Put on your thinking caps everyone! I have 2 video cards, which both arrived today as shown in the pictures below.

A - ATI Radeon 8500LE - The seller shipped it in a thin-padded bubble envelope with no anti-static wrap and no additional protection. The card was also filthy - like a laser jet printer cartridge exploded over most it (particularly within and around the heatsink/fan). The photo shown was after cleanup - there was no way I was putting this card as it was into any of my motherboards. Arrived from California.

B- Elsa GLoria II Pro - The seller shipped it double-boxed, the outer box was also reinforced with additional cardboard, anti-static wrap, and bubble-wrap; PLUS additional newspaper protection covered in tasty news, food, and bicycle sales. They even markered in an arrow to tell me which way to pull the tape sealing the anti-static wrap. One of the cleanest cards I have ever received. No maintenance was required. Arrived from Germany.

Which card was the stud, and which one was the dud?

I'd say the Radeon 8500. There's no way that thing survived considering the packaging, even if it doesn't use BGA RAM.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-04-29, 21:49:

I'd say the Radeon 8500. There's no way that thing survived considering the packaging, even if it doesn't use BGA RAM.

Ding ding ding ding ding! We have a winner.

The moment I opened it; I was confident it was going to be a disappointment.

Maybe it was laser ink or a similar form of carbon, which is conductive, so giving it copious flushing with a pressurized source, or sticking it in an ultrasonic cleaner for a bit might rejuvenate it, if miracles still happen.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-04-29, 22:14:

Maybe it was laser ink or a similar form of carbon, which is conductive, so giving it copious flushing with a pressurized source, or sticking it in an ultrasonic cleaner for a bit might rejuvenate it, if miracles still happen.

I'll let the seller handle any additional cleaning. I already have a return label. I'm letting it sit overnight and I'll give it one more chance to 'work.' Otherwise, it's out to the mailbox in the same packing in which it was received.

Meatball wrote on 2022-04-29, 21:24:

Put on your thinking caps everyone! I have 2 video cards, which both arrived today as shown in the pictures below. […]
Show full quote

Put on your thinking caps everyone! I have 2 video cards, which both arrived today as shown in the pictures below.

A - ATI Radeon 8500LE - The seller shipped it in a thin-padded bubble envelope with no anti-static wrap and no additional protection. The card was also filthy - like a laser jet printer cartridge exploded over most it (particularly within and around the heatsink/fan). The photo shown was after cleanup - there was no way I was putting this card as it was into any of my motherboards. Arrived from California.

B- Elsa GLoria II Pro - The seller shipped it double-boxed, the outer box was also reinforced with additional cardboard, anti-static wrap, and bubble-wrap; PLUS additional newspaper protection covered in tasty news, food, and bicycle sales. They even markered in an arrow to tell me which way to pull the tape sealing the anti-static wrap. One of the cleanest cards I have ever received. No maintenance was required. Arrived from Germany.

Which card was the stud, and which one was the dud?

Well, if you ask like that, I fear for the ELSA.

I imagine there was some kind of miscalculation with that card. I happened about a stack of half a dozen NOS that just lay in some storage. Maybe they produced to many or to few people would learn about AGP pro and get one. Your's maybe unused, can you tell by squinting at the connector?
(I just bought a CUSL2 for mine!)

Is it DOA? But, at least now you know where you can find really shitty coffee for € 3.99 a pound?

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-29, 22:33:

Well, if you ask like that, I fear for the ELSA. […]
Show full quote

Meatball wrote on 2022-04-29, 21:24:

Put on your thinking caps everyone! I have 2 video cards, which both arrived today as shown in the pictures below. […]
Show full quote

Put on your thinking caps everyone! I have 2 video cards, which both arrived today as shown in the pictures below.

A - ATI Radeon 8500LE - The seller shipped it in a thin-padded bubble envelope with no anti-static wrap and no additional protection. The card was also filthy - like a laser jet printer cartridge exploded over most it (particularly within and around the heatsink/fan). The photo shown was after cleanup - there was no way I was putting this card as it was into any of my motherboards. Arrived from California.

B- Elsa GLoria II Pro - The seller shipped it double-boxed, the outer box was also reinforced with additional cardboard, anti-static wrap, and bubble-wrap; PLUS additional newspaper protection covered in tasty news, food, and bicycle sales. They even markered in an arrow to tell me which way to pull the tape sealing the anti-static wrap. One of the cleanest cards I have ever received. No maintenance was required. Arrived from Germany.

Which card was the stud, and which one was the dud?

Well, if you ask like that, I fear for the ELSA.

I imagine there was some kind of miscalculation with that card. I happened about a stack of half a dozen NOS that just lay in some storage. Maybe they produced to many or to few people would learn about AGP pro and get one. Your's maybe unused, can you tell by squinting at the connector?

