I got this set for 20 bucks.. Not a bad deal, but I probably kind of overpaid for a motherboard that is of fairly limited use. That said, I have been trying to source a U5S-40 for my 486 build for years and years now, so the satisfaction of scratching one more unicorn off the list was worth the price..

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-09-12, 06:44:

Goes a little bit offtopic, but I’m actually curious, how would you measure this kind of high voltage damper diode to find out if it is indeed genuine and what the stamping says? I’ve never had to do this, so I haven’t never needed to find information how.

Oscilloscope, high voltage power supply with current limiting and a signal/pulse generator. The breakdown voltage test is likely destructive itself so sacrificial parts are needed, but other things like recovery time, voltage drop vs current etc. can be seen with signal generator and oscilloscope without causing destruction to the parts at hand. Things like capacitance can also be measured against the real parts, if you have any in the first place...
Whenever possible I use modern equivalents from places like Mouser and Digikey, and for diodes there are plenty of options, for the switching transistor there are none unfortunately, they went extinct with the TVs/monitors they were found in although nowdays there are SiC MOSFETs that can be used with some changes to drive circuits, something I eventually plan to explore.

Tiido wrote on 2023-09-12, 10:27:

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-09-12, 06:44:

Goes a little bit offtopic, but I’m actually curious, how would you measure this kind of high voltage damper diode to find out if it is indeed genuine and what the stamping says? I’ve never had to do this, so I haven’t never needed to find information how.

Oscilloscope, high voltage power supply with current limiting and a signal/pulse generator. The breakdown voltage test is likely destructive itself so sacrificial parts are needed, but other things like recovery time, voltage drop vs current etc. can be seen with signal generator and oscilloscope without causing destruction to the parts at hand. Things like capacitance can also be measured against the real parts, if you have any in the first place...
Whenever possible I use modern equivalents from places like Mouser and Digikey, and for diodes there are plenty of options, for the switching transistor there are none unfortunately, they went extinct with the TVs/monitors they were found in although nowdays there are SiC MOSFETs that can be used with some changes to drive circuits, something I eventually plan to explore.

Thanks, very interesting! I was thinking that you probably need a high voltage PSU and signal generator do this and also that you probably need to smoke a sample to find out what kind of part we are looking at. Not the simplest measurement for average hobbyist, for example I only have low voltage PSU and small signal generator which is only a handy learning tool for scope.

appiah4 wrote on 2023-09-12, 10:25:

I got this set for 20 bucks.. Not a bad deal, but I probably kind of overpaid for a motherboard that is of fairly limited use. That said, I have been trying to source a U5S-40 for my 486 build for years and years now, so the satisfaction of scratching one more unicorn off the list was worth the price..

Woohoo, yah, those are super hard to find. Imagine if they'd have mass produced a DX2-80 in those, it would have given Cyrix 5x86 and AMD DX5s a run for their money.

Personally I wouldn't have been too upset to just get that bare motherboard for $20 though, I have a soft spot for the minimal footprint ones.

appiah4 wrote on 2023-09-12, 10:25:

I got this set for 20 bucks.. Not a bad deal, but I probably kind of overpaid for a motherboard that is of fairly limited use. That said, I have been trying to source a U5S-40 for my 486 build for years and years now, so the satisfaction of scratching one more unicorn off the list was worth the price..

Neat! I have a similar motherboard I just pulled from a system albeit with a Texas Instruments DLC-40 processor.

Yours looks in much better shape though!

Damper diodes is specially made for the application in deflection circuit. Not a ultra-high-speed diode. You can use one that was from much larger monitor, make sure specs is better than the original.

Cheers,

I just got this Epox 8KRA2+ VIA KT600 board. I think 25€ was very reasonable as it is already recapped with polymers. I can do recap myself, but I really can't complain. IO shield was included, which isn't in this picture.

A nice bonus was that it arrived with 2600+ Barton and Kingston DDR400 512MB stick, although it was sold without any accessories. It would be awesome if that would turn out to be one of those which have rebranded Winbond BH-5s.

