Excellent ~

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-04-19, 04:28:

Yep! Those are some of the only references I could find, aside from Cloudschatze's post here. […]
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BitWrangler wrote on 2024-04-18, 22:15:

devius wrote on 2024-04-18, 20:26:

Media Vision Thunder and Lightning. A video and sound card in one. I couldn't find the ad that you mentioned, just a schematic of the card on VCFED and it matches your photo.

Heavy Metal VGA ad https://books.google.ca/books?id=gasgHhfj-RAC … ghtning&f=false

Brilliant Deals from Media Vision Ad (tiny pic) https://books.google.ca/books?id=rjsEAAAAMBAJ … ghtning&f=false

Yep! Those are some of the only references I could find, aside from Cloudschatze's post here.

I was about 80% sure it was a Thunder and Lightning (based on the similarities to the Thunderboard and the fact that it looked like a VGA port) until I saw that schematic of the card, that bumped it up to a solid 97% certainty. It's never 100% though... you never know how many variants of cards these crazy people made back in the day. 😁

Cloudschatze wrote on 2024-04-18, 21:12:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-04-17, 22:40:

As it is, even if it's only the back 3 inches of the card and the rest is torn off I believe it will still be the only photos of that much of the card since it was released. Granted, there may be pictures on a non-english speaking site and they just never come up in Google searches.

Re: A gallery of strange sound devices

Awesome! So you did find one! That post doesn't come up in searches because the name isn't actually in text anywhere in the thread.

Anyway, I got the lot today and I am pleased to say that it is in fact a Thunder and Lightning.

mv_thunderlightning_fronts.jpg
mv_thunderlightning_backs.jpg

Pics are obviously after some cleaning and TLC, but it was overall in good shape. Only major cosmetic issue is that the chrome plating on the back plate is bubbling up in several places, which is not something I can say I've run into with cards in such good condition. I will probably try to clean that up and re-coat it at some point.

And... oh my... there were so many more video cards in the lot than I expected.

cardhaul1s.jpg

I thought there would only be 6 or 8 of them from the pictures I saw, and I definitely did not see the ATI WINTURBO (Mach64 GX 2MB VLB) card. It has a couple badly bent legs on the Mach64 chip, but they appear to be grounds. I still separated the pins very carefully and resoldered them to the pads, but if I beep out the first two legs on each corner of the chip they are almost all grounds. I compared this to an ISA Mach64 GX and it was the same on that one, so even if they had been broken off it'd likely have still worked fine.

Other neat cards in the lot:

Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 Plus VLB (S3 805 I believe), Diamond Speedstar Pro VLB (CL-GD5428), STB Powergraph S3 805 VLB, pile of Trident VLB and ISA, No less than three Acumos AVGA1 ISA cards, Evershine ET4000AX (unusual brand with neat screen-printed logo, PLUS it has someone's writing in sharpie on the back "Jen 11-10-92"... so cool!), Cardinal Technologies ET4000AX, OAK OTI-087 ISA, and several others.

Also got a pile of other misc stuff that wasn't really useful (old Token Ring cards and such), and a possibly-usable Asus P5QL-M (CM5571) micro-atx Socket 775 board with one broken cap.

All in all, I think it was a good purchase (understatement)... but there's a fair amount of work to do here in fixing things, unbending pins (already done a bit) and testing. Also, lots of tantalums to roll the dice on.

I will probably make a thread about the Thunder and Lightning some time. 😀

The dip switch have "Dis Joy" and "Dis MPU" labelled configs. Was there a midi/joystick optional bracket originally ?

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-04-19, 16:51:

I believe the Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 Plus is an S3 805. Some day I would love to find one with the sound card components populat […]
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appiah4 wrote on 2024-04-19, 07:12:

Great Haul. What chipset does that Orchid VLB card have I wonder?

I have no Trident VLB specimens and am pretty envious to see, what, like 5 of them in there 🤣!

Enjoy man.

