shiva2004 wrote:

Today I received mi latest (and biggest to date) eBay haul: All left to right, top to bottom: […]
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Today I received mi latest (and biggest to date) eBay haul:
All left to right, top to bottom:

IMG_20161130_002006.jpg

- MSI GeForce GT 440 1GB, nice card with better than usual cooling, small but 1.5 slots wide, it's supposedly silent and cool (two, only one pictured).
- Asus GeForce 8500GT 512MB Silent, relatively small passive cooler, we'll see how it perfoms.
- Sapphire Radeon HD 4650 512MB DDR2 64 bit, usually these cards are 1GB DDR3 128 bit, I wonder how big the perfomance impact will be with such a reduction in memory bandwith, but probably good for a HTPC.
- Asus GeForce 6600LE 256MB, the small brother of the 6600GT, at least it's passive.
- ATI Radeon HD 2400 256MB, it uses a DMS-59 connector for output, fortunately it includes a dual VGA adapter or it will be useless to me.

IMG_20161130_002030.jpg

- Creative /Ensoniq ES1370 PCI, it should be a nice card for late DOS games and also a nice substitution to the on-board sound of some W98-XP motherboards.
- Creative CT4810 (Vibra 128, if I'm not mistaken), more or less same as the above (X2)
- Creative X-FI Xtreme Gamer, a bit ridiculous name but a nice sound card with native drivers from XP to W10 (X2)
-Sound Blaster Live 5.1, nice in it's moment for the EAX support, now a challenge just to make it work in Vista and above, nice for an XP machine.

IMG_20161130_002125.jpg

- Iwill IDE raid card, it can function with only one drive, making it a good way to add IDE support to SATA only machines, althought I don't know what OS it supports.
- Three CardBus network cards, two wifi and one ethernet, my only CardBus compatible laptop is currently 600 kms away, so they'll have to wait.
- A strange Pinnacle card, for what I gathered it's part of some version of the Pinnacle Studio package, it combines two firewire ports with S-Video, composite and audio output (not input, contrary to what some people believe it's not a capture card), i don't know what kind of compatibility I can expect (no drivers at all, if it works it should be with the OS native support).
- Generic Realtek ethernet cards (like four or five, and I already have some...)
- Firewire only PCI cards, three of them.

Now, more interesting pieces for my fellow vogoners:

IMG_20161130_002107.jpg

- Ati Radeon 9800 256 MB with a Zalman cooler (the cooler is going to need some loving).
- Asus Radeon 9600SE 128MB, I found a small socketed capacitor in the box and I'm nearly sure it's from this card, I don't have the equipment to resolder socket mounted components, so I'll try without it and if it doesn't work or explodes, well, that's life.
- Ati Radeon 9550 PRO 256MB, if I remember well the 256MB is the best version, I already have one with passive cooling.
- Ati Radeon 7000VE 32MB, perhaps the lowest form of Radeon, it should made a good sacrificial lamb when I have to test a motherboard with a suspicious AGP slot 🤣 .
- Ati Radeon 9100 64MB, another basic card, this one at least includes a DVI output.

IMG_20161130_005348.jpg

- Gainward GeForce 8800GT 512MB, a little surprise: not only it includes the original box (and althought it's obviously used it's in very good visual shape) but also it's a pretty uncommon one slot card (and real one slot, not one-and-a-bit), althought I'll have to be very pressed for space to include any card next to this one.

All in all about thirty cards, with some pretty nice ones, for a grand total of 65€, in fact 30€ for the cards and 35€ for the shipment (30€ was the initial bid, I put a placeholder bid and I win becouse no one else bid). According to the seller, they're untested but "most or all" should work, we'll see.

I'd drop the X-Fi in my main if I were you unless your running a Xonar DGX or something good like that. Pretty much anything north of the Audigy2ZS from Creative makes a good modern sound card.

The GT 440 still makes a nice HTPC GPU (Hell, I use a GT520 inside a decade old 1st gen Quad Core dell as mine)
The silent 6600s in my experience usually don't perform all that great (I have a factory OC'd Gigabyte Silent Pipe 2, closer to GT clocks than normal 6600 clocks)
Nice 8800GT. I've had a chance at a few XFX Alphadog 8800GTs that were single slot but being the owner of a 8800GTX and having limited cash for the hobby I've never pulled the trigger. I've always assumed they would be a cooling nightmare. G92 was not a GPU core that was meant to be single slot cooled.

