root42 wrote:

Thanks to keropi I've got this nice thing here in the mail:

650ED1CD-F076-47E3-AB0E-9D0E47573779.jpeg

You can expect a video reviewing it in the next week or so. Looking forward to hooking up my SC55 to it!

since i' m too stupid to find this myself - what does the zilog do on the board? iirc a cpu of comparable power could not pull off midi in most cases;
and what is that intelligent midi thing? does it magically fix all intelligent mode troubles?

The whole board is just a specialized Micro controller. The Z80 processor was INCREDIBLY cheap and easy to use. It is right up there with the 6502 and 8051. Rather than make a custom micro chip, you could slap a z80 on a board with a bit of ram/rom and have it do all the work.

It is just a small cpu whose whole purpose in life is to watch the isa bus, take any data given to it, and translate that to midi signals. This was a VERY common thing to do. Quite a few early scsi cards did the same thing. including some top-shelf serial/parallel cards. Even some very early Ethernet cards have them. But that was short lived.

in this case this is a Z8 MCU , not a full Z80 cpu. It does stuff that it needs to do very quick and it's clocked at 12mhz.
The card is compatible 100% with the Roland "intelligent mode" functions, the firmware is just a port to the Z8 mcu from Roland's Hitachi (iirc) MCU so you don't need any drivers or other software to run the software that requires it

Today's prize is the Intel TC430HX motherboard with all the optional extras integrated:

• Intel 430HX chipset for Socket 7 processors
• Powerful S3 Virge DX integrated PCI graphics with 2MB of EDO memory
• Supports the latest Intel Pentium 233MHz MMX processor
• 512KB of L2 Cache integrated
• SRS 3D Yamaha OPL3-SA audio with OPL4 WaveTable
• The latest ATX format motherboard design with Universal Serial Bus ports

Installing Windows 98SE on this has been great - everything just works out of the box, all the drivers are already there and there's OPL3 or OPL4 options selectable for MIDI playback. The seller was selling it as broken, which it is if you plug the jumpers in like the picture, but it works when they're installed where the manual says they go 😁

I guess this would be good to pair with the Voodoo 1, but it's working pretty well with nothing plugged in as well (except when the processor gets busy the screen gets wavey because that's what happens when you put the IGP that far away from the port and run it past the cache chips)

Thermalwrong wrote:

Today's prize is the Intel TC430HX motherboard with all the optional extras integrated: […]
Show full quote

Today's prize is the Intel TC430HX motherboard with all the optional extras integrated:

tc430hx.jpg

• Intel 430HX chipset for Socket 7 processors
• Powerful S3 Virge DX integrated PCI graphics with 2MB of EDO memory
• Supports the latest Intel Pentium 233MHz MMX processor
• 512KB of L2 Cache integrated
• SRS 3D Yamaha OPL3-SA audio with OPL4 WaveTable
• The latest ATX format motherboard design with Universal Serial Bus ports

Installing Windows 98SE on this has been great - everything just works out of the box, all the drivers are already there and there's OPL3 or OPL4 options selectable for MIDI playback. The seller was selling it as broken, which it is if you plug the jumpers in like the picture, but it works when they're installed where the manual says they go 😁

I guess this would be good to pair with the Voodoo 1, but it's working pretty well with nothing plugged in as well (except when the processor gets busy the screen gets wavey because that's what happens when you put the IGP that far away from the port and run it past the cache chips)

Man that's a beauty of a board! Something about ATX socket 7 boards. Onboard OPL 3 & 4 and 3 isa slots!! That would be perfect for a mega sound card build!

wow that must have been an elite board or something back then, black ss7 mobo? 😮

With all the talk of Cyrix 5x86 CPUs lately, imagine my surprise when somebody stuck up this lot with a 5x86 120.

Also has an Intel 486 DX4 100 which I don't have yet as well as a TI 486DLC-33 and a Cyrix FasMath 40Mhz.

Initial asking price was too much so I put in an offer and it was accepted.. woohoo!

According to the BIOS string, it's a "1.00.xx.DH05 MBD001078 Millennia® LXA/ClientPro® MTA (Tucson P5/TC430HX)", which appears to be one of these:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6TsEAAAAM … ge%20dx&f=false

So not particularly high end, but lucky that it has "integrated wavetable". Sadly, as I'm running it, it's getting less happy and more crashy, so I guess there are some issues to look into after all 😀

keropi wrote:

wow that must have been an elite board or something back then, black ss7 mobo? 😮

Maximum FSB will officially be 66MHz, and PCB colour meant nothing about the "eliteness" of an MB back then. As it's an Intel motherboard, it's likely closer to dark green anyway.

