Received this Tandy TL today.

The exterior is in decent shape. Only some minor paint chips and scratches.

On the inside, however, it has a bunch of rust on the metal frame. Unfortunately, the volume knob also snapped off when I was removing the case. I'm not sure if this was my own carelessness or if it was already damaged.

The main board looks quite good. Couldn't see any damage on initial inspection. The disk drive though is quite nasty looking with some rust and debris inside.

At some point soon I'll need to give this a full teardown and cleaning.

Huh wtf and why are these NexGen CPUs so expensive ?!?!

libby wrote on 2022-09-25, 20:10:

- There was no A7V8X deluxe. - The trailing X in the A7V8X-X model number is ASUS code for "stripped of primary features for bud […]
Show full quote

- There was no A7V8X deluxe.
- The trailing X in the A7V8X-X model number is ASUS code for "stripped of primary features for budget/OEM systems". this would be the broadcom gigabit ethernet and Promise SATA RAID the regular A7V8X had.
- The "useless wifi ASUS BS" is irrelevant as you had the option to just buy any wifi card and put it in, there was no shortage of PCI slots. I suppose they could have offered a CNR slot, which was equally useless. Every manufacturer did something similar at the time.
- The A7V8X (non-X) had promise SATA RAID and IDE RAID.
- The GA-7NNXP uses the nforce 2 ultra 400 chipset which was a refresh of nforce 2 and is approximately a year newer. It did offer one more DIMM slot and the separate VRM.
- The AOpen AK79G Tube did not have SATA, and the tube section came at the cost of 3 PCI slots. It is also unobtainium now and is impossible to find for under $500 or so. The tube section did little to compensate for the nforce 2's chronic issue of crosstalk in its analog stage, rendering more or less all motherboards using the chipset terrible for audio quality if SPDIF was not used.
- The Soyo board you mention is a KT600 chipset and is a year newer.
- The Soltek board has only 3 DIMM slots and the same featureset as the A7V8X.
- PCB color has no correlation to quality.

If you're going to be critical of something, at least have some knowledge of what you're talking about. Thanks.

+ Whatever if there was or not, u know what i mean the crappy "deluxe" of ASUS 462...
+ The NF7/-S V2 was the same year as the shitty ASUS "deluxe" and was ALOT better in everything(color EVEN !!).. I was comparing every other brand to ASUS, does it matter if was in 2003 or 2004, NO it does not..
+ Sure the AOpen AK79G Tube is like baby ATX form factor die to the Tube part, and Sata is missing stuff, BUT still it has socket for second Bios, and the shitty ASUS does not have even that... And everyone will gladly sacrifice x2 or even x3 PCI slots in order to have so unique mobo... I did saw in a local AD site some years ago the AOpen Tube but 478 version, so i bet the thing is not as hard to find, as u think..
+The Soyo Dragon Platinum looks 1000 times better, so who cares if is newer or not ?
+ Same goes for the Soltek Golden Flame, is nothing special, BUT the PCB color makes it alot more nice to even look at, not like the ASUS and their shitty color...
+ No one said the PCB color means quality.. The better color means better color, and the better color means the whole system will look better, not like with ASUS like shit..
So to ask again ASUS 462 Deluxe has what sata only ?!?!? Where is Dual BIOS, where is cool PCB color, where is Tube audio, where is 4 slot for memory, where is AT least IDE raid ?!?!? ASUS was not even at the top of the overclocking charts, since there was DFI LanParty (oyy yeah UV slots, not shit like asus) or ABIT NF7 V2 with modded BIOSes... So tell me what exactly makes asus any better then shitty ECS or ASSrock, i will help u, nothing. There was even early ECS 462 black mobo that was considered OC champion from others... ASUS 462 boards are good in one thing to look like their PCB color like shit..