Is it DOA? But, at least now you know where you can find really shitty coffee for € 3.99 a pound?

You know what, it probably is unused... if not hardly used at all upon closer inspection. The ELSA works great; it's the Radeon which is dead.

You mean this coffee? (attached).

We keep a stash of Jacob's around in case the sun burns out.

Meatball wrote on 2022-04-29, 22:45:

You know what, it probably is unused... if not hardly used at all upon closer inspection. […]
Show full quote

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-29, 22:33:

Well, if you ask like that, I fear for the ELSA. […]
Show full quote

Meatball wrote on 2022-04-29, 21:24:

Put on your thinking caps everyone! I have 2 video cards, which both arrived today as shown in the pictures below. […]
Show full quote

Put on your thinking caps everyone! I have 2 video cards, which both arrived today as shown in the pictures below.

A - ATI Radeon 8500LE - The seller shipped it in a thin-padded bubble envelope with no anti-static wrap and no additional protection. The card was also filthy - like a laser jet printer cartridge exploded over most it (particularly within and around the heatsink/fan). The photo shown was after cleanup - there was no way I was putting this card as it was into any of my motherboards. Arrived from California.

B- Elsa GLoria II Pro - The seller shipped it double-boxed, the outer box was also reinforced with additional cardboard, anti-static wrap, and bubble-wrap; PLUS additional newspaper protection covered in tasty news, food, and bicycle sales. They even markered in an arrow to tell me which way to pull the tape sealing the anti-static wrap. One of the cleanest cards I have ever received. No maintenance was required. Arrived from Germany.

Which card was the stud, and which one was the dud?

Well, if you ask like that, I fear for the ELSA.

I imagine there was some kind of miscalculation with that card. I happened about a stack of half a dozen NOS that just lay in some storage. Maybe they produced to many or to few people would learn about AGP pro and get one. Your's maybe unused, can you tell by squinting at the connector?

Is it DOA? But, at least now you know where you can find really shitty coffee for € 3.99 a pound?

You know what, it probably is unused... if not hardly used at all upon closer inspection.

You mean this coffee? (attached).

We keep a stash of Jacob's around in case the sun burns out.

I was just marveling at the Edeka ad - they found some actual use for it, amazing.
The Gloria II pro is an imposing card, I'd have packed it extra nice, myself.

Well, the only thing worse than real Jacobs Dröhnung might be Jacobs Dröhnung instant, although I don't know whether it's any worse than Nescafe.
As a doom's day prep, very good, if you loose the lid, ants and roaches won't touch it! 😜

Meatball wrote on 2022-04-29, 17:45:

I wasn't aware there was anything faster than PC3200 back in the day, also, since I wasn't much of an overclocker. I think I only put together 1 DDR400 machine, and that was it. Some board based on Gigabyte, which I can't recall.

I remember RAM speeds going up to at least 4000-4400 back then, but I only ran 3200 because it was pretty much the standard, and by then I didn't care a whole lot about overclocking the RAM, just ran it at speed.

I had an issue with RAM speed when I built my first Socket 754 Athlon 64 machine around 2005. It never was stable and I ended up swapping out the motherboard at some point. I think the issue had to do with the memory timings when using more than two sticks or something. I ended up only using two but it was still somewhat unstable.

The memory was a budget Patriot brand. Their customer service was actually excellent and they told me that it might be an issue with the quality of the memory, and that some motherboards work better with Micron chips. So they did an RMA and sent me new sticks with Micron chips on it. The system was still unstable, so it wasn't the memory. I didn't have much experience building computers at that point and couldn't troubleshoot it any further other than removing one of the memory sticks.

Finally found a reasonably priced ASUS CUSL2 with AGP pro for my ELSA Gloria II pro. (Some auction sniping may have occured.)
GHz Coppermine?
Should be fun to see if or how Win98 handles the IGP alongside AGP graphics. The AD1881 sound is probably useless for DOS, I'd have preferred the version without it, but well...

Also, I never knew I needed such a thing, but one buck on ebay begged to differ. The Aten 4 Port Video Splitter. A VGA "hub" that will distribute any VGA input onto four parallel monitors, amplified. New in sealed box and built like a tank. What has become of analogue video?

Same deal, the Top Gun Fox 2 joystick. Somehow I learned back then that Thrustmaster was the premium brand for those things, but this stick's build quality strongly suggests the commies won. No comparison with the Logitech Wingman, but they found game port plugs with screws, I give them that. Maybe I'll test it while other people go watch that silly new movie?

LCDs killed analog video. Changing resolutions causes the picture to shfit, changing resolutions is slow, blurry or chunky upscaling, and far less flexibility with resolutions and refresh rates (out of sync errors).

