Wooohooo, speed demon 🤣 But yah, are you stuck with a fixed clock of 25 and only get 75 out of it, or can you give it 33 and let 'er rip?

😁 yeah going crazy haha.

Hopefully 33MHz. It's going to fit in a Tulip TC38 board, so no L2 cache unfortunately. But Doom should run well.

Got this Medion 9800XL Dual VGA AGP card. Came to the USA all the way from Ukraine. Interestingly, it has a factory sticker on the aux power connector saying to only use if put in a "non powered" AGP slot. I thought all 9800 cards needed aux power regardless of AGP slot type?

kingcake wrote on 2023-11-09, 23:12:

Got this Medion 9800XL Dual VGA AGP card. Came to the USA all the way from Ukraine. Interestingly, it has a factory sticker on t […]
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Got this Medion 9800XL Dual VGA AGP card. Came to the USA all the way from Ukraine. Interestingly, it has a factory sticker on the aux power connector saying to only use if put in a "non powered" AGP slot. I thought all 9800 cards needed aux power regardless of AGP slot type?

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I have a MEDION 9600 TX with that same connector (and sticker) . I use it with a Core 2 Duo. The system/graphics will boot without extra power, but it isn't stable. I do end up powering the card through that connector.

Last night I picked up an unused Compaq SK-2860 keyboard including manual - a little newer than my Compaq DeskPro 590 but will give it a fine look. It's almost sad to have to take it out of the bag and unwind the cord...

Price tag was about 5 €/$

kingcake wrote on 2023-11-09, 23:12:

Got this Medion 9800XL Dual VGA AGP card. Came to the USA all the way from Ukraine. Interestingly, it has a factory sticker on the aux power connector saying to only use if put in a "non powered" AGP slot. I thought all 9800 cards needed aux power regardless of AGP slot type?

I had a 5700 LE once that would cause the motherboard behave very erratically when the aux power was connected. I had assumed that there was a major fault causing a short, but maybe the power connector wasn't meant to be plugged in, just like this.

This surprised me by turning up today, projected date was Xmas Eve 🤣 just under 2 weeks actual though, I've had stuff ordered in US or even from other coast of Canada take longer.

Very nice shape, factory fresh looking, is that a 7th week of 95 manufacture? Hope such a late one is very bugfixed... However, I did not buy this for math, what's this forum about? Games! These ULSI are showing high benches on FPU using games from various youtubers. So hoping that this works well with my BL3 for a "quake monster" 386 setup that could potentially break a whole 5 frames per second. (Yes this is a very slow fast.) Though would kinda like it to demonstrate being 90s standard "playable" on about 4 levels of viewport reduction. Yes this is utterly pointless. Also was not planning to be doing anything with it until December/January so all on ice at the moment.

(Edit: BTW does anyone have any info on how the -C variant, appearing sometime in 1994, differs from the prior non-C which revision was sometime 1993 to 1994, and was improved over original ULSI, the info in the "everything you need to know about math coprocessors" originated as a usenet faq in early 1990s and may predate these revisions. So I'm going to ignore any references to that, yes I'm talking to the two of you that never read more than the first line of a paragraph 🤣 )

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-11-10, 17:26:

This surprised me by turning up today, projected date was Xmas Eve 🤣 just under 2 weeks actual though, I've had stuff ordered in US or even from other coast of Canada take longer.

I sent a 9 Kg package from the UK to Oregon that arrived in 3 days! That was shipped with UPS, who were the cheapest carrier for that size and weight. I was totally amazed, even shocked, that a parcel could travel 6000 miles in that time 😀

debs3759 wrote on 2023-11-10, 21:43:

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-11-10, 17:26:

This surprised me by turning up today, projected date was Xmas Eve 🤣 just under 2 weeks actual though, I've had stuff ordered in US or even from other coast of Canada take longer.

I sent a 9 Kg package from the UK to Oregon that arrived in 3 days! That was shipped with UPS, who were the cheapest carrier for that size and weight. I was totally amazed, even shocked, that a parcel could travel 6000 miles in that time 😀

That's 6000 miles in 72 hours, that's 83.3 mph. With a little inaccuracy in the numbers, it may be 88mph, which enables the parcel to arrive in whatever date and time is set in the DeLorean ... Not that impressive then ... 🤣

Recently acquired a couple sound cards from the early 90s.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-11-11, 15:51:

Recently acquired a couple sound cards from the early 90s.

Those are some enormous capacitors for a sound card. Wow.

Quite suitable for the emerging rave and techno movement. 😁

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-11-11, 20:07:

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-11-11, 15:51:

Recently acquired a couple sound cards from the early 90s.

Those are some enormous capacitors for a sound card. Wow.

