abrunetto wrote on 2022-06-20, 22:32:

Thank you for your answer. Is there any way to confirm through software or maybe an oscilloscope? I don't have a CGA monitor. […]
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BitWrangler wrote on 2022-06-20, 18:16:

It is also CGA according to this https://www.oldcomputers.co.za/item/hmc-hm6311 though it seems to me it might have anough memory to do better than CGA too... but doesn't seem to have the oscillators on for EGA, maybe plantronics or other less common modes.

Thank you for your answer. Is there any way to confirm through software or maybe an oscilloscope? I don't have a CGA monitor.

Best Regards,
Ariel

You have mono monitor though? If you type
mode co40
and the text goes fat and wide, it's doing a CGA mode, type
mode mono
to go back, might need to type that blind if the screen blanks.

I'm afraid there's not much out there about this card it seems so a lot of experimentation required to find the useful stuff. Like hopefully there's a CGA on mono mode where you get different mono shades for each CGA color. That co40 trick only uses the white, if you've got console color set to default, if you had it set to cyan or magenta and it dissappeared then it probably wasn't set to CGA on mono. On MDA or Herc that would be ignored.

Anyhoo, good luck is about all I can say.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-06-20, 19:12:

I haven't "got into" it yet, it's all passworded up, so have some cracking to do.

Heh, had it on for a minute or two and now *1337 haxx0r voice* "I'm in" ... I am in fact ashamed it took me 5 attempts when the password was in fact password.. I tried Pa55word, pa55word, pa55w0rd, password123 first. 🤣

That box art is hilarious. I'm sure they moved a lot of product.

ChrisK wrote on 2022-06-20, 18:23:

Only things people sell at local flea markets are old clothes, dishes, furniture, military stuff (commonly called militaria here […]
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Only things people sell at local flea markets are old clothes, dishes, furniture, military stuff (commonly called militaria here) and such. Mostly things anyone else would instantly bring to waste disposal.
No chance in getting any computer stuff. Something from the good old times not even in your dreams.
Only way for me is some ad sites or ...bay.

At least today I seem to have found some nice board for just a few bucks: ASRock 960GC-GS FX
Look at the CPU support list: nearly everything from AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+ with DDR2 and DDR3 support.
https://asrock.com/mb/amd/960gc-gs%20fx/#CPU
It was offered as defective but seller said it just laid around for a long time. So I'll see. IF it works it will be a really universal test board and I can't help...I kind of like ASRock.

That sucks... Then look all the time in the local AD sites, and maybe Ebay. I dont use Ebay as the prices there are alot higher then what i pay for them here... Yes having dedicated testing parts is a good thing, i also have some AM2+ Gigabyte GA-M55S-S3 board that i use for testing PCIex cards, DDR2 memory and most of the late AMD CPUs after 939... Well you like them alone here, i never liked that brand is just dogshit.. I prefer GIGAbyte boards every day even over ASUS, as ASUS is contantly downfall for me i find many, many of that brand dead no matter the socket/ generation, meanwhile 80% of all GIGAbyte boards just works, while only 30% of all ASUS ones do work.. ASSrock also as boards are mostly working, but i just dont like the brand..

imi wrote on 2022-06-20, 23:14:

FAST sure were on point with their box designs :D […]
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Radical Vision wrote on 2022-06-20, 16:00:

Fast Multimedia AG Philips ISA

FAST sure were on point with their box designs 😁

hardware39_41.jpg

and speaking of batmobiles... I got this one recently ^^

hardware40_86.jpg

Yes i also think they did nice job on the design, a bit too much, as it looks like was from some Arnold action movie, but still..

Good for u the faumos Batman revenge board, i am not in into that much, but a fellow HW collector was talking much about that board, so it seems it is a pretty huge deal.. How much did you spend for that Batman board ( i also wonder wtf is with that name, i dont see bats or Batman name on it..)

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-06-21, 01:42:

That box art is hilarious. I'm sure they moved a lot of product.

The art on these old boxes is nice, they had to be very creative back in these days, compared to today they just put some insane stuff like GIGAbyte Aorus Master boxes with that insane Eagle logo that enrages and lifts particals of earth in the air... The lost art of the computer HW and stuff...

