Not *bought*, but was given an Alienware m17x R2 laptop. Thing was a beast when first released, but this particular machine died an early death of heat stroke. Gutted the parts, but would have been nice to have it running as an uber beastly XP machine.

Carlos S. M. wrote:

meljor wrote:

I'm keeping several Ati cards, wil be fun to a line up one day and benchmark the series. Only keeping s3 virge GX (seems to be quickest), rest can go.

The dual cards are a mouth full, i found a link: http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/component … cs-jeronimo-pro

They are permedia2 based dual head it seems.

About the Rage series, don't forget there are multiple models in some of the series, like multi Rage 128 models like 128 VR, 128 GL, 128 Pro and Ultra

Found out about that thanks to wiki and when i read that i decided to keep some of them to compare later. Never actually benched Ati cards from that era before so should be fun.

An old 'friend of mine' has returned at home - not properly bought, it was one of my 2 NES, this one given as gift to my brother, but he never had time to play with it, so... I'll take care of it personally again.

Kadath wrote:

An old 'friend of mine' has returned at home - not properly bought, it was one of my 2 NES, this one given as gift to my brother […]
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An old 'friend of mine' has returned at home - not properly bought, it was one of my 2 NES, this one given as gift to my brother, but he never had time to play with it, so... I'll take care of it personally again.

"Mattel Version" ? Never saw that one before. Curious to know what they did to put their name on it.

Brickpad wrote:

Kadath wrote:

An old 'friend of mine' has returned at home - not properly bought, it was one of my 2 NES, this one given as gift to my brother […]
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An old 'friend of mine' has returned at home - not properly bought, it was one of my 2 NES, this one given as gift to my brother, but he never had time to play with it, so... I'll take care of it personally again.

"Mattel Version" ? Never saw that one before. Curious to know what they did to put their name on it.

Here in Italy, only this version of the famous NES was distributed, just by Mattel - famous name, during the early '90s. We can say that this is the Italian version of NES PAL. Personally speaking, I find it much more aesthetically pleasing the US NTSC version, gray and purple. I have never owned the original Japanese Famicom, but fortunately I still have the European version of the SNES PAL.

meljor wrote:

I have been fidling with computers for a long time, like 20 years or so and i have seen an awful lot of hardware. But i never se […]
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brostenen wrote:

Just got a message today. Going to pick up a SCSI bundle tomorrow. It should be something like an external SCSI box for 5.25 inc […]
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Just got a message today. Going to pick up a SCSI bundle tomorrow.
It should be something like an external SCSI box for 5.25 inch drives, a SCSI harddrive and possible a controller.
Perhaps some cables? I really have no clue. All I know is that the bundle has that box and that HDD.
The stuff are untested, so I am quite qurious on to what it is and what state it is in.

Meh... Can't complain as it is free stuff.

Pics will come...

I have been fidling with computers for a long time, like 20 years or so and i have seen an awful lot of hardware. But i never set up anything with scsi.
Sometimes i had drives but somehow i always ended up having cards and cables that do not fit together....

I never found out exactly what was what and how to put it together i mean there is scsi 1 , 2 wide ultra etc. and too many types of connectors.
I always ended up throwing stuff away and THEN a controller came along that might have fit. When that was long gone a cable came etc. etc.

I found documentation online a bit ''blurry'' and never found a straight forward guide with pictures about the differences in SCSI.

Finally having a HD and a cable that fit i never could find a used controller card for a low price. I could never justify paying a lot of money just to get an old 36gb hd (or something like that) going when i had multiple 80gb+ Ide drives for next to nothing (or sata). I gave up and as of now i have nothing scsi.

Maybe i never cared enough 🤣

At first, it seems like a big mysterie. Yet I managed to figure things out.
Both by logic, and secondly by reading manuals for different parts.

Some stuff are bacwards compatible, so it is mostly a question of converters.
The biggest hurdle for me, was to figure out that some drives are low voltage and others are not.
Once I got some of the information sorted out, it is actually pretty straight forward and easy.

kixs wrote:

I'm kinda in the same boat. Also on the PC scene from beginning of the 1990's and just never fiddled around with SCSI. Last year […]
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I'm kinda in the same boat. Also on the PC scene from beginning of the 1990's and just never fiddled around with SCSI. Last year I bought an old IBM e-server that had everything already installed. But I wanted more. A few months ago bought my first SCSI Adaptec 1542CP ISA card - boxed with all the bells and whistles (cable, active terminator). Connected it to a 486 and tried a few small 50-pin SCSI drives - 1 dead, 3 working, CD-ROM working. A few days ago bought another SCSI card, this time PCI and NIB - KOUWELL KW-801V75 - I haven't opened it yet 😉 It has both 50 and 68 pin connectors. Wondering how much better a PCI card is on a 486.