Having alot of parts, and systems, and i know exactly how crap asus is.. Now if u are delusional, and think they are good, the joke is on you !!
If u think u know better then me, EXPLAIN then, WHY TF asus boards die so much, and specially WHY they all share the same shit, and that being totally dead the power on led lights, and the fucking DOA or just dead asus will not EVEN spin fans, and that is on many asus boards, this exact behavior. Also there is NOT visible problem on any of these asus boards i did test, no reason at all to act like the PSU is not even connected. U name it i saw dead not spinning even fans asus boards sockets 462, 478, 775, 754, 939, AM2, 1156, AM2+..
Now tell me mister knowledge, why the fuck that crap happens on many asus boards, but on other brands if they are dead, is blown caps, burned mosfet or other chip, or something is visible, and the board still AT least spin fans, while the asus garbage have NO visible dmg, nothing and wont even spin fans.. If u dont know about this behavior on many asus boards after socket 370, then u dont know shit about that shit brand...

Few other odds 'n sods from this past week including:

8-bit Paradise VGA card
Couple lo-tech 2MB EMS cards
Blue Lava Systems CF Adapter
Sound Blaster CT1330A

Most of the above items are intended for the Tandy previously posted as I attempt to build a moderately tricked out Tandy TL.

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-10-01, 20:20:

Huh wtf and so are these NexGen CPUs so expensive ?!?! […]
Show full quote

Huh wtf and so are these NexGen CPUs so expensive ?!?!

libby wrote on 2022-09-25, 20:10:

- There was no A7V8X deluxe. - The trailing X in the A7V8X-X model number is ASUS code for "stripped of primary features for bud […]
Show full quote

- There was no A7V8X deluxe.
- The trailing X in the A7V8X-X model number is ASUS code for "stripped of primary features for budget/OEM systems". this would be the broadcom gigabit ethernet and Promise SATA RAID the regular A7V8X had.
- The "useless wifi ASUS BS" is irrelevant as you had the option to just buy any wifi card and put it in, there was no shortage of PCI slots. I suppose they could have offered a CNR slot, which was equally useless. Every manufacturer did something similar at the time.
- The A7V8X (non-X) had promise SATA RAID and IDE RAID.
- The GA-7NNXP uses the nforce 2 ultra 400 chipset which was a refresh of nforce 2 and is approximately a year newer. It did offer one more DIMM slot and the separate VRM.
- The AOpen AK79G Tube did not have SATA, and the tube section came at the cost of 3 PCI slots. It is also unobtainium now and is impossible to find for under $500 or so. The tube section did little to compensate for the nforce 2's chronic issue of crosstalk in its analog stage, rendering more or less all motherboards using the chipset terrible for audio quality if SPDIF was not used.
- The Soyo board you mention is a KT600 chipset and is a year newer.
- The Soltek board has only 3 DIMM slots and the same featureset as the A7V8X.
- PCB color has no correlation to quality.

If you're going to be critical of something, at least have some knowledge of what you're talking about. Thanks.

+ Whatever if there was or not, u know what i mean the crappy "deluxe" of ASUS 462...
+ The NF7/-S V2 was the same year as the shitty ASUS "deluxe" and was ALOT better in everything(color EVEN !!).. I was comparing every other brand to ASUS, does it matter if was in 2003 or 2004, NO it does not..
+ Sure the AOpen AK79G Tube is like baby ATX form factor die to the Tube part, and Sata is missing stuff, BUT still it has socket for second Bios, and the shitty ASUS does not have even that... And everyone will gladly sacrifice x2 or even x3 PCI slots in order to have so unique mobo... I did saw in a local AD site some years ago the AOpen Tube but 478 version, so i bet the thing is not as hard to find, as u think..
+The Soyo Dragon Platinum looks 1000 times better, so who cares if is newer or not ?
+ Same goes for the Soltek Golden Flame, is nothing special, BUT the PCB color makes it alot more nice to even look at, not like the ASUS and their shitty color...
+ No one said the PCB color means quality.. The better color means better color, and the better color means the whole system will look better, not like with ASUS like shit..
So to ask again ASUS 462 Deluxe has what sata only ?!?!? Where is Dual BIOS, where is cool PCB color, where is Tube audio, where is 4 slot for memory, where is AT least IDE raid ?!?!? ASUS was not even at the top of the overclocking charts, since there was DFI LanParty (oyy yeah UV slots, not shit like asus) or ABIT NF7 V2 with modded BIOSes... So tell me what exactly makes asus any better then shitty ECS or ASSrock, i will help u, nothing. There was even early ECS 462 black mobo that was considered OC champion from others... ASUS 462 boards are good in one thing to look like their PCB color like shit..

