jheronimus wrote:

Got a free Pentium MMX machine today. The case is kind of dirty and pretty generic anyway, so I'm not gonna post it. However, th […]
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Got a free Pentium MMX machine today. The case is kind of dirty and pretty generic anyway, so I'm not gonna post it. However, the internals are the reason why I got it.

First, a Tseng ET6100:

DSC_1475.JPG

It has two 1,125 MB MDRAM chips for a total of 2,25 MB. It has two empty slots for MoSys chips. I always wanted a Tseng mainly because the name sounds cool and weird to me. 😀 Not sure if there's a practical reason to use this card as I have several Matrox Millenium and S3 Virge cards. The owner claimed that he used this card to play Quake 2 — guess he referred to software mode as there is no sign of a Voodoo card in the system and to my knowledge 3D-capable Tseng never came to market 😀

I can't see the writings on the memory chips, but if they are MD908, than these are 1MB ones and you have 2MB total memory. If you have MD909 than they are 1.25MB ones.

It's a nice card 😉

kixs wrote:

I can't see the writings on the memory chips, but if they are MD908, than these are 1MB ones and you have 2MB total memory. If you have MD909 than they are 1.25MB ones.

It's a nice card 😉

MD908. Oh, thanks! I just got my info from a review I quickly googled, guess that wasn't the whole story 😀

I am new to the forum, but I have been getting back into retrocomputing.. trying to be nostalgic of my 8086 and 386 powered childhood. Unfortunately, finding parts from this era has been easier said than done around where I am for some reason without spending an arm and a leg.. so I fastforwarded a bit to the late 1990s at Pentium/PentiumII era. I have been scrounging computers and parts wherever I can over the last few months.. until today when I hit a bit of a bang-for-the-buck jackpot.

I bought everything on this table for $15.

4x Dell Optiplex 110 Pentium 3 machines
1x Sony Pentium 233 machine
1x Compaq LTE5400 P150 machine w/docking station
Some no name 17" monitor
AOC 15" monitor
USRobotics Courier 56K modem
HP branded multimedia keyboards

I haven't gone through to see what everything has yet, but the LTE Laptop does work, and the Sony is pinned out for 233mhz.

rkrenicki wrote:

I am new to the forum, but I have been getting back into retrocomputing.. trying to be nostalgic of my 8086 and 386 powered chil […]
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I am new to the forum, but I have been getting back into retrocomputing.. trying to be nostalgic of my 8086 and 386 powered childhood. Unfortunately, finding parts from this era has been easier said than done around where I am for some reason without spending an arm and a leg.. so I fastforwarded a bit to the late 1990s at Pentium/PentiumII era. I have been scrounging computers and parts wherever I can over the last few months.. until today when I hit a bit of a bang-for-the-buck jackpot.

I bought everything on this table for $15.

4x Dell Optiplex 110 Pentium 3 machines
1x Sony Pentium 233 machine
1x Compaq LTE5400 P150 machine w/docking station
Some no name 17" monitor
AOC 15" monitor
USRobotics Courier 56K modem
HP branded multimedia keyboards

I haven't gone through to see what everything has yet, but the LTE Laptop does work, and the Sony is pinned out for 233mhz.

Nice haul! I always wanted a USR Courier modem. I just couldn't justify the expense at the time, so I got the USR Sportster instead.

GuyTechie wrote:

Nice haul! I always wanted a USR Courier modem. I just couldn't justify the expense at the time, so I got the USR Sportster instead.

Me too, I always had a little Sportster or internal 3Com modem, but deep down I always wanted a Courier. I really cant say why, perhaps just because it is big and has all the cool red lights. It is not like it is going to be any faster. I have a 8 line analog PBX and a linux based serial to ethernet converter kicking around that I was going to turn into a "dial up ISP", so I can relive the heyday of 56k modems, dialup sound and all. It will go nicely with my Powerbook 180 and this Compaq LTE. I suppose I could fire up the IIGS and iBook G3, but one has wifi, and the other has no real use going online 😉

I just finished testing everything. The 15" monitor works great, the 17" monitor I think may need a re-cap. All of the computers largely work. A few have dead hard drives, but they all boot. The Dells all have P3s, one is a 600, two 667s, and one 733. The Sony is a Pentium 200 w/128mb of ram in 4x32MB SIMMs. The BIOS didnt call it out as MMX, but the hard drive was dead to verify it right away.

