CrFr wrote:

Picked up this excellent condition Sound Blaster AWE32 CT3980 for just 10 euros. Couldn't leave it at that price, even when I already had CT3600 and CT4520 🤣. And just after I had bought this, I found AWE64 Gold CT4390 at 15 euros, so couldn't leave that either. It is still in mail, maybe coming on monday. Ebay prices for these are just insane, so it really makes me happy to find them at such low prices.

sweet, unfortunately the local classifieds here seem to have caught up to ebay prices already... the only time I could find cards for reasonable prices so far is when buying old hardware in bulk ^^ ...twelve years ago I got an AWE64 Gold for 10€ off ebay, that was before I was really collecting, just got it cause I liked it and it reminded me of old times (I never actually had an AWE64 gold, just the regular AWE64)
and more recently I got a CT1350 by chance buying a box of "scrap", and a CT1600 from a different scrap box, unfortunately in that one all the cards had their brackets stripped.

This somewhat rare 486 SX-16 was the last missing CPU in my Intel 486 collection. I still have to get a few overdrives, but the standard lineup is now covered. 😊

Now I am wondering if there is a 486 motherboard with 16 MHz support so that I can test this guy. The one I have starts at 20 MHz....

mpe wrote:

This somewhat rare 486 SX-16 was the last missing CPU in my Intel 486 collection. I still have to get a few overdrives, but the standard lineup is now covered. 😊

Now I am wondering if there is a 486 motherboard with 16 MHz support so that I can test this guy. The one I have starts at 20 MHz....

I have a packard bell with 16mhz 486sx. If I am correct they where only used by some OEMs like Packard Bell, Compaq..

Get a Board with changeable crystal oscilator and just put a 32Mhz one on it.

I wonder what the equivalent 386DX speed to that would be.. 25MHz?

No, much more. Based on MIPS, a 16 MHz 486 is equivalent to a 42 MHz 386DX. So it's already faster than the fastest 386, as 40 MHz was the end of the line.

Note that unlike with the 386, there's no speed difference between a 486 SX and DX.

I expect in the right board it should beat the 386 DX-33.

486SX-25 beats 386DX-40 which is close to SX-20 in raw horsepower. Often the 486 has benefits of faster chipset, VL-BUS, bigger/faster L2 cache which even increase the difference

Got lots of dust and whatever for 5€.

Paid ~18 USD.

Not really excellent deal, because seller lost the cyberpuck and VIP Card<->VFX1 cable. Although he stated he tested it like 1 year ago and it was working fine...

Woah, nice find! $18 USD is insane for one of those. AFAIK the cable is "ACCESS.bus", which IS a standard, although a little-used one. You might be able to source one from some industrial supply or whatever.

I've found very little use for the Cyberpuck and end up playing with the keyboard & mouse or a joystick for most games anyway, but a shame not to have the complete set.

xjas wrote:

Woah, nice find! $18 USD is insane for one of those. AFAIK the cable is "ACCESS.bus", which IS a standard, although a little-used one. You might be able to source one from some industrial supply or whatever.

I've found very little use for the Cyberpuck and end up playing with the keyboard & mouse or a joystick for most games anyway, but a shame not to have the complete set.

Thanks for the tip! As you can see also the foam padding is deteriorating but that seems to be usual case with these headsets - I may look for some thick headliner foam/fabric and try to replace it...

Edit: Naaah, it's not Access.Bus - this one was probably used for connecting cyberpuck to helmet or vip card, and I'm talking about the big cable with D-Sub 26 pin connectors... I may look for the diagram or try to reverse-engineer one (fortunately @Batyra has full set, and he said he will borrow me the controller and the cable to test this set - I will be able to make a pinout diagram using his cable).

I measured that cable when I was fixing mine up & I'm pretty sure it was 1:1. Best to confirm with Batyra or someone though, since that was a couple years ago... (My set up is in storage at the moment.) I'll see if I can find where I wrote down the pinout.

xjas wrote:

Woah, nice find! $18 USD is insane for one of those. AFAIK the cable is "ACCESS.bus", which IS a standard, although a little-used one. You might be able to source one from some industrial supply or whatever.

I've found very little use for the Cyberpuck and end up playing with the keyboard & mouse or a joystick for most games anyway, but a shame not to have the complete set.

I disagree about the Cyberpuck, it was novel, but had it's place in the 'immersion'.

Standing up while playing FPS's was so much better than sitting down, and the Cyberpuck was a perfect tool for that... only maybe beaten by a dataglove. I never played Flight Unlimited with my VFX1 (or which ever flight simulator it was that supported it), but that would have been the only thing worth sitting down with a joystick/flightstick for imo.

