Hello and happy second advent

Recently I experience what most of us hope to find.. a rare piece of hardware in the wrong packaging.
I friend of mine messaged me knowing that I collect Hercules boxes and helped me win the auction, what I did notice was that its not the correct card to go with the box nor any of the other accessory included. But I knew that shape of the card all too well.

Seller photos:


My photos:

Also got a Voodoo 4 4500 box

Have a nice day!

Nice finds and what a random assortment of paperworks alongside to it... 😀

Diamond Stealth 64 Video VRAM

+ matching VRAM upgrade module

A great addition to my P66 system.

Was advertised as non-working and got it for a peanut.

Reseated BIOS chip and bath in isopropanol brought it back to live.

oh, another one ^^ nice, I wonder why they switched to smaller memory chips on the later revision

also I curiously noticed looking at my picture again that the Spea card doesn't have a single through-hole component, even the VGA connector, ram expansion connector and all the pin headers/jumpers are surface mount.

it is great for a late socket 5 😀 the image quality is better, than the matrox millennium.

Found it in local thrift store

imi wrote:

oh, another one ^^ nice, I wonder why they switched to smaller memory chips on the later revision

also I curiously noticed looking at my picture again that the Spea card doesn't have a single through-hole component, even the VGA connector, ram expansion connector and all the pin headers/jumpers are surface mount.

The chips on this one are IBM 256x16. They are EDO VRAM capable. So this card is a bit faster than the later version with Samsung 258x8bit FPM parts.

I own the Spea 968 too. It is a really nice card.

Also I suspect that Diamond cards in this era were mildly overclocked. That's why they performed slightly better than other cards with the same chips. They really shined in contemporary benchmark tests.

MAZter wrote:

Found it in local thrift store

<snip>

Sweet find. I have a PCMCIA 3Com 10/100 card that was in a 3Com Megahertz 10Base-T box. Cannot complain.

Haven't posted here in a while, and I think my last haul is kind of awesome.

Long story short, I've come across some people who have been helping their friend to clean out his apartment. I've never been to his place, but according to his friend, the guy is an actual hoarder, and I don't mean a collector — I mean someone who has stuffed his two rooms with endless computers, TV sets, CRT monitors, printers, cell phones and so on. It got so bad that his friends and relatives tried everything to convince the guy to get rid of the stuff. It was kind of bizarre hearing the story.

That being said, here is the haul:

Media Vision Pro AudioSpectrum Plus. My first PAS, but AFAIK it's kind of a limited one? I've read different accounts on the functionality of this thing — some say it's only capable of playing 8bit digital sounds and 16-bit OPL3 (thus breaking compatibility with actual 8-bit PAS), other say it's a proper PAS16, just without recording capabilities.

Creative Sound Blaster PCI128. Basically a rebranded Ensoniq AudioPCI.

ESS Audiodrive

Socketed 386 motherboard with 386DX33

Very similar socketed 386 motherboard with 386DX40 and socketed oscillator

a cheap 386SX40 motherboard

late 286 board with Harris 20 MHz chip, DIP-style memory and.. cache? Do 286 boards even have L2 cache?

PC Chips M912 v1.7 — the cache chips are soldered on, I guess they are fake ones? The CPU is Cyrix 486DX2

an Acer LPX 486 motherboard with riser card and AMD 486DX2 CPU

a Cirrus Logic 5428 VLB videocard

a Promise IDE controller

DFI G586IPC — a 430HX motherboard with a Pentium 100 chip

Asus TX97-LE — a 430TX motherboard

Now, for the main part. First, a 486 box

It's Intel branded, but the motherboard isn't made by Intel? It has a 486-JAL motherboard with built-in Cirrus Logic video, IDE controller and 3 ISA slots on a riser. Only takes 5V chips and comes with an Intel 486DX2. Really nice and compact machine.

