Something to match my Q3D X-24 and 200SB... Quantum Obsidian2 200SBi - that "i" on end means a lot because this one is not a "sandwich" solution but one long card...

(sellers photo)

keenerb wrote:

Not your average post. […]
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Not your average post.

Picked up an old late 90's server rack for my home lab. I need a Proliant 7000-series server to put in it to replicate my first "real" I.T. job...

serverrack.jpg

This was by FAR the most difficult retro purchase to get in the house...

Nice catch, got the same rack two years ago and had some problems getting it into the desired room as well. Had to detach the socket to get the rack upside in the room due to the low ceiling height.
Then had to install the socket again after the thing was upright.
Transport was easy due to the use of a trailer.

Won this auction for "Assorted Computer Components Lot".

Nowhere in the description did it say what they were actually selling, but I am pretty sure that's an Awe 32 PNP with some sort of add-on module. I'm not really sure what the add-on module is though.

It also includes a unknown Trident ISA VGA card. The third card is a bit of a mystery. There is no IO on it, but it seems to have an IDE or Floppy port on it. Maybe its an IDE or Floppy controller card?

I don't think anyone else really knew what they were selling, so I got a very good deal, assuming they all work.

The addon module is the Creative Waveblaster II (wavetable MIDI daughterboard). It's worth $70-100 alone and is kinda AWE32 in its own right making this setup a "true" AWE64 with 64 voices in hardware.

tegrady wrote:

Won this auction for "Assorted Computer Components Lot". […]
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Won this auction for "Assorted Computer Components Lot".

Nowhere in the description did it say what they were actually selling, but I am pretty sure that's an Awe 32 PNP with some sort of add-on module. I'm not really sure what the add-on module is though.

It also includes a unknown Trident ISA VGA card. The third card is a bit of a mystery. There is no IO on it, but it seems to have an IDE or Floppy port on it. Maybe its an IDE or Floppy controller card?

I don't think anyone else really knew what they were selling, so I got a very good deal, assuming they all work.

I actually spotted that and then forgot about it. 🤣 Showing my age. Great catch. Would like to hear back from you if it still works good, which I'm sure it will.

tegrady wrote:

Won this auction for "Assorted Computer Components Lot". […]
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Won this auction for "Assorted Computer Components Lot".

Nowhere in the description did it say what they were actually selling, but I am pretty sure that's an Awe 32 PNP with some sort of add-on module. I'm not really sure what the add-on module is though.

It also includes a unknown Trident ISA VGA card. The third card is a bit of a mystery. There is no IO on it, but it seems to have an IDE or Floppy port on it. Maybe its an IDE or Floppy controller card?

I don't think anyone else really knew what they were selling, so I got a very good deal, assuming they all work.

I belive that the controller card is a Creative model for ATAPI CD-ROM drives. At least, I have one that looks very much like that, and it's quite flexible in terms of how you can set the addesses. Those types of carsd are really useful on pre-pentium machines that only have 1 IDE channel.

Ordered an Intel Advanced/ML motherboard (430HX chipset) today, gonna get it somewhere within a week:

I've been working on a multi soundcard build for a while now. In short: I want a system that will be useful for most games that can benefit from MT-32, SC-55, GUS PnP and AWE32. I originally tried a DX4 build and a P60 build, but both turned out to be too slow for Windows 95 (which I need for AWE32 and soundfonts). An obvious choice would be some sort of a Socket 7 machine, but at this point I consider it too boring.

The Intel board seems pretty interesting to me. It's a less common chipset (as compared to 430TX), a form-factor that will allow me to use a cheap PS/2 KVM and a working turbo function (via keyboard shortcuts). Intel's manual states that this board will work at "AT 23MHz system" speed in turbo, but that will need some benchmarking. Second option would be to put something like a 133-166 MHz non-MMX Pentium and just disable L1 and L2 cache. According to Phil that would be enough to run Wing Commander 1 at normal speed.

Next I'll need to source some sort a tower ATX case. It will probably be an InWin S500, as it's a very common (and period correct for a 1996 ATX build) case.

