SEGamer wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Have a "Rage 128 Pro" on the way 🤣

rage_fury_maxx.jpg

Got mine the same way where it was listed as a "Rage 128 Pro". I think the last 3 or 4 have been listed that way at decent/good prices.

I've been watching those. Congrats to those that picked them up. Glad to see them showing up here! 🤣 I got mine >10 years ago, but I think I paid more than what a couple of these have gone for lately.

liqmat wrote:

I feel the same way about this model.

IMG_1840.JPG

I bought one of those still in the box a few months ago.

Hooked it up to both serial ports of my T5200... not detected. I thought my serial ports were dead... then tried another mouse and discovered that the trackball was dead. Tried taking it apart, but couldn't figure out what was wrong.

Nothing particularly exciting lately. Yeserday, I stopped at a local old electronics/gadget store and picked up a couple soundcards (a non-OEM Sound Blaster Live! and a Sound Blaster PCI 512) for $5. I didn't know which I wanted to use in the Pentium III system I was downgrading to Win98SE. I ended up using the Live! since it worked perfectly, even in pure DOS mode (which was my main motivation for replacing the Dell OEM Live! I had in there already).

SpeedySPCFan wrote:

[...]

Nice find, but, I have two questions:

1: Is there anything good about them besides the ergonomics (how's the sensor ,etc)?

MS claims they were the first 1500dpi sensor pointing devices. I'm not hugely choosy on that front but they certainly feel accurate. Also, in the trackball world, five buttons and a scroll wheel are still not standard, let alone back ~2000 when these things were made. But it's mainly the ergonomics.

2: WHY ARE THEY SO EXPENSIVE?!

Supply & demand. MS stopped making them just as they were getting popular, and most users are very, very enthousiastic about them. Those who have them simply won't sell in most cases. It's telling I've bought two being sold by next-of-kin after the user died...

That said, it's the same as with everything else on eBay - if you want one *NOW* with no effort, you pay through the teeth. If you're patient and follow ads on other platforms you can get them for a fraction of the prices you see there. I've been actively looking for about nine months now and found four for low to moderate prices locally, having passed on a fifth as it started getting pretty expensive.

Hamby wrote:

liqmat wrote:

I feel the same way about this model.

IMG_1840.JPG

I bought one of those still in the box a few months ago.

Hooked it up to both serial ports of my T5200... not detected. I thought my serial ports were dead... then tried another mouse and discovered that the trackball was dead. Tried taking it apart, but couldn't figure out what was wrong.

Yeah, that particular model just had the most comfortable surface area. The wide body just cradled your entire hand and gave full support. So comfortable. The later models had the PS/2 adapter included.

cyclone3d wrote:

Have a "Rage 128 Pro" on the way 🤣

rage_fury_maxx.jpg

That's a Rage Fury MAXX. ATI didn't make it work with W2k, so W98/ME only 🙁 I sold mine in 2001 when it became obvious ATI had forgotten about their short lived dual GPU flagship. Bought back for $20 a few years later.

dionb wrote:

MS claims they were the first 1500dpi sensor pointing devices. I'm not hugely choosy on that front but they certainly feel accurate. Also, in the trackball world, five buttons and a scroll wheel are still not standard, let alone back ~2000 when these things were made. But it's mainly the ergonomics.
Supply & demand. MS stopped making them just as they were getting popular, and most users are very, very enthousiastic about them. Those who have them simply won't sell in most cases. It's telling I've bought two being sold by next-of-kin after the user died...

That said, it's the same as with everything else on eBay - if you want one *NOW* with no effort, you pay through the teeth. If you're patient and follow ads on other platforms you can get them for a fraction of the prices you see there. I've been actively looking for about nine months now and found four for low to moderate prices locally, having passed on a fifth as it started getting pretty expensive.

Interesting, thanks for the answer! I guess I'll have to keep my eye out for one at a thrift shop. I'd like to pick one up and see if it lives up to the hype 😊

ph4nt0m wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Have a "Rage 128 Pro" on the way 🤣

rage_fury_maxx.jpg

That's a Rage Fury MAXX. ATI didn't make it work with W2k, so W98/ME only 🙁 I sold mine in 2001 when it became obvious ATI had forgotten about their short lived dual GPU flagship. Bought back for $20 a few years later.

He knows. Thats why rage 128 pro is in quotes. 🤣

Katmai500 wrote:

ph4nt0m wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Have a "Rage 128 Pro" on the way 🤣

rage_fury_maxx.jpg

That's a Rage Fury MAXX. ATI didn't make it work with W2k, so W98/ME only 🙁 I sold mine in 2001 when it became obvious ATI had forgotten about their short lived dual GPU flagship. Bought back for $20 a few years later.

He knows. Thats why rage 128 pro is in quotes. 🤣

I've got it. Many n00bs sell it this way because there's no MAXX label anywhere. OTOH it says "Rage 128 PRO" on both sides of the PCB and on the fans. Anyway, $70 + postage was a bit expensive IMHO. Although it's a price for a working regular Voodoo 2 these days, so I'm not surprised.

grabbed this yesterday (seller's photo)

That extra DB25 connector and all those pin headers and jumpers can be safely ignored according to a more knowledgeable person in this stuff (madowax) since they are the flat panel connectors and configuration pins.
I estimate this will be a really fast ISA card , I've only seen the WD90C33 chip in vlb cards before.

appiah4 wrote:

I looked into the E2xx series (along with some Iiyamas and AOCs) back in the day when choosing a 17" CRT and went for a Philips 107P instead, though I can not remember why.. I believe I was charmed by the obscenely high resolution and refresh rates the 107P offered. E2xx was a good series though.

