Predator99 wrote on 2022-09-22, 20:14:

Wow thats a really cool find I have never seen this card! I have also been using COPY II PC and it was able to copy all my copy protected disks even without that card. Please let us know if/how it works!

Yeah this is easily one of my "top 5" finds from trawling the local markets etc. When I first saw it I thought "oh cool an 8-bit ISA floppy card that's a good find" and then noticed the "Central Point Software" copyright text and ah-ha it dawned on me what the card must be!

I've actually been intending to muck around with custom floppy formats and such (like what happens if you format a track to have two 4096 byte sectors - which will cause the 2nd sector to overlap the track index mark and the 1st sector's address mark) so this is pretty much a gift from the gods.

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-22, 10:39:

Picked up yesterday: Abit BH6 rev 1.02 in surprisingly good condition, for Abit anyways ... very clean and no bulged caps:
20220922_122939.jpg

I had to dust it off and use some contact cleaner on ram slots, no issues other than that. Posts with 768MB.

I love that board. Very nice find and great price. What are you going to put in it?

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-09-22, 22:21:

What maybe the fact that from all brands i ever owned, used, buyed ASUS has the most dead fucking boards... Sure i saw dead boar […]
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timsdf wrote on 2022-09-18, 19:50:

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-09-18, 08:29:

too bad is ASUS it may die for no reason (the usual BS with that garbage brand). But if u want reliable x58 board get anything that is not shitty ASUS, no wonder urs did die.. My Gigabyte x58 UD7 meanwhile is not dead, cuz is not shitty ASUS...

What's the problem with asus? Disregarding lowend boards on mainstream sockets (which are with all manufacturers questionable) I don't see any reason to call asus x58 boards bad like that. Specially with x58 gigabyte boards can be very unstable.

What maybe the fact that from all brands i ever owned, used, buyed ASUS has the most dead fucking boards... Sure i saw dead boards from other brands too, but ASUS the most, How to consider them any good. Also couple of ASUS boards did die on me. And the worst with ASUS as a brand is they die and most of them die for NO obvious reason, and all of them do the same BS they wont spin even fans wtf, only ASUS do this ALOT of times.. Then tell me what is wrong with that BS of a brand.. My GIGAbyte x58 UD7 is solid AF, and even carry 6/12 core Xeon on 4.5GHz OC, never saw any INstability, tho i did test at least 120 GPUs (Radeon HD7950, R9 280x, R9 380, R9 290) and the damn board works very well. I dont call x58 Asus boards bad, i call the whole ASUS bad.. They seems to be NO 1 brand for motherboards, yet aside from their stable and well writen BIOSes i dont find them any good, in terms of reliability..

chris2021 wrote on 2022-09-18, 20:06:

Omg Asus so rocks.

Sure they are dead like a rocks, no spark, no fan spin, not even magic smoke, dead AF rocks...

debs3759 wrote on 2022-09-18, 21:08:

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-09-18, 08:29:

Nothing too special in here, and depend on the price too, the dual 462 mobo is nice, too bad is ASUS it may die for no reason (the usual BS with that garbage brand). But if u want reliable x58 board get anything that is not shitty ASUS, no wonder urs did die.. My Gigabyte x58 UD7 meanwhile is not dead, cuz is not shitty ASUS...

I've never had an Asus board on any socket that has been anything other than great. But then, I never buy low end boards.

Good for u, i replaced ASUS with GIGAbyte they are alot better. And DUAL BIOS as a feature is WAY better then what asus offers..

libby wrote on 2022-09-20, 06:54:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-20, 03:19:

Its not a big deal to you or me who have the experience and tools to replace caps but to your average joe such boards are just e-waste or listed on eBay at unrealistic prices as used but untested. The original discussion wasn't really about the cap plague but rather Radical Visions hate boner for ASUS and any retro part he considers "peasant" quality and that curious posters should really just ignore his hate filled posts as nothing of value comes from them.

ASUS was never "peasant quality" anyway. they always made good boards with plenty of features, good BIOS support, few significant flaws or issues. OEMs used them a lot for good reasons. most of their boards one could call "duds" were OEM boards like the A7V8X-X or P4S533-VM with budget chipsets and stripped out features.

this is not a hobby where there is room for elitism, it is best kept accessible and friendly for all and the more people are into it, the better.

