I just picked up a Fujitsu Lifebook E-5140. I don't know much about this laptop, but it was only $20, so I grabbed it before anyone else did. I've also been really happy with each Fujitsu device that I've owned so far.

There's a neat little LCD screen right above the keyboard that shows some system information.

The manual says it should come with a Celeron processor, but a Pentium III shows up when booting, so I assume it got upgraded at some point. Someone also bumped the memory to 256Mb as well. This should make a fun little Windows 98 machine. I'm hoping that it will work for DOS too, but I'm not sure what it's using for sound. The manual just mentions that it has a "SoundBlaster Pro-compatible 32-bit stereo PCM/FM sound chip". The only problem is that the BIOS is locked, but it seems like you can unlock it with a master password.

I now have a nice little Pentium laptop family with a PI, PII, and PIII.

From left to right they are: a Hitach M-120D, a Toshiba Satellite 4060XCDT, and the new Fujitsu.

Some guy is locally asking for $30 each for these two cards, are either of them worth that price? One of them seems to be GUS compatible? The other says Adlib Multimedia but looks like a generic CS4237 card with an onboard wavetable (that I can't tell what it is under the sticker but I THINK is a QS-1000?..)..

appiah4 wrote on 2023-08-01, 10:49:

Some guy is locally asking for $30 each for these two cards, are either of them worth that price? One of them seems to be GUS compatible? The other says Adlib Multimedia but looks like a generic CS4237 card with an onboard wavetable (that I can't tell what it is under the sticker but I THINK is a QS-1000?..)..

I guess thats the regular price now for a Wavetable ISA card... The sellers here want around the same for such a card.
The times where ISA was trash and you could find them for free everywhere are sadly gone.
I could even see me buying the first one for 30.
Just found a Video of the first card... I think it sounds ok for 30 bucks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AvFkcHuyww

I think if its worth the price is just your preference. I never had any wavetable stuff back in the day, so my soft spot is Yamahas FM synthesis. Even if wavetable sounds better, real FM tickles my retro brain.

Does a NIB HP 40gs graphing calculator with CAS count? The closest thing to a 50g. I sold my 50g like an arse years ago.

HanJammer wrote on 2023-07-30, 16:44:

Meatball wrote on 2023-07-30, 15:52:

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-07-30, 15:19:

That's one fancy looking card!

Back in the day, it would have been a shame for this card to be stuffed in a restrictive beige box, never to see the light of day until retirement.

Back in the day when these cards came out beige boxes were pretty much thing of the past, with silver and charcoal/black boxes ruling the scene. Also most modders/tweakers/overclockers were never putting side panel on the case anyway and the "gaming" cases already started to feature small acrylic windows from the factory (and if not - case modders were putting them theirselves).

They released this in 2002?
Black/silver wasnt a thing until for a couple of years, at least not on the mainstream.

It was cards like this that got the maufacturers to start making cases you could see into. Not the other way around.

I grabbed the Interwave one, the seller turned out to be familiar and gave me a considerable discount. Still one of my most expensive sound card purchases 😅

appiah4 wrote on 2023-08-01, 12:57:

I grabbed the Interweave one, the seller turned out to be familiar and gave me a considerable discount. Still one of my most expensive sound card purchases 😅

without the possibility to add ram to it the card will be severely limited to a basic windows soundcard with 1mb wavetable
biggest issue will be the lack of GUS Classic support and DOS gaming... ofcourse you will be able to load the SB emulation stuff but that's hardly ideal
pretty sure these cards were made just to use some interwave stock for a win9x sound solution

keropi wrote on 2023-08-01, 13:06:

without the possibility to add ram to it the card will be severely limited to a basic windows soundcard with 1mb wavetable bigge […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote on 2023-08-01, 12:57:

I grabbed the Interweave one, the seller turned out to be familiar and gave me a considerable discount. Still one of my most expensive sound card purchases 😅

without the possibility to add ram to it the card will be severely limited to a basic windows soundcard with 1mb wavetable
biggest issue will be the lack of GUS Classic support and DOS gaming... ofcourse you will be able to load the SB emulation stuff but that's hardly ideal
pretty sure these cards were made just to use some interwave stock for a win9x sound solution

Is it not possible to use the Interwave for just GM in DOS and route its L/O to another card's L/I internally? There are no DOS drivers that expose it as a GM synth? (EDIT: It seems there are DOS drivers on Vogons Drivers) It looks novel so I'm trying to come up with some use cases, to be honest, and justify grabbing it.. At the same time, I'm not sure that's really worth it now that I have two PicoGUS'es 😁

I decided to get a Sound Galaxy NX instead from the same guy, and skipped on the Adlib CS4237 card.. maybe a bit unwisely? I just don't like the way QS-1000 sounds..