Okay, I'm gonna need a moment to go over the total treasure trove that was Vintage Computer Festival Southeast's consignment area this weekend.

-Amiga 2000 rev. 6.2 (8372A Agnus, but standard OCS Denise and Kickstart 1.3) with A2091 SCSI controller (no added Fast RAM, unfortunately), a 4 GB SCSI HDD (that it didn't seem to boot from), a Video Toaster card, keyboard (missing the right Alt keycap and tactile sleeve, but functional), tank mouse, and a loaded floppy that turned out to have Workbench 1.3 on it. You bet I was taking that thing home ASAP!

However, the SCSI HDD wasn't exactly bootable off the bat, and a cable was missing. I haven't exactly had the best of luck getting it to boot from the SCSI HDD without trying to format it elsewhere (which I want to avoid, given what a PITA it is to get Amiga-bootable media going on a PC), but it does boot off the Workbench floppy just fine. Thankfully, so does that Amiga 500 I imported earlier.

-Power Macintosh 9600/200 with a few expansion cards (PATA controller, combo USB/FireWire, ATI Rage 128, SB Live!, Ethernet, other things I can't immediately remember), all the drive covers (you'd be surprised how many of these are missing a few), and some kind of XLR8 G3 upgrade (as I understand, it's sorta like a slotket adapter that G3 and G4 ZIF modules can then be installed in), but only a PATA optical drive.

I knew I had to have this one too when I saw it being unloaded from a van just crammed full of vintage Mac stuff, and as it turns out, the seller had used it as a primary machine for a while, well aware of how expandable it was. The 9600 was my endgame bridge Mac, the one I sought to replace my existing 6500 with, and replace I did.

However, it seems like the pre-installed PATA controller isn't being picked up as a bootable device. I don't have a SCSI HDD currently set up since I also sold the IIcx there, but I do have a spare 1 GB drive I was in the middle of setting up before VCF hit. Didn't think to claim any more SCSI drives while I was there, either.

-17" CRT Apple Studio Monitor, partly for the aesthetic factor, partly because it's still aperture grille, partly because my Sun GDM-5410 is looking primed to join my Sony GDM-FW900 in the FD Trinitron afterlife. Thankfully, this monitor turns on just fine, has no screen scuffs or scratches that I noticed, and doesn't display any apparent color issues. This one's definitely a keeper.

-A fairly stripped-down, parts unit MDD G4 single 1.25 GHz FW400, just in case it had parts I could use on my main MDD. It was pretty cheap, after all.

-Rocketfish 900W 80+ Silver modular PSU, sealed in box. Hardly vintage, but how many PSUs that specced-out do you see being sold for under $20? If anything, I'm running short on ATX PSUs for all my systems!

-Box of 50 "duplicator-grade" blank DSDD 3.5" floppies. Pricing seemed high at first, but it quickly sunk in why: those were actually listed by one of the Amiga enthusiasts with a table there. (A table with a thoroughly-hotrodded Amiga 1200 with an A1200.net transparent case, a Blizzard1260 accelerator with SCSI expansion, Indivision AGA, USB controller, some kind of really compact IDE header SSD... to say that thing alone was worth several hundred dollars is an understatement!)

A bit of negotiation later, and I should be able to prepare myself to get any ol' Mac or Amiga up and running with these, without the kludgery of taping holes on HD disks and hoping it works when formatted as DD.

