I started to retrobright my spare Compaq keyboard, this thing was super yellowed.. so I gave it a good sunbath (3 hours) with 12% hydrogen peroxide cream solution and the result was great, but it still needs a couple more hours to be perfect. Still need to wash all key caps and do them aswell.

PD2JK wrote on 2022-06-28, 11:14:

Yes, another small recap story. But I only replaced the two bad ones + a good one for measurement purposes.
I really hate fighting RoHS solder, and I'd like to postpone the purchase of a good desoldering station. For soldering one of the caps, I needed a 1mm drill, jeeezz.....

Notice the SECC slot, wich says slot 1. Well, slot A is just a turned around slot 1 slot anyway.

Epox 7KXA, by any chance? 😁

I call it "PcBytes Killer". ah-ha-haaA-haaaaAAA!!!
No, I'm kidding ))
This is the embryo Pentium 3. Celeron 1100. EliteGroup P6IPAT. Sirtec High Power ATX-350-102. GF4 MX440

PcBytes wrote on 2022-06-30, 09:40:

PD2JK wrote on 2022-06-28, 11:14:

Yes, another small recap story. But I only replaced the two bad ones + a good one for measurement purposes.
I really hate fighting RoHS solder, and I'd like to postpone the purchase of a good desoldering station. For soldering one of the caps, I needed a 1mm drill, jeeezz.....

Notice the SECC slot, wich says slot 1. Well, slot A is just a turned around slot 1 slot anyway.

Epox 7KXA, by any chance? 😁

Correct! 😁
Luckily only two caps were bad. Maybe the board didn't get much run time.

Accidentally bought a NOS box of 360k floppy disks thinking they were 1.2mb disks ...not sure what to do with them now since I dont own a 360k floppy drive and using a 360k floppy in a 1.2mb drive isn't a great idea if you want to read it on a different machine reliably.

Thankfully they didnt cost much, perhaps Ill add them to my display shelf as a reminder to RTFM or box in this case.

Also found several driver distros for Aureal Vortex2 for WinXp and 2000, going to give them a shot and see if I cant figure out a way to get it running with A3D under XP.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-06-30, 10:56:

Accidentally bought a NOS box of 360k floppy disks thinking they were 1.2mb disks ...not sure what to do with them now since I dont own a 360k floppy drive and using a 360k floppy in a 1.2mb drive isn't a great idea if you want to read it on a different machine reliably.

Thankfully they didnt cost much, perhaps Ill add them to my display shelf as a reminder to RTFM or box in this case.

Also found several driver distros for Aureal Vortex2 for WinXp and 2000, going to give them a shot and see if I cant figure out a way to get it running with A3D under XP.

Sell them to a C64 user.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-06-30, 11:23:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-06-30, 10:56:

Accidentally bought a NOS box of 360k floppy disks thinking they were 1.2mb disks ...not sure what to do with them now since I dont own a 360k floppy drive and using a 360k floppy in a 1.2mb drive isn't a great idea if you want to read it on a different machine reliably.

Thankfully they didnt cost much, perhaps Ill add them to my display shelf as a reminder to RTFM or box in this case.

Also found several driver distros for Aureal Vortex2 for WinXp and 2000, going to give them a shot and see if I cant figure out a way to get it running with A3D under XP.

Sell them to a C64 user.

or donate them if I can find someone locally who uses 360k floppies.

PD2JK wrote on 2022-06-30, 10:17:

Correct! 😁
Luckily only two caps were bad. Maybe the board didn't get much run time.

Was easy to guess. I have one at home that came with a T-Bird 750MHz. Can't overclock for its own life (someone pointed out that's because of the Cypress clockgen, although I wouldn't really expect to OC on a KX133 of all things. If anything, AMD chipset is a MUST if I want to get that T-Bird at any speeds higher than 750, very likely.) but otherwise it's a pretty good board if you want a Slot A machine on the cheap, and I've been happy with mine until its retirement, in favor of a KT133 based Duron 1600 combo

I've been sick with COVID-19 since last Tuesday, up until today, so I've been quarantining and doing a lot more vintage computer/gaming stuff as of late than usual for the summer.....

