cyclone3d wrote:

Here is one of the more interesting things I have gotten recently. I had been looking for one of these adapters for a good price for a while. It came with a motherboard, cpus, ram, and a few cards.
A Lin-Lin S370 adapter to use Coppermine CPUs in older boards as well as to use Tualatin CPUs in older boards.

What does this actually do? Is it just a VRM or something?

FAMICOMASTER wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Here is one of the more interesting things I have gotten recently. I had been looking for one of these adapters for a good price for a while. It came with a motherboard, cpus, ram, and a few cards.
A Lin-Lin S370 adapter to use Coppermine CPUs in older boards as well as to use Tualatin CPUs in older boards.

What does this actually do? Is it just a VRM or something?

No VRM. It is basically a pin-mod device. See info here on doing the pin mod to run a Tualatin in a BX board.
https://www.overclockers.com/tualatin-in-a-bx-board/

Repo Man11 wrote:

There was a very long drive involved, but to me it was worth it.

Yip. Some drives are just worth it.

cyclone3d wrote:

Nice.. I still have the Silent Tower I bought new when it first came out. Works a bit better if there is a second fan on the oth […]
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Nice.. I still have the Silent Tower I bought new when it first came out. Works a bit better if there is a second fan on the other side used as an exhaust. And you can get higher cfm fans as well. The stock one really doesn't move a lot of air.

Edit: Here is one of the more interesting things I have gotten recently. I had been looking for one of these adapters for a good price for a while. It came with a motherboard, cpus, ram, and a few cards.
A Lin-Lin S370 adapter to use Coppermine CPUs in older boards as well as to use Tualatin CPUs in older boards.

adapter.jpg

jumper_settings.jpg

I had one of those once. I used it in a baby AT Socket 370 board with a Via chipset. That board didn't support anything beyond a Mendocino 533 (officially), but it actually worked with a Tualatin Celeron 1100 with that adapter.

Recently won an Ebay auction on a Creative CD-ROM Upgrade Kit, brand new and sealed in-box. This will go well with my new(ish) 386 build.

Pic of installed drive: Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

WTF Creative!! The drive is not wrapped in plastic?

Noice...

Original owner must have slipped the receipt through the crack of the box lit.. 1996, 't was a good year...

I paid about $80 AUD more than the original cost. Considering inflation, not a bad deal... 😀

Edit: Actually, according to the RBA inflation calculator, the price in 2018 would have been $270 AUD. I paid $238.50 AUD + AU $16.00 AUD shipping. Not bad indeed...

it is buggy 🙁 creative gf256ddr

Realised that I haven't posted here in a while, but found some stuff I'm excited about. Time for a show and tell 🤣

Intel Advanced/ATX motherboard aka Thor. AFAIK it's the first ATX motherboard ever. Has onboard S3 Trio64V+ chip, Crystal 4232+Yamaha OPL3 — basically a full system on a board (sans modem/NIC). The only unpopulated sockets are COAST (my motherboard has 256KB onboard L2 cache) and VRM (I don't know what it's for. The fastest CPU in the manual is P1-166).

I prefer ATX over AT and I am a fan of Intel boards, so to me this is a perfect alternative to late 486 boards. It has an option to disable cache with Ctrl+Alt+"-" shortcut (kind of turbo, gives mid 386 speeds), so it's a great platform for a very late DOS machine. Right now I'm messing with Windows 3.11, but I want to test my new SB32 and I might get my hands on PowerVR PCX2 soon, so I might switch to original Windows 95 and then this build will be like a true granddaddy of modern PCs: 25 years old, but pretty much exactly the same as any modern computer 😀

Another Intel board, a TC430HX. Has onboard Yamaha YMF chip. I would love to find a fully loaded version with S3 and OPL4. But as it stands it's the last MMX-capable Intel board to have earlier AMIBIOS with "turbo" functionality as 430TX boards have a different BIOS.

The board actually came with a full Socket 7 system, but the case was in terrible condition. I've spent a day cleaning off all the dust, dirt and rust only to realise the plastic parts got pretty brittle. It was a machine made by "Vist" — probably the only Russian big-name company to adopt ATX Intel boards early on, but their ATX cases were abysmal. Unnecessarily complicated design where you always have to remove the front bezel to access anything, and the whole thing was held by plastic clips that break all the time.

I also have an Intel Batman (Socket 4 AT), an Advanced/ML (Marl, a cheap 430HX-based board without MMX support), a VS440FX (Socket 8 ATX) and an AP440FX (Socket 8 LPX). Guess I'll have to get rid of most of my 430TX Socket 7 AT boards as I can't imagine using them again — ATX is just that much convenient.

Creative SoundBlaster 32, CT3930. It's a weird beast — a Vibra-based AWE board with a dedicated OPL3 chip. Everything is set through jumpers which is nice, because I always stick like 2-3 soundcards in my machines. I am pretty excited about this card because AWE32 is my favourite wavetable card and I always wanted a model with OPL3. Also Vibras usually have pretty clean sound in my experience. The downside is buggy MPU401, but I'm not going to use this board with external MIDI. Also AFAIK Vibra can't control bass/treble in mixer the way normal AWE32 can, but that's okay too.

Too bad the card only shines under Windows 95 though. I can't imagine how people felt about AWE32 in 1994 when there was only Win3.11 and DOS. The musicians could of course load soundfonts under Windows, but it's impossible to run most games that way.

A socketed AMD 386DX40. I have a couple of PC-CHIPS M321 motherboards which I believe have a jumper to switch between 33 and 40MHz chips. Guess I can get rid of all my integrated AMD 386DX boards now 😀 Have to find an FPU for it though as all my chips are 25 or 33 MHz.

