Oo, I like that keyboard. What's the difference between a ProDesigner II and a normal ET4000? Would that video BIOS work with a standard ET4000? I quite like those colors.

If anything, those crappy little Herculese clone cards are good for components. The parallel and MDA connectors can be re-purposed, the brackets will fit onto many I/O cards, and can be used as brackets for other connectors. Oh, and if you're a penny-pincher like me, they're a great source of oscillators, logic chips, EPROMs (Looks like yours has a 2764), and 4164 DRAMs. All kinds of goodies from these worthless little things, use them to repair EGA cards and upgrade the RAM of XTs!

FAMICOMASTER wrote:

Oo, I like that keyboard. What's the difference between a ProDesigner II and a normal ET4000? Would that video BIOS work with a standard ET4000? I quite like those colors.

Yup 😁 It doesn't get much more vaporwave than that 😉
It has excellent build quality, but I doubt it differs from other ET4000AX cards... it has some dip switches (I'm not sure what's their purpose - my 3 other ET4000AX card doesn't have them), and that's about it.
ProDesigner card were pretty early ET4000AX cards (this is ProDesigner II, original ProDesigner was a full size card, there was also ProDesigner E) and ET4000 was faster than anything else back then, I guess that's why they called them "Pro".
I will dump the EPROMs tomorrow, so you can check if it works.

FAMICOMASTER wrote:

If anything, those crappy little Herculese clone cards are good for components. The parallel and MDA connectors can be re-purposed, the brackets will fit onto many I/O cards, and can be used as brackets for other connectors. Oh, and if you're a penny-pincher like me, they're a great source of oscillators, logic chips, EPROMs (Looks like yours has a 2764), and 4164 DRAMs. All kinds of goodies from these worthless little things, use them to repair EGA cards and upgrade the RAM of XTs!

Well, I think they are worth more as a whole working card (I paid ~5USD for it)... I have lots of loose TTL chips, oscillators, DRAMs and rest I can buy or source from broken cards... no reason for ruining a working card even if it's crappy...

Warlord wrote:

JonathonWyble wrote:

On Saturday I was at someone's house when I found this interesting little calculator in their basement. […]
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On Saturday I was at someone's house when I found this interesting little calculator in their basement.

It seems to be a calculator from the tech company Sharp.

When I told the guys about this thing, I asked if I could take it, and they just said "Sure, take it. We don't use it anyway."

wait what? I don't know if I should feel old for using a calculator or i'm being trolled here.

Huh? Nah, I don't think you'd have to feel trolled for using an older calculator. I mean, this calculator probably isn't old, like, from the 90's, it's probably from the early 2000s or so. I do have a couple newer calculators as well, but I just found this one and the previous holders told me I could keep it.

7800GS completes my late-era AGP cards.

HanJammer wrote:

Saved from crusher...

Keyboard is XT/AT unfortunatelly it misses one of the button caps (anybody recognizes what microswitch it is?) and the spiral cable is stretched a bit.

Keyboard is made by a company called "Maxiswitch". I had this one on my first 486 PC. I don't know what kind of switches it uses, but I always considered it pretty decent. Still have it too.

Zero_sugar wrote:

https://imgur.com/I0YJJiy.jpg […]
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7800GS completes my late-era AGP cards.

Oh nice,
What all late-era AGP cards do you have?

HanJammer wrote:

this is ProDesigner II, original ProDesigner was a full size card

ProDesigner II also comes in full-length variant, see the attachment.
Yours looks like ProDesigner IIs

Anyway, that translation ROM is likely to match - http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?569 … Translation-ROM

Grzyb wrote:

ProDesigner II also comes in full-length variant, see the attachment. Yours looks like ProDesigner IIs […]
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HanJammer wrote:

this is ProDesigner II, original ProDesigner was a full size card

ProDesigner II also comes in full-length variant, see the attachment.
Yours looks like ProDesigner IIs

Anyway, that translation ROM is likely to match - http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?569 … Translation-ROM

Yes that's IIs - I've seen this translation ROM yesterday when googling for information about the card - I will try it for sure! Thanks.

