Seems like I'll be getting another 90's laptop. This one's a Compaq Armada 7750MT. Some guy is selling a big lot of Compaqs, but we'll see what shape they're in; might be a rough bunch. I've owned an LTE 5280 and an Armada 1130T, both of which had nice build quality, so I'm looking forward to checking out a different Armada model.

appiah4 wrote:

K6-III (and K6-2+) listings on eBay US are usually fairly cheap but listings on EU are often about twice as expensive.. I get the feeling the chips were a lot more common in US.

K6-III and 2+ yes... but here I'm talking of this specific one K6-III+ 550... It's like with that cyrix 486 that goes for huge money.

or even a Pentium III-S 1400 for anything near that price...

Actually those are quite easy and cheap to get, due to their strong presence in OEM.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

or even a Pentium III-S 1400 for anything near that price...

Actually those are quite easy and cheap to get, due to their strong presence in OEM.

I've seen a few in the wild where I live, for reasonable prices too, but I skipped out on them as I already have enough 1000A and S-1200 CPUs to get me through any Tualatin build. K6-2+ or K6-III however are never in my target price range.

I grabbed this for 10 bucks.

I remember buying this card in late 2008 to play Age of Conan because my Powercolor Radeon HD3850 I bought in 2007 was really struggling with it. It made a night and day difference. I used it for a good four years, through the 'Dark Ages of Kinect' when XBOX 360 lost its core gamer focus and appeal to me, until eventually upgrading to an HD7770 in 2012 (which got upgraded to an RX480 in 2016 - I seem to be upgrading GPUs every four years, interesting..)

I will be buying an HD7770 (or an HD7850) sometime down the line as well; they are just not attractive enough pricewise.

cyclone3d wrote:

I don't understand why people think the K6-III+ CPUs are expensive. Pretty sure I got my last one for less than $20 shipped. […]
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arncht wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Considering how expensive K6-III CPUs are I really hope you don’t OC it.

I really dont understand the hype around it. It is slow (compared to the same age), and chipsets are buggy.

I don't understand why people think the K6-III+ CPUs are expensive. Pretty sure I got my last one for less than $20 shipped.

That being said.. the "hype" is because it was what people who couldn't afford the higher end Intel stuff at the time.

And it was plenty fast for all the games back then.

I never actually had a Slot-1 or Socket 370 system until much much later. I went straight from SS7 to Slot-A.

AMD was the bomb diggidy back then.

it was fast and more compatible in dos... and with 3dnow, if something supported it (mostly not - powerful fpu preferred). at those time most of the people bought the c300a with bx in the end of 98 and overclocked it to 450. the + versions and the bugfixed chipsets were from 2000, in 99 you got the very hot desktop version and the buggy chipsets. nobody bought a k6 in 2000... you can buy durons for cheap.

so that is the reason, why are they rare... but good? no.

here is a couple of benchmarks:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tfyd0 … dit?usp=sharing

I received the above sound card yesterday.

What a terrible mistake buying this was, thankfully i didn't pay much.

While it does have an OPL3, it is hobbled by the rest of the card that makes me think that they simply didn't care what it sounded like at all. Terrible noise floor, bad distortion with the vibra pre-amplifier, this is a sound blaster 16 you should run far from. The output on this is so bad, I simply can't bring myself to actually use it in any computer I own. What a piece of trash, it has a wavetable header but it would be a terrible waste of money to connect anything to it.

It was so bad, I'm probably going to avoid buying all sound blaster 16's in the future. Expensive and overrated for the most part. What I did do, was buy a Yamaha YMF719E-S based ISA card. That should work a lot better.

This also just came in the mail:

My second G450 PCI. I just love this card as a drop in card for OEM PII/PIII PCs such as Optiplexes, Deskpros etc. that lack AGP slots.

canthearu wrote:

I received the above sound card yesterday. […]
Show full quote

IMG_2701.JPG

I received the above sound card yesterday.

What a terrible mistake buying this was, thankfully i didn't pay much.

While it does have an OPL3, it is hobbled by the rest of the card that makes me think that they simply didn't care what it sounded like at all. Terrible noise floor, bad distortion with the vibra pre-amplifier, this is a sound blaster 16 you should run far from. The output on this is so bad, I simply can't bring myself to actually use it in any computer I own. What a piece of trash, it has a wavetable header but it would be a terrible waste of money to connect anything to it.

It was so bad, I'm probably going to avoid buying all sound blaster 16's in the future. Expensive and overrated for the most part. What I did do, was buy a Yamaha YMF719E-S based ISA card. That should work a lot better.

try with the ct22x0 series... they are much better. but i prefer the sbpro2 for the older games.
the pas16 is also better than the ct17x0, if you want a well supported and better quality sound card from those years (92-93).

the vibra-s is a very noisy card, more noisy, than the first sb16.

arncht wrote:

try with the ct22x0 series... they are much better. but i prefer the sbpro2 for the older games.
the pas16 is also better than the ct17x0, if you want a well supported and better quality sound card from those years (92-93).

the vibra-s is a very noisy card, more noisy, than the first sb16.

