Horun wrote on 2020-12-31, 01:57:

[...]

Nice bunch of boards ! If you post the BIOS of the PIP56-0 would be happy to do some searching to figure out a bit more. It reminds me of a Biostar/Biotech board from long ago.

Tnx for the offer! Will see if I can read it in my TL866-II

Plot twist: someone has written something that looks suspiciously like the start of a BIOS string in pencil on the (E)EPROM. Could be that the BIOS isn't original to the board, which is why it's not booting - and why it ended up discarded as well. Still, lacking any better leads, I'll try to get it tomorrow.

Edit:
Hang on, I think I found it.
http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/5005

I entered the chipset in UH19, ran through the boards and the bottom one is a near perfect match (just RTC and BIOS reversed). Then checked the jumpers and they all correspond.

Name (TMC PCI58AL (VER. 1.0) ) doesn't even resemble PIP56-0, but if the jumpers match, it should be good. But... there's nothing obviously wrong in the jumpers, and I can't find any BIOS under that name either. So will still rip the BIOS.

dionb wrote on 2020-12-31, 02:14:

Tnx for the offer! Will see if I can read it in my TL866-II […]
Show full quote

Horun wrote on 2020-12-31, 01:57:

[...]

Nice bunch of boards ! If you post the BIOS of the PIP56-0 would be happy to do some searching to figure out a bit more. It reminds me of a Biostar/Biotech board from long ago.

Tnx for the offer! Will see if I can read it in my TL866-II

Plot twist: someone has written something that looks suspiciously like the start of a BIOS string in pencil on the (E)EPROM. Could be that the BIOS isn't original to the board, which is why it's not booting - and why it ended up discarded as well. Still, lacking any better leads, I'll try to get it tomorrow.

Edit:
Hang on, I think I found it.
http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/5005

I entered the chipset in UH19, ran through the boards and the bottom one is a near perfect match (just RTC and BIOS reversed). Then checked the jumpers and they all correspond.

Name (TMC PCI58AL (VER. 1.0) ) doesn't even resemble PIP56-0, but if the jumpers match, it should be good. But... there's nothing obviously wrong in the jumpers, and I can't find any BIOS under that name either. So will still rip the BIOS.

Ahh I also searched but the BIOS and Dallas time chips were opposite so did not even look at the jumpers (duh me 😀 )
Yes the jumps seem nearly identical. Possibly a different revision but appears to match !
added: the only big difference is JP11 on yours and not on the PCI58AL from what I can see

appiah4 wrote on 2020-12-30, 09:40:

I would appreciate your effort. Cheers!

Disk wouldn't image due to sector re-reads 🙁 , but it's a bog standard disk with an install script for the .LZH files so I just copied the entire disk contents into a ZIP file (checked all the LZH files would individually extract without errors in 7-Zip, and added a disk label JPG)

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2020-12-31, 06:59:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-12-30, 09:40:

I would appreciate your effort. Cheers!

Disk wouldn't image due to sector re-reads 🙁 , but it's a bog standard disk with an install script for the .LZH files so I just copied the entire disk contents into a ZIP file (checked all the LZH files would individually extract without errors in 7-Zip, and added a disk label JPG)

OS2 Unleashed.zip

Thank you. I'll get the lady who does my motorcycle decals to make a couple of labels up.

Here we go, didn't want to throw around all the boxes so I'll try to keep this tidy. Most MB's are NOS Socket 2/3.

Wow! So many good stuff!

Horun wrote on 2020-12-31, 02:50:

[...] Ahh I also searched but the BIOS and Dallas time chips were opposite so did not even look at the jumpers (duh me :) ) Yes […]
Show full quote

[...]
Ahh I also searched but the BIOS and Dallas time chips were opposite so did not even look at the jumpers (duh me 😀 )
Yes the jumps seem nearly identical. Possibly a different revision but appears to match !
added: the only big difference is JP11 on yours and not on the PCI58AL from what I can see

Well, here's the BIOS:

Can't make much of it myself other than that it's an AMIBIOS all right. The pencil mark on the (TI TMS27010A) EPROM seems to read 7B63.

