This monstrosity 😈

It is a PCIe to PCI bridge card with 3x 3.3v PCI slots and 1x 5v PCI slot. Meant for development I am pretty sure, but this will be a weird expansion / test card to test PCI cards on a PCIe only system.
I wonder if it can run the PCI cards at 66Mhz. The bridge chip supports it.

Strange things are being produced. I've never seen something like that in person, and I was about to get a PCI-e 1x extension cable, but those things are from China, and probably not ETL or UL listed.

Two brand-spanking new Ezra-Ts - I consider this a huge score!

infiniteclouds wrote:

Two brand-spanking new Ezra-Ts - I consider this a huge score!

Nice find!

infiniteclouds wrote:

Two brand-spanking new Ezra-Ts - I consider this a huge score!

Nice! Would love to find some myself. Are you going to build a system?

bjwil1991 wrote:

Strange things are being produced. I've never seen something like that in person, and I was about to get a PCI-e 1x extension cable, but those things are from China, and probably not ETL or UL listed.

This is an older piece of equipment. Pretty sure it is not even being made anymore. When new, this card was over $300 if I remember correctly from my research. This is the only one I have ever come across used for sale for super cheap.

Those PCIe riser cables are fine. They don't need to be ETL or UL approved. They are just straight through extension cables. The only thing I would worry about is if I was using one for a video card and then I would want a 1x to 16x riser cable that had a power plug in order to supply the video card with enough power.

Wohohohoooo... This is absolutely in great shape. 😜 😳

Today I recieved that Amiga500, wich I bought a week ago or something like that. It was sold as a seller refurbished machine. Yet the state of this, is absolutely stunning for it's age. It looks like it is one year old. Drive is working flawless.... It came with the power brick and a tankmouse. Only the power brick has that 30 year old look. And only the tankmouse did not survive the shipping. Yet the Amiga is complete, with both expansion bay cover and trapdoor cover present.

I've always wondered what Amiga was all about. But being in the US means everything is 10x more expensive than it already is and I just don't see the appeal at that prices they tend to be.

luckybob wrote:

I've always wondered what Amiga was all about. But being in the US means everything is 10x more expensive than it already is and I just don't see the appeal at that prices they tend to be.

Yeah... I can relate. I have the same thing, regarding Apple machines from the 80's. There are various reasons as to why Amiga systems are so special. They operate in a quite unique way. I would actually say, that it is the best computer system for gaming, between the years 1988 to 1991. 1991 PC's caught up, and from 1993 the Amiga became inferiour. Unless we are talking about the space shuttle program at nasa. Here they had amiga's calculating a lot of stuff, such as monitoring and the shuttle's curs to space. Nasa said that the Amiga was the only system, that had so little overhead, that it would be usefull in launching the shuttle.

For me, personally....
The Amiga is pure nostalgia, on the same level as PC's. Though Apple machines up to the PowerPC line, is just meh' and uninterresting to me. Basically saying, that unless you experienced it all back then, regarding the highly social Amiga community. Then I think that you can not understand what exactly the Amiga is. Or was. What makes it nostalgic in this caliber. I think this is somewhat the same when Americans are reporting stories on how they used Apple-II machines in school. I kind of read that between the lines.

Snagged a NetVista P4, moreso was interested in the tape drive + video card since it looked unusual. It came today. P4, 1GB RAM, turns on but doesn't post. Might've been my doing cause when I removed the processor to redo the thermal paste and clean the insides, it popped out of the socket attached to the heatsink. Reseating it several times, checking all connections, no dice.

But the video card is interesting, a Matrox Orion AGP 32MB with some sort of Matrox attachment. Seems to be a frame buffer card. I tried it in the Intellistation and it does work. Finding the drivers for it was a pain but I got the ISO... I could upload it somewhere if anyone else is interested.