As time permits (maybe next year 🤣 ) I'll play around with both cards. ISA on 286/386/486 and PCI on 486 and Pentium. Also have a SCSI to IDE/CF adapter and I'm wondering how that performs.

KOUWELL KW-801V75

That is an awesomme looking card.
Though I am more into the ISA SCSI-II stuff. Awefully slow by today's standards, yet pretty fast for a 286-10 or 386sx33.

On my 386sx33, i measured around 800kb/s transfer rate on an ISA controller with an 3600rpm SCSI-II drive. Looking at 800kb/s was fast in 1987/88, it will kind of fit my 8/10 mhz 80286 better. I am using this controller here....

meljor wrote:

Question: What is the best card to keep from Ati Rage series? And Which from s3? I got 15x Ati and 15x S3 here, all kinds of flavors.....Rage, Rage pro, 128, Rage II and from S3 All kinds of trio's, some virge GX some DX, savage 3d, trio 3D

For Rage cards, you may want to look at which ones support CIF 3D, particularly for Mech2. Same with S3 and Metal.

The AHA1542 has always been my go-to SCSI card on ISA. Can't go better than that (except for some controllers from DPT, anyone remember those? My favorite maker of SCSI controllers back in the '90s were DPT, before Adaptec bought them and immediately discontinued all support)

Just got a message from the doner of that SCSI bundle... The package should contain the following.

- External SCSI CD-Rom drive.
- One IBM tape drive.
- One IBM SCSI controller (came with the tape drive originally).
- One unnamed SCSI controller.
- Some SCSI cables.

Soooo.... Looking forward to add a CD-Rom drive to my 286.
I have a lot of different SCSI stuff that I want to build an external box for.
I just need to figure out how to find and modify the perfect case for this.
Perhaps an old and defect shuttle XPc or something like that.

Sadly. The HDD was dead when he tested it out 🙁

gdjacobs wrote:

meljor wrote:

Question: What is the best card to keep from Ati Rage series? And Which from s3? I got 15x Ati and 15x S3 here, all kinds of flavors.....Rage, Rage pro, 128, Rage II and from S3 All kinds of trio's, some virge GX some DX, savage 3d, trio 3D

For Rage cards, you may want to look at which ones support CIF 3D, particularly for Mech2. Same with S3 and Metal.

Sure! Ofcourse! But........first i did ask my almighty friend Google what CIF 3D is.... 😎

Is it like a glide for ATi? Not very much games do support that or am i wrong? Or is it like when it is NOT supported the image will be corrupted (like with the first ATi 3d cards ).
Thanks for the tip, now please fill me in. The first ATi card i really used was the x1900xtx.
Before that i listened to all the people that talked about bad drivers etc. and went for Nvidia (before that, 3dfx).

I'm on a roll here and already love 2017.... Two more motherboards will be coming my way: Asus p3v4x and Asus P3b-F. Both come with cpu: p3 550 and 600.
The last one i have a couple of but an extra spare is always good when the price is low.

meljor wrote:

Sure! Ofcourse! But........first i did ask my almighty friend Google what CIF 3D is.... :cool: […]
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gdjacobs wrote:

meljor wrote:

Question: What is the best card to keep from Ati Rage series? And Which from s3? I got 15x Ati and 15x S3 here, all kinds of flavors.....Rage, Rage pro, 128, Rage II and from S3 All kinds of trio's, some virge GX some DX, savage 3d, trio 3D

For Rage cards, you may want to look at which ones support CIF 3D, particularly for Mech2. Same with S3 and Metal.

Sure! Ofcourse! But........first i did ask my almighty friend Google what CIF 3D is.... 😎

Is it like a glide for ATi? Not very much games do support that or am i wrong? Or is it like when it is NOT supported the image will be corrupted (like with the first ATi 3d cards ).
Thanks for the tip, now please fill me in. The first ATi card i really used was the x1900xtx.
Before that i listened to all the people that talked about bad drivers etc. and went for Nvidia (before that, 3dfx).

