Compaq S3 ViRGE/GX video card, not the most interesting hardware but it has nearly excellent DOS compatibility and comes with VBE 2.0 onboard. The build quality of the card is excellent and doesn't suffer from the brightness bug out of the box.

Another one would be the Gigabyte GA-586ATV Socket 7 motherboard, one of the few ones with proper Turbo switch for 50 MHz FSB mode. With a voltage adapter and a modded BIOS, I was able to run an AMD K6-2+/450 CPU on it. The combination would make it a flexible "time machine" computer.

Toshiba Libretto 110CT. So tiny yet so powerful. I just love it.

Bonus: my first Voodoo (a Diamond Monster 3D II 8MB) that I acquired during my quest to recover all the milestones of recent computing history. Well at least the affordable ones!

Probably going to have to go with the roland MPU 401.
Although it was a bit pricey its probably amongst the best value retro purchase I've ever made.

I've played a ton of games in DOS using a midi desktop module paired with this and its never skipped a beat.

No need for TSRs or emulation , just bare metal hardware at its finest.

No hanging notes , no compatibility issues , plus I get intelligent mode support for my MT32 and I can use whatever sound blaster card I want without having to worry about what kind of mpu 401 compatible gameport it has.

Its robust , very well built and you can easily connect it to a midi switchbox.

Really good bit of kit.

Gravis Ultrasound Extreme

With native Gravis GF1 support, SoundBlaster Pro support (via ESS 1688), and super clean output, it's my favorite ISA DOS soundcard.

Paired with a Roland SCC-1 or MPU-401AT card makes for one of the best DOS sound card setups there is.

For me, it's a toss up between my X-Fi Titanium and my Roland SC-155.

The former lets me enjoy EAX games in their full glory, while the latter makes DOS games sound better than I ever thought they could. In my youth, I had neither of these, so I'm now experiencing how good my favorite games can sound for the first time.

For me it’s the K6-2 450, the first CPU I bought with my own money and has a strong sentimental value.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-05-23, 16:50:

Gravis Ultrasound Extreme

With native Gravis GF1 support, SoundBlaster Pro support (via ESS 1688), and super clean output, it's my favorite of ISA DOS soundcard.

Paired with a Roland SCC-1 or MPU-401AT card makes for one of the best DOS sound card setups there is.

That thing is awesome. All of the advantages of a GUS and none of the drawbacks. Up until now I never knew it existed! I've had a few GUS cards pass trough my collection, but never stuck with any of them due to lack of proper SB compatibility. If I had one of these babies I wouldn't have traded it like I did with the others.

My favorite ISA sound card is the Guillemot Maxi 64 series. I bought a new Guillemot Maxi Sound 64 Home Studio back in 2000 for next to nothing, planning to use it in a fast 486 I was building for my little sister. First time I heard that Dream chip in Descent I was blown away. I had no idea MIDI music could sound like that.

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2023-05-23, 18:00:

For me it’s the K6-2 450, the first CPU I bought with my own money and has a strong sentimental value.

I know the feeling! For me it was a 750MHz Duron. I still have it, missing pads and black marker writing and everything. And the reason I still have it is because of my sister. She had a 486 I built in 2000, out of hand-me downs and cheap parts, and she really wanted to play Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver, and I wanted an upgrade - so I bought an Athlon XP 1700+ and a Soltek 75DRV5 KT333 motherboard for myself and kept the old motherboard and cpu to build a PC for her. I also wanted to upgrade my radeon 7500 but decided it would be better to upgrade her 486 instead - that way I could setup a home network and we could play multiplayer games. So instead of that shiny new radeon 9600 I got a cheap ATX case and PSU, 128MB of ram and a Geforce 2 MX. That PC lasted until I got into collage and left home. Turns out she kept it, and it became part of my collection later on. Unfortunately the matsonic KT266 motherboard went belly up at one point, and having nothing similar to replace it with and no need for such a configuration, I took the PC apart. I still have everything apart from the motherboard and hard disk drive.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-05-23, 17:18:

For me, it's a toss up between my X-Fi Titanium and my Roland SC-155.

The former lets me enjoy EAX games in their full glory, while the latter makes DOS games sound better than I ever thought they could. In my youth, I had neither of these, so I'm now experiencing how good my favorite games can sound for the first time.

I never got the EAX craze, but I do get the SC-155. I never knew about roland sound hardware back in the day apart from what I could see in DOS games setup programs - as such I had no idea how big the difference between OPL3 and Wavetable MIDI was - until I got the aforementioned Guillemot Maxi Sound 64. Sill have the card, but the box, manuals and disks are gone. Probably thrown out when we moved. I only own 2 pieces of Roland sound hardware and I love both - an SC55MKII and an MT32. Just glad I had the sense to pick up one of each (despite prohibitive shipping and import costs) when they were still cheap.

