The Matrox Mystique 220 (MY220P/4N) I bought arrived today.

This is replacing a S3 Virge/DX in my new Socket 7 build. With some of the posts I had read discussing Matrox vs S3 cards, I was expecting a little bit more of a "Wow!" factor, but ... well, I'm kind of "meh" on the difference. Feels like a bit of an over-hyped card to me. 😜 The colours do look a little bit nicer with the Matrox... but frankly now seeing the difference for myself, the S3 Virge I was using didn't look bad at all.

At any rate, I will keep the Matrox in my build going forward as I do see a tiny bit of a difference. I won't be using this machine to play any of the known problematic games, so no worries there.

Bought a Linksys Business Network Attached Storage RAID unit, model number NSS6000 at a thrift store for $7.49 + tax (looked new and originally $14.99), but lacks the hard drive enclosures. Going to measure the length of the bays and get 4 new enclosures and insert hard drives (or SSDs for faster response times) to create a NAS for backing up important data from every system in my house in case the drives inside every system we have goes dead.

Also planning on replacing the fan with a quieter 12dBA fan (I replaced the boisterous fan in my Cisco Catalyst 2950 48-port switch with a much quieter fan and I love it).

I've been buying cheap lots of hardware here and there lately when I see a card in there that I figure is a 3dfx; this time I came across something interesting. It's the fourth AGP 3000 in my collection (fifth actually, I sold off one at some point) but it also comes with the most well executed fan mod on a Voodoo 3 that I have seen. I'm certainly keeping that fan on.

I also bought 3 hard drives: 1 Quantum Pioneer 2.1GB, 1 Quantum Fireball 4.3GB and 1 Western Digital Caviar 4.3GB. They are untested, and I don't have high hopes, but got them for 5 bucks a piece so no complaints here.

Refering to the previous inquiries, I'm adding photos of the demanded cards for better inspection.

I would also need a little help: can someone please direct me where to find DOS drivers for Creative Sound Blaster CT 2600; you can also PM me.

appiah4 wrote:

... 1 Quantum Pioneer 2.1GB ...

Still the nicest-looking HDD I've ever seen. Noticeably slower in use than Fireballs, though (which makes sense, given it was Quantum's budget offering before the Fireball TM and lct, and spins at 4500RPM).

Protip: don't be alarmed if it produces a strange buzzing noise at startup; all two of these that I've found (both 100% working) do this, and it seems to be normal for them.

Technically I got most of this for free, but I can't seem to find the other thread and I did pay for one thing.

My friend gave me a bunch of old-ish parts that he didn't want anymore. I say old-ish because the oldest are from the late 90s and the newest from maybe 2010.

In approximate row/column order:

• Radeon VE
• 2-port SATA RAID controller, PCIe (I think it's a 3ware)
• 8-port SATA (or SAS?) RAID controller, PCI-X
• D-Link Wireless-N PCI card
• SCSI RAID controller, PCI-X (I think this one is also 3ware)
• D-Link PCI gigabit ethernet (missing bracket)
• D-Link Wireless-G PCI card
• Hauppage WinTV (with driver disc, IR blaster, remote)
• Another PCI ethernet card, I think 10/100
• USB2 and Firewire PCI card (VIA chipset)
• Matrox G400 DualHead

Other bits, not pictured:

• A probably-working 9800GTX (although I gave it to him in the first place)
• Two LGA771 Xeons of some description
• A Pentium G1610 (Ivy Bridge)
• Two mPGA478 processors of some description (P4 or Celeron)
• A mobile Athlon
• An Athlon 64 (939 I think)
• H57H-AM2 LGA1156 motherboard (OEM)
• IPIBL-LA LGA775 motherboard with CPU (OEM manufactured by ASUS)
• Some random SDRAM

I also asked him if he had any power supplies. This is the guy that sold me the XFX 650W I ended up not using, and I know he had some other big ones, but he also had a 380W Antec Earthwatts. As I understand it, this is a decent (but not amazing) power supply, with a very pleasing green finish that looks great in person. It was $10.

