MadMac_5 wrote on 2023-02-13, 21:38:

Someone local was giving away a massive stash of old computer parts, and I mentioned that if he had any AGP cards like a TNT2 Ultra I'd take them off his hands. He replied with "I have a Viper V550 and a Rage Fury MAXX." I immediately grabbed them and offered $20 (he was going to give them to me for free), but I figured he at least deserved to get some beer money for giving me some genuinely interesting hardware! Both are going to get used in my Pentium II-450/Voodoo 2 Windows 98 machine, and I'm interested to see if the micro-stutter on the MAXX is as bad as people said it was. My original intent was to use the TNT to replace an ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP, but now I may just use the Rage MAXX in single-GPU mode depending on which of the two I like better in the games that I play. No matter what, I am excited to give this oddball graphics card a try!

Wonder if he later realized that Fury MAXX card is worth more than your average Voodoo5 5500....I have two of them a broken one from a scrap lot and a very nice working boxed one, I can confirm the cards are as picky about boards and chipsets as the rumors suggest. I have had great results with BX chipset based boards (AGP 1x/2x) and bad results with anything Via based...doesn't matter what the AGP speed is. Its for sure a fun card to play around with and I ended up just leaving it in my Slot 1 Pentium III 500 Voodoo2 SLI box where it seemed very happy.

There is a thread here on Vogons that has an archive with every MAXX driver released in it, its worth going through the newer drivers to find one that works with your setup, avoid the older drivers as they all have issues with textures.

I have a MAXX as well. The fans are obnoxiously loud, the performance is lackluster, driver support is poor and compatibility is worse. It's an interesting relic of it's time, but I would never make a build around it. And even if I did, I would want to replace the fans, which would be risky because they are glued on.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-02-14, 06:54:

I have a MAXX as well. The fans are obnoxiously loud, the performance is lackluster, driver support is poor and compatibility is worse. It's an interesting relic of it's time, but I would never make a build around it. And even if I did, I would want to replace the fans, which would be risky because they are glued on.

The boxed one I got recently was used twice and then put away, its fans are pretty quiet for its age, but yeah its drivers are hit and miss the later ones fair better than the older ones but for a early 98SE rig with SLI voodoo2 backing it up it works pretty well. Ill be getting a Rage Fury Pro soon which is NIB and I was thinking that since I would then have both dual and single GPU variants or the MAXX and Voodoo5 5500 (Got a Voodoo4 4500) I might run some benchmarks with the 4 cards to see just how much performance and scaling is given by the Dual GPU versions.

Might also run a few tests to see which driver versions provide the best experience for anyone curious and crazy enough to own these cards.

They aint amazing cards but they do have that cool factor and SLI is always amusing to test with.

Now if I could only acquire a ATI DDR MAXX ...yea the big brother to the Fury MAXX, I don't think it was ever released but since there are photos there must be prototypes out there,
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-ddr-maxx.c2326
Dual Rage 6 R100 GPUs !!! ALL THE POWER ...

I just received this sound card. I was the only bidder so it cost only about the price of a beer. Cant say I was aware of this model before but it is a Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS. If it was released today im sure they would have chosen another name. There are a couple of other owners here on Vogons and the reviews are mixed. But it seems to be a good card for some late Win98 gaming and music production which are my use cases. It uses a Dream SAM 9707 and ESS Maestro-2EM. It's missing the CDs but they are fortunately on archive.org.

GM/GS sampler with 64-notes polyphony, 4Mb RAM (expandable to 36Mb, SIMM 72pin), 16 MIDI channels (up to 32), multi layer mode, resonance filter upto 24 db.
Standard 4MB GM/GS bank + MT32 certified by Roland Corp. : 128 instruments + 97 variations and 61 drum kits in GM bank, in MT32 bank - 128 instruments, 7 special sets with 82 instruments, set of sound effects with 46 instruments and CM64/32 with 67 instruments.