Seller said that SATA ports don't recognize drive, but my bet is that it is not actually faulty. Many of these early SATA controllers are really picky and don't work with newer or larger 500GB+ SATA drives. It is very common that MB hangs on boot, or don't recognize SATA2/3 drives. In fact, I found an blog post about 8KRA2+ dealing with this exact issue. Even if SATA controller turns out to be faulty, I think this is a decent deal.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-09-14, 17:08:

I just got this Epox 8KRA2+ VIA KT600 board. I think 25€ was very reasonable as it is already recapped with polymers. I can do recap myself, but I really can't complain. IO shield was included, which isn't in this picture.

A nice bonus was that it arrived with 2600+ Barton and Kingston DDR400 512MB stick, although it was sold without any accessories. It would be awesome if that would turn out to be one of those which have rebranded Winbond BH-5s.

Seller said that SATA ports don't recognize drive, but my bet is that it is not actually faulty. Many of these early SATA controllers are really picky and don't work with newer or larger 500GB+ SATA drives. It is very common that MB hangs on boot, or don't recognize SATA2/3 drives. In fact, I found an blog post about 8KRA2+ dealing with this exact issue. Even if SATA controller turns out to be faulty, I think this is a decent deal.

I use a Startech IDE to SATA adapter with mine since the Via controller doesn't recognize SSD drives.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-09-14, 17:31:

I use a Startech IDE to SATA adapter with mine since the Via controller doesn't recognize SSD drives.

Yeah. I just used similar adapter for SSD for my recent Socket A setup with 8rga+. 8rga+ doesn’t have SATA at all, but I generally don’t see native SATA essential in these systems.

My point was just that controllers in these are flakey, but hardly an essential feature in any case.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-09-14, 17:08:

Seller said that SATA ports don't recognize drive, but my bet is that it is not actually faulty. Many of these early SATA controllers are really picky and don't work with newer or larger 500GB+ SATA drives. It is very common that MB hangs on boot, or don't recognize SATA2/3 drives. In fact, I found an blog post about 8KRA2+ dealing with this exact issue. Even if SATA controller turns out to be faulty, I think this is a decent deal.

I have a KT600 board that also has SATA, but same issue, couldn't get it to work. In my case, it seemed specifically set up for RAID usage. Never bothered to try to sort it out, instead just opting for a SATA->IDA adapter.

Hi all,

Returning from my lurking mode. Past months have been good for my retro-obsession, and managed to pick some cool items.

Firstly an obscure mini laptop from Soyo. Probably the worst plastic shell ever made, it feels like its going to disintegrate at any moment you touch it.

A complete geneic PC whith an 166MMX + quantum bigfoot +SB16:

Found also 2 gems for my retro needs. The HP N36L is a very good solution for an inexpensive NAS for my retro needs, and SB pro boxed is a nice to have.

Also from Germany, I received a nice industrial PC104 motherboard. It accepts an obscure CPU module based on AMD ELAN cpu produced by Jumptec, and later by Kontron (DIMM-PC).

Continuing with my findings, a DECpc Lx+ 466. It arrived in a sorry state, but some TLC it turned up nice.

Managed to snatch this 2 lots of "big box" games. All complete. I miss the experience of opening a Bigbox game and dwell on the massive manuals, its a bit of a shame that this is no more.

Xicor wrote on 2023-09-14, 17:51:

Hi all, […]
Show full quote

Hi all,

Returning from my lurking mode. Past months have been good for my retro-obsession, and managed to pick some cool items.

Firstly an obscure mini laptop from Soyo. Probably the worst plastic shell ever made, it feels like its going to disintegrate at any moment you touch it.

PW9800.jpg

PW9800_2.jpg

A complete geneic PC whith an 166MMX + quantum bigfoot +SB16:

PC_perfil.jpg

Found also 2 gems for my retro needs. The HP N36L is a very good solution for an inexpensive NAS for my retro needs, and SB pro boxed is a nice to have.

N36L_SBPro.jpg

Also from Germany, I received a nice industrial PC104 motherboard. It accepts an obscure CPU module based on AMD ELAN cpu produced by Jumptec, and later by Kontron (DIMM-PC).

