liqmat wrote on 2022-10-11, 14:18:

Careful or you might get the keyboard circuit bend bug. There is an entire subculture of circuit bending musical hobbyists that take those cheaper keyboards to new heights. Just search "casio circuit bending" or "keyboard circuit bending" and you will be amazed at what some people can do with those keyboards and a little electronics know-how.

As a proud collector of way too much old music hardware I've come across circuit bending. 😉

I have resisted the urge to now as I kind of like keeping this old hardware in stock condition. That said, there are definitely a lot of interesting possibilities once one starts tinkering with the signal paths on these things.

Got a bunch of CF cards recently.

Once can never have enough CF cards. 😁

I got this nice Toshiba T2130CT for relatively cheap but it's been a real fixer upper. The battery leaked so it needed a new mainboard, the replacement mainboard was corroded in the same way so I got another new (old) mainboard. These particular laptops are so rare now that I'm glad I could save this one. I think many of them have just been destroyed by the NIMH main battery and the NIMH standby battery, then scrapped.
In the end I had to repair the floppy drive (belt + damaged WP switch), the inverter (usual cap failure) and made a T2100CS motherboard into a T2130CT motherboard by transplanting the GPU, CPU and BIOS.

The screen seems to be perfect. And the drive is now working which has the factory restore stuff on it. If only it had some sound then this fanless, 640x480 TFT, 486 DX4-75 would be essentially perfect in my opinion. As it is though, I really like it and it'll be keeping this original 520MB hard drive while it's still working.

For reference, here's how it started out:

Well, that'll certainly fill the void that my 486 build not fully working out left behind.

GigAHerZ wrote on 2022-10-11, 21:17:

appiah4 wrote on 2022-10-11, 10:47:

GigAHerZ wrote on 2022-10-05, 15:46:

Got this set of sound cards for total of around 45€.

There are quite a few interesting cards in this set that i didn't have yet.

One day... One day i'll find time to record all the popular FM synth songs with every card and will create a website with multitrack player that can play all of them and you can fade between cards. One day, i say!

Oh, an Mwave sound card! Interesting!

What is the card on the lower left?..

The chip has "Jazz16" on it.

I just yesterday found time to test all the ISA cards - 4 out of those 9 didn't get recognized by UNISOUND immediately. Didn't have more time to debug it. Soon gonna be making a detailed post to UNISOUND thread with all the information about those 4 cards and if any *should* work with UNISOUND, i'll try to debug and test as much as needed so UNISOUND would become even greater universal sound card initializer. 😀

FWIW, my sound card in my first 486 was a Jazz16, so probably a sound card 😀

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-10-11, 01:07:

Zip100 arrived today after having to go on an extended trip due to being sent to the wrong person and .. its broken, looks like […]
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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-21, 08:01:

Havent had a huge opportunity to trawl the vintage stuff on the bay of late but I did see a few nice things to throw at my retro […]
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Havent had a huge opportunity to trawl the vintage stuff on the bay of late but I did see a few nice things to throw at my retro rigs, one I cant find much about and the other is a nice Yamaha Xwave 744 sound card.

STB Horizon64.png

I cant find a lot about this card on the web other than it uses the Sierra Falcon 64 chipset which I have never heard of before or ever used but the little I can find suggests its fast but buggy, in any case its an interesting bit of gear to have and im curious to see what DOS incompatibilities it has, going to put it up against the ARK1000PV and 2000PV to see just how it compares.

Yamaha Xwave.jpg

I dont have a XG 7XX PCI based card in my sound card box so when I saw this one for 20USD I grabbed it, hopefully I can locate all the software that it originally came with.

Bonus
Bought this ATAPI Zip100 with 4 disks just Today for 50AUD, I already have one SCSI Zip100 but its pretty much useless without a second one and a few disks to copy files between machines.

