Finally some progress! I ordered a bunch of things from Monoprice to complete the wall mounting of my main TV with no wires showing.. and in that order I added a couple of MIDI cables. The order finally showed up today, and I tried out a couple of Sierra games on my MT32.

I have been waiting over 25 years to see these messages..

I do not yet have the proper audio setup to get it all to play nice together.. I have a mixer on the way from Japan right now (among other Roland goodies) which should be here in the next week or two. In the meantime, I will be getting games properly installed.

My Japan package showed up today. I have not yet had a chance to test these items, but it sure is nice to have them all sitting on my desk now.

So, in total I have the following modules:
Roland MT-32 (Old version)
Roland SC-55ST (Black)
Roland SC-55ST (White)
Roland SC-55mkII
Roland SC-88VL
Yamaha MU90B
Yamaha TG300

rkrenicki wrote:

My Japan package showed up today. I have not yet had a chance to test these items, but it sure is nice to have them all sitting […]
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My Japan package showed up today. I have not yet had a chance to test these items, but it sure is nice to have them all sitting on my desk now.

2016-12-05 09.55.39.jpg

So, in total I have the following modules:
Roland MT-32 (Old version)
Roland SC-55ST (Black)
Roland SC-55ST (White)
Roland SC-55mkII
Roland SC-88VL
Yamaha MU90B
Yamaha TG300

How much?

This last package ended up about $200 before final shipping to me, that included the 5 MIDI modules photoed above and a 6 channel Yamaha Mixer that I havent photoed yet.

In other news, I tested all of the MIDI modules, and they all work great. The Mixer needs some serious cleaning and possibly some new slider potentiometers due to a lot of noise when using them. A few of these modules will end up being sold off to help offset the costs of the units that I am keeping.. I just have not yet decided which units will be kept.

rkrenicki wrote:

In other news, I tested all of the MIDI modules, and they all work great. The Mixer needs some serious cleaning and possibly some new slider potentiometers due to a lot of noise when using them.

Might be worth trying some Deoxit before sourcing the replacement parts.

gdjacobs wrote:

rkrenicki wrote:

In other news, I tested all of the MIDI modules, and they all work great. The Mixer needs some serious cleaning and possibly some new slider potentiometers due to a lot of noise when using them.

Might be worth trying some Deoxit before sourcing the replacement parts.

Yep, that is what I was referring to by "cleaning" 😀 I cleaned up one of the SC-55STs and the SC-88VL, and I am getting ready to put it up for sale somewhere. the TG300 will likely end up for sale as well. It is interesting looking, but the MU90B is more capable since it has XG compatibility.. even if it is boring with no LCD on the front.

rkrenicki wrote:

This last package ended up about $200 before final shipping to me, that included the 5 MIDI modules photoed above and a 6 channel Yamaha Mixer that I havent photoed yet.

You're kidding right? I spent 100$ shipped for my SC-55mk2 and frankly it destroyed my wallet! Congrats on a great deal! I suppose you didn't get it on ebay - is there some other (special) site you can find these on? I'm looking to get an MT32 myself (just like you, been waiting ~20 years to own one) but the 150-180$ (shipped) price tag is way too much for me. I also looked into some yamaha synths (I love those) but they cost about as much as roland units... 🙁

All of my MIDI gear (except the 88VL which came from eBay) were purchased on Yahoo Auctions Japan. I personally use TokyoBuyers as my bidding proxy.

Buying just one item will be expensive, so i always buy in batches to spread out the international shipping cost. If I were to buy just one MT-32 or SC-55mkII in Japan and have it shipped EMS, it would likely end up being $110 or more, but if you buy enough and are willing to wait for Surface Mail or Space Available Airmail, you can drop the per unit cost quite significantly.

rkrenicki wrote:

All of my MIDI gear (except the 88VL which came from eBay) were purchased on Yahoo Auctions Japan. I personally use TokyoBuyers as my bidding proxy.

Buying just one item will be expensive, so i always buy in batches to spread out the international shipping cost. If I were to buy just one MT-32 or SC-55mkII in Japan and have it shipped EMS, it would likely end up being $110 or more, but if you buy enough and are willing to wait for Surface Mail or Space Available Airmail, you can drop the per unit cost quite significantly.

awesome, always wanted a MT-32!
i will check this site 😊

I managed to score a Gravis Ultrasound PnP today! I am quite excited to get my hands on it, as I never have seen one in the flesh before.

However, that means that I now have a ridiculous amount of sound cards to my name. I think I need to pare down the list a bit, but I want some input first. This is a list of all of the (decent) sound cards that I have. I have marked off the few that I know I will keep, but is there any reason why I should hold on to any of the others?

-----======== ISA ========-----
Gravis Ultrasound PnP **KEEPING**
MediaVision Pro Audio Spectrum 16
Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold (CT4390) **KEEPING**
Sound Blaster AWE64 (CT4500)
Sound Blaster 32 (CT3600)
Sound Blaster 16 Value (CT2770)
Sound Blaster 16 (CT2910)
Sound Blaster Pro 2 (CT1600) **KEEPING**

-----======== PCI ========-----
Sound Blaster Audigy SB1394 (SB0090) *I have two of these, one with "gold" connectors, and one without*
Yamaha YMF740 Sound Card
Yamaha YMF724 Sound Card
Diamond Monster Sound MX400
Sertek Aureal Vortex AU8820

I have a bunch of Sound Blaster 128 PCIs and some other no-name cards, but those are all pretty much on the chopping block as of right now.

