Artex wrote:

vmunix wrote:

the guy said it has never been used, he has some other stuff from the era still so I sort of believe him , too bad box or manuals are gone. I think this one might have come as part of a multimedia kit, with speakers & cd-rom

Wasn't there a DSP board that plugged into "P3" on the top of this card?

The guy said it never had a DSP board on top of it, do you think it is still usable in this way? he also said the cardboard box was in really bad shape so I'm assuming he throw it away, perhaps with the manuals, only the diskettes survived still with scotch tape.

vmunix wrote:

Artex wrote:

vmunix wrote:

the guy said it has never been used, he has some other stuff from the era still so I sort of believe him , too bad box or manuals are gone. I think this one might have come as part of a multimedia kit, with speakers & cd-rom

Wasn't there a DSP board that plugged into "P3" on the top of this card?

The guy said it never had a DSP board on top of it, do you think it is still usable in this way? he also said the cardboard box was in really bad shape so I'm assuming he throw it away, perhaps with the manuals, only the diskettes survived still with scotch tape.

I don't know if the DSP board ever came with the card out of the box. It may have been an available upgrade, kind of like the ASP chip upgrade used on some of the Creative Sound Blaster cards. There wasn't a whole lot out there that supported that Creative chip though (Qsound, WaveStudio, and maybe some others). Perhaps the board was more useful on the AudioTrix card, allowing the card to output sound with more depth similar to the Ensoniq SoundScape Elite daughterboard.

Just received this: http://www.ebay.nl/itm/251789213605

The box is in pretty bad shape but the board itself looks like it's never been used. I'm curious to see how it matches up against the Asus P3B-F. One cool feature of this board is its Realtek clock generator, which can be set anywhere from 66 all the way up to 200MHz (!!!) in steps of 1 MHz!
There's a UDMA-100 controller on-board too, possibly with RAID, but I don't think I'll be using this since I already have a UDMA-133 PCI controller.

jwt27 wrote:

Just received this: http://www.ebay.nl/itm/251789213605

The box is in pretty bad shape but the board itself looks like it's never been used. I'm curious to see how it matches up against the Asus P3B-F. One cool feature of this board is its Realtek clock generator, which can be set anywhere from 66 all the way up to 200MHz (!!!) in steps of 1 MHz!
There's a UDMA-100 controller on-board too, possibly with RAID, but I don't think I'll be using this since I already have a UDMA-133 PCI controller.

neat!

Don't kill the messenger, but you might want to look at the caps. either its a bad picture, or there are several caps that are starting to bulge right at the center of the processor slot.

Also, anything over ata-66 is pointless unless you are using new large drives. hell, even todays fastest spinning drives only push 120mb/s.

jwt27 wrote:

Just received this: http://www.ebay.nl/itm/251789213605

The box is in pretty bad shape but the board itself looks like it's never been used. I'm curious to see how it matches up against the Asus P3B-F. One cool feature of this board is its Realtek clock generator, which can be set anywhere from 66 all the way up to 200MHz (!!!) in steps of 1 MHz!
There's a UDMA-100 controller on-board too, possibly with RAID, but I don't think I'll be using this since I already have a UDMA-133 PCI controller.

That isn't a socket 478 board.

And I agree with luckybob. It appears to have popped caps

luckybob wrote:

neat! […]
Show full quote

jwt27 wrote:

Just received this: http://www.ebay.nl/itm/251789213605

The box is in pretty bad shape but the board itself looks like it's never been used. I'm curious to see how it matches up against the Asus P3B-F. One cool feature of this board is its Realtek clock generator, which can be set anywhere from 66 all the way up to 200MHz (!!!) in steps of 1 MHz!
There's a UDMA-100 controller on-board too, possibly with RAID, but I don't think I'll be using this since I already have a UDMA-133 PCI controller.

neat!

Don't kill the messenger, but you might want to look at the caps. either its a bad picture, or there are several caps that are starting to bulge right at the center of the processor slot.

Also, anything over ata-66 is pointless unless you are using new large drives. hell, even todays fastest spinning drives only push 120mb/s.

Yep, you're right, some caps are indeed bulging slightly. I'll give it a spin first and if it's any good, I'll recap it. If it's better than the P3B-F I could probably use the caps I bought for that board.

Got some SSDs recently, these should go up to 120MB/s according to their specs. Have yet to create aligned partitions (will post a thread about that soon) but I've seen them push 105MB/s already.

smeezekitty wrote:

That isn't a socket 478 board.

Awwww.... 🙁
No wait, I hate socket 478.

smeezekitty wrote:

jwt27 wrote:

Just received this: http://www.ebay.nl/itm/251789213605

The box is in pretty bad shape but the board itself looks like it's never been used. I'm curious to see how it matches up against the Asus P3B-F. One cool feature of this board is its Realtek clock generator, which can be set anywhere from 66 all the way up to 200MHz (!!!) in steps of 1 MHz!
There's a UDMA-100 controller on-board too, possibly with RAID, but I don't think I'll be using this since I already have a UDMA-133 PCI controller.

That isn't a socket 478 board.

And I agree with luckybob. It appears to have popped caps

3 caps seems bad but Im pretty sure the board will work just fine.
If you can then replace the caps, if not ignore them as long as the board runs.

I have a few BX boards with a few bad caps in the VRM circuits and they run fine (for now at least)

Its a bit different with motherboards for K8 and Netburst CPUs, if you can spot bad caps on those its likely the boards wont even post.

No wait, I hate socket 478.

Haha me too. I just find it amusing the eBay seller had no idea

Artex wrote:

I don't know if the DSP board ever came with the card out of the box...Perhaps the board was more useful on the AudioTrix card, allowing the card to output sound with more depth similar to the Ensoniq SoundScape Elite daughterboard.