Zip100.jpg

Bonus Bonus

Forgot I got this a week back a Savage 4 Pro 32mb PCI, its one of the Creative versions and itll be heading to my DOS/9x machine collection where all my PCI GPUs hide. (The one I received was still sealed in its hard shell cover which was a bonus)

Savage4 Pro.jpg

Going to use this to play around with S3TC.

Zip100 arrived today after having to go on an extended trip due to being sent to the wrong person and .. its broken, looks like it took a hit and its snapped the front facia off the drive, no idea if it works as the 4 discs were not with it. Have contacted the seller so hopefully we can sort it out, Id give it a power on test but the internals rattle a fair bit so its possible it suffered other damage, it was packed rather well too so I'm surprised it got broken.

Oh well, guess ill have to get another and find some 100 and 250 discs.

Zip100.jpg

-I guess I could also just find 2 LS120 drives ..then I can still use my 1.44mb floppy discs in them and they might survive the postal system better 😁

Sigh

Sellers who try to play games with buyers really fucking suck.

About to put this seller on my shelf of shame.

Got this beauty recently ... and it works 😀.

Now, dilemma is cooling. I'm inclined to go with NOS Zalman VF900, since original Asus cooler is completely flat surfaced and may cause premature death of the GPU 🙁. Considering blue (or red) porcupines for BGA memory chips. Memory is 2.5ns Hynix and it doesn't seem to run too hot, so maybe without porcupines? I'd really like to use the card 😀.

PS: Playing with Nvidia Riva cards lately, I completely forgot how insanely good image quality is on those Radeons 😀. You can notice it from post screen.

I seem to be collecting these DFI K6XV3+/66 boards ..now I have three of them, two 1meg AT types and now the 1 meg ATX version.

All are working too which is nice since they are known to need recapping, this one comes with a K6-2 500 and a Radeon 9200.

Also grabbed 16 Zip250 Discs for 30 USD and 5 Zip100 Discs for 25AUD.

stef80 wrote on 2022-10-12, 08:32:

Got this beauty recently ... and it works :). 20221012_101821.jpg […]
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Got this beauty recently ... and it works 😀.
20221012_101821.jpg

Now, dilemma is cooling. I'm inclined to go with NOS Zalman VF900, since original Asus cooler is completely flat surfaced and may cause premature death of the GPU 🙁. Considering blue (or red) porcupines for BGA memory chips. Memory is 2.5ns Hynix and it doesn't seem to run too hot, so maybe without porcupines? I'd really like to use the card 😀.

PS: Playing with Nvidia Riva cards lately, I completely forgot how insanely good image quality is on those Radeons 😀. You can notice it from post screen.

There was a thing about older nVidia GPUs using some pretty harsh texture compression algorithms back in the day while ATI never did use them, it was one of the reasons nVidia had such a huge advantage with Vram ..Harsh texture compression leading to lots of dithering. Though in practise many nVidia users either didn't notice the lower quality or ignored it, but ATI did have the superior image quality for their early cards.

I finally got an ATI Radeon X850XT PE.

It's the PCI Express version, so I'll need to check if I can get that running on Windows 98SE next - if it still runs at all.
The seller shipped it in a small box without any padding and a capacitor got ripped off during transit. 😢 Why do people always cheap out...

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-10-12, 10:45:

I seem to be collecting these DFI K6XV3+/66 boards ..now I have three of them, two 1meg AT types and now the 1 meg ATX version. […]
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I seem to be collecting these DFI K6XV3+/66 boards ..now I have three of them, two 1meg AT types and now the 1 meg ATX version.

All are working too which is nice since they are known to need recapping, this one comes with a K6-2 500 and a Radeon 9200.

K6XV3+66 B2.jpg
Cache.jpg

Nice catch. I managed to get one, rev. B1 512KB, which works with mobile K6s. I don't see them often.

schmatzler wrote on 2022-10-12, 12:34:

I finally got an ATI Radeon X850XT PE. […]
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I finally got an ATI Radeon X850XT PE.

