Master_Shifu wrote on 2020-06-20, 22:41:

After a little digging, I found some list prices from an old website around the same time for the ISA and PCMCIA adapter […]
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chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-20, 22:22:

Thats actually less than I was thinking but still a good amount of money

After a little digging, I found some list prices from an old website around the same time for the ISA and PCMCIA adapter

Aironet ARLAN 655-2400 DS 1-2 Mbps 100 mW ERP 150 m 5 km ISA card (1/2 size) $ 945 5 channels
Aironet ARLAN 690-2400 DS 1-2 Mbps 100 mW ERP 150 m 5 km PCMCIA Type II $ 795 Radio/antenna module is external (2.85"x4"x1")

Great find and that is a huge amount of money unless you consider they were designed to transmit for miles not just a hundred feet , if I read that link correctly.

Horun wrote on 2020-06-21, 04:31:

Great find and that is a huge amount of money unless you consider they were designed to transmit for miles not just a hundred feet , if I read that link correctly.

Well of course that is always under "ideal" circumstances. though the antenna was a little bigger then what we use now.
If you convert the 1995 price of $945,- into today's money you would pay around $1610,- (1440,- euro's!) for the ISA Wifi adapter....

On the 17th, I bought a Dell 1702FP LCD monitor to use on some of my retro machines that cannot go past 800x600 due to high refresh rates and see how it performs. Before I use it, I need to buy a new PSU for it since the one that came with the system has missing pieces of plastic or I can attempt to patch it by cutting some plastic off of another broken equipment or use electrical tape and/or 3D print a chassis for the PSU, but I don't think that'd be a good idea to do that.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-06-21, 08:01:

On the 17th, I bought a Dell 1702FP LCD monitor to use on some of my retro machines that cannot go past 800x600 due to high refresh rates and see how it performs. Before I use it, I need to buy a new PSU for it since the one that came with the system has missing pieces of plastic or I can attempt to patch it by cutting some plastic off of another broken equipment or use electrical tape and/or 3D print a chassis for the PSU, but I don't think that'd be a good idea to do that.

What?

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-06-21, 08:01:

On the 17th, I bought a Dell 1702FP LCD monitor

That's one fugly monitor.

Made a deal on a Compaq SLT 286 today. Gonna collect it somewhere in the next few weeks.

Cons:
Dallas clock is dead
Some little case damage
No battery (empty slot)
Keyboard wire falls apart
No bios disk
Untested fdd/HDD after some years of no usage

Pros:
Actually turns on and posts to say failed battery and run diagnostic disk
4MB ram upgrade
Included is the adapter, a serial mouse and original travel bag
Price: just €30

Collateral damage: have to order some new cr2032 sockets

Edit:

mpe wrote on 2020-06-20, 13:15:

(...) Two SiS551x based motherboards. That chipset was missing in my Early Pentium Chipset survey. One of them has Asus Media BU […]
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(...)
Two SiS551x based motherboards. That chipset was missing in my Early Pentium Chipset survey. One of them has Asus Media BUS and the other (Abit PG5) two weird looking expansion slots.

(...)

This Abit board is on TH99 😀
The port between ISA and PCI is a PISA port according to TH99.
http://www.uncreativelabs.de/th99/m/S-T/35091.htm
It seems this port combines PCI and ISA in one slot, end enable you to put in a single board computer to override the system board. No experience, just learned it exists 😉

If you like reading:
https://www.kontron.com/downloads/white_paper … f?product=87222

Picked up this beauty yesterday. Couldn't resist because of the memory expansion board, giving this card a total of a whopping 4MB VRAM.

I have several Diamond videocards with DRAM but never had a VRAM version, so I finally do.

CHiLL72 wrote on 2020-06-21, 14:52:

Picked up this beauty yesterday. Couldn't resist because of the memory expansion board, giving this card a total of a whopping 4MB

Nice. It is also the one with better 220 MHz DAC. Earlier versions had 175 MHz.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-06-21, 08:01:

On the 17th, I bought a Dell 1702FP LCD monitor to use on some of my retro machines that cannot go past 800x600 due to high refresh rates and see how it performs. Before I use it, I need to buy a new PSU for it since the one that came with the system has missing pieces of plastic or I can attempt to patch it by cutting some plastic off of another broken equipment or use electrical tape and/or 3D print a chassis for the PSU, but I don't think that'd be a good idea to do that.