I think I will end up parting out most of the Dells, as my real score (in my opinion) was the Sony with its three ISA slots to work with.

The Sony looks like a cool case. AT case?

brostenen wrote:

The Sony looks like a cool case. AT case?

It is ATX. Unfortunately, it is missing the side panel.. otherwise I would use it as my primary case.

This is a bit overdue, but better late than never.

I attended VCFMW 11 two weekends ago. I've been there twice before, but this was my first time vending. All in all it was a wonderful time. I even met a few people I know from a Packard Bell and retro computer Facebook group I often frequent. I wish I could keep attending, but this will likely be my last time there as I will be too busy with university for the next few years.

Of course I bought everything I saw that looked shiny as well. The main thing I was looking for was a working 486/Pentium rig, which didn't happen as nobody had actually brought one to the convention in the first place. Most people there grew up on the 8-bit machines and don't consider PC clones "retro" at all. But I still did find some really nice stuff. So let's get on to it.

• *Apple ImageWriter - $5. Yes, a printer. So what? Well the people on eBay and Craigslist somehow got the idea that these things are worth their weight in gold regardless of condition, so I was having trouble finding a deal on one for a long time. Now I have a "complete" Apple II setup (//e, two Disk II drives, AppleColor Composite Monitor, and ofc ImageWriter). It also came with four NOS ink ribbons. One of these days I'll find an excuse to print out a school assignment with the thing.
  
  *Diamond Monster Sound MX300 (A3D Aureal 2) - $5. Hot damn! Now I can finally see what all the hype is about. It's installed in my Dimension 4100 now. Haven't tested it fully yet, but so far it's making MIDIs sound really nice.
  
  *Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo Banshee AGP - $2. My first 3DFX card! It's not much, and I can't actually get the drivers working with any games at the moment, but it's still cool to finally own a Voodoo without paying up the butt and around the corner.
  
  *Commodore 1702 Monitor - $15. Okay, so probably the most impressive deal of the bunch. The picture looks fantastic for a 32 year old monitor, and there is not a scratch on the screen glass. It is now part of my C64 setup, though I could see this becoming my go-to CRT whenever I need to hook up something real quick to test it or just want a quick game.
  
  *Misc - Microsoft Intellimouse for $5, and a Gravis joystick for free.

Sounds like a great haul, ElementalChaos!

rkrenicki wrote:

Me too, I always had a little Sportster or internal 3Com modem, but deep down I always wanted a Courier. I really cant say why, perhaps just because it is big and has all the cool red lights. It is not like it is going to be any faster. I have a 8 line analog PBX and a linux based serial to ethernet converter kicking around that I was going to turn into a "dial up ISP", so I can relive the heyday of 56k modems, dialup sound and all. It will go nicely with my Powerbook 180 and this Compaq LTE. I suppose I could fire up the IIGS and iBook G3, but one has wifi, and the other has no real use going online 😉

Dial-up server? I did that last weekend: What retro activity did you get up to today? except mine is digital and supports up to V.90 modems and 128K multi-link ISDN. If you want to connect at 56k-ish speeds, then you'll need to go digital too.

I settled for a V.34 Sportster back in the day; it also supported v.34+ 33.6k. The Courier gave you HST, which was not worth the expense. Some people say they get better speeds, but I dubious about those clams. I have a Courier I-modem which looks similar except digital. It has a really satisfying modem sound.

ElementalChaos wrote:

*Commodore 1702 Monitor - $15. Okay, so probably the most impressive deal of the bunch. The picture looks fantastic for a 32 year old monitor, and there is not a scratch on the screen glass. It is now part of my C64 setup, though I could see this becoming my go-to CRT whenever I need to hook up something real quick to test it or just want a quick game.

These monitors are absolutely MAGNIFICENT. I would love to get one of these for my 64.

I've started looking at Craigslist to source computer parts. It's surprising how many people just sit on these parts. The locals just don't want to deal with shipping. Fine by me, there's a lot of good stuff, and I'll post my finds here!

Couriers tend to be more reliable under different line conditions - for dialing your ISP it might not be worth it, but if you were doing lots of commercial data transfer it was. Additionally, there were lots of different types of Sportster, each with subtle differences in command set and cables. The number of Courier configurations were much fewer, and they had good reasons for changing them at the times (early versions of Couriers were not flashable to support X2 or V.90, but later versions were).