- Broke out the Words+ System 2000 Commpac AAC and figured out the Joystick Port on it, uses a regular Atari joystick. Also got EZ Keys working and started figuring out how to edit speech trees a little bit. Looks like there's a lot more to the software than I realized. Had to throw a Windows drive back in the Versa M/75 to set it up. This was actually a little before COVID-19.

- Got a Hyperkin Cadet Wireless Bluetooth Gamepad with NES Dongle, loving it. See below.

- Beat Dragon Warrior II NES in a COVID-induced-malaise. Started back onto Dragon Warrior III and now I'm not far from beating Zoma soon (15 year old savegame where I stopped just a little bit before getting the pheonix and killing Baramos). Once I nail that one I will have beat all 4, which is good since I plan to LP those on my channel. Still working on the first but my voice has been down. I'm not sure if I should keep up the Bithead1000 style rambling while I do LP's or do more of a edited/voiceover experience.

- Got a new shelf for my vintage laptop computers so five out of the six have a nice place to be displayed when not in use. From top to bottom
-- 1993 DFI MediaBook (NanTan FMAK9200M)
-- 1993 BSI (NanTan Notebook 3500C)
-- 1994 NEC Versa 40EC
-- 1995 NEC Versa V/50
-- 1995 NEC Versa P/75

creepingnet wrote on 2022-07-01, 02:40:

- Got a new shelf for my vintage laptop computers so five out of the six have a nice place to be displayed when not in use. Fro […]
Show full quote

- Got a new shelf for my vintage laptop computers so five out of the six have a nice place to be displayed when not in use. From top to bottom
-- 1993 DFI MediaBook (NanTan FMAK9200M)
-- 1993 BSI (NanTan Notebook 3500C)
-- 1994 NEC Versa 40EC
-- 1995 NEC Versa V/50
-- 1995 NEC Versa P/75

I like it! now load a program on each and time it such that it makes text appear on the top laptop that seems to drop down the screen onto laptop 2, down its screen and then onto laptop 3 and so on. amuse passers by!!

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-06-30, 11:38:

appiah4 wrote on 2022-06-30, 11:23:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-06-30, 10:56:

Accidentally bought a NOS box of 360k floppy disks thinking they were 1.2mb disks ...not sure what to do with them now since I dont own a 360k floppy drive and using a 360k floppy in a 1.2mb drive isn't a great idea if you want to read it on a different machine reliably.

Thankfully they didnt cost much, perhaps Ill add them to my display shelf as a reminder to RTFM or box in this case.

Also found several driver distros for Aureal Vortex2 for WinXp and 2000, going to give them a shot and see if I cant figure out a way to get it running with A3D under XP.

Sell them to a C64 user.

or donate them if I can find someone locally who uses 360k floppies.

Is there some open or is it a sealed pack? If there's some loose, you could punch the HD notch out and see if they format reliably as 1.2MB ... many people did this back in the day, when 360kb quality got more reliable. Need branded disks rather than generics most likely. Should be good enough for "working copies" of treasured originals at least, even if you have to redo them every once in a while.

Did try to buy off this IBM Model M Gen 1 metal badge, but someone was faster it seems... It was 30 euros.. Not that i care much, as the space is limited, and i want Model M Gen 0 Industrial grey, Model M13 Stealth black and Model F AT, dont care for the rest IBM keyboards really.. Still a little bit sad tho..

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-06-26, 16:19:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-06-26, 06:23:

TheMobRules wrote on 2022-06-26, 06:20:

Yes it is.

The feature connector was used for various types of cards like MPEG decoders, or even rare stuff such as the Creative 3DO Blaster. Basically its purpose was to enable direct data transfer between the VGA and the other card without being constrained by the system bus, memory or CPU speed.

If one were to hunt for a Mpeg decoder what models would be compatible >

Wont bother with the 3DO Blaster . .last one I saw with complete kit+CDrom drive was well over 3.5k USD

Yeah the ship for rare stuff like the 3D0, NV1 or V5 5500 has sailed. Those are the realms of the uber rich TechBros now.

