Me too!
Has anyone ever seen 4Mb ones like those? Or only 1Mb sticks have been produced?

Couple of additions to my Socket 3 collection. Kinda hoping the X5 is magic and will handle a 50MHz FSB.

3x50MHz shouldn't be a problem. 4x50MHz is another matter 😉

As to Topless simms I think there are only 1 meg modules. I think they are as cool as a simm stick can get. The black blobs look cheap but differentiate them them from other manufacturers in a very interesting way. I wonder if that was for cost cutting or other purposes.

Edit: these are 60ns modules! FAST!

Why don't we produce a VOGONS branded cool looking 4mb and 16mb SIPP30/SIMM30 sticks?.. Shouldn't be difficult to design and assemble imho.

I think would be too much hassle as some users still have tones of simms laying around 😀

Continuing my journey into professional audio land with a 1980s stereo mixer in 19" 2U format:

8 stereo line inputs (2 also mic inputs), each with adjustable fader, gain, panpot, and effect volume, 2 effect returns (one stereo), master faders, headphones out with separate volume knob, stereo out. $40.

Last month I already got this thing ($35), which will soon be en route to me:

That's a MIDI patchbay, a 19" rackmount unit that allows easy routing of MIDI devices, so instead of swapping cables I can just hit a switch to select a different MIDI module.

yawetaG wrote:

Continuing my journey into professional audio land with a 1980s stereo mixer in 19" 2U format:

mx8sr1 .jpg

8 stereo line inputs (2 also mic inputs), each with adjustable fader, gain, panpot, and effect volume, 2 effect returns (one stereo), master faders, headphones out with separate volume knob, stereo out. $40.

Very interesting. Is that active mic mixer (so you don't need external power amp), or passive?

yawetaG wrote:

Last month I already got this thing ($35), which will soon be en route to me:

mav 8 1.jpg

That's a MIDI patchbay, a 19" rackmount unit that allows easy routing of MIDI devices, so instead of swapping cables I can just hit a switch to select a different MIDI module.

Does it work "many-to-many"? For example, to switch between multiple retro rigs and multiple MIDI devices? Let say I have three retro computers. I also have a Roland MT-32 and a Roland SC-88. Can I use it to switch between computers and MIDI modules?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

yawetaG wrote:

Continuing my journey into professional audio land with a 1980s stereo mixer in 19" 2U format:

mx8sr1 .jpg

8 stereo line inputs (2 also mic inputs), each with adjustable fader, gain, panpot, and effect volume, 2 effect returns (one stereo), master faders, headphones out with separate volume knob, stereo out. $40.

Very interesting. Is that active mic mixer (so you don't need external power amp), or passive?

Passive only, I think. I still have to buy a modern audio interface to be able to record my music, and that one will take care of any active mics. However, I wanted to be able to make music with multiple electronic instruments without being dependent on a computer, so the mixer was pretty much a prerequisite - and stereo mixers are hard to come by.

yawetaG wrote:

Last month I already got this thing ($35), which will soon be en route to me:

mav 8 1.jpg

That's a MIDI patchbay, a 19" rackmount unit that allows easy routing of MIDI devices, so instead of swapping cables I can just hit a switch to select a different MIDI module.

Does it work "many-to-many"? For example, to switch between multiple retro rigs and multiple MIDI devices? Let say I have three retro computers. I also have a Roland MT-32 and a Roland SC-88. Can I use it to switch between computers and MIDI modules?

Yes. MIDI patchbays have multiple MIDI INs (typically 4 or 8 ), each of which can be routed to one or more MIDI THRU/OUTs. The one I picked up is quite simple and not programmable, using hardware switches to change the routing by hand (I actually bought it for that reason, it's pretty much indestructible) - it has 4 INs, each IN can be routed to 1-8 OUTs. However, it lacks MIDI merge, so it can't merge MIDI signals coming from multiple INs. There are small MIDI merge boxes available for that, but most programmable MIDI patchbays have the merge function build in. More modern patchbays can also be connected to computers via USB and be used as MIDI interfaces for communication with instruments (note: not from DOS - they are not MPU-401 compatible AFAIK).

So in your example, as long as your three retro computers each already have a MIDI interface available (e.g. game port break-out cable), you'd hook up each computer's MIDI OUT to one of the MIDI patchbay's MIDI IN ports (three total), and the two MIDI devices' MIDI IN ports to two of the MIDI patchbay's MIDI OUT ports. Then you can just hit a switch on the patchbay to switch between computers and MIDI devices. E.g. Computer A -> SC-88 and Computer B -> MT-32 (both routings can be active at the same time), or even Computer A -> SC-88 + MT-32 (the same signal gets send to both MIDI devices). If your MIDI patchbay has MIDI merge, you could also have Computer A + Computer C -> SC-88.
If you were to connect a MIDI device's MIDI OUT to one of the patchbay's MIDI INs, and the patchbay's MIDI OUTs to your computers' MIDI INs, you could also do sysex dumps to one of your computers pretty easily. There's one hitch, and that's that some MIDI patchbays don't work nice with sysex (the one I got does it well, one that doesn't is the MOTU MIDI Express range).

