oops posted in wrong thread;

Picked up a Roland A-880 with manual, so I can replace my MPU 104 + MPU 105 now.

Skimming the manual... battery backup.. uhoh.

yep.. there it is but its retention clip looks to be soldered to the motherboard. uuuugh. damn. Thats a job for the weekend.

imi wrote on 2020-05-06, 13:48:

got a few sound cards :3 […]
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got a few sound cards :3

...

Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS, seems complete
hardware38_46.jpg

Be very careful with the external rack: you can't "hot plug" it. Always plug or unplug the rack when the computer is turned off

MMaximus wrote on 2020-05-07, 22:56:

Be very careful with the external rack: you can't "hot plug" it. Always plug or unplug the rack when the computer is turned off

I second this.

Not very exciting, but from experience, low quality IDE cables suck. I was happy to find high quality brand new ones locally for not too much. I tried IDE cables out of China before (although these are also made in China) and they fell apart just by looking at them. The shitty Chinese cables were a slightly darker gray then the ones I always used before.

Are these cables keyed, you ask? No they're not... 😀

MMaximus wrote on 2020-05-07, 22:56:

imi wrote on 2020-05-06, 13:48:

got a few sound cards :3 […]
Show full quote

got a few sound cards :3

...

Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS, seems complete
hardware38_46.jpg

Be very careful with the external rack: you can't "hot plug" it. Always plug or unplug the rack when the computer is turned off

thank you, I wouldn't have tried... but plugging and unplugging audio devices from the rack should be fine, no?

Did not buy it but this is the first 8bit ISA slot only, 286 I have seen. Most all 286 have a few 16bit slots but not this one.

Horun wrote on 2020-05-08, 01:42:

Did not buy it but this is the first 8bit ISA slot only, 286 I have seen. Most all 286 have a few 16bit slots but not this one

31MHz CPU, that sounds so very standard .

EDIT : 12 MHz according to https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/H/H … 86-HED-919.html

Received my supposedly refurbished Dell U2412M from newegg.ca. It arrived naked in its cardboard box with no screen protection and loose cables. As a bonus the cardboard struts inside had failed so the screen was rubbing against the inside of the of the box and the power cable . Maybe that's what caused the half centimeter scratch close to the middle of the screen, or maybe it was already there as part of the "refurbishing" process .
The monitor was advertised as refurbished, without a grade . I am not a happy camper .

https://www.newegg.ca/dell-u2412m-24-uxga/p/N … N82E16824260702

EDIT : I will contact their customer service tomorrow .
EDIT : There is 1 other small blemish, but the one in the photo is simply not acceptable to me .

This happened to me once. I only buy screens new now, or for dirt cheap prices if it's retro monitors.

kolderman wrote on 2020-05-08, 03:55:

This happened to me once. I only buy screens new now, or for dirt cheap prices if it's retro monitors.

The worst of it is that I paid 40$ shipping on it, so it would presumably cost the same to ship back . I would be surprised if the yrefunded any of the shipping costs. So that means, in the best of circumstances, I'm going to be out 80$ with no monitor .

I've been spoiled by dellrefurbished.ca . Their stuff is accurately graded and I've had no bad surprises with the 4 laptops I've purchased from them so far . Oh, and they know how to pack .

I was actually expecting something similar from newegg.ca . Oh and I forgot to mention, there actually was bubble wrap in one corner of the box. They just never bothered to wrap the screen in it .

darry wrote on 2020-05-08, 04:31:

The worst of it is that I paid 40$ shipping on it, so it would presumably cost the same to ship back . I would be surprised if t […]
Show full quote

kolderman wrote on 2020-05-08, 03:55:

This happened to me once. I only buy screens new now, or for dirt cheap prices if it's retro monitors.

The worst of it is that I paid 40$ shipping on it, so it would presumably cost the same to ship back . I would be surprised if the yrefunded any of the shipping costs. So that means, in the best of circumstances, I'm going to be out 80$ with no monitor .

I've been spoiled by dellrefurbished.ca . Their stuff is accurately graded and I've had no bad surprises with the 4 laptops I've purchased from them so far . Oh, and they know how to pack .

I was actually expecting something similar from newegg.ca . Oh and I forgot to mention, there actually was bubble wrap in one corner of the box. They just never bothered to wrap the screen in it .

Send it postage due or COD. If they don’t file a charge back.

imi wrote on 2020-05-08, 00:12:

MMaximus wrote on 2020-05-07, 22:56:

imi wrote on 2020-05-06, 13:48:

got a few sound cards :3 […]
Show full quote

got a few sound cards :3

...

Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS, seems complete
hardware38_46.jpg

Be very careful with the external rack: you can't "hot plug" it. Always plug or unplug the rack when the computer is turned off

thank you, I wouldn't have tried... but plugging and unplugging audio devices from the rack should be fine, no?

...when it's off, yes. Otherwise you run the risk of damaging internal components because of voltage spikes caused by parasitic noise. Also be sure to turn down all the volume pots/sliders before switching it on or off (for the same reason).

The loud *POP* people get when they turn on their amplifier? A potential killer of the device itself and especially any connected devices (it can especially blow speakers). Always turn on devices in outgoing order, with the volume off or at its lowest, and use the same order when opening the volume.

brownk wrote on 2020-05-07, 23:37:

MMaximus wrote on 2020-05-07, 22:56:

Be very careful with the external rack: you can't "hot plug" it. Always plug or unplug the rack when the computer is turned off

I second this.

I third this.

maverick85 wrote on 2020-05-07, 17:04:

Cyrix200+ wrote on 2017-01-11, 17:28:

An Aureal Vortex 2.