And of course you could use it as a mouse! 😵

HanJammer wrote:

Paid ~18 USD.
Not really excellent deal, because seller lost the cyberpuck and VIP Card<->VFX1 cable. Although he stated he tested it like 1 year ago and it was working fine...

I would say that was a steal (certainly for spares, if not... dare I say it, donor retro looking headset for retro fitting much better tech into 😉).

I've had 2 VFX1's in the past ~20 years, and both cost me in excess of 100 quid. The first one I got in 2001... back then it was over 100 quid second hand!

The Cyberpuck you can live without, but the VIP card is a bit of a pita... however, if you are ok with DIY electronics there is something called a LinkBox (and also describes the pinout) which basically frees the VFX1 from VESA and its other software limitations. You will need the cable, but not the VIP card, and may end up with a VFX1 that you could use on today's modern machinery.... LCD res still crap though 😀.

1994 IBM PS/1 multimedia edition with VLB slot and Sound Blaster 16. Model # 2155.
486dx2-50 CPU.
This has 20mb ram and an onboard Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428 , 1mb ( pretty good , Second fastest VGA card behind the 5429 ).
Does not look like it has any cache however so I will have to add some.
I am going to clean it up and restore it with an original IBM disk image from IBM museum.

spiroyster wrote:

I disagree about the Cyberpuck, it was novel, but had it's place in the 'immersion'.

Standing up while playing FPS's was so much better than sitting down, and the Cyberpuck was a perfect tool for that... only maybe beaten by a dataglove. I never played Flight Unlimited with my VFX1 (or which ever flight simulator it was that supported it), but that would have been the only thing worth sitting down with a joystick/flightstick for imo.

Descent 1 & 2 work well with the VFX-1 and a joystick (or a full HOTAS setup if you want to go all-out.) I wish they had virtual cockpit mechanics, but even as-is they're great games to play on the thing.

MMaximus wrote:

Bought this NOS case for a reasonable price on ebay. It seems to be a clone of the Chieftec Dragon - I used to have a grey model […]
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Bought this NOS case for a reasonable price on ebay. It seems to be a clone of the Chieftec Dragon - I used to have a grey model in the early 2000's and remember it being really heavy. This one might be a bit lighter, but overall I'm really pleased with the quality. The materials, fit and finish are all decent. TBH I wasn't expecting such a nice case for the price... I'm looking forward to using it for a build soon.

i wouldn't call it a clone really. chenming was the case oem for antec/chieftec and others.

chenming also released their own product line and i think the case you have is the chenming 601AE-U.

The cyclical old hardware bug is back to haunt me.

Could not let go of an ASUS NCCH-DL with two Xeon 3GhZ. This will make a nice high-end AGP beast. At 70 euro, including shipping, it's fairly cheap for a relatively rare board. Hopefully it arrives safe and sound.

How much would you guys spend on a dual Tyan Thunder S2895 with 8GB ram and two Opterons?

Sigh. I've been trying to get a SCSI MO or ZIP drive for a while now, and seem to have terrible luck getting one:

- First MO drive was very cheap and didn't see disks.
- The 250 Mb ZIP drive I received today turns out to be a parallel port drive, which I could have known as it was shown very clearly on the box that was pictured in the advertisement, that was listed as SCSI by accident. Let's hope it works, because it might still be useful on a non-SCSI equipped system...

Also got a cheap USB ZIP/PCMCIA/SmartMedia drive that can serve as a standalone photo editing station when you hook it up to a TV. The ZIP portion appears to be dead (won't spin up disks), but it turned out the actual drive is a regular ATAPI drive, so replacing it shouldn't be too hard. The SmartMedia portion works, and the PCMCIA portion probably too. I got all cables, software, manuals and box with it, so that's nice.

What is it with all this old junk I keep buying 🤣 Now I found new-in-box never used Hyundai ImageQuest V995 19" CRT monitor. Had to buy it. At some point, I got rid of all my CRTs "because they took too much space". Now I at least have one to play with 😀 It can do up to 1600x1200/75Hz, which is quite decent.

Puh, won this auction but I am afraid I paid too much money. Think some other collectors spotted this and the seller was rather surprised about the outcome...

Will see if something works. We have:
4 x 286 Mainboard, 2xSuntac
3 x 486 Mainbaord, 1 with PCI+VLB
4 x Soundblaster
1 x Mediavision
3 x Voodoo I
1 x Voodoo Banshee with Cinch-Out?
ISA Video Capture
ET4000 VLB
2 x ISA ARCNet
2 interesting (full length) PCI Graphics cards, one Matrox?
..and not too much junk.

(sellers photo)