Having alot of parts, and systems, and i know exactly how crap asus is.. Now if u are delusional, and think they are good, the joke is on you !!
If u think u know better then me, EXPLAIN then, WHY TF asus boards die so much, and specially WHY they all share the same shit, and that being totally dead the power on led lights, and the fucking DOA or just dead asus will not EVEN spin fans, and that is on many asus boards, this exact behavior. Also there is NOT visible problem on any of these asus boards i did test, no reason at all to act like the PSU is not even connected. U name it i saw dead not spinning even fans asus boards sockets 462, 478, 775, 754, 939, AM2, 1156, AM2+..
Now tell me mister knowledge, why the fuck that crap happens on many asus boards, but on other brands if they are dead, is blown caps, burned mosfet or other chip, or something is visible, and the board still AT least spin fans, while the asus garbage have NO visible dmg, nothing and wont even spin fans.. If u dont know about this behavior on many asus boards after socket 370, then u dont know shit about that shit brand...

From my experience, gigabyte is a brand I actively try not to buy. It's AM3 boards were good, the AM2 were bad. The intro 478 boards usually had cheap components on them like thin round brown caps from the 80's and they were slow when I slapped win 98 on them. The newer boards were atrocious, I don't think you've been in a dual bios boot loop were the other bios kicks in., I've had that on a b85 board. I've had gigabyte GPUs Gimp out on me, a brand new gtx 460 windforce(?). Nowadays it's either Asus or msi if I have to choose. Asus in the other hand, I've only had a tusl2-m Gimp out on me which was a shame. I had their 4890 GPU which had coil whining issues apart from that, their boards esp the modern stuff is good quality

Fleamarket haul...

On the tote lid is a ~10" Monitor/TV with it's funky VGA cable, to the side of that an AV Breakout dongle for Asus cards. in the corner a small VGA/chipset sink. Monitor demounts from it's stand, think I will receive double nothing on it as a TV because tuner seems to be PAL only and it's analog. Takes NTSC thru inputs though. Hoping the res is somewhat decent can't see it called out in the manual. Anyhoo, might make it a couple of dangle hooks and put foam on the back so I can hang it on a mono/passive matrix laptop screen and have fast TFTness out the VGA hole instead.

Then I got crazy and dropped coin on $1000 (MRSP) worth of Avatar Shark drives and media... good thing it came at a 98% discount. I regarded them as poor value back in the day, but since I also got 3 parallel and 3 PCMCIA interfaces, these might be handy for older laptops with no USB for shovelling games and apps on and off.... and they were at a ~98% discount off 1997/98 price. Got the Win 9x drivers, hope the 3.1 drivers are still around somewhere.

Unpictured, I got a small tote with a LaCie porshe external HDD, slim external DVDRW and turned out there was a Roku 3 hiding in the bottom. What I was thinking was the porsche series went up to 750GB so it should be a SATA case I could use right? Bzzzzt wrong. PATA, oh well, least I got the tote to store all this junk in.

Stood looking at a GT260 for a bit, then decided it wasn't interesting enough to me. Got a 280 to fix up anyway.