EDIT2: The seller also has this Aztech/PackardBell card for sale, I think it's a Multimedia Pro 16? It looks like a decent SB Pro 2.0 compatible? I can't make it out but there is an ICS IC on there, maybe it also has an onboard wavetable?..

Welp, got a temporary stroke of insanity on bought this PS/2. I guess this is the point of no return, what am I ever going to do with it.

As a fun curiosity, it still has the sticker of the local computer shop where it was bought, that's going to stay even after all refurb work.

appiah4 wrote on 2023-08-01, 13:13:

EDIT2: The seller also has this Aztech/PackardBell card for sale, I think it's a Multimedia Pro 16? It looks like a decent SB Pro 2.0 compatible? I can't make it out but there is an ICS IC on there, maybe it also has an onboard wavetable?..

No there is no wavetable.
The only Aztech card i own that is equipped with Wavetable is the Waverider series. There are different versions, but all are Waverider.

You will always see the memory chip and missing wavetable Header on Aztech wavetable cards.

Yeah I already have a WaveRider 32+, pretty great card if you don't count the 37KB TSR required to use the onboard wavetable 😅

doublebuffer wrote on 2023-08-01, 13:58:

Welp, got a temporary stroke of insanity on bought this PS/2. I guess this is the point of no return, what am I ever going to do with it.

As a fun curiosity, it still has the sticker of the local computer shop where it was bought, that's going to stay even after all refurb work.

I'd like to acquire one of those IBM PS/2 Model 30 machines at some point. There is just something elegant yet sturdy about that form factor that I just dig (no pun intended). I don't quite understand why. I have that with the "pizza box" form factor in general. The higher model numbers with higher desktop cases feel clunky in comparison.

Maybe the fact that we had those Model 30 in the computer lab back in high school is also a factor in my sense of nostalgia for these particular machines.

Did yours come with an original Model M keyboard?

digger wrote on 2023-08-01, 17:00:

There is just something elegant yet sturdy about that form factor that I just dig

I agree, they are beautiful machines. This one is model 55 sx (386 SX 16 mhz), which pretty much my holy grail model since my first PC had similar CPU and for me this was the point PCs became advanced enough to be actually useable for gaming (I'm spoiled by VGA 😀).

digger wrote on 2023-08-01, 17:00:

Maybe the fact that we had those Model 30 in the computer lab back in high school is also a factor in my sense of nostalgia for these particular machines.

Understandable, I have never encountered a PS/2 in real life until now. Would be nice to pimp it out with sound and network cards and such, but that might not be feasible.

digger wrote on 2023-08-01, 17:00:

Did yours come with an original Model M keyboard?

Unfortunately no, or maybe better that way or it would have tripled the price 😁

I was introduced to computers on a 386 ps/2 as well. Although I was really young at the time, that is what I remember ours looking like. I wish we had kept it. My dad also had a Vic 20, which would also be fun today.

One thing that I remember is how sturdy and clicky the keyboard was. It's not a big surprise to me why those old mechanical keyboards are still popular today.

Another thing is that I learned a lot about computers on it. I had to make boot disks because a lot of games needed more memory than was available in the default DOS environment. I also learned to use the command line a bit. Basic was fun as well. While DOS gaming can be frustrating, especially for a kid in elementary school, it does teach you a lot about how computers worked backed then. I don't think that the younger generations will get the same thing on today's computers, unless they get into Python or another programming language.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-08-01, 12:16:

They released this in 2002? Black/silver wasnt a thing until for a couple of years, at least not on the mainstream. […]
Show full quote

HanJammer wrote on 2023-07-30, 16:44:

Meatball wrote on 2023-07-30, 15:52:

Back in the day, it would have been a shame for this card to be stuffed in a restrictive beige box, never to see the light of day until retirement.