If I'm not reading that chip wrong to the immediate left of the caps it's an operational amplifier that wants plus and minus 22V so those and the voltage controllers would be part of a buck boost circuit for it I assume.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-11-11, 23:31:

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-11-11, 20:07:

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-11-11, 15:51:

Recently acquired a couple sound cards from the early 90s.

Those are some enormous capacitors for a sound card. Wow.

If I'm not reading that chip wrong to the immediate left of the caps it's an operational amplifier that wants plus and minus 22V so those and the voltage controllers would be part of a buck boost circuit for it I assume.

Those caps are more than likely just coupling capacitors. In no way would there be a buck boost circuit to raise the voltage for the amplifier.
The amplifier has a max supply voltage of ~26V and a minimum of ~ 6V according to the pdf

edit: or they're just decoupling caps for the linear regulators at the top right of the board.

Got Nvidia Quadro FX 1500.
https://ibb.co/JFXdq3k

It's overclocking beast, as it has G71 core, which were used on 7900GS and 7900GT, it can go very high from stock 325MHz.
Tried 540 Mhz, which is 66% overclock on core!
And stable at 3dmark2005.
Lol, at these clocks, with 16:6 shader config, should have similiar performance as 7900GS at 450Mhz with 20:7 shaders

So, it's kinda 7900GS in disguise.

Bought some old stock 74LS33N chips, just got them in the mail today and hmmm....some of these things are not like the others...

Saw this odd little Socket 370 CPU on the bay and decided to grab it, at its core its a VIA C3 Samuel 2 running at 533 but normally its a BGA chip for embedded systems. This one has been mounted to a interposer and will run in any socket 370 board that supports the VIA C3, The seller had some info about it and only a few thousand were ever made for socket 370.

Normally I wouldn't bother with a VIA C3 but I do have a baby AT socket 370 board that supports the C3 and was thinking this little chip would make for an interesting low power DOS/Windows box, this CPU operates between 2.8 to 5 watts of power so with a Voodoo3 and a SSD it would be pretty much silent. (I have a passive MX400 that would also be a good fit)

Also grabbed some nice DDR500 TwinX sticks that popped up while I was grabbing the above CPU, no good for a 370 board but I have a Athlon rig that can use it. (Can never have too much DDR500 laying around)

weedeewee wrote on 2023-11-11, 23:45:

Those caps are more than likely just coupling capacitors. In no way would there be a buck boost circuit to raise the voltage for the amplifier.
The amplifier has a max supply voltage of ~26V and a minimum of ~ 6V according to the pdf

edit: or they're just decoupling caps for the linear regulators at the top right of the board.

They are DC blocking caps on output of the speaker amp chip, and the larger (in terms of capacitance) they are, the better low freq response there will be with passive speakers that one used at the time. These capacitors form a high-pass filter with speaker impedance and with 8 or 4 ohm speaker, a 470µF capacitor one sees on many cards gives low freq cutoff (-3db) at ~85Hz for 4ohm and ~42Hz for 8 ohm, having 1000µF will halve the figures. Some cheaper stuff uses only 220µF or maybe even less and they have no bass reproduction capability with any sort of passive speakers.

Tiido wrote on 2023-11-12, 11:35:

weedeewee wrote on 2023-11-11, 23:45:

Those caps are more than likely just coupling capacitors. In no way would there be a buck boost circuit to raise the voltage for the amplifier.
The amplifier has a max supply voltage of ~26V and a minimum of ~ 6V according to the pdf

edit: or they're just decoupling caps for the linear regulators at the top right of the board.

They are DC blocking caps on output of the speaker amp chip, and the larger (in terms of capacitance) they are, the better low freq response there will be with passive speakers that one used at the time. These capacitors form a high-pass filter with speaker impedance and with 8 or 4 ohm speaker, a 470µF capacitor one sees on many cards gives low freq cutoff (-3db) at ~85Hz for 4ohm and ~42Hz for 8 ohm, having 1000µF will halve the figures. Some cheaper stuff uses only 220µF or maybe even less and they have no bass reproduction capability with any sort of passive speakers.

Yeah that's what I meant with coupling capacitors.

edit On mine they are 16v 3300uF and they appear to go from gnd to the 12v feeds, they could be decouplers for the dual amp IC but seem very large (datasheet shows 500uF), they are short and very fat.
that is a Mediavison original Pro Audio 8bit, mine is model 650-0002-01 😀 added: on the back is printed for the +5/-5v, +12/-12v and one for +10v voltage planes. not sure where the 10v goes hard to trace....
someone elses picture of the back http://www.yjfy.com/images/oldhard/sound/Pro_ … oSpectrum_2.jpg
added close up picture of those caps. btw these old sound cards are getting very rare !!