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.

Finally.... Last piece to the puzzle... A project I started on in 2013.
The project is to build a collection of working machines to show how
pc hardware evolved from mid-80's to 2000/01.
That would be, from the nerd machine to the family's everyday-everything-
multimedia-machine. Kind of a historic little project.

And boy have I had a ride doing this. Parts from all over the world.
I had a lot of fun doing this, building machines from 286 to Pentium4 and
everything in between. Not everything, just a basic machine collection.
286, 386, 3x486, Pentium-I, Pentium-II, 2xPentium-III, K6-II, K6-III, AthlonXP and P4.

Anyway....
Paid for this today. Will recieve it in the next week. Ohhh yeah.
This will be stripped, the motherboard, ram, cpu and gfx put up for sale.
And my 486dx2-66 VLB/ISA system will recieve a new home.

Sellers pictures. The price was 79 US Dollars including shipping.
(Can someone perhaps identify the motherboard?)

the 2 socketed ICs on the mediasonic soundcard can be replaced with the real Yamaha counterparts and boost it's FM quality since the ones installed are clones . Something to keep in mind if you want to use it "seriously" 🤣

I recently did that to a clone card I had and the difference in quality was really noticeable:

brostenen wrote:

Finally.... Last piece to the puzzle... A project I started on in 2013. The project is to build a collection of working machines […]
Show full quote

Finally.... Last piece to the puzzle... A project I started on in 2013.
The project is to build a collection of working machines to show how
pc hardware evolved from mid-80's to 2000/01.
That would be, from the nerd machine to the family's everyday-everything-
multimedia-machine. Kind of a historic little project.

And boy have I had a ride doing this. Parts from all over the world.
I had a lot of fun doing this, building machines from 286 to Pentium4 and
everything in between. Not everything, just a basic machine collection.
286, 386, 3x486, Pentium-I, Pentium-II, 2xPentium-III, K6-II, K6-III, AthlonXP and P4.

Anyway....
Paid for this today. Will recieve it in the next week. Ohhh yeah.
This will be stripped, the motherboard, ram, cpu and gfx put up for sale.
And my 486dx2-66 VLB/ISA system will recieve a new home.

Sellers pictures. The price was 79 US Dollars including shipping.
(Can someone perhaps identify the motherboard?)

PC Chips M575 with ALi Aladdin IV chipset.

http://motherboards.mbarron.net/models/pcchips/m575.htm

You do not want to sell this motherboard. It's one of the fastest Socket 7 motherboards there is. It will run a K6-3 (not K6-3+) at 500 MHz (6x83) but it's also very fast with all other CPUs.

If you sell it be sure to sell if for a low price to member vetz, he needs an ALi Alladin IV motherboard for his Socket 7 motherboard benchmarking project.

I was emptying out some more boxes left untouched since I moved and found the book to a DX-6900 Universal VESA Master 486 System Board. Not sure who made that board. Sadly no board was turned up with the book, I don't even remember owning this.

Probably already on Mbarrons or something but I have the manual for it if anybody needs jumper info and what not 😎

Edit: meant to enter this in the retro activity thread, my brain is now vintage.

Skyscraper wrote:

PC Chips M575 with Ali Aladdin IV chipset.

http://motherboards.mbarron.net/models/pcchips/m575.htm

You do not want to sell this motherboard. It's one of the fastet non "Super" Socket 7 motherboards there is.

Wow... That was fast. 😳
One of the fastest you say? Hmmm... Well. Never knew that, so it might be a good purchase then?
I have no need for that board, as I have both a P5A and a GA-5AX for my K6-II and K6-III builds.
It is better that someone else will use this for an awesomme build.
Next week, time will be spend on testing that board to see if it is good enough to be sold.
(keep an eye out for this on Amibay)

- a combo Hercules (reportedly) card with an LPT port. It says PEAKTRON ELECTRONICS on the card. I wonder why does the duct tape […]
Show full quote

- 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.

The duct tape is covering the erasable part of the eprom. UV light can erase the ROM, so don't remove that tape!

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?

Back in the day.. when I worked in a computer shop, we had a real 50%+ DOA rate with Supermicro boards.

We stopped selling them because they were so horrible. Right around the time that that board would have been made.

If it works, great. It will probably be fine for a long time.

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?

i820 Motherboard Roundup - January 2000 - Supermicro PIIISCA:

Anandtech wrote:

From a stability standpoint, the PIIISCA was by far the poorest in this bunch. When using RDRAM, the test system would crash randomly to the point that the system was rendered unusable for any normal purposes. The problems were somewhat alleviated by using the fail-safe defaults in the BIOS but the system was still very unstable.

Switching to SDRAM seemed to fix the issues but, even when using SDRAM, the PIIISCA wasn’t nearly as stable as the ASUS P3C-2000. We are not sure if the issues were related to our sample or the board design itself, and the only recommendation we can give as of now is to be weary of motherboards that boast both SDRAM and RDRAM support

$25 on Craigslist. Ho. Lee. Crap.

