Always wanted to have one of these. They sell for close to 800 USD, and around Xmas I saw someone from Israel sell it for 390 USD, so I grabbed it.

Some photos:

This is a high end capture device, it does DVI / HDMI and most importantly VGA in 24 bit RGB as well. I will have to have a proper play to learn all the settings, but I have a YouTube project lined up that will be a good opportunity to use this card 😀

rein_ein wrote:

Today i got... honestly can't call it retro - Asrock 939A790GMH Just for 7.5$ but it was pretty dusty and comes w/o backplane. P […]
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Today i got... honestly can't call it retro - Asrock 939A790GMH
Just for 7.5$ but it was pretty dusty and comes w/o backplane.
Posts and boots fine,gonna test stability later.
AMD 790GX chipset based,imo superior find for 939 platform.

That's one weird motherboard. 790GX were introduced in August 2008, doesn't think there's many 939 boards with PCIe 2.0, native SATA 2.0, onboard HD video decoding (UVD 2.0) and HDMI. 🤣

Bought a couple of ESS Solo-1/ES1938 based Terratec OEM boards.

Kamerat wrote:

Bought a couple of ESS Solo-1/ES1938 based Terratec OEM boards.

20160121_075515.jpg

Nice! They aren't really the greatest of the best out there, but one of my earliest completed rig used a Solo-1 sound card and whatever it did, it just worked. I kinda grew to like it though that rig's dismantled now (dismantled it a couple years ago, so I can't remember the details of Solo-1). Solo-1 was also used quite commonly as onboard sound solution for a short while. If you build a rig containing one of your Solo-1s, feel free to let me know what you think of it 😀

In Soviet Russia, postal boxes bring your child home!

Sorry for an offtopic picture, but I just couldn't help but posting it here:

By the way, the lower boxes do contain some precious retro goodness received from two fellow Vogoneers, namely a boxed MediaTrix AudioTrix 3D-XG, a loose Media Vision Pro 3D with MV Korg-based MIDI daughterboard, two different boxed Primax GUS-clone cards and a whole kilo of Dutch goat cheese to compensate all the discomfort my beloved wife has to suffer due to my hobby (as you may know, foreign agricultural imports are prohibited as a counter measure to the Western sanctions, but one can still receive some foodstuffs in a foreign postal package if it is intended solely for private use and consumption).
And the upper blue box is empty, but this Saturday it will start its not-so-long journey to another Vogoneer with an ASUS CUSL-2CB Black Pearl in it.

Actually, 2015 has been a great year for my hobby achievements.
Sorry for not posting pictures, I really hope that one day I will find time to document my collection and share it with you.
The greatest acquisitions include (but are not limited to):
- fully functional 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 AGP 3700A in mint condition (had to travel abroad for Christmas with my wife to test and pick this one up),
- Aureal Vortex 2 SQ3500 Turbo with the DSP daughterboard (a REALLY great gift from the Universe just on the day of my wedding anniversary - woke up at 6 a.m. in the morning for some unknown reason, checked eBay and found this one for $25 offered by some store in California, couldn't believe my eyes and bought that immediately - actually the coolest deal I have ever made in my whole life, have been recalling my emotions every day for 4 months already),
- AdLib Gold 1000 with the Surround Sound module (will be actually using this one for my all-times-favourite title - DUNE),
- boxed Core Dynamics DynaSonix Pro (spent 2 and half years negotiating that one!!!),
- boxed Ensoniq SoundScape Elite,
- complete Quantum3D Mercury system (in addition to a loose Mercury brick I already had and a Q3D AAlchemy system with 2 8164 boards as well as nvSENSOR board),
- boxed Quantum3D Obsidian 2 X-24 with the cooling option,
- Quantum3D Obsidian 100SB-4440 with both SHADES attached,
- Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro MAXX prototype (no longer with me),
- XGI Volari V8 Duo Ultra (no longer with me),
- lots of other cool stuff (3dfx, Quantum3D, Canopus, Turtle Beach, Roland, Yamaha, Gravis, Creative, ASUS, whatsoever)...

So you might imagine the argumentation why we bought a baby carriage with such a HUGE lower compartment for our baby girl 😁 She's been a postgirl every weekend since she was born.

^ amazing pic there my friend, brought a smile on my face 😀
Also your recent acquirement are impressive!

Looks your soundcards collection is bigger, than mine already.

