The good thing about its cheapness is that it's so nice and light that it's easy to pick up and move, great for swapping motherboards and other parts for testing. It has front USB, but I kept running into problems. I initially thought that it might be because the pins weren't set correctly (they were all individual) so I decided to put the wires into a nine pin USB plug. But even after doing that (and painstakingly making sure the wires were correct with a voltmeter since they weren't correctly color coded) USB devices were hit or miss. I was testing another motherboard, and sometimes the USB drive would work, sometimes the computer would tell me "This device could work faster in another port" and sometimes plugging the drive in would lock the machine up and I'd have to hit the reset button. I was at a computer store today that has some new old stock, and they had a USB back plate for $5.00 that looked about right. Installing it involved drilling a couple of holes, and the wires were only just long enough to reach the USB header, but now the front USB ports work perfectly.

Bought an AOpen AW200 PCI sound card from Japan, with instruction book, driver CD and case. I've searched through the forum and found that it has soundblaster pro support, so I bought it.

I don't know if it's one of those actually good (for DOS) PCI sound cards, but chipset manufacturers were very loose with the "soundblaster support" thing back then and my intuition tells me it's probably not one of the better ones.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-11-22, 14:50:

I don't know if it's one of those actually good (for DOS) PCI sound cards, but chipset manufacturers were very loose with the "soundblaster support" thing back then and my intuition tells me it's probably not one of the better ones.

For DOS? Probably not. The AOpen Cobra has the support for a SB-Link header which would make it usable in DOS (providing you have a motherboard that supports SB-Link). There is a thread on it: AW744L II - YMF744 - AOpen Cobra Sound Card - Install SB-Link Header

Welp, genuine sorry to anyone here who had their eyes on that Asus K7V listed on Big Auction Website, I just bought it for the Big Athlon Project. I'll take good care of it and follow through with any requests anyone has for testing anything regarding it so as to make it in some small way everyone here's K7V.

Listing image.

pan069 wrote on 2022-11-22, 20:00:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-11-22, 14:50:

I don't know if it's one of those actually good (for DOS) PCI sound cards, but chipset manufacturers were very loose with the "soundblaster support" thing back then and my intuition tells me it's probably not one of the better ones.

For DOS? Probably not. The AOpen Cobra has the support for a SB-Link header which would make it usable in DOS (providing you have a motherboard that supports SB-Link). There is a thread on it: AW744L II - YMF744 - AOpen Cobra Sound Card - Install SB-Link Header

There are other cards under the AOpen Cobra brand with lesser chipsets than the YMF744 and without SB-Link. https://www.newegg.ca/aopen-cobra-aw850/p/N82E16829117105
And this is not one with the Yamaha OR SB-Link. I don't know what this AS9200 chipset is, but there are AW200 branded sound cards wit AS4000 chipset, and those aren't the best.

lepidotós wrote on 2022-11-22, 20:32:

Welp, genuine sorry to anyone here who had their eyes on that Asus K7V listed on Big Auction Website, I just bought it for the Big Athlon Project. I'll take good care of it and follow through with any requests anyone has for testing anything regarding it so as to make it in some small way everyone here's K7V.

s-l400(1).jpg
Listing image.

Oh damn, nice. not a bad price. I have one here I was planning to get rid of sometime.

A few items showed up this past week, including a BlasterBoard and Roland SCB-55.

Plus managed to obtain original disks and user guide for the Epson Equity III+, and a bunch of memory chips destined for the memory card in that computer. Assuming they all work, that should give me 6 MB of RAM in that system (4MB + 2MB already installed).

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-11-22, 22:50:

A few items showed up this past week, including a BlasterBoard and Roland SCB-55.

Plus managed to obtain original disks and user guide for the Epson Equity III+, and a bunch of memory chips destined for the memory card in that computer. Assuming they all work, that should give me 8 MB of RAM in that system.

Where did you get these memory chips? These are 1M x 1bit ICs.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-11-22, 23:52:

Where did you get these memory chips? These are 1M x 1bit ICs.

Cheers,

Ebay, from a seller in Romania.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-11-22, 20:45:

pan069 wrote on 2022-11-22, 20:00:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-11-22, 14:50:

I don't know if it's one of those actually good (for DOS) PCI sound cards, but chipset manufacturers were very loose with the "soundblaster support" thing back then and my intuition tells me it's probably not one of the better ones.