Apart from that this board was sourced from the same place as the two Spring Circle boards and has very similar design and stickering (including S/N sticker on side of ISA slot), so it wouldn't surprise me if it is Spring Circle.

Today was a good day. I drove 2 hours to get these retro components from the seller who was cleaning his attic. A few components are in a bad shape, but for the money I gave him, it was never a question if any of them will work.

And a little more: A 286 computer which sadly doesn't post (probably battery leakage related) and a working Pentium 2 system, also HDD's and broken Juster speakers, but they can be fixed. (Sorry for the bad pics).

Bought this oddity for the end of the year.

Music Quest Midi Engine 2Port/SE Parallel Port.

Grzyb wrote on 2019-10-17, 05:47:

ARK1000? Impressive? Can't see anything interesting about that chipset, just yet another dumb framebuffer. And in the VLB era, t […]
Show full quote

Warlord wrote:

Another Impressive card.

ARK1000? Impressive?
Can't see anything interesting about that chipset, just yet another dumb framebuffer.
And in the VLB era, there was plenty of cards with Cirrus Logic 5426/5428/5429 chips, ie. accelerated.

That's the fastest VLB card I presume, even faster than tseng et4000w32p.

Godlike wrote on 2021-01-01, 21:16:

Grzyb wrote on 2019-10-17, 05:47:

ARK1000? Impressive? Can't see anything interesting about that chipset, just yet another dumb framebuffer. And in the VLB era, t […]
Show full quote

Warlord wrote:

Another Impressive card.

ARK1000? Impressive?
Can't see anything interesting about that chipset, just yet another dumb framebuffer.
And in the VLB era, there was plenty of cards with Cirrus Logic 5426/5428/5429 chips, ie. accelerated.

That's the fastest VLB card I presume, even faster than tseng et4000w32p.

You just corrected a 14 month old post. 🤣

Xicor wrote on 2020-12-29, 16:46:

Found this BTC sound card @21€.

BTC_ESS1688F.jpg

Does anyone knows why it has a 27c256 OTP eprom ? Is it possible to find an ES689F or is it unobtainium ?

It can be difficult to find an ESS wavetable card. Nice pickup - I'm jealous.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2020-12-30, 22:04:

Couldn't believe I found Yamaha TG100 for sale on a local marketplace less than an hour from me. MIDI gear is extremely rare in […]
Show full quote

Couldn't believe I found Yamaha TG100 for sale on a local marketplace less than an hour from me. MIDI gear is extremely rare in my part of the country. The only other sound module I've found within reasonable driving distance was a Roland MT200 about 175 miles (3 1/2 hours) back in 2016... and that was a stretch, even if I made another stop half way there.

Anyway, this thing was a bit smokey, but cleaned up nicely after an hour or so of detailing. I tested it out with the built in demo track and it sounds really nice!

Came with a pile of unrelated cables (was hoping for the serial cable), the original Yamaha PA-1505 power brick and to my surprise, the original books! I didn't know I was getting those. 😀

Got a very good price on it as well, even with shipping (COVID19 and crummy weather made this preferable).

I'm looking forward to comparing it to my other modules. I'm especially interested in seeing how the CM64 emulation sounds in a side by side comparison with the CM64 I picked up earlier this year.

Well done. Love my wee TG100!

My last retro computing purchase of 2020:

The Highscreen LeBook Advance (aka Chicony MP975), a Pentium MMX class laptop computer.
I purchased one almost exactly one year ago (and posted about it, too). But that one was lacking the HDD tray, so I couldn't get it up and running.