Edit: Well that took a whole 3 seconds of searching, archive dot org to the rescue with Windows 3.1 installer for the Avatar Shark. Thanks Mr "Avatar Peripherals"

First time I'm introduced to Avatar Shark. Never knew such a thing existed. Seems to be some kind of Zip competitor but using hard disk tech instead, so should be more reliable hopefully.

gmaverick2k wrote on 2022-10-01, 20:42:

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-10-01, 20:20:

Huh wtf and so are these NexGen CPUs so expensive ?!?! […]
Show full quote

Huh wtf and so are these NexGen CPUs so expensive ?!?!

libby wrote on 2022-09-25, 20:10:

- There was no A7V8X deluxe. - The trailing X in the A7V8X-X model number is ASUS code for "stripped of primary features for bud […]
Show full quote

- There was no A7V8X deluxe.
- The trailing X in the A7V8X-X model number is ASUS code for "stripped of primary features for budget/OEM systems". this would be the broadcom gigabit ethernet and Promise SATA RAID the regular A7V8X had.
- The "useless wifi ASUS BS" is irrelevant as you had the option to just buy any wifi card and put it in, there was no shortage of PCI slots. I suppose they could have offered a CNR slot, which was equally useless. Every manufacturer did something similar at the time.
- The A7V8X (non-X) had promise SATA RAID and IDE RAID.
- The GA-7NNXP uses the nforce 2 ultra 400 chipset which was a refresh of nforce 2 and is approximately a year newer. It did offer one more DIMM slot and the separate VRM.
- The AOpen AK79G Tube did not have SATA, and the tube section came at the cost of 3 PCI slots. It is also unobtainium now and is impossible to find for under $500 or so. The tube section did little to compensate for the nforce 2's chronic issue of crosstalk in its analog stage, rendering more or less all motherboards using the chipset terrible for audio quality if SPDIF was not used.
- The Soyo board you mention is a KT600 chipset and is a year newer.
- The Soltek board has only 3 DIMM slots and the same featureset as the A7V8X.
- PCB color has no correlation to quality.

If you're going to be critical of something, at least have some knowledge of what you're talking about. Thanks.

+ Whatever if there was or not, u know what i mean the crappy "deluxe" of ASUS 462...
+ The NF7/-S V2 was the same year as the shitty ASUS "deluxe" and was ALOT better in everything(color EVEN !!).. I was comparing every other brand to ASUS, does it matter if was in 2003 or 2004, NO it does not..
+ Sure the AOpen AK79G Tube is like baby ATX form factor die to the Tube part, and Sata is missing stuff, BUT still it has socket for second Bios, and the shitty ASUS does not have even that... And everyone will gladly sacrifice x2 or even x3 PCI slots in order to have so unique mobo... I did saw in a local AD site some years ago the AOpen Tube but 478 version, so i bet the thing is not as hard to find, as u think..
+The Soyo Dragon Platinum looks 1000 times better, so who cares if is newer or not ?
+ Same goes for the Soltek Golden Flame, is nothing special, BUT the PCB color makes it alot more nice to even look at, not like the ASUS and their shitty color...
+ No one said the PCB color means quality.. The better color means better color, and the better color means the whole system will look better, not like with ASUS like shit..
So to ask again ASUS 462 Deluxe has what sata only ?!?!? Where is Dual BIOS, where is cool PCB color, where is Tube audio, where is 4 slot for memory, where is AT least IDE raid ?!?!? ASUS was not even at the top of the overclocking charts, since there was DFI LanParty (oyy yeah UV slots, not shit like asus) or ABIT NF7 V2 with modded BIOSes... So tell me what exactly makes asus any better then shitty ECS or ASSrock, i will help u, nothing. There was even early ECS 462 black mobo that was considered OC champion from others... ASUS 462 boards are good in one thing to look like their PCB color like shit..