Also came with a tape drive and a SCSI card. Pictures https://imgur.com/a/AgIiO

brostenen wrote:

Wohohohoooo... This is absolutely in great shape. :-P :-O […]
Show full quote

Wohohohoooo... This is absolutely in great shape. 😜 😳

Today I recieved that Amiga500, wich I bought a week ago or something like that. It was sold as a seller refurbished machine. Yet the state of this, is absolutely stunning for it's age. It looks like it is one year old. Drive is working flawless.... It came with the power brick and a tankmouse. Only the power brick has that 30 year old look. And only the tankmouse did not survive the shipping. Yet the Amiga is complete, with both expansion bay cover and trapdoor cover present.

Amiga500-Just-Unpacked.jpg

Amiga500-FirstBoot-Testing.jpg

I was a heavy Amiga user from when it came out in 1985 to 1991 and loved every minute of it. Found this news interesting. The 1200 case is out and a 500 is planned. Very good news for those with yellowed, cracked, etc. cases.

http://www.indieretronews.com/2018/02/new-ami … ter-teased.html

only unsealed Tual Cel 1.3

unknown card to ISA for 8 SIMs, dont know what can do this

brostenen wrote:

For me, personally....
The Amiga is pure nostalgia, on the same level as PC's. Though Apple machines up to the PowerPC line, is just meh' and uninterresting to me. Basically saying, that unless you experienced it all back then, regarding the highly social Amiga community. Then I think that you can not understand what exactly the Amiga is. Or was. What makes it nostalgic in this caliber. I think this is somewhat the same when Americans are reporting stories on how they used Apple-II machines in school. I kind of read that between the lines.

Heh. Nostalgia is quite circumstantial to how each of us spent our earlier years as well as when our earlier years occurred. Someone the same age as I am that grew up in the same city as I did cannot have had the same experiences I did. That is compounded even more when comparing my experiences to that of someone growing up in say... Denmark (to use your location as an example, brostenen) that is also the same age as I am.

I think I have seen some Youtubers that actually get a bit upset that some of the larger gaming channels haven't mentioned their systems of choice when you have to acknowledge that a difference 0f 5000 miles, a lot of water, and several countries is going to alter your observed history.

The diversity of vogons is GREAT for this. It also means I can post at 3:00 a.m. my time and get immediate responses from vogons buddies Australia and Europe. 😁

On the subject of the Apple II in the U.S. In my school, we literally had a line right down the middle of the computer lab with Apple II on one side and Commodore 64 on the other. At home? An IBM PC. Friend down the street? T.I. 99/4a and Apple II.

True... We are all users from all over the world, wich means that we all have different backgrounds. I think people in the US had better systems at school, than we in Denmark had at that time (the 80's). Every publich school here, had a special system that were 100% Danish developed and build. It had a 80186 (yes 186), and it ran CP/M. The name was piccoline from "RegneCentralen", roughly translated to "The Calculation-Exchange".
It was a part of the gouverment, that handeled school affairs. You know, department of education. At home, it was like 90% commodore machines from around 1983/84 and onwards to around 1991/92. Everyone that I knew, had C64 or later eighter C64 or Amiga. It was defacto standard here, and if you were a PC user, then everyone laughed and made fun of you. I think it was Wolfenstein3D and finally Doom that nailed the coffin for Commodore dominans here in Denmark. Even schools, did not use PC's untill somewere around 1991/92. We had all heard about Apple computers in the news, yet none was ever seen in the wild back then. A select few had Atari machines, yet even to this date, people know about the C64 and Amiga500. Everyone thinks that Atari is those that only made the Atari-2600.

Ohh... Piccoline computers from regnecentralen: (if anyone is curious)
http://rc700.dk/

People being mad at big retro gaming channels, for not talking about favorite childhood system??? 😳
Wow man... That is a bit hard. Those people, as you put it, have no freaking clue that every part of the globe had a different diversity when it comes to early computers. Darn it... I guess someone is cruising for some intimate acquaintance, with the good old "LARD". 🤣

liqmat wrote:

I was a heavy Amiga user from when it came out in 1985 to 1991 and loved every minute of it. Found this news interesting. The 1200 case is out and a 500 is planned. Very good news for those with yellowed, cracked, etc. cases.