A few days before christmas, another one popped up on the local classifieds - for free, but pickup only, a few hundred kilometers away.
So I offered the seller a few Euros for shipping it, and he turned out to be a very friendly fellow and agreed to send it to me.
So by noon of December 31st, the package arrived at my doorstep. I almost couldn't believe in what great shape the computer is - basically looks like new, has all the drives, the bag, the power supply, the original HDD and RAM, and even a PCMCIA Ethernet adapter and a copy of Corel Draw. Plus, it came with the original invoice (4600 DM, about 3300€ in today's money). Of course the battery and the CMOS battery are dead, but apart from that, it is really in near-perfect condition. Even has the protective film on the small LCD display 😉

Specs:
- Pentium 166 MHz
- 32 MB RAM
- Opti Chipset
- Chips 2MB PCI video
- ESS ES1788 sound chip
- 12" TFT, 800x600
- 10x CD-ROM + Floppy
- 2 GB HDD

It came with Windows ME installed, it looked like a very clean setup but was painfully slow. So I wiped the HDD and installed a fresh copy of Windows 95, which is what this machine was made for. It all went really smooth and now I'm enjoying it in all its 1997-ish glory 😄

Picked up this unusual sound card recently. Its a Bluepoint Corporation Sound FX 3000. It has some daughterboard on it which handles midi. It claims to do GS and MT32. I tried Sam N Max in MT32 and it didn't sound too bad. GM sounds pretty primitive and some of the instruments are pretty week. Non the less an unusual card to add to the collection.

Now that is an interesting sound card.

Bancho wrote on 2021-01-02, 15:35:

Picked up this unusual sound card recently. Its a Bluepoint Corporation Sound FX 3000. It has some daughterboard on it which han […]
Show full quote

Picked up this unusual sound card recently. Its a Bluepoint Corporation Sound FX 3000. It has some daughterboard on it which handles midi. It claims to do GS and MT32. I tried Sam N Max in MT32 and it didn't sound too bad. GM sounds pretty primitive and some of the instruments are pretty week. Non the less an unusual card to add to the collection.

Interesting looking card. Can you make a thread about it? There's not much info about it online.

Bought a DFI K6BV3+/66 for a good price.

Seller's photos:

I didn’t buy it or receive it today, but I got this Matrox G550 PCIe in the mail this last week. I’ve been putting it through its paces, and I have to say…I’m disappointed.

I bought it to see if the G400 drivers for Windows NT 3.51 and Windows 3.1 would work with it. I had not seen anywhere that anyone had ever attempted it. Unfortunately, neither OS’s driver would recognize the card. I bet it might be possible to modify the driver to identify the G550’s PCI ID since Matrox derived the design from the G400. I don’t have the skill or time to do that.

I also tried the card with Windows 95 (Retail Gold) in the hope it would become my go-to PCIe card. While both the Windows 95 drivers for the G450 and the Windows 98 drivers for the G550 (with modified .INF files) worked with the card, I had a number of issues.

The Windows 95 driver would not allow me to modify the signal parameters to match VESA 1080P (it always reverted to a Sony proprietary signal). The Windows 95 drivers at least provided Direct3D support, but it had horrible performance at high resolutions. I wasn’t hoping for Crysis-like performance, but, dang, I didn’t expect it to be so bad.

The Windows 98 drivers worked at all desired resolutions (including proper 1080P signaling), but didn’t integrate into the Display Properties or DirectX. Without those, I couldn’t get any 3D acceleration.

I also discovered that I had to disable PCI Bus Mastering or else Windows 95 would crash after opening a couple of windows.

For good news, the OS/2 Warp (Versions 3 and 4) drivers for the G450 work with the G550 without any modification. I also got 1080P resolution by modifying the MGA.MON file to correct the HDTV signal parameters. This will become my go-to card for OS/2 Warp at least.

Despite the poor 3D performance, the card did produce excellent quality images using analog VGA. The addition of DVI support and dual monitors is a nice bonus. It just isn’t compatible enough with older OSs to suit all of my needs. Fortunately, I only paid $20 US (shipped) to test it out.