Wow, Hard1k, that's really impressive! I hope you'll enjoy your kilo of 3DFX goodness! 😁

hard1k wrote:

In Soviet Russia, postal boxes bring your child home!

That is sooooo adorable! 😀

hard1k wrote:

- Aureal Vortex 2 SQ3500 Turbo with the DSP daughterboard (a REALLY great gift from the Universe just on the day of my wedding anniversary - woke up at 6 a.m. in the morning for some unknown reason, checked eBay and found this one for $25 offered by some store in California, couldn't believe my eyes and bought that immediately - actually the coolest deal I have ever made in my whole life, have been recalling my emotions every day for 4 months already),

I was wondering offhand where you acquired it from, and for $25! What an amazing deal!

hard1k wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/loD0ykg.jpg […]
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Doing an activity with one's child, is a retro-activity in it self. 🤣
And getting retro-hardware with one's child is kind of double up on that.

hard1k wrote:

In Soviet Russia, postal boxes bring your child home! […]
Show full quote

In Soviet Russia, postal boxes bring your child home!

Sorry for an offtopic picture, but I just couldn't help but posting it here:

Awwww!! What a cutie!! 😀

hard1k wrote:

By the way, the lower boxes do contain some precious retro goodness received from two fellow Vogoneers, namely a boxed MediaTrix AudioTrix 3D-XG, a loose Media Vision Pro 3D with MV Korg-based MIDI daughterboard, two different boxed Primax GUS-clone cards and a whole kilo of Dutch goat cheese to compensate all the discomfort my beloved wife has to suffer due to my hobby (as you may know, foreign agricultural imports are prohibited as a counter measure to the Western sanctions, but one can still receive some foodstuffs in a foreign postal package if it is intended solely for private use and consumption).
And the upper blue box is empty, but this Saturday it will start its not-so-long journey to another Vogoneer with an ASUS CUSL-2CB Black Pearl in it.

I always understood Russian commerce to be quite resistant to politics.

hard1k wrote:

- complete Quantum3D Mercury system (in addition to a loose Mercury brick I already had and a Q3D AAlchemy system with 2 8164 boards as well as nvSENSOR board),

Wow! Some exotic finds. Good job getting the Mercury chassis on the pram without upgrades! Those 8164 boards look like absolute beasts, but it seems you have to pick up the PSU at the same time. Kind of a shame, it would be cool to see how hard they can push with upgraded processor power.

Sounds like you're giving hard1kova the right start! I see a fruitful life of tinkering ahead.

Love your photo hard1k. Evidence that retro hobbies can be compatible with family life 😀

Wow hard1k impressive haul!

An AdLib Gold 1000 is impressive but with surround module? Amazing! Also good to know that Cloudschatze isn't the only Vogons user to own one, definitely reassuring to know that there are more surround modules and AdLib Golds laying around. 😀

Oh and the AudioTrix 3D-XG is an absolut killer too!

Tetrium wrote:

Kamerat wrote:

Bought a couple of ESS Solo-1/ES1938 based Terratec OEM boards.

20160121_075515.jpg

Nice! They aren't really the greatest of the best out there, but one of my earliest completed rig used a Solo-1 sound card and whatever it did, it just worked. I kinda grew to like it though that rig's dismantled now (dismantled it a couple years ago, so I can't remember the details of Solo-1). Solo-1 was also used quite commonly as onboard sound solution for a short while. If you build a rig containing one of your Solo-1s, feel free to let me know what you think of it 😀

I installed one of them in my single CPU BX rig for testing. Compatibility with DOS games seems good running it in DDMA mode and it got a nice real FM synth. The ES1938 should also support TDMA, PC/PCI DMA (the SB-LINK solder joint's on my cards are empty) and something called WBDMA (not sure what that is for).

Line output is somewhat noisy but running it with the internal amplifier and headphones directly connected the card helps.

Unfortunately I haven't found a DOS mixer for it yet.

Great photo hard1k! And great story too. Glad the package arrived safely.

Kamerat wrote:

I installed one of them in my single CPU BX rig for testing. Compatibility with DOS games seems good running it in DDMA mode and […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote:

Kamerat wrote:

Bought a couple of ESS Solo-1/ES1938 based Terratec OEM boards.