Back in the day when these cards came out beige boxes were pretty much thing of the past, with silver and charcoal/black boxes ruling the scene. Also most modders/tweakers/overclockers were never putting side panel on the case anyway and the "gaming" cases already started to feature small acrylic windows from the factory (and if not - case modders were putting them theirselves).

They released this in 2002?
Black/silver wasnt a thing until for a couple of years, at least not on the mainstream.

It was cards like this that got the maufacturers to start making cases you could see into. Not the other way around.

It's a shame that AGP cards are installed upside down, though, so even with a window the interesting side of fancy video cards are hidden.
They didn't even fix that with PCI Express, which kind of surprised me. The only reason cards got flipped in the first place was so they could have a shared slot position between ISA and PCI.

shamino wrote on 2023-08-01, 23:10:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-08-01, 12:16:

They released this in 2002? Black/silver wasnt a thing until for a couple of years, at least not on the mainstream. […]
Show full quote

HanJammer wrote on 2023-07-30, 16:44:

Back in the day when these cards came out beige boxes were pretty much thing of the past, with silver and charcoal/black boxes ruling the scene. Also most modders/tweakers/overclockers were never putting side panel on the case anyway and the "gaming" cases already started to feature small acrylic windows from the factory (and if not - case modders were putting them theirselves).

They released this in 2002?
Black/silver wasnt a thing until for a couple of years, at least not on the mainstream.

It was cards like this that got the maufacturers to start making cases you could see into. Not the other way around.

It's a shame that AGP cards are installed upside down, though, so even with a window the interesting side of fancy video cards are hidden.
They didn't even fix that with PCI Express, which kind of surprised me. The only reason cards got flipped in the first place was so they could have a shared slot position between ISA and PCI.

I mean TBF there is reverse ATX like what Dell used for some of their mid 2000s designs, but that creates a whole slew of new problems.

Today I spent a good $6.

It's even an early model.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-08-01, 23:48:

shamino wrote on 2023-08-01, 23:10:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-08-01, 12:16:

They released this in 2002?
Black/silver wasnt a thing until for a couple of years, at least not on the mainstream.

It was cards like this that got the maufacturers to start making cases you could see into. Not the other way around.

It's a shame that AGP cards are installed upside down, though, so even with a window the interesting side of fancy video cards are hidden.
They didn't even fix that with PCI Express, which kind of surprised me. The only reason cards got flipped in the first place was so they could have a shared slot position between ISA and PCI.

I mean TBF there is reverse ATX like what Dell used for some of their mid 2000s designs, but that creates a whole slew of new problems.

BTX I think is that reverse format, mostly used for Dell office type machines that needed the better airflow that format provided.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTX_(form_factor)

Over the last couple weeks I bought a few AGP video cards. Overall the results were good.
1 great find that was under-described, 1 card I thought was unique but was actually quite ordinary, 1 incorrectly described disappointment that's in great condition so I kept it, and 1 cheap as-is I felt pessimistic about that works great.
So I pushed my luck, and the 5th card I bought was DOA. Back to form.

Radeon 7000:
==========================

I was hoping this card had 128-bit DDR, but it doesn't. It is DDR, but the RAM chips are 8-bit, so it's a 64MB 64-bit DDR card. The RAM chips are -75 rated and only clocked at 133MHz.
The date codes on the RAM are from late 2004 so this must have been sold in 2005. It was on the shelf next to X800 and X600 cards.
The caps are a cheap brand (Licon), they should be easy to change.
It does have dual outputs and the mini-DIN for Composite/S-Video. Jumper was set to PAL for some reason, I guess nobody ever hooked this to a TV, or if they did then it didn't work.

I was surprised how slow this card is compared to the other Radeons of this generation. From what I've read the core on the 7000 is crippled so it's worse than the clock/memory speed differences would lead you to expect.
This card was very overclockable. With a fan blowing on the card it got up to 225MHz core / 205MHz RAM, but it was starting to flake out there. The RAM is definitely better than the -75 marking implies.