Baleog wrote on 2023-02-14, 11:07:

I just received this sound card. I was the only bidder so it cost only about the price of a beer. Cant say I was aware of this m […]
Show full quote

I just received this sound card. I was the only bidder so it cost only about the price of a beer. Cant say I was aware of this model before but it is a Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS. If it was released today im sure they would have chosen another name. There are a couple of other owners here on Vogons and the reviews are mixed. But it seems to be a good card for some late Win98 gaming and music production which are my use cases. It uses a Dream SAM 9707 and ESS Maestro-2EM. It's missing the CDs but they are fortunately on archive.org.

GM/GS sampler with 64-notes polyphony, 4Mb RAM (expandable to 36Mb, SIMM 72pin), 16 MIDI channels (up to 32), multi layer mode, resonance filter upto 24 db.
Standard 4MB GM/GS bank + MT32 certified by Roland Corp. : 128 instruments + 97 variations and 61 drum kits in GM bank, in MT32 bank - 128 instruments, 7 special sets with 82 instruments, set of sound effects with 46 instruments and CM64/32 with 67 instruments.

box.jpg

kort.jpg

I had one back in the day. Please be careful not to plug / unplug the external rack when the computer is powered on as you can risk damaging the card or the rack ⚠️

some people seem to have all the luck lately, I must need to start no life-ing it up on ebay to scoop me a deal. Come to think about it almost everything I've bought has been this way, but I guess It feels like I'm really missing out on somthing.

Baleog wrote on 2023-02-14, 11:07:

I just received this sound card. I was the only bidder so it cost only about the price of a beer. Cant say I was aware of this m […]
Show full quote

I just received this sound card. I was the only bidder so it cost only about the price of a beer. Cant say I was aware of this model before but it is a Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS. If it was released today im sure they would have chosen another name. There are a couple of other owners here on Vogons and the reviews are mixed. But it seems to be a good card for some late Win98 gaming and music production which are my use cases. It uses a Dream SAM 9707 and ESS Maestro-2EM. It's missing the CDs but they are fortunately on archive.org.

GM/GS sampler with 64-notes polyphony, 4Mb RAM (expandable to 36Mb, SIMM 72pin), 16 MIDI channels (up to 32), multi layer mode, resonance filter upto 24 db.
Standard 4MB GM/GS bank + MT32 certified by Roland Corp. : 128 instruments + 97 variations and 61 drum kits in GM bank, in MT32 bank - 128 instruments, 7 special sets with 82 instruments, set of sound effects with 46 instruments and CM64/32 with 67 instruments.

box.jpg

kort.jpg

Wow, nice find! I'm guessing this either wasn't on ebay or wasn't listed with the correct name?

Also, I would be curious if the DOS software in this thread does anything at all for the Maxi Studio ISIS:
Dream 97PNP2 - Interesting SAM9707 prototype\sample ISA MIDI card from 2001!

As far as I can tell, the developer sample Dream 97PNP2 and the Maxi Studio ISIS are the only PC products made with the Dream SAM9707. Though it seems to be mostly identical in functionality to the SAM9407 with regard to MIDI playback. I kind of doubt that the PCI card will allow the SAM9707 to initialize without drivers in DOS like the ISA card does, but it's worth a shot.

MMaximus wrote on 2023-02-14, 12:05:

Baleog wrote on 2023-02-14, 11:07:

I just received this sound card. I was the only bidder so it cost only about the price of a beer. Cant say I was aware of this m […]
Show full quote

I just received this sound card. I was the only bidder so it cost only about the price of a beer. Cant say I was aware of this model before but it is a Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS. If it was released today im sure they would have chosen another name. There are a couple of other owners here on Vogons and the reviews are mixed. But it seems to be a good card for some late Win98 gaming and music production which are my use cases. It uses a Dream SAM 9707 and ESS Maestro-2EM. It's missing the CDs but they are fortunately on archive.org.

