BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-22, 21:18:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-22, 21:06:

I guess the lest big of the 4 is a Gf3 Ti 500 have only seen the 1 on EBay and it’s nearly 500AUD.

Oh wow, I have those on the "sorta want" list, meaning if I saw one for reasonable money I'd grab it, and was vaguely aware that "I kinda guess you don't see them real often huh?" thinking back in the day that they sold in fair numbers, so should be a few around, but I didn't really go hunting for one specifically. Guess I'm not getting one now unless I get lucky 🤣

For running on though, I don't think there's much difference between one and a Gf4 4200... I was running a 200 at near 500 speeds (stupid RAM wouldn't quite hit spec) and a 4200 I had at stock to feel out.. and at that point they felt about equal... though the Gf3 ti200 was gasping for air at that level and the 4200 was just chilling... Then Radeon 8500 has a close performance envelope to those two.

Its funny, but getting a Quadro variant of the GF4 is easier and cheaper than getting the actual GF4 cards, Im actually thinking of grabbing a 980XGL since Ti4800s never hit eBay, the GF3 Quadro DCC also never hits eBay.

The other reason I want a GF3 is compatibility with certain games that use the Z Fogging from the Xbox .. namely Splinter Cell, the GF3 pretty much has full compatibility with Xbox ports due to it being used in the Xbox.

Bought this nice canonical IBM 5170 motherboards, the earliest one (Type 1 256K) and the latest (Type 3) with 8Mhz CPU.
Both in a very bad condition, so dirty, a marks of corrosion on first motherboard.
Will clean them and review then in more details.

Thats some gnarly corrosion there.

Not a typical thing I normally buy, but I've always wanted one of those. As a boy I had a C64 and this was the next best thing I could imagine but never had.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-22, 21:44:

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-22, 21:18:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-22, 21:06:

I guess the lest big of the 4 is a Gf3 Ti 500 have only seen the 1 on EBay and it’s nearly 500AUD.

Oh wow, I have those on the "sorta want" list, meaning if I saw one for reasonable money I'd grab it, and was vaguely aware that "I kinda guess you don't see them real often huh?" thinking back in the day that they sold in fair numbers, so should be a few around, but I didn't really go hunting for one specifically. Guess I'm not getting one now unless I get lucky 🤣

For running on though, I don't think there's much difference between one and a Gf4 4200... I was running a 200 at near 500 speeds (stupid RAM wouldn't quite hit spec) and a 4200 I had at stock to feel out.. and at that point they felt about equal... though the Gf3 ti200 was gasping for air at that level and the 4200 was just chilling... Then Radeon 8500 has a close performance envelope to those two.

Its funny, but getting a Quadro variant of the GF4 is easier and cheaper than getting the actual GF4 cards, Im actually thinking of grabbing a 980XGL since Ti4800s never hit eBay, the GF3 Quadro DCC also never hits eBay.

The other reason I want a GF3 is compatibility with certain games that use the Z Fogging from the Xbox .. namely Splinter Cell, the GF3 pretty much has full compatibility with Xbox ports due to it being used in the Xbox.

The Ti 4800 cards show up on eBay sometimes... Though priced high, the 980XGL cards are normally even more here in the USA

mpe wrote on 2022-02-22, 22:33:

Not a typical thing I normally buy, but I've always wanted one of those. As a boy I had a C64 and this was the next best thing I […]
Show full quote

Not a typical thing I normally buy, but I've always wanted one of those. As a boy I had a C64 and this was the next best thing I could imagine but never had.

I kinda wanted one, I used to go into Tandy (UK Radio Shack, bought out by carphone warehouse or someone I think) to moon over them in the late 80s, until Amigas were around to moon over. There's actually a local seller with one and a C64, and a bunch of stuff, asking for "offers" I dunno whether to try a "If you can't get rid of it, I'll give you $200 rather than see it junked" kind of offer. But I don't really want to "invest" a chunk into one without really knowing my way round them. The high appeal for me was they could also run CP/M stuff which I always wanted to have a mess with, also had that Gem system and I think I still have a mouse I picked up by mistake thinking it was an Amiga mouse, and a 1541 I grabbed years back, after seeing they could be hooked up somehow to Amigas, but then realizing it was only worth the trouble if you had old 8 bit stuff on 5.25 and virtually no use for Amiga or PC stuff or other 5.25 formats.

Anyway, have fun with the memories. Hope all your fave C64 stuff works.. (Thought I remembered there was a tiny percent where the programmers got too clever, so have compatibility probs, like on many a system that had a bigger brother, Spec 48/128, A500/A1200 PC/XT/AT and up etc etc)

FIC 4386-VC-V

Diamond Stealth 24VL

Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429-86QC

On a retro computer parts streak this evening.

mpe wrote on 2022-02-22, 22:33:

Not a typical thing I normally buy, but I've always wanted one of those. As a boy I had a C64 and this was the next best thing I […]
Show full quote

Not a typical thing I normally buy, but I've always wanted one of those. As a boy I had a C64 and this was the next best thing I could imagine but never had.

