rasz_pl wrote on 2022-11-27, 17:48:

I think those are Rambus ram, so not S3, something weird

The only 3D graphics card that I know of that uses RDRAM is the Cirrus Logic Laguna 3D, so maybe that one.

Laguna 3D doesnt do mpeg1/mpeg2 without external decoder

Could be a Chromatic MPact 2 then, which seems to tick all the boxes.

devius wrote on 2022-11-27, 18:36:

Could be a Chromatic MPact 2 then, which seems to tick all the boxes.

Yep, looks like the winner https://vintage3d.org/chromatic.php Fascinating internal design, Rendition Verite like software defined SIMD VLIV engine.
Company co-founded by one of rambus co-founders ewww. Highly proprietary, secretive and lawyer driven business model, destined to fail. Wonder why ATI acquired them. I dont see any sign of technology transfers. For example 1998 ATI Rage 128 fixed function DVD playback acceleration has nothing to do with MPact2 powerful and flexible shader like decoder setup.

Following philscomputerlabs recommendation, bought an ESS pci soundcard online. What arrived was a red PCB Crystal CS4281. As you can tell, I'm not pleased. Anyone have any experience with this sound chip?

Socket3 wrote on 2022-11-27, 09:41:

8 bit seria controller (I think) […]
Show full quote

8 bit seria controller (I think)

Looks to me like one of these ... http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/44041/ … 150-Video-Card/

Hercules/MDA adapter.

edit: BTW love that little board with the SARC chipset, got a DX and cache, hope that cleans up well and POSTs for you, will be an awesome little board, and I'd treasure it as "peak 386" well without getting into all those weird cyrix and TI 486ish ones.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-11-28, 15:01:

Socket3 wrote on 2022-11-27, 09:41:

8 bit seria controller (I think) […]
Show full quote

8 bit seria controller (I think)

Looks to me like one of these ... http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/44041/ … 150-Video-Card/

Hercules/MDA adapter.

Thanks for identifying it - at first look it seemed like a serial controller, should have known a serial card wouldn't have that many ICs on it... Was hoping to use it in my Hyundai Super-16 as an easy way of connecting a standard serial mouse, but I guess I really have to get around to building a D-SUB25 to D-SUB 9 adapter...

It seems the board has a Tseng ET1000-A adapter - it makes for an interesting display piece, as I allready have an ET2000 EGA card as well as the common ET3000 and ET4000AX VGA cards. Maybe I'll build a small display case and put these in it.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-11-28, 15:01:

edit: BTW love that little board with the SARC chipset, got a DX and cache, hope that cleans up well and POSTs for you, will be an awesome little board, and I'd treasure it as "peak 386" well without getting into all those weird cyrix and TI 486ish ones.

That would be awesome. I'll get around to washing and testing the lot this weekend and give her a go.

Added another computer to my collection:

A TI-99/4A. Came in the original box, with all of the original parts and even the original advertisement brochures for software etc. Special offer on some of the newest games if ordered by July 1985 - I think I might have missed the deadline a bit. 🤣

I've never even used 1 of these computers before until today, it's a bit of an oddball system really. I've tried some of the cartridges (command modules) that came with it and loaded some cassette-based TI BASIC games from .WAV files. Can't do much else with it yet until I receive my FlashROM99 cartridge this week, with a 32K sidecar RAM expansion also on the way.

PTherapist wrote on 2022-11-28, 19:03:

Added another computer to my collection: […]
Show full quote

Added another computer to my collection:

ti994a.jpeg

A TI-99/4A. Came in the original box, with all of the original parts and even the original advertisement brochures for software etc. Special offer on some of the newest games if ordered by July 1985 - I think I might have missed the deadline a bit. 🤣

I've never even used 1 of these computers before until today, it's a bit of an oddball system really. I've tried some of the cartridges (command modules) that came with it and loaded some cassette-based TI BASIC games from .WAV files. Can't do much else with it yet until I receive my FlashROM99 cartridge this week, with a 32K sidecar RAM expansion also on the way.

that looks in good condition, a nice addition

i remember thinking how great the keyboard looked back in the day, and that it was a little bit different from the usual offerings of the era

gerry wrote on 2022-11-28, 19:15:

PTherapist wrote on 2022-11-28, 19:03:

Added another computer to my collection: […]
Show full quote

Added another computer to my collection:

ti994a.jpeg

A TI-99/4A. Came in the original box, with all of the original parts and even the original advertisement brochures for software etc. Special offer on some of the newest games if ordered by July 1985 - I think I might have missed the deadline a bit. 🤣

I've never even used 1 of these computers before until today, it's a bit of an oddball system really. I've tried some of the cartridges (command modules) that came with it and loaded some cassette-based TI BASIC games from .WAV files. Can't do much else with it yet until I receive my FlashROM99 cartridge this week, with a 32K sidecar RAM expansion also on the way.

that looks in good condition, a nice addition

i remember thinking how great the keyboard looked back in the day, and that it was a little bit different from the usual offerings of the era

Texas Instruments machines are like my old Timex 2086, not much Sofware was made for it so unless you like to create stuff, they tend to get little use.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-11-28, 18:30:

It seems the board has a Tseng ET1000-A adapter - it makes for an interesting display piece, as I allready have an ET2000 EGA card as well as the common ET3000 and ET4000AX VGA cards. Maybe I'll build a small display case and put these in it.

