Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-03, 11:16:

I need that 5.25" bay for my lighter/cup holder.

NOW!!!

Who do I need to blow and/or kill to get one?

Damn, I'll have to start smoking again.
Now I know why a certain Aussie needs an 850 W PSU. Man's got a point.

Welcome everyone!
I have been looking for used of Ageia Physx cards (Dell, Asus, Bfg) for a long time.

lbanfi2 wrote on 2022-03-03, 12:29:

Welcome everyone!
I have been looking for used of Ageia Physx cards (Dell, Asus, Bfg) for a long time.

I think I remember there only being 16 games that support PhysX cards (PPU)

Not really worth the electricity, cash and heat build up inside the case for that? They weren't really great games either

Unless you just want it on the shelf for nostalgia? I remember when they come out and were hyped up but they died a quick death

I think that PhysX was an interesting technology but developers lost interest once it became an NVIDIA exclusive.

Once multiple cores proliferated, and CPUs got faster, all of this ended up being done in software. A sad ending for a very interesting technology.

Well, I bought a number of GPUs over the past week or so, and they are mostly unique or interesting in some way. I'll update every few days or so.

Here's the first one:

NEC/Matrox Mystique with no display out. It's for a Japanese-based PC9821. D'oh!

Surprisingly, it does get detected and installed automatically in Windows ME (as a Mystique 200), but I can't do anything with it of which I am aware.

I thought I was buying some kind of card which operated like a PowerVR. I spent about 15 seconds researching it before I bought it because I didn't want to lose the chance of getting it. Well, after I bought it, I discovered I bought fool's gold (I didn't look, but with my luck on this buy there's a half million of them available for $0.25). I didn't cancel the sale because the seller shouldn't suffer for my Matrox "Myst-ake." One can't spend a lot of time waffling on an eBay purchase when something rare (not so rare/in demand in this case) pops up. The price paid for little hesitation is what I have here today.

If there's some Video Card collector out there who would like to make a trade, send me a PM with what you have available. Some kind of Cirrus Logic card will probably do, haha!

Got hold of these pair 😁 replaced the thermal paste and pads with Thermal Grizzly kryonaut and minuspad 8's

Meatball wrote on 2022-03-03, 20:02:

Well, I bought a number of GPUs over the past week or so, and they are mostly unique or interesting in some way. I'll update ev […]
Show full quote

Well, I bought a number of GPUs over the past week or so, and they are mostly unique or interesting in some way. I'll update every few days or so.

Here's the first one:

NEC/Matrox Mystique with no display out. It's for a Japanese-based PC9821. D'oh!

Surprisingly, it does get detected and installed automatically in Windows ME (as a Mystique 200), but I can't do anything with it of which I am aware.

I thought I was buying some kind of card which operated like a PowerVR. I spent about 15 seconds researching it before I bought it because I didn't want to lose the chance of getting it. Well, after I bought it, I discovered I bought fool's gold (I didn't look, but with my luck on this buy there's a half million of them available for $0.25). I didn't cancel the sale because the seller shouldn't suffer for my Matrox "Myst-ake." One can't spend a lot of time waffling on an eBay purchase when something rare (not so rare/in demand in this case) pops up. The price paid for little hesitation is what I have here today.

If there's some Video Card collector out there who would like to make a trade, send me a PM with what you have available. Some kind of Cirrus Logic card will probably do, haha!

That's..... special. Kinda thing that if I had kicking round I might populate the VESA connector and try to get something out of that for amusement one day, but yeah, it's a bit of a weird one.

Got a whole lot of hardware in the last days. The highligts are an AGP Gainward 7800 GS with 512 MB and a Soundblaster AWE 32 with OPL.

And then I got an old notebook from a local seller. The photos didn't show very much and I couldn't find any info about exactly that model but it was clearly from the Pentium 1 era. For 15 Euro I thought it's worth getting anyway. It's a Maxdata 'Artist' Bristol (article no. is 46 60 10 in case anyone is interested) with Pentium 133, 32 MB, Sound, CD and unfortunately only a DSTN display. For the price I think I can't complain but I don't really have a use for it so probably I'll sell it some day.