Yup... It was announced some time ago, that they will start the 500 case-remake, as they need to build molds from scratch. The luxury of having the C64-c molds, is not there when it comes to Amiga's. Not even the breadbin molds have survived. As far as I understood it, then they will begin with a kickstarter thing, when the keycaps for 1200's are starting to be mass produced.

The good old Amiga days. It was like Vogons, just in real life and computer weekends with Amiga's as well. Like I said... Exactly like Vogons, just in real life and extremely intense. That's how it was, at least here in DK. And then again. Not that many people had computers at all. Even calculators were something of a luxury item. Colour mono tv's, and one single tv-channel were the most advanced in the household. Microwaves were lightyears away. If you were sofisticated and rich, you had a VCR in the 80's.

Matrox Millennium MGA 2064W from eBay. I plan to test it in my Athlon rig under FreeDOS tomorrow, but it's ultimately going to end up in my future Pentium Pro workstation build (and will be paired with a Voodoo 1).

Also an original Athlon case sticker and a hilariously shitty IBM ball mouse probably made by Logitech from 100% recycled failure and depression.

luckybob wrote:

I've always wondered what Amiga was all about. But being in the US means everything is 10x more expensive than it already is and I just don't see the appeal at that prices they tend to be.

Other than what the other have already written above, there was one important factor that kinda sorta explains it: smaller percentage of consoles on the market. In many European countries, including the former Soviet block (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia etc.), consoles weren't as popular as in the US or western EU (but even rich countries, such as UK, France and western Germany had significantly less of them). So for many of us, myself included, Amiga was the first machine that offered the level of graphics and sound plus wide array of games that in US would be associated with SNES or MegaDrive. Given that most people used Amigas only for playing games, I think this comparison is not completely without merit.

Amiga was the future. What we are living today is a lie.

😢

So sad.

appiah4 wrote:

Amiga was the future. What we are living todey is a lie.

😢

So sad.

Let me comfort you with a synthwave song with relevant chorus: Kalax - Take Me Back (feat. World Wild):

1Take me back to 1984
2I cannot stand the future anymore

https://kalax.bandcamp.com/album/metropolis

OldCat wrote:

Other than what the other have already written above, there was one important factor that kinda sorta explains it: smaller percentage of consoles on the market. In many European countries, including the former Soviet block (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia etc.), consoles weren't as popular as in the US or western EU (but even rich countries, such as UK, France and western Germany had significantly less of them). So for many of us, myself included, Amiga was the first machine that offered the level of graphics and sound plus wide array of games that in US would be associated with SNES or MegaDrive. Given that most people used Amigas only for playing games, I think this comparison is not completely without merit.

Not having internet was probably a big part in the huge diversity. You had no idea what your fellow geeks in the next country were doing, let alone on the other side of the world. It wasn't just the lack of centralised resources, communication was also non-standardised and cost money - be it for long-distance phone calls or paper magazines, particularly if they weren't local ones. That meant that even short distances in affluent, well connected countries threw up barriers. And there was the language thing too - English is now pretty much universally used, even at a young age, which means you can communicate across borders. A generation ago, exposure to English started much later if at all.
As a Brit growing up in the Netherlands I was always the odd one out with my quintessentially British Sinclair computers, where my Dutch friends tended to have MSX systems (due to Philips pushing that standard), and my Your Sinclair magazines cost me an arm and a leg, selling for over twice the price they cost in the UK. Later Amiga takeup was lower than in surrounding countries due to more Atari ST than average (no idea why) and the quality of the MSX2 standard making upgrade to 16b computers less compelling.

It's telling that us old fogey who grew up in the '80s have nostalgic attraction to all the different systems from back then, but our children (mine at least...) are doing the same stuff as their peers across continents and time zones, and doing so on the same hardware and software platforms too.