had a lot more issues with running Windows 9X software on XP than ever had running Windows XP software on Windows 7 or 10.

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #13 –
If I want a fast and responsive machine I'll have to stick to win95...

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #14 –
Windows XP is fast and responsive on a 350 MHz K6-2. I set up a PC just like that to rip CDs with EAC. (I didn't try opusenc, though.)

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #15 –
Those late 90's systems are suited to win 9x and W2k. 95B is the fastest, 98se/W2k would be the next step up with better
compatibility. You could run on 64-128mb 9x, 128-256 W2k,  256+ XP.  I used to have gateway2000 notebook celeron. I think it had 256mb ram.  Came with ME, But ran W2k very nicely. Not so good with XP and that system was newer than this K6-2.

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #16 –
Opus playback should not be a problem. It's capable of decoding using ~40MHz on weak fixed-point-only ARM chips.

The issue is getting it compiled in a way you can use, and hoping the compile was optimized well enough to perform OK on your machine.

There is an input plugin for Winamp 2.x which should do the job.

Alternatively, mpxplay has a DOS version which claims to support Opus.

I haven't tried either of the above myself.

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #17 –
Some common motherboard chipsets of that time (e.g. ALi Aladdin, VIA Apollo) may limit the reasonable
RAM size by their cacheable range. This can even be as little as 64 MB, 128 MB, xxx MB, depending on
the size of the onboard cache. Installing more RAM will then lead to a drop in (memory) performance if
a K6 or K6-2 without on-die L2 cache is used. The K6-2+ or K6-III(+) mitigate this, as they have an
integrated L2 cache.

Re: Opus on retro-machines (K6-2/Win95)

Reply #18 –
I would not consider Win2k to really be usable on that machine, even if I use fat32 instead of NTFS. Same for XP anyway. I already have checked that the 64MB cachable area is expanded to 128MB for that K6-2/CXT core. Beside getting an opus encoder and compatibility to ADTpro there is mostly nothing that brings things forward with a higher and much much slower OS. My keypoint is, finding the best software for a machine with a specific OS or you can call it"getting most out of the limitations without breaking them"... the hardware and the OS is safe on that machine, only the software/tools/games/media are the variables to play with. The mainboard does not support the (+) cores.