Yes, CIF was ATI's proprietary 3D API for the Rage 3D/64/XL family of chips. Similar for S3 was their Metal API.

Some info:
http://gona.mactar.hu/ATI_3D_CIF/
Proprietary 3D API's
LIst of games for non-Glide proprietary APIs:
3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)

Got this REALmagic MPEG Audio / Video accelerator yesterday. Thank you Dirkmirk!

Haven't gotten around to trying it just yet, but I've got a 386 SX 33 ready to go.

I'll try not to buy as much stuff this year. Last year was crazy and I've already got so much stuff. It will last me years to test and review them all 😵

brostenen wrote:

That is an awesomme looking card. Though I am more into the ISA SCSI-II stuff. Awefully slow by today's standards, yet pretty fa […]
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kixs wrote:

I'm kinda in the same boat. Also on the PC scene from beginning of the 1990's and just never fiddled around with SCSI. Last year […]
Show full quote

I'm kinda in the same boat. Also on the PC scene from beginning of the 1990's and just never fiddled around with SCSI. Last year I bought an old IBM e-server that had everything already installed. But I wanted more. A few months ago bought my first SCSI Adaptec 1542CP ISA card - boxed with all the bells and whistles (cable, active terminator). Connected it to a 486 and tried a few small 50-pin SCSI drives - 1 dead, 3 working, CD-ROM working. A few days ago bought another SCSI card, this time PCI and NIB - KOUWELL KW-801V75 - I haven't opened it yet 😉 It has both 50 and 68 pin connectors. Wondering how much better a PCI card is on a 486.

As time permits (maybe next year 🤣 ) I'll play around with both cards. ISA on 286/386/486 and PCI on 486 and Pentium. Also have a SCSI to IDE/CF adapter and I'm wondering how that performs.

KOUWELL KW-801V75

That is an awesomme looking card.
Though I am more into the ISA SCSI-II stuff. Awefully slow by today's standards, yet pretty fast for a 286-10 or 386sx33.

On my 386sx33, i measured around 800kb/s transfer rate on an ISA controller with an 3600rpm SCSI-II drive. Looking at 800kb/s was fast in 1987/88, it will kind of fit my 8/10 mhz 80286 better. I am using this controller here....

SAM_0521 (1).JPG

I love Adaptec cards... yours look almost the same as my. This is what I bought a few months ago... works very good.

That's an 1542CF... I recognize it by the red DIP switch bank. 😁

As for me, nothing too exciting today... a few HDD caddies for the Thinkpad 75x/76x series. One of the few I had has gone bad recently (worn connector) and I realized I had only few left, and they're getting rare and expensive. In fact the only place I found where they didn't cost an arm and a leg, after my purchase only have 4 left in stock. When those are gone there won't be any left, anywhere. Proprietary connectors suck.

kixs wrote:

I love Adaptec cards... yours look almost the same as my. This is what I bought a few months ago... works very good. […]
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I love Adaptec cards... yours look almost the same as my. This is what I bought a few months ago... works very good.

Yup...
When I got mine, I actually got two of them. One is working (the one in my picture) and the other one was dead.
I think it lost a resistor, wich is one of the black rectangulair ones, though I am not shure if it is a resistor.
Still have the card floating around though. The one that died, had a red dipswitch thingy, just like your's.

On a second glance at the picture.... It is a capacitor. It is eighter C11 or C12 that broke off.

Finally decided to dive back in 486 era and bought an ASUS VL/I-486SV2GX4 rev. 2.0 motherboard to host the Media Vision ProGraphics 1024 VLB card I already had. Cache chips are also on the way, still no luck with a nice Cyrix 5x86 (actually have a 100 MHz one, but this is not enough!), so I'll put a Pentium Overdrive as an interim solution. Now let the quest for a Creative 3D Blaster VLB begin!..

kixs wrote:

KOUWELL KW-801V75 […]
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KOUWELL KW-801V75

looks like a rebaged tekram 390... hmm. might not be but its the same chipset. swap bios to other side and looks like a dc390.. i always liked tekram scsi cards.

Got a Dell Dimension 4600 + an HP KB-0228 from a thrift store today. Cleaned them both, came out great.

Just needs an AGP card for the 4600, but I tested it with the Aptiva's ATI Rage PCI card and it works fine. http://imgur.com/a/KqgN7