I had a C64 back in the day and sold it to finance a new 286. Years later when I got into the hobby I picked up some C64 units on freecycle. After that I kind of wanted the C128 I never had and was lucky enough to get one cheap on ebay. Since then I snagged 2 x 1571 floppy drives, a Commodore mouse, Commodore monitor for analog and digital inputs , and a 128K RAM expansion I upgraded to 512K. Mostly I use it in C64 mode but is does look cool in GEOS 128.

cyclone3d wrote on 2022-02-23, 00:13:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-22, 21:44:

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-22, 21:18:

Oh wow, I have those on the "sorta want" list, meaning if I saw one for reasonable money I'd grab it, and was vaguely aware that "I kinda guess you don't see them real often huh?" thinking back in the day that they sold in fair numbers, so should be a few around, but I didn't really go hunting for one specifically. Guess I'm not getting one now unless I get lucky 🤣

For running on though, I don't think there's much difference between one and a Gf4 4200... I was running a 200 at near 500 speeds (stupid RAM wouldn't quite hit spec) and a 4200 I had at stock to feel out.. and at that point they felt about equal... though the Gf3 ti200 was gasping for air at that level and the 4200 was just chilling... Then Radeon 8500 has a close performance envelope to those two.

Its funny, but getting a Quadro variant of the GF4 is easier and cheaper than getting the actual GF4 cards, Im actually thinking of grabbing a 980XGL since Ti4800s never hit eBay, the GF3 Quadro DCC also never hits eBay.

The other reason I want a GF3 is compatibility with certain games that use the Z Fogging from the Xbox .. namely Splinter Cell, the GF3 pretty much has full compatibility with Xbox ports due to it being used in the Xbox.

The Ti 4800 cards show up on eBay sometimes... Though priced high, the 980XGL cards are normally even more here in the USA

Finding a Ti4800se is easy, I see them often but not interested in the SE variants, I saw a Ti4800 recently .. it was broken and for parts only and stupidly priced, im happy to take a gamble on a broken GPU but not when its priced for 300USD.

Finally found a board I've been hunting for some time: the FIC PA-2007.

I've had a lot of luck with the FIC VA-502 I picked up recently and figured it's time to try out its bigger sibling. The VA-502 a really fast board for what it is, and it does indeed excel with Cyrix 6x86s. This is pretty impressive, considering that the VIA VPX chipset isn't exactly known as a top performer. RedHill suggested that the VA-502 outperformed better boards with the 6x86MX-200, which I can't exactly validate completely, but I can say that it does perform quite well with such CPUs. I do intend to test that more extensively. I'd be curious to see how the SiS5571 compares. Really, what I like about the VA-502 most has to be its stability at 75MHz. That board came with a 6x86-200 (the classic variant, but an IBM-labelled one) and runs brilliantly with that CPU.

By contrast, the PA-2007 has the VP2 chipset, which seems to really have only been used on a handful of boards. The VP2 is more of a TX chipset competitor, perhaps even on the level of the Aladdin IV. It comes with 1MB of L2 cache and can cache a complete 512MB of RAM--absurd for the time, and only matched by an HX board with a second TAG or a comparatively ancient NX board. Apparently, AMD's 640 chipset is a licensed VIA VP2. This board should perform excellent with the K6-233 or 6x86. I'm truly curious if this board really is the "fastest board from 1997" and deserves to be known as a speed demon, or whether it's all just marketing hooplah.

Later BIOSes support the K6-2 and, while the PA-2007 only officially supports 2.8V at its lowest, the "lesser" VA-502 can do 2.5V with some undocumented settings (confirmed via a multimeter). I suspect the same holds true here.

I done messed up... just realised that one PentiumM I ordered is actually a P4-M, it was listed among PentiumM as P-M ... I thought I had looked it up by model before ordering, might have been a case of looked at it on one machine, ordered it on my more secure machine..... but clicked the wrong one... or I plain didn't notice it was a P4M in the first place. However, it was so cheap it's not worth returning. Also I think I can whack it into a 478 motherboard to get some jollies out of it... since it's not a dothan, it will henceforth be referred to as the Doh!-than. 🤣

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-23, 19:15:

...I think I can whack it into a 478 motherboard to get some jollies out of it...

What you do with your hardware is entirely up to you. Just don't hurt your floppy.

Whoops, unintended synonyms... yes, should have said bang or toss or something.

I bought this Realtek-based Kingston Ethernet NIC for $39.46 (includes taxes and shipping). I know I paid too much, but it’s a Realtek PCI NIC!!!!!!!!!! Whoo hoo!!!!!! Oh, and an AGP Voodoo3 2000 was thrown in for “free.”

Everything tested OK.

Oh man, you got real lucky there, it even has the 28 pin DIL socket to use for ROM extensions.

Meatball wrote on 2022-02-23, 21:29:

I bought this Realtek-based Kingston Ethernet NIC for $39.46 (includes taxes and shipping). I know I paid too much, but it’s a Realtek PCI NIC!!!!!!!!!! Whoo hoo!!!!!! Oh, and an AGP Voodoo3 2000 was thrown in for “free.”

You want more of them?
I'll even throw in an ATI Rage 128 as a freebie! 😜

RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2022-02-23, 21:44:

Meatball wrote on 2022-02-23, 21:29:

I bought this Realtek-based Kingston Ethernet NIC for $39.46 (includes taxes and shipping). I know I paid too much, but it’s a Realtek PCI NIC!!!!!!!!!! Whoo hoo!!!!!! Oh, and an AGP Voodoo3 2000 was thrown in for “free.”

You want more of them?
I'll even throw in an ATI Rage 128 as a freebie! 😜

Make that a Voodoo 5 5500 and you have a deal !!

There are 30 NIB Antec/chieftec full towers for $50 a few miles for me. Unfortunately he says must take all 🙁

ODwilly wrote on 2022-02-23, 22:41:

There are 30 NIB Antec/chieftec full towers for $50 a few miles for me. Unfortunately he says must take all 🙁

Sounds like an opportunity to me.

ODwilly wrote on 2022-02-23, 22:41:

There are 30 NIB Antec/chieftec full towers for $50 a few miles for me. Unfortunately he says must take all 🙁

$50 for all or just one?