Been working on making the world's most accurate and complete list of video arcade games prior to the CPU, aka "discrete logic" video games. Aside from a few weird outlier games this means some, but not all, games from November 1971 to 1980.
Just sent a page of corrections (mostly identifying the unknowns) to http://pong-story.com/arcade.htm - hope he reads it and makes the changes. 😉

jwt27 wrote:

Whoa. Can't say I'm very fond of the OEM case but all that Yamaha gear makes it a very impressive system.

It's definitely an unconventional design, and seems to draw a bit of inspiration from Dell's earlier Optiplex cases in its use of removable, paneled sections. I like it though. It's wider than most systems, with styling reminiscent of some sort of futuristic war machine, and the built-in "dust cover" feature will be handy when the front-facing I/O isn't being used. Perhaps most importantly, it looks great alongside my music gear, and complements the color of the AX44 I/O module to a much better degree than would the monolithic white tower that it's supplanting.

Outside of my use case, I think this particular Vaio could make a superb gaming system as well, both for DOS/Windows use, and also as something to connect a PlayStation, NES/SMS, and SNES/Genesis to concurrently. The photograph below doesn't do it justice, but the S-Video input through the All-in-Wonder, using the Sony-customized version of ATi's TV Tuner application, is much better than it ought to be, and produces a significantly better looking image than my Matrox Mystique w/Rainbow Runner does.

vetz wrote:

Over a year ago I got news about two IBM 320 Servers being given away for free 50km away from my location. I drove out and picke […]
Show full quote

Over a year ago I got news about two IBM 320 Servers being given away for free 50km away from my location. I drove out and picked them up. Both servers worked perfectly and they were in good condition. When I get buy or get old computer stuff locally I always ask if they have more (pre-2000) and this guy said yes. He had a couple of Thinkpad's he was going to throw away. They were dusty and didn't look very good after 10 year in a garage, but I took them with me. No power adapters came with them so I just put them into storage. I bought the required power adapters from Ebay some time ago and finally I got around to test them. Picture is from when I got home with the servers and laptops:

The list of computers were as follows:

1x Thinkpad 750C
Intel 486SL 33mhz w/ FPU (no L2 cache)
20MB of RAM (max. upgraded)
1MB VGA
Sound (not SB compatible)
10" color screen 640x480
-No harddrive or caddy, no battery

1x Thinkpad 760CD
Intel Pentium 90
1MB VGA
Sound (SB compatible with TSR's)
40 MB RAM (max. upgraded)
12" color screen 800x600
-No harddrives or harddrive caddy 🙁
Working battery
Floppy drive (missing bezel)
- 89IOKL;: keys don't work

3x Thinkpad 760ED
Intel Pentium 133
2MB VGA
Sound (SB compatible with TSR's)
80MB RAM (max.upgraded)
12" color screen 1024x768
-No harddrives or harddrive caddy 🙁
One has External floppy drive glued to lid, all have 6x CD-ROM
Only one boots, the two others are not turning on.
Keyboard on the one that does boot worked for 10 min then stopped working....

2x Thinkpad 770
Intel Pentium 233MMX
2MB VGA
Sound (SB compatible with TSR's)
160MB RAM (max.upgraded)
13" color screen
-No harddrives or harddrive caddy 🙁
Floppy and non-working CD-ROM ultra drives
Only one works.

1x Thinkpad 770ED
Intel Pentium II 266mhz
Don't have much more info on this machine as it won't boot. The DVDrom has been placed into the working Thinkpad 770.

Generally I'm really glad the 750C worked! The backlight on the LCD didn't turn on at the first bootups, but I opened the lid and re-attached the cables and it fired up again 😀 Have some work cut out for me with the 760's as the keyboards on both machines that boots up is not working properly. All in all glad I have surplus machines of the same models for spare parts. Unfortunately it seems most of the machines have lived pretty harsh lives as they are scratched up on the outside, so to get one "perfect" machine on the 760 and 770 I'd have to transfer the best parts from the non-working machines which is quite amount of work. Plan is to buy an Ultra Dock 1, a new harddrive caddy for the machines and get something installed on it. Will probably go for CF card in the 750C. I have some older 2.5" IDE drives for the 760 and 770.

Nice haul! I have a legacy Thinkpad collection too, ranging from a 360CS to a 760EL. Hope your wrist pads aren't sticky, seems to be a common issue and I need to swap out some keyboards. Really want a 760XL/XD but might build a 'Frankenpad' when I get all the right parts.

My 760CD had a keyboard problem too, was just a misaligned cable, so like your 750 reseating it fixed the trouble. The problem was a 3x3 block of keys so I initially thought it was corrosion but the cable looks askew in any case.

Re changing hard drives I have read that some models/BIOSes only allow IBM drives to be used. Good luck with the builds!

Cloudschatze wrote:

http://www.symphoniae.com/Sony/JPG/vaio_3_s.jpg […]
Show full quote

It's definitely an unconventional design, and seems to draw a bit of inspiration from Dell's earlier Optiplex cases in its use of removable, paneled sections. I like it though. It's wider than most systems, with styling reminiscent of some sort of futuristic war machine, and the built-in "dust cover" feature will be handy when the front-facing I/O isn't being used. Perhaps most importantly, it looks great alongside my music gear, and complements the color of the AX44 I/O module to a much better degree than would the monolithic white tower that it's supplanting.

Outside of my use case, I think this particular Vaio could make a superb gaming system as well, both for DOS/Windows use, and also as something to connect a PlayStation, NES/SMS, and SNES/Genesis to concurrently. The photograph below doesn't do it justice, but the S-Video input through the All-in-Wonder, using the Sony-customized version of ATi's TV Tuner application, is much better than it ought to be, and produces a significantly better looking image than my Matrox Mystique w/Rainbow Runner does.

