My totally overpriced Voodoo5 5500 AGP arrived today. Box and contents are in good shape … well, except for the fans - the next little side project will be replacing the extremely noisy stock cooling solution in a non destructive and reversible way.

Already feeling a little anxiety thinking about the ice cooling spray procedure to remove the heat sinks.

For initial testing the GF6200 (passive cooled) and the Diamond Monster 3D II had to go… hooray - we have liftoff - the card works (you can never be sure with stuff from the bay 😉).

CMB75 wrote on 2020-05-20, 08:17:

My totally overpriced Voodoo5 5500 AGP arrived today. Box and contents are in good shape … well, except for the fans - the next little side project will be replacing the extremely noisy stock cooling solution in a non destructive and reversible way.

Already feeling a little anxiety thinking about the ice cooling spray procedure to remove the heat sinks.

For initial testing the GF6200 (passive cooled) and the Diamond Monster 3D II had to go… hooray - we have liftoff - the card works (you can never be sure with stuff from the bay 😉).

Congratulations with a very nice box and card. Before you remove the fans, why not try to oil them? Sewing machine oil does wonders for old ball-bearing fans!

Skanque wrote on 2020-05-20, 11:01:

CMB75 wrote on 2020-05-20, 08:17:

My totally overpriced Voodoo5 5500 AGP arrived today. Box and contents are in good shape … well, except for the fans - the next little side project will be replacing the extremely noisy stock cooling solution in a non destructive and reversible way.

Already feeling a little anxiety thinking about the ice cooling spray procedure to remove the heat sinks.

For initial testing the GF6200 (passive cooled) and the Diamond Monster 3D II had to go… hooray - we have liftoff - the card works (you can never be sure with stuff from the bay 😉).

Congratulations with a very nice box and card. Before you remove the fans, why not try to oil them? Sewing machine oil does wonders for old ball-bearing fans!

I tried silicone spray and it didn't do that much. But thanks for the hint I will try sewing machine oil.

wirerogue wrote on 2020-05-20, 04:51:

austinham wrote on 2020-05-19, 16:25:

nabbed this up for a good price.

6800 ultra hooray!!!

Believe it or not its a GT on a ultra PCB from Asus. But I intend to flash it to a ultra.

Ok... so here is what all the "secrecy" was about. Was not cheap at all .. in fact I may be insane for paying as much as I did but I just had to get it for posterity's sake and pretty sure I would never see it pop up again and we need the files on those disks as a community since most of them were nowhere to be found.

Behold - The Developer Kit for Sound Blaster Series (original version):

Now I just have to wait for it to get here and hope that the disks are still good. This was an unused kit so I am feeling pretty good about it.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-05-20, 17:21:

Ok... so here is what all the "secrecy" was about. Was not cheap at all .. in fact I may be insane for paying as much as I did b […]
Show full quote

Ok... so here is what all the "secrecy" was about. Was not cheap at all .. in fact I may be insane for paying as much as I did but I just had to get it for posterity's sake and pretty sure I would never see it pop up again and we need the files on those disks as a community since most of them were nowhere to be found.

Behold - The Developer Kit for Sound Blaster Series (original version):
box.jpg
contents.jpg

Now I just have to wait for it to get here and hope that the disks are still good. This was an unused kit so I am feeling pretty good about it.

Dude, that is just pure awesome. Congrats!

If you do have trouble with the disks the ole shake & blow has worked for me for many years. Never give up! I even managed to manipulate data off a warped 5¼" disk with great patience.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-05-20, 17:21:

Ok... so here is what all the "secrecy" was about. Was not cheap at all .. in fact I may be insane for paying as much as I did b […]
Show full quote

Ok... so here is what all the "secrecy" was about. Was not cheap at all .. in fact I may be insane for paying as much as I did but I just had to get it for posterity's sake and pretty sure I would never see it pop up again and we need the files on those disks as a community since most of them were nowhere to be found.

