I never thought I would have a working Voodoo 2 SLI setup. Now I do. *Joy*

Now I think I will never have a Voodoo 3 PCI or a Voodoo 4/5.

appiah4 wrote:

I never thought I would have a working Voodoo 2 SLI setup. Now I do. *Joy*

That! Also never thought I'd have so many different Creative SB cards 😀

I just want something I can never have...

Never thought I'd own a Libretto U100 due to crazy "collectors" prices but I found one on ebay recently for a bit of a bargain, might seem unremarkable to some but I've been fascinated with them ever since they came out, and before that the 20ct-110ct that came before it.

appiah4 wrote:

I never thought I would have a working Voodoo 2 SLI setup. Now I do. *Joy*

Now I think I will never have a Voodoo 3 PCI or a Voodoo 4/5.

I got my voodoo 3 4 and 5 way after release. The voodoo 3 and 4 where great additions. The voodoo 5 didnt impress me as much.

I own so much stuff from years ago and feel I have enough.. The thing i never have is time to enjoy it all.

I thought I would never be able to get a Radeon HD3850, because of the outrageous prices of the card on ebay, until I found one locally for a price I never thought I'd find it... And now it's mine, although virtually, since it's been shipped just today.

In computing ? I thought I would never have a Bluw/White Power Mac. Really liked them when they were new.
When I got my first G3 iMac (1998 model), my hopes rised. I learned a lot with these outdated computers.

Initially, it was not easy to me. I had to open my mind and forget most I learned about operating real computers.
After two weaks or so, I finally made friends with the strange OS (esp. Mac OS 8/9).

For example, I lerarned, that you can't copy files to the OS 9 desktop by drag and drop (like you could on Win95 and OS X).
If you do, you actually move these files. Also the lack of file extensions and the use of a resource tree in filesystem was new to me.

I thought this about only Voodoo AGP card, which I can use in my "retro" rig, Voodoo 4 4500. But yeah, it somehow ended up in my collection. I'm quite proud about it, even tho it's one of my slowest card (but most rare on the other side).

A Packard Bell 486 machine (prices on eBay were high), but, as luck would have it, I found a Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus, as well as the matching keyboard and mouse, and bought it for $17 + tax at a thrift store (worth every penny). I installed a new CMOS battery (the system needed it) on the battery jumper pinout, installed a CD drive (not period correct), Epson SD-800 Dual 3.5"/5.25" HD FDD (1.44MB/1.2MB), 2GB CF card, Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro (now a Sound Blaster 16 CT2740 + Yamaha DB50XG), 36MB RAM (2x 16MB SIMM-72 + 4MB onboard), Conner Tape drive (will be the ZIP 100 from a gutted PowerMac G3), 3Com EtherLink III (installed by the previous owner), Roland MT-32 + keropi's Music Quest MPU-401 clone card (love it), Lo-Tech Tandy 3-Voice Sound Card (made by Texelec), has Windows 95C installed, and it has the Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428 integrated. My plans are to get an ISA IDE/FDD controller card that has cache in place of the integrated one due to sluggishness with certain games, and the 3Com EtherLink III card will be in my Socket 7 build in the future.

I upgraded the CPU from the SX2-50 to a DX2-66, and it now has the DX4-100 OverDrive (5V) installed and it runs nicely.

The stuff I though I would never have tend to be items that are just rare. By rare I mean just that, very few come up for sale.

If you collect long enough even some of the rarities will end up in your collection.

I never thought I would be able to get a Dell Optiplex GX150 (or any decent P3 tower with AGP for that matter) at a decent price because most eBay sellers think even the most common P3-era desktops are worth a crazy amount of money these days, I was lucky enough to find one at a price that wasn't stupidly expensive so now I have one. My black Dell setup is now complete (I also never would've thought I'd get a working black Dell CRT).

Oh, and I never thought I would have a working Voodoo 2 card, until I found one at a good price a few months ago.

I felt the same way about the C64's being pricey, but, I did get two of them, both breadbins, for an average of $70/piece. However, the PSU the one came with had no 9VAC, so I got a serviceable one (new) and the system did work, until I blew the 2A fuse in the PSU and tossed the internal RF Modulator that had capacitor leakage, and the other system has an aftermarket case that makes the C64 look like the breadbin and C64C combined, but, it's a breadbin, and that works. Just need to make a 1541 emulator (Uno2IEC) and connect the Uno board to my Raspberry Pi system or my Pentium 4 laptop(s).

I never thought I would own a P4. They don't seem to have the same vintage appeal as P3 and older. I have never wanted a P4 in the past, but then my wife's software company downsized and cleaned out. All of a sudden I had my pickins among two dozen P4's. I kept 3 of the best cases, all the PSU's, RAM, CPUs, CD/DVD-ROMs, HDD's, floppy, cables, and motherboards, then recycled the remaining cases. I also kept a few rack mount P3 & P4 servers. Anyway, my least desirable era of older computer now flourishes at my home. I never thought I would have these and still don't really want them. I've been waiting for their appeal to grow on me.

Yamaha SW1000XG (got a Yamaha MU500 instead, eventually).

feipoa wrote:

Anyway, my least desirable era of older computer now flourishes at my home. I never thought I would have these and still don't really want them. I've been waiting for their appeal to grow on me.

Yeah... if you find an appeal, let me know.

Last sound card I got myself were a Gravis Ultrasound Classic. Must been a soft moment because I got an obvious fetish for old PCI sound cards. 🤣

Tadpole Alphabook 1

I've always kind of looked down on systems newer than Pentium MMX and ATX form-factor (getting AT stuff is not hard in Russia). Just felt too modern to me. However, my last Pentium 3/Voodoo 3 build quickly became my favourite machine.

It has an AWE32 with 28MB of RAM, a Diamond Multimedia MX300 and a Soundblaster Live. Also, awesome InWin H500 desktop case, an IBM Model M keyboard and a NOS 17" CTX PR711FL CRT screen. I probably need to get a better mouse and speakers, though.

It's just so convenient! No jumpers, rock stable (it has an Asus P3B-F board) and pretty fast. Just works. I've been playing a lot of late 90s game on it, including Jagged Alliance 2, Sacrifice, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament and Tiberian Sun. Also finally got around to trying different soundfonts, including Chorium, EMU's 8MBGMSFX and others.

I'll probably make a tower case build that will host several ISA soundcards, including Gravis Ultrasound PNP (once I get it fixed), Yamaha SW60XG and MusicQuest clone for my Roland MT-32. It's either going to be a fast 486 build (so that I can run 386-class games on Turbo but also things like Crusader: No Remorse that don't run on P3) or a Pentium Pro. I have a nice Asus Socket 8 ATX board so in theory I can connect two builds using a KVM.

@jheronimus Nice looking machine, what speed is the P3?