Hi, do you have the manual for this card. I'm trying to connect the dvd to the card so i can have clean sound via S/PDIF

No I don't have a manual I'm afraid. But I guess you could find it on Google maybe? It's not really rare or old 😀

yawetaG wrote on 2020-05-08, 05:39:

The loud *POP* people get when they turn on their amplifier? A potential killer of the device itself and especially any connected devices (it can especially blow speakers). Always turn on devices in outgoing order, with the volume off or at its lowest, and use the same order when opening the volume.

I have learned this the hard way with my 1978 Scott Amp/Tuner. It required extensive repairs afterwards.

People who clean the house LOVE to leave the volume dials at max for some reason....

austinham wrote on 2020-05-08, 04:44:

darry wrote on 2020-05-08, 04:31:

The worst of it is that I paid 40$ shipping on it, so it would presumably cost the same to ship back . I would be surprised if t […]
Show full quote

kolderman wrote on 2020-05-08, 03:55:

This happened to me once. I only buy screens new now, or for dirt cheap prices if it's retro monitors.

The worst of it is that I paid 40$ shipping on it, so it would presumably cost the same to ship back . I would be surprised if the yrefunded any of the shipping costs. So that means, in the best of circumstances, I'm going to be out 80$ with no monitor .

I've been spoiled by dellrefurbished.ca . Their stuff is accurately graded and I've had no bad surprises with the 4 laptops I've purchased from them so far . Oh, and they know how to pack .

I was actually expecting something similar from newegg.ca . Oh and I forgot to mention, there actually was bubble wrap in one corner of the box. They just never bothered to wrap the screen in it .

Send it postage due or COD. If they don’t file a charge back.

They will pay for return shipping . I said would prefer a replacement if possible. They will refund me if not possible . Considering the monitor was loose in box, face against cardboard, with loose cables inside and cardboard support structure had failed , it could be due to bad packing combined with rough handling .

This might be shipping damage, but I can't say for sure .

I also find it hard to believe that something as glaring would pass any quality control if it had been present before shipping .

Anyway, newegg.ca seems to be handling this in a fantastic manner so far .

Well I'm glad it's being resolved satisfactory so far. But it just seems so weird for Newegg I've been using them since 04/05 and I've never had any issues with how they package and ship things even refurbished items. I really hope they fully resolve this for you.

So, I bought myself a pile of "new in box industrial cards" this week. Arrived today, exactly as pictured in the ad, just with one extra card outside of a box:

I started unpacking them, leaving the motherboard for last. And had a bit of an anticlimax 🙁

No PCMCIA NIC and - much worse - no motherboard 🙁 🙁

However some nice surprises in the rest:
- The second sound card looks like the least crap ALS100 card I've come across - thick PCB, solid caps and a sensible-looking layout. Also LS-212 OPL3 1:1 clone.
- The IDE card has a BIOS, which is unusual for AT IDE, and supports not two but four floppy drives. Not sure how I would use that, but nice nonetheless.
- That extra card was a NOS Adaptec AHA-1542 - about the most standard, usable ISA SCSI card out there 😀
- I'd expected the true 'industrial' cards all to be data acquisition cards. One of them is (full of NEC D71055 parallel I/O chips), the other three (two in the big box!) are all battery-backed RAM disks.

Of course "battery backed" means nasty leaky NiCd, but fortunately there was only some frosting around the negative poll. Snipped them off before they could do any harm. Whats left is a 128kB SRAM board, configurable as floppy drive, and a 1024kB EPROM board (or 192kB SRAM, depending on whether you use 16 27512 EPROMs or 6 62256 SRAMs) which is bootable as option ROM. Nothing that an XT-IDE couldn't already do, but nice nonetheless. It also contains detailed instructions on how to install DOS onto the ROMs and a bunch of tools:
MAKEDISK.EXE - that makes ROM images out of a list of files.
RAMDRV.SYS - SRAM device driver for DOS
INITRAM.EX - format utility for the SRAM disk

Not at all sure what I'll be doing with this stuff, but will definitely be ordering some chips to try it out.

Oh, and bottom-right another parcel arrived: a Deschutes P2-400 and a Katmai P3-600, the fastest 100MHz FSB Katmai CPU. My MS-6168 utterly refuses any Coppermine CPUs (even though its dying twin from same revision happily accepts CuMine and even Tualatin), so might as well give it the fastest CPU it will allow.

The Tyan box wasn't empty though. Apart from some crap coax cables (TV/radio style) that went straight into the bin, and the Tyan S1590 manual and driver disk, it also had some reciepts from 1996 (3 years older than the box!) and a pile of prints of IBM 486 pinout & specification:

In 1996 in NL 256k of cache cost DFL 90 (about EUR 62 allowing for inflation), an IBM DX4-100 cost DFL 179 (EUR 125 now) and its motherboard DFL 269 (EUR 185 now). Will see if those IBM 486 specs are easily available online, if not will scan & preserve of course 😉

Edit: yep, found 10x 62256 SRAMs surprisingly cheaply and 16x 29C512 EEPROMs (for more flexibility if I want to re-use in 486 motherboards later) somewhat less so.
Edit2: found the IBM pinout document too: http://datasheets.chipdb.org/IBM/x86/486/40024.PDF - so no need to scan my papers.

DTC 2278D VLB I/O EIDE controller card and an AMD Am5x86-P75 am486dx5-133v16bgc that works at 3.3VDC, which'll be installed in my Packard Bell once I get the 3.3V CPU support installed on the newly acquired board, along with the RAM, BIOS chip, and so on to test it out to verify the 3.3V CPUs will work in it before setting it into my other 486, or keep it installed.

Just got this nice CT1770:

From what I can tell it has a v4.05 DSP, so this must be one of those SB16 with bug-free MIDI output right?