Having alot of parts, and systems, and i know exactly how crap asus is.. Now if u are delusional, and think they are good, the joke is on you !!
If u think u know better then me, EXPLAIN then, WHY TF asus boards die so much, and specially WHY they all share the same shit, and that being totally dead the power on led lights, and the fucking DOA or just dead asus will not EVEN spin fans, and that is on many asus boards, this exact behavior. Also there is NOT visible problem on any of these asus boards i did test, no reason at all to act like the PSU is not even connected. U name it i saw dead not spinning even fans asus boards sockets 462, 478, 775, 754, 939, AM2, 1156, AM2+..
Now tell me mister knowledge, why the fuck that crap happens on many asus boards, but on other brands if they are dead, is blown caps, burned mosfet or other chip, or something is visible, and the board still AT least spin fans, while the asus garbage have NO visible dmg, nothing and wont even spin fans.. If u dont know about this behavior on many asus boards after socket 370, then u dont know shit about that shit brand...

From my experience, gigabyte is a brand I actively try not to buy. It's AM3 boards were good, the AM2 were bad. The intro 478 boards usually had cheap components on them like thin round brown caps from the 80's and they were slow when I slapped win 98 on them. The newer boards were atrocious, I don't think you've been in a dual bios boot loop were the other bios kicks in., I've had that on a b85 board. I've had gigabyte GPUs Gimp out on me, a brand new gtx 460 windforce(?). Nowadays it's either Asus or msi if I have to choose. Asus in the other hand, I've only had a tusl2-m Gimp out on me which was a shame. I had their 4890 GPU which had coil whining issues apart from that, their boards esp the modern stuff is good quality

I have a Gigabyre FM1 board. The onboard LAN failed quite quickly. I've not enough other Gigabyte boards to really comment on them, but failed LAN on one board isn't enough to put me off buying their boards again, albeit used if it's the only way I can buy into a socket I don't have in my collection. I dp prefer Asus high end (especially ROG) boards though, never had an ROG or earlier high end board fail.

I found a 20 inch UXGA monitior locally for $5.00. I don't hav e a powersupply for it so I havn't tested it yet. its a BENQ FP2081. Pretty intresting monitor becasue it has DVA/VGA/Analog and svidio hook ups.

Found a old review for it. https://www-ixbt-com.translate.goog/video/ben … en&_x_tr_pto=sc

I "found" one this week too, Samsung 213T, tucked it up a corner when I picked it up and forgot about it. Almost as heavy as a CRT tho.. well a smaller one, not one approaching it's screen size.

debs3759 wrote on 2022-10-01, 23:06:

I have a Gigabyre FM1 board. The onboard LAN failed quite quickly. I've not enough other Gigabyte boards to really comment on them, but failed LAN on one board isn't enough to put me off buying their boards again, albeit used if it's the only way I can buy into a socket I don't have in my collection. I dp prefer Asus high end (especially ROG) boards though, never had an ROG or earlier high end board fail.

Probably a cheap realtek. Happened many times. Bought and soldered new ones to new life.
One had a burnt smd capacitor, I soldered a new LAN chip but it wasn't the issue 😀

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-01, 22:16:

Fleamarket haul... […]
Show full quote

Fleamarket haul...

On the tote lid is a ~10" Monitor/TV with it's funky VGA cable, to the side of that an AV Breakout dongle for Asus cards. in the corner a small VGA/chipset sink. Monitor demounts from it's stand, think I will receive double nothing on it as a TV because tuner seems to be PAL only and it's analog. Takes NTSC thru inputs though. Hoping the res is somewhat decent can't see it called out in the manual. Anyhoo, might make it a couple of dangle hooks and put foam on the back so I can hang it on a mono/passive matrix laptop screen and have fast TFTness out the VGA hole instead.

Then I got crazy and dropped coin on $1000 (MRSP) worth of Avatar Shark drives and media... good thing it came at a 98% discount. I regarded them as poor value back in the day, but since I also got 3 parallel and 3 PCMCIA interfaces, these might be handy for older laptops with no USB for shovelling games and apps on and off.... and they were at a ~98% discount off 1997/98 price. Got the Win 9x drivers, hope the 3.1 drivers are still around somewhere.

Unpictured, I got a small tote with a LaCie porshe external HDD, slim external DVDRW and turned out there was a Roku 3 hiding in the bottom. What I was thinking was the porsche series went up to 750GB so it should be a SATA case I could use right? Bzzzzt wrong. PATA, oh well, least I got the tote to store all this junk in.

