jheronimus wrote:

Actually, the coolest thing about this machine is the case. Meet the 1999 Palo Alto ATCX, aka the convertible case. Just take out the drive cage:
And you can turn this case into a desktop:
Even the little badge holder can be rotated (although right now the front panel of this case is a bit yellowed, so I didn't move the badge).

Wow, THAT is a neat feature!

rikukos wrote:

Then some REAL(!) gems (albeit IBM Music Feature Card is not something to look down on) […]
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Then some REAL(!) gems (albeit IBM Music Feature Card is not something to look down on)

SoundPiper 16/32 😎

and..the ChipChat Sound Card 😀 !!

Noice! I think I spotted an MCA fan!

To me, this is really interesting although I'm not personally a PS/2 collector. Still, I'd love to know how these stack up wrt the compatibility of ISA based ES1688 cards.

Ok, end of my shopping spree (for now). At 35 euro, a great steal from the industrial archive of Philips:

2 racks from the Philips Plant in Hasselt, Belgium. Not a speck of dust on them and an overall high quality feel to it. Both were used in the production environment where CD and DVD-equipment was assembled and adjusted.

The "driver" pc has an AT power supply, even if the 14 slot-backplane is also ATX-capable. The SBC is i430TX based with a Pentium 233MMX with 2*32 MB SIMMS. Logically, it's running WINNT 4.0 which feels smooth on the Qyantum Fireball HDD.

The other one is fully ATX, based on the Abit AX5T, also an i430TX mainboard. Both DIMMs occupied, I forgot to jot down how much ram it has. Sound is provided by a SB CT 2910 and VGA through a S3 Virge. The Pentium 200 is an OEM. The system runs on Windows2000.

flupke11 wrote:

Sound is provided by a SB CT 2910 and VGA through a S3 Virge.

that sure is a nice soundcard for an industrial PC, also those are really nice in general 😀

I went on a short trip to germany over the weekend... and had some unpacking to do 🤣

this is the loot from over a month.

I was flying home with over 20kg of mostly retro computer hardware in my carry-on, didn't even have much explaining to do... just "some motherboards and graphics cards" and an explosives swab later I was in.

put all the bulky and less valuable stuff in a package to send home with another 15kg or so.

got some sorting to do now...

this is one of the parts that was in there most precious to me, the first GPU from my first ever PC, one more piece in the puzzle to rebuild it 😀

I found this pretty cool motherboard - supports 386DX, 486SX, 486DX, 486DX2 and other CPUs... 486 socket doubles as 387 socket. 386 is socketed so can be replaced easly with something else (I have Tx486DLC so I may want to check this option out). Upto 256kB cache. EISA slot, upto 32 MB RAM.

https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/U/U … 6-BC3486UL.html

OPTI Local Bus (OLB), not EISA. Is this board the FX 3000?

Anonymous Coward wrote:

OPTI Local Bus (OLB), not EISA. Is this board the FX 3000?

Are you sure? Seems to say EISA on the silkscreen by the slot. I could be wrong though.

HanJammer wrote:

I found this pretty cool motherboard - supports 386DX, 486SX, 486DX, 486DX2 and other CPUs... 486 socket doubles as 387 socket. 386 is socketed so can be replaced easly with something else (I have Tx486DLC so I may want to check this option out). Upto 256kB cache. EISA slot, upto 32 MB RAM.

https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/U/U … 6-BC3486UL.html

Although I question the utility of an ISA only 486 board in the first place that is a fascinating piece of crossover technology regardless!

Yeah, I did some more 'research' on it and it's OPTi Local Bus. Which is even better because I have fitting graphics card (S3 911) from which came with my other OLB motherboard. I don't have plans of putting 486 on it - it will be my ultimate 386.

imi wrote:

I was flying home with over 20kg of mostly retro computer hardware in my carry-on

That's pretty brave, I was being much more cautious carrying only a crappy Trident ISA for the first time 😀

@HanJammer

Weird that they write "EISA" on the PCB when it's not. Kinda confusing ^^
But at least they had the excuse of saying it's physically the same slot. Because I've seen a 486 with vlb slots labeled as EISA 🤣

Since you can't tell EISA from OLB by the look of it, why do you even think it's OLB when it clearly reads "EISA"? I would expect to see OLB only on a board having an OPTi chipset at least.

Vegge wrote:

Anonymous Coward wrote:

OPTI Local Bus (OLB), not EISA. Is this board the FX 3000?

Are you sure? Seems to say EISA on the silkscreen by the slot. I could be wrong though.

Another way to know for sure is that it doesn't have an EISA chipset. Mini EISA boards normally have the HiNT chipset, and will typically have at least 3 brown slots. OLB boards almost always have one...maybe two slots.

derSammler wrote:

Since you can't tell EISA from OLB by the look of it, why do you even think it's OLB when it clearly reads "EISA"? I would expect to see OLB only on a board having an OPTi chipset at least.

OLB was used by other manufacturers, not just OPTi. I think the "standard" was relatively open. You can confirm this if you dig in old magazines.

derSammler wrote:

Since you can't tell EISA from OLB by the look of it, why do you even think it's OLB when it clearly reads "EISA"? I would expect to see OLB only on a board having an OPTi chipset at least.

- Because fellow Vogon-ers say this board is OLB in other threads, for example:

BC3486UL UMC Motherboard + Tseng ET4000AX OPTi Local Bus VGA PRICE?

- Because jumper settings states this slot is for "local bus" cards and EISA is not a local bus.

https://arvutimuuseum.ee/th99/m/U-Z/34310.htm

But yeah, the silkscreen definitaly says EISA.

HanJammer wrote:

Yeah, I did some more 'research' on it and it's OPTi Local Bus. Which is even better because I have fitting graphics card (S3 911) from which came with my other OLB motherboard.

That card may be EISA, be careful - Re: EISA Graphics / Video Cards

Grzyb wrote:

HanJammer wrote:

Yeah, I did some more 'research' on it and it's OPTi Local Bus. Which is even better because I have fitting graphics card (S3 911) from which came with my other OLB motherboard.

That card may be EISA, be careful - Re: EISA Graphics / Video Cards

Well, but it was in a computer which had Puma-200 motherboard and I used it with this mobo - Puma-200 has 3 "local bus" slots (one for CPU module only) and is opti based. I'm pretty sure information in above thread is incorrect (about OLB cards have only Tseng chipsets) - this is one of these SVLB cards.

OK, then it must be Opti Local Bus.
BTW: that card has VRAM, rather than regular DRAM, right?

Be careful with infos coming from TH99 as I found many mistakes here. Don't take them for their word.

Got this lot for $20 including shiping. I think I need to stop, I have more stuff than I will ever need at this point. This is my 6th 486 board, I doubt I need more. I may buy a few more 386/286 and some 3dfx stuff (In particular I need a Voodoo 3 PCI) but for 486 and later stuff, I'm full.

No cache on the motherboard kind of sucks but I have cache on all my other boards so I can always borrow from them if I choose to use this.. Regardless, there's nothing particularly unique about this board, I may just sell it off.. I needed a fast non-MMX Pentium (the fastest I had was a 133) so the 166 was welcome. As for the UMC U5S, I already had a 33 but wanted a 40, but a second 33 could be useful for a trade somewhere..