Lovely haul there. Gus and tape streamers. Love it.

I only wanted the Packard Bell but the guy selling it made me take the PowerMac G4 and the K6 there also. 😒 🤣

RacoonRider wrote:

Prepare to hate me

At first I was like "no way, I could never hate RacoonRider", but now I'm like "yeah, I hate that guy" 🤣

King_Corduroy wrote:

I only wanted the Packard Bell but the guy selling it made me take the PowerMac G4 and the K6 there also. :/ lol […]
Show full quote

I only wanted the Packard Bell but the guy selling it made me take the PowerMac G4 and the K6 there also. 😒 🤣

You might have a Packard Bell with a SiS chipset which may supply a low enough voltage for K6-X and Cyrix MII 2.2v.
The K6 system seems interesting also, could you post a pic of the internals of both systems somewhere? 😀

edit: Woops, just noticed the Intel sticker on the PB. Can't really tell what CPU is inside though 😊

badmojo wrote:

RacoonRider wrote:

Prepare to hate me

At first I was like "no way, I could never hate RacoonRider", but now I'm like "yeah, I hate that guy" 🤣

Lol!

Well, I still have a couple older ATX systems I got over the paast few months which I haven't even taken apart yet.
Might do some system dismantling and post some pics of the stuff I got (4 or 5 ATX systems or so this year I think).

Here's some close ups. 🤣

Here's the wiki specs btw: http://pbclub.pwcsite.com/wiki/index.php?titl … Multimedia_M415

Apparently it's from 1997 which makes it the newest Packard Bell I own in my collection (see below)

King_Corduroy, that's a nice collection of PB computers! It would be so cool if there was this corner PC, I bet you're on the hunt for one?

Tetrium wrote:

Your s5 system, the modules you mention "32MB FPM RAM (Registered?)", if you want, could you post a pic of the modules?
I remember once having stripped a dual s5 or s7 system on the street and the modules you mention sound to be similar (the case was way too heavy, but I did take the chips and the memory modules and they were also FPM I think).

The two modules nave 16 MB on the one side and 4MB on the other. So I guess that 16MB is actual memory size and 4MB is for parity? I'll take pictures once back home.

Tetrium wrote:

Your VI14G looks similar to the VI15G I have and it seems yours also has gold-plated SIMM slots.
The cache chips you seem to have on your board seem to be the ones you need 8 of to have 512KB cache, so I reckon yours has 256KB cache in total?
I think mine came with the smaller ones.

Yes, you're quite right 😀 Mine is actually VI15G too, that must be a misprint.

Tetrium wrote:

I read in the past it was a bad idea to mix metal types because of corrosion, but in later years I've also read that this wasn't as much of a problem as it was made out to be. Since I have plenty gold-plated FPM SIMMs that doesn't really bother me though and you seem to have gotten a couple gold-plated SIMMs yourself, though I can't read the print to see if those are EDO or FPM. They have either 4MB (if the other side is empty) or 8MB (if both sides also have chips).

Your SIMMs with only 2 large chips are usually 4MB (the one with the very thick chips, if the other side is empty) and the other one with the very thin large chips should be 16MB if the other side is empty, but I admit that my memory is a bit rusty here 😊

I actually already know sizes and types, I just prefer to put a sticker on the other side of the stick if it is one-sided. The largest modules are 8MB. One thing of curiosity is the 4MB Huindai stick on the left (two chips). The ICs are less than 1mm thick and apparently, this one was sold in '99.

Tetrium wrote:

And what's so special about the 3com Etherlink XL PCI LAN card if I may ask? 😀

It's doing its thing via hardware, offloading the CPU. As far as I know, such things are perfect for older gear, because otherwise file transfer speed is defined by the CPU.

I should look into that, perhaps take a 5x86-133 or P60 and compare this 3com to two Intel PRO/100 cards (older and newer), a cheap Realtek and these two (from the same haul, they were just not interesting enough to include in the post)

@Tetrium; I mean where it says Copyright 2002 at the upper left of the image. The card was on the Matrox site as early as July 2002, but Matrox appear to still be making it at the present time. Mine was bought used.

