Siggypony wrote on 2023-05-30, 13:15:

Aquired a new 486 motherboard with a 486SX and some ram today 😀 Broke the battery off first thing haha i cant believe it didn't leak. Got a 486 DX2 66 ready for this board 😁 Will make a good patner for my main 486. Want to LAN warcraft 2 between them 🤣.

Looks to be this one:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/a-trend-atc-1442g

We don't have a MR bios for that one yet so if you can dump it, yes please.

Cuttoon wrote on 2023-05-27, 11:21:

There really is a black & gold edition of the Terratec Solo-1 sound card. (a.k.a. 128i PCI)

And finally, someone took the time to misspell it on ebay.

Nice catch, I have mine. 😀

Abit Siluro MX400 (128-bit) & Linksys Ether16

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-05-30, 03:09:

This is VT82C693A on extreme budged (pcpartner was priding itself on making bottom of the barrel hardware, they even manufactured for/with pcchips at some point). Not only it is ~1/3 slower than any 440BX board, but it will regularly crash while gaming on graphic cards actually using AGP features. Hardware reviews of motherboards with VIA chipset actually had a separate category called Stability or Reliability to reflect how often your computer will (not could, will) crash in "normal" use. This only changed with 694X/694T/TK133.

I don't really agree. PC Partner made some pretty solid budget motherboards back in the day (you may say they were cheap and good at the same time) - I do own several of those and they work perfectly fine and perform as good as your Soyos/Abits/ASUSes. And while VIA chipsets may not be as reliable as Intel's offering - they are still perfectly fine for less demanding tasks (not to mention Apollo Pro 133 is pretty good chipset anyway!). Nobody says that you need to use AGP equipped motherboard for Windows games - it will still make a solid platform for playing around with utility software or playing in DOS. And if the motherboard dies in the process - well, not a big deal.

Big Pink wrote on 2023-05-30, 15:49:

HanJammer wrote on 2023-05-29, 21:56:

This build with NexGen motherboard and quite not interesting parts otherwise inside...

I really like this case. It's as big as my modern LianLi Lancool III but I think It will be good suited for some ultimate mid-90s build. Maybe I will even leave the NexGen inside as it's board which apparently was originally installed in it.

Ooh. Is that smoked glass/plastic on the front? Makes me think of the late 80s.

Yeah, that's smoked plastic.

HanJammer wrote on 2023-05-31, 00:12:

I don't really agree

... proceeds to agree on every point made? :]
1 pcpartner was a budget manufacturer
2 VT82C693A sucks, is unreliable, and its AGP implementation is broken
3 its ok it you only use some minimal subset of computer capabilities

ediflorianUS wrote on 2023-05-30, 08:37:

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-05-30, 01:19:

For me, it's because some of the low end stuff seems to have the survival potential of cockroaches, where some higher end stuff dies in mysterious ways that eternally confound fixing. Besides, as mature PC users we can step out of the "utterest piece of crap in the known universe and gave my gerbil cancer" mindset of describing how it was a couple of percent slower on a review back in the day. Also not expecting anything and futzing around with a cheapie and getting it running sweet is far far more satisfying than the equivalent amount of time "fighting" something high end until it works how it "should".

I Agree with that statement , since I moved onto brand's (compaq/hp/apple/dell/etc/etc) I never ever looked back.

Dell never touched VIA. Neither did HP, in fact HP mainly shipped OEM Asus boards 😀 Those companies specialized in B2B with support contracts, best way to lower your support cost is by shipping reliable hardware. There is one item not like the others on your list. Compaq was dabbling in everything, sis, via, cyrix, k5, k6, 5.25" Quantum Bigfoots, pathetic integrated graphics (selling "3D accelerated" Ati Rage LT with no AGP slot in 1998), anything to flood supermarkets with volume of crap. Unsurprisingly they went out of business in 2002 and sold itself to HP.

it is what it is but why should anybody care what somone else does in a case like this. I'm not saying youre wrong.

Warlord wrote on 2023-05-31, 04:46:

it is what it is but why should anybody care what somone else does in a case like this. I'm not saying youre wrong.