Pleanty of features u say HA HA... Wanna compare some stuff maybe ? Lets take for example the mobo u did mention A7V8X-X (HELL i will even mention the Delux of that shit) so what they had on their boards for 462 socket was maybe SATA ports and that useless crap WI-FI special ASUS BS.. Wanna see real features i will tell u look at GA-7NNXP, or even the PRO variant, that thing have 4 slots for memory, not only 3, it has SATA + IDE RAID, it has DUAL BIOS, and even that crappy useless DPS VRM module, but at least looks cool, and yes the board also is blue, not shitty yellow color like ASUS.. Or the AOpen AK79G Tube, sexy stealth black color, AOpen build quality, it has as well DUAL BIOS, and there is the useless but great looking tube audiophile for the audio.. Or the SOYO - SY-KT600 DRAGON Ultra Platinum, or the SOLTEK-SL 75FRN2-RL - Golden Flame, and there are more, but u got the idea..

maestro wrote on 2022-09-22, 00:35:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-16, 08:19:

7000 and 8000 series all had horrible solder and were prone to just dying, even if never used and still in a sealed box they can still just up and die after a few months due to the shit solder used.

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-09-16, 07:37:

This is nasty.. I have luck with most nVIDIA cards, and they work, no artifacts or BS. Still u can try heatgunning that shit and see, if it will work, or send it to hell...

Good news gents, the seller has excepted a return and even paid the return shipping. He was grumbly at first and surprised I had problems, but I think what helped is that I engaged him politely and messaged him first instead of just starting a return. Instead of acting angry or demanding I asked if he'd be willing to make an exception in this case, and despite having the advantage I think things went well. I definitely dodged a bullet on that return shipping, as far as I understand ebay can't force him to pay it.

Well good for u, u happened to deal with good seller. When i sell stuff i give 20 days warranty on my retro parts. Some stuff even have more warranty, that if the thing fail in that period of time i will refund back the money to the buyier.. And i dont even sell on ebay (at least yet).. Sure some times when we are mad need, not to go and rage on someone that did some shit, but talk firts instead..

God the amount of garbage you can spew forth is truly amazing.

smtkr wrote on 2022-09-23, 03:30:

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-22, 10:39:

Picked up yesterday: Abit BH6 rev 1.02 in surprisingly good condition, for Abit anyways ... very clean and no bulged caps:
20220922_122939.jpg

I had to dust it off and use some contact cleaner on ram slots, no issues other than that. Posts with 768MB.

I love that board. Very nice find and great price. What are you going to put in it?

Was thinking of P2 300 SL2YK that should arrive soon. They were supposed to reach 450 due to faster L2.

Not sure if it is worth sharing in the current context, but the only Asus board that I have had completely and suddenly die on me was X58 based ( P6X58D variant), which is apparently rather common for that model. I have had ICH9 USB ports die on an Asus P5B (likely ESD damage). Also, I have had an A8N-SLI Deluxe sputter and die, which I suspect was due to a chipset fan failure.

Every other Asus board that I have owned or set up for someone has worked fine. Some of them are still currently in service after 15 years of daily use. I have owned and installed more Asus boards than any other brand, so I have seen more of those fail than other brands.

To be fair, the A8N failure was likely preventable if I had been more diligent about maintenance and Asus should have put a heatsink instead of a crappy fan mounted on a thin and flat metal plate. P5B USB failure might be due to bad board design (ESD semsitivity), but I can't be certain (certain ICH versions were apparently extra fragile on the ESD front). This leaves the P6X58D as the only very suspect death where others of its kind ended up with a similar fate.

Just my 2 cents .

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-23, 03:53:

smtkr wrote on 2022-09-23, 03:30:

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-22, 10:39:

Picked up yesterday: Abit BH6 rev 1.02 in surprisingly good condition, for Abit anyways ... very clean and no bulged caps:
20220922_122939.jpg

I had to dust it off and use some contact cleaner on ram slots, no issues other than that. Posts with 768MB.

I love that board. Very nice find and great price. What are you going to put in it?

