386SX wrote:

Great decoder card, I have it right now with my pc. If you want to use it on a PC monitor (CRT) you need the pass cable but if you use it on a TV svideo mini-din or rca input you can use it anyway.
These kind of cards were intended for good old times but I still prefer the hardware decoding of these cards that the software decode or assisted solution.

Sweet! I never had one back in the day so it's a new experience for me. Should hook up nicely to my 1084 😀

Sparkle FX 5900XT - got this baby silly cheap. Great condition, clean, cool, and the fan si quiet too.

A couple of Yamaha DS-1 cards for my PCI builds. I'm trying them out as I type this. Great dos support, and they seem to work on windows 7 too.

Shuttle AK35GT2-R (VIA KT333). When I first saw it I was "meh, can't be any better then my Gigabyte 7VRXP - boy was I wrong. Unlike my gigabyte witch tops out at the 2400+, this baby correctly ID's my 2600+ CPUs and runs them at 2133MHz. Even better - it supports barton CPUs up to the 3000+ (FSB 333 of course). Universal AGP of course, so it makes for a great voodoo 3/4/5 machine base. She's in dire need of recapping since 6!!! of the 3300uf capacitors measured only 10-20% of their rated capacitance. Frankly I'm surprised she even posted. Allready ordered 8x panasonic 3300uf 10v low-esr caps for her. I also replaced the tiny black NB heatsink (since it's missing the fan) with a big passive one off a dead nforce board.

Ah, Yamaha 724 cards, brilliant for Pentium II/III era stuff among other things, especially with the SB-Link connected.

As for me, I just bought these;

Colorgraphic Quad Pro Lightning V+ - A card which I have always wanted. No idea if I can make it work to any useful extent, but at the stupid low price I just had to grab it, if it doesn't work at all without the special cables then, well, I'd still be happy keeping it as a display piece.

Akai S2000 Sampler - I wanted an S1000 but couldn't find a working one at a good price. This S2000 was listed as broken but the seller says it works. It's a bit later than the model I wanted but it does the same things - if not better - so if it does work I shan't be complaining, more MIDI gear can never be a bad thing.

HighTreason wrote:

Colorgraphic Quad Pro Lightning V+ - A card which I have always wanted. No idea if I can make it work to any useful extent, but at the stupid low price I just had to grab it, if it doesn't work at all without the special cables then, well, I'd still be happy keeping it as a display piece.

That's interesting. I can see two Trio64 chips and two ports, but "quad" in the name... Are there two more chips on the other side of the board? Is this supposed to be used with special cables connecting two monitors to each connector on the board?

Oh, and the most important question: are you going to try using this with your BW CRTs =) ?

There are two more chips on the other side and a lattice chip; http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/z/3kcA … xVc2jA/$_57.JPG but there is a version with only two on the card. There is also a Cirrus version as far as I remember. I once heard a rumor there was a Vision-based version but I have never seen one.

So far as I know, in a certain mode/configuration the card will use two of the S3 chips to drive a single display through some sorcery in the Lattice chip. But I don't know for sure and it is supposed to have special cables which I don't have, so I'm just hoping i can drive one or two monitors - I guess I probably could figure out the pinout if not though. Both sockets are likely the same and are standard VGA-type connectors, but I am hoping i can cheat and just plug a single monitor into each one without breaking anything, probably will check with a multimeter first.

If I got quad monitor support I would probably try it with the monochrome screens for fun, but their intended purpose is something requiring much more power and has been halfway put in place already using a Matrox board. See the intro to my latest video if you want to see those in action, they appear briefly, but you can at least see them working - by all means mute it if you don't want to hear my inane ramblings.

Bunch of new CPUs. 😁

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ socket 939 ; on the right Mobile Athlon 64 3400+ socket 754. One of the fastest s754 processors - 2.2 GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 90nm "San Diego" core... with some luck it should be capable of 3GHz clock. 😈

P4 1.7 Willamette s423 ; PIII-S 1.4

Not that common - 2GHz P4 Willamette socket 478.

P4 2.0 / 256 / 400 ; P4 2.26 / 512 / 533 ; P4 2.53 / 512 / 533

P4 HT 2.4 / 512 / 800 ; P4 HT 2.6 / 512 / 800 ; P4 2.6 / 512 / 400
P4 HT 2.8 / 512 / 800

That is some really neat stuff you got. Love the quad S3 card - I've only ever seen a dual chip version myself.

