FGB wrote:

IMO the OPL3 of the AdLib sounds fantastic even without the module. In fact, to be honest, it is the only OPL3 output I really like. It is crisp and clean and has very well defined heights and depths (but more heights in my ears) that seem to be CUT OFF in all other major cards with this chip (I can not remember any Creative OPL3 card that has so well defined treble and bass).

You point some of the reasons why i like the YMF-71x chipset cards so much. I know you're talking about the AdLib Gold but my Audician 32 sounds way better than all the CT1600's, CT2230, CT2290, CT2760, PAS16 cards i own. I could confirm this even further when i got my Behringher mixer.

And i can only imagine an AdLib Gold would sound even better, in fact there were a couple of Audio examples on Wikipedia that were removed between an AdLib Gold and a SB16 and boy... The AdLib sounded so much better. I actually remember mentioning this on the DOS Nostalgia podcast i was in, and this is something i value so much. Beautiful FM synthesis.

Got a "classic" boutique built socket 754 AMD system yesterday. It's a Sempron 3100+, 1,5GB of ram (1x512 + 1x1GB), Geforce 5700LE 64bit crippled edition, 80GB and 160GB WD IDE drives, a leadtek TV tuner (useless to me), and SB0790 X-Fi fidelity sound card. It's packed in a cheap chinese white / gray case with a carry handle, but has a NOX Urano 450W PSU with a phat 5A rail I can use in my socket A builds. The motherboard is a DFI VIA based board, black and yellow color scheme - all but two of the 3300uf 6.3v caps are bloated and leaky. Weirdly enough, the thing runs, and boots in winXP, but BSODs in any 3D game / benchmark.

I'm planning on swapping the leaky caps and using it as my 754 benchmark platform, since I don't have any 754 MBs and CPUs. If it was socket 939 I would have dropped in my X1950XT AGP card and made it my new XP gaming machine.

I also got 3 AT cases, two of them are baby-AT minitowers, and the other one you can see in one of the pictures - it's a miditower AT case, but I couldn't find it's cover (shame, I know). The cover you can see in the picture is 2 cm too short to fit... Also barely visible in the first picture is a dual Xeon rig - unfortunately it won't start. If I short the PSUs, they will run, but trying to run it with a known working MB they seem to short. I'll try to test the MB with another ATX PSU, but it has a 4 pin connector I've never seen before (besides the 8 pin cpu connector) and I don't kow if it will run. The case and tree 76GB SCSI drives that came with it are usefull even if the server won't run.

P.S. - before you can make fun of my bed cover - my mum got it for me!

Nice!

I have always liked all DFI K8 boards, they are definitely worth recapping 😀

I just got another haul:

- Socket A KT133 with one ISA slot to use my Voodoo 3 3500 TV in - came with a 1,1GHz duron and a 256MB SDRAM stick
- 1GHz socket 370 PIII CPU
- Slot 1 to Socket 370 adapter + 433MHz celeron
- Creative Sound Blaster 128 (Vibra 128?) PCI CT4810 - this one is going in my P3 V2 SLI rig since I can't find win9x drivers for the X-Fi
- Creative Sound Blaster 2.0 CT 2600
- S3 Trio 3D/2X AGP - this one has very good output quality unlike my other 3D / 2X witch thinks gray is black. Great for dos games together with a MVP3 and a socket 7 pentium
- ATi Rage Mobility-P AGP 2x - this is an 8MB AGP board - really wierd for me to find a mobile chipset on an AGP card.
- S3 Virge/DX PCI with 4MB, and four vram sockets
- Two Cirrus Logic VLB video cards - both have 1MB of vram, but one has a defective ram chip so I pulled it off until I find a replacement
- 3Com parallel talking ISA LAN card
- Geforce 4 Ti 4600 by ASUS - this one unfortunately presents artifacts - looks like one of the memory chips is bad. It's a nice looking board nevertheless. It came with the socket A mb.
- WD Caviar 500MB HDD (2540) - good for older 386/486 machines I guess. Tested it and works perfectly.
- Old Quantum Fireball 600MB HDD - this one has loads of bad blocks and format halts half way trought.
- 4GB Quantum Fireball HDD - currently installing win95 on one of my machines with it.

What interest me most is the Sond Blaster PRO 2.0 CT2600 - I started working on it as soon as I got home. All the jumpers were missing, and the jacks and the volume control were taken off, so the ones currently on it are soldered by me. It didn't come with its I/O bracket, and I don't have one that fits, but I did manage to test the card and it works great.

The CT2600 is the best Sound Blaster Pro 2. From recollection I believe it has the cleanest audio output.

I have a second CT2600 in my 486 (the one in my sig) - that one is whole. Thinking of getting a blank i/o cover off one of my AT cases and drilling holes into it to match the I/o plate from the other one I own.

Just got a SB Live to go in my Voodoo rig. The AWE64 its replacing will go into my K5 machine.

meisterister wrote:

Today I got a 900MHz T-Bird Athlon. I'll post pictures when I manage to clean it, but it runs quite well for a $9 CPU! It will be going into a Win9x/ME build that I've been planning for a while.