Take for example the art on these VGA boxes... It was used for OAK, UMC, CL-542X and another old cards, but i got my Diamond Edge 3D nVIDIA NV1 cards with such boxes... I really like what they did really beatiful painting on them... I also like the approach EPoX did on their boxes unique design.. Also the box are of the Hercules seems like was stolen from 3Dfx straight 🤣... ASUS for example on their P2B board have dumb design (well what to expect from ASUS..)

I think that the 3Dfx Voodoo had some of the best branding ever. It's still iconic and fresh, even to this day.

Sorry, responding and editing on mobile firefox is weird.
-Radical Vision: If you can find a cheap Asrock 990fx Extreme 4 check it out. Its not the best board ever, but the integrated usb/bios, ata133, floopy, am2+?-3+ support up to the FX 8370 made it my favorite brand new motherboard purchase of all time. I know you dont like AsRock much, but they went all out on cap choice with decent enough VRM's and cooling for a mildly OC'd 8350 for the past decade after my Athlon ii 250 upgrade + many cases, GPU's, PSU'. Survived a Apevia Beast 800 watt + R9 290 literally melting the mains cable to the surge protector without skipping a beat. Extra 2 sata ports are brittle and kinda slow/suck, but weren't bad for XP use. Last bios update was 2014? And by then they really worked out any bugs or compatibility issues.

Bought this nice little setup today, an Rev 1.06 ASUS P2B-D with dual PII-350 CPUs, 256mb Ram and what appears to be some kind of ATI Rage card, going to throw possibly Win 2k on this or setup a Dual boot XP/DOS machine not really sure yet, It'll get the Voodoo5 5500 since this board is AGP 2x it'll be prefect for the Voodoo AGP card along with a ESS 1869F + E Wave card it'll also work good for late DOS gaming too.

Never had a Dual PII board before but this one also supports slot 1 Coppermine CPUs so perhaps later it'll get a pair of them too or at the least a nice pair of PII 450s and some ECC ram.

Not a great photo, will add better ones when I get the board in the mail.

I've looked at dual processors for years. They are beautiful, and I want one, but I can't see myself ever building with it. I'll leave them all to you guys.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-06-21, 10:28:

I've looked at dual processors for years. They are beautiful, and I want one, but I can't see myself ever building with it. I'll leave them all to you guys.

Never had a Dual PII slot1 board before, it looks like it'll be a fun rig to build.

I have dual PIII 1.4s Tually CPUs too .. but lack a decent dual socket 370 Tualatin board with AGP ..you either get 1.4s Tualatin support and no AGP or you get AGP but no Tualatin support 🤣.

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-06-21, 08:21:

ChrisK wrote on 2022-06-20, 18:23:

Only things people sell at local flea markets are old clothes, dishes, furniture, military stuff (commonly called militaria here […]
Show full quote

Only things people sell at local flea markets are old clothes, dishes, furniture, military stuff (commonly called militaria here) and such. Mostly things anyone else would instantly bring to waste disposal.
No chance in getting any computer stuff. Something from the good old times not even in your dreams.
Only way for me is some ad sites or ...bay.

At least today I seem to have found some nice board for just a few bucks: ASRock 960GC-GS FX
Look at the CPU support list: nearly everything from AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+ with DDR2 and DDR3 support.
https://asrock.com/mb/amd/960gc-gs%20fx/#CPU
It was offered as defective but seller said it just laid around for a long time. So I'll see. IF it works it will be a really universal test board and I can't help...I kind of like ASRock.

That sucks... Then look all the time in the local AD sites, and maybe Ebay. I dont use Ebay as the prices there are alot higher then what i pay for them here... Yes having dedicated testing parts is a good thing, i also have some AM2+ Gigabyte GA-M55S-S3 board that i use for testing PCIex cards, DDR2 memory and most of the late AMD CPUs after 939... Well you like them alone here, i never liked that brand is just dogshit.. I prefer GIGAbyte boards every day even over ASUS, as ASUS is contantly downfall for me i find many, many of that brand dead no matter the socket/ generation, meanwhile 80% of all GIGAbyte boards just works, while only 30% of all ASUS ones do work.. ASSrock also as boards are mostly working, but i just dont like the brand..

