Re: 486DX-50 MHz EISA system

Posted on 2019-12-13, 11:12

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Nice build. I might have a spare EISA Anylan, if you have a matching hub/switch (Anylan is not compatible with Ethernet) otherwise you need to look for a 3C595 which is quite rare. I probably have a PM2022 with floppy as well but recommend to use a wide SCSI controller if you really want to use the …

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Re: My "new" HP Z400 Workstation.

Posted on 2019-12-13, 10:54

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

The Z400 is surely an upcoming high quality retro system that can actually be pursued for a very good price. Got myself a Z400, two Z600 and a Z800 after finding the Win7 restore CDs in company scrap. Super solid high quality systems, designed for every day use. The Z800 was equipped with an Nvidia …

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Re: Dual Pentium III Scsi Raid Workstation Build

Posted on 2019-12-13, 10:45

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Any idea what kind of memory sticks can be used to upgrade the increase adapter cache? I own the same raid adapter and allways wanted to find out. Slot coding looked like 3.3V buffered SD-RAM, but I havent verified yet. eisapc

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Re: Hardware tools for speeding up file transfers to legacy laptops (and possibly other things)

Posted on 2019-12-13, 10:37

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Speaking on vintage systems USB is not allways an option. I successfully used Interlnk/interserve via parallel line transfering data to/from legacy laptops. These tools come bundled with MS-DOS 6.22 and the cable layout is descriped in the help pages. Another helpful tool was the adaptec paralleport …

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Re: NCR System 3434: The Single 486 MCA Monster

Posted on 2019-12-13, 10:03

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nice box, owned one myself, but gave it to another microchannel collector near Nuernberg. Still got the defective power supply I had to replace in my one. In opposition to yours mine had two memory boards with soldered chips instead of SIMM sockets. Each board had about 2MB IIRC. It had a second …

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Re: Quad Pentium 3 Xeons/eight Pentium 3 Xeon benchmarks???

Posted on 2019-09-20, 08:10

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Did not know about these patches, may try this later. Providig some pictures is easier than the benchmarks. The systems are actually piled up after the at move and may take some time to be up and running again. Maybe I find the tim during the upcomming months to run SIV utility as well. If I find …

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Re: Quad Pentium 3 Xeons/eight Pentium 3 Xeon benchmarks???

Posted on 2019-09-20, 06:57

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I could provide benchmarks for Proliant 8500 (8x P3) Netserver LR (6x P3) and Proliant 6400 (4x P3). Problem running Windows on one of these is that you need High end Windows Versions like Datacenter edition to get support for more than 2/4 CPUs. Most of my systems are running Linux for this reason, …

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Re: What are the weirdest pieces of retro hardware you owned?

Posted on 2019-09-13, 09:26

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh there are several weird pieces in the collection Here are the weirdest parts where information on the web is next to non existant - Siemens PCM Series PC, a Microchannel machine build by Siemens unluckily missing the reference disk - Epson 5.25" 11 MB Floppy drive using a dedicated ISA Interface …

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Re: Newly made 4MB 30pin SIMMs

Posted on 2019-08-20, 06:49

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Great project, If you reorder some of the PCBs, I would be interested in 20 to 40 PCBs, to move some chips over from spare PS/2 SIMMs. eisapc

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Re: Lowest CPU to play MP3s?

Posted on 2019-07-24, 07:35

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

486DX4@100 Mhz is sufficient for playing MP3 under Windoze. Used a Pentium 66 for some time. But you had to prevent the screensaer to start to prevent stutter. Probably a DOS player needs less resources and works even with DX2/66.

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Re: IBM PS/2 Model 25 on-board hard drive interface

Posted on 2019-06-27, 07:58

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The 25 used the same disks like the 30 and probably 50, its ST506 but not the classic connector with 20 pin data and 34 pin control cable but a proprietary cardedge connector, not to be mixed up with the ESDI DBA interface used in later models like Model 50z, 55 and 70. Using an 8 bit ISA controller …

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Re: Performance difference between ISA NICs?

Posted on 2019-06-27, 07:22

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I can confirm heavy system load of some cheapo realtek cards on Win 9x, while 3C509, SMC and other brands performed much better. 3C509 using DMA is new to me, the only ethernet using DMA and ISA busmastering is the NE1500/NE2100 also known as AMD LANCE. But beware, dont try to mix it with other ISA …

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Re: Is the bios on HDD or not ? Compaq Deskpro 2000 P133

Posted on 2019-06-17, 06:43

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Afair the Deskpro 2000/4000/6000 had usual on chip BIOS. Got half a dozen of these in my basement. In case you are looking for the on disk Setup and diagnostics, its still availiable on the ftp server. ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/allfiles.txt is a list of many, but not all availiable files.

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Re: KVM Switches

Posted on 2019-06-11, 09:13

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I experienced some flaky behaviour while using older keyboards with high current draw. Using a powered KVM-switch fixed the problem. Currently I use Compaq KVM, Belkin, Digitus and Aten.

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Re: How do I set up a CDrom in MSDOS 6.22?

Posted on 2019-06-05, 11:23

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

dionb was faster on the company name. If the drive has a 40 pin connector it is either Mitsumi, Panasonic or broken. Sony uses a 34pin cable and SCSI 50pin (only once met a 68pin IBM branded Plextor drive).

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2019-06-04, 08:54

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finally managed to empty my storage room in time, but having my flat and cellar flooded with my hardware collection now. I was surprised how much hardware and media a 20 m² room can hold. Time for inventory now. Allready recovered some bits of hardware I missed for a long time. Pictures are to …

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Re: EISA Graphics / Video Cards

Posted on 2019-05-29, 08:00

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

That's AWESOME! From what I gather, ELSA was big in Europe (Germany mostly??) and not much in the states. So there's a better chance of scoring one from there (lucky bastards). Right, ELSA was one of the three big german graphic card manufaturers, SPEA and MIRO being the other two. All three were …

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Re: Hunting elusive EISA Video cards

Posted on 2019-05-28, 11:40

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Apart from the Compaq Qvision boards the ELSA Winner 1000 combo board is one of the/or the only common EISA graphic boards. There are only few others, like MIRO Crystal 24, but these are hard to find (and were hard to find even 20 years ago when I started collecting). Beware from these ET4000 …

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Re: IBM PS/2 57 486SLC2 ?

Posted on 2019-05-22, 05:44

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I put up a MCA sound card on ebay a month or so ago. It sold in THREE HOURS for $400. let that sink in. MCA IBM is for masochists. Thats the reason not owning a single MCA sound board (besides the RS6K boards) despite owning allmost the full range of IBM PS/2 and loads of spare boards. MCA is not …

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Re: IBM PS/2 57 486SLC2 ?

Posted on 2019-05-21, 08:10

by

by eisapc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Con’s: IBM computer is proprietary and rare and expensive IBM Micro channel (MCA) cards CPU upgrade is expensive and rare. Proprietary drives are expensive and rare. Will be very expensive to own. Only drawback of MCA is the allmost unobtainiable sound card, but I am using a Logitech Soundman …

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