Story goes that I searched ebay for AOPEN for an unrelated reason, and came across a listing for a socket 5 board. The board was in bubble wrap and I couldn't quite make it out. In another image there was a VLB video card standing proped up aginst the box. Curious I Bing Image searched that particular board so I could see the PCB layout. To my surprise the picture didn't at all look like the same board that was obscured by the bubble wrap. I realized at this point that the board in the images did not match the Ebay listing.

I was determined to figure out what exactly this this was. So in an effort to identify the board I down loaded the image of the bubble wrapped board and enlarged, sharpened and adjusted the colors in irfanview. I immediately realized that this must be something special when I could barely make out what looked to be an American flag sticker on the chipset.

Still having no idea what exatly this was I posted a picture of the bubble wrapped board on Vogons titled "Mystery Board" . Within minutes several users stated this was an Alaris Cougar and that its a rare board etc. Now I was pretty hyped at the possibility that at the sellers expense, that he didn't really know what he had made some kinda mistake. Without knowing exactly what it was worth, I just clicked buy without second guessing as it was 20 US Dollars buy it now.

Next few days I wondered if it really was, what I thought it was then it finally came today, what looks like a unused new old stock motherboard.

Got this sound card today -- it actually looks exactly like the sound card I used to have in the 90s!

dell dimension xps m233s. in great shape. just needs a little tlc... and maybe some voodoo!!!

socket 7 Intel 430VX
pentium 233mmx
64mb 66mhz sdram
matrox millenium II
onboard creative vibra16 w/ awe32 daughter board
usr sportster 56k
unknown nic
8gb maxtor hdd
48x cd-rom
3.5" floppy
windows 95

I really love these Dell Dimension towers..

EDIT: I was looking at 15" LCD monitors to use with my retro PCs (not enough room to store or use a proper CRT 🙁 ) so I came across this interesting Compaq branded panel:

A Compaq TFT5015 apparently. It looks rather nice, being beige and fairly reminiscent of a CRT from distance. Anyone know how good/bad these things are?

Haven't really been posting pictures lately but I have gotten quite a bit of goodies for good/great prices lately - all these are seller's pics:

Gravis Ultrasound 2.4 boxed - this is my first GF1 based card

Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS XL - factory sealed

Media Vision Audio Port - parallel port sound card - factory sealed

MediaTrix AudioTrix Pro

Diamond Monster MX200 with 4MB wavetable

Continued:

Mozart Wavetable (sold under Raysound brand ?)with documentation and install disks:

MM401 ? clone - Not really any info at all that I could find on this card other than an older eBay sale that said the same thing.

Media Vision Midi Mate gameport MIDI adapter:

ASUS P3C-S - Intel i820 motherboard with RDRAM, Universal AGP Pro, and real ISA slot via the ITE IT8888F PCI/ISA bridge:

ASUS P4T533-C - Intel i850E motherboard - RDRAM

Continued:

PC-Chips M915i / Amptron DX-9200 Slot 3 motherboard:

Great nb/sb chips 😁 amptron rulz.

cyclone3d wrote:

Continued:

PC-Chips M915i / Amptron DX-9200 Slot 3 motherboard:

M915i.jpg

I like the white ISA slots

cyclone3d wrote:

Continued:

Mozart Wavetable (sold under Raysound brand ?)with documentation and install disks:

Mozart Wavetable.jpg

Look a page back I got a similar Mozart card a few days ago 😊 Recap is done

nice stuff there cyclone3d! enjoy!!!

arncht wrote:

Great nb/sb chips 😁 amptron rulz.

And no onboard floppy controller. So strange.

It's using the UMC chipset that has PCI. I believe it has no super io controller as I've only seen boards with that chipset having IDE ports and nothing else.

keropi wrote:

nice stuff there cyclone3d! enjoy!!!

Thanks! I definitely will.

Deksor wrote:

It's using the UMC chipset that has PCI. I believe it has no super io controller as I've only seen boards with that chipset having IDE ports and nothing else.

Yeah, I'll probably end up throwing an ISA I/O controller in there and just disable the IDE on the controller.

Bought a new old stock IBM CGA card today 😁

For those interested, there are a couple more left on ebay. US seller. They are going quick!

I wonder if those were from Computer Reset

mothergoose729 wrote:

Bought a new old stock IBM CGA card today 😁

For those interested, there are a couple more left on ebay. US seller. They are going quick!

Ad said a pair of matched PB oem boards (MU440EX) 😕 - turns out one is proper Intel branded 😎

Got myself a free* (only had to pay postage cost of $15 + leaving a $5 tip as a thanks, therefore I consider it buying) USRobotics 56K X2 V.Everything modem. You know, that dead 56k standard?

I got it for my Pentium I project since I can reliably "emulate" a dial-up connection, I wanted a nice modem to go with it. I have a fair few USR modems, but they are mainly Sportster models or older Courier models that would be more suited to the 486 era. This model is a perfect fit for the project and one I don't own yet, since it was built in early '97 and I'm trying to avoid hardware from anywhere after '97.

Of course once receiving it, the first thing I did was turn it on. That's a good start. Next I took it apart, and this is where I saw some minor issues.

Nothing hugely concerning. Some minor corrosion (unsurprising for something of the age that was probably stored haphazardly), dust, what looks like pet fur and case cracking.

Lucky I've got all the parts to fix that!

Sadly, I'm out of glue. Job for another night after I buy some more.

Still very happy though. Total cost was less than one on eBay, not to mention the shipping fees from the US to Australia on top of that.

This XT clone. Works perfectly fine (judging by the files metadata it was last used in 1994 and was destined for a scrap yard recently). I even got XT keyboard with it for free.