For some reason I can't quite explain, I have the pick the terrible Voodoo Rush. I've also got a V1, V2 and V3, but I find something so much more compelling about bad/difficult hardware. Which probably also explains my runner up:

The GUS also has the added personal value of being a card I lost a long time ago, and it just feels really good to finally have one back in my collection.

Probably my Powerleap PL-iP3/T complete with Tualatin 1.4GHz.

Makes my Slot 1 machine about as fast as it’s possible to be, and makes for a great base late 90s to early 2000s gaming machine.

It’s a great fit for my second favourite piece, my Voodoo 5 5500.

Tossup between my IBM PS/2 Model 95, 486 EISA/VLB, Apple Quadra 950+ or Apple WGS 95, Mac IIfx. Depends on my mood an Amiga could come out of top.

I have too many machines I like a lot to pick just 1.

ATI Rage Fury Maxx - Terrible card really, but cool nonetheless.

Socket3 wrote on 2023-05-23, 15:16:

Hey guys. I was wondering what your favorite piece of retro hardware is - be it in your collection or not - pictures are encoura […]
Show full quote

Hey guys. I was wondering what your favorite piece of retro hardware is - be it in your collection or not - pictures are encouraged!

For me it would be the Geforce 4 Ti4600 - specifically the Leadtek Winfast A250 Ultra TD. The reason is probably pretty boring - it was in most tech and PC gaming magazine ads when I was in highschool - and I was never able to come close to affording one.

Here she is:

a250.jpg

... and only 20 years too late!!! 😜 (got her about a year ago). In fact I plan to collect all the cards on that ad page. So far I've got the A250TD (Ti4200), the A170 DDR T (Geforce 4 MX460), Winfast Geforce 2 MX400TH and the WinFast Titanium 200 TH. I'm only missing the regular Winfast A170T and the Winfast Geforce 2 MX64.

A close second would be the Slot A platform, with the reason being intel of all things. Their pricing in my country back in 1999-2000 was horrendous - not because of intel themselves (well, partly) but because the sole intel CPU importer had near 50% markup on all CPUs - so a 400MHz pentium 2 cost double what a 400MHz K6-2 cost. i440bx boards were also more expensive than any super socket 7 - so when I could finally afford to upgrade my ancient 586... a no-name via MVP4 chipset board with a 450Mhz K6-2 is all I could afford. Kinda made 8th grade me hate intel. So when the Athlon started showing up in tech and gaming magazines it was love at first sight - especially considering a 650Mhz slot A Athlon cost as much as a slower Celeron + slotket (according to the offers printed in magazines at the time). So I used to drool over these things up until I finally managed to raise enough money for another upgrade, but at that point slot A had been superseded by socket A - so I went with that.

What about you guys? What did you wish for back in the day and were never able to afford (or were able to and loved it)?

This is all what i need to be happy.

Gumur.gurl wrote on 2023-05-23, 19:51:

Socket3 wrote on 2023-05-23, 15:16:

Hey guys. I was wondering what your favorite piece of retro hardware is - be it in your collection or not - pictures are encoura […]
Show full quote

Hey guys. I was wondering what your favorite piece of retro hardware is - be it in your collection or not - pictures are encouraged!

For me it would be the Geforce 4 Ti4600 - specifically the Leadtek Winfast A250 Ultra TD. The reason is probably pretty boring - it was in most tech and PC gaming magazine ads when I was in highschool - and I was never able to come close to affording one.

Here she is:

a250.jpg

... and only 20 years too late!!! 😜 (got her about a year ago). In fact I plan to collect all the cards on that ad page. So far I've got the A250TD (Ti4200), the A170 DDR T (Geforce 4 MX460), Winfast Geforce 2 MX400TH and the WinFast Titanium 200 TH. I'm only missing the regular Winfast A170T and the Winfast Geforce 2 MX64.

A close second would be the Slot A platform, with the reason being intel of all things. Their pricing in my country back in 1999-2000 was horrendous - not because of intel themselves (well, partly) but because the sole intel CPU importer had near 50% markup on all CPUs - so a 400MHz pentium 2 cost double what a 400MHz K6-2 cost. i440bx boards were also more expensive than any super socket 7 - so when I could finally afford to upgrade my ancient 586... a no-name via MVP4 chipset board with a 450Mhz K6-2 is all I could afford. Kinda made 8th grade me hate intel. So when the Athlon started showing up in tech and gaming magazines it was love at first sight - especially considering a 650Mhz slot A Athlon cost as much as a slower Celeron + slotket (according to the offers printed in magazines at the time). So I used to drool over these things up until I finally managed to raise enough money for another upgrade, but at that point slot A had been superseded by socket A - so I went with that.