There were also, if I remember correctly, a few particularly technical bits of the AT command set the Courier had that the Sportster did not, but it's been so long since I've needed to manually create modem initialisation strings I can't remember the differences.

FuzzyLogic wrote:

rkrenicki wrote:

Me too, I always had a little Sportster or internal 3Com modem, but deep down I always wanted a Courier. I really cant say why, perhaps just because it is big and has all the cool red lights. It is not like it is going to be any faster. I have a 8 line analog PBX and a linux based serial to ethernet converter kicking around that I was going to turn into a "dial up ISP", so I can relive the heyday of 56k modems, dialup sound and all. It will go nicely with my Powerbook 180 and this Compaq LTE. I suppose I could fire up the IIGS and iBook G3, but one has wifi, and the other has no real use going online 😉

Dial-up server? I did that last weekend: What retro activity did you get up to today? except mine is digital and supports up to V.90 modems and 128K multi-link ISDN. If you want to connect at 56k-ish speeds, then you'll need to go digital too.

I settled for a V.34 Sportster back in the day; it also supported v.34+ 33.6k. The Courier gave you HST, which was not worth the expense. Some people say they get better speeds, but I dubious about those clams. I have a Courier I-modem which looks similar except digital. It has a really satisfying modem sound.

I would love to do something like that, but I do not have access to a PRI at home 😉 33.6k in each direction will be fine once I get around to setting it all up. I will make a thread once its done.

Oh, look, another MS SideWinder 3D Pro! Now I have two!

But this one's a little different, you see...

So far, it seems to work - as a relative mouse, anyway. Joystick mode does nothing, I didn't get a driver CD, and search engines are completely useless for digging up driver CD images or anything for this stick.

Looks like all that X-Wing/TIE Fighter fun time is gonna have to wait a bit longer.

Got another PC today for about 15 USD.

Now, my main reason for getting it was the case — I love desktop AT cases and I know how hard are they to come by. 15 bucks is an okay price for something like this. However, it looked so wonderfully weird and it originally came with ~1990 Samsung SyncMaster 3 that I kind of hoped that it would be a late 486. Also, the "multimedia" and the integrated speakers made me wonder if it would have some interesting sound card. Naturally, the owner didn't know the specs.

Well, it was neither. It's a pretty average Pentium machine. The sound card is a Sound Blaster CT2940 (non-OPL3), of which I now have three.

However, the cool thing is, I have another desktop AT system that uses the same Lucky Star LS-P54CE motherboard, but it has an earlier revision that did not support the MMX. This one, on the other hand, comes with a 166 MMX.

Nice find! I can't even find an empty AT case for that price. I'm certainly not paying eBay prices of over $100 shipped! I need a few for 386, 486 and Pentium builds.

I started stripping down some excess computers I had snagged from a dumpster recently, and I stumbled across a real oddity.

This is a 440BX based Socket 370 board with 6 ISA slots on it! It has on-board Chips 69000 video as well. It is certainly unusual, but I don't know what to do with it..

rkrenicki wrote:

I started stripping down some excess computers I had snagged from a dumpster recently, and I stumbled across a real oddity. http […]
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I started stripping down some excess computers I had snagged from a dumpster recently, and I stumbled across a real oddity.

This is a 440BX based Socket 370 board with 6 ISA slots on it! It has on-board Chips 69000 video as well. It is certainly unusual, but I don't know what to do with it..

That looks really strange indeed. Something about it, makes me think industrial board.
It might just be a home/office board though.

brostenen wrote:

rkrenicki wrote:

I started stripping down some excess computers I had snagged from a dumpster recently, and I stumbled across a real oddity.

This is a 440BX based Socket 370 board with 6 ISA slots on it! It has on-board Chips 69000 video as well. It is certainly unusual, but I don't know what to do with it..

That looks really strange indeed. Something about it, makes me think industrial board.
It might just be a home/office board though.

I figured it was an ATX Socket 7 board with all of those ISA slots on there.. but boy was I surprised to see that it was Socket 370.

After some googling, It is indeed an Industrial board. http://www.dfi-itox.com/pages/products/mother … b/itox3spec.php

Bought a bunch of Pentium4 chips, all Willamette from 1.3 to 1.8 GHz. I was a few minutes too late to grab a 1.9GHz Willamette ES, it was already gone when I looked. 🙁