I too like your VaioStation 😀 compared to the usual beige LX era machines it stands out. It's also true Sony minimalist styling with no fussy buttons - I'm a bit of a Sony fan, typing this on an Xperia X2 😉

With the dust cover up it does take on a console-esque appearance, along the lines of a grey X68000.

Have played Supaplex. Have stuck on the level 82.
Why almost all old games are very hard? 😀

Where can i find the old version of this game?

Removed the PLG100-DX board from the MU100, and mounted it to the SW1000XG in the Vaio build...

And swapped-out the 15" Gateway monitor for the 17" NEC, and the beige Bose MediaMate pair with the black.

Yay.

Cloudschatze wrote:

Removed the PLG100-DX board from the MU100, and mounted it to the SW1000XG in the Vaio build... http://www.symphoniae.com/Sony/J […]
Show full quote

Removed the PLG100-DX board from the MU100, and mounted it to the SW1000XG in the Vaio build...

Yay.

Cool - let us know how you get on. I've got a PLG150-DX, SW1000XG and DS2416 combo build in the pipelines... I've got all the parts, just haven't decided on a few things. What software will you be using to control all this hardware?

j^aws wrote:

What software will you be using to control all this hardware?

For now, just the same (ancient) software I had when I put the original (Gateway) build together back in 2007 - Cakewalk Pro Audio 8.0, Yamaha XG Works 3.0, Mark of the Unicorn's MIDI Timepiece AV Console, and one or two synth editors.

Thus far, I'm not super thrilled with CWPA8.0's support of the DS2416. It's usable to a degree, and that's about it.

I finally successfully partitioned HDD for DOS 6.22+Windows 3.11 and Windows ME. The DOS have 4 partitions, 2GB each. Windows ME is on FAT32 with lot of space. As a bootloader i did install Plop boot manager. I'm pretty pleased with my HDD structure 😀 It was productive weekend 😀

Having a bit of a sort out.

This is perhaps not very retro but Im tinkering with some XP era hardware.

I have a Geforce 7600 GT PCI-E which acts very strangely.

It wont work in any newish motherboard, I have tried quite a few and the systems even wont post. It wont work in in older motherboards either with one exception. It works in PCI-E slot 2 in DFI socket 939 motherboards but only in slot-2, I have tried 2 DFI boards with the same result. When used in PCI-E slot 2 in the DFI boards the card works flawlessly and performs as it should.

Does anyone have any ideas whats wrong with this stupid video card?
Could it perhaps be that it only works in 8X mode and not in 16X?

Trying to transfer large amounts of data across the ISA bus via a 10/100 Intel ISA etherexpress adapter.
Suffice to say not impressed, it gets nowhere near the theoretical max speed of the isa bus, and is just as slow as a normal 10mbit adapter.
1-2.5mbytes a sec on avg.
Ended up taking the drive out and using a usb 3.0 sata dock instead, as I simply could not wait over a full day for the transfer to complete 🤣 .

Did some more work on my P133 machine. Moved the GUS-ACE from my K6-3 machine into this.
Tried some games and thought that it would be funny to test out MT32 emulation on GUS-ACE.
And it works. First time ever hearing GUS perform MT32 emulation. 😜

Now....
Those who say that GUS can do this better than AWE32, should set up AWE32 with chorus and reverb
set to 50%. That sounds much, much better than the GUS. AWE32 still the best in my book.
GUS are just too shallow in the sound quality, when trying to emulate MT32.
The LIVE is somewhat the same as AWE32, yet the AWE cards have chorus and reverb settings on top.
A real MT32 is better than any emulation at any time. I just don't have that in my collection.

Decided to play arround with my pair of Voodoo² today.... and I was only able to make one of them work =(
The second one got detected and the drivers installed sucessfully, but it wouldn't work neither in SLI nor by itself (in both available slots). It is still a bit too early to condemn it though, as it seems this MOBO is a bit finicky. Couldn't get neither Voodoo to work with bus mastering enabled, and once a Voodoo was in the system (and bus mastering was disabled), my PCI USB controller would make Win98 unable to start. Oh well, I'll survive using the onboard USB 1.1, specially now that I have my network setup correctly.

Iam brainstorming about my 286 system.. Few minutes ago a removed the compenents that where in this case. Iam going to use the tiny 286-12/16 DFI motherboards with headland chipset in the desktop case..
It seems that ill need low-profile 30 simms in this board, otherwise got problems when installing cards in the lower 8-bit slot.. Iam trying to find a solution now.

The case can only house one harddisk drive.. Dont know which storing solution i would use.. Make it sense to go for scsi? Or would SCSI not really better on a 286-12 class machine, so i might be better off with simple IDE AT controller..?

I've been pondering how I can avoid using a CRT TV for my old consoles - I already have a modern PC + vintage PC on my desk, breaking out yet another hulking screen when I want to play a little Sega or NES just seems unreasonable.

Last night I tried one of those cheap Composite to VGA devices bought on the eBays. It was unspeakably bad.

The next thing I'll try is an old PCI TV Tuner I have stashed away (composite IN -> CRT monitor), but from memory this isn't really a workable option either.

My only other thought is to try an ATi All-in-wonder, which I understand can take all sorts of inputs.

Anyone got a better idea?

An XRGB Framemeister and a GameBroadcaster HD?

Alternatively, you could set up a 'console corner'. What I've done here is separate the realms. Consoles have no keyboard so get a nice old upholstered chair. A change of view, and a change of position for the aging arse back & neck.

SquallStrife wrote:

An XRGB Framemeister and a GameBroadcaster HD?

I was afraid you were gonna say that. The Framemeister looks totally rad but I can't justify the price for the relatively small amount of console gaming I do. I hadn't heard of the GameBroadcaster, I'll do some reading.