I have this card NOS with manual. In case you need it I can take scans/pics...

Another from my recent $50.00 grab bag: an Albatron KX400-8XV. A basic KT400 Socket A motherboard that worked very well when I tried it out. One thing that surprised me was that this board has significantly better hard drive speeds than my Epox KT600 motherboard does; in both cases they have an SSD with a SATA to IDE adapter and I tested them with the same drive and same SATA to IDE adapter.

I picked up a Dimension 8250 on my way home today. Now truly, I need another old Dell like I need a hole in the head, but as the 8250 was their last Rambus based system, I couldn't just leave it there. I fully intend to put this machine back into circulation after having my fun with it; after all, I'm sure there are plenty of people out there just yawning at the bit to play with a Dell desktop PC from 2002.

Other than the RDRAM, there's nothing too special about the system. It came with a 2.66GHz P4, 1GB of RDRAM, Radeon X1300 Pro video card, Windows XP + Ubuntu 10 on the 250GB PATA hard drive, and even a Season 2 DVD of Black Mirror in the DVD drive. The Windows side had a bunch of N64 and PS1 ROMs, plus a fairly mediocre game called Outpost. After failing to find the fun in Outpost, I installed a fresh copy of XP for a possible 845PE vs 850E investigation I may do in the future, if I ever get bored enough.

🥱 It's been a Rambus powered evening of adequate discovery.

Ooh, the Black Mirror DVD sounds like a nice bonus 😀

Got these stuff for pocket change (as usual..) the 3Dfx cards are from trade, did have an working AMD 486 DX2 with wear off letters. And the drives the seller did gave them to me, to test them, and pay after that, the ones i will keep..

- 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee AGP (i think is Banshee)
- 3Dfx Voodoo Rush A-Trend
- x3 286 drives WD NONcaviar 40MB and SeaGate ST 157
- Quantum, WD Caviar, SeaGate and Fujitsu drives only 1 WD non Caviar and the Fujitsu are bad sector free, rest are trash...

Guess i will see that Voodoo Rush tested on some old monitor (my current one DELL 23 inch from 2013 model), as my DELL cant get proper signal from that Alliance 2D chip... At least i was able to see the Rush in Windows with another card so it is prob fine.. But the banshee looks dead as fuck, no alcohol, cleaning or even damn WD-40 could not make that mother fucker to output signal... Is strange since the card gets a bit hot, meaning the chipset is working prob... Maybe some part has malfunctioned who knows for sure...

That year was good, so far i have founded and rescued total of 9 3Dfx cards... Waiting before the year to end, in order to get at least small box of more 3Dfx cards...

These 2 was the only ones that work properly, bad sectors free... And the IBM has bad sectors at the end, so isolated seems to be fine...

Thrustmaster Mark II FCS and an intel PCI ethernet card 😀

Forgot how much fun Descent and TIE Fighter are with a real joystick vs keyboard and mouse

drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-11-29, 22:49:

Thrustmaster Mark II FCS and an intel PCI ethernet card 😀

Forgot how much fun Descent and TIE Fighter are with a real joystick vs keyboard and mouse

Now you just need to add a throttle and rudder pedals for the perfect setup for flight and space sims!

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2022-11-29, 23:14:

drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-11-29, 22:49:

Thrustmaster Mark II FCS and an intel PCI ethernet card 😀

Forgot how much fun Descent and TIE Fighter are with a real joystick vs keyboard and mouse

Now you just need to add a throttle and rudder pedals for the perfect setup for flight and space sims!

I'll put them on my list for Santa 😁

Joysticks are a necessity for me for space and flight sims. But I've never come up with a joystick scheme that works with my brain for Descent. I mean, I can use pitch and yaw instead of pitch and roll for the main joystick, but a throttle control was always clumsy for me to use for forward/back. And then there was the question of what to use for sliding left/right and up/down. Using hat switches for some movement while using stick axes for otherwise causes my brain to melt down for some reason.

So then I'd think helicopter cyclic/collective control scheme. That works wonderful for moving and turning, but leaves out pitch control.

And if you mix the two, so one joystick is a cyclic for moving and the other is a flight stick for pitch/yaw, you essentially get a twin thumbstick controller. So that's what I use now. Map the slide up/down controls to the top and bottom left triggers and I don't worry about roll controls since they're not really needed in that game. And that ties into my years of Xbox and PlayStation.

Jaron wrote on 2022-11-30, 00:15:

Joysticks are a necessity for me for space and flight sims. But I've never come up with a joystick scheme that works with my brain for Descent. I mean, I can use pitch and yaw instead of pitch and roll for the main joystick, but a throttle control was always clumsy for me to use for forward/back. And then there was the question of what to use for sliding left/right and up/down. Using hat switches for some movement while using stick axes for otherwise causes my brain to melt down for some reason.

So then I'd think helicopter cyclic/collective control scheme. That works wonderful for moving and turning, but leaves out pitch control.

And if you mix the two, so one joystick is a cyclic for moving and the other is a flight stick for pitch/yaw, you essentially get a twin thumbstick controller. So that's what I use now. Map the slide up/down controls to the top and bottom left triggers and I don't worry about roll controls since they're not really needed in that game. And that ties into my years of Xbox and PlayStation.

Yea for Descent, at least imo, the hat is only useful for sliding when im not trying to turn or navigate too much. Otherwise i still use WASD/shift/space for forward/back and strafing directions, Q and E to roll.