It's the PCI Express version, so I'll need to check if I can get that running on Windows 98SE next - if it still runs at all.
The seller shipped it in a small box without any padding and a capacitor got ripped off during transit. 😢 Why do people always cheap out...
s-l1600.jpg

Tell me about it. It shouldn't be a problem if pads are still OK. Regular cap ot tantal one?

Thermalwrong wrote on 2022-10-12, 02:16:

I got this nice Toshiba T2130CT for relatively cheap but it's been a real fixer upper. The battery leaked so it needed a new mai […]
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I got this nice Toshiba T2130CT for relatively cheap but it's been a real fixer upper. The battery leaked so it needed a new mainboard, the replacement mainboard was corroded in the same way so I got another new (old) mainboard. These particular laptops are so rare now that I'm glad I could save this one. I think many of them have just been destroyed by the NIMH main battery and the NIMH standby battery, then scrapped.
In the end I had to repair the floppy drive (belt + damaged WP switch), the inverter (usual cap failure) and made a T2100CS motherboard into a T2130CT motherboard by transplanting the GPU, CPU and BIOS.
IMG_0382 (Custom).JPG

The screen seems to be perfect. And the drive is now working which has the factory restore stuff on it. If only it had some sound then this fanless, 640x480 TFT, 486 DX4-75 would be essentially perfect in my opinion. As it is though, I really like it and it'll be keeping this original 520MB hard drive while it's still working.

For reference, here's how it started out:
7.jpg
9.jpg

I had a T610CT (Pentium) and a 34XX(?-something) before that (486). The screen was a weak spot in these machines (at least in mine) as they both conked out probably after a year. Otherwise they were really great machines.

Something that I was seeking for years as a Compaq lover, a near mint Compaq G80-11800 mechanical keyboard (1994), PT layout, with vintage Cherry MX browns for a reasonable price of 50$. I absolutely love it and I'm gonna use it on my main rig.

Bought two strips of SO-DIMM DDR3-1333 2GB from e-waste to upgrade the Lenovo ThinkPad X200 I bought in August (it came with only one strip of 2GB DDR3-1066). Bought two just in case either one can function properly (i.e. pass MemTest86 tests); fortunately both strips passed the tests with flying colors. 😄

In addition RAM I also salvaged a lithium battery and a SanDisk 4GB SDHC card from a heap of junk digital cameras. Most of them had batteries and memory cards removed before disposal, but 1-2 in a dozen contain functional battery or memory cards (SD, CF, MS, xD, or even SM cards). The battery came from a Fujifilm Finepix F50fd, the same model I have. The camera was in a bad shape but the battery is still clean and shiny; it was still rechargeable and powered my camera without any problems.

The four items cost me NT$130 (a bit more than US$4). 😉

Picked up this case on ebay. Thought it was just an old case in good condition. In reality it appears to have been NOS.

Heh, nice case, and nice demo of how knowing the model of these generic-ish cases gets you absolutely nowhere with regards to finding them, "CI-68 series" on the paperwork, and now this post will be the only relevant result when google indexes it.

Fresh arrival! In the pros - Lucky Star 5V-1A motherboard (with a clocker that allows you to lower the frequency of the processor to 12 MHz ), Intel P200MMX processor, a lot of RAM (assorted, including double-sided DIMM 256MB for 440BX as example), videocard S3 Virge / DX 2MB PCI, Network Realtek 8139, Seagate Marathon notebook HDD 811Mb (by the way, I now have 2 of them), entourage AT case with "turbo" and a three-digit frequency indicator, AT keyboard Chikony.
Well, the ISA-8 compatible not-PnP ESS 1688 soundcard with interfaces for IDE/SONY/MITSUMI/PANASONIC CDROMs

My first post on this forum! 😁
Here's some of my graphics cards that I got recently from marketplace and ebay:

