The Unisys Aquanta SC arrived.

Heard rattling inside the case when I unpacked it which is never good. Upon opening it I see the battery has come loose as well as one stick of ram. The battery holder appears to just naturally be loose by design so no wonder that came out. The ram on the other hand appears that one of the plastic notches that clip into the holes on the ram has broken off, but seems to still be held in place well enough otherwise upon reinsertion.

Gallery
https://imgur.com/a/RGkPBH5

I bought a Voodoo3 2000 for 11 euros.

got 2 NOS 286/12.5mhz mobos, boxed/complete

only 1MB of ram though - but it can be a classic 286/EGA/AdLib build 😀

keropi wrote:

got 2 NOS 286/12.5mhz mobos, boxed/complete […]
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got 2 NOS 286/12.5mhz mobos, boxed/complete

only 1MB of ram though - but it can be a classic 286/EGA/AdLib build 😀

Doesn't even look like a barrel battery was installed at the factory from the looks of the pads. Nice condition!

^ correct, batteries were external and that was great for the long run 😀

keropi wrote:

got 2 NOS 286/12.5mhz mobos, boxed/complete […]
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got 2 NOS 286/12.5mhz mobos, boxed/complete

only 1MB of ram though - but it can be a classic 286/EGA/AdLib build 😀

Great stuff Leo!!

Whelmy wrote:

The Unisys Aquanta SC arrived. […]
Show full quote

The Unisys Aquanta SC arrived.

Heard rattling inside the case when I unpacked it which is never good. Upon opening it I see the battery has come loose as well as one stick of ram. The battery holder appears to just naturally be loose by design so no wonder that came out. The ram on the other hand appears that one of the plastic notches that clip into the holes on the ram has broken off, but seems to still be held in place well enough otherwise upon reinsertion.

Gallery
https://imgur.com/a/RGkPBH5

I like that case - are you going to retrobrite it ?

And a loose battery holder has its advantages 🤣 replacing the battery on my IBM Aptiva took me like an hour because the pin holding it into place was so tight, removing the battery required me to insert all sorts of metal prongs to lift it up so I could finally get it out of the socket. I almost damaged the board getting it out!

Munx wrote:

Rescued this Terratec sound card with a Crystal CS4630. Aparently it can do A3D really well and rivals the Vortex chips. Will have to put it in a PC and test it out when I have the chance.

P_20190204_204655.jpg

Ahh a SixFire 5.1, awesome PCI card. CS4630 is my favorite PCI chipset thesedays, but I lack this card despite being a huge Terratec fan. I need to rectify this..

red_avatar wrote:

Whelmy wrote:

The Unisys Aquanta SC arrived. […]
Show full quote

The Unisys Aquanta SC arrived.

Heard rattling inside the case when I unpacked it which is never good. Upon opening it I see the battery has come loose as well as one stick of ram. The battery holder appears to just naturally be loose by design so no wonder that came out. The ram on the other hand appears that one of the plastic notches that clip into the holes on the ram has broken off, but seems to still be held in place well enough otherwise upon reinsertion.

Gallery
https://imgur.com/a/RGkPBH5

I like that case - are you going to retrobrite it ?

And a loose battery holder has its advantages 🤣 replacing the battery on my IBM Aptiva took me like an hour because the pin holding it into place was so tight, removing the battery required me to insert all sorts of metal prongs to lift it up so I could finally get it out of the socket. I almost damaged the board getting it out!

I think eventually yes I will, if anything just to see the original colour which should more match the painted steel case. A few nicks down to bare steel can be seen on the case itself so eventually repainting the whole thing may be in order I'd just have to find a paint that matches the stock colour.

The floppy drive was giving all kinds of trouble refusing to fully read floppies, after pulling it all out, replacing the drive and even the cable still gave the same error. went back to the original cable and now it's all working again... so not sure what that was all about. Hard drive has no bad sectors so that's nice. But boy does the PSU get hot. Outer casing is at the point where another degree or so it would be to hot to place your hand against it.

