appiah4 wrote on 2023-10-26, 13:03:

Bought a very compact Baby AT case.. It needed some repairs and cleaning, almost completely done though. These are what came out of it:

It looks like 386SX was a very popular platform for business use where I live, I have come across more 386SX systems than 286 or even Pentium class in the last few years. Odd.

Also, I need help with identifying the motherboard. There is an S logo on the back, and it's not SOYO's logo.

Yeah the late SX machines were a kind of "all you need" system for basic DOS office tasks, Wordperfect, Lotus 123 until your sheets got big and so on. I saw a lot in use into the windows 98 era.

Been discovering the landscape of the US computer market in 1992 through my researches into an AST Advantage 386SX/25 and it's possible multimedia edition. It seemed at the time, that there was a pent up supply of 386SX systems, maybe caused by a sales hold due to the AMD/Intel lawsuits, and in early 1992, the floodgates opened. 386SX for everyone, no please, take one home with you, the kids need one? The dog? Now as they struggled to clear this glut, what did Compaq do? Launch a price war on clones and competitors, using their excess capital and shaving their margins to a mere 2% to try to drive everyone else out of business... and were Compaq doing this to clear out 386SX? Hell no, they were discounting what was until now the high end workstation, the 486! So 486 prices are dropping like a stone through late 92 into 93 as this price war rages, and 386SX are getting fobbed off on discounters. So it seems pretty likely at this point that a huge amount of 386SX got dumped in non-US markets to score ready cash for the 486 fight with Compaq.

Radeon X1950XTX w/box.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-27, 04:09:

Law212 wrote on 2023-10-26, 13:43:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-25, 03:48:

Creative Nomad is an MP3 player right? Or does it use its own encoder?

MP3 player.

I just like anything by Creative. I have no need for this , but its neat . I will load it up with music. It has 6 gigs of space

Part way explains why you didnt like ATRAC3 encoding.

I was an early adopter of MiniDisc and remember it was far superior to MP3 of the same time period.

I dont remember ever seeing Mini discs being sold or even advertised. THe only time I saw a mini disk and player was when my friend was sent one by his uncle in hong kong.

Law212 wrote on 2023-10-27, 12:44:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-27, 04:09:

Law212 wrote on 2023-10-26, 13:43:

MP3 player.

I just like anything by Creative. I have no need for this , but its neat . I will load it up with music. It has 6 gigs of space

Part way explains why you didnt like ATRAC3 encoding.

I was an early adopter of MiniDisc and remember it was far superior to MP3 of the same time period.

I dont remember ever seeing Mini discs being sold or even advertised. THe only time I saw a mini disk and player was when my friend was sent one by his uncle in hong kong.

I was the other buyer of a Mini-disc player (Sony) back in the day. Ahh... that was money well spent. I think I used it while traveling and, on the train, to work for a few months.

Mini discs where semi popular here in the uk in the mid 90's as they was smaller then a cd player but better then a walkman (in theory) so quite a few people had them at college for their bus journeys to and from college. I stuck with a walkman until I got an mp3 player in the early 00's

The nice thing about mp3s was Napster. Kinda makes me want to buy an mp3 player.

A friend of mine almost talked into buying a minidisk player for my component stereo in the late 90's but I passed. There are at the local BestBuy back then, I was more interested in the Technics 100+ CD disk changer (which I eventually purchased on ebay cheap because of a bad rubber belt). I used to frequent a used CD music shop to get my media in the 90's and there was never one for minidisks.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-10-27, 12:00:

appiah4 wrote on 2023-10-26, 13:03:

It looks like 386SX was a very popular platform for business use where I live, I have come across more 386SX systems than 286 or even Pentium class in the last few years. Odd.

It seemed at the time, that there was a pent up supply of 386SX systems, maybe caused by a sales hold due to the AMD/Intel lawsuits, and in early 1992, the floodgates opened. 386SX for everyone, no please, take one home with you, the kids need one? The dog? Now as they struggled to clear this glut, what did Compaq do? Launch a price war on clones and competitors, using their excess capital and shaving their margins to a mere 2% to try to drive everyone else out of business... and were Compaq doing this to clear out 386SX? Hell no, they were discounting what was until now the high end workstation, the 486! So 486 prices are dropping like a stone through late 92 into 93 as this price war rages, and 386SX are getting fobbed off on discounters. So it seems pretty likely at this point that a huge amount of 386SX got dumped in non-US markets to score ready cash for the 486 fight with Compaq.

http://www.righto.com/2023/10/intel-386-die-versions.html :

According to the 386 oral history, the cost of the original 386 die decreased to the point where the chip's package cost about as much as the die. By reducing the number of pins, the 386 SX could be put in a one-dollar plastic package and sold for a considerably reduced price. The SX allowed Intel to segment the market, moving low-end customers from the 286 to the 386 SX, while preserving the higher sales price of the original 386

No discounting was taking place at Intel, they were making a killing selling ~$2 BOM product.

Law212 wrote on 2023-10-27, 12:44:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-27, 04:09:

Law212 wrote on 2023-10-26, 13:43:

MP3 player.

I just like anything by Creative. I have no need for this , but its neat . I will load it up with music. It has 6 gigs of space

Part way explains why you didnt like ATRAC3 encoding.