I believe the Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 Plus is an S3 805. Some day I would love to find one with the sound card components populated (that's what the upper right corner is for). I have an ISA model and now a VLB, and I have seen others and they always have the locations clearly marked but unpopulated. There are some other variants I believe, but this one is meant to have an (ancient) ESS ES488 onboard. If I ever find an ES488 with a damaged PCB I would be tempted to move the components over to one of these. That'd be so cool. 😁

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-19, 08:41:

Just me but I would be replacing every one of them evil little bastards regardless of how they test, tantrum caps are pretty cheap to buy in bulk and certainly worth the cost for a card as rare as this one. As for the time .. I mean its a rare card likely worth a bit in working condition so .. worth the cost in time to just replace every tantrum cap.

Honestly, unless you do board repairs on devices like this for a living and do it constantly, I would put the risk of accidental PCB damage during repairs much higher than the risk of tantalums popping when they aren't already shorted. As mentioned, I've handled and used tons of cards and old PCs and have only ever had three failed tantalums, and only two of those were "eventful".

One was on a Trident 8900C ISA card, which popped violently the first time the card was powered. I replaced it and the card was fine... though I was much more aware of the problem after that. The second was in an Everex EV-659 which I bought brand new in box to put in my PC 5150 (to provide EGA and Parallel on one card). The PC wouldn't power on with the card installed. I located a shorted tantalum, replaced it with whatever old electrolytic cap I had laying around of similar value and it has been working fine for 8 years now. Third failed tantalum was when I plugged in a Gridcase 386 laptop that was given to me and hadn't been used in probably 30 years. There was a fizzle in the PSU and it died. I replaced it and it was good to go... at least until the RIFA X cap blew and probably took a couple years off my life with fumes... those are caps you do not leave in devices. Ever!

In each of these cases the tantalums failed after not being used for 25-30 years. I've personally never had one go on a card that I had powered on previously, and I have likely put power through tens of thousands of tantalums (dipped or SMD).

zuldan wrote on 2024-04-19, 08:59:

Learn from my mistake Smoke coming from PAS16

Still waiting for my 16x tantalum’s to arrive and audio chip.

Thankfully, I learned from that on a the Trident card mentioned above many years ago. I check them for shorts now. 😁

snufkin wrote on 2024-04-19, 15:21:

Looks like CT940 goes between -12V and +5V analog supplies (based on the copper areas on the back), so seems unlikely there should be a short between those two. Might want to try just removing it and making sure there isn't a short between the two holes. Only thing I can think immediately think where there might be a reason to have a short across a capacitor would be maybe an output smoothing capacitor on a linear regulator that can have a input-output bypass jumper, so you could e.g. switch from 5V to 3.3V.

I could be wrong, but I don't think those solder pads actually connect to the -12v and +5v planes. I don't know what the proper terminology is, but the solder pads are on "islands" with no bridge to the surrounding plain. Their traces are likely on the other side of the PCB.

I believe ES488 and ES688 are pin compatible. You could try using the latter..

Today's scores:

- Quadro4 750XGL - doesn't POST or get detected, missing SMDs 🙁 - hope to fix it though I'm not having high hopes
- Winfast A340 - FX5200, doesn't POST either but doesn't beep either.
- Kobian N620 TG - Riva TNT2 M64 32MB - works, nice to have a spare TNT2 w/ active cooling no less!
- EVGA 8600GT - untested but given its state along the Quadro4 and A340, I'm not expecting it to work either...
- Gigabyte P35-DS3 + E8400 - pulled from an PC, along with a 500GB HDD, GT320 (OEM'd by Sapphire/PCPartner o_o) and a OEM HP 300W PSU (which thankfully enough is standard ATX)
- ASUS P5QL Pro + E2180
- bunch of random RAM sticks, interesting picks are orange GeiL DDR2 stick and a 1GB Qimonda
- Xbox 360 "Zephyr" revision - E74... surely the thermal paste had no part in that 😜

PcBytes wrote on 2024-04-21, 10:22:

Today's scores: […]
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Today's scores:

- Quadro4 750XGL - doesn't POST or get detected, missing SMDs 🙁 - hope to fix it though I'm not having high hopes
- Winfast A340 - FX5200, doesn't POST either but doesn't beep either.
- Kobian N620 TG - Riva TNT2 M64 32MB - works, nice to have a spare TNT2 w/ active cooling no less!
- EVGA 8600GT - untested but given its state along the Quadro4 and A340, I'm not expecting it to work either...
- Gigabyte P35-DS3 + E8400 - pulled from an PC, along with a 500GB HDD, GT320 (OEM'd by Sapphire/PCPartner o_o) and a OEM HP 300W PSU (which thankfully enough is standard ATX)
- ASUS P5QL Pro + E2180
- bunch of random RAM sticks, interesting picks are orange GeiL DDR2 stick and a 1GB Qimonda
- Xbox 360 "Zephyr" revision - E74... surely the thermal paste had no part in that 😜

