My £5.99 Powerbook G3 Lombard. It needs a hard drive, the optical drive faceplate is missing, and the battery is dead. However, it powers on fine, the screen looks good, and it seems to be pretty much complete - apart from the aforementioned issues (it came with the charger). This is the first non-iPod Apple product I've owned. It's the 400 MHz model, if my serial number lookup is accurate.

Free box of floppies. 25 disk install of MS office 4.2, 22 disk install of windows 95, 2 ZIP disk install of 95 and 3 disk DOS 6.22 (along with a bunch of random discs) nice surprise today!

Artex wrote:

borgie83 wrote:

I second that! I've looked for the creative one everywhere but the only ones I can find are the after market simmconn ones.

+1 Where did you find that? I've been searching for a few years now!

eBay

There's another such board available at the moment as well, as part of an AWE64 Gold package.

Cloudschatze wrote:

Artex wrote:

borgie83 wrote:

I second that! I've looked for the creative one everywhere but the only ones I can find are the after market simmconn ones.

+1 Where did you find that? I've been searching for a few years now!

eBay

There's another such board available at the moment as well, as part of an AWE64 Gold package.

Dammit! I just checked and it's sold! 🙁

I bet another vogoner bought it.

Bit the bullet and purchased this Samsung 16:10 1920 x 1200 monitor I had my eye on:

Splinter Cell at 1600 x 1200 bliss:

These two Quadro GeForce4 cards arrived:

Not sure when I get a chance to play with them, my retro room is, once again, a mess 😵

And I got three new power supplies. It's hard to justify getting a "sufficient" 350W PSU when a more powerful one just costs $10 more 😐

I will be using these for my test benches instead of the OEM Gigabyte PSUs I'm currently using.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Bit the bullet and purchased this Samsung 16:10 1920 x 1200 monitor I had my eye on: Splinter Cell at 1600 x 1200 bliss: http:// […]
Show full quote

Bit the bullet and purchased this Samsung 16:10 1920 x 1200 monitor I had my eye on:
Splinter Cell at 1600 x 1200 bliss:

Nice! Which model is it? (Edit: Nevermind, I just found the update in the relevant thread).
This might be one of the last good monitors for VGA/DOS usage. 1920x1200 resolutions, 70 Hz-capable TN panels and VGA inputs seem to be on the way out...

5u3 wrote:

Nice! Which model is it?

Just over $300. The IPS version was $20 or so more but I got the TN version because of your information 😀

More information here: Re: Widescreen monitors and 4:3 aspect ratio compatibility thread

@Mau1wurf, where did you buy it from exactly? Also, if you don't mind, could you please test Keen and Tyrian on this monitor and tell me if you get a display at all? If you do then ill purchase one as well 😀

borgie83 wrote:

@Mau1wurf, where did you buy it from exactly? Also, if you don't mind, could you please test Keen and Tyrian on this monitor and tell me if you get a display at all? If you do then ill purchase one as well 😀

I got it from PLE in Perth. But they don't list it anymore, just the IPS version of it. I believe it's a business class monitor because it has height adjustment and pivot. Happy to test Keen. I'll send you a PM 😀

Bought best (for me) 486 VLB motherboard, Asus V10.
.

Pros:
- onboard mio+floppy+hdd, saves vlb or isa slot (for mio/ide).
Can be disabled. Separate ports disabled in bios, all mio - by jumper.
- Eight (!) isa16 slots (usually we get 6-7 and lost minimum 2 for vga and mio)
- PS/2 keyboad and mouse (no need antique com mouse).
Each of this points can be found widely, but all together - only on 2-3 vlb motherboards.
And:
- 256Kb cache.
- Optional onboard scsi.
- 4 simm72 slot, up to 64 mb ram (some pages say up to 128).
- onboard 4mb ram (can be disabled by jumper)
- bus clock 20, 25, 33, 40, 50 mhz.

