I was going to buy a GRiD 386 laptop, but the I found this for a good deal on eBay of all places

Edit.
That's a sound blaster audigy 4 pro

Bought this for $69 + free shipping. Probably too much. I just wanted the case, not the stuff inside (Which I plan to test and sell...I hate Pentium 4s). Board is an Asus P4B533-VM, 1GB of RAM, and what looks to be a single bulging cap...which I'll fix.

I had the exact same case housing my Athlon AXIA 1Gb @ 1.3Ghz with a ABIT KT7a in 2001 (I think) Great case!

foey wrote:

I had the exact same case housing my Athlon AXIA 1Gb @ 1.3Ghz with a ABIT KT7a in 2001 (I think) Great case!

Do you know what brand? I was thinking Enlight. Do you know if it requires drive rails? I saw one of these cases that looked very similar, on Ebay for $8+$27 shipping, but it was slightly rusted, plastic was yellowed, and missing the 3.5" drive cage; required drive rails. Thought maybe this might need them too.

[EDIT]

Nevermind. It is an Enlight Endura 7237, and it does require drive rails. Looks like there are a few sellers on Ebay that have spares.

Picked up the Diamond Viper V330 + original install CD-ROM for $1 (shipping was $13, though).

My first 3D accelerator card was the STB Velocity 128, also a Riva 128 card. I finished Quake 2 and FF VII with it, so I have fond memories of it despite its flaws.

I was intrigued by the Diamond card because it is the PCI version and comes with 8MB (most Riva 128s come with 4MB, which doesn't allow you to go past 800x600 for 3D games).

jesolo wrote:

Recently bought an Olivetti M24 (AT&T 6300) locally for about $50 US.
Came with the original Olivetti M24 monochrome monitor, the 102-key Olivetti keyboard, a Seagate ST-225 20 MB HDD, 360k floppy drive and a full 640KB of RAM

Sigh... i envy you. Nice setup! This Olivetti was a really great pc clone.
I had one too, i sold it for 40 euro 5 years ago. Had memory expansion, color monitor,5,25 3.5 floppies and a surprisingly working hard drive.

Now that i remember i have one spare m24 case,found in a junkyard. I also have one compatible keyboard, but no monitor! I'll probably have to find an ega or vga card too...

foey wrote:

I had the exact same case housing my Athlon AXIA 1Gb @ 1.3Ghz with a ABIT KT7a in 2001 (I think) Great case!

I have a bunch of black cases like that (Enlight) but with dual USB ports at the bottom (and they don't need drive rails).

boxpressed wrote:

I was intrigued by the Diamond card because it is the PCI version and comes with 8MB (most Riva 128s come with 4MB, which doesn't allow you to go past 800x600 for 3D games).

its a riva zx then, same engine as riva 128 iirc, just more memory

mongaccio wrote:

Sigh... i envy you. Nice setup! This Olivetti was a really great pc clone. I had one too, i sold it for 40 euro 5 years ago. Ha […]
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jesolo wrote:

Recently bought an Olivetti M24 (AT&T 6300) locally for about $50 US.
Came with the original Olivetti M24 monochrome monitor, the 102-key Olivetti keyboard, a Seagate ST-225 20 MB HDD, 360k floppy drive and a full 640KB of RAM

Sigh... i envy you. Nice setup! This Olivetti was a really great pc clone.
I had one too, i sold it for 40 euro 5 years ago. Had memory expansion, color monitor,5,25 3.5 floppies and a surprisingly working hard drive.

Now that i remember i have one spare m24 case,found in a junkyard. I also have one compatible keyboard, but no monitor! I'll probably have to find an ega or vga card too...

Yes, great finding - I love Olivetti machines too... so many memories from my youth. When I was child I had an Olivetti M300, with its color monitor, keyboard and Genious mouse - it was a 486 SX25, if I'remembering right. I've played many nice DOS games on it. The only Olivettis I own today are 2x Olivetti M24 "new" model, based on Pentium 133mhz - found aside the dumpster, left there by a school near my house.

Carlos S. M. wrote:

Got all of this for 10 € […]
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Got all of this for 10 €

An old Fujitsu SCAELO with a BIOSTAR M6VCG, Pentium III 866, 256 MB RAM, nVidia TNT2 M64 32 MB, VIA Firewire card, AMR Modem, Ovislink network card with a Tiger 320 chip (?), HDD is missing
Two IBM Thinkpad A21ms, both Pentium III (can be 700, 750 or 800 MHz), one has 64 MB RAM and no HDD, the other has 128 MB RAM and 10 GB HDD

Need to test them

Update: Only one of the Thinkpads works, the desktop P3 works, but the videocard needed a new heatsnik

boxpressed wrote:

Picked up the Diamond Viper V330 + original install CD-ROM for $1 (shipping was $13, though). […]
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Picked up the Diamond Viper V330 + original install CD-ROM for $1 (shipping was $13, though).

My first 3D accelerator card was the STB Velocity 128, also a Riva 128 card. I finished Quake 2 and FF VII with it, so I have fond memories of it despite its flaws.

I was intrigued by the Diamond card because it is the PCI version and comes with 8MB (most Riva 128s come with 4MB, which doesn't allow you to go past 800x600 for 3D games).

P1120681.JPG

Is the heatsink original? I've one identical PCI one that has no heatsink on it and I always thought it ran too hot on the chip surface.

Testing 2 new modules of 1GB OCZ PC3200 that run at 2.5-2-3-5. Without overclocking from the 3-4-4-8 ones I had before they seems to be a bit faster on browser usage.