Meatball wrote on 2022-03-03, 20:02:

Well, I bought a number of GPUs over the past week or so, and they are mostly unique or interesting in some way. I'll update ev […]
Show full quote

Well, I bought a number of GPUs over the past week or so, and they are mostly unique or interesting in some way. I'll update every few days or so.

Here's the first one:

NEC/Matrox Mystique with no display out. It's for a Japanese-based PC9821. D'oh!

Surprisingly, it does get detected and installed automatically in Windows ME (as a Mystique 200), but I can't do anything with it of which I am aware.

I thought I was buying some kind of card which operated like a PowerVR. I spent about 15 seconds researching it before I bought it because I didn't want to lose the chance of getting it. Well, after I bought it, I discovered I bought fool's gold (I didn't look, but with my luck on this buy there's a half million of them available for $0.25). I didn't cancel the sale because the seller shouldn't suffer for my Matrox "Myst-ake." One can't spend a lot of time waffling on an eBay purchase when something rare (not so rare/in demand in this case) pops up. The price paid for little hesitation is what I have here today.

If there's some Video Card collector out there who would like to make a trade, send me a PM with what you have available. Some kind of Cirrus Logic card will probably do, haha!

How exactly would the PC9821 use this ..im not familiar with that system so I guess I am missing an important detail but without and IGPU it wouldn't be able to even pass the video signal out to a display.

Or does it use it like an accelerator card.

HanSolo wrote on 2022-03-03, 21:53:

Got a whole lot of hardware in the last days. The highligts are an AGP Gainward 7800 GS with 512 MB and a Soundblaster AWE 32 wi […]
Show full quote

Got a whole lot of hardware in the last days. The highligts are an AGP Gainward 7800 GS with 512 MB and a Soundblaster AWE 32 with OPL.
Gainward7800GS.JPG
SBAwe32.jpg

And then I got an old notebook from a local seller. The photos didn't show very much and I couldn't find any info about exactly that model but it was clearly from the Pentium 1 era. For 15 Euro I thought it's worth getting anyway. It's a Maxdata 'Artist' Bristol (article no. is 46 60 10 in case anyone is interested) with Pentium 133, 32 MB, Sound, CD and unfortunately only a DSTN display. For the price I think I can't complain but I don't really have a use for it so probably I'll sell it some day.
Maxdata_Artist.jpg

That laptop looks to be in great condition, I would .. shove an external display on it and use it that way myself, perhaps as a nice little quick and dirty DOS gaming machine. DSTN displays are horrible but so long as it has the ability to do display out I dont write the machine off if it has good DOS compatibility.

Not so much bought, as in 'should I' buy them ? 😄

Never seen anything like this, Speed card.... which seems to be able to set a speed in Mhz(?) from 25 to 66.
Assuming that might be the bus speed on a motherboard ?
Or is it related to modems or somesuch thingie ?

bestemor wrote on 2022-03-03, 23:09:

Not so much bought, as in 'should I' buy them ? 😄 […]
Show full quote

Not so much bought, as in 'should I' buy them ? 😄

Never seen anything like this, Speed card.... which seems to be able to set a speed in Mhz(?) from 25 to 66.
Assuming that might be the bus speed on a motherboard ?
Or is it related to modems or somesuch thingie ?
SpeedCard.JPG

Maybe I'm talking nonsense but these look like Joystick adapters with dual DB15 connectors. Maybe the "speed switch" is some kind of feature that matches the card to the system bus speed so that the Joystick timings are more accurate, or something of this sort

Aaah... yeah, that makes much more sense than some mobo 'controller' card... 😅

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-03, 19:58:

I think that PhysX was an interesting technology but developers lost interest once it became an NVIDIA exclusive.

Once multiple cores proliferated, and CPUs got faster, all of this ended up being done in software. A sad ending for a very interesting technology.

Havok pretty much killed Physx for gaming, even if nVidia had not bought it, its life was going to be incredibly short with how fast CPU power was increasing and how quickly CPU based physics engines were progressing and the simple fact that games dont require sophisticated physics simulations that need to be done in hardware.