GM/GS sampler with 64-notes polyphony, 4Mb RAM (expandable to 36Mb, SIMM 72pin), 16 MIDI channels (up to 32), multi layer mode, resonance filter upto 24 db.
Standard 4MB GM/GS bank + MT32 certified by Roland Corp. : 128 instruments + 97 variations and 61 drum kits in GM bank, in MT32 bank - 128 instruments, 7 special sets with 82 instruments, set of sound effects with 46 instruments and CM64/32 with 67 instruments.

box.jpg

kort.jpg

I had one back in the day. Please be careful not to plug / unplug the external rack when the computer is powered on as you can risk damaging the card or the rack ⚠️

Thanks, i learned that the hard way when removing a joystick to my c128 when it was powered on. But the ARM-sid is nice too...

Warlord wrote on 2023-02-14, 12:08:

some people seem to have all the luck lately, I must need to start no life-ing it up on ebay to scoop me a deal. Come to think about it almost everything I've bought has been this way, but I guess It feels like I'm really missing out on somthing.

I do spend an enormous amount of time checking auction sites and local ads. I enjoy doing it and for me it's a big part of the hobby. Economically i would be better off working overtime then chasing deals - but as i said i enjoy it!

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-14, 13:18:

Wow, nice find! I'm guessing this either wasn't on ebay or wasn't listed with the correct name? […]
Show full quote

Baleog wrote on 2023-02-14, 11:07:

I just received this sound card. I was the only bidder so it cost only about the price of a beer. Cant say I was aware of this m […]
Show full quote

I just received this sound card. I was the only bidder so it cost only about the price of a beer. Cant say I was aware of this model before but it is a Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS. If it was released today im sure they would have chosen another name. There are a couple of other owners here on Vogons and the reviews are mixed. But it seems to be a good card for some late Win98 gaming and music production which are my use cases. It uses a Dream SAM 9707 and ESS Maestro-2EM. It's missing the CDs but they are fortunately on archive.org.

GM/GS sampler with 64-notes polyphony, 4Mb RAM (expandable to 36Mb, SIMM 72pin), 16 MIDI channels (up to 32), multi layer mode, resonance filter upto 24 db.
Standard 4MB GM/GS bank + MT32 certified by Roland Corp. : 128 instruments + 97 variations and 61 drum kits in GM bank, in MT32 bank - 128 instruments, 7 special sets with 82 instruments, set of sound effects with 46 instruments and CM64/32 with 67 instruments.

box.jpg

kort.jpg

Wow, nice find! I'm guessing this either wasn't on ebay or wasn't listed with the correct name?

Also, I would be curious if the DOS software in this thread does anything at all for the Maxi Studio ISIS:
Dream 97PNP2 - Interesting SAM9707 prototype\sample ISA MIDI card from 2001!

As far as I can tell, the developer sample Dream 97PNP2 and the Maxi Studio ISIS are the only PC products made with the Dream SAM9707. Though it seems to be mostly identical in functionality to the SAM9407 with regard to MIDI playback. I kind of doubt that the PCI card will allow the SAM9707 to initialize without drivers in DOS like the ISA card does, but it's worth a shot.

Yeah im aware of that thread and will be experimenting, stay tuned 😀

Got some kinda ordinary stuff come in yesterday, so not bothering with pics, Intel DX4-100 for the PC300/330 6571, MX440 AGP low profile, two of, likely for PIII systems, and a small handful of 771 Xeons. Think only one of those is going to a retro build at the moment, meaning for a specific era rather than being a general donkeywork machine. The others might end up there in a few years.

Kinda wish I had an upper end AGP system ready to go, the MX440s only cost me ~$10 USD each, so being about the cheapest DX7 card on the 'bay at the same time the V5-6k was selling at $15k, I thought it would be amusing to "match benchmark numbers" with it. ~$2 per 3DMark2000 vs 7 3DM to the penny. Though I was reliably informed "iTs NoT aBoUt tHe bEnCHmaRks" by the humorless. Anyway that might happen at a distant time.