XCVG wrote:

old parts.jpg

Mmmmm.... G400. Sweet. 😜

I picked these up at a computer/electronics recycle center that I normally stop by once a week to see what they have. Lately, all they seem to be getting is P4 and newer systems and parts so when I saw these I was happily surprised.

Tyan S1662D: The motherboard seems to never have been used. There was no dust on it and it has that new electronics smell to it. I have couple of PPro 200's + VRM's some where in my storage closet that I now must find.

BusLogic BT-958D HVD SCSI Controller (I actually have a few HVD SCSI drives that are currently not being used)

Genoa Audio Blitz Stereo 16+ Audio Card

Creamw@re Audio Card: I don't know what model this is but one site has this listed as a CutMaster Pro, another has it as a TripleDAT.

The first photo shows error 404. Apparently, the image was removed after a certain time period (yes, that's an option) or an incorrect link was entered.

Have a few more cards on the way.

Maxtor (Promise PCI SATA 150/IDE controller)

This lot of cards. The interesting ones to me are the two in the upper right hand corner. The top has a wavetable daughterboard and the one below it is I think Crystal based with onboard Crystal wavetable.
Then the sound card in the middle line right above the bottom video card is a Yamaha YMF-724 based card I think.. with PC-PCI/SBLINK header.
Yeah, the pic is really, really bad, but even the closer ones were not much better at all.
I had been watching this lot for a while and the seller finally lowered the price enough for me to bite.

My latest restore. Teardown on this system was unpleasant to put it mildly, but managed to get the 20MB MFM HD working nicely. The exterior has minor wear, but the internals look factory new. Gentleman I bought this from said it was a cancelled order from decades ago and was only used lightly. The MFM drive looks factory new and no bad sectors which is unusual for a MFM drive. All original docs and software came with it and thank goodness, since this system has more dip switches than a jet airplane control panel. You can even adjust how the monochrome LCD panel interprets color via dip switches. It also accepts an external CGA or EGA monitor via a switch on the side.

Specs:

ZIF socket 286 10 MHz (switchable to 8MHz via keyboard command CTRL-ALT-minus key on numeric keypad)
640K RAM (expandable to 4.6MB via expansion card)
NEC 20MB MFM HDD
720K floppy drive

fixed

You should definitely dump these old floppy disks for whoever may have this computer loose !

oeuvre wrote:

fixed

My deepest apologies. I have corrected the error in my ways.

Deksor wrote:

You should definitely dump these old floppy disks for whoever may have this computer loose !

You're right. Considering you can't access the CMOS settings without the NEC setup disk. Here ya go. The entire disk set that comes with the system.

liqmat wrote:

oeuvre wrote:

fixed

My deepest apologies. I have corrected the error in my ways.

NEC Powerskull.JPG

where is the forum's like button!!!!

Skeletor took it away.

liqmat wrote:

oeuvre wrote:

fixed

My deepest apologies. I have corrected the error in my ways.

NEC Powerskull.JPG

amazing! now it has been blessed

Look at the condition of the beauty! Is that an LCD monitor with a 286? Sorta reminds me of this Compaq "portable" suitcase system I had with an 8088, although it had a mini CRT.

Deksor wrote:

You should definitely dump these old floppy disks for whoever may have this computer loose !

One piece of the this system's puzzle are the system disks, but the other is the enormous amount of dip switches on the back of this system. Here are 300dpi scans from the manual of all the dip switch settings. Essential if you want to set this system up properly. I was going to convert it to a PDF, but decided to leave them as individual JPGs which is more useful for posting single pages. Cheers.

UPDATE 09/07/2018: Since I have donated this machine to a select museum I decided to archive the entire Owner's Guide for this system and I also found an addendum to page 45 which contains changes to some of the DIP switch settings. Thanks to vcfed.org member modem7 for converting all of my scans into PDF format and submitting it to minuszerodegrees.net. Here is the link:

minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/NEC/NEC%20 ... 0NOV87.pdf