Also that 9800 Pro is the same revision as mine. Runs exceedingly hot. Make sure to apply some Arctic Silver or another good cooling compound. Also, 2 words: Ram Sinks. Without them you'll be able to simulate the temperature of hell just inside your case...

Thanks stamasd

stamasd wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Pentium 166. Does it work with DOS? Can run pure DOS while having sound?

Of course it does. All Thinkpads from that era have DOS drivers, as DOS was an option for OS to come pre-installed on them. They also have drivers for OS/2, NT 3.51, NT 4.0, Win9x, and sometimes Win2k and even XP. 😀
The sound chip is CS4236B; it works in DOS.

If it also has gameport to use joystick under DOS, then it will be a very interesting laptop indeed.

Does it?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

stamasd wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Pentium 166. Does it work with DOS? Can run pure DOS while having sound?

Of course it does. All Thinkpads from that era have DOS drivers, as DOS was an option for OS to come pre-installed on them. They also have drivers for OS/2, NT 3.51, NT 4.0, Win9x, and sometimes Win2k and even XP. 😀
The sound chip is CS4236B; it works in DOS.

If it also has gameport to use joystick under DOS, then it will be a very interesting laptop indeed.

Does it?

No; it has serial port though. And the port replicators for it (basic one http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkPad_380/38 … Port_Replicator, advanced one http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkPad_Enhanc … Port_Replicator) do have a joystick/MIDI port.

I just won a Guillemot Maxi Sound. DOS soundfont goodness.

Unknown_K wrote:

IBM era Thinkpads are very well designed and documented so working on them is no big deal, they also used decent screens for their time. The only Thinkpad docks I like are the old 486 era ones with a SCSI CDROM + speakers built in. CMOS batteries are easy to replace in 99% of Thinkpads (The 701 series they are soldered onto the motherboard).

My T43 even has an IPS screen, for crying out loud. Such a shame that the first thing Lenovo cut the quality on was the screen - the one in my T430 is really mediocre.

I bought an UMC based VLB controller.
Now I need to find a VLB/ISA 486 mobo.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/262737887387 […]
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http://www.ebay.com/itm/262737887387

Bought this one today. Never tried S3 805i for ISA bus before.

p.s. Is there any particular reason why I am not able to resize my image in this form? I've tried all the phpbb syntax I can find and nothing seems to work.

I have always been wondering what the best S3 graphics solution would be. I know Trio64 exists for VLB but I don't know about ISA.

And what the pics are concerned, I just upload them to Vogons as that always seems to work just fine.

I saw that...Let me know how well it works for ISA.

dogchainx wrote:

I saw that...Let me know how well it works for ISA.

I don't know where but I think I read somewhere of a S3 Trio isa version... would be nice to know if it existed and find one... 🙁

stamasd wrote:

I just won a Guillemot Maxi Sound. DOS soundfont goodness.

To me this would seem to be close to the perfect ISA sound card - excellent SB pro, ESFM, bug free MPU 401, great sounding GM on board. Are there any downsides? Massive TSR required for example?

This Australian eBay shop has been selling a ton of NIB graphics cards. They are dirt cheap, I got these 3 for A$ 50 shipped! I've gotten some GTS 250 cards from them previously, but it turned out that they are some sort of underclocked versions, especially with the memory.

These ones are proper 6600GT cards however. Passively cooled as well.

386SX wrote:

dogchainx wrote:

I saw that...Let me know how well it works for ISA.

I don't know where but I think I read somewhere of a S3 Trio isa version... would be nice to know if it existed and find one... 🙁

The only place I ever saw mention of an ISA version existing was on this forum. I think it was supposed to be one of those multi-chip/multi-monitor type cards. In any case, I've never seen one. There are a couple of other VLB cards I'm looking for that have supposedly PCI exclusive chips. Although they theoretically exist, I have also never seen them in all my years of searching (save for one tiny blurry image).

I'll post the results from the 805i in January (if I get the package).

stamasd wrote:

Unknown_K wrote:

IBM era Thinkpads are very well designed and documented so working on them is no big deal, they also used decent screens for their time. The only Thinkpad docks I like are the old 486 era ones with a SCSI CDROM + speakers built in. CMOS batteries are easy to replace in 99% of Thinkpads (The 701 series they are soldered onto the motherboard).