Was thinking of P2 300 SL2YK that should arrive soon. They were supposed to reach 450 due to faster L2.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overcloc … special,94.html

I wonder if the SL2YK would be the same as the SL2W8, where cache may be a lottery as to if it's fast enough or not?

darry wrote on 2022-09-23, 04:10:

Every other Asus board that I have owned or set up for someone has worked fine. Some of them are still currently in service after 15 years of daily use. I have owned and installed more Asus boards than any other brand, so I have seen more of those fail than other brands.

That's probably the reason of the most failures 😀

The only motherboard that died in my hands was Asus M32N-WS SLI (I liked it much), but that's because it stayed with me the most time, something like 8 years (others were given away or sold) - I just upgraded the CPU and RAM. And it survived several movements in not the best conditions. ASUS boards are quite popular and capable, be buy more - they die more.

After I started retroing, I bought approx. the same amount of boards I had in personal use. 2 ASUS boards among them and both still alive (Asus P2B and Asus P/I-P55TP4XE). I bought them in the first turn because they were ASUS - they simply can't be bad. On the other hand, the one from intel and one from ECS are dead. But that's way too small selection to make any conclusions for sure.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2022-09-23, 04:51:

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-23, 03:53:

smtkr wrote on 2022-09-23, 03:30:

I love that board. Very nice find and great price. What are you going to put in it?

Was thinking of P2 300 SL2YK that should arrive soon. They were supposed to reach 450 due to faster L2.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overcloc … special,94.html

I wonder if the SL2YK would be the same as the SL2W8, where cache may be a lottery as to if it's fast enough or not?

same stepping (dB0), same idea.
Unfortunately, cartridges are not easy to open up and check specs of L2 chips in advance.

Years back I decased a PII-350, for some reason I want to say it had 3.8ns cache, but recollection not strong at all so could be off. I had it ~95% stable at 466 (3.5x133) but it was an early 440BX board by PC Partner that was maybe not liking 133. Was solid at 124. Half the reason was that it was at the point where nobody seemed to think Slot 1 coolers were worth selling so I drilled and tapped a 370 cooler to mount through the holes. Not recalling the S spec.

darry wrote on 2022-09-23, 04:10:

Not sure if it is worth sharing in the current context, but the only Asus board that I have had completely and suddenly die on m […]
Show full quote

Not sure if it is worth sharing in the current context, but the only Asus board that I have had completely and suddenly die on me was X58 based ( P6X58D variant), which is apparently rather common for that model. I have had ICH9 USB ports die on an Asus P5B (likely ESD damage). Also, I have had an A8N-SLI Deluxe sputter and die, which I suspect was due to a chipset fan failure.

Every other Asus board that I have owned or set up for someone has worked fine. Some of them are still currently in service after 15 years of daily use. I have owned and installed more Asus boards than any other brand, so I have seen more of those fail than other brands.

To be fair, the A8N failure was likely preventable if I had been more diligent about maintenance and Asus should have put a heatsink instead of a crappy fan mounted on a thin and flat metal plate. P5B USB failure might be due to bad board design (ESD semsitivity), but I can't be certain (certain ICH versions were apparently extra fragile on the ESD front). This leaves the P6X58D as the only very suspect death where others of its kind ended up with a similar fate.

Just my 2 cents .

Yeah, my P6X58D-E is the only Asus board I've had straight up die. Is there an actual known reason for those boards in particular failing? Always been curious about that.
Other than that, eh, I haven't really had any Asus trouble. They've had some stand-out boards, but overall to me they are just another option to consider. And they make so many variants of boards that they're bound to screw one up here and there... you know... just like everyone else.

Got this Audigy 4 Pro (SB0380) for free, from colleague he did not need it. Looks nice, but it takes place, i prefer the 5 inch front panels instead, as i can put it in a system, and wont take space, but thins thing..
Still good as i did not have that model. Still need to find cheap Audigy 2 ZS, Audigy 1 Platinum, SB AWE 32 (CT 3990 i think was the higher end one), SB Pro and SB Pro II, and these are about all, i have the rest models. Maybe one X-Fi Fatal1ty Champion (rebranded Xtreme gamer), with the front panel.. At least these are the models i can think of.