I was curious about reasons behind collecting pretty much garbage. So far the answers I got are somewhere between 'I ran out of things to buy' to 'I like garbage, its cute' with some 'its not total garbage if you compare it to other garbage'. First two seem pretty legit and I wont argue with those 😀

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-05-31, 05:34:

Warlord wrote on 2023-05-31, 04:46:

it is what it is but why should anybody care what somone else does in a case like this. I'm not saying youre wrong.

I was curious about reasons behind collecting pretty much garbage. So far the answers I got are somewhere between 'I ran out of things to buy' to 'I like garbage, its cute' with some 'its not total garbage if you compare it to other garbage'. First two seem pretty legit and I wont argue with those 😀

Why are you outright ignoring my point about it being an mATX board with AGP/PCI/ISA?

evasive wrote on 2023-05-30, 20:07:

appiah4 wrote on 2023-05-29, 08:11:

This is my first hardware purchase in maybe six months, mostly because prices on old hardware skyrocketed for no reason all of […]
Show full quote

This is my first hardware purchase in maybe six months, mostly because prices on old hardware skyrocketed for no reason all of a sudden locally, and also because my attention shifted to other hobbies in the last few months..

But then I came across this listed as faulty for about 10 bucks and I went for it. All that I needed to do to fix it was replace the CMOS battery, so that was a net win for me. It came with a Celeron 600 which is basically useless aside from maybe as a testing CPU.

PCPartner AP133MS3-C910.jpg

I need identification help with this. It seems to be a PCPartner AP133MS3-C910 however that model appears to have an onboard Ensoniq AudioPCI whereas this one has it unpopulated.. Also, the jumper locations are different compared to the motherboard, so I can't be sure what it is, exactly. Does anyone recognize the board?

Yep. My bad. I added the 35-8932 manual in there instead of the 35-C932 manual. It's fixed now
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/pcpart … s3-c910-35-c932

Thank you very kindly, this makes a lot more sense! Do you know whether this board supports VIA C3 processors by chance? I can't find a mention in the manual, but being a VIA board and all 🙄

When it rains, it pours. I always wanted more AT/286 era systems and a horizontal AT case. Managed to save these from getting scrapped, cost me about 15 bucks each. Olivetti has a NIC I can use to add XT-IDE, and the noname one comes with a Hercules adapter which I wanted. Double plus good.

Seller also had a mid tower AT case with a black glass front panel door but it had a cookie cutter PCChips M537 + Pentium MMX build in it so I begrudgingly passed. Shipping is expensive these days 🙄

appiah4 wrote on 2023-05-31, 06:47:

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-05-31, 05:34:

Warlord wrote on 2023-05-31, 04:46:

it is what it is but why should anybody care what somone else does in a case like this. I'm not saying youre wrong.

I was curious about reasons behind collecting pretty much garbage. So far the answers I got are somewhere between 'I ran out of things to buy' to 'I like garbage, its cute' with some 'its not total garbage if you compare it to other garbage'. First two seem pretty legit and I wont argue with those 😀

Why are you outright ignoring my point about it being an mATX board with AGP/PCI/ISA?

Maybe because then he'd have to admit he was wrong. And apparently he doesn't like admitting he is wrong. Or maybe he's just ignorant or a blockhead. It's really just a stupid thing to speak in such mannerisms.

I agree with the previous statements about non-high end hardware. I kinda like PCPartner boards. They seem to have made boring no-frills but decent boards in those days.
I kinda see them filling up a similar spot for motherboards that FSP was filling up for PSUs or the Virge for graphics cards in the same era. 'Noname', no blingbling, no top-end, it just works (sometimes kinda), you get none of the fancy stuff and usually these boards were not used to the max by previous owners.

appiah4 wrote on 2023-05-31, 07:01:

evasive wrote on 2023-05-30, 20:07:

appiah4 wrote on 2023-05-29, 08:11:

This is my first hardware purchase in maybe six months, mostly because prices on old hardware skyrocketed for no reason all of […]
Show full quote

This is my first hardware purchase in maybe six months, mostly because prices on old hardware skyrocketed for no reason all of a sudden locally, and also because my attention shifted to other hobbies in the last few months..

But then I came across this listed as faulty for about 10 bucks and I went for it. All that I needed to do to fix it was replace the CMOS battery, so that was a net win for me. It came with a Celeron 600 which is basically useless aside from maybe as a testing CPU.