-3x IBM Model Ms (1 silver label from 1986, 2 blue labels from 1993)
-Compaq rubber dome board (old logo, pre-90s)
-ARK Logic ARK2000PV (already installed in my 486, works!)
-USB 750MB Zip drive

And all of this NOS (some seals torn but all new!!!!):
-Evergreen 486 Upgrade (Ti486SXL2)
-Gainbery CPUMaximizer (Cyrix 5x86-100)
-Mouse Systems White Mouse
-2x CD-RW drives from I/OMagic
-SIMM expander

Wow, what a score

oeuvre wrote:

Wow, what a score

No kiddding. I pretty much never have that kind of luck.

Starting to get a bit suspicious. It is April 1st after all.

Toshiba 320CDS.
Pentium Mobile 233 MMX, 32MB RAM (accepts EDO SODIMM), 4GB disk, YMF71x OPL3, Chips&Tech Video, 2MB. Working battery.
It runs Commander Keen 4 just fine with music & all. Screen is laggy, but it has USB, VGA and PS2 with Y cable support.

In excellent condition, I'll just put a random pic here as it's no different:

I feel that I am under my lucky star this weekend. First the K6 machine and now this....
This is so like my favorite brand of all better than IBM... Yeah... Nostagia factor.

Not an aprils fool joke. I actually bought this for 43 US Dollars including shipping.
Nothing is too good to be true, as the seller reports that it can not find boot device.
Well.... Going to take it under care, as soon as this arives. 😜 (Can't complain)

Sellers pictures by the way.

keenerb wrote:

- a combo Hercules (reportedly) card with an LPT port. It says PEAKTRON ELECTRONICS on the card. I wonder why does the duct tape […]
Show full quote

- 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.

The duct tape is covering the erasable part of the eprom. UV light can erase the ROM, so don't remove that tape!

Haha, wish I had known that when I was a kid. Killed my 286 that way.

elod wrote:

Toshiba 320CDS. Pentium Mobile 233 MMX, 32MB RAM (accepts EDO SODIMM), 4GB disk, YMF71x OPL3, Chips&Tech Video, 2MB. Working bat […]
Show full quote

Toshiba 320CDS.
Pentium Mobile 233 MMX, 32MB RAM (accepts EDO SODIMM), 4GB disk, YMF71x OPL3, Chips&Tech Video, 2MB. Working battery.
It runs Commander Keen 4 just fine with music & all. Screen is laggy, but it has USB, VGA and PS2 with Y cable support.

In excellent condition, I'll just put a random pic here as it's no different:

That's a fucking sweet DOS gaming laptop. Really can't beat Toshiba + OPL3.

So, a minor project I am undertaking is to move my Pentium build from its AT case to an ATX case, and use the AT case to build something more fluffy and contemporary for it, a UMC 486SX33/40 MSDOS PC. A very kind local seller hooked me up with a nice Tyan S1753S board for this purpose, so I was left short of a decent ATX case. I looked through listings and found someone selling an Elan Vital T10 case which looked particularly clean and complete. I never had one of these back in the day, having to use flimsy cheap cases instead and envying those who did. I realize that it's not really time correct for a Pentium PC but to hell with that, the case looks retro as hell. Anyway, it was on sale for around $20, so I arranged for a local pick up, and brought it home.

But while loading it into the car's trunk, I realized that it was HEAVY.. and I mean, I know these cases are all metal and heavy as shit but this was heavy as all hell, so I turned it around to realize there was actually a system built into it. I brought it home, and late tonight I had the time to tear it apart. And here is the loot I got from it:

ABIT Siluro GeForce Ti4200 (with a Cooler Master 60mm fan replacement for its original fan, and a custom Ti4400BIOS loaded.. I will find a replacement for the original cooler fan for the cooler and revert the bios mod. The 60mm fan will get strapped onto my Vooodoo 3.)
Creative Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 SB0100
2x512KB Kingston Value RAM DDR PC333
ABIT AN7 nForce 2 Motherboard (with IO shield)
AthlonXP 1700+ Thoroughbred CPU (with some weird superglue residue in one corner, apprently from a sloppy job of regluing the rubber puck in place, as they often come off with these CPUs)
NEC ND-3520A DVD-RW
Western Digital Caviar WD800 80GB IDE HDD
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB IDE HDD

Overall I'm mighty pleasantly surprised! All this haul, along with the case, for $20.

ElementalChaos wrote:

And all of this NOS (some seals torn but all new!!!!): -Evergreen 486 Upgrade (Ti486SXL2) -Gainbery CPUMaximizer (Cyrix 5x86-100 […]
Show full quote

And all of this NOS (some seals torn but all new!!!!):
-Evergreen 486 Upgrade (Ti486SXL2)
-Gainbery CPUMaximizer (Cyrix 5x86-100)
-Mouse Systems White Mouse
-2x CD-RW drives from I/OMagic
-SIMM expander

If your not joking, all the gainbery kits contain an IBM5x86C-100 and should fine at 120mhz

What speed is the 486SXL2?