eesz34 wrote on 2024-01-23, 14:07:

I did phone tech support for those around the time this one was manufactured. I can't remember if it was that case, but some designs had a problem where the power button didn't correctly push on the actual switch underneath.

Nice! I can well believe that, the mechanism is a bit rubbish. Appears ok on this one though, not tested yet mind you.

No Banshee sadly, it has an onboard 'AGP' Riva 128 chipset with 8MB, and onboard Creative ES1373 Soundblaster-ish sound. A distinctly mid-range system. This is the board - https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/intel- … ster,-micro-atx - part 4000431 which through some serious archive.org digging and research here I've managed to find the latest Gateway BIOS image in case it needs an update. Next job is to open up the PSU for a clean and inspection, test that, then see if it fires up. Last used about 18 years ago the owner told me.

weedeewee wrote on 2024-01-19, 09:18:

Modicon SA85 https://www.classicautomation.com/Part/am-sa85-000 That indicates Modbus Plus Interface Card, which suggests some i […]
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Law212 wrote on 2024-01-18, 17:41:

I found these a while ago. I have no idea about them. Anyone know anything about these? […]
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I found these a while ago. I have no idea about them. Anyone know anything about these?

Modicon SA85
https://www.classicautomation.com/Part/am-sa85-000
That indicates Modbus Plus Interface Card, which suggests some industrial network interface.

https://i.imgur.com/w9ZtAQ6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Khn7v7M.jpg […]
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Veeborg's idea is good. Floppy controller is connected to SYSTEM connector, AT or XT/T1500 connectors go to internal floppy drives and external connector to external device.

Thanks to all who replied .... I've been away for a bit and wasnt able to respond until now. Thanks !

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-01-23, 13:57:

Meatball wrote on 2024-01-23, 13:19:

I obtained one of my ‘grail’ items: […]
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I obtained one of my ‘grail’ items:

Quantum3D Raven

Actually, I’m smitten over just the box artwork; everything else is gravy.

The card, paperback, and discs appear to be unused.

There were one or two games that were hard coded to only work on this card, if I remember correctly. Probably something that was included in the box.

Rush Alcatraz is the game hardcoded for the Raven, which had no other physical release. It's been hacked, though, to work on any card.

Mozart 16 soundcard on OTI 601 chip and old-new-in-the-box AT Case.

Need to wait for 2 brand new Socket 5 fans to arraive and my 1995 build is ready to be built.

Just got this lovely DFI ITOX G7S620-N motherboard. LGA 775, Intel 865G chipset, supports Pentium 4/D processors, and even has a pair of ISA slots.

This one should be fun to experiment with.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-01-25, 01:02:

Just got this lovely DFI ITOX 67S620-N motherboard. LGA 775, Intel 865G chipset, supports Pentium 4/D processors, and even has a pair of ISA slots.

Wow, that's interesting. I remember how my friends, musicians, had some ISA sound card with FX processors on it, rather expensive I suppose. It was hard to upgrade for them in 2002-2003 due to lack of motherboards with ISA bus. This one could be very helpful back then.

Seagate ST336607LW 36GB SCSI HDD came in today.

DW12 wrote on 2024-01-09, 19:37:

Yesterday I've got my first ever retro laptop. It is the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo-EL 6800: IMG_20240109_195834_HDR.jpg IMG_20240109 […]
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Yesterday I've got my first ever retro laptop. It is the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo-EL 6800:
IMG_20240109_195834_HDR.jpg
IMG_20240109_194253_HDR.jpg
Spec-wise it is not special really, but it's in great shape for it's age. Hard drive was not formatted by previous owner (of course...), and from file dates it looks like Windows was never reinstalled on it. Dates range from 2003 up to 2013. There were some games installed on it at some point, I've found directories of Carmageddon TDR 2000, The Settlers IV and Worms World Party. Battery is dead obviously. Now I'll have to restore it to factory defaults.

Specs:
- Intel Celeron 2.0GHz
- 256 MB DDR
- 20 GB hard drive
- Integrated SiS Real256 graphics

Got it for only 15$ shipped.

Yesterday I've got a replacement battery for my Fujitsu laptop. It's incredible that I've managed to get one brand new, it must by one of the last ones out there. Now this Fujitsu is fully functional.

Btw, I've digged a little in the BIOS rom and found that it contains a microcode for 2,8GHz Celeron too. Theoretically I would be able to upgrade it, however I'm not sure if the power delivery of this laptop would be able to handle higher TDP of that chip. There was never any other variant of this laptop other than the one with 2GHz Celeron AFAIK.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-01-25, 15:18:

Seagate ST336607LW 36GB SCSI HDD came in today.

I have the same one here.
mkarcher and me use it to test and fix old SCSI BIOSes to operate with disks > 8 GB.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-01-25, 01:02:

Just got this lovely DFI ITOX 67S620-N motherboard. LGA 775, Intel 865G chipset, supports Pentium 4/D processors, and even has a pair of ISA slots.

This one should be fun to experiment with.

Should be "G7S620" instead. 😅

If TRW is correct then this motherboard is THE only one with LGA775 + 865G + AGP 8x + ISA combined. Theoretically it could span from DOS to late XP games.

Got this Toshiba T1200 from local classifieds for just 30€!
Supposedly has an issue somewhere in power circuitry. Wish me luck that the rest of the machine is good.
It does look very nice, though yellowed.