As much as I agree with you, The prices of these cards you talk about and my wallet don't agree, most of the cards you speak about are on the other side of the $100 mark,

I can pay for a damn good yamaha/ess clone, and also get a new dreamblaster s2, for less than the vast majority of these cards, so unless I fall over one of these cards by sheer luck, it's not happening.

And I agree, the Vibra-S is awful, I don't know how they could have done so much more of a worse job than the clone manufacturers in creating a single chip digital audio solution.

what is your goal and your config, in witch want you use?
do you want to build an authentic computer from a specified year?
or just it should work in a faster computer?

many isa boards has some problem with faster computers.

arncht wrote:

what is your goal and your config, in witch want you use? do you want to build an authentic computer from a specified year? or j […]
Show full quote

what is your goal and your config, in witch want you use?
do you want to build an authentic computer from a specified year?
or just it should work in a faster computer?

many isa boards has some problem with faster computers.

My goal is to build good computers to play these older games on, and that takes priority over exact authentic-ness.

Regarding whether sb clones are authentic in a retro sense, my thoughts are definitely, hell yes! Much more likely to see some stodgy SB clone than an actual creative card in computers of the old eras.

Regarding it working in faster computers, my targets for these cards are 386-DX40, 486-DX66 and 5x86-133, and maybe pentium 200, depending on how I feel. I do have a Pentium III-600 with an AWE64 value in it, but my faster computers use otherwise use PCI cards, because they are better for windows 9x and generally offer better sound performance than most ISA cards. It would be a particularly odd game that would benefit from working on a 1ghz P3, but also be allergic to a PCI sound card.

In happier sound card news, I received this little gem today. A diamond multimedia sonic impact S90.

Based on a cheaper respin of the original aureal vortex 1 chip, the AU8820 is still pretty good. This example offers very nice line output quality and good DOS compatibility.

Considering I paid $24 AU delivered for it, I think I have done OK.

It is going into an Athlon XP-2000 based system with nvidia geforce 4ti-4200 😀

canthearu wrote:

In happier sound card news, I received this little gem today. A diamond multimedia sonic impact S90. […]
Show full quote

IMG_2702.JPG

In happier sound card news, I received this little gem today. A diamond multimedia sonic impact S90.

Based on a cheaper respin of the original aureal vortex 1 chip, the AU8820 is still pretty good. This example offers very nice line output quality and good DOS compatibility.

Considering I paid $24 AU delivered for it, I think I have done OK.

It is going into an Athlon XP-2000 based system with nvidia geforce 4ti-4200 😀

I've got a very similar AU8820 based card, and I agree, they do sound nice.

canthearu wrote:

I received the above sound card yesterday. […]
Show full quote

IMG_2701.JPG

I received the above sound card yesterday.

What a terrible mistake buying this was, thankfully i didn't pay much.

While it does have an OPL3, it is hobbled by the rest of the card that makes me think that they simply didn't care what it sounded like at all. Terrible noise floor, bad distortion with the vibra pre-amplifier, this is a sound blaster 16 you should run far from. The output on this is so bad, I simply can't bring myself to actually use it in any computer I own. What a piece of trash, it has a wavetable header but it would be a terrible waste of money to connect anything to it.

It was so bad, I'm probably going to avoid buying all sound blaster 16's in the future. Expensive and overrated for the most part. What I did do, was buy a Yamaha YMF719E-S based ISA card. That should work a lot better.

This is by far the strangest Sound Blaster ISA card I've seen, never before had I seen the CT2860 - I wonder how it compares to my other CT28xx cards. I have a CT2890 for example, it is a Vibra-S card with a genuine OPL3 and it's one of the most silent OPL3 ISA cards I have..

Maybe your card has a busted filter cap or something somewhere?

Also, I don't believe VibraS is the first Vibra chip, that actually is the CT2501? Then there is the CT2502 (Vibra Pro) that I believe is the most silent Vibra chip.. Or maybe that is the XV? Someone who knows better will correct me anyway 😀

canthearu wrote:

In happier sound card news, I received this little gem today. A diamond multimedia sonic impact S90. […]
Show full quote

IMG_2702.JPG

In happier sound card news, I received this little gem today. A diamond multimedia sonic impact S90.

Based on a cheaper respin of the original aureal vortex 1 chip, the AU8820 is still pretty good. This example offers very nice line output quality and good DOS compatibility.

Considering I paid $24 AU delivered for it, I think I have done OK.

It is going into an Athlon XP-2000 based system with nvidia geforce 4ti-4200 😀

This looks like it was built on the reference Aureal Vortex 1 PCB design, I'm 99% sure that if you soldered on a wavetable header, it would work. Here's my Turtle Beach Montego for reference:

canthearu wrote:

My goal is to build good computers to play these older games on, and that takes priority over exact authentic-ness. […]
Show full quote

arncht wrote:

what is your goal and your config, in witch want you use? do you want to build an authentic computer from a specified year? or j […]
Show full quote

what is your goal and your config, in witch want you use?
do you want to build an authentic computer from a specified year?
or just it should work in a faster computer?

many isa boards has some problem with faster computers.

My goal is to build good computers to play these older games on, and that takes priority over exact authentic-ness.