There are certainly a lot of advantages to using an LCD. But analog video is not one of them.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-04-30, 13:41:

LCDs killed analog video. Changing resolutions causes the picture to shfit, changing resolutions is slow, blurry or chunky upscaling, and far less flexibility with resolutions and refresh rates (out of sync errors).

There are certainly a lot of advantages to using an LCD. But analog video is not one of them.

Was more of a rhetorical question but actually, digitalization in general killed it. VGA died harder than other applications.
Up until well into the miniDV era, people would invest silly amounts of money into S-video (sometimes mislabeled as S-VHS) based home video gear.
I have a small video mixer, also a one Euro ebay deal.
All that died a quick death as soon as IEEE1394 etc. caught on, it seems.

It's too bad, because it was my experience that VGA was incredibly robust and "just worked". Until LCDs came around, that is.

The analog technology for drawing to the screen is just wholely incompatible with the fixed PPI of LCDs.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-04-30, 13:41:

LCDs killed analog video. Changing resolutions causes the picture to shfit, changing resolutions is slow, blurry or chunky upscaling, and far less flexibility with resolutions and refresh rates (out of sync errors).

There are certainly a lot of advantages to using an LCD. But analog video is not one of them.

Actually it was more the high bandwidth requirements and interference that followed which caused the stray away from analog
the changing resolutions causing pictures to shift, from my own experience was mostly due to annoying video card manufacturers like ATI which strayed from the standards and just wanted to do their own thing, causing these annoying picture shifts when changing resolutions.
and analog has far more flexibility with resolutions and refresh rates than any lcd, since with lcd you are factually stuck at one resolution, any other resolution will suffer on lcd.
While with analog, you've got a vertical & horizontal frequency range, combined with a max bandwidth and any resolution/refresh which falls in that range&bandwidth is possible.

Some LCDs have a pretty good built in scaler.

And there are also external scaler boxes. The good ones aren't cheap and most of the best ones are no longer manufactured. I've got a couple of the TVOne scalers that allow you to adjust every single parameter possible and they also have a ton of included settings.

Programming is done with a utility program.

For some reason I felt compelled to buy this server:

It's a Compaq ProLiant ML350 G2 and doesn't seem to be working but I didn't do much debugging. It powers on, fans spin and LEDs light up but nothing shows on screen. This is the loudest and heaviest computer I have ever worked with! Even if it doesn't work there are some interesting components that can be salvaged like the Pentium III-S 1,26GHz CPU and 4x SCSI 18,2GB 10K HDDs.

Also got this nice Riva TNT from Asus, in working order:

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-04-30, 13:41:

LCDs killed analog video. Changing resolutions causes the picture to shfit, changing resolutions is slow, blurry or chunky upscaling, and far less flexibility with resolutions and refresh rates (out of sync errors).

There are certainly a lot of advantages to using an LCD. But analog video is not one of them.

Another "disadvantage" for using an LCD (at least on desktop computers) are the borders displayed on CRT monitors which barely gets mentioned. That doesn't matter nowdays but said borders can be noticed with older games using 8-bit color mode or less and are affected by the color palette even if they aren't part of the screen pixels.

This can be seen with Commander Keen games where the borders are colored cyan, also in Wolf3D and DOOM when the screen is getting flashed and Crystal Caves where the border color is determined whether the all the crystals in the level were collected (green) or not (red).

devius wrote on 2022-04-30, 17:38:

For some reason I felt compelled to buy this server: […]
Show full quote

For some reason I felt compelled to buy this server:

IMG_20220430_164746.jpg
IMG_20220430_164834.jpg

It's a Compaq ProLiant ML350 G2 and doesn't seem to be working but I didn't do much debugging. It powers on, fans spin and LEDs light up but nothing shows on screen. This is the loudest and heaviest computer I have ever worked with! Even if it doesn't work there are some interesting components that can be salvaged like the Pentium III-S 1,26GHz CPU and 4x SCSI 18,2GB 10K HDDs.

Also got this nice Riva TNT from Asus, in working order:

IMG_20220430_175839_edit_83230901875319.jpg

Give the server sometime once you turn it on. It can take a good few minutes before you get an image. I have a HP Proliant Ml350 G6 and that can take 3ish minutes on a cold boot before I get an image servers tend to do alot of health checks when first powers up before it gets to the post process.

cyclone3d wrote on 2022-04-29, 20:51:

I wish I could find some DDR500 sticks for not insane prices.

Depends on your definition of insane ? 😅

You can actually get some 550mhz ones, though for more than I am willing to pay (used to pay max $10-20 for these when I was 'collecting' them):

= 78euros/best offer(!) - item number 134088942929
Not that insane I think for such rare things, but certainly not cheap by any means.

If you're happy with only 500mhz though, you have this beautiful set for only £25:

item number 324926834984