In such a hypothetical situation, because obviously we're just talking in theory here, it would be wise to setup a protonmail and proton vpn account to use to set up an account at archive dot org and similar places to upload it all.
Though such abundance of caution might not be necessary if the IP trail seems to contain multiple defunct companies and nobody knows or cares about it. But should it be known buttholes like Sony or Nintendo that ended up owning it, sleep with a lawyer under your pillow.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
Well, my secondary reason for wanting to post the stuff is that the card doesn't seem to want to work properly, and I feel like it's something simple... but I definitely need some help in figuring it out, and I think the card schematic would make it much easier to do so.
The company that owns the IP is still going, but at this point the device is so massively outdated that I highly doubt there is anything sensitive about this information. People are, quite literally, building and selling modern cards that use similar chips and do as much or more than this.
ATI Rage II +DVD - Some bent pins on the main chip. When I tried to bend them back, one of them came clean off. Don't think I'll be saving it.
ATI Radeon 32M
ATI Rage 128
ATI 9600XT
ATI 9250
NVidia FX 5200
NVidia Geforce 3 Ti 200 - No bracket. Not sure what to do about that yet.
Matrox G450
NVidia TNT 2 Ultra - Bent the bracket back in shape. The fan was barely working, so I attached a heatsink with a adhesive thermal pad and screwed a small fan into it. I'd like to find a heatsink solution that uses the mounting holes, but I'm not sure if that's something that would be readily available.
Panasonic floppy drive
32MB of RAM
200MHz Pentium MMX
Gigabyte GA-586HX rev 1.55 - Managed to find a patched BIOS to fix the large HDD bug, but it wasn't straight forward. Needed to use archive.org on a dead link to find a copy of it. Now, other than the dead battery, it seems to be working great.
So the Rage II+DVD seems to be the only dud, and I'm not gonna lose sleep over that. I haven't had time to really put everything through its paces, but all the sound cards output music and sound effects, and all the video cards are showing a clean image. And the few I've tested in 3D have been good there too.
Scored an AOpen AX4BS. Probably working, but just to be sure I'll test it up after posting this. Came with 2x256MB PC133 SDR (yes, it's SDR) and a 1.7GHz WIllie.
Otherwise, not much, just two LGA775 machines (one is a Pentium Dual Core machine, that's as much as I know.) and a nice silver/black coloured A4Tech PS/2 keyboard.
"Enter at your own peril, past the bolted door..."
Main PC: i5 3470, GB B75M-D3H, 16GB RAM, 2x1TB
98SE : P3 650, Soyo SY-6BA+IV, 384MB RAM, 80GB
the card doesn't seem to want to work properly, and I feel like it's something simple... but I definitely need some help in figuring it out, and I think the card schematic would make it much easier to do so.
Ahhh, did this particular card ever work though? I am not entirely sure that the material you've got will be a fast track to getting it working if it was an early alpha. What might make more sense is to look for high res photos of early known to work revisions and compare them. Small difference might get it working, large differences, uh oh. Check part numbers of main ASIC too if custom, if you've got an earlier than known spin, that might not have worked right and almost nothing you can do on the PCB will correct it. (Otherwise that revision would have released with external circuit mods.)
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
danieljmwrote on 2023-01-22, 08:10:I seem to be on a roll recently. Managed to get all this from two generous locals today. […] Show full quote
I seem to be on a roll recently. Managed to get all this from two generous locals today.
IMG_0347.JPEG
ATI Rage II +DVD - Some bent pins on the main chip. When I tried to bend them back, one of them came clean off. Don't think I'll be saving it.
ATI Radeon 32M
ATI Rage 128
ATI 9600XT
ATI 9250
IMG_0346.JPEG
NVidia FX 5200
NVidia Geforce 3 Ti 200 - No bracket. Not sure what to do about that yet.
Matrox G450
NVidia TNT 2 Ultra - Bent the bracket back in shape. The fan was barely working, so I attached a heatsink with a adhesive thermal pad and screwed a small fan into it. I'd like to find a heatsink solution that uses the mounting holes, but I'm not sure if that's something that would be readily available.
SB 16 CT4180
SB AWE 64 CT4380
SB Pro 2 CT1600 - Two of them! On the same day! How does that even happen?
IMG_0350.JPEG
Panasonic floppy drive
32MB of RAM
200MHz Pentium MMX
Gigabyte GA-586HX rev 1.55 - Managed to find a patched BIOS to fix the large HDD bug, but it wasn't straight forward. Needed to use archive.org on a dead link to find a copy of it. Now, other than the dead battery, it seems to be working great.
So the Rage II+DVD seems to be the only dud, and I'm not gonna lose sleep over that. I haven't had time to really put everything through its paces, but all the sound cards output music and sound effects, and all the video cards are showing a clean image. And the few I've tested in 3D have been good there too.
Phew, what a day!
Woohooo, awesome haul. Shame about that RageII but I wouldn't trash it, demand for 32bit PCI Video cards has been going nuts the last year or so, so someone might wanna try fixing it, even if it means digging out enough contact to solder to.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
I would rather say A500 is a clone of this case. InWin cases are cheaply built compared to this one - it even has powdercoated black chassis and better quality materials in general...
The A500 is a very solid case and certainly not cheaply built, but hey, everyone is entitled to their opinion. To each their own.
Compared to the cheapest options from this era - yes, it's pretty solid, but compared to the case mentioned in this thread or some other quality options like Enlight EN-7230 for example, yes, it's pretty cheaply built.