For DOS? Probably not. The AOpen Cobra has the support for a SB-Link header which would make it usable in DOS (providing you have a motherboard that supports SB-Link). There is a thread on it: AW744L II - YMF744 - AOpen Cobra Sound Card - Install SB-Link Header

There are other cards under the AOpen Cobra brand with lesser chipsets than the YMF744 and without SB-Link. https://www.newegg.ca/aopen-cobra-aw850/p/N82E16829117105
And this is not one with the Yamaha OR SB-Link. I don't know what this AS9200 chipset is, but there are AW200 branded sound cards wit AS4000 chipset, and those aren't the best.

I have several working pieces with YMF724 or ESS solo 1, and I also bought a couple of unicorn boards with SB Link and Tualatin support. I think Yamaha is one of the best PCI choices to play DOS games, ESS with hardware FM is okay too. I wonder what the other cards like, but I don't have time to test it yet. 🤣

This beauty

The moment you decide to buy another copy of the exactly same card you know that you have graduated from casual mob to "are you nuts" club.

Saw this copy on my local country auction site. Could not resist. Prices will go only up, doesn't hurt to have backup. It was sold as-is but I was lucky. It is perfectly functional card (- back bracket).
It was very convenient to do multimeter health check for continuity/resistance on ISA bus contacts when you can compare. While I have cheaper ISA board for testing still it would hurt to damage it.

Note to myself: Do not damage SIMM plastic tabs with this new card, OK?

Today received an ATX case that I bought 2 days ago for 7$ shipped. It's from company called "Super Power" and looks like it was hardly ever used, really good condition. I like that it has place for floppy drive in top section of front panel, looks different from other cases. From the stickers it looks like it was used for a build in early 2000s. Already started building a slot 1 system in it.

I'm jealous that you can ship something that big for $7! Shipping is way more expensive here, which stops me from buying a lot of stuff online.

I got a cheap case in about 2002 with a "Super Power" PSU in it, no idea if that's the same ppl who made the case or not. Similar internally, but different front panel. Does it kind of have an X shape in the side panel?

Bought an IBM 240 from Japan. 1.3kg, 800*600, Celeron 300MHz, 128M, ESS Solo 1. In good condition except that the LCD has two or three grey spots, not quite obvious, and the USB port is not working. The HDD is original, with about 6G capacity, windows 2000 Japanese installed. I replaced it with a 40G disk and installed win98 on it.
Good for DOS and win98 2D gaming. C&C95 runs fast, Commandos runs good in default resolution but too slow in 800*600.
DDMA/TDMA has compatibility issues with some DOS games, but I changed it to PCPCI (through regedit) and now it's better.

vutt wrote on 2022-11-23, 19:02:

The moment you decide to buy another copy of the exactly same card you know that you have graduated from casual mob to "are you […]
Show full quote

The moment you decide to buy another copy of the exactly same card you know that you have graduated from casual mob to "are you nuts" club.

Saw this copy on my local country auction site. Could not resist. Prices will go only up, doesn't hurt to have backup. It was sold as-is but I was lucky. It is perfectly functional card (- back bracket).
It was very convenient to do multimeter health check for continuity/resistance on ISA bus contacts when you can compare. While I have cheaper ISA board for testing still it would hurt to damage it.

Note to myself: Do not damage SIMM plastic tabs with this new card, OK?

Funny, I also have two of these cards for the exact same reason 😀

DW12 wrote on 2022-11-23, 21:24:

Today received an ATX case that I bought 2 days ago for 7$ shipped. It's from company called "Super Power" and looks like it was hardly ever used, really good condition. I like that it has place for floppy drive in top section of front panel, looks different from other cases. From the stickers it looks like it was used for a build in early 2000s. Already started building a slot 1 system in it.

The bottom looks the same as this one, probably the same maker. https://www.ebay.fr/itm/155007385580

vutt wrote on 2022-11-23, 19:02:

The moment you decide to buy another copy of the exactly same card you know that you have graduated from casual mob to "are you […]
Show full quote

The moment you decide to buy another copy of the exactly same card you know that you have graduated from casual mob to "are you nuts" club.

Saw this copy on my local country auction site. Could not resist. Prices will go only up, doesn't hurt to have backup. It was sold as-is but I was lucky. It is perfectly functional card (- back bracket).
It was very convenient to do multimeter health check for continuity/resistance on ISA bus contacts when you can compare. While I have cheaper ISA board for testing still it would hurt to damage it.

Note to myself: Do not damage SIMM plastic tabs with this new card, OK?

Better yet replace the sockets with new ones that have metal tabs.