I hate how every hobby I enjoyed got "discovered" during the Pandemic and prices exploded due to brand dead morons that spend triple digits on stuff that would literally otherwise end up being broken down for the $0.10 of gold in it.

So the nVIDIA NV1 is considered is considered luxury part 🤣.... Guess i am lucky at having bunch of them brand new, at some point i will load them all off ebay and with the money i will buy whatever my heart desires as retro HW stuff... Was going to exchange one brand new NV1 with a filty collector that had x2 Voodoo V 5500 AGP, but the bastard was greedy AF, and wanted instead x3 retro systems and x2 retro monitors fuck him... Voodoo V and NV1 are expensive sure, but stuff such as Voodoo V 6K, GEforce FX5800 Ultra, Creative 3D Blaster VESA, and some SLI Quantum3D cards are what i consider dumb and retarded they start with 4 digits easy... Last Voodoo V 6000 i heard was sold on closed auction for 3000$ LMAO 🤣 ......... Intel 4004 is also one of these dumb expensive stuff...

Wondering what else is dumb expensive as parts, whole systems, keyboards or whatever....

PD2JK wrote on 2022-06-28, 14:53:

Yes, too bad all those short lived 'platforms' are. Socket 4, 8, 423, 939...

U forgot socket 5, SS7, Slot A, the Pentium M platform i think was also short lived... Still i very much like s939, Slot A and s423 they are all unique... s939 is the last DDR400 platform and the last AGP platform as well it is strange mix of powerful new K8 architecture + old tech cant get more cool then this + it features the old nice brands such as DFI LanParty, ABIT AN8 and the insane Fatal1ty, there was also Soltek still there and their strange colored boards.. The s423 is also fun it features the very short lived RAMbus and the Pentium 4 478 that was soldered on bigger pakage instead on the smaller one the 478 after that was. And slot A the vrty first platform to hit 1GHz of speed and being rare platform, hard to find good mobos and powerful CPUs + i like the slot 1/A platforms, they dont have sockets, whole slot system socket free™ ...

appiah4 wrote on 2022-06-28, 14:54:

Does Slot A also count? At least where I lived it was near non existant, and Socket A came quite fast to make it a legacy thing.. It's also pretty unobtanium for me.

For sure Slot A counts that platform did have very short lifespan, die to AMD pushing K6 CPUs on the ss7 and then they joined late the Slot wagon and then Intel moved to sockets again, so AMD did as well, or something like that... Here Slot A is also VERY limited i managed to collect Tyan Trinity K7 S2380, ASUS K7M AMD 750 and MSI MS-6167... All in great condition, i had before also Acorp Slot A, but i sold that crap ofc... The interesting fact back on Slot A, was that this was the very first AMD only platform, and Intel did push VERY hard on the board manufacturers not to produce any AMD Slot A boards, so back on the boxes and manual u cant see AMD... ASUS and Gigabyte i heard did ship white boxes and that was all.. Or others like Tyan did include box art and stuff, but there was no AMD anywhere on the box... Back then they was scared of Intel, same way they are now from the filty nVIDIA (back with their garbage GEforce partner program shenanigan BS...) .. But these days AMD even have their own license since the Intel x64 was garbage and they all used the x84-x64 AMD one... So they are even these days Intel owns the x86 license, and AMD owns the x64 license, not that most ppl use the x84 these days aside from the retro community and all the military in the world...

For what it's worth I think Socket 754 still existing and being quite cheap makes Socket 939 look stupidly overpriced, same for later P4 systems and Socket 423. I cant say the same for Slot A though for example, uniAGP/ISA socket A is still rare as fuck.

Sadly there is just NO comparison between 754 and 939.. 754 has single channel memory vs dual channel on 939, also only shitty CPUs i think, while 939 supports the FX series + dual cores, while 754 only single core and mostly Semprons.. The chance of getting high end mobo for 939 such as ABIT Fatal1ty or DFI LanParty or MSI Platinum/ Diamond is ALOT bigger then finding High end board for 754.. The only one i can think off is some Lanparty NF3, and i never have seen one.. Meanwhile i saw multiple times LanParty NF4 939... Also i got to have MSI Diamond 939 one of the very last high end boards for 939, and LanParty NF4 Ultra-D, also high end board, while for 754 i have only crap boards...

