Seriously jealous. The coolest thing I've ever found at a flea market was a Riva 128ZX. 🙁

Well now I'm seriously jealous we have no local swap meet in my neck of the woods.
Any way that good found and good deal

MaxWar wrote:

But what about the isa video cards? Any old 8 bit cirrus logic by any chance?

There was 1 8-bit cga card, but it wasn't a Cirrus Logic. Sorry. I'll keep an eye out for one, if you like.

DonutKing wrote:

Regarding the socket 3 boards; when there's only one VLB slot, what's the best card to populate it with - a disk controller or a video card?

If this is going to be a DOS games box, VLB video card for sure. You won't notice much benefit from the VLB disk controller under DOS while local bus video is significantly faster than ISA video.

Thanks DK. This will definitely be a DOS gaming build.

humanoid wrote:

MaxWar wrote:

But what about the isa video cards? Any old 8 bit cirrus logic by any chance?

There was 1 8-bit cga card, but it wasn't a Cirrus Logic. Sorry. I'll keep an eye out for one, if you like.

Actually i asked because we are having a bit of fun over in the CGA emulation on vga cards thread. We determined that one of the best contender for 100% cga emulation is the cirrus logic eagle chipset, CL-GD510/520 . Should be a late 80s 8bit card.
We need to find someone with one so he can do the CGA test on it 😜

CGA Compatibility Tester vs. VGA cards

MaxWar wrote:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Rwxr9C9AcCg/TlqGODoJOnI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/NMr--TXbg2E/s1024/swapfind2.JPG […]
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That OPTi card is actually a SoundBlaster Pro clone, and a pretty bad one, too. That's an 82C931, right? The 82C931 is probably one of OPTi's worst sound cards. Its SoundBlaster Pro support is good, but its FM Synthesis is just weird. There's no OPL3 on this; instead, it uses OPTi's supposed superset of OPL3, OPTiFM. It just sounds weird and overall very poor with several volume spikes when certain notes play in OPTiFM as well as distortion at high volume. I'd personally take the SoundBlaster Live! over this even though its emulated YMF262 murders certain games but is tolerable in many others.

If it's an 82C930, though, that's a good one as it can either have true OPL3 or a discrete clone of the YMF262 with clearer sound than the real chip.

Now I want to go to my local flea market and pick up a Socket 5 and Socket 7 motherboard I found last time I went there.

Ace wrote:

That OPTi card is actually a SoundBlaster Pro clone, and a pretty bad one, too. That's an 82C931, right? The 82C931 is probabl […]
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MaxWar wrote:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Rwxr9C9AcCg/TlqGODoJOnI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/NMr--TXbg2E/s1024/swapfind2.JPG […]
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That OPTi card is actually a SoundBlaster Pro clone, and a pretty bad one, too. That's an 82C931, right? The 82C931 is probably one of OPTi's worst sound cards. Its SoundBlaster Pro support is good, but its FM Synthesis is just weird. There's no OPL3 on this; instead, it uses OPTi's supposed superset of OPL3, OPTiFM. It just sounds weird and overall very poor with several volume spikes when certain notes play in OPTiFM as well as distortion at high volume. I'd personally take the SoundBlaster Live! over this even though its emulated YMF262 murders certain games but is tolerable in many others.

If it's an 82C930, though, that's a good one as it can either have true OPL3 or a discrete clone of the YMF262 with clearer sound than the real chip.

Now I want to go to my local flea market and pick up a Socket 5 and Socket 7 motherboard I found last time I went there.

I had to go rummage through my box of sound card to find it and yes, it's The 82C931 🤣 . When i do my grand opl3 comparison run with all the sound blaster clones i have, ill be sure to include this horror! Have drivers for it ?

HOWLY COW!!!!!!!!!!! NICE STUFF OVER THERE! I WHISH IT RAINED THAT OLD HARDWARE OVER HERE!!!!!!

MaxWar wrote:

I had to go rummage through my box of sound card to find it and yes, it's The 82C931 🤣 . When i do my grand opl3 comparison run with all the sound blaster clones i have, ill be sure to include this horror! Have drivers for it ?

I sure do! For both DOS and Windows, which are attached to this message, though from what I can tell, you must run the setup utility through Windows.

By the way, would you mind if I add to your grand OPL3 comparison run if there's a certain OPL3 clone one of my sound cards has that yours don't?

Thanks mate! Yes it would be awesome if other people would contribute to the Grand OPL3 comparison run. Now that will come once im done with a couple other projects and then i will post in the sound card comparison thread ( or maybe in a new thread).
Cheers!

I'll tell you one thing: leave the OPL3 stuff on any OPTi sound card with true OPL3 to me. I have an 82C930 which I modified with a socket so I can test different quad op-amps on the YMF262 as my damaged 82C929A had an LF347 quad op-amp on it, which produced a different sound than my 82C930, which originally came with a TL074 quad op-amp before I removed it and replaced it with a socket.

Humanoid, Tyan all the way. Go for it, man.
This unknown green motherboard is a PCCHIPS M507 and would be my third pick for DOS games.

Reasons ? Its gonna be too much of a hassle to the bring it to the max:

8.4Gb barrier (will need to flash your BIOS to overcome that)
No L2 cache onboard (unless you install a COAST pipelined)
Pentium MMX support only through a Voltage Regulator Module

This is gonna be great... 🤐
Well...no, it´s not going to be great. Tyan has it all and supports 128Gb. You cut the shit.

Second reason: Personally, my experience with older mobos from PCCHIPS is not very nice.
I dont know...PII was slower on a M717. What about M598 ? Should i proceed ?

My M507 v1.2 has two false cache chips. It´s written "write back" on them (they are plastic...just empty plastic).

Third reason: Tyan mint condition. On the other hand, Tyan cant outperform FIC VA-503 and FIC supports USB. It´s up to you.

Note: My M507 is very similar to your unknown motherboard, except for the COM1 and COM2 connectors. They are in a different orientation. Therefore, im not 100% sure your model is a M507.

actually that tyan board has USB. its near the bottom left of the picture, its a 2x4 pin header. I know, because I own the same board. It also has 1mb L2 cache with proper tag ram for full 768mb cache-ability. I have a K6-2/550 in mine. I wish I could overclock it, but thems the breaks..

The Tyan sounds like a good board. Thanks for the info guys!

I have one of those Tyan boards running a K6-2/500, have had it for years and it is a good board. I also Have the ATX version of that board.