The 8400GT and 8600GT are the Cockroaches of the old GPU pile, doesn't matter how few GPUs are in a lot there will be either one of these cards in there. They are usually pretty resilient too, well the 8400GTs usually are, I have at least two that look like they lived out in the open for a while, they both still fire up and show signs of life. That said if they have been stored badly with other cards and no protection then their chances are pretty slim, I had a GTX 670 get sent to me with no protection from the other card it was throw into the box with, the 670 sadly got its PCB gouged to hell and back by the other cards bracket.

I have a 8600GT from Palit. That thing is a trooper! Shame the mobile ones were less reliable, although the "sillicon lottery" thingy applies to that as well 🤣 - I have two HP dv9000, one AMD one Intel. The AMD required a single reflow and has been hitting the 5-6 year mark, while the Intel one needed just a repaste, in contrast to a Packard Bell that couldn't keep running more than half a hour (if even that) before failing with spaghett on screen 🤣

EDIT: I'll be damned, this thing works. There's some missing SMDs but it works.

Also, @momaka if you're here... silver Evercons, an strange "PXR" series poly cap (which I very much doubt it's a poly in the first place!), and two strange looking Lelon OCR polymer caps which I doubt are genuine as well. Oh joy.

Today I picked up a a TNT2 M64 to go with the 6x86mx pr300 build. Yes it’s a nerfed card, and yes it’s nowhere near as powerful as the FX 5500 I was already using…

…but the driver overhead from the FX was insane, as is expected with a card so much newer than the system. Now it’s one thing that the CPU was a major bottleneck for the card, but quite another when the processor can’t even handle the hit from the driver itself. There are times I think that the overhead is slowing down Windows.

Now I’m under no illusion that the performance will magically be *better* with the lowly M64, but it is more period correct, doesn’t rely on SSE and will do just about everything I need to do with a machine of this tier.

Today I ordered for the BIOS programmer, an adapter to program, PLCC32 and DIL32 chips, this allows me to be able to reprogram the chips of most motherboards, I already have adapters to use for chips with 8 pins, let's say that I will be able to program the most commonly used chips, and for me that I make a sporadic use of it, it's enough, later I would have to order some new chips, to use it instead of those that may fail.

Local flee market find. Micromint AT-16. Early AT clone with 6MHz CPU. Very nice condition case and some goodies inside. It didn't worked but I fixed some minor issues and now it fully functional. Has strange German BIOS with German setup and hardcoded German keyboard layout.

HanJammer wrote on 2024-04-21, 22:25:

Local flee market find.

Wolumen? Kolo?

👀 outstanding condition!

Did not buy yet but inquired on a voodoo 3 3000 agp 16mb video card for $50 plus postal shipping, sold semi locally. That is according to their description. no picture.
So not sure what exactly it is yet, they are sending the 3dfx part # back in email tomorrow... or so they say....might be worth it or not.....

Quick question for the Pentium 4 aficionados out there, looking at grabbing a Presshot 3.4 SL7PP to throw into the 875p board I got recently and was wondering if it would be better to stick with the 3.4 SL793 Northwood I already have?.

Reading around has them both pretty much on par till you overclock them at which point the Presscott overtakes the Northwood, also have others saying the Northwood I have is pretty much the best P4 ever made and everything after it was a mistake till Cedar Mill.

Cooling isn't an issue here but I do know the Presshots run hot along with the VRM getting a kick too.

Board if anyone is curious is https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/aopen-ax4c-max-ii so VRM wont be an issue.

Any thoughts ?

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-22, 04:09:

Quick question for the Pentium 4 aficionados out there, looking at grabbing a Presshot 3.4 SL7PP to throw into the 875p board I […]
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Quick question for the Pentium 4 aficionados out there, looking at grabbing a Presshot 3.4 SL7PP to throw into the 875p board I got recently and was wondering if it would be better to stick with the 3.4 SL793 Northwood I already have?.