@alexanrs; Ah, I changed to a 775 machine (My unstable Core 2 Quad) because the 370 was choking (I am running some horribly inefficient software) but you're correct there. The board only has 2 PCI slots, so I was kinda forced into a corner on this one. The stack of Trios never really worked anyway and the Cirrus cards kept throwing a fit. My dual monitor Matrox worked fine, so I assume the 4x model will be just as good if not better. Hope the mobo and CPU don't mess things up too badly, I have only a single working memory channel and I never found the Q8400 to be a reliable platform - it doesn't matter too much, if the concept works I can replace it with a crappy Atom or something down the line. The Core 2 only has to last long enough to prove the idea works, if it starts having problems I shall just patch it up until I can get something else. I expect people will be practically throwing hardware from this era away in the near future anyway, so I could probably hold out until people start binning 1st-Gen Core i machines and grab one of them out of the trash pile. The Core 2 board has a record of ruining hard drives, but this one is out of the garbage and will never have anything important on it, so that is not a factor.

Anyway, I bought another device for a tenner;

Bit more costly, but I know the 878A works well and does what i want it to do, the universal driver (BtWinCap) generally works with everything. Hopefully this idea works. I do have an LR138/SA713 based card, but it's ancient and hasn't worked properly for years so I thought I'd just drop that idea and get another 878A. My dual P3 machine is running my old WinTV which uses this same chip, and that card has served me very well for over a decade now.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Apparently it's from 1997 which makes it the newest Packard Bell I own in my collection (see below) […]
Show full quote

Apparently it's from 1997 which makes it the newest Packard Bell I own in my collection (see below)

The bottom one on the far left looks just like the Multimedia C110 I just converted into my DOS retro rig.

RacoonRider wrote:

King_Corduroy, that's a nice collection of PB computers! It would be so cool if there was this corner PC, I bet you're on the hunt for one?

Yeah I am I would LOVE to get my hands on one of those but they are rare as hell. 😒

clueless1 wrote:

The bottom one on the far left looks just like the Multimedia C110 I just converted into my DOS retro rig.

Nice, I thought about doing that with this one but I decided to leave it alone and just have it run Windows 95. As it is that is the computer I had to replace the PSU and HDD on. It now has a converted ATX PSU and a 2gb CF card for a HDD! 🤣

It's a Legend 812CD btw from 1995.

HighTreason wrote:

The Core 2 only has to last long enough to prove the idea works, if it starts having problems I shall just patch it up until I can get something else. I expect people will be practically throwing hardware from this era away in the near future anyway, so I could probably hold out until people start binning 1st-Gen Core i machines and grab one of them out of the trash pile. The Core 2 board has a record of ruining hard drives, but this one is out of the garbage and will never have anything important on it, so that is not a factor.

If stability starts being a problem and you have a conductive pen on hand, you could try a BSEL mod to drop the FSB down to 266MHz by shorting BSEL2 and ground. Since it has a busted memory channel I doubt the northbridge itself is in good contition and running at a lower FSB might help both the processor and the chipset to run a bit more stable.

HighTreason wrote:

Bit more costly, but I know the 878A works well and does what i want it to do, the universal driver (BtWinCap) generally works with everything. Hopefully this idea works. I do have an LR138/SA713 based card, but it's ancient and hasn't worked properly for years so I thought I'd just drop that idea and get another 878A. My dual P3 machine is running my old WinTV which uses this same chip, and that card has served me very well for over a decade now.

Will you need sound? In my experience Bt878A works on just about anything you throw at it, but the tuner might not. I could never get my Bt878A-based card to have sound with either DScaler or BtWinCap - only the original drivers worked well.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Here's some close ups. lol http://orig00.deviantart.net/6852/f/2015/361/d/d/s2460007_v01_by_mad_king_corduroy-d9lov7m.jpg […]
Show full quote

Here's some close ups. 🤣

Hang on a minute!