It's not a secret that I love sunday flea markets. Since I've been living in my current town, where I moved 4 months ago, I found here some interesting pieces of hardware: Voodoo Banshee, ram, etc. But today I found a piece of gold 🤣:

The mighty Awe64 Gold. Tried it and works perfectly fine, it will substitute the Value version that I currently have in my retro machine. At first sight, it's more or less the same but sound quality is way more clear, and the card itself is a beauty!. Still have to investigate what good soundfounts may fit on it's 4MB internal ram.

And also a S3 Virge DX, it's the same card that came with our first Pentium back in 1997, but in 2MB version. This one has 4MB (bought it because of the addtional memory chips, quite useful), and it's more or less the same poor card, but allows more choices in both resolution & color configurations. It may be ok to pair it with a Voodoo 😀

Both cards for 5€, quite a deal 😀

mmx_91 wrote:

And also a S3 Virge DX, it's the same card that came with our first Pentium back in 1997, but in 2MB version. This one has 4MB ( […]
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And also a S3 Virge DX, it's the same card that came with our first Pentium back in 1997, but in 2MB version. This one has 4MB (bought it because of the addtional memory chips, quite useful), and it's more or less the same poor card, but allows more choices in both resolution & color configurations. It may be ok to pair it with a Voodoo 😀

Both cards for 5€, quite a deal 😀

S3 ViRGE cards are great cards for 2D and DOS due to it's perfomance and compatibility, but really bad for 3D games on Windows (DirectX/OpenGL), also is fine as card for paring with 3dfx Voodoos

Carlos S. M. wrote:

The Radeon 9200SE, Geforce 2 MX/400, S3 Trio3D, Voodoo 1 and that 7500LE may still work

That ATI Rage card is baddly damaged, so it'll likely not work

The 8-bit ISA card is an old Network card, the IBM stick might be an EDO DIMM, check it's capacity, that generic soundcard looks like a CMI-8738 based soundcard

Yeah, I cleaned the gunk off that ATI Rage card, threw it into my testpc, at first it activated the monitor properly, but then nothing appeared. What is worse is that now after inserting TNT2 I have in that normally I noticed the HDD was not spinning, so I reseated power plug, HDD started, but threw I/O error on me. Ugh...

Also, I plugged the Voodoo card to PC, but I don't have the passthrough cable, so I couldn't test how it works. Drivers installed perfectly, so I hope it is OK..?

krivulak wrote:

Also, I plugged the Voodoo card to PC, but I don't have the passthrough cable, so I couldn't test how it works. Drivers installed perfectly, so I hope it is OK..?

Just start a game with Glide support and connect your monitor directly to the Voodoo card. It should work as expected if everything is ok 😀

So if all goes well, soon I'll have my first Roland Sound Canvas (SC-88 version). 😁

Received these 2 beauties today:

first 386 motherboard

a 386sx-16 with 1MB built-in and slots for another max 4x1MB chips. Has a custom DTK BIOS-like setup program, but it's not a run-of-the-mill BIOS. It's by DTK/Datatek and has some advanced features. For instance there's a special section for setting the NEAT chipset which can apparently map XMS into EMS without any external utility. 😀
I've hit an obstacle though: it doesn't seem to recognize any of the floppy controllers I have, and it won't boot if it doesn't find one, even if both floppies are set in the setup program to "none" Still investigating...
I've replaced the battery already. There was a bit of corrosion on the battery's negative terminal, but it looks like it didn't reach the motherboard. No damage anywhere.

second 386 motherboard

I expected this one to just work, but it doesn't. When I power it on, the keyboard LEDs flash briefly then turn off. No video out at all. I only tested with one video card though, I may go back and test again with others. Tried several of the ISA slots, same result. I don't know what the large brown connector is for. I assume the connector right next to the CPU is used for some sort of memory extension card which I don't have. But why? It already has 8 30-pin slots for memory, more than enough for extra RAM. The board is apparently made by AMI (the BIOS company).
I can't find it in TH99, this is model 386XT series-17, the only AMI 386XT in TH99 is series-6 which has a completely different layout. I can't find a battery, or a connector for one, anywhere on the motherboard. No DS or equivalent chip either. Perhaps it would be on the expansion card, or on whatever plugged into the brown connector?

If anything, the layout is similar to this AMI 386SX motherboard: http://arvutimuuseum.ee/th99/m/A-B/30911.htm However this one has a coin battery pictured, and connector J2 for an external battery and J1 to select internal/external battery. My motherboard has none of the above.

brassicGamer wrote:

Standard Def Steve wrote:

$15 got me this Gridcase 1520 last weekend:
It has a 286-12, 1MB of RAM, 20MB HDD and a plasma screen.

She's a beaut!! Where'd you find her?

Got lucky at the thrift store. 😀

stamasd wrote:

I don't know what the large brown connector is for. I assume the connector right next to the CPU is used for some sort of memory extension card which I don't have. But why? It already has 8 30-pin slots for memory, more than enough for extra RAM. The board is apparently made by AMI (the BIOS company).
I can't find it in TH99, this is model 386XT series-17, the only AMI 386XT in TH99 is series-6 which has a completely different layout. I can't find a battery, or a connector for one, anywhere on the motherboard. No DS or equivalent chip either. Perhaps it would be on the expansion card, or on whatever plugged into the brown connector?

Anonymous Coward has/had a similar board: Re: Post your 386 Speedsys results here so you can see where the battery is on that one. Your board is a mystery! It's a high-end 386 board for sure, with the LIF socket for CPU. Apparently the brown connector is for a proprietary CPU upgrade board: http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28153.