Gainward GeForce 7800GS+ Golden Sample 512MB GDDR3 24 pipes (G71 7950GT core)
XFX GeForce 7800GS 256MB GDDR3
Gainward GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB GDDR3
Leadtek WinFast A400 GeForce 6800 128MB DDR
GALAXY GeForce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3
Palit GeForce 6600GT 256MB GDDR3
Sparkle GeForce 7300GT 512MB DDR2
BFG GeForce 7300GT 512MB DDR2
ASUS V8440 GeForce 4 Ti 4400 128MB DDR
Creative 3D Blaster GeForce 4 Ti 4600 128MB DDR
XFX GeForce FX 5700LE 256MB DDR
Creative GeForce FX 5600 128MB DDR
Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 512MB GDDR3
Radeon 9800XT 256MB DDR
Radeon 9250 PCI 256MB DDR
Radeon 8500LE 64MB

All cards are working except for the Ti 4600 which displayed a white jumbled mess on the screen when I powered it on and a cap blew on it after about 5 seconds, perhaps it can be saved by recapping
Also I changed the cooler on the Sapphire HD 3850 because the stock fan was totally dead but unfortunately I'm still getting crashes while playing more intensive games, it's probably the bridge chip cooking itself

schmatzler wrote on 2022-10-12, 12:34:

I finally got an ATI Radeon X850XT PE. […]
Show full quote

I finally got an ATI Radeon X850XT PE.

It's the PCI Express version, so I'll need to check if I can get that running on Windows 98SE next - if it still runs at all.
The seller shipped it in a small box without any padding and a capacitor got ripped off during transit. 😢 Why do people always cheap out...
s-l1600.jpg

Oh, i followed this auction. (Seller from Austria if i remember correctly)
You got it for a good price !
I was really hesitant to increase my bid because i already have a "non PE" version 😀 (and also shipping to France was 20+ something €)

On my side, i recently found matching siblings for three cards i like a lot :
- A second GTX 7800 512MB (quite scarce version) For 11€ + 1Million USD in shipping and taxes
- A second HD3870X2 (Exactly the same model 😀 ) For ~30/40€ iirc
- A second Orchid Voodoo2 12Mb (Matching pair \o/ i don't remember the price but was not cheap)

Other recent cards (last few month)
- The Fury MAXX i dreamt about for a long time (i'm an ATI person. was not cheap ~270€ iirc)
- A nice GeForce 3 in box, complete with games and software... for 8€
- A HD5970 (I already had a broken one for display. This one works. 40€)

And this made my flagship ATI 3d collection almost complete...

I own a pair of 4870X2's ...Only problem I have with using them is the PSU required for them to even post the system, Ive been looking at 3870X2's but they are notorious for having terrible solder and are very prone to cracked BGA joints due to this.

So if both of yours are fully working . .take extra care with them to not knock them about.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-10-13, 09:39:

I own a pair of 4870X2's ...Only problem I have with using them is the PSU required for them to even post the system, Ive been looking at 3870X2's but they are notorious for having terrible solder and are very prone to cracked BGA joints due to this.

So if both of yours are fully working . .take extra care with them to not knock them about.

👍 I agree, i have a third (broken) 3870X2.
I was not able to test them in CrossfireX right now because my S775 card just refused to work (it worked well a few month ago 😤) and i need to find another one.
I have other boards with multiple GPU support, but i'm seeking period correctness...

I like 4870X2 very much as well !
I would like to run mine in CrossfireX, but not sure it will work. I have two very different models.

• An MSI 4870X2, reference design (The one with an Orc on the picture, not the best looking one...)
• A Gainward/Palit 4870X2 Golden Sample, Which is a **GIGANTIC** card taking 3 slots wide... (https://www.techpowerup.com/review/palit-revolution-r700/)

Even if it works, it will not looks great 😂.

For power hungry configs, i use a 1000W silverstone PSU (on my test bench). It currently drives a Socket 7 pentium config. A bit overkill.
If i remember correctly, we discussed a few month ago about GTX280 x3 VS GTX295 x2.
The PSU used for these cards would probably also be able to drive 2x 4870X2 if you still have it.