Puled out my pile of in-progress builds.

I think I have decided to try to "finish" the Pentium 233-MMX build first.

Worst part is going to be deciding exactly what sound cards to use with it.

Also sourced the drivers, manual, etc. For the IBM/Tecmar ACPA (Audio Capture and Playback Adapter).

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?593 … -PC-sound/page7
http://ps-2.kev009.com/ohlandl/sound/ACPA.html

I actually posted this to the now defunct eBay thread a while back and ended up buying it myself before the sale ended....

I had one back in the day.. 20+ years ago that was given to me but I was never able to find any information on it and so I got rid of it.

I've only ever seen 2 of these for sale in addition to the one I had years ago. Pretty sure this is one of the rarest sound cards out there.

It is 16-bit and was released before the first Sound Blaster card, but was marketed for business use. Newer/beta drivers support SB emulation through Windows.

It was released in MCA and ISA versions. Apparently the MCA version doesn't like DMA. Not sure if the ISA version will or not as there is absolutely 0 information regarding the actual use of it.

I'm guessing it will be speed sensitive but I may be wrong.

cyclone3d wrote:

Also sourced the drivers, manual, etc. For the IBM/Tecmar ACPA (Audio Capture and Playback Adapter).

Wow that's a prehistoric looking card, I wonder what it sounds like! Do tell if you get it up and running.

I wonder what it is that makes old sound cards so interesting? I for one find them to be fascinating - more so than any other component in an old PC.

not retro or vintage by any means but setup this 2008 macbook today and it runs quite well https://imgur.com/a/XKvgU

Replaced my P3 stystem's motherboard with something that can handle Coppermines; the Abit BE6-II but I'm having nothing but trouble with it. There is an onboard UDMA66 controller that I thought would be great for speeding the system up but instead it makes the PCI bus a huge mess to work with (lots of slots share IRQs and bus mastering with the controller and among themselves so it becomes a mess) - in my current setup the system can't even find a free IRQ for SB Pro Emulation drivers of the Vortex 2.

So I'm considering replacing that, yet again, with a GA-BX2000. Any feedback on whether I should keep the ABIT BE6-II or move to the Gigabyte GA-BX2000 would be great. I think I can make the BE6-II work, but I'm not sure it's worth the hassle just to go from UDMA33 to UDMA66..

appiah4 wrote:

Replaced my P3 stystem's motherboard with something that can handle Coppermines; the Abit BE6-II but I'm having nothing but trouble with it. There is an onboard UDMA66 controller that I thought would be great for speeding the system up but instead it makes the PCI bus a huge mess to work with (lots of slots share IRQs and bus mastering with the controller and among themselves so it becomes a mess) - in my current setup the system can't even find a free IRQ for SB Pro Emulation drivers of the Vortex 2.

So I'm considering replacing that, yet again, with a GA-BX2000. Any feedback on whether I should keep the ABIT BE6-II or move to the Gigabyte GA-BX2000 would be great. I think I can make the BE6-II work, but I'm not sure it's worth the hassle just to go from UDMA33 to UDMA66..

I set up quite a few of those Abit boards with Highpoint controllers, with varying results. It will cost some time to set up as you say. Take a look at http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?44668- … RQ-sharing-help for example, but there are many more examples. https://www.google.nl/search?q=abit+highpoint … n+board+irq+pci

Is disabling and not using the controller another option? Might save you buying a new board.

Well, I already own the BX2000 I just needed to recap half of the 330uF 25V no-name caps on it because they are bulging, and now that is done. So if I am going to disable the Highpoint controller I may just use the BX2000. I will try to get it to work for some more time, if all else fails, the ABIT goes into storage and BX2000 goes into the system. UDMA66 is nice but having a running system is nicer.

badmojo wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Also sourced the drivers, manual, etc. For the IBM/Tecmar ACPA (Audio Capture and Playback Adapter).

Wow that's a prehistoric looking card, I wonder what it sounds like! Do tell if you get it up and running.

I wonder what it is that makes old sound cards so interesting? I for one find them to be fascinating - more so than any other component in an old PC.

I'll be putting it through the paces once it gets here. I'll probably post an article about it on my upcoming web page, do a YT video and some audio recordings as well.

My take on the soundcards being so interesting is mostly because there was a huge amount of variety and even different cards with the same chipset can sound different because of the rest of the circuitry on the card.

With video, you pretty much got only e few real selections because either the card supports something or doesn't as is fast enough or isn't. The only real big difference between video cards with the same paper-specs is the RAMDAC making a difference in the output quality for VGA. Even so, I have a huge collection of video cards which will eventually be thinned out. Not sure I can bring myself to get rid of sound cards other than extra multiples.

I've been playing with the Abit BE6-II recently. Slot 1, P3 700 Mhz running Windows XP.

I had a play with the Highpoint 366 ATA-66 controller. I've now disabled it in the BIOS. Far too much trouble.

I tried to use it with a IDE - SATA adapater on an older SATA drive. It was tempermental whilst installed XP.

I really wanted to get this machine good again.

I can't explain why, but the onboard PS2 keyboard and mouse controller no longer works. (I've done a BIOS clear and nothing). I'm now using a USB Keyboard which is thankfully supported in the BIOS.

It has a SCSI controller card and SCSI Yamaha CD Rewriter. The drive is probably past it. I gave it a clean, but it's slow and temperamental.

The PCI USB 2.0 Controller card I have doesn't work with it either.

I really didn't want a PC to throw more money at. But here we are again.

I've got a socket 370 P3 1Ghz chip to use. I'm waiting on a Slocket adapter bought on eBay.

