zerker wrote:

it should be a small step up from the Gravis Analog Pro I found earlier. It doesn't help that the Gravis joystick has an issue with the trigger getting detached

You have insulted my favorite joystick. You and your civilization must be destroyed. 😉
That was my joystick when I was a kid - that is, until my dad threw it away because he was convinced it didn't work any more... 😵

I did say small step. The one I have is a bit of a problem child at present; if I had a fully functional one, I might feel differently 😀. My main joysticks when I was a kid were the Gravis Gamepad and a Gravis Blackhawk, and then eventually a Gravis Firebird 2. I did have the original 2+1 red Gravis Analog Joystick before those, but I didn't actually have many games that were really suited to it when I owned it.

Side question: Does the Analog Pro have a throttle or not? I have seen mixed answers on this. The one I have has an awkwardly placed red slider, but it doesn't seem to do anything at all. Is this supposed to be the throttle and mine is defective, or is some adjust I can't figure out?

This Logitech Joystick is a bit creaky though. Should I try lubricating it?

...I'd love to just have a good condition Firebird 2 again.

Thanks to the world of CAD/CAM I designed my own test bench 😀

It's basically a slap of metal that lets me mount motherboards securely. No more flexing because of CPU coolers, and I think it will look nice on camera.

Here is a prototype rocking an AM3 motherboard:

Cool, Phil! Useful and attractive...

Great work Phil, and eyecandy 😉

Picked up Labway Xwave-6000 Yamaha YMF754 based,never actually used Yamaha sound cards so decide to test and give it a try.

I'm still in shock 🤣 🤣. Found a Voodoo 2 in today's flea market in my town, for the whole amount of 2€ , I love sunday flea markets!!

I've never owned a Voodoo, I was a little child when they where top. I wish I had one back then when I couldn't play many games in our Pentium 166 and S3 Virge! Now I have to try this one on my P-MMX retro machine that I'm building, if it actually works it would be a perfect mach. Now I'm downloading drivers to test... 😎

Today, at local flea market, I've found external Creative SoundBlaster Live! with remote, I didn't know about this particular model - and a little PS/2 keyboard I must clean, small layout:

Then, a friend of mine, knowing about my love for old pieces of PC history and their preservation, gave me this big monster:

CMOS battery already coin (no Dallas chip fortunately), backup on MC tape, and much more! Now I'll investigate more on the content, I think it's a 386/486, the fact that the CPU has active heatsink makes me think that it might be good clocked... can't wait to give it a good cleaning and use it!

It's some VIP (vesa, isa, pci) 486 motherboard. It looks it has cache modul on board which is good. UMC chipset is also a better one. I'd guess cpu is at least 100MHz.

I bought another boxed AWE 64 Gold complete with driver disc and other stuff. The price was ~50 euro including shipping.
This how I hedge against inflation in combination with negative interest rates!

The sellers pictures (not all accessories are shown in these 4 pictures)

Indrid Cold wrote:

Today, at local flea market, I've found external Creative SoundBlaster Live! with remote, I didn't know about this particular model - and a little PS/2 keyboard I must clean, small layout:

Then, a friend of mine, knowing about my love for old pieces of PC history and their preservation, gave me this big monster:

CMOS battery already coin (no Dallas chip fortunately), backup on MC tape, and much more! Now I'll investigate more on the content, I think it's a 386/486, the fact that the CPU has active heatsink makes me think that it might be good clocked... can't wait to give it a good cleaning and use it!

Nice! You will spend some time cleaning it though 😀

Bought this one 😀

Hope it works and I have a compatible motherboard 🤣

Sellers pic:

kixs wrote:

It's some VIP (vesa, isa, pci) 486 motherboard. It looks it has cache modul on board which is good. UMC chipset is also a better one. I'd guess cpu is at least 100MHz.

It seems to be OK, boot without problems - dead CMOS battery a part and IDE disk not recognized yet... maybe dead? POST states 'Enhanced' 486 @100mhz, 16mb RAM, EGA/VGA adapter.