Cons:
- bios support only CHS ide. Can be override by ontrack disk manager. Running 8Gb seagate w/o problem now.
- 5v CPU only.
But, I successfuly can start this MB with:
- 3v amd DX2-66 (native 33mhz)
- 3v amd DX4-120 (only on 20-25mhz)
- 3v intel DX4-100 (only on 20mhz).
For now it runs with 5v overdrive DX2-66, and waiting 5v overdrive DX4-100 to arrive.

Can be found as "Acer V10" or installed in "Lucent Intuity MAP/5" servers. Jumpers: http://artofhacking.com/th99/m/A-B/34201.htm, http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/acer/mb/v10.htm

easy_john, Great board! Seriously, one of the best possible VLB motherboards. Does it support maximum 512K L2 cache or 1MB?

The SCSI chip is probably easy to buy from China, provided that you know what to look for. Alibaba.com in particular has a lot of chineese people selling all kinds of ICs.

Considering 5V CPUs, anything 3.3/3.45V is anyway better in a good PCI board.

RacoonRider wrote:

Does it support maximum 512K L2 cache or 1MB?

According to manual - only 128 and 256 kb 20 ns supported.

RacoonRider wrote:

The SCSI chip is probably easy to buy from China, provided that you know what to look for. Alibaba.com in particular has a lot of chineese people selling all kinds of ICs.

Scsi is AIC-6360L, but i prefer not install scsi, to save irq.

$20 shipped.

DFi K6BV3+/66
http://www.ebay.com/itm/321394137232

Another Super 7 board!

Neat motherboard! I actually have one as well, in its original case. The case is cheap and ugly plastic. In fact its a LOT like the clam-shell cases Dell uses in the P4 era. If anyone is interested I'm willing to share some pics. (Or sell it)

easy_john wrote:

Scsi is AIC-6360L, but i prefer not install scsi, to save irq.

Except the fact with scsi, you no longer need IDE. Thus you can SAVE an irq.

in the mail: voodoo1, creative voodoo2 and voodoo3 3500tv. i have these but i just can`t resist voodoo`s if they are a reasonable price! with these i am at a total of 23! STILL SEARCHING FOR VOODOO4 (for years)!

also in the same package: 2x awe32 isa. have one in my collection and i like it alot so if it dies i have some spare 😮)

What do people do with AWE32s? I always found the GM / GS playback pretty poor compared to the SCB-7/55 personally. 😊

I think it's simply the 'retro' factor with these. They are more retro than AWE64s, and if someone is lets say building a 486-based system and they want to stick to period-specific hardware, then these SB32s/AWE32s would match up pretty well. Plus they have the genuine OPL3 people want for these old games that run on the 486 - or at least the non-PNP models do. The PNP models still have CQM/Yamaha Synthesis which sounds pretty close to the OPL3. On some of these you can add 30-pin SIMMS as well so you can load your own soundfonts to make the GM output sound much better. I've heard some Roland soundfonts that sound pretty convincing to me!

Which is the best sbk GM soundfont available for AWE32/64?

Cubic inch is everything :p

PeterLI wrote:

What do people do with AWE32s? I always found the GM / GS playback pretty poor compared to the SCB-7/55 personally. 😊

Games with native support for the AWE cards can sound pretty decent, plus you can always stick a Roland (Yamaha, whatever) DB on it.

Artex wrote:

Plus they have the genuine OPL3 people want for these old games that run on the 486 - or at least the non-PNP models do. The PNP models still have CQM/Yamaha Synthesis which sounds pretty close to the OPL3.

OPL3 routed through the EMU8K for chorus/reverb effects is a "killer feature" for me. BTW, there are PnP cards with real OPL3 (e.g. CT3980).

The AWE32 cards are perfect if you want to combine a lot of features in a single ISA slot.

5u3 wrote:

BTW, there are PnP cards with real OPL3 (e.g. CT3980).

Thanks! Ahh yes, there's that little CT1747 chip.