I've installed a IDE Zip 100 drive.

I'll upgrade the RAM to 512 MB.

And buy some games to use with the Voodoo 3.

Virtua Tennis doesn't work on this machine. 😢 And I'll probably get really fixated on that fact.

Just finished fixing my second Roland SB-55. 😀

Turns out that this unit has a newer firmware that plays MIDI files that my other unit won't load.

Re-tested the LuckyStar board with non-chinese authentic cache chips from Cypress and these 15ns ones withstand 50mhz fsb at the fastest settings in a single bank configuration.
Funnily they even yield a higher performance than the generic ones... very strange.

The score for demo3 of Doom shareware is now at ~65fps+ which narrows the delta to the fastest 486 score in "Doom benchmark results" down to less than 4 frames per second. BUT how to overcome these I have no idea.

Also realized the Rev.D. of the Diamond Riva128 may not be able to run in older systems in general. All the Rivas I have run in older 486 boards while this one only works in a new PC(Core2 was used for testing).

andrewreader wrote:

I've been playing with the Abit BE6-II recently. Slot 1, P3 700 Mhz running Windows XP.

...

I can't explain why, but the onboard PS2 keyboard and mouse controller no longer works. (I've done a BIOS clear and nothing). I'm now using a USB Keyboard which is thankfully supported in the BIOS.

Stop the press! I have the same issue with the same board, the mouse PS/2 controller just refuses to work! The keyboard is OK though. Nothing I did in the BIOS seems to help either. I was almost convinced it was an issue with the port itself, but now that you say this..

We need to sort this out. I'm pretty much convinced it's a stupid hardware conflict of some kind now.

Well, what we can do for now is avoid that particular mobo.

Discovered that the composite TV out on my Trident ProVidia 9685 PCI is next to useless combined with my 1999 27" Zenith TV for three reasons:

1.) The drivers don't provide a proper 320x240 Interlaced mode for TV out, only 640x480 Interlaced which isn't what usually works best on a CRT TV. This leads to a very poor undefined image quality with some color artifacts.

2.) TV out is only available under Windows 95 where this systems Yamaha OPL3-SAX can't be properly tapped by most games due to Windows IRQ hogging. I can get music but no sound FX (initialization failure). This may or may not be an issue on other systems.

I attempted to repair an interesting old IBM Model F (XT style) clone keyboard I found recently. It appears to be a keyboard for the rare Dimension 68000 desktop, and is a Keytronic design with a similar "decomposing foam pads with mylar stickers" problem that plagues other vintage Keytronics, like the Apple Lisa keyboard. Long story short, I thought I'd be tricky and use some neoprene pads to make the keyboard last forever, but its simply too stiff so I need to use a lighter foam that more closely resembles what was used originally. Rats! 🤣

Here's a great guide I followed:

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/entry.php?433-Repa … -the-Apple-Lisa

Its actually a super easy process and doesn't even take that long. Thankfully I only replaced the pads on handful of keys before testing it and realizing it wasn't going to work with neoprene pads.

Installed the 4.6GB Fujitsu HDD from my Pavilion N3350 into my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus by using the 2.5" to 3.5" IDE HDD kit I got at my local computer store, and my system detected the HDD (as a 733MB drive, but I entered the cylinders as 4000 heads at 15, sectors/track at 63 to make it 1836MB, which isn't bad at all). I then fdisked and formatted the HDD, and after that was done, I typed in these commands to copy everything from the CF Card (drive D) to the HDD (drive C):

1A:\>set path=d:\DOS
2A:\>C:
3C:\>xcopy /s D:\ 

Going to check to see if it boots up.

Edit (12-20-17 @ 22:49 or10:49pm EST): it boots up! 😀

harddrivespin wrote:

Well, what we can do for now is avoid that particular mobo.

The ABIT BE6-II is one of the, if not the best BX boards available in my opinion, even supports overclocking to 200 MHz fsb. the only flaw is Abit used crappy caps that failed often so I'd suggest testing and or changing them.

Apparently Opti ISA Chipset 82C931 aka "Opti Audio 16" isn't even a 16-bit card. It's a Soundblaster Pro 1.0 (not 2.0/Old) clone. Weird considering I was under the impression that it was a SB16 clone.

Sounds damn good for a non-OPL rip off. It's beating my Yamaha OPL3-SAX (an SBPro 2.0 clone made by Yamaha) senseless in audio quality. The compatibility so far is better too.

cj_reha wrote:

harddrivespin wrote:

Well, what we can do for now is avoid that particular mobo.

The ABIT BE6-II is one of the, if not the best BX boards available in my opinion, even supports overclocking to 200 MHz fsb. the only flaw is Abit used crappy caps that failed often so I'd suggest testing and or changing them.

It's brother the BF6 is maybe even better, practically the same board, with one extra PCI slot and without the onboard HighPoint controller. I would love to have either one!

Also, the PS/2 problem feels like a defective component to me somewhere. Hard to tell though...

Cyrix200+ wrote:

cj_reha wrote:

harddrivespin wrote:

Well, what we can do for now is avoid that particular mobo.

The ABIT BE6-II is one of the, if not the best BX boards available in my opinion, even supports overclocking to 200 MHz fsb. the only flaw is Abit used crappy caps that failed often so I'd suggest testing and or changing them.

It's brother the BF6 is maybe even better, practically the same board, with one extra PCI slot and without the onboard HighPoint controller. I would love to have either one!

Also, the PS/2 problem feels like a defective component to me somewhere. Hard to tell though...

I can't see any dead caps on mine with visual inspection, feel free to help me out though (click for larger):