S462 with ISA is very rare indeed, BUT what about LGA 775 mobo with ISA slots 🤣... I have a retro HW collector m8 and he has found some DFI LGA 775 with ISA slots...

As far as Win9x/AGP is concerned I feel my A64 3700+ basically maxes it out with an X800XTPE despite single channel ddr on S754 but I guess if you really want UNLIMITED POWA the S939 it is..

Never saw LGA775 with ISA.. does it even do proper DMA etc?

appiah4 wrote on 2022-07-02, 09:06:

As far as Win9x/AGP is concerned I feel my A64 3700+ basically maxes it out with an X800XTPE despite single channel ddr on S754 but I guess if you really want UNLIMITED POWA the S939 it is..

Never saw LGA775 with ISA.. does it even do proper DMA etc?

Yes there are https://www.ebay.com/itm/114575241873?_trkpar … 7Cclp%3A2047675

This one's even got DDR3 https://www.ebay.com/itm/284532288399?hash=it … 3sAAOSwXsdhlMqQ

This one has AGP, it would go nicely with Voodoo 5 https://www.ebay.com/itm/275031139204?hash=it … HkAAOSwnVxhlNYh

moog wrote on 2022-07-02, 11:45:

appiah4 wrote on 2022-07-02, 09:06:

As far as Win9x/AGP is concerned I feel my A64 3700+ basically maxes it out with an X800XTPE despite single channel ddr on S754 but I guess if you really want UNLIMITED POWA the S939 it is..

Never saw LGA775 with ISA.. does it even do proper DMA etc?

This one's even got DDR3 https://www.ebay.com/itm/284532288399?hash=it … 3sAAOSwXsdhlMqQ

This one has AGP, it would go nicely with Voodoo 5 https://www.ebay.com/itm/275031139204?hash=it … HkAAOSwnVxhlNYh

At 700 USD you would have to really fucking want these boards .. they costs more than a Voodoo5, I get that they have ISA but at this price they are clearly intended for industrial buyers or people with more money than sense.

The guy with the DFI LGA775 with the ISA said that Intel 865 and 875 are the last chipsets that support proper ISA DMA, while for example industrial boards with Intel P35 chipset wont work properly.. Meaning anything newer then 875 chipset wont work good. Guess having LGA1366/ 1156 with ISA wont be any good..

motherboard makers: we will create newer LGA775 boards with ISA slots for industrial purposes.
retro HW enthusiasts be like: hold mah ISA audio cards >>>

If is me i wont use Voodoo V 5500 on LGA 775... Better to use instead GEforce VII 7950 GX2......

That bastard with the 700$ 775 board wants arm and leg for it... This is why thrift stores, local AD sites and local recycling centers are best, fuck ebay...

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-02, 11:55:

moog wrote on 2022-07-02, 11:45:

appiah4 wrote on 2022-07-02, 09:06:

As far as Win9x/AGP is concerned I feel my A64 3700+ basically maxes it out with an X800XTPE despite single channel ddr on S754 but I guess if you really want UNLIMITED POWA the S939 it is..

Never saw LGA775 with ISA.. does it even do proper DMA etc?

This one's even got DDR3 https://www.ebay.com/itm/284532288399?hash=it … 3sAAOSwXsdhlMqQ

This one has AGP, it would go nicely with Voodoo 5 https://www.ebay.com/itm/275031139204?hash=it … HkAAOSwnVxhlNYh

At 700 USD you would have to really fucking want these boards .. they costs more than a Voodoo5, I get that they have ISA but at this price they are clearly intended for industrial buyers or people with more money than sense.

Yeah, which really drives my point home that there's a lot of scalping going on.

moog wrote on 2022-07-02, 11:45:

This one has AGP, it would go nicely with Voodoo 5 https://www.ebay.com/itm/275031139204

Look carefully at its AGP: it's the late 1.5V model, while Voodoo 5 requires 3.3V AGP.

AFAIK Voodoo 4 is the only universal AGP Voodoo card with both 3.3V and 1.5V keys.