Yeah been looking for a type 3546 dock for ages for my 755cx. Still looking.

I've got the Dock II 3546 time ago, for my little ThinkPad 370C (486-DX4 75mhz) - fortunately, and oddly enough, I paid very little for it, on eBay: as already been said, if you are patient with these sites, good business may come out, sooner or later. Here's some specs of this nice and heavy/huge dock >> www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkPad_Dock_II_(3546)

In one ISA slot the dock is offering, I've inserted a SoundBlaster 16:

Kadath wrote:

I've got the Dock II 3546 time ago, for my little ThinkPad 370C (486-DX4 75mhz) - fortunately, and oddly enough, I paid very little for it, on eBay

I'm envious now. My 755CX has been crying for one of those for quite a long time.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

I'd drop the X-Fi in my main if I were you unless your running a Xonar DGX or something good like that. Pretty much anything nor […]
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I'd drop the X-Fi in my main if I were you unless your running a Xonar DGX or something good like that. Pretty much anything north of the Audigy2ZS from Creative makes a good modern sound card.

The GT 440 still makes a nice HTPC GPU (Hell, I use a GT520 inside a decade old 1st gen Quad Core dell as mine)
The silent 6600s in my experience usually don't perform all that great (I have a factory OC'd Gigabyte Silent Pipe 2, closer to GT clocks than normal 6600 clocks)
Nice 8800GT. I've had a chance at a few XFX Alphadog 8800GTs that were single slot but being the owner of a 8800GTX and having limited cash for the hobby I've never pulled the trigger. I've always assumed they would be a cooling nightmare. G92 was not a GPU core that was meant to be single slot cooled.

Also that 9800 Pro is the same revision as mine. Runs exceedingly hot. Make sure to apply some Arctic Silver or another good cooling compound. Also, 2 words: Ram Sinks. Without them you'll be able to simulate the temperature of hell just inside your case...

Thank you for your comments, if I have to be honest I was interested only in a few of the cards, the rest came with the lot.
I agree with you, G92 GPUs aren't suited to single slot cooling, most of the first ones were in that format, but they change it to the more usual dual slot quickly.
As an update, all the cards seem to work, althought XP doesn't like the AGP Radeons and refuse to work with the official drivers 😢 and I can't test the 8800 because I have misplaced my DVI-VGA adapter 😒 , ah, and the Creative cards aren't regular models, they are Alienware OEMs and require special, hard to find, drivers, in XP they work, let' hope they work in w7 too.

shiva2004 wrote:

Thank you for your comments, if I have to be honest I was interested only in a few of the cards, the rest came with the lot. I a […]
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TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

I'd drop the X-Fi in my main if I were you unless your running a Xonar DGX or something good like that. Pretty much anything nor […]
Show full quote

I'd drop the X-Fi in my main if I were you unless your running a Xonar DGX or something good like that. Pretty much anything north of the Audigy2ZS from Creative makes a good modern sound card.

The GT 440 still makes a nice HTPC GPU (Hell, I use a GT520 inside a decade old 1st gen Quad Core dell as mine)
The silent 6600s in my experience usually don't perform all that great (I have a factory OC'd Gigabyte Silent Pipe 2, closer to GT clocks than normal 6600 clocks)
Nice 8800GT. I've had a chance at a few XFX Alphadog 8800GTs that were single slot but being the owner of a 8800GTX and having limited cash for the hobby I've never pulled the trigger. I've always assumed they would be a cooling nightmare. G92 was not a GPU core that was meant to be single slot cooled.

Also that 9800 Pro is the same revision as mine. Runs exceedingly hot. Make sure to apply some Arctic Silver or another good cooling compound. Also, 2 words: Ram Sinks. Without them you'll be able to simulate the temperature of hell just inside your case...

Thank you for your comments, if I have to be honest I was interested only in a few of the cards, the rest came with the lot.
I agree with you, G92 GPUs aren't suited to single slot cooling, most of the first ones were in that format, but they change it to the more usual dual slot quickly.
As an update, all the cards seem to work, althought XP doesn't like the AGP Radeons and refuse to work with the official drivers 😢 and I can't test the 8800 because I have misplaced my DVI-VGA adapter 😒 , ah, and the Creative cards aren't regular models, they are Alienware OEMs and require special, hard to find, drivers, in XP they work, let' hope they work in w7 too.

