I think everyone here has a M919 😀

I have a P4 1.4 with RDram 😁

bigskymusiclover wrote:

I there anyone here that collect's computers for there oddness or failures, like a Cyrix or any early P4 1.4Ghz with RDram and socket 423 or early Pentium's like the 60's and 75's?

I collect a lot of Slot-2 Xeon stuff. Just finished this build a month ago. Also I tend to collect other multiprocessor stuff.

The P75s weren't oddballs. Those were standard P54s. The P60 and P66 systems were based on the old 5V design with the non-staggered socket4 pin arrangement.

Actually, I kind of have a thing for oddball systems. Though, I will usually only jump at them if I get them cheaply and find some upgrades to play with. I rather like systems that use early 32-bit expansion buses. I have a special place in my heart for EISA and VLB. I've also been temped to play around with systems that use MCA, OLB and CUPID but I just never got a chance to get the stuff cheaply.

I have a Compaq Presario 2200, pretty oddball PC

uses the cryix 6×86 180mhz media cpu. Its a terrible PC. from what I could find its not to common, read that only about 300 were sold in the US.

bigskymusiclover wrote:

I there anyone here that collect's computers for there oddness or failures, like a Cyrix...

Was Cyrix odd or a failure?

In my opinion, the Cyrix MediaGX was the only odd failure from Cyrix. One of the more common speeds available was the 266 MHz unit. Overall, it was only about as good as a Pentium 166 and came to market 3 years after the P166. Now if you wanted to play any games on it, it was about as good as a P100.

I personally thought that bringing the PCI, memory, sound, and graphics controller on chip would have made the system blazing fast, but it turned out to be a slug. For this reason of novelty, I have a system setup around the MediaGX.

The Presario 2200 was notable in that it was a sub-$1000 complete PC (included monitor). It was never intended to be fast. I ran across a few when I was repairing computers for a living. I think that store still has one in the junk pile some where!

I have a few oddball EISA/VLB 486 motherboards now. Makes for interesting comparisons. I usually collect odd stuff, like PC compatibility boards and such. I have a Powermac 6100/66 DOS Compatible along with an Applied Engineering PC Transporter "Turbo XT on a card" for the Apple II series. I also have an interest in machines that maintain backwards compatibility with previous computers released in a company's line, but requires all kinds of weird hardware to do it, like the Apple IIgs. Still don't have a Commodore 128 though!

I got a Dual P60 EISA/VLB board recently that I'm dying to test out. There were very few Pentiums made with this combination of busses (I only know of 3 boards). Actually, in 1993 it would have been a very good (but expensive) setup.

When I think of truly oddball systems I think of something like the MBC-550/555, aka Sanyo's "PC in a VCR chassis".
Sort-of PC compatible but not quite - no ROM BIOS, and actually slower (8088 @ 3.58MHz); graphics were somewhat better than CGA but not backward compatible, and one model used "quad density" 5.25" floppies (720 KB). I believe it sold moderately well for a while despite all its quirks, probably because it was dirt cheap.

feipoa, It would be odd in my opinion, being it's not a Intel or AMD CPU system, the P4 I have is a Dell Precision 330 1.4Ghz P4 From 06 of 2001. It's a high end workstation PC from the local collage that has a 100% must destroy old PC's policy. Don't how the guy got it of the collage.

[quote="NJRoadfan"]The Presario 2200 was notable in that it was a sub-$1000 complete PC (included monitor). It was never intended to be fast. I ran across a few when I was repairing computers for a living. I think that store still has one in the junk pile some where!

quote]

I've seen alot of systems that were ment to be cheap and not built for speed but at least they didn't go bat sh^%@t crazy when you tried to upgrade from windows 95 to win 98. 🤣. The 2200 has almost zero expandability, not even one USB port.

I always wanted to run into a MIPS-based SGI machine but I've never even seen one personally. Though I can't imagine what I would actually do with one.

oh, then theres my Tandy 2000 pictured as my avatar. wierd sort of but not really PC compatable running a 186.

swaaye wrote:

I always wanted to run into a MIPS-based SGI machine but I've never even seen one personally. Though I can't imagine what I would actually do with one.

Make some wicked renders using that program.. SoftImage?

