I have a YMF-718 card with the QS1000 chip. It sounded decent to me, but I'm far from an expert.

I have another card with a QS700, and it is just OK. I have a nice Diamond Monster MIDI with the 4MB Dream set, so I'm collecting all of these other cards for, well, science. I just really like the elegance of a one-card solution that does not require a DB or a TSR or EMM386.

I'd really like a YMF card with the QS1000 chip. I really like the YMF-71x line of chips and a one-card solution with broad compatibility would be a plus. I did buy an SB32 and an AWE64 for cheap recently, and I'm waiting for it to arrive.

Oh, and the remaining parts for my Duron arrived. The latest revision of the PCChips M810LR I could find (ver 😎 and a nice VCOM heatsink which takes an 80mm fan and has a copper base - and it came with a nice ball bearing fan installed. This revision doesn't feel as cheap as the older M810LR revisions (1, 5 and 7.1) or their ECS variant (K7SEM rev 3+)... at least it's got more caps and coils in the VRM and the layout seems to be slightly improved. I'd normally avoid PCChips like the plague, but my mother wasn't exactly rich, and even my cheap-ass PCChips-powered systems made a dent on her finances, and I'm trying to recreate the system I had in my early teens.

Got the 64FGP up and running (needed to extract the DOS files via a Windows installer, however). No TSR needed for GM.

The QS1000 sounds better to me than the QS700, if memory serves. My card with the QS700, however, also has a real OPL3. It is a Silicom Wavemaster 32FGP Rev 1.2.

A YMF-718 card with the QS1000 and an OPL3SA would be a very nice card indeed. Even better if it has a Waveblaster connector!

alexanrs wrote:

I'd really like a YMF card with the QS1000 chip. I really like the YMF-71x line of chips and a one-card solution with broad compatibility would be a plus. I did buy an SB32 and an AWE64 for cheap recently, and I'm waiting for it to arrive.

Failing that, the 724 is usually cheap and does a good enough job. A least, when PCI is available - I recommend a P2 for this card.

Oh, and the remaining parts for my Duron arrived. The latest revision of the PCChips M810LR I could find (ver 😎 and a nice VCOM heatsink which takes an 80mm fan and has a copper base - and it came with a nice ball bearing fan installed. This revision doesn't feel as cheap as the older M810LR revisions (1, 5 and 7.1) or their ECS variant (K7SEM rev 3+)... at least it's got more caps and coils in the VRM and the layout seems to be slightly improved. I'd normally avoid PCChips like the plague, but my mother wasn't exactly rich, and even my cheap-ass PCChips-powered systems made a dent on her finances, and I'm trying to recreate the system I had in my early teens.

I have a K7SEM somewhere... Whilst I would never say it was among the better boards I own it does still work fine despite the capacitors being rather bulgy. I actually like ECS for the most part as they do seem to at least last long enough. Certainly one of the better high-volume makers. Can't speak for the PCChips variant but I imagine it can't be too different and they would certainly suffice for a Duron, mine ran a Duron 1600 without issues anyway and had been in that configuration for years before I got hold of it. It had outlived the god awful Celeron MSI boards the place also had in use by a long way at any rate.

HighTreason wrote:

I have a K7SEM somewhere... Whilst I would never say it was among the better boards I own it does still work fine despite the capacitors being rather bulgy. I actually like ECS for the most part as they do seem to at least last long enough. Certainly one of the better high-volume makers. Can't speak for the PCChips variant but I imagine it can't be too different and they would certainly suffice for a Duron, mine ran a Duron 1600 without issues anyway and had been in that configuration for years before I got hold of it. It had outlived the god awful Celeron MSI boards the place also had in use by a long way at any rate.

The ECS K7SEM rev 3.0 is the exact same board as the M810LR rev 5.0 (or 7.1) - sans the colors. The older ECS K7SEM rev 1.0 is a different design, and so is the PCChips M810LU rev 8.0 and, surprisingly, these have a seemingly stronger VRM. ECS still has the drivers and BIOS files in their website, which is a massive plus. PCChips doesn't, though, so it is an exercise of using the Internet Archive to get the file names (the files used to be on their now-defunct FTP server) and then google and pray. Ultimately I favoured the M810 8.0 over the K7SEM 1.0 because it has onboard LAN.
My original Duron outlived me as well. The PSU and the Geforce 4MX installed on it were failing miserably (cheap crap PSU and hand-me-down MX that was exposed to said PSU), but the board itself was fine when my father sold it. I'm rather happy, just out of spare IDE HDDs xD

I finally found a 7950GT - actually, I found TWO identical ones, from two different sellers 😀. XFX GF 7950GT M570 Extreme Edition Passive with 512MB of DDR3. Payed very little for them too - about 14 euro for one, and traded a GT430 I had laying around for the other one, and got asocket 754 Athlon64 3200+ and 2x512GB Crucial DDR400 with micron chips as a bonus.