EDIT: I've identified that the machine is working, but the screen is not. It has few horizontal stripes, it's flickering and has a bit of whiny sound which pitch is dependent on contrast knob.
There was one board with transformer behind the lcd panel that had some very suspicious 2 capacitors. I replaced them, but it didn't fix the issue...

rkurbatov wrote on 2024-01-25, 13:04:

Wow, that's interesting. I remember how my friends, musicians, had some ISA sound card with FX processors on it, rather expensive I suppose. It was hard to upgrade for them in 2002-2003 due to lack of motherboards with ISA bus. This one could be very helpful back then.

It's fascinating to me how certain motherboards (esp. industrial ones) retain better backwards compatibility for legacy hardware. These are motherboards that would have likely gone unnoticed by general consumers.

I have another DFI motherboard which is Socket 7/ATX, but has 6 ISA slots and is designed to accommodate full-length cards in each slot.

dormcat wrote on 2024-01-25, 17:21:

Should be "G7S620" instead. 😅

Good catch! Fixed. 😀

If TRW is correct then this motherboard is THE only one with LGA775 + 865G + AGP 8x + ISA combined. Theoretically it could span from DOS to late XP games.

This a unique board for sure then! Glad I was able to find one.

I tested it out and confirmed it does work with native ISA sound cards in DOS. Here it is running Sam n Max under DOS 6.22. No throttling either, this is at a full 3.4 GHz. 😅

Disruptor wrote on 2024-01-25, 17:12:

PcBytes wrote on 2024-01-25, 15:18:

Seagate ST336607LW 36GB SCSI HDD came in today.

I have the same one here.
mkarcher and me use it to test and fix old SCSI BIOSes to operate with disks > 8 GB.

Nice. It manages to cancel out the screaming fans over the Coppermines (which I hope to replace with 2x Noctua soon enough) with its "angle grinder" type of sound. (HD Sentinel reports 100% health tho.)
I think I managed to have a few of those "angle grinder" type of drives already - IBM Deskstar 60GXP 20GB, Quantum Atlas 10K II, Ultrastar 4.5GB and Maxtor 5T020H2 are to name a few. The least loud of those is the Maxtor.

dormcat wrote on 2024-01-25, 17:21:

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-01-25, 01:02:

Just got this lovely DFI ITOX 67S620-N motherboard. LGA 775, Intel 865G chipset, supports Pentium 4/D processors, and even has a pair of ISA slots.

This one should be fun to experiment with.

Should be "G7S620" instead. 😅

If TRW is correct then this motherboard is THE only one with LGA775 + 865G + AGP 8x + ISA combined. Theoretically it could span from DOS to late XP games.

Except you would be stuck with a late AGP video board. I don't think it would be good enough for a lot of XP games.

If you stuck to using official drivers you'd have to go ATI 9800Pro or Geforce 59xx. Otherwise you'd have to cheat for Win98.

Shagittarius wrote on 2024-01-25, 22:28:

Except you would be stuck with a late AGP video board. I don't think it would be good enough for a lot of XP games.

If you stuck to using official drivers you'd have to go ATI 9800Pro or Geforce 59xx. Otherwise you'd have to cheat for Win98.

I wonder if going dual video cards (AGP + PCI) might get around that.

Maybe use something like a GeForce 7-series for WinXP and a PCI card for Win9x + DOS?

Granted even the GeForce 7-series would be limited compared to a PCI-e card for XP gaming, but should still yield playable frame rates at lower resolutions.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-01-25, 22:59:

I wonder if going dual video cards (AGP + PCI) might get around that. […]
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Shagittarius wrote on 2024-01-25, 22:28:

Except you would be stuck with a late AGP video board. I don't think it would be good enough for a lot of XP games.

If you stuck to using official drivers you'd have to go ATI 9800Pro or Geforce 59xx. Otherwise you'd have to cheat for Win98.

I wonder if going dual video cards (AGP + PCI) might get around that.

Maybe use something like a GeForce 7-series for WinXP and a PCI card for Win9x + DOS?

Granted even the GeForce 7-series would be limited compared to a PCI-e card for XP gaming, but should still yield playable frame rates at lower resolutions.

I had a 9800 pro when XP was first released, I don't think even 2 gens later is going to be enough for most late XP games.

Don't get me wrong I think the idea would be fun to attempt. But I would rather have 2 machines than compromise on resolution/framerate for XP games. My XP rig has a 780ti, I want to be able to max everything out.

Shagittarius wrote on 2024-01-25, 23:04:

I had a 9800 pro when XP was first released, I don't think even 2 gens later is going to be enough for most late XP games.

I guess that also depends on how we're defining late XP games?

For stuff released late 2000s to early 2010s, then no, it wouldn't be powerful enough.

But for games into the mid-2000s, it should be okay.

Don't get me wrong I think the idea would be fun to attempt. But I would rather have 2 machines than compromise on resolution/framerate for XP games. My XP rig has a 780ti, I want to be able to max everything out.

Oh, absolutely agree. I've already got a i7-3770k / 980Ti rig for Window XP. No compromises there. 😁

It's also important to take your CPU into consideration as well. I upgraded my video card several times in the 2000s, even up to a GeForce 6800 GT, without realizing that my Pentium 1.4 Ghz (later upgraded to 1.8) was holding everything back. That and my 256MB of RAM made it anemic by Windows XP, but RDRAM was expensive and I decided to hold out for a complete upgrade instead. It was quite torturous by the end.

Although I am bias through the lens of nostalgia, I honestly feel that a 6800 GT is more than enough for a pleasurable XP experience. The benchmarks were unbelievable at release compared to previous generations.

i found this on ebay and thought it looked interesting.
i can't find many references to this card on the internet or here on vogons.
a new orchid kelvin mpeg vlb.
it has a cirrus logic gd5434 along with a em7000 mpeg-1 decoder all on the same board.