Well, my secondary reason for wanting to post the stuff is that the card doesn't seem to want to work properly, and I feel like it's something simple... but I definitely need some help in figuring it out, and I think the card schematic would make it much easier to do so.
The company that owns the IP is still going, but at this point the device is so massively outdated that I highly doubt there is anything sensitive about this information. People are, quite literally, building and selling modern cards that use similar chips and do as much or more than this.
Anyway... we'll see. 😁
Contact the company directly, they really appreciate talked to and see if they allow this to go into public domain or share yours with directly to that Vintage Computer Federation on https://vcfed.org/
VCF has deep knowledge dealing with kind of these sensitive IP issues to get permission from company like this.
IP does have finite life and many time very old IP is usually forced into public or shared if sued by another company.
I would rather say A500 is a clone of this case. InWin cases are cheaply built compared to this one - it even has powdercoated black chassis and better quality materials in general...
The A500 is a very solid case and certainly not cheaply built, but hey, everyone is entitled to their opinion. To each their own.
Compared to the cheapest options from this era - yes, it's pretty solid, but compared to the case mentioned in this thread or some other quality options like Enlight EN-7230 for example, yes, it's pretty cheaply built.
Like I said. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I had both of those cases, at one point, in multiples. The Enlight case you mention, in my opinion, was nowhere near as solid of a case as the A500. This is a niche hobby with many options to choose from. As long as you're happy with what you have, that's all that matters.
You would be fine in that situation. Lots of people have released that kind of stuff under their regular identities, in fact pretty much everyone has. The only times it's ever been sued over is when what's been released is either still for sale or still part of the backbone of something for sale, but then that risk then gets mitigated by throwing it up on an anonymous imageboard using a Mega link. Here's something to consider: you aren't under an NDA, the company this came from is.
danieljmwrote on 2023-01-22, 08:10:I seem to be on a roll recently. Managed to get all this from two generous locals today. […] Show full quote
I seem to be on a roll recently. Managed to get all this from two generous locals today.
IMG_0347.JPEG
ATI Rage II +DVD - Some bent pins on the main chip. When I tried to bend them back, one of them came clean off. Don't think I'll be saving it.
ATI Radeon 32M
ATI Rage 128
ATI 9600XT
ATI 9250
IMG_0346.JPEG
NVidia FX 5200
NVidia Geforce 3 Ti 200 - No bracket. Not sure what to do about that yet.
Matrox G450
NVidia TNT 2 Ultra - Bent the bracket back in shape. The fan was barely working, so I attached a heatsink with a adhesive thermal pad and screwed a small fan into it. I'd like to find a heatsink solution that uses the mounting holes, but I'm not sure if that's something that would be readily available.
SB 16 CT4180
SB AWE 64 CT4380
SB Pro 2 CT1600 - Two of them! On the same day! How does that even happen?
IMG_0350.JPEG
Panasonic floppy drive
32MB of RAM
200MHz Pentium MMX
Gigabyte GA-586HX rev 1.55 - Managed to find a patched BIOS to fix the large HDD bug, but it wasn't straight forward. Needed to use archive.org on a dead link to find a copy of it. Now, other than the dead battery, it seems to be working great.
So the Rage II+DVD seems to be the only dud, and I'm not gonna lose sleep over that. I haven't had time to really put everything through its paces, but all the sound cards output music and sound effects, and all the video cards are showing a clean image. And the few I've tested in 3D have been good there too.
Phew, what a day!
Woohooo, awesome haul. Shame about that RageII but I wouldn't trash it, demand for 32bit PCI Video cards has been going nuts the last year or so, so someone might wanna try fixing it, even if it means digging out enough contact to solder to.
I hear ya. I'm certainly going to hold onto it. If I eventually get one of those digital microscopes I might take a shot at it, but I'm not sure I'm ready to make that jump yet. 😁
The more likely scenario is that I'll come across someone who will take it off my hands first though.
I didn’t buy it or receive it today, but last week I purchased a combo Itox/DFI G7S620 Socket 775 motherboard with a Pentium 4 651 (3.4GHz) and 2GB of DDR-400 memory hoping it would make an excellent retro rocket for Windows NT 3.1 and OS/2 1.3/2.0. I just started sincerely testing the board yesterday, and I find myself profoundly disappointed.
To begin, the board does not appear to work with my ATI Graphics Ultra Pro (Mach32, PCI) in any high-resolution modes regardless of the OS. I only get massive screen corruption in any mode outside of text and VGA. This is a known good card that works in my Itox/DFI G4V620 board. The G7S620 also has issues with my Matrox Millennium in OS/2 2.1 (blank screen when transitioning to GUI mode).
I don’t see any physical damage on the board, and the caps all look good. I also cleaned all of the slots in case some dust kept the cards from making good contact. I suspect that the board has some issue with PCI signal timing, but the G7S620 BIOS doesn’t offer any options to change the PCI timings like my G4V620 (DFI also does not have a newer BIOS to download).
Finally, Windows NT 3.1 has some sort of issue on this board despite working with my Matrox Impression Plus video card. Windows NT 3.1 seems to have an intermittent data transfer problem which causes the drives to stutter regardless of when I connect devices to the SATA ports or the IDE ports.
I don’t know if I got a lemon, or if this board just isn’t that great for my application by nature. Like I said, I feel very disappointed.
Hmm I suspect the computer isn’t the issue here but rather the os you are trying to use with it.
Both the operating systems you are trying to use here are 486/Pentium era and likely don’t have any support for the modern hardware you are using.
Now it might be possible to Frankenstein something that works but it won’t be a pleasant experience. Might be worth dropping back to Pentium II early PIII hardware.