HighTreason wrote:

Ah, Yamaha 724 cards, brilliant for Pentium II/III era stuff among other things, especially with the SB-Link connected.

As a matter of fact I'm playing with the black one in my tualatin build right now 😀 - midi synth is not bad, and CPU usage is 1% (unlike the SB 128 PCI). It lacks the kick the SW20 has, but the guitar samples are much nicer on the DS-1.

@havli - that's a nice collection of intel CPUs you got there. I recently ordered a 3.4GHz socket 478 and a 3.8GHz LGA775 p4 myself.

Oh, you want to hear the guitar samples?

I think this one works on the 724, it won't sound as good as the real MU of course, but it should work.

Doesn't get real interesting for a while, but skipping it will probably break the effects so you'll have to bear with it - this is a serious, real MIDI file, not that note-data-only kiddie crap you get in the MEDIA folder. I can upload a recording from a real MU90R if you want to hear the similarity/difference.

As a last note, if it doesn't play right, try changing the player (Though Media Player from Win9X should do fine) as some don't remap the SysEx port number reliably.

What makes the DS-1 interesting for me is it's price and availability. I'd love to have an MT32 and a MU90R, but the're out of my price range yet, so el cheapo midi synths will have to do 🙁 .

Check this one out - 100$ for the MU90R, and 100$ for shipping. Seriously? Are they going to be teleporting the thing on my desk as soon as I pay for it? They better to justify that shipping price. Then again, lots of ebay sellers post huge shipping prices to make more profit.

I'll try the file you attached tomorrow morning on my SW20, the DS-1 and an AWE32 😀

/\ Don't forget that if customs decide to tax you that value can be even higher! That is one of the reasons I try as hard as possible to find something nationally before resorting to eBay. I've had stuff take over three months to arrive, whereas most stuff I buy nationally arrive in a week or so.

Delivery time isn't usually too bad for me - except on orders from the US, sucks because like 90% of my orders are form the US - but customs can do one, bloody charges. I seem to think mine was decently priced and came from a guy in Malta. I think it was cheap because it is rusty, the selection wheel is a bit wonky and the power cord was busted to hell. Works though.

ramble on
The RZ-1 was a good deal, bought that as parts on the chance it was the classic button problem - it was, just a slipped membrane with broken retainers, so duct tape sorted that out and I only need the sample and MIDI button as I control it from the PC, needed the pots and sockets cleaned too. The CZ-1000 I bought as damaged (No volume control - full volume only) and the Korg was bought with a flat battery (apparently broken) - I think the CZ-5000 is the only thing I ever bought as fully working, but they are pretty worthless (or were, I think I played a part in making them worth more) so I was taking advantage of people's ignorance, in that they usually hated a keyboard they had never used or even heard... Funny thing is, most people start liking them when they've used one. Of course, only the Yamaha is GM compatible out of this selection. Oh, the MT-32 was fully working and cost far too much, then broke when I tried writing music with it... bloody piece of junk. The SCC-1 was boxed and untested (and cheap, circa 2004) and the SoundCanvas modules I had were free or close too - just as well because they were horrible. My MC-303 was free too and needed to be because it was plain awful, but I sold it at the end of 2007.
ramble off

Doesn't matter too much on the MU90R here as the DS-1 is good enough for PC games anyway, none of them really make use of the extended features of the MU90. In fact, even the MU50 would probably be overkill, hell, even the DS-1/724 is kinda overkill and it would probably only be worth getting a module if you planned to write your own songs... Though that does tempt me to see how impractical I can be and use multiple overpowered synths for simple GM music, just to see how many I can actually set up and use at one time. Once wrote a song which used six synths at the same time, that was a pain in the ass.

I doubt that MIDI will sound good on an AWE32, given it's an XG file and relies on extended programs and features. It will play though.

Here's what I got this year so far:

Not much but still better than nothing 😉

Nice haul! I'm really envious of that Trident Blade 3D - I've been looking for one for ages, but all I can seem to find is the 3D Image 🙁. I used to have the on-board version on my K6 back in the day and it ran most games well at low resolutions.

@Hightreason - that midi file you sent is kick-ass! Sound pretty good on the DS-1 too! Do you have any more?

kanecvr wrote:

Nice haul! I'm really envious of that Trident Blade 3D - I've been looking for one for ages, but all I can seem to find is the 3D Image 🙁. I used to have the on-board version on my K6 back in the day and it ran most games well at low resolutions.