I wonder what kind of Fill rate performance and so on would those SGI workstations with their own separate Geometry and Rasterization boards (Composed of lots of chips) have compared to normal 3D accelerators.

I have about seven or eight SGI machines in my collection, ranging from their low-end Indy desktop to their 250lb deskside Onyx graphics supercomputers. Performance-wise, they're hard to compare to consumer PC graphics boards because SGI focused more on factors like visual quality and geometry horsepower rather than fill rates, which are more important for gaming. But by the late 1990's, high-end PC workstations with Intergraph boards had caught up to SGI in terms of performance, and by the early 2000's even commodity PCs with GeForce cards were blowing SGIs out of the water, so the content creation industry switched to Intel systems running Windows and Linux, which could be had for 1/10 the price of a comparable SGI box.

That said, SGI systems are extremely collectible and uniquely addictive because of their stylish case designs and the quality of IRIX, their UNIX-based OS. And as a guy who came of age in the 90's watching movies like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park, it's a real rush to run vintage high-end 3D apps like Softimage and PowerAnimator on hardware that used to cost more than a BMW. There are even versions of Photoshop and Premiere that were ported to the platform, and with SoftWindows and ScummVM you can run Win95 apps and LucasArts games. If you have $300 to spare, you can get a very nice SGI O2, Indy, Indigo2, or Octane workstation on eBay.

leileilol wrote:

I think everyone here has a M919 😀

Some of us have 2. 😁

Some of us also have some Nexgen stuff. You don't get much more odd than that. 😳 😁

SiliconClassics wrote:

I have about seven or eight SGI machines in my collection, ranging from their low-end Indy desktop to their 250lb deskside Onyx graphics supercomputers. Performance-wise, they're hard to compare to consumer PC graphics boards because SGI focused more on factors like visual quality and geometry horsepower rather than fill rates, which are more important for gaming. But by the late 1990's, high-end PC workstations with Intergraph boards had caught up to SGI in terms of performance, and by the early 2000's even commodity PCs with GeForce cards were blowing SGIs out of the water, so the content creation industry switched to Intel systems running Windows and Linux, which could be had for 1/10 the price of a comparable SGI box.

That said, SGI systems are extremely collectible and uniquely addictive because of their stylish case designs and the quality of IRIX, their UNIX-based OS. And as a guy who came of age in the 90's watching movies like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park, it's a real rush to run vintage high-end 3D apps like Softimage and PowerAnimator on hardware that used to cost more than a BMW. There are even versions of Photoshop and Premiere that were ported to the platform, and with SoftWindows and ScummVM you can run Win95 apps and LucasArts games. If you have $300 to spare, you can get a very nice SGI O2, Indy, Indigo2, or Octane workstation on eBay.

Have you ever seen the movie "Hackers"? It features a mouthwatering WipE'out"(Yes, the classic anti-gravity craft racing game) CGI video done on an SGI (I don't know which one though). It was based on an earlier concept of the wipeout saga than the one we know of today. Psygnosis sold a shorter version of it for use in the movie.

Here is the uncut one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix35c_8DEXk

A lost treasure from the 90s 😉

VileRancour wrote:

When I think of truly oddball systems I think of something like the MBC-550/555, aka Sanyo's "PC in a VCR chassis". Sort-of PC c […]
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When I think of truly oddball systems I think of something like the MBC-550/555, aka Sanyo's "PC in a VCR chassis".
Sort-of PC compatible but not quite - no ROM BIOS, and actually slower (8088 @ 3.58MHz); graphics were somewhat better than CGA but not backward compatible, and one model used "quad density" 5.25" floppies (720 KB). I believe it sold moderately well for a while despite all its quirks, probably because it was dirt cheap.

Now THAT is odd. 😀

I don't think there's much x86 hardware that I'd call odd.

When I think odd, I think of stuff like the weird Soviet-era Tandy and Spectrum clones, or those later Z80 CP/M machines with over-engineered hardware DOS compatibility.

Weird glitches going on right there at 0:41 with the disappearing mountain.

An interesting tidbit concerning that video: That weird continuous beeping at the beginning is nowhere to be heard in any Wipeout game besides the much later (and shitty) Fusion. Guess if they're out of ideas for a new game they go back and look at old concept videos 🤣