20160121_075515.jpg

Nice! They aren't really the greatest of the best out there, but one of my earliest completed rig used a Solo-1 sound card and whatever it did, it just worked. I kinda grew to like it though that rig's dismantled now (dismantled it a couple years ago, so I can't remember the details of Solo-1). Solo-1 was also used quite commonly as onboard sound solution for a short while. If you build a rig containing one of your Solo-1s, feel free to let me know what you think of it 😀

I installed one of them in my single CPU BX rig for testing. Compatibility with DOS games seems good running it in DDMA mode and it got a nice real FM synth. The ES1938 should also support TDMA, PC/PCI DMA (the SB-LINK solder joint's on my cards are empty) and something called WBDMA (not sure what that is for).

Line output is somewhat noisy but running it with the internal amplifier and headphones directly connected the card helps.

Unfortunately I haven't found a DOS mixer for it yet.

Cheers!

I had a look on one of my driver disks which I remembered actually has a Solo-1 driver, but all indications point at the Solo-1 being a Windows-only card (no DOS drivers and all other programs were also for Windows).
I'm not sure if theres anything on Solo-1 on Vogonsdrivers, I'll go check a few other disks.

Is there any particular program (name?) you are looking for? I got the driver disks laying right next to my keyboard anyway so it's hardly a hassle for me to do some quick searching 😀

Btw, perhaps we could continue this conversation in private? Or you could make a new thread about it (this might even be better), theres people here that know a lot more about sound cards than I do 😉

Kamerat wrote:

rein_ein wrote:

Today i got... honestly can't call it retro - Asrock 939A790GMH Just for 7.5$ but it was pretty dusty and comes w/o backplane. P […]
Show full quote

Today i got... honestly can't call it retro - Asrock 939A790GMH
Just for 7.5$ but it was pretty dusty and comes w/o backplane.
Posts and boots fine,gonna test stability later.
AMD 790GX chipset based,imo superior find for 939 platform.

That's one weird motherboard. 790GX were introduced in August 2008, doesn't think there's many 939 boards with PCIe 2.0, native SATA 2.0, onboard HD video decoding (UVD 2.0) and HDMI. 🤣

Yeah, that's a year or so after I got an AM2-based Dell, which I'm pretty sure only had PCIe 1.0 or 1.1 on its nForce chipset (although it did have SATA 2.0). It certainly didn't have HDMI!

retrofanatic wrote:

Lol...sorry for all the info...and, ok I will forget you asked lol. I will try to be more succinct next time. […]
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Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

😳 😳 😳 Forget I asked.

Okay, I'll try to read it slower. 😳

Okay, supposed I need to do something similar, but much less exotic. Like, merely displaying exotic SVGA resolution (mostly 640x400) on modern LED screen properly, would I need that many devices?

Lol...sorry for all the info...and, ok I will forget you asked 🤣. I will try to be more succinct next time.

To at least try to answer your question though...I would have to say "not really" to "needing that many devices". You may be able to do it with just one device like the Extron RGB-HDMI 300A unit that works for some resolutions for me, for anything 640x480 and above (I am not sure about 640x400, but I think it might work). It converts 640x480 to 1920x1200 resolutions or 480p, 576p, 720p, 1080i, or 1080p to:

640x4806,8,9, 800x6006,8,9, 852x4806,8,9, 1024x7686,8,9, 1024x8526,8,9, 1024x10246,8,9, 1280x7686,8,9, 1280x8006,8,9, 1280x10246,8,9, 1360x7656,8,9, 1360x7686,8,9, 1365x7686,8,9, 1365x10246,8,9, 1366x7686,8,9, 1440x9006,8,9, 1400x10506,8, 1600x9006,8, 1600x12006,8, 1680x10506,8, 1920x12006,8,
2048x10801,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, 480p7,8, 576p6, 720p3,4,5,6,7,8, 1080p1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, 1080i6,7,8
1 = at 23.98 Hz, 2 = at 24 Hz, 3 = at 25 Hz, 4 = at 29.97 Hz, 5 = at 30 Hz, 6 = at 50 Hz, 7 = at 59.94 Hz, 8 = 60 Hz, 9 = 75 Hz;

Check out the specs on this page:
http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=8504

I have had to use this RGB-HDMI unit in conjunction with another extron upscaler (VSC 300) to get some other resolutions to work (it does 560x384 to 1600x1280 resolutions but outputs to component or RGB, not HDMI, so you will have to connect your VGA from computer to VSC300->RGB-HDMI 300A->LED TV to get an HDMI signal, for example, if your TV doesnt support component inputs) -> http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=vsc300

You really have to look at all the specs to get an idea if it will work for what you want to do, but I would check out the http://shmups.system11.org/ forum as well for information. It's difficult to answer your question with suggesting just one device. Unfortunately it's usually more complicated in most cases, but I think you will find what you need with just a bit of research and eBay searching. Good luck.