MMaximus wrote on 2022-03-03, 23:14:

bestemor wrote on 2022-03-03, 23:09:

Not so much bought, as in 'should I' buy them ? 😄 […]
Show full quote

Not so much bought, as in 'should I' buy them ? 😄

Never seen anything like this, Speed card.... which seems to be able to set a speed in Mhz(?) from 25 to 66.
Assuming that might be the bus speed on a motherboard ?
Or is it related to modems or somesuch thingie ?
SpeedCard.JPG

Maybe I'm talking nonsense but these look like Joystick adapters with dual DB15 connectors. Maybe the "speed switch" is some kind of feature that matches the card to the system bus speed so that the Joystick timings are more accurate, or something of this sort

Could it be for expensive controls for flight sims and such, Hotas type controllers might need more timing accuracy.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-03, 09:40:

Hehe, isn't that just the holy grail of floppy drives? (especially for cases without 3.5 bays) […]
Show full quote

bjwil1991 wrote on 2022-03-03, 05:09:

my interest is the dual floppy drive

Hehe, isn't that just the holy grail of floppy drives?
(especially for cases without 3.5 bays)

I was so happy when I got one on ebay and NOS, in a box, the dummy disk still inside.
For almost nothing because HE HAD NO IDEA WHAT HE WAS DEALING WITH! 😳

That and having a dual floppy drive in a 286 is better than a single drive.

Planning on putting this bad boy in my Portable 286 so I can play Lemmings.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-03, 23:21:

MMaximus wrote on 2022-03-03, 23:14:

bestemor wrote on 2022-03-03, 23:09:

Not so much bought, as in 'should I' buy them ? 😄 […]
Show full quote

Not so much bought, as in 'should I' buy them ? 😄

Never seen anything like this, Speed card.... which seems to be able to set a speed in Mhz(?) from 25 to 66.
Assuming that might be the bus speed on a motherboard ?
Or is it related to modems or somesuch thingie ?
SpeedCard.JPG

Maybe I'm talking nonsense but these look like Joystick adapters with dual DB15 connectors. Maybe the "speed switch" is some kind of feature that matches the card to the system bus speed so that the Joystick timings are more accurate, or something of this sort

Could it be for expensive controls for flight sims and such, Hotas type controllers might need more timing accuracy.

It is for any type of joystick / gamepad. The really early ones will only work up to a certain speed, then for a while they had speed adjustable, some by a switch like that and for the higher end, the Gravis one has an external POT so you can adjust in real time without opening up the computer

Later gameport cards would "auto adjust" aka work on pretty much any speed system.

I ended up finally ordering a Compaq DeskPro 8086 motherboard.

Seller still has 5x unopened ones.

HanSolo wrote on 2022-03-03, 21:53:

Got a whole lot of hardware in the last days. The highligts are an AGP Gainward 7800 GS with 512 MB and a Soundblaster AWE 32 wi […]
Show full quote

Got a whole lot of hardware in the last days. The highligts are an AGP Gainward 7800 GS with 512 MB and a Soundblaster AWE 32 with OPL.
Gainward7800GS.JPG
SBAwe32.jpg

And then I got an old notebook from a local seller. The photos didn't show very much and I couldn't find any info about exactly that model but it was clearly from the Pentium 1 era. For 15 Euro I thought it's worth getting anyway. It's a Maxdata 'Artist' Bristol (article no. is 46 60 10 in case anyone is interested) with Pentium 133, 32 MB, Sound, CD and unfortunately only a DSTN display. For the price I think I can't complain but I don't really have a use for it so probably I'll sell it some day.
Maxdata_Artist.jpg

That 7800GS may actually be a 7800GT.

Got a BX6 R2 with some kind of slot1 CPU on it (guessing a P2) and some assortment of video, network, and sound cards the seller threw in for free (probably because they were worth 0). I'm going to put in the closet and revisit some other time. I always had a thing for that motherboard when I was a kid.

Recently picked up this fascinating VLB card. Gotta say, it’s pretty darn fast. I haven’t tried out video acceleration, but I’m curious to see how well the Vision868 does.

