Was to pick up an ibm 760cd laptop when o saw an interesting red sound card in a pile of network cards. Asked if I could have it without really looking at it.

Now when I came home I realize this was a gravis ultra sound pnp. Is it any good? All my computers are in storage atm so I can't try it.

Welllll, 98 times out of 100 you could do worse. Don't know how it ranks among GUS only though.

I know very little about them, maybe it doesn't play well together with an sb16 which was my idea.

JustJulião wrote on 2023-07-26, 09:21:

I bought this used 20 years old Radeon. Look at how glorious this box looks. Even the sticker is very carefully placed.

Looks neat and very collectible, nice! Which Radeon model is it?

The automatic Ebay offer system kept on pestering me about this so I had to make a nice low-ball counteroffer: seller accepted.
Like these IBMs for some reason.

Bought an Opteron 180 OSA180DAA6CD which is equivalent to the 4800+ ADA4800DAA6CD, going to give it a shot in my 939 setup since getting an actual 4800+ ADA4800DAA6CD at a reasonable price is pretty much impossible.

Included the part number as that's important since the 6CD version includes SSE3, I could have grabbed a 5BV part but its got half the L2 cache.

doublebuffer wrote on 2023-07-27, 08:34:

JustJulião wrote on 2023-07-26, 09:21:

I bought this used 20 years old Radeon. Look at how glorious this box looks. Even the sticker is very carefully placed.

Looks neat and very collectible, nice! Which Radeon model is it?

The card itself isn't really exciting, it's a Radeon 7500LE AGP with a red PCB and a passive cooler. There are tons of it for cheap on Ebay. I mostly bought the box actually ahaha.

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-07-27, 10:35:

Bought an Opteron 180 OSA180DAA6CD which is equivalent to the 4800+ ADA4800DAA6CD, going to give it a shot in my 939 setup since getting an actual 4800+ ADA4800DAA6CD at a reasonable price is pretty much impossible.

OPteron 180.jpg

Included the part number as that's important since the 6CD version includes SSE3, I could have grabbed a 5BV part but its got half the L2 cache.

Good score. My 939 system has been a bit of a disappointment. The Asus motherboard I bought (A8V-X) was reasonably priced new old stock, but it turned out that the model has no overclocking options. I've a 4400+ that has a broken pin, so it sometimes hangs on POST. My 4200+ is okay, and could easily be overclocked to where I would be happy with that system's performance, but that would require a different motherboard. I've tried the BIOS from a very similar Asus 939 board, but it wouldn't POST with that BIOS. As is, the 4200+ is a bottleneck for the HD 3850 AGP card.

And to think that I gave away my 939 system with a 4600+ with Thermalright copper heat pipe cooler back in 2012 or so.

Received this Sound Blaster clone this week.

Curious to try this out and see how it compares to an original Sound Blaster. I'm hoping it's less noisy that the real deal.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-07-27, 17:00:

Received this Sound Blaster clone this week.

Curious to try this out and see how it compares to an original Sound Blaster. I'm hoping it's less noisy that the real deal.

I got one as well the other week. On my one the bracket seems to be all wonky, looks like some of the components are weirdly offsetted. I haven't tried it yet.

pan069 wrote on 2023-07-27, 19:56:

I got one as well the other week. On my one the bracket seems to be all wonky, looks like some of the components are weirdly offsetted. I haven't tried it yet.

PXL_20230702_035452027.jpg

Is yours the plastic bracket?

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-07-27, 21:49:

pan069 wrote on 2023-07-27, 19:56:

I got one as well the other week. On my one the bracket seems to be all wonky, looks like some of the components are weirdly offsetted. I haven't tried it yet.

PXL_20230702_035452027.jpg

Is yours the plastic bracket?

Yeah, its a 3d printed thing. Is yours not? I wasn't aware it came with a metal bracket option, would definitely have gone for that. I ordered from Tindie. The order receipt doesn't specify details around the order.

pan069 wrote on 2023-07-27, 23:03:

Yeah, its a 3d printed thing. Is yours not? I wasn't aware it came with a metal bracket option, would definitely have gone for that. I ordered from Tindie. The order receipt doesn't specify details around the order.

Yes, I got the metal bracket. I bought mine via Ebay. They had separate listings for metal brackets for their cards.

Their listing says they still have two metal brackets in stock, so you could probably still order one if you wanted.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-07-27, 23:49:

pan069 wrote on 2023-07-27, 23:03:

Yeah, its a 3d printed thing. Is yours not? I wasn't aware it came with a metal bracket option, would definitely have gone for that. I ordered from Tindie. The order receipt doesn't specify details around the order.

Yes, I got the metal bracket. I bought mine via Ebay. They had separate listings for metal brackets for their cards.

Their listing says they still have two metal brackets in stock, so you could probably still order one if you wanted.

Ah, right. I am not going to pay $38.50USD + shipping to AU for a metal bracket 🤣. I'll stick with the flimsy 3d printed one... 😀

I was very happy to find a ISA Network Card with RJ45 and Boot Rom socket for just 30 euros shipped.
I know 30 euros sound a lot for a network card, but they are getting quite rare here these days.
My hope is that i can use XTIDE in the Rom socket. These will be some nice experiments and tinkering at the weekend.
As a bonus the seller included some kind of sound card wich you can see above my holy network card.