Found two sound cards on my list this past week: (sellers' photos)

Interwave based sound card:

And an Awe64 Gold hiding in this lot:

cyclone3d wrote:

Initial asking price was too much so I put in an offer and it was accepted.. woohoo!

I can tell it was an incredible deal when you're buying them by the pound!

Not from yesterday but the weekend 😀

Got these 3 for 70€ which is pretty good imho.
The Olivetti has had some TLC scrub but due to keyboard error, I can't get it to post further. I think the HD is toast, it squeaks like an old wheel.
I have enough keyboards but this Olivetti doesn't seem to have a classic keyboard connector so any help is appreciated.
The seller also gave me the MS mouse that came with it but it has an parallel or serial adapter attached so I'm guessing the keyboard also needs something like that?
I need to find more info on the screen too. Not sure if it's VGA.

The Tandy should work according to a picture he sent me before but that is on the menu today. First one I've ever had....
Should I ask MS for the cellphone :p?

This also came in:

Not in the picture: an XT psu that has some damage to the switch so I need to look into that.

Traded this + Voodoo3 2000 for my boxed AWE64 Gold

http://www.pixelatedarcade.com/pictures/192

Thallanor wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Initial asking price was too much so I put in an offer and it was accepted.. woohoo!

I can tell it was an incredible deal when you're buying them by the pound!

Heh. Not sure it was an incredible deal, but it was a decent deal considering the Cyrix 5x86 120.

This should complete my attainable high-end socket 3 CPUs anyway.

Intel 486 DX4-100
AMD 5x86 133
Cyrix 5x86 120GP
Intel PODP5V83 (Pentium 83Mhz)

Seeing how beaten those CPUs are, what makes you think the Cyrix even still works?

cyclone3d wrote:

Heh. Not sure it was an incredible deal, but it was a decent deal considering the Cyrix 5x86 120. […]
Show full quote

Heh. Not sure it was an incredible deal, but it was a decent deal considering the Cyrix 5x86 120.

This should complete my attainable high-end socket 3 CPUs anyway.

Intel 486 DX4-100
AMD 5x86 133
Cyrix 5x86 120GP
Intel PODP5V83 (Pentium 83Mhz)

That is cool. I now have a small collection of CPUs but have yet to inventory them properly. The biggest issue that I am starting to run into now is finding heatsinks and fans for older CPUs. An example would be my 486/66 which I just feel more comfortable having a heatsink and fan on. But the socket doesn't have anything to attach to. In this case, I was lucky and a friend gave me a heatsink and fan that actually clips to the edges of the CPU itself. At least as my CPUs get newer, I move onto more standard sockets. 😀

derSammler wrote:

Seeing how beaten those CPUs are, what makes you think the Cyrix even still works?

There are only 3 CPUs (The 2x IT's and the one DLC) in that lot that look like they would not work.. and maybe one of the 486SX chips.

I'm guessing the ones that are physically broken were broken when the dummy was trying to remove the heatsinks for scrapping purposes.

The others all just have bent pins which are easy to fix.

Thallanor wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Heh. Not sure it was an incredible deal, but it was a decent deal considering the Cyrix 5x86 120. […]
Show full quote

Heh. Not sure it was an incredible deal, but it was a decent deal considering the Cyrix 5x86 120.

This should complete my attainable high-end socket 3 CPUs anyway.

Intel 486 DX4-100
AMD 5x86 133
Cyrix 5x86 120GP
Intel PODP5V83 (Pentium 83Mhz)

That is cool. I now have a small collection of CPUs but have yet to inventory them properly. The biggest issue that I am starting to run into now is finding heatsinks and fans for older CPUs. An example would be my 486/66 which I just feel more comfortable having a heatsink and fan on. But the socket doesn't have anything to attach to. In this case, I was lucky and a friend gave me a heatsink and fan that actually clips to the edges of the CPU itself. At least as my CPUs get newer, I move onto more standard sockets. 😀

I know the feeling. Luckily for me I came across a couple different lots of CPU coolers. Even have some brand new ones for socket 3 CPUs.

I wasn't willing to spend the absurd amount that a lot of people try to sell a single cooler for.

Was very happy to see the postman today - three separate purchases arrived together:

- two TEAC 5.25" 1.2MB floppies with 1980s vintage black front. Also a freebie 3.5" FDD and ATAPI ZIP100 drive used as packing material to fill out the box 😁
- an IBM rubber dome keyboard to go with my keyboardless PC330
- an ECS SL486E motherboard with EISA & VLB, if not new, at least in original box with original manual and EISA config disks. Too bad about the soldered Dallas RTC though...

Nice on Dionb

dionb wrote:

Too bad about the soldered Dallas RTC though...

Much better though than a leaking barrel battery.