I have wanted to test an 868 for a while. I suspect that the 868 can be tuned with MCLK a bit. Right now it seems slightly slower than my 60ns-equipped Paradise Bahamas64 VLB, equipped with the S3 864.

Unfortunately, however, my fastest VLB motherboard uses a very weird chipset that MCLK does not like. It’s an APC Predator 747 with the Chips&Tech CS4041—a super fast, super late VLB chipset. And it loves late, advanced, quirky VLB cards that some of my other boards hate for whatever reason. (e.g., My Symphony Haydn board requires me to jumper my Cardex Challenger Tseng ET4000W32P to disable “Delay Command Option,” whatever that means. If I don’t do that, it won’t boot and, if it does, it sure as heck isn’t stable…). The Predator 747 is seemingly very fond of the ARK1000VL, S3 864, and Tseng ET4000W32P, as well as the Trio32. I’d like to really test this card to its fullest on the Predator 747.

Does anyone know any other memory clock adjustment software for DOS?

Speaking of VLB, I picked up an Avance Logic ALG2228.A board. My apologies for the awful photo; it’s a great board and, truthfully, the thing looks brand new. It’s also very, very, very late date-code wise for a VLB card: Week 13 of 1995—essentially a contemporary of the Vision868 shown above. To anyone curious about this card, I have used it in DOS for a while and have found the following to be true:

• Image quality on my Dell 1908FP LCD is awesome; easily toward the top of my VLB cards. I don’t have a CRT to test with at the moment.
• The 45ns DRAMs are there for a reason; this thing is fast. How fast? A bit faster than a Cirrus GD5426/28, but slower than a Trident 9440-1. It’s probably around an S3 805, which I’ve found to be pretty fast (I have a Diamond Stealth24, with 50ns RAM and it is about 5-7% slower than the Vision864).
• Apparently it’s got some basic Windows acceleration features; I haven’t tried this, but I can imagine it’d be acceptable in 3.1, and okay in 95.
• 1MB of non-upgradeable RAM is the big, limiting factor. The 32-bit memory bus doesn’t really help.
• Compatibility with VESA stuff seems good. The VBE implementation is limited, but it’s there and it works. I can at least say that relative to some of the other cards I have.
• Unlike the ET4000W32P, which hates my Symphony Haydn-based board, this seems totally content there. It’s pretty trouble-free, just like any Cirrus.

Overall verdict? In my opinion, seemingly worth it over a GD5428, and maybe a GD5429. These are sometimes findable for fair prices, but some people seem to want to charge a lot for the Hercules version, which utilizes the same PCB and sometimes possesses a differently-packaged RAMDAC (PLCC vs the DIP setup here). As partial as I am to S3, the build quality of this card is quite good and it’s rated for 50MHz. Only some later 805-Ps seem to be able to do the same and they need at least 70ns RAM; the 864 can barely do 40MHz. The ALG2228.A definitely deserves a look and some love!

Also, I grabbed this PCChips M810LMR. It was ~$11, and it’s probably not worth that; I do have to say that it’s pretty nice for what it is. It’s slower than my KT7A and AMD760-based GA-7DX, but still not that bad. It came with the original manual, disk, and AMR card.

The SiS730 itself really isn’t too bad. Sure, it’s an integrated chipset with sound, graphics, and the works all stuffed into it, but it’s pretty fast and very stable. Despite the usual shoddy PCChips quality, this board seems fun for testing. It’s perfect with an Athlon 1400 and even runs at 133/133 FSB/RAM, despite the manual seemingly insisting (contrary to SiS’s specifications) that the SiS “Thunderbird” chipset (as they deemed it) can only handle 100/133. Apparently the integrated MIDI isn’t half bad. SoundBlaster compatibility needs work and possibly some aspirin, to say the least…

Also, I probably need to update the bios on this thing as it does not like Athlon XPs very much. A 1700+ Palomino would run at 1100MHz, but not at 1466MHz; apparently it should be able to do the latter, so I’ll try a re-flash and see…