Gave them a good cleaning, new thermal paste and replaced a bulging capacitor on one of the cards with one I scavenged off a newer motherboard (identical specs tough).

Unfortunately I can't test them in SLI since my EVGA 780i SLi motherboard is in storage - but I can't wait to slap my Pentium D 945 and these babies on it -> 2003-2007 gaming machine. I have just the right case too - a Thermaltake Shark.

Here is one of them being put trough it's paces in my 3dmark suite on my PCI-E tst rig (3GHz Athlon X4 + Biostar A785G3):

I also got a somewhat rarer card - a Gigabyte GV-3D1 - basically 6600GT SLi on a stick. It comes with 2x128MB DDR3 clocked at 1120MHz and the cores are clocked at 500Mhz. Unfortunately the card came with the top radiator shorud missing and some badly replaced capacitors. Someone soldered two 3300uf 6.3v capacitors instead of the two 1500uf 2.5v capacitors the board originally had on, and did a piss poor job too. The solder points are huge and they somehow managed to scorch the PCB. After a little research I managed to find some hi-res pics of the card and replaced the caps with 6.3v 1500uf low-esr rubicons. I also found a missing SMD capacitor - one of the pads was burned off so I had to improvise a bit, but I managed to solder a replacement on.

The board is finally working, but only one of the GPUs is being detected. I read that it needs a special gigabyte motherboard it originally came bundled with (Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI) to work in SLi mode. Other sites claim that SLi mode will only work on nForce 4 chipsets, and I don't have an nForce 4 board laying around. I did manage to find the motherboard this thing was bundled with for sale, but at a pretty outrageous price so I'll contact the seller to see if he is willing to negotiate. I'd really love to see thins thing working at full power.

I payed 18 euro + 9 euro shipping for this thing. It came in defective and with missing parts. Plus the seller claimed it was tested and working, and said shipping would cost about 4 euro. Do you guys think I overpaid for it?

kanecvr wrote:

I finally found a 7950GT...Gave them a good cleaning, new thermal paste and replaced a bulging capacitor on one of the cards with one I scavenged off a newer motherboard (identical specs tough).

Out of curiosity, which capacitor was bulging? These are all solid polymer capacitors on these cards, no?

first picture - card on the right - the larger blue top capacitor. I also measured the old one with my capacitance meter - no-ware near the intended value, but the card seemed to work correctly. I swapped it with a blue top one off a dead Intel motherboard. Its marked A620 330 16v.

It wasn't bulging like I've seen on other caps - it was kind of "lopsided" - swollen on one side. Maybe it was physical damage?

Sometimes, they only look like polymers. And as far as looking blown--at times rather than leak out the top the rubber bung in the bottom will bulge, causing the capacitor to lift away from the board. I've had hardware do this to me, where I couldn't find any bad-looking caps, and finally I would find that one that was lifted away from the baord about a 1/32 or 1/16 of an inch to where I could see the rubber bung, and replacing that suspect capacitor would fix the problem. If it's not a trusted, name-brand polymer then just assume it's a cheap knock-off masquerading as a polymer.

kanecvr wrote:

first picture - card on the right - the larger blue top capacitor. I also measured the old one with my capacitance meter - no-ware near the intended value, but the card seemed to work correctly. I swapped it with a blue top one off a dead Intel motherboard. Its marked A620 330 16v.

It wasn't bulging like I've seen on other caps - it was kind of "lopsided" - swollen on one side. Maybe it was physical damage?

Interesting. These caps should not fail.

Those are United Chemi-Con PSA series polymers. There are two large 10mm ones being used for the VRM high, and then you have two Sanyo SEP series for the VRM low.

My only guess is that the guy who was running the card before you had a really noisy 12V rail on his PSU (read: bad caps in his PSU).

Good call on using the right replacement.

For the Gigabyte, I'll venture to guess that he replaced them because the card originally came with KZG series, and they probably bloated on him. You mentioned that you used Rubycon, but I think you meant Nichicon. I hope that's HM series. You can also use HN or HZ, or even polymers. you missed one of those Yageo capacitors though on the top left of the card.

no, I used black/gold 1500uf 6.3v Rubycon MCZ caps. They don't make these anymore but I have a can full of them. The only Nichicon caps I have at the moment are 3300uf 10v low ESR caps I use for repairing socket A / 754 / 939 boards. I would have used panasonic caps to repair the 6600, but the ones I have are short and wide - too wide to properly fit the board.

I've seen polymer caps fail on PSUs and video cards before. Not common, but it happens. My mushkin 650XP PSU had two failed 1000uf 16v poly caps (at least they looked like polymer caps - could have been aluminum electrolytic). It would start then shut down a few seconds later. I replaced them with 1000uf 25v panasonic electrolytic capacitors - the type you usually find in audio amps - and it's been running trouble free for over two years now.

Bought this for 10$ today along with a Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold!