A Mac Performa 200 aka Classic II. Really cool system, even if I keep it simply as a room decoration. Originally it produced vertical bars at boot, but after I've cleaned the whole motherboard with isopropyl and removed both SIMM30 sticks, the system works perfectly well. Guess, I'll have to find a different set of RAM as nothing I have works. Funnily the computer obviously came from Germany and was set to German interface and text input — don't know how it found its way to Russia.

jheronimus wrote:

late 286 board with Harris 20 MHz chip, DIP-style memory and.. cache? Do 286 boards even have L2 cache? […]
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late 286 board with Harris 20 MHz chip, DIP-style memory and.. cache? Do 286 boards even have L2 cache?

No, GoldStar GM71C4256A-60 is DRAM 256Kx4
8 Chips = 8 MBit = 1 MByte.

jheronimus wrote:

Haven't posted here in a while, and I think my last haul is kind of awesome.

Long story short, I've come across some people who have been helping their friend to clean out his apartment. I've never been to his place, but according to his friend, the guy is an actual hoarder, and I don't mean a collector — I mean someone who has stuffed his two rooms with endless computers, TV sets, CRT monitors, printers, cell phones and so on. It got so bad that his friends and relatives tried everything to convince the guy to get rid of the stuff. It was kind of bizarre hearing the story.

That being said, the haul is truly awesome:

Good gracious almighty son. Congrats!

Nice grab, enjoy it!

I got me a CT2770 (Nothing special, but I did not have one in my SB16 collection)

@jheronimus
Hope i don't break some rules here, but if you don't plan to keep the 386 mobos and the VLSI 286 one - render me interested ... 😀

jheronimus wrote:

A Mac Performa 200 aka Classic II. Really cool system, even if I keep it simply as a room decoration. Originally it produced vertical bars at boot, but after I've cleaned the whole motherboard with isopropyl and removed both SIMM30 sticks, the system works perfectly well. Guess, I'll have to find a different set of RAM as nothing I have works. Funnily the computer obviously came from Germany and was set to German interface and text input — don't know how it found its way to Russia.

It needs a recap to work long term, cleaning the board only is a temporary fix. Also, pull the battery out before it leaks everywhere and ruins the board. My Classic II is still board-less because it was too far gone due to battery leakage.

pshipkov wrote:

@jheronimus
Hope i don't break some rules here, but if you don't plan to keep the 386 mobos and the VLSI 286 one - render me interested ... 😀

I might get rid of some 386 boards with integrated CPUs, but I'm keeping all the socketed ones. I also plan to get rid of a bunch of 430TX AT boards like this Asus one (most of mine are TXP4, TX97 and the likes, actually). Hit me up if you're interested.

Found a Dell 2001FP close to home. It's from januari 2006, so no 15kHz support, but since I don't own anything Amiga (yet) I don't mind. Still much much better than I had before and in great shape. And it was 10 euro so could not leave it there 😀

jheronimus wrote:

Now, for the main part. First, a 486 box […]
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Now, for the main part. First, a 486 box

Nice 'plain jane generic box' 😊

jheronimus wrote:

I mean someone who has stuffed his two rooms with endless computers, TV sets, CRT monitors

Any pictures of those? 😊

SpectriaForce wrote:

jheronimus wrote:

Now, for the main part. First, a 486 box […]
Show full quote

Now, for the main part. First, a 486 box

Nice 'plain jane generic box' 😊

Sucks that it doesn't have a turbo button.

On the bright side, seems like these motherboards are standard (for instance, the Acer board would likely work there). So maybe I'll be able to find a board with a Tseng videochip and 3V CPU support since I could never find a VLB Tseng locally — that would be great, as these boards tend to be really cheap.

That would make a perfect 486 — small yet fully featured. Then I'd find a small (14-15 inch) CRT to go with it.

Oh well. Just when I thought I'm not going to mess with 486 anymore... 🤣

SpectriaForce wrote:

jheronimus wrote:

I mean someone who has stuffed his two rooms with endless computers, TV sets, CRT monitors

Any pictures of those? 😊

Nah, they wouldn't let me there — they've just asked me what I wanted, packed hardware into boxes and met me at a different location.