A Radeon 7200 32MB SDR. Not the most exciting card, but only cost me 1.5 bucks, so why not.

A SIS 315 AGP card. I know nothing about it, but it was also very cheap.

An Intel NIC to go with my Intel boards 😀 All my other NICs are 3COM, so I've thought this might be nice for a change. Don't think it's going to be noticeably better that a typical 3C905 though.

CT3930s are pretty nice cards... enjoy it!

jheronimus wrote:

Realised that I haven't posted here in a while, but found some stuff I'm excited about. Time for a show and tell :lol: […]
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Realised that I haven't posted here in a while, but found some stuff I'm excited about. Time for a show and tell 🤣

Intel Advanced/ATX motherboard aka Thor. AFAIK it's the first ATX motherboard ever. Has onboard S3 Trio64V+ chip, Crystal 4322+Yamaha OPL3 — basically a full system on a board (sans modem/NIC). The only unpopulated sockets are COAST (my motherboard has 256KB onboard L2 cache) and VRM (I don't know what it's for. The fastest CPU in the manual is P1-166).

What a nice board!

The unpopulated VRM header is for external voltage regulator module which was meant to provide a flexibility in providing CPU voltage. In theory early an early Socket 7 board with this can support Pentium MMX by just swapping a VRM module and perhaps a BIOS upgrade.

arncht wrote:

it is buggy 🙁 creative gf256ddr

I have one of these cards but haven't tested it yet. What do you mean by buggy?

A tale of two Abit BH6s:

I acquired a second BH6, because I've too scared to stick anything into my first board's AGP:

Does this look like burn damage to you?

There are some obvious differences between the two, but I'm not sure they're significant (newly-acquired on the right):

Both PCBs are dated 0799:

I also grabbed another Slot 1 PII 450, this time in SECC2 packaging:

SL37H along side SL2U7 (SECC1):

Were SECC2 PIIs released in 1998? Could they OC better, given that the heatsink is mounted directly to the CPU die?

piatd wrote:

I have one of these cards but haven't tested it yet. What do you mean by buggy? […]
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arncht wrote:

it is buggy 🙁 creative gf256ddr

I have one of these cards but haven't tested it yet. What do you mean by buggy?

A tale of two Abit BH6s:

I acquired a second BH6, because I've too scared to stick anything into my first board's AGP:

agp.jpg

Does this look like burn damage to you?

There are some obvious differences between the two, but I'm not sure they're significant (newly-acquired on the right):

image

Both PCBs are dated 0799:

image

I also grabbed another Slot 1 PII 450, this time in SECC2 packaging:

SL37H along side SL2U7 (SECC1):

image Were SECC2 PIIs released in 1998? Could they OC better, given that the heatsink is mounted directly to the CPU die?

The AGP slot doesn't look burned but more like something exploded onto it... what on earth happened there.
Though, I may be wrong

It looks like the AGP slot has multiple pins crushed in it, I take a photo of the slot straight from above.

piatd wrote:

There are some obvious differences between the two, but I'm not sure they're significant (newly-acquired on the right):

left chip looks to be a newer stepping (week 4/99 vs. week 45/98). these could sometimes come with bugfixes, but really nothing to think about in general.

Starting to agree with you, andreja6, that something exploded onto it, rather than from it. Perhaps something on an AGP card trickled down and hardened, and the slot was further damaged when the card was removed. Whatever it is, it's nasty and doesn't want to come off with a cotton swab and 99% isopropyl alcohol.

piatd wrote:

Starting to agree with you, andreja6, that something exploded onto it, rather than from it. Perhaps something on an AGP card trickled down and hardened, and the slot was further damaged when the card was removed. Whatever it is, it's nasty and doesn't want to come off with a cotton swab and 99% isopropyl alcohol.

I dont see any damage here. There is dust on the front side (see the CPU/coolers nearby the AGP slot).

From the bottom 2 pins are little bent. There are these same pairs of pins through the holes on the top and the bottom of the slot. And one hole in the middle. Straight them and the board is ready for a test...

Spotted this buy-at-once for 18€...bought it before thinking much about it as I saw the 3dfx and Ensoniq logo...

Seems to be the Ensoniq VIVO ISA, still missing in my collection, and a V2. Price is OK I think..

wow that 7950 is worth more than 2x the 18€ you paid!

piatd wrote:

DSCN5984a.jpg

This slot is wrecked for sure, I wouldn't put any card into it and power on the machine. I'm not sure what has been done to it...
It is possible to replace the entire slot but if the board is actually still alive I wouldn't know...

jheronimus wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/qG114oxm.jpg […]
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An Intel NIC to go with my Intel boards 😀 All my other NICs are 3COM, so I've thought this might be nice for a change. Don't think it's going to be noticeably better that a typical 3C905 though.

Intel PRO/100 NIC?

I have a couple of those, they're excellent boards.

I've found a great lot on a local ad :

A bit of everything in that box ... IO cards, some NICs, sound cards, AT psus, etc:

Some Syquest drives, a 4x or 2x CD-Rom drive (can't remember which speed) and two dead ST277R-1 (one might be fixable):

A ton of old ISA video cards (many CGA and VGA cards):

Including this one 😁 (80's video accelerator 😮 )

A big stack of very old 3.5" drives from the 80's/early 90'es (MFM, IDE and SCSI. There's even a "Hard Card"):

5"1/4 MFM/RLL drives (there's also a quantum BigFoot missing from the photo):

Some motherboards ...

More motherboards ...

Here's a closer look at some of them :

The boards with the 486DX4 and the Ti486SLC are still ok 😁 (for other boards I'll have to find their bios because for some of them it's been removed. Some boards are missing some more components ^^ and all will need a good cleaning !!)

For 50€ I'm pretty happy with my bought 😁