Behold - The Developer Kit for Sound Blaster Series (original version):
box.jpg
contents.jpg

Now I just have to wait for it to get here and hope that the disks are still good. This was an unused kit so I am feeling pretty good about it.

If the disks don't work in a normal FDD try putting them in a LS120 drive if you have one, they tend to read disks better. Or try running scandisk in a loop.
Ether way hopefully they work and they get put to use 😉

austinham wrote on 2020-05-20, 17:44:

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-05-20, 17:21:

Ok... so here is what all the "secrecy" was about. Was not cheap at all .. in fact I may be insane for paying as much as I did b […]
Show full quote

Ok... so here is what all the "secrecy" was about. Was not cheap at all .. in fact I may be insane for paying as much as I did but I just had to get it for posterity's sake and pretty sure I would never see it pop up again and we need the files on those disks as a community since most of them were nowhere to be found.

Behold - The Developer Kit for Sound Blaster Series (original version):
box.jpg
contents.jpg

Now I just have to wait for it to get here and hope that the disks are still good. This was an unused kit so I am feeling pretty good about it.

If the disks don't work in a normal FDD try putting them in a LS120 drive if you have one, they tend to read disks better. Or try running scandisk in a loop.
Ether way hopefully they work and they get put to use 😉

I do have a laptop with an LS120.
When reading old 3.5" disks, I have about 3 different floppy drives I use as some disks work in some drives and not others.

Hope these don't have a problem at all. I haven't run across many old used disks that I wasn't able to get to read at least good enough to copy all the files off of. I have had a few that I wasn't able to make an image off of but was still able to copy all the files off.

I'm going to be a nervous wreck until they get here... heh.

Do yourself a favor though. Make sure you write protect them first so they keep their original last access date and image them with WinImage using the IMA format so it images the correct image size of the disk. Makes it easy to see what size the original disk was at a glance for others.

liqmat wrote on 2020-05-20, 18:01:

Do yourself a favor though. Make sure you write protect them first so they keep their original last access date and image them with WinImage using the IMA format so it images the correct image size of the disk. Makes it easy to see what size the original disk was at a glance for others.

Good idea.

liqmat wrote on 2020-05-20, 18:01:

Do yourself a favor though. Make sure you write protect them first so they keep their original last access date and image them with WinImage using the IMA format so it images the correct image size of the disk. Makes it easy to see what size the original disk was at a glance for others.

When imaging floppies I make sure to do it from DOS, since it doesn't have the urge to modify the boot sector unnecessarily as Win9x does when accessing floppies. Of course, the write protection is always a good measure.

My imaging tool of choice is DSKIMAGE by M. Brutman. Very simple, but effective, and generates an untouched image, which is not always the case with WinImage (I have seen cases where WinImage writes its metadata to the first sector, though it may be possible to avoid that with some setting).

I use dskimage to backup my diskettes into images and in case they stop working one day, I can copy the image to a newly formatted diskette and be done with it. I wish I could copy my Lemmings IBM diskette, but it's copy protected (volume label is all jibberish).

TheMobRules wrote on 2020-05-20, 18:31:

liqmat wrote on 2020-05-20, 18:01:

Do yourself a favor though. Make sure you write protect them first so they keep their original last access date and image them with WinImage using the IMA format so it images the correct image size of the disk. Makes it easy to see what size the original disk was at a glance for others.

When imaging floppies I make sure to do it from DOS, since it doesn't have the urge to modify the boot sector unnecessarily as Win9x does when accessing floppies. Of course, the write protection is always a good measure.

My imaging tool of choice is DSKIMAGE by M. Brutman. Very simple, but effective, and generates an untouched image, which is not always the case with WinImage (I have seen cases where WinImage writes its metadata to the first sector, though it may be possible to avoid that with some setting).

I'm well aware and why I said write protect it. I just find WinImage very convenient and effective. Personal choice.