Regarding whether sb clones are authentic in a retro sense, my thoughts are definitely, hell yes! Much more likely to see some stodgy SB clone than an actual creative card in computers of the old eras.

Regarding it working in faster computers, my targets for these cards are 386-DX40, 486-DX66 and 5x86-133, and maybe pentium 200, depending on how I feel. I do have a Pentium III-600 with an AWE64 value in it, but my faster computers use otherwise use PCI cards, because they are better for windows 9x and generally offer better sound performance than most ISA cards. It would be a particularly odd game that would benefit from working on a 1ghz P3, but also be allergic to a PCI sound card.

if you pair an isa card with the same aged computer, it should work... the problems will come, if there is a big age difference. the later cards fit more to the latest isa mainboards. it is possible to change the timings, and it could resolve some problems, but not everything.

so if you use a p3 - just stay with the dos compatible pci card (yamaha), it will work better, than the old sb16 cards. in a 486 you could fit sbpro, pas16, gus (these cards do not completely works in a p3 - detection, dma, memory problems), and the guspnp, awe64 work more stable in the faster computers.

A local seller I bought a PC from for the Voodoo 3 in it contacted me to tell me he had some sound cards for sale. I picked up a CT3670 and a CT4620. The CT4620s are bog standard Sound Blaster AWE64 Values but the CT3670 is a strange beast. I believe officially it is a Sound Blaster 32, but it has the AWE chip from an AWE64 and the v4.16 DSP too. Plus, it has standard 30-pin slots for memory expansion, nothing proprietary. No OPL sound but everything else looks good.

The other item I got in the mail was supposed to be a Yamaha... er... I cannot remember the model off of the top of my head. I've had no real time to poke at this, but I'm pretty sure it's not a Yamaha (though it has the OPL chipset at least) so will have to see what it really is. I Googled the model number at the top and actually got a couple hits back to VOGONS, pretty much confirming it's just an average card using the Yamaha chipset. But if I can get sound Sound Blaster Pro compatibility out of it and OPL and a working MIDI port, that'd make me happy. 😀

Thallanor wrote:

A local seller I bought a PC from for the Voodoo 3 in it contacted me to tell me he had some sound cards for sale. I picked up a […]
Show full quote

A local seller I bought a PC from for the Voodoo 3 in it contacted me to tell me he had some sound cards for sale. I picked up a CT3670 and a CT4620. The CT4620s are bog standard Sound Blaster AWE64 Values but the CT3670 is a strange beast. I believe officially it is a Sound Blaster 32, but it has the AWE chip from an AWE64 and the v4.16 DSP too. Plus, it has standard 30-pin slots for memory expansion, nothing proprietary. No OPL sound but everything else looks good.

DSC_0426.JPG

The other item I got in the mail was supposed to be a Yamaha... er... I cannot remember the model off of the top of my head. I've had no real time to poke at this, but I'm pretty sure it's not a Yamaha (though it has the OPL chipset at least) so will have to see what it really is. I Googled the model number at the top and actually got a couple hits back to VOGONS, pretty much confirming it's just an average card using the Yamaha chipset. But if I can get sound Sound Blaster Pro compatibility out of it and OPL and a working MIDI port, that'd make me happy. 😀

DSC_0423.JPG

That second one looks like a pretty bog-standard YMF719 based card. I've got a Labway card that looks identical.

EDIT: By which I mean that generic Yamaha drivers should work just fine

canthearu wrote:

In happier sound card news, I received this little gem today. A diamond multimedia sonic impact S90. […]
Show full quote

IMG_2702.JPG

In happier sound card news, I received this little gem today. A diamond multimedia sonic impact S90.

Based on a cheaper respin of the original aureal vortex 1 chip, the AU8820 is still pretty good. This example offers very nice line output quality and good DOS compatibility.

Considering I paid $24 AU delivered for it, I think I have done OK.

It is going into an Athlon XP-2000 based system with nvidia geforce 4ti-4200 😀

AU8820 IS the original Aureal Vortex. 8810 is the cheaper respin.

LHN91 wrote:

That second one looks like a pretty bog-standard YMF719 based card. I've got a Labway card that looks identical.

EDIT: By which I mean that generic Yamaha drivers should work just fine

Yeah. I might be on crack thinking that back in the day, Yamaha started building their own sound cards. My memory sure ain't what it used to be!

I Googled the FCC ID and tada! Labway. 😀 Good eye! A Google hit to VOGONS mentioned someone having trouble getting stereo sound out of its Sound Blaster Pro emulation, but I'll dig deeper when I have a chance. If it does good Sound Blaster Pro emulation, combined with it having OPL3 and an MPU-401 port, I could be in heaven. 😀 And it was a dirt-cheap card too. I was chatting with stamasd from the forums here and he's who got me interested in these cards again so it was sort of an impulse purchase. But for $20? Yeah, I'm cool with that. 😀 I was a bit nervous because the seller was Russian and I wasn't sure if I'd get the package mauled by Russian bears or anything, or if I'd receive anything at all. No box, but the guy must have shares in a bubblewrap company because there must have been 3" of padding all the way around it. I suspect it'd even survive that Russian bear.