Baleog wrote on 2023-02-14, 11:07:

It uses a Dream SAM 9707 and ESS Maestro-2EM.

The only issue I have with the Maestro and Allegro chips from ESS is the terrible Adlib synthesis. If this isn't important to you, then it's a solid card. Wavetable MIDI is always exciting!

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-14, 07:56:

Now if I could only acquire a ATI DDR MAXX ...yea the big brother to the Fury MAXX, I don't think it was ever released but since there are photos there must be prototypes out there,
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-ddr-maxx.c2326
Dual Rage 6 R100 GPUs !!! ALL THE POWER ...

I had never even heard of this card until you mentioned it; prototype or otherwise. A good indicator of whether or not it's real is to see if it exists in any of the driver releases. Although it's also possible that it shipped with a unique driver set due to its dual chips.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-02-14, 16:24:

The only issue I have with the Maestro and Allegro chips from ESS is the terrible Adlib synthesis. If this isn't important to yo […]
Show full quote

Baleog wrote on 2023-02-14, 11:07:

It uses a Dream SAM 9707 and ESS Maestro-2EM.

The only issue I have with the Maestro and Allegro chips from ESS is the terrible Adlib synthesis. If this isn't important to you, then it's a solid card. Wavetable MIDI is always exciting!

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-14, 07:56:

Now if I could only acquire a ATI DDR MAXX ...yea the big brother to the Fury MAXX, I don't think it was ever released but since there are photos there must be prototypes out there,
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-ddr-maxx.c2326
Dual Rage 6 R100 GPUs !!! ALL THE POWER ...

I had never even heard of this card until you mentioned it; prototype or otherwise. A good indicator of whether or not it's real is to see if it exists in any of the driver releases. Although it's also possible that it shipped with a unique driver set due to its dual chips.

Tech power up simply lists it as unreleased so I doubt it would ever be in retail release drivers, if it did have working prototypes then likely also used beta drivers.

Info is very scarce on the card but it’s enjoyable chasing ghosts 🤣

Baleog wrote on 2023-02-14, 11:07:

I just received this sound card. I was the only bidder so it cost only about the price of a beer. Cant say I was aware of this m […]
Show full quote

I just received this sound card. I was the only bidder so it cost only about the price of a beer. Cant say I was aware of this model before but it is a Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS. If it was released today im sure they would have chosen another name. There are a couple of other owners here on Vogons and the reviews are mixed. But it seems to be a good card for some late Win98 gaming and music production which are my use cases. It uses a Dream SAM 9707 and ESS Maestro-2EM. It's missing the CDs but they are fortunately on archive.org.

GM/GS sampler with 64-notes polyphony, 4Mb RAM (expandable to 36Mb, SIMM 72pin), 16 MIDI channels (up to 32), multi layer mode, resonance filter upto 24 db.
Standard 4MB GM/GS bank + MT32 certified by Roland Corp. : 128 instruments + 97 variations and 61 drum kits in GM bank, in MT32 bank - 128 instruments, 7 special sets with 82 instruments, set of sound effects with 46 instruments and CM64/32 with 67 instruments.

box.jpg

kort.jpg

Oh ! I bought one a few weeks ago!
Haven't tested it yet.
I have a huge backlog of cards to test and clean.
My next hardware post here will probably be quit long 😂

I bought the sound card in a lot with 3 graphics cards. For something like 15/20€. But without the external unit. Just the card and its connector bracket. The ram slot was populated.
I wonder if I would be able to load soundfonts from dos with it. The driver seems to support Dos but not sure about the available features .

Big Pink wrote on 2022-01-11, 01:30:

That's an ECS BookPC BKi810. Most of the information online seems to be in Japanese. I've got one but haven't done anything with it yet because the wierd SFF form factor makes it a pain to put in any case other than the original one.