HanJammer wrote:

Grzyb wrote:

ProDesigner II also comes in full-length variant, see the attachment. Yours looks like ProDesigner IIs Anyway, that translation […]
Show full quote

HanJammer wrote:

this is ProDesigner II, original ProDesigner was a full size card

ProDesigner II also comes in full-length variant, see the attachment.
Yours looks like ProDesigner IIs
Anyway, that translation ROM is likely to match - http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?569 … Translation-ROM

Yes that's IIs - I've seen this translation ROM yesterday when googling for information about the card - I will try it for sure! Thanks.

I've got the same card (the IIs), I'll have to give this a try too 😁

At the second look - Grzyb was wrong - it's not ProDesigner IIs but ProDesigner II. Although it does look like "s" variant it doesn't have 's' letter added on the PCB, both stickers on EPROMs state it's "II" not "IIs" and also video BIOS message states it's "II" (IIs' BIOS message should look like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9aZgRk3k-U

Maybe.
Nevertheless, it does have the most important feature of IIs - socketed RAMDAC, so it can be replaced with that hi-color Sierra thing.

Bought a used Cooler Master Elite 360 which is I believe the smallest case for full ATX motherboards.

dionb wrote:

For nostalgia's sake I have an Aztech MR-2800 in my ultimate P3 build (Tualatin 1400S, DDR, SiS635T chipset).

Which motherboard do you use for your ultimate P3 system?

wiretap wrote:

Dell Dimension 8250 Motherboard (socket 478 / RAMBUS-1066 support) https://imgur.com/eaOKkPjh.jpg […]
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Dell Dimension 8250 Motherboard (socket 478 / RAMBUS-1066 support)

Does that board fit inside a mATX case and is it compatible with a regular ATX PSU?

I've seen those in Optiplex machines. They fit in normal ATX cases, but I'm not sure if they need a special power supply. The connector is the standard 20 pin with the 12 volt connector, so I don't think it's anything special.

The front panel connectors and buttons and the like are non-standard, iirc, so it's useless without those.

IIRC Dell used a non-standard ATX connector pinout, so if you plugged à regular ATX PSU onto a Dell mobo, you could very well burn the PSU or the mobo! (however I ain't sure if they still use that non-standard pinout these days...)

Edit: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=339053

Vynix wrote:

IIRC Dell used a non-standard ATX connector pinout, so if you plugged à regular ATX PSU onto a Dell mobo, you could very well burn the PSU or the mobo! (however I ain't sure if they still use that non-standard pinout these days...)

Edit: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=339053

Somewhere during the early 2000's they changed that. The question is when and whether that S478 board is compatible with a regular ATX PSU, because proprietary Dell PSU's are hard to find and expensive if you do find them. You can however mod a regular ATX PSU for Dell proprietary boards (been there, done that), but it's a bit of a hack job.

HanJammer wrote:

...

And this ProDesigner II card <3 - I loved it's BIOS intro: https://youtu.be/gBggJP7L1dI - gotta hoard all ET4000 cards I can find before Atari ST guys will ruin them all ;]

Nice. I have an Orchid Designer 800 that does a similar thing on BIOS startup.

What do Atari ST guys want ET4000 cards for?

SpectriaForce wrote:

wiretap wrote:

Dell Dimension 8250 Motherboard (socket 478 / RAMBUS-1066 support) https://imgur.com/eaOKkPjh.jpg […]
Show full quote

Dell Dimension 8250 Motherboard (socket 478 / RAMBUS-1066 support)

Does that board fit inside a mATX case and is it compatible with a regular ATX PSU?

Normal ATX case, normal ATX power supply, no special pinout on the ATX connector.

MMaximus wrote:

Nice. I have an Orchid Designer 800 that does a similar thing on BIOS startup.

What do Atari ST guys want ET4000 cards for?

ST and even STe has pitiful resolution and offers very limited amount of colours which can be displayed on the screen at the same time.

ET4000AX / W32i or ATI Mach 32/64 cards supposedly cures this problems. Why these particular cards? Perhaps card requires some mods (GAL chips? EPROM?) that are possible only in Tseng or ATI cards, or maybe it's because of driver availability...

Edit: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=aut … 2Fpanther2.html