Five daughterboards were produced for the Audiotrix Pro, and were available as separate purchases:

• DSP/Effects Processor
• DSP/Voice Processor
• DVC/Phone
• Multi CD-ROM
• RAM/512K Expansion

The add-on boards may as well be unobtainium (I've only managed to acquire three of the five). Notwithstanding, the base Audiotrix Pro is one of the better "all-in-one" cards, in my opinion, offering WSS support, SB2.0 hardware support, FM and General MIDI via the Yamaha OPL4, and a great MPU-401 implementation. An appropriately expanded Audiotrix Pro adds sample-RAM playback and digital effects to that feature list.

The Ensoniq Soundscape Elite comparison is especially relevant, given that both cards have similar digital audio capabilities, MIDI routing options, and MPU-401 support capable of faking-out all but the Legend Entertainment titles. The DSP options between the two are similar as well, both in features (although the YSS225 additionally provides SRS), and in the fact that the DSP configuration utilities are Windows-based.

Awesome! I was hoping Cloudschatze would see this thread and drop some knowledge on us. Thank you sir! 😎

Bought one of those NOS Nakamichi CD changers from the other thread. Possibly it's pointless... but definitely awesome to play with 😎
The slots are represented as multiple drives in DOS/Windows and the drive swaps between discs automatically.

Is it coincidence or design that the mainboards featuring extras like IDE raid on four connectors, maybe even sata on really early boards, don't have sound capability? I also can see most of them have an ISA slot however. I take it that the manufacturers thought that if someone wanted such a high end machine, they'd likely put their own sound card in there anyway?

It could be that they were mostly server boards and therefore probably wouldn't need the additional cost of audio hardware. It could also be that some limitation of the chipset and BIOS only being designed for so many onboard devices or that there were no PCI slots left to occupy without removing actual slots from the motherboard and hindering the potential for expansion.

What a beast that Nakamichi!

Blurredman wrote:

Is it coincidence or design that the mainboards featuring extras like IDE raid on four connectors, maybe even sata on really early boards, don't have sound capability? I also can see most of them have an ISA slot however. I take it that the manufacturers thought that if someone wanted such a high end machine, they'd likely put their own sound card in there anyway?

These were the enthusiast boards at the time. Onboard audio still sucked big time and therefore would've been useless anyway, so better to not have it in the first place. Also, having an ISA slot meant backwards DOS compatibility (DOS wasn't THAT outdated at the time), and having a RAID controller was just awesome.

I mean, these were the reasons I bought the Abit KT7-RAID back then. YMMV.

Blurredman wrote:

Is it coincidence or design that the mainboards featuring extras like IDE raid on four connectors, maybe even sata on really early boards, don't have sound capability? I also can see most of them have an ISA slot however. I take it that the manufacturers thought that if someone wanted such a high end machine, they'd likely put their own sound card in there anyway?

Speaking of early SATA boards, I've got 2 Nforce2Ultra boards. One has built-in MCP RAID, 2 IDE and 2 SATA. Integrated peripherals include sound and no LAN. The other board has a simpler south bridge and therefore does not have raid. However, it has both sound and LAN. 😀 I also guess it has to do with the amount of PCI slots the board has to offer.

RacoonRider wrote:

Blurredman wrote:

Is it coincidence or design that the mainboards featuring extras like IDE raid on four connectors, maybe even sata on really early boards, don't have sound capability? I also can see most of them have an ISA slot however. I take it that the manufacturers thought that if someone wanted such a high end machine, they'd likely put their own sound card in there anyway?

Speaking of early SATA boards, I've got 2 Nforce2Ultra boards. One has built-in MCP RAID, 2 IDE and 2 SATA. Integrated peripherals include sound and no LAN. The other board has a simpler south bridge and therefore does not have raid. However, it has both sound and LAN. 😀 I also guess it has to do with the amount of PCI slots the board has to offer.

I have a soyo dragon motherboard in the other room (not sure what chipset it has), earlier Socket-A before barton. I mention it because it has all the PCI slots, AGP, and a dedicated Promise IDE ATA-100 RAID card onboard, 2 ports and supports 4 drives. That is on top of the other 2 IDE ports that already exist from the chipset. And has both onboard sound, and onboard network all in one. I don't know what tower it's in, if anyone wanted I could photo it and show them in a thread or PM or something. It's an interesting board. I picked it up for $10 and it came with a 1400 applebred duron in it for the price. I don't use it much because it has some bad caps and causes the whole area around the cpu socket to run abnormally very hot.

Some boards were produced with "everything", they just were not common.

Well, my T3200SX is here and is all working aside from the hard drive.

Unfortunately I have BIOS 003I which only allows two specific Conner models, but I needed an excuse to get a new EEPROM programmer and have a dump of a BIOS version that has a workaround, think I'll give that a shot as this seems like a good enough justification for grabbing a programmer seeing how I appear to need one every other week as of late.

@bjt; CD changers are fun 😁 I have a TEAC one that works a bit like yours, I had a Panasonic that could work that way or show as only one letter.

HighTreason wrote:

Unfortunately I have BIOS 003I which only allows two specific Conner models, but I needed an excuse to get a new EEPROM programmer and have a dump of a BIOS version that has a workaround, think I'll give that a shot as this seems like a good enough justification for grabbing a programmer seeing how I appear to need one every other week as of late.

Faced with the same problem on my T3200 non-SX, I upgraded to SCSI. 😉

That thought did cross my mind, but I'd have to forfeit the network card.

And as I said, I needed an excuse to buy a programmer anyway. I may try using a SCSI or IDE controller in the meantime though so I can get more of a feel for the machine while I wait to fix it properly.