Today I've picked up package with this card - MSI GeForce FX5900XT for roughly 10 USD. It will need only some heatsink cleaning and new thermal paste just to be sure. Bought from previous (and the only) owner, who had it from new - he bought it back then for about $280, seems little high for me as it was released as midrange card with 6800 series already on the market. But who cares, I've never had a Geforce FX card before and the higher models are somewhat more difficult to obtain here (no wonder, when ATi 9700/9800 were cheaper to buy here and also faster).

EDIT: pardon me for a silly question, but those FX cards with heat spreader weren't supposed to have some thermal paste? Or I am unlucky again? Removed the heatsink and found the chip itself and the cooler without a thermal paste. In fact there was no residue left, not a minor one on the PCB or so. There are some black dots on the heatspreader, but it is not a paste, I wasn't able to clean them. Maybe the previous owner was very good at cleaning it, but I really doubt it due to the fact, that the fan was pretty dusty...

At least the fan is now as good as new 😎

@peklop - great reaserch still... I also haven't heard of this brand before - didn;e even knew the did anything alse.Yes, card was bought in Poland and it traveled trough fev collections before it foun its place in mine.

Tetrium wrote:

Is that floppy drive a 2.88 one? The print on the eject button is too small to read 😜

Naw, just a garden variety 1.44M.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Those symptoms would be consistent with a dead Hard Drive. My guess is it was dropped while running causing a head crash. Shutting the lid too hard can do it as well (I've done that once myself).

Well... I tried switching out the harddrive for a CF-IDE adapter I had laying around and it still doesn't work. Same symptoms. '

If I run the setup program on the reference disk, it does show hard drive as "installed" but FDISK and FORMAT won't find the drive and it's impossible to boot from it.

What's more, the diagnostics on the reference disk wont find and test the hard drive, but the rest of the tests all pass except for the hard drive LED. It doesn't turn on/off like it should. This leads me to believe that maybe something is up with the ribbon cable going to the drive..? Or some kind of controller issue? The drive does get power, at least intermittently, because before I switched the mechanical drive out I could hear it seek test at boot sometimes.

Any ideas, anyone? These are obscure machines, hard to find much troubleshooting info.

Haven't bought it yet, but I'm on the edge of clicking on Confirm.. Is a Sound Blaster 32 (Not AWE32, the 32 model without the 512K onboard ram and mixer options) worth $32 shipped?

appiah4 wrote:

Haven't bought it yet, but I'm on the edge of clicking on Confirm.. Is a Sound Blaster 32 (Not AWE32, the 32 model without the 512K onboard ram and mixer options) worth $32 shipped?

Where are you located. I am guessing it is model CT3600?

If in the USA, you should be able to get one for about $20 shipped.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=ct3600+- … +-tips&_sacat=0

cyclone3d wrote:

Where are you located. I am guessing it is model CT3600? […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote:

Haven't bought it yet, but I'm on the edge of clicking on Confirm.. Is a Sound Blaster 32 (Not AWE32, the 32 model without the 512K onboard ram and mixer options) worth $32 shipped?

Where are you located. I am guessing it is model CT3600?

If in the USA, you should be able to get one for about $20 shipped.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=ct3600+- … +-tips&_sacat=0

Im in Europe, it's shipping from the US, and yes it's a CT3600.

appiah4 wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Where are you located. I am guessing it is model CT3600? […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote:

Haven't bought it yet, but I'm on the edge of clicking on Confirm.. Is a Sound Blaster 32 (Not AWE32, the 32 model without the 512K onboard ram and mixer options) worth $32 shipped?

Where are you located. I am guessing it is model CT3600?

If in the USA, you should be able to get one for about $20 shipped.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=ct3600+- … +-tips&_sacat=0

Im in Europe, it's shipping from the US, and yes it's a CT3600.

Ok, yeah, that is a decent deal when shipping from the US. No dice on finding one more local I guess?

cyclone3d wrote:

Ok, yeah, that is a decent deal when shipping from the US. No dice on finding one more local I guess?

Been looking for an AWE32 or Pro 2.0 for a while now, no luck - just a lot of SB16 clones, Audio PCIs, PCI 128s and Live cards hereabouts.. I'm having second thoughts though, as I already have an AWE64 Value. The only reason I want an AWE32 is so that I can use SIMM RAM and load Soundfonts for General MIDI (I'm not happy with AWE64's default GM at all, but finding a SIMMCON for it seems impossible..) CT3600 has the hanging note bug though, so.. 🙁

appiah4 wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Ok, yeah, that is a decent deal when shipping from the US. No dice on finding one more local I guess?