Now, as for the things I didn't get, but are worth noting because I never expected to see that kind of hardware there:
-Atari 1040ST + SC1224 monitor, both boxed. I was waiting for a price tag to be stuck on 'em, not knowing how VCF consignments went (this was my first), but next thing I knew, they were tagged "SOLD".
-NeXTstation Turbo with monitor, keyboard and mouse. Seriously thought about this one, but ultimately realized I don't know what I'd do with NeXT stuff as someone mainly concerned about retrogaming (and for which I have no idea what id Software were doing on 'em while developing Doom).
-SGI Indy. No accessories. Also passed because the only Indy I would want would have N64 devkit hardware in it.
-Apple DOS compatibility cards, both the official Apple ones and a couple of OrangePC ones with 486DX-33s on 'em.
-Macintosh 128k in its own carrying case, keyboard and mouse included!
-Macintosh SE/30, also with a matching keyboard and mouse. Despite the high list price, someone must've made an offer good enough for it to sell, because it was gone by event's end.
-Macintosh Classic. I tested the Cmd-Opt-X-O startup sequence, and sure enough, it worked. There was also a HDD inside that also worked for booting from.
-IBM portable (as in "luggable") PC with a nice XT-style keyboard.
-Stripped-down Macintosh Quadra 950. If I could find more than a case, logic board and PSU for it, I might have snagged that one too, but I didn't feel like trying to source all the rest.
-Two Power Mac G5s. One of 'em sold.
-Way too many Macintosh IIcx and IIci systems to count, and the occasional full-size Mac II. (No IIx or IIfx, though; I checked!)

Really now, I'm just kinda scratching the surface of what was there. It was a lot to think about buying, but I only have so much space in my car (and at home), not to mention that it's not the sorta environment that's easy to actually test that hardware in before buying. At the very least, my big-ticket items snagged there power on without errors, so that's good.

Pics to come later; I still need to arrange everything.

^^^ Sounds like a fun time to me. Smart choice on the Next machine. An old friend of mine picked one of those up years ago and it has sat in his closet since. Not a lot was developed for it, but it's interesting to look at and good for museum and collection display purposes IMO.

jheronimus wrote:

The Intel board seems pretty interesting to me. It's a less common chipset (as compared to 430TX), a form-factor that will allow me to use a cheap PS/2 KVM and a working turbo function (via keyboard shortcuts). Intel's manual states that this board will work at "AT 23MHz system" speed in turbo, but that will need some benchmarking. Second option would be to put something like a 133-166 MHz non-MMX Pentium and just disable L1 and L2 cache. According to Phil that would be enough to run Wing Commander 1 at normal speed.

Just a note about the AT de-turbo (since it doesn't actually speed up the system but slows it down) function, it will only work in real mode, not protected mode.

I bought this 486 33Mhz pc from local auction site for 50 euros. No display or keyboard comes with it though. I think the case looks pretty good. if I would want to buy a pc from ebay, I basically would have to pay 50 euros just for shipping it to my country, so that is why I don't have many old cases. Hopefully it will arrive later this week.

yawetaG wrote:

jheronimus wrote:

The Intel board seems pretty interesting to me. It's a less common chipset (as compared to 430TX), a form-factor that will allow me to use a cheap PS/2 KVM and a working turbo function (via keyboard shortcuts). Intel's manual states that this board will work at "AT 23MHz system" speed in turbo, but that will need some benchmarking. Second option would be to put something like a 133-166 MHz non-MMX Pentium and just disable L1 and L2 cache. According to Phil that would be enough to run Wing Commander 1 at normal speed.

Just a note about the AT de-turbo (since it doesn't actually speed up the system but slows it down) function, it will only work in real mode, not protected mode.

Thanks! I might be wrong, but I think that most protected mode games (e.g. DOS4GW-based ones) came out after 386. E.g. Wing Commander shouldn't have issues with that.

I posted about this earlier, but it arrived this morning so here it is. One thousand square centimeters of ex-server magnificence, and my entry ticket into the Dual-Slot 1 Club that seems to have taken off around here in the last few pages.

Featuring twin mighty 550MHz towers of power, an entire gigabyte of ECC SDRAM, a whole bank of beefy, dusty-but-perfect caps of as-yet-unknown manufacture, onboard Adaptec SCSI & Cirrus Logic 54M30 video, and a conveniently-socketed 2032 battery. This is the good stuff.

If you're wondering what I was buying PCI workstation cards for on the last page, this is the reason. 😜 To be honest, I kind of lost track of what I wanted a dual-slot 1 board for (I have a perfectly matched pair of 233s already, and the system I originally wanted to dual-ize got repurposed into doing something where SMP makes no sense), but this will make for a better overall system. I don't have an immediate use for it in mind but will figure something out. And hey, it was ten bucks.