Well three years after picking up that motherboard and not knowing what to do with it, out of the blue I spotted the case on eBay. Bought it immediately. It's surprisingly small. I need to get my makeshift PSU set up, and then...? It was designed to just browse the web and now even that is more computationally demanding than flying to the moon. Can't even install a web accelerator card cause it's got no slots!

Big Pink wrote on 2023-02-14, 19:12:

Big Pink wrote on 2022-01-11, 01:30:

That's an ECS BookPC BKi810. Most of the information online seems to be in Japanese. I've got one but haven't done anything with it yet because the wierd SFF form factor makes it a pain to put in any case other than the original one.

Well three years after picking up that motherboard and not knowing what to do with it, out of the blue I spotted the case on eBay. Bought it immediately. It's surprisingly small. I need to get my makeshift PSU set up, and then...? It was designed to just browse the web and now even that is more computationally demanding than flying to the moon. Can't even install a web accelerator card cause it's got no slots!

Wow, that thing really is tiny! At least the sound (rebadged CMI8738) and video (Intel 810/i752) are well known and shouldn't be hard to get working, so the PC should be able to run lots of non-3D-accelerated Windows games from the mid to late 90s without any trouble. Or you could go crazy and try to push that Intel 810 to the limit with whatever 3D titles will run on it. 😮

How about 8 Pentium IIs a Pentium 3 and a unknown board without the cover for ...27 bucks.

Dont know yet how many work or what models but if only half of them work then its worth the gamble. (I have several bashed up SECC modules and they still work, damn things are near impossible to kill unless you damage the connector)

Also nabbed a pair of Gskill 1Gb DDR500 PC4000 modules, more DDR500 1gb sticks are always nice to have.

Cool, about $3 a piece, good score, there's something both weirdly anachronistic but at the same time futuristic about those things, it's like an 8 -track or atari cartridge for your PC, but you expect some Scotty or LaForge to pull out a panel in a spaceship and be faced with a rack of them.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-15, 01:49:

How about 8 Pentium IIs a Pentium 3 and a unknown board without the cover for ...27 bucks. […]
Show full quote

How about 8 Pentium IIs a Pentium 3 and a unknown board without the cover for ...27 bucks.

Dont know yet how many work or what models but if only half of them work then its worth the gamble. (I have several bashed up SECC modules and they still work, damn things are near impossible to kill unless you damage the connector)

Pentium IIs.png

Also nabbed a pair of Gskill 1Gb DDR500 PC4000 modules, more DDR500 1gb sticks are always nice to have.

Gskill DDR500.jpg

Jealous of the DDR-500 modules. I still have never been able to snag any.
FYI, if you save your jpg files at 85% quality or less, the forum will not compress them any more.
This forum absolutely destroys png files no matter what.

I just received this beauty in what was a small, "overpriced", scrap lot. I offered $85 for the lot (plus shipping) and it was accepted almost immediately.

Everything in the lot was packaged well so no damage, and I have already tested it to POST.
This was the only thing I was even interested in that was in the lot.

Now I have 3x V5-5500 AGP cards. One I bought new from CompUSA, one from before the prices went sky high, and now this one.

cyclone3d wrote on 2023-02-15, 05:38:

Jealous of the DDR-500 modules. I still have never been able to snag any. FYI, if you save your jpg files at 85% quality or less […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-15, 01:49:

How about 8 Pentium IIs a Pentium 3 and a unknown board without the cover for ...27 bucks. […]
Show full quote

How about 8 Pentium IIs a Pentium 3 and a unknown board without the cover for ...27 bucks.

Dont know yet how many work or what models but if only half of them work then its worth the gamble. (I have several bashed up SECC modules and they still work, damn things are near impossible to kill unless you damage the connector)

Pentium IIs.png

Also nabbed a pair of Gskill 1Gb DDR500 PC4000 modules, more DDR500 1gb sticks are always nice to have.

Gskill DDR500.jpg

Jealous of the DDR-500 modules. I still have never been able to snag any.
FYI, if you save your jpg files at 85% quality or less, the forum will not compress them any more.
This forum absolutely destroys png files no matter what.

