SquallStrife wrote:

Lukeno94 wrote:

I'm not sure why something that has SATA connectors and PCI-e slots is causing such a problem for you vmunix - I've seen newer graphics cards than these things happily accepted here. I bought it as it is extremely unusual (I already have a Pentium 4 system in a Dell Optiplex GX270) - if I can't get the motherboard running, I'll probably buy a Socket A board in the summer, and put an Athlon XP in it, unless I happen across another Socket 479 board. I'd rather have had a 865-era chipset Socket 479 motherboard, which would've enabled a Win2K/Win98 dual boot setup - but there aren't any for sensible prices right now in the UK.

Some people on the Internet get grumpy when others don't adhere to their own personal standards of XYZ. Ignore them, create a build thread in System Specs and go for it. I for one am keen to see how it pans out! 😀

Welcome to the forum!!

I haven't had a Wico Command stick in my hands since I was 10, playing a friends C64. 26 years later I have one of very my own, yay. NIB and ready to kick butt. Also picked up a Sound Blaster midi kit - I've had cheap versions of this but I wasn't impressed, this one looks to be better quality, also NIB.

I have the exact same cable. Isnt that just a cable?

I've taken photos of some of my old hardware today, and they can be found here. Here are some of the more interesting ones:

A very rare sight - an AMR modem. No idea if it works, as I've never had any way to test it!

A 10,000 RPM SCSI Quantum Atlas III. Again, no idea if it works properly, but it did power up when I tested it - and it sounded like this.

A 3.5" floppy drive with a built-in 5.25" adapter. I *really* need to get my hands on some floppy disks... haven't gotten around to it yet.

A 50-pin SCSI card that I'd forgotten I had - Adaptec's AVA-2906! Not tested, as the SCSI drives I have are 68-pin, and I haven't bothered buying a converter cable yet.

The previously-mentioned AMD Athlon 850MHz chip.

Stojke wrote:

I have the exact same cable. Isnt that just a cable?

Is this a trick question?

There is a picture of an midi box on the cover and all that is in your photo is an cable and a floppy.
Is that a special kind of a cable?

Stojke wrote:

There is a picture of an midi box on the cover and all that is in your photo is an cable and a floppy.
Is that a special kind of a cable?

It's usual 15-pin midi/joystic port to midi in/out cable. But it produced in late 80's, so it's vintage. :)

Wow, vintage cable 😀

Can Roalnd U-220 be good for anything?

Very nice collection Artex! Most collectors never provide insight into their collectoon. 😀

PeterLI wrote:

Very nice collection Artex! Most collectors never provide insight into their collectoon. 😀

Thanks! It's nice to share this stuff with other people who are passionate about this hobby. It's fun to actually 'see' what other people have in their collections - not just see a list of items on paper.

Roland U-220 is not gonna be useful for games but its a nice module with late '80s - early '90s sounds. Listen to the demo songs below to get an idea:

http://www.synthmania.com/u-220.htm

MMaximus wrote:

Roland U-220 is not gonna be useful for games but its a nice module with late '80s - early '90s sounds. Listen to the demo songs below to get an idea:

http://www.synthmania.com/u-220.htm

There are some people that use Roland U-110 and Roland U-220's for DOS games, though not many people do that as the music audio tends to be not rendered correctly.

Still can't get the S479 board going, so I've filed a returns claim. A shame, really.

PhaytalError wrote:

MMaximus wrote:

Roland U-220 is not gonna be useful for games but its a nice module with late '80s - early '90s sounds. Listen to the demo songs below to get an idea:

http://www.synthmania.com/u-220.htm

There are some people that use Roland U-110 and Roland U-220's for DOS games, though not many people do that as the music audio tends to be not rendered correctly.

Is it GM compatible?
I also can get Roland MV 30.

The u-220 pre-dates general midi so it won't be compatible. I don't think the mv30 is GM compatible either.

badmojo wrote:

I haven't had a Wico Command stick in my hands since I was 10, playing a friends C64. 26 years later I have one of very my own, yay. NIB and ready to kick butt. Also picked up a Sound Blaster midi kit - I've had cheap versions of this but I wasn't impressed, this one looks to be better quality, also NIB.

Those WICO sticks are the best controllers you can buy. I bought a lot on ebay with a bunch of sticks and a couple of trackball controllers all in boxes.

My best WICO stick, though, was in a lot of Atari Mega ST stuff that I bought. it was one of the 'deluxe' command controls.

You can see the difference right away. The regular command controls are still pretty easy to get, but the deluxe sticks are very rare. The presence of the deluxe stick in the Mega ST lot was what really drew me to it,even more than the Mega ST itself. The Mega ST was sold as non working, but when I got it and opened it up I found that at some point someone had installed an aftermarket RAM upgrade in it and one of the connectors had come loose causing it not to boot. Once it was back together, it booted and ran fine. That was an awesome find, that lot. It had the Mega ST 2 with 4mb upgrade installed, a Megafile30, the WICO Command Control Deluxe, about 50 loose software disks,a floppy file, and a Atari trackball controller that had been converted for use as a mouse. I picked it up for the starting bid of $99.99 but there was some trepidation as it had come out of New Orleans, post hurricane Katrina so i expected everything would be waterlogged and I think that was what kept other bidders away because a Mega ST for $99.99 plus all the other stuff was an incredible price.

sliderider wrote:

Those WICO sticks are the best controllers you can buy. I bought a lot on ebay with a bunch of sticks and a couple of trackball controllers all in boxes.

Yeah they're a very solid stick and that deluxe is a mean machine, but I must say that nothing really beats a good game pad on the C64 for comfort and accuracy. My C64 spazzed out when the wico was in 'stick button' mode which is how I'd prefer it to work, so although I'm happy to own one, it's going to be of a collectors piece. I'll keeping using my mega-drive controller setup:

Lukeno94 wrote:

I've taken photos of some of my old hardware today, and they can be found here. Here are some of the more interesting ones: […]
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I've taken photos of some of my old hardware today, and they can be found here. Here are some of the more interesting ones:

A 10,000 RPM SCSI Quantum Atlas III. Again, no idea if it works properly, but it did power up when I tested it - and it sounded like this.

You've never owned one of the Atlas 15k series drives then. They did make 15,000 rpm "enterprise" drives that were even louder than that 10k drive, at one point.

Here's one of the spec sheets: http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/maxtor/en_ … _data_sheet.pdf

I've never had anything beyond a 10k RPM in my possession, and I've only ever run up to 7.2k RPM drives in my systems so far. SSDs have all but taken out the market for high-RPM drives now (well, those and hybrid drives.)

Well, I've ordered a pair of Celeron M 370-powered Advent 7094 laptops which need work - it cost me £15.50, and both at least power on, and have good screens. Should be a fun project. (Does these count as retro?)