Was out checking one of my thrift stores (looking to pick up a few more 90's and early 2000's games that aren't on Steam, or I'd just like to have a physical copy of for sentimental reasons) and saw a Dell 2009Fpb monitor just sitting there begging to be taken home.

$10 out the door and 2 minutes wiping it down with a bleach cleaning wipe, some razor blade scraping to remove stickers (this apparently lived the state engineering office) and this thing is ready to be color calibrated before taking its rightful place with my spare Windows 98 rig - a Dell Optiplex GX150 which currently has a PIII 933, 512mb PC133 SDRAM, Nvidia TNT2 16mb AGP card, Aureal Vortex 2 (Diamond Monster II PCI sound card), 4 port USB 2.0 card, and last night upgraded to a 120gb SSD.

I think that 1600x1200 is perhaps a bit much for that little TNT2 so I'm going to be on the lookout for a beefier low-profile AGP card to bring this rig up to snuff.

Finally received an Super Sound Origin 32-3D card I ordered a month ago.

Has hardware wavetable, decent SB pro emulation, working IDE connector. Not a bad sound card at all.

Figure i couldnt pass up bidding on this four piece gem on ebay..... won it all for $92 shipped.

Asus Tusl2-c / pentium3 1ghz / 512mb pc133 / ati 9600XT 256mb ddr2

$7 at the flea market for all this today

There is a seller with many ("industrial") CompactFlash cards on Marktplaats, I got some small ones for a few bucks. There are many more.

Also this Adaptec AHA-1540/42 CP. I like that it has a floppy connector (and a Zilog Z80). Should be nice in a 486 build.

The past weeks purchases have all arrived now. 😀
First out an addition to my very small PS/2 collection:

A model 70 with 6mb RAM. Boots right in to Windows 3.1. And just for fun I rummaged through my memories 😉 and found not the special stick for this machine, but close enough, same chips and same pcb. Partnumber just one digit off. Just moved a bridge on the stick and voila:

Full 8mb action. 😁
And second:

Commodore PC-10 III but...

The Varta-killer strikes again. 😵 Half the board affected as far as I can see. One of the screws for the motherboard just crumbled away, so I'll have to drill it out. Project for another day.
And lastly:

SBC with Ppro 200/256 and 128mb RAM. Sadly I got no backplane for it so I can't test it. Quick look on ebay and it seems to be available at least. I'm gonna look closer to home first.

I also got some random FPM sticks from 8mb to 32mb and some other bits and pieces, not too exciting.

luckybob wrote:

Finally found an IBM 365 for a half-way reasonable price. […]
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Finally found an IBM 365 for a half-way reasonable price.

ebay seller images:

I'll know in 7-17 days if the door survives the trip around the world.

I have a couple IBM 350 desktops.
I really like these newer NON proprietary IBM computers like the Aptiva too.
The older IBM PS/2’s are too proprietary hardware. Hard to find and expensive to own.
The Sound cards are ridiculously priced and rare.

I really like the clean and simple look of these IBM computers with the bay door closed.
When the plastic is white and not yellowed they look really nice.
It looks like proprietary hurt IBM like it hurt Apple.

Purchased yesterday, lot 10 Motherboard to be repaired, various sockets plus a couple of Slots1.
Expected arrival around 10 July
First 5 MB

Here are the other 5 MB

I would recap the following boards in my opinion:

ABIT SE6
Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000-G
Soyo SY-6BA+ IV
MS6199VA
ECS K7S5A

These are some good boards, especially the 6BA+ IV. That's a solid 440BX right there, and SE6 is a i815E board which is also good. Should make good for some strong Pentium 2/3 machines if done right. Also the K7S5A is a cheap and good OC board (there are BIOS for that if my memory serves me right)

PcBytes wrote:

I would recap the following boards in my opinion: […]
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I would recap the following boards in my opinion:

ABIT SE6
Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000-G
Soyo SY-6BA+ IV
MS6199VA
ECS K7S5A

These are some good boards, especially the 6BA+ IV. That's a solid 440BX right there, and SE6 is a i815E board which is also good. Should make good for some strong Pentium 2/3 machines if done right. Also the K7S5A is a cheap and good OC board (there are BIOS for that if my memory serves me right)

Yes ok thanks for the suggestion.
Of some I have others very similar, for example of the Abit I also have a SA6, of the MSI MS6199VA I have an equal to repair but it is a different version, of the K7S5A I have an identical one of the PCChips.
Some are easy to repair, requiring the replacement of some electrolytic capacitors.

Some interesting hardware today:

an 8-bit SB clone, based on ES488F chip with OPL2. I wonder, how compatible is this thing with the original SoundBlaster? Are there any particular games or tests I could run?

Acer WarpLink. I'm guessing, these are Wi-Fi adapters in the form of PCMCIA and ISA cards?

jheronimus wrote:

Acer WarpLink. I'm guessing, these are Wi-Fi adapters in the form of PCMCIA and ISA cards? […]
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Acer WarpLink. I'm guessing, these are Wi-Fi adapters in the form of PCMCIA and ISA cards?

Probably, but if they are only for long-dead standards. Most ISA and PCI PCMCIA-adapter cards that come with such PCMCIA cards do not support more interesting PCMCIA cards such as sound cards etc.

jheronimus wrote:

an 8-bit SB clone, based on ES488F chip with OPL2. I wonder, how compatible is this thing with the original SoundBlaster? Are there any particular games or tests I could run?

Yet another SB 2.0 clone.
Try running some program that reports SB DSP version - it should display something like 2.01
You can also try playing some 44100 Hz, 8-bit, mono WAV file, eg. with PLANY - it should work fine, while SB 1.x cards are limited to 22050 Hz

yawetaG wrote:

Probably, but if they are only for long-dead standards.

Indeed.
I also have an ISA WiFi card in the form of ISA-PCMCIA adapter + PCMCIA WiFi card, and the included WiFi card only supports the original 802.11 standard, ie. 2 Mbps max.
It's probably possible to replace the PCMCIA card with a newer card, supporting 802.11b, or even later, but I prefer to keep it original, especially considering that the original card comes with software with DOS support.

Can I see a picture of this contraption? That sounds crazy

oeuvre wrote:

Can I see a picture of this contraption? That sounds crazy

Pics taken from https://allegro.pl/oferta/karta-wifi-symbol-s … adka-8283090774 - apparently still for sale...

jheronimus wrote:

Some interesting hardware today:

an 8-bit SB clone, based on ES488F chip with OPL2. I wonder, how compatible is this thing with the original SoundBlaster? Are there any particular games or tests I could run?

More likely AdLib compatible. But may run as Sound Blaster clone as well.

Grzyb wrote:

oeuvre wrote:

Can I see a picture of this contraption? That sounds crazy

Pics taken from https://allegro.pl/oferta/karta-wifi-symbol-s … adka-8283090774 - apparently still for sale...

Crazy !
I just use a Wifi extender with all my old computers. Just plug the ethernet cable in and your online.
First you need to register your Wifi extender with your router of course.

Link
https://www.ebay.com/itm/TP-LINK-TL-WA850RE-N … fsAAOSwiPBc8UDY

How-to Video:
https://youtu.be/PPPkcLhbUes

I use a raspberry pi as a router for all my old computers. It lets me do some cool stuff like network booting 😀