Baoran wrote:

I bought this 486 33Mhz pc from local auction site for 50 euros. No display or keyboard comes with it though. I think the case looks pretty good. if I would want to buy a pc from ebay, I basically would have to pay 50 euros just for shipping it to my country, so that is why I don't have many old cases. Hopefully it will arrive later this week.

371771557-orig.jpg

Pretty!

jheronimus wrote:

Ordered an Intel Advanced/ML motherboard (430HX chipset) today, gonna get it somewhere within a week: […]
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Ordered an Intel Advanced/ML motherboard (430HX chipset) today, gonna get it somewhere within a week:

4391351264.ETz2eCydLLSRFy7vaFDZ4ET5HMB4OKNS.jpg

4391351276.8NLGA7Sq5AGe4tdj9Z5Xmyz09J5W1EFM.jpg

[...]

Is it just me or is that board tiny? I don't think I've ever seen a Pentium board that small. It looks like one of those really late 386es with everything integrated but it's also full-featured ATX with about as many slots as you ever get on Socket 7. Neat design.

Compare to my monster board above, it's literally less than half the size.

Is it just me or is that board tiny?

Big man hands + deceiving perspective. This board is standard ATX size. Pretty much same size as ASUS P5A for example.

liqmat wrote:

^^^ Sounds like a fun time to me. Smart choice on the Next machine. An old friend of mine picked one of those up years ago and it has sat in his closet since. Not a lot was developed for it, but it's interesting to look at and good for museum and collection display purposes IMO.

If you do a lot of CLI (eg. Linux admin) stuff, you can do that from it. At least, that was the only thing I used mine for...

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Is it just me or is that board tiny?

Really huge hands / Deceiving perspective. This board have standard ATX size.

Standard height, but it is pretty slim, not much wider than the length of an ISA slot.

xjas wrote:

I posted about this earlier, but it arrived this morning so here it is. One thousand square centimeters of ex-server magnificenc […]
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I posted about this earlier, but it arrived this morning so here it is. One thousand square centimeters of ex-server magnificence, and my entry ticket into the Dual-Slot 1 Club that seems to have taken off around here in the last few pages.
...
Featuring twin mighty 550MHz towers of power, an entire gigabyte of ECC SDRAM, a whole bank of beefy, dusty-but-perfect caps of as-yet-unknown manufacture, onboard Adaptec SCSI & Cirrus Logic 54M30 video, and a conveniently-socketed 2032 battery. This is the good stuff.
...

Those heatsinks are pretty beefy: I actually use them to cool down 1 GHz chips and they do just fine. What case do you have in mind for this monstrosity?

slivercr wrote:

Those heatsinks are pretty beefy: I actually use them to cool down 1 GHz chips and they do just fine.

Cool, sounds like I can run this thing passive which is nice. I was worried it had some kind of engineered-airflow active cooling setup.

slivercr wrote:

What case do you have in mind for this monstrosity?

Errrrrrrrm... I didn't realize it until just now, but case selection is going to be an issue. Seems it's a not-quite-standard form factor and fouls the PSU in a typical (E-)ATX case because of how far the board extends above the i/o shield area (there's a good 2cm of extra height there.) I have a Fractal Design Define R4 which it looks like it will fit in, but I was going to get rid of that because I'm missing the little PCB with the front USB ports & power button & got an incredibly irritating passive-aggressive FU from Fractal when I dared enquire about ordering spare parts for it. Maybe I'll make some kind of custom display board for it, although I don't have any real reason to put this one on display.

Baoran wrote:

I bought this 486 33Mhz pc from local auction site for 50 euros. No display or keyboard comes with it though. I think the case looks pretty good. if I would want to buy a pc from ebay, I basically would have to pay 50 euros just for shipping it to my country, so that is why I don't have many old cases. Hopefully it will arrive later this week.

I have the same case as well! The 3.5" turbo / reset / LED faceplate is removable and can be placed anywhere in the 3 external 3.5" bays.