The other hitch is the price of the things. I got mine via Yahoo Auctions Japan, as the vintage ones on Ebay are usually overpriced by about 300%. Japan seems to have way too many MIDI patchbays, the rest of the world too few... 😵 There are a few modern options that can be used with retro computers, but they are expensive.
My best advice would be: do the research first (manuals are easy to find via Google), decide what you need, and only then buy.

hard1k wrote:

Me too!
Has anyone ever seen 4Mb ones like those? Or only 1Mb sticks have been produced?

Mine are 1MB I think and apparently they are parity modules (1MB x 9 on the back side). Made in 1994.

I had a bit of a backlog with sorting out stuff, so this post is a bit of a catch-up 😀

Hedeka 286 motherboard+cpu, I/O, floppy drives and graphics:

And then a whole bunch of PCI videocards I bought in one batch. I don't need this many of course but they were cheap as dirt and there are some Diamond cards which I like 😀

Bought this SuperMicro PIII SCA board with the Intel 820 chipset. Seems to be a weird niche mobo with the AGP Pro slot and rimm/dimm memory combo options. I am desperate to find something that will run my PIII 800-133 slot 1 and this was the cheapest option. Anyone have any experience with this at all?

Received my "amd k6" purchase today, and it is indeed a Super Socket 7 board from Chaintech, with included AMD K6-2 500MHz.

Cyrix200+ wrote:

I had a bit of a backlog with sorting out stuff, so this post is a bit of a catch-up :) […]
Show full quote

I had a bit of a backlog with sorting out stuff, so this post is a bit of a catch-up 😀

Hedeka 286 motherboard+cpu, I/O, floppy drives and graphics:

Great haul! I got a similar board in a haul last year but mine is missing the memory chips. It's nice to see your picture so I can compare it for missing parts.

After trying to obtain this card locally for over a year I found someone selling it.. in a lot consisting mostly of totally uninteresting AGP cards of the era like the TNT2 M64 and MX400.. for $3 each..

WAAAATTTTT!?!?!

Bought it and its mine now at last.

Nice! Yours had a faster CPU but it looks very similar. Let me know if you need detail pics or something else.

MMaximus wrote:

<snip> Great haul! I got a similar board in a haul last year but mine is missing the memory chips. It's nice to see your picture […]
Show full quote

<snip>
Great haul! I got a similar board in a haul last year but mine is missing the memory chips. It's nice to see your picture so I can compare it for missing parts.

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Nice! Yours had a faster CPU but it looks very similar. Let me know if you need detail pics or something else.

Hedeka...I knew this from somewhere...

It the same brand I got an interesting ISA VGA 2 weeks ago from.

It has a TV-out and works at least in my 80286, but not in my K6-2. Never seen this before.

buckeye wrote:

Bought this SuperMicro PIII SCA board with the Intel 820 chipset. Seems to be a weird niche mobo with the AGP Pro slot and rimm/dimm memory combo options. I am desperate to find something that will run my PIII 800-133 slot 1 and this was the cheapest option. Anyone have any experience with this at all?

That's almost definitely an early SuperMicro board from http://www.supermicro.com but I'm not finding any record of it on their site. May have to dig through with the internet archive. I might suggest you start a thread for it in marvin and get folks to help you identify it there, (as it's running a bit off topic for this thread). Additionally there's most likely a manual on the CD in PDF somewhere, that's normal for SuperMicro boards.

Got an unusual haul of cards today for free:

- some yet unidentified Mediasonic ISA soundcard. Maybe some sort of Sound Commander?
- A-Trend ATC-1020 motherboard with a VX chipset;
- AWE32 — unfortunately, a CT3990 model. So no OPL3 and hanging note bugs;
- AWE64 Value CT4380;
- ATI Mach64 videocard;
- an Oak OTIVGA card — according to the previous owner, it's a combo VGA/EGA card;
- a combo Hercules (reportedly) card with an LPT port. It says PEAKTRON ELECTRONICS on the card. I wonder why does the duct tape cover the crystal on the BIOS chip;
- a UMC U5S-SUPER33 CPU and three Pentiums;
- a Realtek ISA videocard;
- a multi I/O from Acer and some sort of a 8bit COM/LPT card;
- several S3 cards, CD-ROMs, HDDs and 30pin memory that I won't bore you with.

Beautiful! That Mediasonic card looks really interesting.