PCPartner AP133MS3-C910.jpg

I need identification help with this. It seems to be a PCPartner AP133MS3-C910 however that model appears to have an onboard Ensoniq AudioPCI whereas this one has it unpopulated.. Also, the jumper locations are different compared to the motherboard, so I can't be sure what it is, exactly. Does anyone recognize the board?

Yep. My bad. I added the 35-8932 manual in there instead of the 35-C932 manual. It's fixed now
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/pcpart … s3-c910-35-c932

Thank you very kindly, this makes a lot more sense! Do you know whether this board supports VIA C3 processors by chance? I can't find a mention in the manual, but being a VIA board and all 🙄

It may not have as back then the VIA Cyrix III may not have existed yet.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-05-31, 04:32:

... proceeds to agree on every point made? :] 1 pcpartner was a budget manufacturer 2 VT82C693A sucks, is unreliable, and its AG […]
Show full quote

... proceeds to agree on every point made? :]
1 pcpartner was a budget manufacturer
2 VT82C693A sucks, is unreliable, and its AGP implementation is broken
3 its ok it you only use some minimal subset of computer capabilities

1. It was. It was a very solid budget manufacturer though. On-par with Lucky Star, Biostar, Shuttle... I don't really know what are you trying to prove here (I believe you mistook the brand with PC Chips which once was also a perfectly good brand - it's 386DX motherboards are among the best - but it's quality degraded over the years).

2. It was already explained to you by appiah that it's not really the point and that this chipset wasn't really that bad.

3. It has nothing to do with using "some minimal subset of computer capabilities" - It simply depends on what are you going to do with such setup. For the purposes appiah described this motherboard seems perfect.

He has a syndrom of "all what is not high class is garbage". He knows only black and white. He is like Retro Hardware channel on youtrube, scrapping functional Ati Xpert 2000 (Rage 128) cards, just because "it's junk", according him, and he already have 1000x better stuff. It's kinda disrespectful to old hardware. Even low end and mid-tier hardware has its place in history and deserves respect, as nothing new will be made.

What is so wrong about the VT82C693A and its AGP implementation?

Dunno why people think the 693A's AGP implementation is anywhere near broken, for Slot 1 it would be the 2nd best choice along the 440BX I'd say, and 370 implementations weren't bad either.

And yes, I've run about anything AGP I could on 693A - Voodoo, ATI, nVidia, S3. All worked just fine, with no issues.

A cheap A-Open slotket adapter since the Asus P3B-F rev 1.04 is incoming in a few days.

I already have a coppermine PIII 866 Mhz. It should be compatible.

HanSolo wrote on 2023-05-31, 19:41:

What is so wrong about the VT82C693A and its AGP implementation?

The AGP issue is just that people are used to not installing chipset drivers because BX drivers were supplied by default in Win98SE and later. If you don't install 4-in-1 drivers, it's slow and not stable. Otherwise it's a regular AGP 1.0 / 2x slot that does what it should.

Main reason not to like the 693A (ApolloPro133 non-A) is the glacial memory performance, leading to a much slower system than similarly clocked BX (or just about anything else for that matter). The only advantage over BX is official 133MHz FSB support, but that doesn't help much when your 133MHz FSB CPU performs no better than its 100MHz FSB sibling on a BX. 694X (ApolloPro133A) boosted performance to far more usable if not completely competitive levels, plus you got AGP 2.0 / 4X and depending on southbridge ATA-66/100 as well.

There's the 4x interleave option that helps on 64Mbit DRAMs

W.x. wrote on 2023-05-31, 16:52:

He has a syndrom of "all what is not high class is garbage". He knows only black and white. He is like Retro Hardware channel on youtrube, scrapping functional Ati Xpert 2000 (Rage 128) cards, just because "it's junk", according him, and he already have 1000x better stuff. It's kinda disrespectful to old hardware. Even low end and mid-tier hardware has its place in history and deserves respect, as nothing new will be made.

TBF Rage 128 cards are like the cockroaches of the retro hardware world, there are 10's of thousands of them out there selling for pennies, you cant give them away and in the end how many people would actually use one even if it was working ? (Does testing and benches count here? I'm thinking of actual use in a finished build)

Some retro hardware really is rubbish no matter how much you want it to not be, this is something all collectors need to come to terms with eventually. (on a side point, there are still rage cards being made from out of china which makes the retro ones even less useful)