I'd hold onto the YMF724, especially if you acquire a motherboard with SB-LINK (a.k.a. PC-PCI). Even if you don't, it has a great hardware-assisted soft synth that can be used in DOS games launched from Windows.

Yes, any Yamaha sound cards with SB-Link are worth keeping. I'd also keep the PAS 16 and check the CT2770 in case it has amazingly low noise levels (as mine does).

Sound cards are compact enough that I store quite a few in fairly limited space. Cut your inventory where you have lots of duplication of course, but I'd keep any cards that are unique.

gdjacobs wrote:

Sound cards are compact enough that I store quite a few in fairly limited space. Cut your inventory where you have lots of duplication of course, but I'd keep any cards that are unique.

They are, but I actually have more cards beyond this list too. I do not need 6 different SB16s 😉 I also have a metric buttload of Video Cards, but those are fairly easy to figure out what to keep.

In other news, I had a serious blast from the past show up the other day. But first, a little history... My father used to work for Panasonic back in the 80s/90s. He bought me my very first PC, which was a Panasonic FX-1650. It is a little known fact that Panasonic actually made several of the Tandy 1000 series of computers, and this was the Panasonic branded version of the 1000SL/2. I have been on the hunt for one of these units with no luck.

Now, my father used a Panasonic CF-170 Laptop at around the same time (the panasonic branded version of the Tandy 1500HD).. of which I have many memories of playing some old games and playing around with GWBASIC. I was able to pick up one of these units for $25 shipped the other day. The display does not seem to work, but it appears to actually boot (judging by the HD Activity LED). I am trying to source a replacement screen for it, but I am quite excited to have such an important piece of my youth back in my possession.

rkrenicki wrote:

but I am quite excited to have such an important piece of my youth back in my possession.

the Leitmotif of this forum 😁 😉

rkrenicki wrote:

I do not need 6 different SB16s 😉

SB16s are never enough 🤣

Regards!

I picked up a couple of desks from my grandparents house yesterday, so my retro PC area has a bit of an upgrade!

I have not hooked anything up yet, but the old retro "computer hutch" is a great place for my sound modules, and floppy organizers. This desk also has the old Keyboard Tray which I hadnt installed yet, so plenty of room for all sorts of items.

It has been a long while since I have updated this here.. I have been dealing with some health issues, and I look forward to finishing my recovery, as I am not allowed to lift anything over 5kg right now, so that rules out most of my retro gear.

I picked up a Tandy 1000RL-HD a few weeks back, as it is pretty close to the old Panasonic FX-1650 that I had as a kid. The hard drive still works, and it boots to Deskmate just fine. I do not have a CGA compatible monitor, but I did have an Oak VGA card that has a jumper selectable 8-bit ISA mode. My Tandy keyboard does not seem to have the switch installed to convert to XT mode, so it does not work on this computer. I was going to try to open it up and install the switch, but then my health issues came up.

Other than that, I have come to the conclusion that I have far too much retro computer gear right now. I am going to be sorting through it all and sticking a lot of it up on eBay here pretty soon. I sold a few pieces a few months back, but I really need to do a serious purge. I just need to really decide what I want to keep.

In the end, I think I will have this Tandy 8086 DOS machine, the Compaq 486 Windows 3.11 machine, a Pentium III 1.13ghz Windows 98 machine, and an Athlon XP Windows XP machine. I also have the iBook G3, Panasonic CF-170 and the Compaq Pentium 133 laptops. Those should cover all of my gaming needs.

I picked up the Tandy keyboard that I found because it had this sticker on it:

So, I assumed it had a switch for XT and AT modes. Turns out that it did not, and it was an AT keyboard. Today, I decided to open it up and see if I could make it work. I installed a jumper, on the keyboard controller board, and now it is an XT keyboard.

I need to get an updated version of Deskmate on the machine, as the version in ROM is black and white when running on a VGA card... either that or I need to find a CGA monitor.

In good news, the hard drives works (mostly). Sometimes it takes a few power cycles to get it to spin up, but once it does, it works great.

it has been a long time since I have updated this thread, but I picked up a number of things including one of those NOS IBM 5170 PC/ATs. That has been occupying my attention as of late.

I have upgraded the 5170 with a VGA card, SBPro2, MPU-401, and an AST Rampage/AT with 1.5mb of RAM (bringing to a total of 2mb of ram). The next step is to preserve the original hard drive and upgrade to IDE with either a CF or SD card as the storage device.

I have a Multi-IO with an IDE BIOS, but it seems to lock the computer up any time I connect a drive to it. i have some other IO cards elsewhere, but I need to dig them out.

I ended up picking up an XT-IDE kit on eBay from Glitchwrks. It works (mostly) perfectly, I can see, partition, format, and read/write to a 64MB CF card, but I cannot seem to boot from it. Yes, the partition is marked as active.. I believe that the computer is still enumerating the MFM controller first. If I boot from a floppy disk, the drive does show up as C: just fine, but it will boot straight to ROM BASIC if I do not use a floppy disk.

I was going to burn some EPROMs with the generic AMI BIOS to get around this, but it turns out that my EEPROM programmer is not working. I guess I will need to buy another at some point.