Well, I have an ASRock board in my main machine since ~10 years now (ALiveDual-eSATA2) and it never failed so far.
Bought it back then because it had that special design with AGP and PCIe which allowed me to use my old AGP VGA card until it was too slow and then going on with a next level PCIe card.
I always upgraded just one part of the machine at the same time (CPU, VGA card, etc.) until the next upgrade was absolutely necessary, mainly out of financial reasons.
So this ASRock board seemed to be a good platform for my strategy. And I think time showed that wasn't that wrong.
So all in all I haven't made any bad experience with ASRock and the company has this kind of "underdog with that special designs" image in my head. Nothing that others must share, it's just my very own POV.

The 960GC-GS FX is just again such a board: most boards are AM2 or AM2+/AM3 on a DDR2 base or AM3+ only with DDR3.
The combination of this all in a mATX form factor is just great, because you only need one board (and of course storage space) for all types of AM2 to AM3+ CPUs. It may not be top notch but that's just not necessary (for my use cases).

On the other hand I don't have much experience with e.g. Asus or Gigabyte boards. I've seen Asus boards with blown up caps but also some with no such problems albeit many years older.
But that's the fate of the big global players, they have good boards for the enthusiast which work for ages but also bad ones for the system integrators which only need to stay for a handful of years.
Where's light there's also shadow.
Where's less light there's also less shadow 😉

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-06-21, 08:21:

Good for u the faumos Batman revenge board, i am not in into that much, but a fellow HW collector was talking much about that board, so it seems it is a pretty huge deal.. How much did you spend for that Batman board ( i also wonder wtf is with that name, i dont see bats or Batman name on it..)

it cost me about €50, more than I'd usually pay for a single motherboard but I like having it in the collection for it's historical significance ^^ and it came fully populated, so it's somewhat justified I guess.
how they came up with the batman codenames I have no idea ^^

imi wrote on 2022-06-21, 14:30:

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-06-21, 08:21:

Good for u the faumos Batman revenge board, i am not in into that much, but a fellow HW collector was talking much about that board, so it seems it is a pretty huge deal.. How much did you spend for that Batman board ( i also wonder wtf is with that name, i dont see bats or Batman name on it..)

it cost me about €50, more than I'd usually pay for a single motherboard but I like having it in the collection for it's historical significance ^^ and it came fully populated, so it's somewhat justified I guess.
how they came up with the batman codenames I have no idea ^^

I've always guessed that they called one motherboard Batman (after the movies) and had problems with it, hence called the fixed version of that board the "Batman's Revenge".
Or at least this is how I imagined it back when I found out the name of the s4 board I found at one time.

"Batman" and "Batman's Revenge" are more like codenames for each revision, the actual name for the board is "Premiere/PCI" or something like that, much like the "Advanced/ZP" is also known by its codename "Zappa".

Intel's naming scheme has always been strange.

Board of the Amiga 500 was nicknamed "Rock Lobster" after the B52s song.

TheMobRules wrote on 2022-06-21, 16:09:

"Batman" and "Batman's Revenge" are more like codenames for each revision, the actual name for the board is "Premiere/PCI" or something like that, much like the "Advanced/ZP" is also known by its codename "Zappa".

Intel's naming scheme has always been strange.

yeah, but we still don't know how they actually decided on those codenames ^^

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-06-21, 10:31:

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-06-21, 10:28:

I've looked at dual processors for years. They are beautiful, and I want one, but I can't see myself ever building with it. I'll leave them all to you guys.

Never had a Dual PII slot1 board before, it looks like it'll be a fun rig to build.

I have dual PIII 1.4s Tually CPUs too .. but lack a decent dual socket 370 Tualatin board with AGP ..you either get 1.4s Tualatin support and no AGP or you get AGP but no Tualatin support 🤣.

Get Gigabyte GA-6VTXD:
https://theretroweb.com/hardware/motherboards … gabyte-ga-6vtxd

It's too bad that that shared ISA slot is unpopulated.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-06-21, 22:17:

It's too bad that that shared ISA slot is unpopulated.

Not a huge issue as I likely won’t run any ISA cards on a dual 1.4s system.

It's a shared slot, so it wouldn't have made a difference in the expansion capability. It just would have been a "nice to have".

Depends how you define capability I guess, some might say the PCI is tapped out when all master capable slots are full, regardless of total number of PCI slots.