Thanks, buddy. 😀

My primary concern is 640x400, and perhaps 512x384 too, because those are the typical exotic resolution of SVGA non-accelerated 3D games; titles like Dawn Patrol and such. I wonder what the typical refresh rate of such games is, and I need a box that can display it correctly on modern monitors or TVs, with correct aspect ratio.

3D accelerated games aren't a problem, because I use 3dfx Voodoo, with pretty much standard 640x80 resolution, and you can even set refresh rate from SST variable. VGA exotic resolution like 320x240 isn't a problem either, because I can always use DOSBOX for such low-res games. It's hi-res, non-accelerated games that makes me build fast DOS system on the first place.

keropi wrote:

^ amazing pic there my friend, brought a smile on my face 😀
Also your recent acquirement are impressive!

Thank you, my friend! 😀

easy_john wrote:

Looks your soundcards collection is bigger, than mine already.

Well, not really, I guess. I'm constantly trying to keep it within certain limits, keeping only true jewels.

Tetrium wrote:

Wow, Hard1k, that's really impressive! I hope you'll enjoy your kilo of 3DFX goodness! 😁

Yeah, thanks a lot!

ZanQuance wrote:

That is sooooo adorable! 😀
I was wondering offhand where you acquired it from, and for $25! What an amazing deal!

Yes, it was really-really great. When I clicked "BUY IT NOW", I was almost sure that I was still sleeping. And when I realized that it was true, I took a shot of Jagermeister right away despite it was 6 a.m. 😁

brostenen wrote:

Doing an activity with one's child, is a retro-activity in it self. 🤣
And getting retro-hardware with one's child is kind of double up on that.

I've shown this thread to my wife, and she asked to send you her greetings - she spent 3 years working in the Russian Embassy in Denmark, she really loves your country 😀

SquallStrife wrote:

Awwww!! What a cutie!! 😀

Thanks! 😀

gdjacobs wrote:

I always understood Russian commerce to be quite resistant to politics.

Wow! Some exotic finds. Good job getting the Mercury chassis on the pram without upgrades! Those 8164 boards look like absolute beasts, but it seems you have to pick up the PSU at the same time. Kind of a shame, it would be cool to see how hard they can push with upgraded processor power.

Sounds like you're giving hard1kova the right start! I see a fruitful life of tinkering ahead.

Well, our commerce can do nothing against the state prohibition of imports. Sad but true. All French and Dutch cheese as well as Polish fruits and other foodstuffs have been replaced with imports from Serbia, Argentina and other countries. They are great too, but in my opinion the French and the Dutch do know how to make cheese...
Mercury came complete - chassis, the brick, all options, all drives, etc. I will upgrade the CPUs to the latest supported model - SL4KL.
And the AAlchemy came even in the original Q3D box. Again, complete - with two AA5 boards, right PSU, MB, and everything else. I will upgrade the CPUs to SL6BY using two PowerLeap PL-S370/T rev.2.1 adapters. If only I had more time, I would do that already.
Yeah, hard1kova will be an engineer, that's out of question 😁

bjt wrote:

Love your photo hard1k. Evidence that retro hobbies can be compatible with family life 😀

Exactly. Even more, if one has a good hobby, his mind is much more calm and the quality of life is better. So a hobby is more than compatible with family life - it even helps in tough moments and brings additional joy in pleasant ones 😀

carlostex wrote:

Wow hard1k impressive haul!
An AdLib Gold 1000 is impressive but with surround module? Amazing! Also good to know that Cloudschatze isn't the only Vogons user to own one, definitely reassuring to know that there are more surround modules and AdLib Golds laying around. 😀

Weeeeell... Not really, I guess 😉
Stay tuned, you'll hear about this module some time soon!

CHiLL72 wrote:

Great photo hard1k! And great story too. Glad the package arrived safely.

Thanks, Chiel! It's a real pleasure to receive all packages that come from you! 😀
And Diana (my baby) really loves to unpack the packages, the more protective material (of any kind actually) it has inside - the better! 😁