It's a 1994 Power Macintosh 6100/66 (66mhz that is). Supposedly this model should have come with a DOS compatibility card but it's missing from mine unfortunately. Still this machine is definitely going to be fun to play with once I get the proper monitor cable (since it uses some weird cable to adapt to DB15). I powered it on though and it does power on and chime so that is a good sign. The HDD doesn't sound healthy but since it powers on everything else should be easy to fix even swapping a HDD and reinstalling OS9. 😁

Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold (which was free with the macintosh):

kanecvr wrote:

no, I used black/gold 1500uf 6.3v Rubycon MCZ caps.

That's odd. The picture you posted clearly shows Black/White capacitors with a plus type vent and not the "K" vent characteristic of Rubycon caps.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Bought this for 10$ today along with a Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold! […]
Show full quote

Bought this for 10$ today along with a Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold!

It's a 1994 Power Macintosh 6100/66 (66mhz that is). Supposedly this model should have come with a DOS compatibility card but it's missing from mine unfortunately. Still this machine is definitely going to be fun to play with once I get the proper monitor cable (since it uses some weird cable to adapt to DB15). I powered it on though and it does power on and chime so that is a good sign. The HDD doesn't sound healthy but since it powers on everything else should be easy to fix even swapping a HDD and reinstalling OS9. 😁

Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold (which was free with the macintosh):

Sweet... PizzaBox style.

the pictures are take in different stages of the repair process. In the first one I had replaced the 3300 caps that I got the board with with salvaged 1500uf caps I had laying around to see if it will work. I later replaced those with the rubycons I mentioned. I also replaced the smaller 1000uf cap with a panasonic.

Got some free stuff today. Two computers, a keyboard, some speaker's and a mouse.

The first computer was a generic machine from an unknown small company.
It has a ECS K7SEM Rev.1 and an Athlon 1.0 or 1.1ghz CPU and just the average 80gig HDD and some unknown size mem.
The special thing about this board, is that it has an universal AGP slot. Other than that. Not so special.

The PSU can be used for an AT system though. The fan is in the back, so it won't matter that the PSU has to be mounted
upside down when installed into an AT case. Then I can scavange the old AT-Psu for it's motherboard power connector's.
This way I can build an ATX to AT Psu converter. My P166 system allready has one I soldered a couple of weeks ago.

The other machine, is just some generic Dell Dimension 5000 with PCI-X gfx and stuff... Nothing special, just standard.
Only special thing about this, is that it's case are build like a tank.

Then I got these two babies... One Ps/2 Cherry RS-6000 Keyboard and one Logitech Ps/2 ball mouse with three buttons.

The speaker's are crap. They look so 90's. Big, beige and.... Light as a feather. 🤣 And has no middle-tone....
(More like 90's knockoff design in the 00's. Probably throw them out)

King_Corduroy wrote:

Bought this for 10$ today along with a Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold! […]
Show full quote

Bought this for 10$ today along with a Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold!

It's a 1994 Power Macintosh 6100/66 (66mhz that is). Supposedly this model should have come with a DOS compatibility card but it's missing from mine unfortunately. Still this machine is definitely going to be fun to play with once I get the proper monitor cable (since it uses some weird cable to adapt to DB15). I powered it on though and it does power on and chime so that is a good sign. The HDD doesn't sound healthy but since it powers on everything else should be easy to fix even swapping a HDD and reinstalling OS9. 😁

Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold (which was free with the macintosh):

There were a few 6100 models, the one that came with the DOS compatibility card has DOS Compatible printed on the front next to the model number.
The compatibility card can be found on its own, but it will likely be more expensive than what you paid for the system.
You can find suitable video adapters for the 6100 on ebay, search for hdi-45 to get the short cable that plugs on the 6100 and DB15 VGA for the adapter to connect it to a regular PC monitor.
Last but not least, check that website: http://www.kan.org/6100/

Bought these bits today:

IBM 386 SX 25 motherboard with built-in everything,VGA(cirrus logic), IDE, Floppy, Serial, LPT & PS2 keyboard & mouse. Really convienient way into the world of 386, early DOS stuff, even has the ISA riser for a soundcard & better yet no barrel battery to leak all over the place, personally I reckon this will be a total diamond. No idea what I will do for a case, will have to wait for it to arrive and see what I can figure out.(these are sellers pictures). Anyhow pretty neat & cost the same as 3 cups of coffee 😉

Western Digital Paradise 512K ISA VGA card. Reading old threads on VOGONS these are pretty decent little cards right? Few threads on here reckon they are faster than Tseng Labs ET4000, so again a real bargain. 2 coffee's for this one 😀

Also got some new CPU's this week.

AMD K5 PR166(my second one!), AMD K6-2 300AFR, AMD Athlon 1333mhz thunderbird, IBM/Cyrix 6x86 MX 166, IBM/Cryrix 6x86 MX 200 & yet another IDT Winchip C6 200mhz(my 3rd).