Runicen wrote:

dogchainx wrote:

I'd have to disagree. I originally was looking for one in box, then decided to just bag that idea and get one as a board only, as trying to find one in box for sale was impossible. I rarely see any on amibay (last listing was back in 2014 i think), and haven't seen one on ebay for the longest time.

As for the CharlieLab Megabeat theory, yes....you can get them, but most sellers will NOT sell it without the entire megabeat. Getting it shipped to the USA from Italy is just way too costly, or the seller charges way too much just for the Roland itself.

BTW, I messaged that seller a LONG time ago on mercatinomusicale for the Roland daughterboard (that listing has been on there FOR YEARS). The guy is insane. He wanted almost $350 shipped to the USA for it. Though he has the price listed, after "shipping" and "packaging" he raised the price more than $150 USA. I'm not sure, but I'm a little offended that some people think Americans are swimming in cash and reprice things accordingly.

I have to ask (and if I should just start a new thread on this, let me know - not looking to hijack or derail here), where do these boards shine? I know it's supposed to work in DOS, but I'm not honestly detecting ANY improvement with the Roland board slaved to an SB16 than I was getting running the Yamaha Audician card.

Is this a piece of hardware that simply does "more" in an Windows environment, or is the assortment of Little Big Adventure and various ID games not the best stage on which to let this thing perform?

You'll need to set each game to either General MIDI (GM) or Roland. Of my favorite examples is Tie Fighter. Run setmuse.exe of Tie Fighter and you can change the MUSIC between FM synthesis, General MIDI, Roland, etc. Switch between FM and GM or Roland and you'll notice the big difference in music. To me, it seems like some games sound better with GM than Roland, and vice versa with other games.

Compared to other wavetables, it can be very hard to notice the difference. The NEC XR385 (Yamaha DB60XG) is a close match (and MUCH more obtainable!), and I can rarely tell the difference between the two. There are a ton of other wavetable daughterboards too, but some are horrific in quality compared to the Roland and Yamaha/NEC boards.

To keep with the thread....Back on topic: I got a new 386DX-40 MHz board in today! This will be my 5th 386DX motherboard to put in my collection. I hope to have "backups" for the next 20 years, or until you guys can figure out how to 3D-print a motherboard! 😎

Runicen wrote:

I'm not honestly detecting ANY improvement with the Roland board slaved to an SB16 than I was getting running the Yamaha Audician card.

You can try to compare sound of sb16 and roland, for example, here http://kawai.spb.ru/files/sound/games/descent2.html
If you don't hear a difference - you don't need this kind of device.

Not exactly hardware but I just grabbed the Roland LAPC-I & MCB-1 and CM-32L service manuals.
They seem to be normal A4 pages so they will get the scan-and-share treatment 😁

Today I bought 29 hard drives for $50. All working SATA drives ranging from 80 to 320gb. One velociraptor in the bunch, which is neat.

keropi wrote:

Not exactly hardware but I just grabbed the Roland LAPC-I & MCB-1 and CM-32L service manuals.
They seem to be normal A4 pages so they will get the scan-and-share treatment 😁

+1

I need to do that with my Roland RAP-10 I have...I still haven't test it out!

Godlike wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Godlike wrote:

I received today Shuttle HOT 555 VER 1.53 Socket 7 board, I can't find english manual for it, all I found is german wesite: http […]
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I received today Shuttle HOT 555 VER 1.53 Socket 7 board, I can't find english manual for it, all I found is german wesite:
https://www.shuttle.eu/_archive/older/de/555_faq.htm
But no more english manual for version 1.5x (PDF, 1123kB) supported. Can you help
Nothing here: http://www.motherboards.org/mobot/motherboard … huttle/HOT-555/ 🙁
Nothing on VOGONS driver library too...

https://www.shuttle.eu/_archive/older/de/555_faq.htm

Manual in german is: "Handbuch"

Thank you for answer, but please read my post, I found this link in german. I'm looking for ENGLISH Manual

Are the differences between the versions that big? Under the link I can find
Englisches Handbuch HOT-555 Ver 1.4x (PDF, 676kB)
Englisches Handbuch HOT-555A Ver 3.0 (PDF, 1334kB)
Those links are admittedly dead, but by searching the filenames you can find a mirror.
You could also compare these to the German 1.5x manual, this should be easy enough even if you don't know German. Google Translate should be able to help you if in doubt.

keropi wrote:

Not exactly hardware but I just grabbed the Roland LAPC-I & MCB-1 and CM-32L service manuals.
They seem to be normal A4 pages so they will get the scan-and-share treatment 😁

Awesome! You da man!