Thanks. I will try to find one Blade 3D for you, I had a chance to buy more than one in the past.

I already have Blade 3D AGP from the same company (Jaton?) so no I will have a pair 😉

BTW I still have additional BLADE T64 if you are interested.

kanecvr wrote:

Nice haul! I'm really envious of that Trident Blade 3D - I've been looking for one for ages, but all I can seem to find is the 3D Image 🙁. I used to have the on-board version on my K6 back in the day and it ran most games well at low resolutions.

@Hightreason - that midi file you sent is kick-ass! Sound pretty good on the DS-1 too! Do you have any more?

I believe I have a green Blade3D in the other room somewhere, AGP. I don't understand the point? They're one of the infamous graphics decelerators of the time, usually made games run slower than software on CPU when used.

Traded some junk for this Creative dxr2 kit. DVD, video card, and soundcard. Not sure if it was a significant item for my collection as I've not found very much information out there on it, but it seemed a shame not to save it.

Sorry about the potato pic. Anyone know about these?

kithylin wrote:

I believe I have a green Blade3D in the other room somewhere, AGP. I don't understand the point? They're one of the infamous graphics decelerators of the time, usually made games run slower than software on CPU when used.

If I recall correctly the Blade3D was supposed to be decent for its price. Even the older/slower 3DImage was faster than the one true decelerator (the S3 Virge) from what I've read.

VooDooMan wrote:

Thanks. I will try to find one Blade 3D for you, I had a chance to buy more than one in the past.

I'd really appreciate it - they're nearly impossible to find here. While smart people on a budget were looking to buy the Blade 3D witch performs well in most 1996-1999 games, retailers here were pushing the S3 Trio3D (witch is utter crap for 3d acceleration and does not support ogl) down everyone's thoughts.

VooDooMan wrote:

BTW I still have additional BLADE T64 if you are interested.

I am actually. The T64 is the 9970 correct? They should perform on par with the 9980 and make an interesting alternative for K6 and pentium 1-2 machines that also use a voodoo card.

I want to use a Blade 3D on my K6-3 build since I had the on-board version on my K6 back in the day. It currently has an AGP voodoo banshee, but if I get a hold of a Blade 3D I'll replace it with that + a Voodoo 2.

kithylin wrote:

I don't understand the point? They're one of the infamous graphics decelerators of the time, usually made games run slower than software on CPU when used.

You may be confusing the Blade 3D with the S3 Virge / Trio 3D - those were 3D decelerators. The blade 3D has good image quality and does games like Quake 2 in openGL up to 1024x768 at decent framerates. I finished Quake 2 on my K6 back in the day at 800x600 on it instead of my voodoo 2 because it simply looked better on the Trident then it looked on the voodoo - the voodoo had washed out colours and too much gamma, while the blade3d had great lighting and colours. The trident also did 1024x768 witch the v2 could not. It's slower in openGL then the V2 is in glide (quite a bit slower) but it's a lot faster in direct 3d, so games like Midtown Madness ran better on the trident.

kithylin wrote:

I believe I have a green Blade3D in the other room somewhere, AGP.

If you have no need for it I'll gladly buy / trade it off you. PM me if you're interested!

Oldbitcollector wrote:

Traded some junk for this Creative dxr2 kit. DVD, video card, and soundcard. Not sure if it was a significant item for my collection as I've not found very much information out there on it, but it seemed a shame not to save it.

Sorry about the potato pic. Anyone know about these?

The only thing these are good for is decoding DVD Video discs on older, slower hardware. Like Pentium-II 400 systems and the like with windows 98. Once you get in to the faster systems like even a 1 Ghz Pentium-III I believe it can be done on cpu, and even then modern software like VLC can run on even WinXP SP-0 and offers gpu offloading with like a nvidia card.

havli wrote:

Bunch of new CPUs. 😁

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ socket 939 ; on the right Mobile Athlon 64 3400+ socket 754. One of the fastest s754 processors - 2.2 GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 90nm "San Diego" core... with some luck it should be capable of 3GHz clock. 😈

I think I have that same 754 processor, it makes for a very decent Windows XP gaming machine. Socket 939 really isn't that faster I found, but I haven't checked out any dual core CPUs yet.