Reading around has them both pretty much on par till you overclock them at which point the Presscott overtakes the Northwood, also have others saying the Northwood I have is pretty much the best P4 ever made and everything after it was a mistake till Cedar Mill.

Cooling isn't an issue here but I do know the Presshots run hot along with the VRM getting a kick too.

Board if anyone is curious is https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/aopen-ax4c-max-ii so VRM wont be an issue.

Any thoughts ?

If it’s cheap and you’re into overclocking for fun then go for it.

The Northwood is regarded as the best, and even with both chips overclocked the performance deltas won’t be *hugely* different; but it will make for an interesting and fun project and you’ll be able to share results here. I say go for it, if you’re underwhelmed you can always sell the Prescott on.

Agreed, the Northwood is considered faster clock-for-clock, even thougt the Prescott doubles the L2 cache. But maybe, being a 90nm vs the 130nm of the Northwood, the Prescott may have some more headroom for overclocking ...

HanJammer wrote on 2024-04-21, 22:25:

Local flee market find. Micromint AT-16. Early AT clone with 6MHz CPU. Very nice condition case and some goodies inside. It didn't worked but I fixed some minor issues and now it fully functional. Has strange German BIOS with German setup and hardcoded German keyboard layout.

I really like your system, it’s obviously been well cared for. Nice expansion cards, especially that EGA.

Horun wrote on 2024-04-22, 03:27:

Did not buy yet but inquired on a voodoo 3 3000 agp 16mb video card for $50 plus postal shipping, sold semi locally. That is according to their description. no picture.
So not sure what exactly it is yet, they are sending the 3dfx part # back in email tomorrow... or so they say....might be worth it or not.....

I'm crossing my fingers for you, I've seen Radeon SDR, STB TnTs, and Diamond S3s being thought to be Voodoos.

I was itching for some portable retro gaming so I picked up an HP Compaq nc6000 from eBay. This thing is an absolute beast! Can run 98 or XP, sharp 1024x768 display, only about 5lbs, and even the crippled 64-bit mobility radeon 9600 is very capable. 5800 points in 3dmark 2001 stock, and after fiddling with ATI tool I got it too 7300 points! It also looks like SBEMU fixed ADI 198X chipset support so should be capable of playing some (late) DOS games as well.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-04-22, 14:48:

Horun wrote on 2024-04-22, 03:27:

Did not buy yet but inquired on a voodoo 3 3000 agp 16mb video card for $50 plus postal shipping, sold semi locally. That is according to their description. no picture.
So not sure what exactly it is yet, they are sending the 3dfx part # back in email tomorrow... or so they say....might be worth it or not.....

I'm crossing my fingers for you, I've seen Radeon SDR, STB TnTs, and Diamond S3s being thought to be Voodoos.

Ok got the email he says 3DFX part number: 210-0371-002
which be the vood00 3 3500 with tv tuner (the Dell one ??) ? does not have the breakout box afaik but am not going to use the tv capture part.
Ok will buy it and complain later if not real 🤣

Horun wrote on 2024-04-23, 03:29:

Ok got the email he says 3DFX part number: 210-0371-002 which be the vood00 3 3500 with tv tuner (the Dell one ??) ? does not h […]
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BitWrangler wrote on 2024-04-22, 14:48:

Horun wrote on 2024-04-22, 03:27:

Did not buy yet but inquired on a voodoo 3 3000 agp 16mb video card for $50 plus postal shipping, sold semi locally. That is according to their description. no picture.
So not sure what exactly it is yet, they are sending the 3dfx part # back in email tomorrow... or so they say....might be worth it or not.....

I'm crossing my fingers for you, I've seen Radeon SDR, STB TnTs, and Diamond S3s being thought to be Voodoos.

Ok got the email he says 3DFX part number: 210-0371-002
which be the vood00 3 3500 with tv tuner (the Dell one ??) ? does not have the breakout box afaik but am not going to use the tv capture part.
Ok will buy it and complain later if not real 🤣

I have one of these, was also listed as a Voodoo3 3000 .. nope it was the Dell Voodoo3 3500, grab that card and fix it ! Nothing better than a V3 3500 without the stupid breakout dongle. (Is it working? .. the post makes it seem like its got no picture out .. but perhaps you mean there is no photo)