Just a reminder: Some 9550s can be flashed into 9700 Pros. I already own a 9700 Pro (an actual one) but it's missing capacitors and I need to find one of the same PCB layout to harvest for parts. Also make sure the Radeons aren't OEM's, some of those had unique device IDs and required OEM drivers (sounds like you may have got an Alienware part out?)

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

This Australian eBay shop has been selling a ton of NIB graphics cards. They are dirt cheap, I got these 3 for A$ 50 shipped! I' […]
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This Australian eBay shop has been selling a ton of NIB graphics cards. They are dirt cheap, I got these 3 for A$ 50 shipped! I've gotten some GTS 250 cards from them previously, but it turned out that they are some sort of underclocked versions, especially with the memory.

These ones are proper 6600GT cards however. Passively cooled as well.

Whats funny is the non-GT Silent Pipe II I have is actually almost GT clocked. It's like 15MHZ below and the ram is at GT clocks. Gigabyte had a weird business strategy with there 6600 passive GPUs

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

shiva2004 wrote:

Thank you for your comments, if I have to be honest I was interested only in a few of the cards, the rest came with the lot. I a […]
Show full quote

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

I'd drop the X-Fi in my main if I were you unless your running a Xonar DGX or something good like that. Pretty much anything nor […]
Show full quote

I'd drop the X-Fi in my main if I were you unless your running a Xonar DGX or something good like that. Pretty much anything north of the Audigy2ZS from Creative makes a good modern sound card.

The GT 440 still makes a nice HTPC GPU (Hell, I use a GT520 inside a decade old 1st gen Quad Core dell as mine)
The silent 6600s in my experience usually don't perform all that great (I have a factory OC'd Gigabyte Silent Pipe 2, closer to GT clocks than normal 6600 clocks)
Nice 8800GT. I've had a chance at a few XFX Alphadog 8800GTs that were single slot but being the owner of a 8800GTX and having limited cash for the hobby I've never pulled the trigger. I've always assumed they would be a cooling nightmare. G92 was not a GPU core that was meant to be single slot cooled.

Also that 9800 Pro is the same revision as mine. Runs exceedingly hot. Make sure to apply some Arctic Silver or another good cooling compound. Also, 2 words: Ram Sinks. Without them you'll be able to simulate the temperature of hell just inside your case...

Thank you for your comments, if I have to be honest I was interested only in a few of the cards, the rest came with the lot.
I agree with you, G92 GPUs aren't suited to single slot cooling, most of the first ones were in that format, but they change it to the more usual dual slot quickly.
As an update, all the cards seem to work, althought XP doesn't like the AGP Radeons and refuse to work with the official drivers 😢 and I can't test the 8800 because I have misplaced my DVI-VGA adapter 😒 , ah, and the Creative cards aren't regular models, they are Alienware OEMs and require special, hard to find, drivers, in XP they work, let' hope they work in w7 too.

Just a reminder: Some 9550s can be flashed into 9700 Pros. I already own a 9700 Pro (an actual one) but it's missing capacitors and I need to find one of the same PCB layout to harvest for parts. Also make sure the Radeons aren't OEM's, some of those had unique device IDs and required OEM drivers (sounds like you may have got an Alienware part out?)

Radeon 9550 can't be flashed into 9700 because it already uses a different chip (RV350 which is the same as the 9600/9600 PRO), 9500 series can be flashed into 9700 since it uses the same R300 chip as the 9700

Anonymous Coward wrote:

386SX wrote:

dogchainx wrote:

I saw that...Let me know how well it works for ISA.

I don't know where but I think I read somewhere of a S3 Trio isa version... would be nice to know if it existed and find one... 🙁

The only place I ever saw mention of an ISA version existing was on this forum. I think it was supposed to be one of those multi-chip/multi-monitor type cards. In any case, I've never seen one. There are a couple of other VLB cards I'm looking for that have supposedly PCI exclusive chips. Although they theoretically exist, I have also never seen them in all my years of searching (save for one tiny blurry image).

I'll post the results from the 805i in January (if I get the package).

S3 Virge on VLB for example?