First SL2YK arrived today, so far so good:

... on BH6, cool as cucumber (mid 20s °C) and pretty silent ... as slot-1 coolers go.

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-23, 20:31:

First SL2YK arrived today, so far so good: 20220923_222042.jpg 20220923_220112.jpg ... on BH6, cool as cucumber (mid 20s °C) and […]
Show full quote

First SL2YK arrived today, so far so good:
20220923_222042.jpg
20220923_220112.jpg
... on BH6, cool as cucumber (mid 20s °C) and pretty silent ... as slot-1 coolers go.

Love them. The best CPU implementation we've ever had. I mean in terms of esthetics and look.

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-23, 20:31:

First SL2YK arrived today, so far so good: 20220923_222042.jpg 20220923_220112.jpg ... on BH6, cool as cucumber (mid 20s °C) and […]
Show full quote

First SL2YK arrived today, so far so good:
20220923_222042.jpg
20220923_220112.jpg
... on BH6, cool as cucumber (mid 20s °C) and pretty silent ... as slot-1 coolers go.

And with 768 megs. Loving it!

This genoa phantom s3 trio 64 card came in today which will replace my elsa winner ,
it appears to be a 4mb one , luckily it came with the original driver cd and manual.

I bought an old but like new Asus eeePC 900.

Remember those useless eeePC ?

Well, it's even more useless now.

Looking at Linux, it seems to be fully supported. A Debian or Fedora system would fit nicely on its 16 GB (!) SSD.

It will be still hard to make anything useful out of it. 900 MHz CPU, 2 GB or RAM, tiny 1024x600 screen. 😁

I still kinda like it.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2022-09-24, 08:59:

I bought an old but like new Asus eeePC 900. […]
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I bought an old but like new Asus eeePC 900.

Remember those useless eeePC ?

Well, it's even more useless now.

Looking at Linux, it seems to be fully supported. A Debian or Fedora system would fit nicely on its 16 GB (!) SSD.

It will be still hard to make anything useful out of it. 900 MHz CPU, 2 GB or RAM, tiny 1024x600 screen. 😁

eeePC.jpg

I still kinda like it.

Its a cute little piece of kit, I mean it would be ok for browsing Vogons while in bed, same for Ebay and the like, good for emails too and discord.

Still plenty it could handle if you didnt mind how slow it might be or the strength of specs required to read the screen.

Bought an external LS120 drive that nobody seemed to want (the seller's text said that in two days he will dump it). Freecom seemed to be a german company that sold external drives but they are out of business. So far I only tested if the drive reacts when inserting a floppy disk and it sounds fine.

The problem is that it's missing the parallel-port cable. I found a picture of it on an old website so maybe I'll try contacting them.
Does anybody here know anything about it? I assume if the pinout of the drive's port would be known the cable could easily be built. The next problem would be the drivers but I think I just found them on archive.org.

In worst case I can still use the drive itself as an internal one.

HanSolo wrote on 2022-09-24, 11:11:

Bought an external LS120 drive that nobody seemed to want (the seller's text said that in two days he will dump it). Freecom see […]
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Bought an external LS120 drive that nobody seemed to want (the seller's text said that in two days he will dump it). Freecom seemed to be a german company that sold external drives but they are out of business. So far I only tested if the drive reacts when inserting a floppy disk and it sounds fine.

The problem is that it's missing the parallel-port cable. I found a picture of it on an old website so maybe I'll try contacting them.
Does anybody here know anything about it? I assume if the pinout of the drive's port would be known the cable could easily be built. The next problem would be the drivers but I think I just found them on archive.org.

In worst case I can still use the drive itself as an internal one.

There are different cables.
I got this freecom external CD-Drive and it was available with different cables like Parallel and USB if i remember right.
The converter part is in the (blue) plug. (maybe its just a parallel>usb bridge)

xcomcmdr wrote on 2022-09-24, 08:59:

It will be still hard to make anything useful out of it. 900 MHz CPU, 2 GB or RAM, tiny 1024x600 screen. 😁

I have two similar Toshiba netbooks (NB520 and NB550D) which I both upgraded to a 1366x768 screen. There is a chance it might work with Eee PC as well.