After testing with a GeForce 4 MX, it can get about 50 fps on the OpenArena timedemo.

Is it slot A or Socket 462?

Picked up a replacement NOS Aptiva MB for my recently rescued Aptiva E Series 590, as well as a "Classic" 850Mhz Slot A Athlon with a TT Golden Orb attached.

Nice slot A system. Planning on buying myself one of two kits a friend is selling.

kanecvr wrote:

Nice slot A system. Planning on buying myself one of two kits a friend is selling.

Thanks! I wasn't sure if the MB was the issue or not the first time around. Turns out it was... but I did end up getting this for cheap, as a backup in case the replacement Aptiva board didn't pan out.

I'm also getting an Asus but with one ISA slot and regular AGP (Asus K7M) - i.e. this thing:

The kit comes with a 650MHz CPU unfortunately. I had a 900 MHz slot A athlon four years ago but gave it away like a dumbass. Around these parts, the 650Mhz is the only one I can find for a decent price...

If I'm lucky I'll get a hold of a socket 423 kit - Intel based MSI board and a 1,5 GHz P4. The only problem I have with it is that the seller has no heatsink for it, and the board only takes RDRAM. I have no ideea where to get RIMM modules in my country - I've never actually seen one.

Looks good! That ISA slot should allow for a nice sound card addition for DOS compatibility, should you want a DOS/Windows setup.

A Powerbook G4 A1095, which is the 1.33 GHz 15" model. It's nicely specced with a gig of RAM, and has a good HDD. It definitely needs TLC though; the screen cable is shot (as far as I can tell, it's the cable), half of the keyboard doesn't work and the battery seems to be dead. But the WiFi appears to work, it boots fine into OS X 10.5.8, the trackpad is fine (if slow, that should be easy to sort with settings when I get the screen sorted) the optical drive sounds fine for CDs at least, so I'm hopeful that it won't take too much in the way of parts to bring the old girl back to something approaching her former glory. No idea if it has the SuperDrive or just the standard CD/DVD combo drive, and no idea what the size of the HDD is, or if there's particularly much on it (I don't think there is).

EDIT: When pushing the screen about as far back as it'll go, it works perfectly. The WiFi works perfectly, and it seems to have little issue with the external keyboard I used, bar the fact it is set up for a Windows machine.

Artex wrote:

Thanks! I wasn't sure if the MB was the issue or not the first time around. Turns out it was... but I did end up getting this […]
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kanecvr wrote:

Nice slot A system. Planning on buying myself one of two kits a friend is selling.

Thanks! I wasn't sure if the MB was the issue or not the first time around. Turns out it was... but I did end up getting this for cheap, as a backup in case the replacement Aptiva board didn't pan out.

VIA chipset boards are good as long as you never plan on upgrading to a Thunderbird. The AMD chipset has the best compatibility with the Thunderbird slot A.

sliderider wrote:

VIA chipset boards are good as long as you never plan on upgrading to a Thunderbird. The AMD chipset has the best compatibility with the Thunderbird slot A.

Yup! Was going to stick with the "classic" Athlons for this one, the "Pluto" & "Orion" K7 chips.

VLB SCSI-II controller cards, new in box with cable, software and manual. Planning to hawk em on ebay soon so watch out for em if you need any.

Got the case I mentionned earlier nice and clean. The interresting part is that it was yellow until it got dry! I reassembled it completely, replaced the bottom screws with flat-top ones that don't leave deep scratches. It still needs some rubber feet though.

My Toshiba Libretto 70CT arrived a few days ago, here are the pics! I loved this PC from first touch!

P.S. Group hug!

RacoonRider wrote:

My Toshiba Libretto 70CT arrived a few days ago, here are the pics! I loved this PC from first touch!

Awesome! I hear these make pretty good DAWs.

That Libretto is beautiful! Looks like it's in awesome shape as well.

Universal charger arrived, and the T1200 booted straight up. It gets a little confused at times when powering on/off, and I'm not certain that the bottom floppy drive is connected and/or working... but it booted into DOS on the top drive without any issues. Contrast and brightness controls work, every key I've used works... now to hope I don't kill it when I fit the hard drive!

A pair of Dell Latitudes (CP M233ST and CPi 300 something) arrived today. Both seem to be in fairly original condition, but were in urgent need of a clean (and the fan on the CPi sounds horrid, not to mention that it realistically needs a replacement keyboard). Batteries still hold charges. The bundle came with a Dell PA6 charger, an old square box, two-button beige PS/2 Dell mouse that is supposed to be a bit tempermental/broken (haven't tested it yet), a cable to use the Dell floppy module as an external drive, and a beautiful gold 56k modem/fax PCMCIA card with the cable. Entire cost of that bundle prior to shipping costs (from the Netherlands)? €30. Photos to follow when I can be bothered.