The monitor looks good but it's stand is an odd one. How did that psu get a broken case, those things are usually near bullet proof. I use a Dell 1908FP for most of my retro machines, it works well with any VGA card so far. And it does do 720x400 @ 70hz without oddness.

Might've hit something on the way down or hit an edge of a piece of furniture. The inside is intact still.

EvieSigma wrote on 2020-06-21, 03:47:

Got this Zenith TurboSport 386 with power supply pretty cheaply off eBay, but like the seller advertised it just doesn't turn on […]
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Got this Zenith TurboSport 386 with power supply pretty cheaply off eBay, but like the seller advertised it just doesn't turn on. There's an "External Power" LED lit up but that's it.

This is rather rare computer. Be careful, and chip sets are zenith's and the actual motherboard with CPU lives in the screen's lid. I think bad capacitors is the usual problem. I saw one once under repair disassembled back in the day since the worked for number of years at university's computing dept was using zenith computers back then. (1989-92)

Also Zenith has problems with bundle of wires breaking that are threaded through the hinges. Not high tech stuff.

Cheers,

mpe wrote on 2020-06-21, 15:05:

CHiLL72 wrote on 2020-06-21, 14:52:

Picked up this beauty yesterday. Couldn't resist because of the memory expansion board, giving this card a total of a whopping 4MB

Nice. It is also the one with better 220 MHz DAC. Earlier versions had 175 MHz.

That's good to know. The image quality is pretty crisp.

It's been a while since I posted here but here's today's purchases:

ATI 3D Rage Pro Turbo AIW 8MB. Works fine, was just dusty.

Left is what I assume a Shuttle board (not sure, but I managed to get the BIOS string if anyone can identify it: X0-0100-001343-00101111-080893-UMC491F-F) and the right is a Luckystar 6P2M810 combo board. The former needs quite intensive tracework as it has some quite nasty corrosion (though I am confident it will work) and the latter I just need to recap it again (since my OCD didn't like how I used mismatched caps).

Need a second opinion..Anyone got this Kingston SX LEM upgrade chip and could verify if those pins (please have a look on the second closeup picture below) should touch each other or should I try to straighten them up? I don't want to attempt such thing if that bending has been intentional. Thanks.

bent pins are NEVER intentional.

It doesn't look to me that those pins are shortened. So no need to touch it IMHO.

luckybob wrote on 2020-06-22, 06:54:

bent pins are NEVER intentional.

mpe wrote on 2020-06-22, 07:01:

It doesn't look to me that those pins are shortened. So no need to touch it IMHO.

Thank you! : )

Fulfilled two of my childhood dreams today: bought an AWE64 and a Turtle Beach Montego II.

As a kid, I had a SB16 Vibra and was always hyped seeing that AWE32 setup option in Doom and such. I didn't know about the Roland SC-55 at that time, so I thought an AWE32 would give you the best possible music. Nowadays, when you can find recordings of pretty much every soundcard on YouTube, I no longer think the AWE32 music is that great. But that childhood fantasy remained with me to this day, and since the card was super cheap (it's a value model) I decided to grab it.

As for the Montego II, well I always wanted an A3D 2.0 card to experience that amazing HRTF sound. The closest thing I had until now was a Yamaha YMF724 with Sensaura, so I'm curious to see how real A3D stacks up against that.

A bunch of PCI sound cards I bought earlier, now with my own photos instead of crappycam seller pics. The CT4810 will go into a GX110 as part of its restoration to an original configuration. The Terratec DMX XFire 1024 is my favorite PCI sound card so I grabbed a second one. The last one I got just because - I want to mess with this CMI chipset and see what its compatibility with DOS stuff is like.

Even with the qurantine now over and flea markets full of sellers, this whole month I only managed to find this lot of ISA cards:

Don't have much use for the Trident VGA or the Opti cound card, but the Mozart card looks interesting and has a real Yamaha OPL chip.