AMD486_SoC.jpg

The Soyo laptop screen looks small. Is it a 640x480 matrix? If so it's a pretty good combination for DOS. What sound card does it have?

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-09-14, 17:41:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-09-14, 17:31:

I use a Startech IDE to SATA adapter with mine since the Via controller doesn't recognize SSD drives.

Yeah. I just used similar adapter for SSD for my recent Socket A setup with 8rga+. 8rga+ doesn’t have SATA at all, but I generally don’t see native SATA essential in these systems.

My point was just that controllers in these are flakey, but hardly an essential feature in any case.

I had to scroll back three years to find my post. Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Finally, the last batch of noteworthy retro hardware......

A nice Atari 1040STE. A first for me, i never had contact with the ST machines because they tend to go for a pretty penny. So it was on the wish list for ages, until this came along for the low price of 59€ and no shipping !!!!!

Also could not resist to pickup 2 PII-450 for the low price of 10€ each.

Still on the bargains theme, found a EXP4349 for reasonable price of 30€. It had the Varta problem, plus it had an repair attempt made , but a 386/486 vlb capable MB doesn't come along often. So puled my trigger, and was lucky enough to be able to repair it...

And at last a not so common sound card, the Turtle Beach TBS-2000. Love the waveFront sound, specially in Descent and Warcraft II.

Xicor wrote on 2023-09-14, 18:41:

Finally, the last batch of noteworthy retro hardware...... […]
Show full quote

Finally, the last batch of noteworthy retro hardware......

A nice Atari 1040STE. A first for me, i never had contact with the ST machines because they tend to go for a pretty penny. So it was on the wish list for ages, until this came along for the low price of 59€ and no shipping !!!!!

1040STE.jpg

Also could not resist to pickup 2 PII-450 for the low price of 10€ each.

PII_450.jpg

Still on the bargains theme, found a EXP4349 for reasonable price of 30€. It had the Varta problem, plus it had an repair attempt made , but a 386/486 vlb capable MB doesn't come along often. So puled my trigger, and was lucky enough to be able to repair it...

exp4349.jpg

exp4349_repair.png

And at last a not so common sound card, the Turtle Beach TBS-2000. Love the waveFront sound, specially in Descent and Warcraft II.

TBS2000.jpg

Hey, you've got some really nice stuff!

... and here is what came in today:

Roland MPU-IPC, about 45 Euros shipped

Bondi wrote on 2023-09-14, 18:17:

Xicor wrote on 2023-09-14, 17:51:

Hi all, […]
Show full quote

Hi all,

Returning from my lurking mode. Past months have been good for my retro-obsession, and managed to pick some cool items.

Firstly an obscure mini laptop from Soyo. Probably the worst plastic shell ever made, it feels like its going to disintegrate at any moment you touch it.

PW9800.jpg

PW9800_2.jpg

A complete geneic PC whith an 166MMX + quantum bigfoot +SB16:

PC_perfil.jpg

Found also 2 gems for my retro needs. The HP N36L is a very good solution for an inexpensive NAS for my retro needs, and SB pro boxed is a nice to have.

N36L_SBPro.jpg

Also from Germany, I received a nice industrial PC104 motherboard. It accepts an obscure CPU module based on AMD ELAN cpu produced by Jumptec, and later by Kontron (DIMM-PC).

AMD486_SoC.jpg

The Soyo laptop screen looks small. Is it a 640x480 matrix? If so it's a pretty good combination for DOS. What sound card does it have?

Yes it is . The sound is poor I think, it has the Cyrix 5530 Audio [Kahlua].

bearking wrote on 2023-09-14, 18:50:

... and here is what came in today:
20230914_212143.jpg
Roland MPU-IPC, about 45 Euros shipped

A unicorn find in this day and age, Congrats !!

bearking wrote on 2023-09-14, 18:50:

... and here is what came in today:
20230914_212143.jpg
Roland MPU-IPC, about 45 Euros shipped

Nice! I thought you need to trade your kidney for these nowadays. If you manage to find one, that is.