Stood looking at a GT260 for a bit, then decided it wasn't interesting enough to me. Got a 280 to fix up anyway.

Edit: Well that took a whole 3 seconds of searching, archive dot org to the rescue with Windows 3.1 installer for the Avatar Shark. Thanks Mr "Avatar Peripherals"

Never heard of the Shark.
Will you run tests? Do stuff with it? Video?

silly question, i have an 120gb ssd formatted to fat32 with cd iso images. i want to access onyx dvd iso from the enclosure, is there a way or am i limited to burning to dvd

gmaverick2k wrote on 2022-10-02, 10:46:

silly question, i have an 120gb ssd formatted to fat32 with cd iso images. i want to access onyx dvd iso from the enclosure, is there a way or am i limited to burning to dvd

Wrong thread to be asking this question in mate, you should try creating your own thread to ask it in, might get more replies that way.

Nexxen wrote on 2022-10-02, 09:15:

Never heard of the Shark.
Will you run tests? Do stuff with it? Video?

Sorry it's a "don't hold your breath" thing, it's out of synch with current stuff I'm working on / have out. I could have sworn I came across an LGR Oddware or similar vid with it, but avatar and shark just have too many other uses and searches are only getting trash.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-02, 15:12:

Nexxen wrote on 2022-10-02, 09:15:

Never heard of the Shark.
Will you run tests? Do stuff with it? Video?

Sorry it's a "don't hold your breath" thing, it's out of synch with current stuff I'm working on / have out. I could have sworn I came across an LGR Oddware or similar vid with it, but avatar and shark just have too many other uses and searches are only getting trash.

I don't have an alternative, I'll hold my breath hoping it won't be more than 10 minutes long.

Among the boards that I have in repair I have some of the ASUS S.462, some are difficult to recover, for others it is possible but require the removal of SMD, which is not exactly simple if done with a normal soldering iron, however a couple I intended to fix them , certainly not for lack of such cards, having others of different brands, one of the best is the ABIT AN7.

By chance I found one, complete with CPU RAM and heatsink (fan missing), obviously it's ASUS A7V600-X, with an unspecified Athlon CPU, two 256MB DDR400 RAMs each (512MB Tot.), Being the very interesting price. 'I bought, but it must be specified that I do not buy everything that has a low price, in that case I would find myself submerged by a lot of material and economically I would still be in bad shape, let's say that in a year I give myself some gifts every now and then, with low monthly budgets , nothing that goes to the third digit, usually I'm just above the second.

Waiting for it to arrive, and hoping the seller doesn't change his mind, here are some pictures:

Oh good, I do see the socket under there. That sink worried me a second, there were some boards around in late socket A times that had soldered down Duron 1600 and 1800, no socket with a large passive sink on similar to that one. ( I mean you can prolly get them to run all right for what they are if they're cheap, but not fun for a system you wanna try different socket A CPUs in. )

It's classical KT600 budget-midrange board of the time. Of course, it has socket A, as all others, CPU and heatsink is removable. The CPU under it will be suprise, I would guess it for AthlonXP, with lesser chance Sempron, with lesser chance Duron Applebred, and with tiny chance (more like win in lottery) Athlon Thunderbird.
Anyway, starting from this line (KT600), the Asus board was significaly cheaper, and budget built, than other companies. MSI KT6 Delta was for example like 30% more expensive. Before (KT400A and earlier), Asus boards were usually most expensive ones, but from KT600, Asus decided to built it budget way (pretty much Asrock style). Many people were suprised by the Asus price, well shocked to be honest, because they were used, they are usually most expensive, but KT600 was priced under midrange offerings of other companies.

This Audiodrive ES-688, with many IDE connectors..

OMORES wrote on 2022-10-03, 17:15:

This Audiodrive ES-688, with many IDE connectors..

FYI, there might be one IDE connector, the others are mitsumi/Sony/Panasonic CDROM connectors.