What about you guys? What did you wish for back in the day and were never able to afford (or were able to and loved it)?

This is all what i need to be happy.

That's a DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra isn't it? I had one of those babies back in the day. Great board.

Socket3 wrote on 2023-05-23, 20:45:

Gumur.gurl wrote on 2023-05-23, 19:51:

Socket3 wrote on 2023-05-23, 15:16:

Hey guys. I was wondering what your favorite piece of retro hardware is - be it in your collection or not - pictures are encoura […]
Show full quote

Hey guys. I was wondering what your favorite piece of retro hardware is - be it in your collection or not - pictures are encouraged!

For me it would be the Geforce 4 Ti4600 - specifically the Leadtek Winfast A250 Ultra TD. The reason is probably pretty boring - it was in most tech and PC gaming magazine ads when I was in highschool - and I was never able to come close to affording one.

Here she is:

a250.jpg

... and only 20 years too late!!! 😜 (got her about a year ago). In fact I plan to collect all the cards on that ad page. So far I've got the A250TD (Ti4200), the A170 DDR T (Geforce 4 MX460), Winfast Geforce 2 MX400TH and the WinFast Titanium 200 TH. I'm only missing the regular Winfast A170T and the Winfast Geforce 2 MX64.

A close second would be the Slot A platform, with the reason being intel of all things. Their pricing in my country back in 1999-2000 was horrendous - not because of intel themselves (well, partly) but because the sole intel CPU importer had near 50% markup on all CPUs - so a 400MHz pentium 2 cost double what a 400MHz K6-2 cost. i440bx boards were also more expensive than any super socket 7 - so when I could finally afford to upgrade my ancient 586... a no-name via MVP4 chipset board with a 450Mhz K6-2 is all I could afford. Kinda made 8th grade me hate intel. So when the Athlon started showing up in tech and gaming magazines it was love at first sight - especially considering a 650Mhz slot A Athlon cost as much as a slower Celeron + slotket (according to the offers printed in magazines at the time). So I used to drool over these things up until I finally managed to raise enough money for another upgrade, but at that point slot A had been superseded by socket A - so I went with that.

What about you guys? What did you wish for back in the day and were never able to afford (or were able to and loved it)?

This is all what i need to be happy.

That's a DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra isn't it? I had one of those babies back in the day. Great board.

Yeah, i didn't happen to have one in the past, and maybe i will never going to buy it today, prices are insane.

but instead i had this one in 2006, no as good as dfi but still a good board.

Socket3 wrote on 2023-05-23, 15:16:

... and only 20 years too late!!! 😜 (got her about a year ago). In fact I plan to collect all the cards on that ad page. So far I've got the A250TD (Ti4200), the A170 DDR T (Geforce 4 MX460), Winfast Geforce 2 MX400TH and the WinFast Titanium 200 TH. I'm only missing the regular Winfast A170T and the Winfast Geforce 2 MX64.

Your forgetting about the Winfast TV2000 XP that card is on that ad page as well.

This thing right here:

Mine is probably this humble Labway branded YMF-719 sound card + X2GS, which I've been using for a few years now. This setup ended my 10 years long search for "the perfect" ISA sound card - totally subjective of course but the countless other options I've tried over the years always annoyed me in some way, where this never does.

I resisted these OPLSAx for years because of the unfiltered SB Pro output but once JamesF came up with the filter mod, that was it. True love.

The X2GS - configured to my tastes and with the stereo reversed to fix the YMF-719's reversed stereo wavetable header - likewise never disappoints. This little guy has replaced all of the other GM hardware I had - SCC-1, SC-55, DB50XG, etc.

Definitely my Libretto 70CT. I love bringing it around with its still-working battery playing Christmas demos during the season. And Jazz Jackrabbit Holiday Hare, of course.

Socket3 wrote on 2023-05-23, 15:16:

Hey guys. I was wondering what your favorite piece of retro hardware is - be it in your collection or not - pictures are encouraged!

Can nail down a few complete systems as my fav's. My top: Laser XT/3 (probably one of the best Turbo XT retail ever made IMHO), so is my Unisys ELI 466 (probably one of the best early 486 VLB retail systems ever built IMHO).
I have no specific top component because looking at the XT's thru P4 era there is not one specific item I can come up with...though the MV PAS Studio would be in top few....