In other news: I found a guy selling a bunch of 486 boards, any of them particularly worth buying?

I want to buy two of these but I can't decide which two..

The third one is the only PCI board with CR32 battery. The fourth one is the only VLB. These would be my "blind" choices without knowing any other technical details about the boards.

keropi wrote:

grabbed this yesterday (seller's photo) […]
Show full quote

grabbed this yesterday (seller's photo)

That extra DB25 connector and all those pin headers and jumpers can be safely ignored according to a more knowledgeable person in this stuff (madowax) since they are the flat panel connectors and configuration pins.
I estimate this will be a really fast ISA card , I've only seen the WD90C33 chip in vlb cards before.

I've seen the ISA version before... not sure if 2MB version exist.

If you have CL-GD5434 card, I'd like to see some benchmarks between them in DOS.

oeuvre wrote:

Alright, which one of you bastards outbid me on that 1.4GHz powerleap Dell Dimension XPS T450 on eBay with a VooDoo3? 🙁

That would be me. 🤣 It just arrived yesterday with a broken CPU retention bracket and the powerleap adapter loose inside the case. 😵 It put a few scratches on the Voodoo3 card and a stick of RAM, but thankfully everything seems to be in working order. I'll just have to replace the CPU bracket.

Now it needs a thorough cleaning. The tualeron shows up as a Pentium Pro 1200 MHz in BIOS, but Memtest86+ correctly reported it at 1397 MHz, though as a Pentium III rather than Celeron. It only shows 512 MB of ram at post because I had the potentially damaged stick of RAM out when I took the picture.

P.S. 100th post! 😁

Nice machine. That reminds me I need to get on top of restoring my Dimension XPS D333. Does anyone know where I can get one of tose 3.5" drive bay covers? These PC cases don't really accomodate regular drive bay covers. Failing that, I'd be happy to buy a ZIP drive but those things go for stupid amounts of money now, for whatever reason..

kixs wrote:

I've seen the ISA version before... not sure if 2MB version exist.

If you have CL-GD5434 card, I'd like to see some benchmarks between them in DOS.

sadly I don't have a 5434 isa card... just a 5429 😢

ph4nt0m wrote:

I've got it. Many n00bs sell it this way because there's no MAXX label anywhere. OTOH it says "Rage 128 PRO" on both sides of the PCB and on the fans. Anyway, $70 + postage was a bit expensive IMHO. Although it's a price for a working regular Voodoo 2 these days, so I'm not surprised.

Well, looking at prices that were correctly listed, the lowest one I saw went for about $125 BIN + shipping while the highest I saw was $266 + shipping.

Taking that into account, I should be able to make my money back and then some if I ever decide to sell it.

I'm kinda envious of the person that was able to grab one not too long ago listed as a Rage 120 Pro for only $39.99.

If everything goes alright I should be getting this thing:

https://segaretro.org/Saturn_Music_School_2

Which is software for a Japanese Sega Saturn plus a MIDI interface that turns your Saturn into a General MIDI-based music tutorial/DAW.

keropi wrote:

kixs wrote:

I've seen the ISA version before... not sure if 2MB version exist.

If you have CL-GD5434 card, I'd like to see some benchmarks between them in DOS.

sadly I don't have a 5434 isa card... just a 5429 😢

In DOS 5429 and 5434 are pretty close (1-2% difference). So don't worry about it 🤣 In Windows the difference is pretty big (80%+ in favour of 5434).

Katmai500 wrote:

That would be me. :lol: It just arrived yesterday with a broken CPU retention bracket and the powerleap adapter loose inside th […]
Show full quote

oeuvre wrote:

Alright, which one of you bastards outbid me on that 1.4GHz powerleap Dell Dimension XPS T450 on eBay with a VooDoo3? 🙁

That would be me. 🤣 It just arrived yesterday with a broken CPU retention bracket and the powerleap adapter loose inside the case. 😵 It put a few scratches on the Voodoo3 card and a stick of RAM, but thankfully everything seems to be in working order. I'll just have to replace the CPU bracket.

Now it needs a thorough cleaning. The tualeron shows up as a Pentium Pro 1200 MHz in BIOS, but Memtest86+ correctly reported it at 1397 MHz, though as a Pentium III rather than Celeron. It only shows 512 MB of ram at post because I had the potentially damaged stick of RAM out when I took the picture.

P.S. 100th post! 😁

What a neat machine you got there, I'm glad to hear it's in good hands now. Hopefully you manage to get the CPU retention bracket replaced someday.

appiah4 wrote:

Nice machine. That reminds me I need to get on top of restoring my Dimension XPS D333. Does anyone know where I can get one of tose 3.5" drive bay covers? These PC cases don't really accomodate regular drive bay covers. Failing that, I'd be happy to buy a ZIP drive but those things go for stupid amounts of money now, for whatever reason..

If you have a few 3.5" floppy drives to spare, you can always put them in as placeholders. I believe there are 3.5" drive bay covers that have holes for the screwholes that are normally used for holding your drives, maybe those would also be an option?

kixs wrote:

keropi wrote:

kixs wrote:

I've seen the ISA version before... not sure if 2MB version exist.

If you have CL-GD5434 card, I'd like to see some benchmarks between them in DOS.

sadly I don't have a 5434 isa card... just a 5429 😢

In DOS 5429 and 5434 are pretty close (1-2% difference). So don't worry about it 🤣 In Windows the difference is pretty big (80%+ in favour of 5434).

Tip for other 2Megs ISA cards: ATI Mach64 and I have seen also Tseng 4000W32i.