Went to a local computer recycling service today, as they also sell parts that are still good. Ended up with some nice goodies.

First up was a Diamond Monster 3D II. Only has 8MB instead of 12MB like my other two STB Voodoo 2s have, but I couldn't just leave this card there. It was in such good condition too and works flawlessly.

The second thing I grabbed was this card that has an Aureal Vortex chip on it made by Turtle Beach. Chip reads AU8820B2. Tested this with the Half-Life demo and it sounds amazing. Also tried with Star Trek: Elite Force, and it seems to be kinda awkward there, losing low pitched sounds most of the time, and also caused system to warm boot (!), so I'm not sure what's going on there. Overall, the sound quality is very good. I may leave that in my system instead of my AudioPCI.

Now, for the question part of this. There were some other cards there that caught my eye, but I'm not sure if I should grab them or not (they're dirt cheap).

First up is a Creative Sound Blaster Live! with model number CT4830. What I found interesting with this card is, well, you can see for yourself. (images are huge so I'll just link to them)
http://i.imgur.com/IwuEttO.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/bnODdGb.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/ymPobBp.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/qi0aOqV.jpg?1
It's got some attachment PCB that I've never seen before. Looks like it says Hoontech Co., LTD on the top. I don't know what this is, or if it's something I should grab.

There was also some other Sound Blaster Live! cards. One was CT4780, another was SB0200. Also found a CT2940 (SB16 I believe) and a CT4170 (Vibra). Not sure if any of these are worth me grabbing. Is there something special about them in particular?

And there was also an old keyboard there named Micro 2000. I was hoping it may have Model M key switches, but from what I've heard from someone, they probably don't. It's a nice keyboard too, still in its box and plastic wrap. I'm assuming it's just another generic keyboard as there's nothing about it online that I can find. I'll probably just skip it.

Does retro software count in this thread?

Finally, after 18 years! Back when I was a kid my Dad bought this game, I played it and got as far as this bit; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0mMtSKoe48

My Dad could not beat the game and sold it, I have never seen another copy anywhere. I realize now the game is probably terrible, but there's no way I'm letting it go, I MUST play the rest of the game. I wish it was here NOW! But hey, I've waited this many years, I guess I can wait another week.

It was cheap too.

I got a large haul of 'junk' shipped to me for almost free. Originaly I wanted to buy the K6-2's, but he said 'he had some more'.

'Modern' CPU's:

Asus P/I-P55TP4XE

Unknown Socket 7 board with Pentium 166:

Abit AB-PT5

2x Elitegroup K7S5A. 1 has visually bad caps, other seems okay but who knows?

Asus C-P2T PC133. Terminator for dual slot 1 board I believe. If anyone needs it please let me know, I'll send it to you for shipping costs.

Network cards

Highpoint IDE controller. ATA66 of 100? Need to look it up.

Pentium II 350MHz Slot 1

K6-2's

Memory. A lot. Drifting throught the box. Lots a scratches.

TV Card

Cirrus Logic ISA video card

This one is not for the faint of heart. 486 DX/2 66MHz (ST). I'll give it a try.

Album is here: http://imgur.com/a/amT2v

HighTreason wrote:

Does retro software count in this thread?

No, it doesn't. There is a own thread for that.

HighTreason wrote:

Does retro software count in this thread? […]
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Does retro software count in this thread?

Finally, after 18 years! Back when I was a kid my Dad bought this game, I played it and got as far as this bit; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0mMtSKoe48

My Dad could not beat the game and sold it, I have never seen another copy anywhere. I realize now the game is probably terrible, but there's no way I'm letting it go, I MUST play the rest of the game. I wish it was here NOW! But hey, I've waited this many years, I guess I can wait another week.

It was cheap too.