I agree. I use WinImage for archiving my diskettes and making new ones with drivers and stuff for controller cards, video, sound, etc.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-05-20, 17:21:

Ok... so here is what all the "secrecy" was about. Was not cheap at all .. in fact I may be insane for paying as much as I did b […]
Show full quote

Ok... so here is what all the "secrecy" was about. Was not cheap at all .. in fact I may be insane for paying as much as I did but I just had to get it for posterity's sake and pretty sure I would never see it pop up again and we need the files on those disks as a community since most of them were nowhere to be found.

Behold - The Developer Kit for Sound Blaster Series (original version):
box.jpg
contents.jpg

Now I just have to wait for it to get here and hope that the disks are still good. This was an unused kit so I am feeling pretty good about it.

thank you for your service :3

Amazing find Cyclone3D! Glad you were able to snag it.

ddrescue on Linux can pull off some miracles reading "barely working" disks if all else fails. If you just run it with the defaults it does a good enough job, but it's incredibly powerful if you really dig in to the settings. You can, for example, have it log the results of previous attempts, so it knows where the "bad" bits are and you can try more advanced scraping methods on those sectors over multiple iterations. Another great tool to have in the drawer.

I've had FAR better experiences with "old" 3.5" disks (especially DS/DD ones) than newer ones made after the prices bottomed out. I think it's more to do with build quality than media density... Anything made after 1999 or so is hopeless trash. Hopefully those will still be OK.

@cyclone3d

My goodness !! Will you scan that book as well ?

For the disks, make sure you write protect them before you image the disks, sometimes windows loves to write stuff in disks it shouldn't write which makes the images less authentical (if someone else have these disks and want to make sure they're totally untouched, a hash of yours could come handy, but only if their content is totally untouched).

Before imaging the disks, open their window to make sure there's nothing funny going on inside. I've had disks that had circular marks and that killed floppy disk drives from times to times, these are really annoying 🙁
Hopefully they'll be fine !

I had bad luck with diskettes for I/O controller cards that needed write-protection off to make a temporary file or would throw data errors across the board. Good thing the internet and a lot of people that bought that particular card had drivers listed online. Good thing I backed up my NX Pro 16 drivers and utility diskettes prior to using them, but they were NIB with the card itself, which was nice.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-05-20, 17:21:

Ok... so here is what all the "secrecy" was about. Was not cheap at all .. in fact I may be insane for paying as much as I did b […]
Show full quote

Ok... so here is what all the "secrecy" was about. Was not cheap at all .. in fact I may be insane for paying as much as I did but I just had to get it for posterity's sake and pretty sure I would never see it pop up again and we need the files on those disks as a community since most of them were nowhere to be found.

Behold - The Developer Kit for Sound Blaster Series (original version):
box.jpg
contents.jpg

Now I just have to wait for it to get here and hope that the disks are still good. This was an unused kit so I am feeling pretty good about it.

Sorry for all the flak I gave ya earlier, I guess that "secrecy" was justified.

Either way that's a pretty awesome discovery, I didn't know that they had a dev. kit!

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-05-20, 17:21:

Ok... so here is what all the "secrecy" was about. Was not cheap at all .. in fact I may be insane for paying as much as I did b […]
Show full quote

Ok... so here is what all the "secrecy" was about. Was not cheap at all .. in fact I may be insane for paying as much as I did but I just had to get it for posterity's sake and pretty sure I would never see it pop up again and we need the files on those disks as a community since most of them were nowhere to be found.

Behold - The Developer Kit for Sound Blaster Series (original version):
box.jpg
contents.jpg

Now I just have to wait for it to get here and hope that the disks are still good. This was an unused kit so I am feeling pretty good about it.

I used to have the 2nd edition of this kit but sold it. Unfortunately, I didn't make copies of the manuals, but I do have a copy of the disk. I'll try to upload it a little later.