============================
Radeon DDR:
=================================

This was an As-Is with minimal description, but I put in a bid and it went cheap. I was worried about that orange sticker on the BIOS chip, and also the flux (which might be glue) on the tantalum cap and adjacent part in the center. The fan was very tight but at least it still spun. I swapped it with a less-tight fan from a PCI version (which sadly doesn't work, because every PCI card I buy doesn't work). End result - this card works great. Very happy with it.
This is a 32MB DDR card, 166MHz, made in 2001. I was curious if it could run 183MHz like the 64MB versions do, so I gradually clocked it up to that point and it was fine. I didn't want to beat on it so I stopped there. I'm glad to finally have a working original Radeon.
<no GPU-Z picture because of the 5 attachment limit - but it's 166/166MHz as expected>
It's ridiculous how much better this card performs than the 7000 I posted above, and that card has a die-shrunk GPU and was made almost 4 years after this one.

===============================
Radeon 7500LE:
===============================

Another Sapphire. This card's RV200 GPU is a die shrink of the original Radeon R100 GPU. The Radeon 7500 were basically ATI's equivalent of the Geforce4 MX cards. It's an optimization of the original Radeon that can run faster clocks with less heat, but avoids the expense of the pixel shader features of later GPUs like the 8500. They were meant to be budget gaming cards.

As I understand it, the 7500LE are lower cost cards that normally have either SDR or 64-bit DDR memory. The seller posted a generic 7500LE specs chart for the 64-bit DDR version. The cool thing though? This card has 128-bit DDR - there are 8x 16bit chips (4 per side), rated for 4ns.

So it's basically a full 7500 but clocked lower. I wonder if it's also undervolted to keep it cool, I haven't investigated that.
At the stock 260/183 clocks it's much faster than the Radeon DDR(7200) above, and probably represents the fastest version of the Radeon 7000 generation cards that didn't need a fan.
This card might have appealed to a major manufacturer like Dell/Compaq/etc who wanted performance without a fan, but it has no such labeling - it appears to be a retail card.
I'm surprised they could make money on this card in the retail world, since the "LE" branding associates it with versions that have a cheaper, more crippled memory bus. But here it is.
Anyway, it was a cool find, and it runs great.

With a fan pointed at the card I tried overclocking it. I think it can run 290MHz core / 225MHz RAM. I did clock the RAM higher but that's when I started to suspect artifacting - there's a muddy range where I'm really not sure if I was seeing artifacts or not.

<continued for 5 attachment limit>

TNT2 M64 "Pro"
========================

This was listed as a TNT2 Pro, and the labeling implies that with the name "G4000 Pro", but it's actually an M64.

I think there's such a thing as an "M64 Pro" - an M64 that's clocked slightly higher on the core, and that's what this is, apparently. The Windows driver lists the device name as "TNT2 Model 64 / Model 64 Pro" so apparently the latter exists.
So I was disappointed with what this turned out to be, but it appears to be new or at least well kept. It's a late produced card with 32MB. It works fine and overclocks well and although there was a return policy I decided to keep it. Believe it or not, this is my only working TNT2 card, low end as it may be. I'd have been a lot happier with a proper TNT2 Pro, though.
It clocked up to about 184MHz core / 194MHz RAM, so it likes to run.

TNT2 (Diamond V770)
=============================

EDIT: this card does work - So all the cards I bought on this little shopping spree were good, which amazes me.
I thought this V770 was DOA but it actually works, I just needed to try another board. I'm glad I finally tried that before returning it.

I have another V770 that has severely corrupted video output. By comparing this card with that one, I discovered some caps missing from the back side of the bad card. I replaced the larger cap but it's still faulty. There's 1 or 2 tiny ceramics still missing, I doubt those will fix anything but I've marked the spot so I can install them when I get them.

It's amazing how long it takes to find all the little parts needed to set up a test system. Most things were still in boxes from moving.
In one of those boxes, I stumbled into some SCSI stuff I thought I had lost:

HVD terminators are obscure. I was really annoyed about losing those, it was like a detective mystery tracking them down a few years ago.