EDIT: maybe this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am486 ---> Enhanced Am486 DX4-100 FSB @33 MHz Clock @100 MHz VCore @3.3/3.45 V L1 Cache @8/16 KiB WB

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Indrid Cold wrote:

Today, at local flea market, I've found external Creative SoundBlaster Live! with remote, I didn't know about this particular model - and a little PS/2 keyboard I must clean, small layout:

Then, a friend of mine, knowing about my love for old pieces of PC history and their preservation, gave me this big monster:

CMOS battery already coin (no Dallas chip fortunately), backup on MC tape, and much more! Now I'll investigate more on the content, I think it's a 386/486, the fact that the CPU has active heatsink makes me think that it might be good clocked... can't wait to give it a good cleaning and use it!

Nice! You will spend some time cleaning it though 😀

Thanks mate, I think MORE that 'some' 😜

That motherboard is almost certainly a PC Chips M919 - http://www.amoretro.de/wp-content/uploads/pc- … motherboard.jpg

Don't let the brand throw you, it's actually a pretty good board. Can't be sure why your HDD won't come up, perhaps you'll have to remove the drive and get the C/H/S values, then enter them manually, the odd drive doesn't auto-detect, especially on older boards when that feature was relatively new. I also can't help wonder, given the CPU in the configuration table screen, whether someone has overclocked to 50MHz to achieve that clock and if they have, you might have more luck lowering it to 40MHz if you run into problems in the future. If not and it turns out to actually be at 50MHz then it is a rare example, not many people ever got that to work. It is more likely that the config table incorrectly reports a DX2 when it is a DX4 on a 33MHz BUS, which isn't anything to worry about.

HighTreason wrote:

That motherboard is almost certainly a PC Chips M919 - http://www.amoretro.de/wp-content/uploads/pc- … motherboard.jpg

Don't let the brand throw you, it's actually a pretty good board. Can't be sure why your HDD won't come up, perhaps you'll have to remove the drive and get the C/H/S values, then enter them manually, the odd drive doesn't auto-detect, especially on older boards when that feature was relatively new. I also can't help wonder, given the CPU in the configuration table screen, whether someone has overclocked to 50MHz to achieve that clock and if they have, you might have more luck lowering it to 40MHz if you run into problems in the future. If not and it turns out to actually be at 50MHz then it is a rare example, not many people ever got that to work. It is more likely that the config table incorrectly reports a DX2 when it is a DX4 on a 33MHz BUS, which isn't anything to worry about.

Really thanks HighTreason, I'll do further investigations this night, together with a good cleaning

Indrid Cold wrote:

It seems to be OK, boot without problems - dead CMOS battery a part and IDE disk not recognized yet... maybe dead? POST states ' […]
Show full quote

kixs wrote:

It's some VIP (vesa, isa, pci) 486 motherboard. It looks it has cache modul on board which is good. UMC chipset is also a better one. I'd guess cpu is at least 100MHz.

It seems to be OK, boot without problems - dead CMOS battery a part and IDE disk not recognized yet... maybe dead? POST states 'Enhanced' 486 @100mhz, 16mb RAM, EGA/VGA adapter.

EDIT: maybe this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am486 ---> Enhanced Am486 DX4-100 FSB @33 MHz Clock @100 MHz VCore @3.3/3.45 V L1 Cache @8/16 KiB WB

I love these sorts of systems! By the way, connect a serial mouse to the serial port (while off, and before you turn it on and cold boot it) and you can use mouse in bios setup there!

Just paid for these two babies. When I recieve them, then I will test them both.
And if they are tested ok, I will ship one away for a specific user here on Vogons.
As they were really cheap, I can afford to give one away. (6.70 euro a piece)
(Yes... Now you know what it looks like)

zerker wrote:

Side question: Does the Analog Pro have a throttle or not? I have seen mixed answers on this. The one I have has an awkwardly placed red slider, but it doesn't seem to do anything at all. Is this supposed to be the throttle and mine is defective, or is some adjust I can't figure out?

Yep, that's a throttle. It's not that nice to use though, hard to make rapid changes in throttle setting.

brostenen wrote:

Just paid for these two babies. When I recieve them, then I will test them both. And if they are tested ok, I will ship one away […]
Show full quote

Just paid for these two babies. When I recieve them, then I will test them both.
And if they are tested ok, I will ship one away for a specific user here on Vogons.
As they were really cheap, I can afford to give one away. (6.70 euro a piece)
(Yes... Now you know what it looks like)

6 euro each is a steal as they often get priced to insane levels on the NA (north american) eBay up to $110 a pop (wtf).