Thats not going to play Mpeg2 files at an acceptable level surely not? 😕 .

Received my Asus P/I-P55TP4XE(G) today including the Asus Mediabus card.
Thing looks good, have to dig out a psu to test the rig. Curious if anything other then a P1 200 can run on it.
Only thing I 'don't have and I can't find one right away is the PS/2 header to connect to the mainboard. 😠

Nvm1 wrote:

Received my Asus P/I-P55TP4XE(G) today including the Asus Mediabus card.
Thing looks good, have to dig out a psu to test the rig. Curious if anything other then a P1 200 can run on it.
Only thing I 'don't have and I can't find one right away is the PS/2 header to connect to the mainboard. 😠

What kind of mediabus card did you get with the board?

HighTreason wrote:

@Tetrium; I mean where it says Copyright 2002 at the upper left of the image. The card was on the Matrox site as early as July 2002, but Matrox appear to still be making it at the present time. Mine was bought used.

I was curious to know when the card was actually manufactured. The copyright date can easily predate the actual production date by years.
The production date is the 4-digit number usually printed in those digitally shaped numbers in week-if-the-month & last 2 digits of the year (like 4499 means week 44, year 1999) and I was curious to know when your card was actually manufactures (the date on the PCB will be very close to when the card was assembled, the chips "may" be (significantly) older).

vetz wrote:

Nvm1 wrote:

Received my Asus P/I-P55TP4XE(G) today including the Asus Mediabus card.
Thing looks good, have to dig out a psu to test the rig. Curious if anything other then a P1 200 can run on it.
Only thing I 'don't have and I can't find one right away is the PS/2 header to connect to the mainboard. 😠

What kind of mediabus card did you get with the board?

The one with the S3 Vision868 videochip and the Vibra16s soundchip combined.
If I find a way at work to upload a picture I will do it. The card name is PCI-AV868 rev1.0

Edit:

Nvm1 wrote:

The one with the S3 Vision868 videochip and the Vibra16s soundchip combined.
If I find a way at work to upload a picture I will do it. The card name is PCI-AV868 rev1.0

Nice, gratz! I've been looking for that card. It only works in Asus Media Bus 1.0 boards, which P55TP4XE(G) should fall under depending on revision.

Regarding PS/2 mouse for ASUS AT boards, take a look here: PS/2 Bracket for Asus Motherboard Header

I have one Media Bus card with SCSI and SB16 combo on it. Don't know if I have any Asus media bus motherboard 😕

vetz wrote:

Nvm1 wrote:

The one with the S3 Vision868 videochip and the Vibra16s soundchip combined.
If I find a way at work to upload a picture I will do it. The card name is PCI-AV868 rev1.0

Nice, gratz! I've been looking for that card. It only works in Asus Media Bus 1.0 boards, which P55TP4XE(G) should fall under depending on revision.

Regarding PS/2 mouse for ASUS AT boards, take a look here: PS/2 Bracket for Asus Motherboard Header

I looked at the PS/2 connector, but the DE sellers listing is gone and Startech doesn't ship to The Netherlands 😠
Looks like it's going to be a hard to acquire piece.

I read also about the scsi and sb16 combo but I thought that it was a mediabus2.0 version card.

There is also a 1.2 revision called PCI-AS7870 for SCSI and SB16.

This seller ships internationally:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/StarTech-com-6-Pin-Mi … HQAAOSwo0JWNyqa

vetz wrote:

There is also a 1.2 revision called PCI-AS7870 for SCSI and SB16.

This seller ships internationally:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/StarTech-com-6-Pin-Mi … HQAAOSwo0JWNyqa

Nice find! Gonna check it when I get home.
Finding a true AT psu instead of a ATX with converter kit would be my next mission. Fortron still sells 250w and 300w AT PSU's here for about € 60 euro but I don't know if they are worth it. 😲 😕