I just received this beauty in what was a small, "overpriced", scrap lot. I offered $85 for the lot (plus shipping) and it was accepted almost immediately.
V5-5500_AGP.jpg
Everything in the lot was packaged well so no damage, and I have already tested it to POST.
This was the only thing I was even interested in that was in the lot.

Now I have 3x V5-5500 AGP cards. One I bought new from CompUSA, one from before the prices went sky high, and now this one.

Nice! Not on ebay I'm guessing? Not seeing that anywhere.

cyclone3d wrote on 2023-02-15, 05:38:

Jealous of the DDR-500 modules. I still have never been able to snag any. FYI, if you save your jpg files at 85% quality or less […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-15, 01:49:

How about 8 Pentium IIs a Pentium 3 and a unknown board without the cover for ...27 bucks. […]
Show full quote

How about 8 Pentium IIs a Pentium 3 and a unknown board without the cover for ...27 bucks.

Dont know yet how many work or what models but if only half of them work then its worth the gamble. (I have several bashed up SECC modules and they still work, damn things are near impossible to kill unless you damage the connector)

Pentium IIs.png

Also nabbed a pair of Gskill 1Gb DDR500 PC4000 modules, more DDR500 1gb sticks are always nice to have.

Gskill DDR500.jpg

Jealous of the DDR-500 modules. I still have never been able to snag any.
FYI, if you save your jpg files at 85% quality or less, the forum will not compress them any more.
This forum absolutely destroys png files no matter what.

I just received this beauty in what was a small, "overpriced", scrap lot. I offered $85 for the lot (plus shipping) and it was accepted almost immediately.
V5-5500_AGP.jpg
Everything in the lot was packaged well so no damage, and I have already tested it to POST.
This was the only thing I was even interested in that was in the lot.

Now I have 3x V5-5500 AGP cards. One I bought new from CompUSA, one from before the prices went sky high, and now this one.

Nice catch! My enthusiasm for retro stuff is waning but still would like to snag one of those, along with a NIB crt.

On a side note there was a V5-6000 that sold for a "nominal" fee of 15,000 - shipping was included tho 😁

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-15, 06:44:

cyclone3d wrote on 2023-02-15, 05:38:

Jealous of the DDR-500 modules. I still have never been able to snag any. FYI, if you save your jpg files at 85% quality or less […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-15, 01:49:

How about 8 Pentium IIs a Pentium 3 and a unknown board without the cover for ...27 bucks. […]
Show full quote

How about 8 Pentium IIs a Pentium 3 and a unknown board without the cover for ...27 bucks.

Dont know yet how many work or what models but if only half of them work then its worth the gamble. (I have several bashed up SECC modules and they still work, damn things are near impossible to kill unless you damage the connector)

Pentium IIs.png

Also nabbed a pair of Gskill 1Gb DDR500 PC4000 modules, more DDR500 1gb sticks are always nice to have.

Gskill DDR500.jpg

Jealous of the DDR-500 modules. I still have never been able to snag any.
FYI, if you save your jpg files at 85% quality or less, the forum will not compress them any more.
This forum absolutely destroys png files no matter what.

I just received this beauty in what was a small, "overpriced", scrap lot. I offered $85 for the lot (plus shipping) and it was accepted almost immediately.
V5-5500_AGP.jpg
Everything in the lot was packaged well so no damage, and I have already tested it to POST.
This was the only thing I was even interested in that was in the lot.

Now I have 3x V5-5500 AGP cards. One I bought new from CompUSA, one from before the prices went sky high, and now this one.

Nice! Not on ebay I'm guessing? Not seeing that anywhere.

The lot with the V5-5500 was on eBay. The listing didn't specifically say scrap. It was more along the lines of untested but most of the stuff was obviously parts that were replaced at some point. MacBook motherboard, PSU parts from I think an iMac, a couple boards from servers, etc.