Need to look into getting a better exhaust fan. 60mm? I think. Not sure how effective it can be when the system is fully enclosed there are no air vents on the front, top, bottom or sides.

Arrived today. 540mb. Conner Hard-drive “Made in U.S.A.” It spins up a little loud but tolerable. Has that unique Conner drive “Click-i-ty” sound when reading and writing. Very retro, I love it. It’s not to big, standard 3.5 drive but about twice the height of a standard hard-drive.

I have it setup with DOS 6.22 and Win311 for testing. Going to go in my “All USA 486 Build”.

Roland SC-7.

I was browsing Gumtree (sort of like Craigslist) and came across someone selling a big set of PA gear. In the mix was a lonely SC-7. Each item had a price, the SC-7 was listed as free. Now Gumtree is meant for face to face cash transactions only, but I took the risk anyway. I messaged the seller and asked if they'd be willing to ship the SC-7 alone (I'm in another state), and I'd pay the shipping cost + about $20 extra for their time. They agreed (yay!) and it arrived today.

I'll clean it up and get it some new feet and it should be great. 😁

SC-7? What sorcery is this?

^^ never heard of that either. From the way the plastic panels fit together & the quality of the I/O jacks on the back, they sure weren't aiming it at the high end of the market.

@x0zm: post some sound samples if you get the chance! Inquiring minds want to know.

From Wikipedia:

The "Standard" drum set of the Roland SC-7 (or other similar Roland product) can be recognized in various (low-budget) television or music productions.

The SC-7, along with other Roland Sound Canvas products are one of the popular choices of MIDI instruments used to generate instrumental elevator music, as well as MIDI-based background music for various television test pattern sequences.

(Emphasis mine.) I think that sums it up well... 😁

Seems to be a cut back version of the SC-55 for home/budget uses. I'll record some samples this week alongside the SC-55 and see how they compare from the same source/file.

I'll see if I can source a local USB to MIDI cable at a reasonable price since I've been meaning to get one of those for awhile and it will generally make recording easier in the future. Failing that, I'll whip out the old trusty XP box and record on that.

xjas wrote:

^^ never heard of that either. From the way the plastic panels fit together & the quality of the I/O jacks on the back, they sur […]
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^^ never heard of that either. From the way the plastic panels fit together & the quality of the I/O jacks on the back, they sure weren't aiming it at the high end of the market.

@x0zm: post some sound samples if you get the chance! Inquiring minds want to know.

From Wikipedia:

The "Standard" drum set of the Roland SC-7 (or other similar Roland product) can be recognized in various (low-budget) television or music productions.

The SC-7, along with other Roland Sound Canvas products are one of the popular choices of MIDI instruments used to generate instrumental elevator music, as well as MIDI-based background music for various television test pattern sequences.

(Emphasis mine.) I think that sums it up well... 😁

I wouldn't really say it is a junky module... people seem to like it a lot:
https://sonicstate.com/synth_reviews/rolandsc7/

I have an SC-7 myself. Really nice little device, though the input volume pot on the back is bad on mine and I could never find a replacement (I made a thread about it a while back).

If that part is working, this is a really special little device for a simple retro PC setup since it does the job of mixing another source with the SC7's output.

The SC-55 is definitely an upgrade, but the SC-7 is still a nice module and a good find.

Are you planning on checking it over internally for aged out components?

gdjacobs wrote:

Are you planning on checking it over internally for aged out components?

Already took it apart (pics were in my build log thread). Didn't know if it had a battery so it was the first thing I checked for. Everything looks fine at a cursory glance, but I'll give it a proper look over and check w/ multimeter when I have more time to sit down with it, as it requires desoldering the RF shield to get at most of the components.

The sc-7 is basically the external version of scb-7 so this little box is great for GM music - in games it sounds like the sc-55. Good stuff.

What am I looking at here? Never saw an SB Live like this.. Really about to just grab it, if I can locate drivers for it.