Been looking for an AWE32 or Pro 2.0 for a while now, no luck - just a lot of SB16 clones, Audio PCIs, PCI 128s and Live cards hereabouts.. I'm having second thoughts though, as I already have an AWE64 Value. The only reason I want an AWE32 is so that I can use SIMM RAM and load Soundfonts for General MIDI (I'm not happy with AWE64's default GM at all, but finding a SIMMCON for it seems impossible..) CT3600 has the hanging note bug though, so.. 🙁

Maybe a CT3670 then. It is basically an AWE64 with simm slots. You can even flash it with the AWE64 firmware to disable the IDE port if you want.

Picked these up from the local craiglist-equivalent. The guy was selling them as a package with a generic LCD and HP Athlon64 system, but was willing to sell them separately 😀

These will be a welcome upgrade to my cheesy little built-in speakers that fit in a 5.25 bay!

probnot wrote:

Picked these up from the local craiglist-equivalent. The guy was selling them as a package with a generic LCD and HP Athlon64 system, but was willing to sell them separately 😀

These will be a welcome upgrade to my cheesy little built-in speakers that fit in a 5.25 bay!

Nice vintage TV and Radio you got there. 😉

probnot wrote:

These will be a welcome upgrade to my cheesy little built-in speakers that fit in a 5.25 bay!

Those are cool! How do they sound? Gotta be better than 5.25" bay speakers I guess.

badmojo wrote:

Those are cool! How do they sound? Gotta be better than 5.25" bay speakers I guess.

I have those with other brand but I think it doesn't matter. They sounds awesome, way better then my modern Genius speakers I am using right now on my main rig but I can't upcycle them because they are too big for my teeny tiny desk 😁

krivulak wrote:

badmojo wrote:

Those are cool! How do they sound? Gotta be better than 5.25" bay speakers I guess.

I have those with other brand but I think it doesn't matter. They sounds awesome, way better then my modern Genius speakers I am using right now on my main rig but I can't upcycle them because they are too big for my teeny tiny desk 😁

Those speakers are great - I've had a set for years and the recycler I go to has a couple sets available right now. They've got RCA jacks for all the connections so they're super versatile and they go plenty loud.

Got another cheap system from the thrift stores. €15 and it was another gamble. The system was some desktop but with a standard ATX formfactor motherboard. Motherboard turned out to be LGA775 supporting most Conroes. After I got home, it had a single stick of 2GB DDR2-800, 320GB SATA drive and (I actually 🤣-ed when I saw this) a Q6600 🤣
Also a standard black-bezeled IDE DVD drive with lightscribe (which I'll probably never use).
The board only has a single bulging cap. It had no graphics card, but the Q6600 + compatible motherboard alone are worth this I think 😀

Also got a silver bezeled optical drive for €2,50...not bad, I basically just grabbed it after I had already decided on buying the €15 system.

nforce4max wrote:

Nice vintage TV and Radio you got there. 😉

I like vintage things! I've fixed up a bunch of old tube radios, then got ambitious and picked up that TV with the plan of restoring it, but gave in and kept it as neat looking furniture.

badmojo wrote:

Those are cool! How do they sound? Gotta be better than 5.25" bay speakers I guess.

Waaaaay better. Though the desk I use for old computers is tiny, so I haven't figured out how I'm going to fit these yet...

Purchased this kit of HyperX memory modules for 1.25 USD 😁 Although listed as "256 MB" they are 512 MB total of course. I was little worried, because the sticker says they are 2.6 volts and my mobo can't run them on higher than default voltage, but they run happily with CL2-2-2-6 timings at 333 MHz (which is now limited by CPU) and default voltage.

I'd like 1 GB total, but still... time to search for a second pair.

Typical Samsung UCCC DDR400 can run 2-2-2-5 DDR333 mode on stock voltage just as easily. In fact, even more older Samsung DDR333 256mb sticks were able to do it.

Bought a Commodore64 PLA chip and a socket for the chip. Hope I do not screw the soldering job up.
My machine begun to make some strange stuff. Poke 1,63 did not freeze it, and the diagnostic
program said that there are some timer issue and bad U5. Hope my reading is correct that it is the PLA.

probnot wrote:

Picked these up from the local craiglist-equivalent. The guy was selling them as a package with a generic LCD and HP Athlon64 system, but was willing to sell them separately 😀

These will be a welcome upgrade to my cheesy little built-in speakers that fit in a 5.25 bay!

Looks like a rebrand / copy of the Goodmans Active 75, might fine speakers for a 2.0, partly because they are rather larger than usual. That shape and layout is unmistakeable.

For a long time, my main set was a pair of Trust Soundwave 20 (also available in other names) smaller, but sounded much better than they ought for their size - got put away somewhere, missing, after the upstairs system got a 5.1 set.

Got a spare pair from charity shop for testing, a £5 pair of Goodmans Active 25, tiny but astonishing, nearly replaced the monitor speakers (ugh!) on the downstairs machine, but picked up another charity shop bargain, a 2.1 set of Altec Lansing Vs-2121 for a tenner