Love this game. It's not terrible, but it certainly has a lot of issues. A lot of the puzzles make no sense and aren't really integrated with the story. Voice acting is rather hilarious. On the other hand, it is pretty imaginative and certainly one of the more memorable games of its era for me. I think it's the first adventure game to have a full 360" panoramic camera, which was really impressive in 1997.

Some random stuff...

GF FX 5200 128MB / 128bit.... SB Live

GF FX 5200 128MB / 64bit (manuactured in 50th week of 2009!)..... GF 6200 256MB / 64bit

2009? Why on earth would anyone be making FX cards that late?

Asus video+sound for PCI+asus mediabus. S3 Vision 868 and Vibra16s (with external yamaha ymf262-m)
.

MediaVision Pro AudioSpectrum
.

IBM Music Feature Card (IMFC)
.

easy_john wrote:

Asus video+sound for PCI+asus mediabus. S3 Vision 868 and Vibra16s (with external yamaha ymf262-m) http://kawai.spb.ru/photo/d/1 […]
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Asus video+sound for PCI+asus mediabus. S3 Vision 868 and Vibra16s (with external yamaha ymf262-m)
.

Whoa, cool. I just got an Asus board with the Mediabus connector (just a few posts up). I like 'weird' combo cards like those 😀

Cyrix200+ wrote:

easy_john wrote:

Asus video+sound for PCI+asus mediabus. S3 Vision 868 and Vibra16s (with external yamaha ymf262-m) http://kawai.spb.ru/photo/d/1 […]
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Asus video+sound for PCI+asus mediabus. S3 Vision 868 and Vibra16s (with external yamaha ymf262-m)
.

Whoa, cool. I just got an Asus board with the Mediabus connector (just a few posts up). I like 'weird' combo cards like those 😀

Is that what that weird pci combo slot is? I have a socket 7 Acer machine with the same slot and have always wondered what it was!

ODwilly wrote:

Is that what that weird pci combo slot is? I have a socket 7 Acer machine with the same slot and have always wondered what it was!

Need a photo to be sure. Afaik acer don't make a mobo with mediabus, so it may be something else.

ODwilly wrote:

Cyrix200+ wrote:

easy_john wrote:

Asus video+sound for PCI+asus mediabus. S3 Vision 868 and Vibra16s (with external yamaha ymf262-m)
<snip image>.

Whoa, cool. I just got an Asus board with the Mediabus connector (just a few posts up). I like 'weird' combo cards like those 😀

Is that what that weird pci combo slot is? I have a socket 7 Acer machine with the same slot and have always wondered what it was!

Yes, it was a proprietary Asus connection where Asus tried to combo a lot of different card types together and they only worked on asus motherboards. Some I've seen in the wild: sound + video, LAN + sound, Lan + sound + video, etc. I dunno what else they released. And I don't think they published specs on the port or bus either. But it was an asus only thing. And only for socket 7 era motherboards, they dropped it with later motherboards.

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Unknown Socket 7 board with Pentium 166: http://i.imgur.com/YbGLi7Zl.jpg?1 […]
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Unknown Socket 7 board with Pentium 166:

That looks like a cross between a Tekram P5T30 and a Aopen / Jetway J-656C - IDE connectors are in the same place as on the Jetway and jumper layout is nearly identical to the Tekram. The only difference between it and the Jetway is the presence of the SD-RAM slot - and the Tekram has 4 PCI slots.

By overall layout and PCB color I'd say it's an OEM Tekram board.

Unrelated, I'm getting another lot delivered next week witch contains some socket 7 boards witch are of almost of no use to me - but if I don't take them, they'll be scrapped... 🙁

I'm keeping the I/O cards - all of them - the 16MHz 286 board (with what looks like a co-processor???), the memory modules, the Chips ISA video card and of course the Creative Voodoo 2.

The question is - are any of the socket 7 boards in the pictures below worth saving? I spotted a Biostar board (one of my favorite brands) with the Intel chipset and a PS/2 port under the AT keyboard connector - but I don't like the fact that it has a Dallas RTC with a built in battery - I might keep that... The ATX Socket 7 board also looks interesting since it has those big PCI slots (and I have a SCSI card that fits it) - but it looks pretty damaged (nothing I can't fix tough). What about the rest? would you guys get any of them?