Yeah it seemed like business networking had a new paradigm every 3 years through the 90s, resulting in mass scrappage of network cards every time a company changed network vendors. Even though with the right drivers the cards from 1990 supported the protocols in 1999, the network vendor would promise it only worked good with their chosen hardware. Well you can't connect token ring cards to a cat 5 10b5 ethernet hub, and 100 is faster than 10 of course. So in the business arena LAN cards certainly got scrapped faster than machines. Then when home networking and LAN parties got big in 2k, all available supply got sucked up, re-used. I mean it seems, because they were thrown out in large bins from large enterprises, that they should be common as dirt, but that's missing the point that they were thrown out. Then home users wanted 100Mbit real quick and the 10Mbit stuff got thrown out harder. Even though in 2001 a 100Mhz 486 with LAN internet was still a fairly useful surfing box (Though as soon as the masses had cable/DSL by 2003 the net got porky) the general public probably associated 486 with crappy 14.4 diallup and there were only a few geeks and enthusiasts keeping such things going. So survivor machines in basements attics and closets from the general populace maybe didn't get a network card back in the day, unless geek owned. Meaning we get to now and there seems to be far less decent network cards than there should be. Big city folks might still find availability by the boxful though forgotten server closet cleanouts.

But your media vision soundcard looks interesting and like being worth as much as the NIC too.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-07-28, 13:58:

Yeah it seemed like business networking had a new paradigm every 3 years through the 90s, resulting in mass scrappage of network cards every time a company changed network vendors. Even though with the right drivers the cards from 1990 supported the protocols in 1999, the network vendor would promise it only worked good with their chosen hardware. Well you can't connect token ring cards to a cat 5 10b5 ethernet hub, and 100 is faster than 10 of course. So in the business arena LAN cards certainly got scrapped faster than machines. Then when home networking and LAN parties got big in 2k, all available supply got sucked up, re-used. I mean it seems, because they were thrown out in large bins from large enterprises, that they should be common as dirt, but that's missing the point that they were thrown out. Then home users wanted 100Mbit real quick and the 10Mbit stuff got thrown out harder. Even though in 2001 a 100Mhz 486 with LAN internet was still a fairly useful surfing box (Though as soon as the masses had cable/DSL by 2003 the net got porky) the general public probably associated 486 with crappy 14.4 diallup and there were only a few geeks and enthusiasts keeping such things going. So survivor machines in basements attics and closets from the general populace maybe didn't get a network card back in the day, unless geek owned. Meaning we get to now and there seems to be far less decent network cards than there should be. Big city folks might still find availability by the boxful though forgotten server closet cleanouts.

But your media vision soundcard looks interesting and like being worth as much as the NIC too.

3 years ago i got a huge free lot of about 30 network cards (hidden inside free office pcs 😁 ) for a fiber optic systems with connectors that are super expensive to buy cables for. I tried to just give them away but nobody wanted them... So i ended up desoldering the ROM chips and tossing all the cards (except of 3 or 4) in the bin...

I just got the package with the cards and had no time to do some basic research...
Here is a better picture of the sound card. Its indeed a Media Vision. I think i have a Mediavision Jazz 16 somewhere, but i vever thought of it as special... because it isnt very good 😁

I just googled the soundcard... it seems to be a "Media Vision Thunder Board"

DerBaum wrote on 2023-07-28, 14:23:

I just got the package with the cards and had no time to do some basic research... Here is a better picture of the sound card. I […]
Show full quote

I just got the package with the cards and had no time to do some basic research...
Here is a better picture of the sound card. Its indeed a Media Vision. I think i have a Mediavision Jazz 16 somewhere, but i vever thought of it as special... because it isnt very good 😁

2023-07-28 16.18.02.jpg
I just googled the soundcard... it seems to be a "Media Vision Thunder Board"

Yup, that's a Thunder Board. It's a great SB 1.5 clone.

I currently use Thunder Boards in my Tandy 1000 TL setups. It functions as a nice Adlib alternative with clean FM output and a 15-pin joystick port to boot.

Got a DGi P-90C laptop (FCC ID FMA7600) from eBay that came with two batteries and the charger (been looking for a charger for 2 years now).

The system wouldn't power on at first until I press on the PSU board, which needs repair or a replacement and I do have another one that I can take parts out of since that one is starting to crack.

It runs on a P90 SX957 (no FDIV bug), 16MB RAM, 1.44MB floppy drive (the BIOS has an option for floppy format, which is weird), 540MB HDD (doesn't boot without the CMOS battery), TFT active, C&T video, and ES688.

The following issues:
1) The PSU board - bit of corrosion on one of the connectors that slides into the motherboard
2) squeaky hinges - needs WD-40
3) HDD not booting - either it's out or without a working CMOS batter, it makes the HDD inoperable
4) dead pixel on the screen, but that's no big deal since the display works well

If anyone is getting a laptop like this and it's asking for a ROM code, it's AMI_SW all caps and underscore.

Photos of the tank with a close-up of the display:

The first PCBs I’ve ever ordered, so of course I went with something very tiny. 😀

Just need to wait for the rest of the parts to show up and I’ll be able to get about 4 different boards up and running.