I was an early adopter of MiniDisc and remember it was far superior to MP3 of the same time period.

I dont remember ever seeing Mini discs being sold or even advertised. THe only time I saw a mini disk and player was when my friend was sent one by his uncle in hong kong.

The only Mini discs or players I have ever seen are what a friend in Norway buys off eBay UK and gets shipped to me for forwarding. Never seen them before (never even knew what they were back in the day).

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-10-28, 05:08:

http://www.righto.com/2023/10/intel-386-die-versions.html : […]
Show full quote

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-10-27, 12:00:

appiah4 wrote on 2023-10-26, 13:03:

It looks like 386SX was a very popular platform for business use where I live, I have come across more 386SX systems than 286 or even Pentium class in the last few years. Odd.

It seemed at the time, that there was a pent up supply of 386SX systems, maybe caused by a sales hold due to the AMD/Intel lawsuits, and in early 1992, the floodgates opened. 386SX for everyone, no please, take one home with you, the kids need one? The dog? Now as they struggled to clear this glut, what did Compaq do? Launch a price war on clones and competitors, using their excess capital and shaving their margins to a mere 2% to try to drive everyone else out of business... and were Compaq doing this to clear out 386SX? Hell no, they were discounting what was until now the high end workstation, the 486! So 486 prices are dropping like a stone through late 92 into 93 as this price war rages, and 386SX are getting fobbed off on discounters. So it seems pretty likely at this point that a huge amount of 386SX got dumped in non-US markets to score ready cash for the 486 fight with Compaq.

http://www.righto.com/2023/10/intel-386-die-versions.html :

According to the 386 oral history, the cost of the original 386 die decreased to the point where the chip's package cost about as much as the die. By reducing the number of pins, the 386 SX could be put in a one-dollar plastic package and sold for a considerably reduced price. The SX allowed Intel to segment the market, moving low-end customers from the 286 to the 386 SX, while preserving the higher sales price of the original 386

No discounting was taking place at Intel, they were making a killing selling ~$2 BOM product.

I fins the $2 BOM claim hard to believe but stranger things have happened so I don't know..

The 386sx was widely popular here around 1992-1994 though going by the computers I found and restored in the last year alone.

BOM is not a analogous to cost of manufacture and distribution. They still have to pay for the fabs, salaries, packaging, print material, marketing, etc.

I thought the context was clear that I was talking of whole system unit costs rather than CPUs, but yeah the 386SX CPU had gotten cheap enough by early 90s that they were "free with the motherboard" practically, thus why there were so many soldered onto motherboards. It was at the tail end of this period that I made my first system components purchase, one of those 6 slot, smallest footprint 386SX boards with a soldered AMD 386SX/40 ... I paid $100 for that and two 1MB SIMM and I think the split was 40/60 $40 for the motherboard and 30 each SIMM.

edit: btw the closest to my memory of that board is the ECS 8517 if you were curious.

debs3759 wrote on 2023-10-28, 05:19:

Law212 wrote on 2023-10-27, 12:44:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-27, 04:09:

Part way explains why you didnt like ATRAC3 encoding.

I was an early adopter of MiniDisc and remember it was far superior to MP3 of the same time period.

I dont remember ever seeing Mini discs being sold or even advertised. THe only time I saw a mini disk and player was when my friend was sent one by his uncle in hong kong.

The only Mini discs or players I have ever seen are what a friend in Norway buys off eBay UK and gets shipped to me for forwarding. Never seen them before (never even knew what they were back in the day).

For my generation (born 1978) the MiniDisc was kind of popular as a portable device with "mix tape" kind of self recorded music. Imo the reason why it never really was a hit was that people thought it was meant to compete with the cd, where the compression made the sound quality sub-par. But as as an alternative to cassette tapes, it was brilliant especially as a replacement for Walkman or portable CD players.
However, MP3 all of the sudden was possible to do in portable devices, and the rest is history ...

Got a STB velocity 3D

Got these two mobos, and a Dell Studio 1737 (not pictured) that needs a few repairs. (missing power button and snapped right hinge plastic)

Left is a ASRock Z77 Pro3 that needs a lot of pin fixing, right is a classy P4-SDR combo of a Chaintech 9BJA0 that needs a northbridge heatsink as well as a few new caps.

Bought this untested beauty for $15, turned out okay with nice and bright picture and no burn-in. My first monitor was also an amber monochrome and I'm happy I finally get to experience it again!

I have such nostalgia for these beautiful amber displays. What a wonderful find.

This morning's thrift haul, only 11 days elapsed since ...

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-10-18, 23:32:

Not all that retro, but definitely retro useful, I hope. Could not resist this thrift pickup of a Micro Solutions, Backpack CD-R... Now I've got a couple of USB externals and a cheapie generic parallel port case, but since this was a brand name in parallel port drives, I thought it would be great for compatibility with about everything that's hard to add an ODD to. I still like using CDs and reading old coverdisk and shareware CDs on period hardware. The manuals and cables were really mummified in multiple plastic bags, and all taped up, I could tell it had the PCMCIA card, and the parallel cable, I missed that it didn't have original CD or power adapter, I'll check back tomorrow in case those are there but separated to the CD and adapter racks, but I can probably make something work and find the drivers. This is supposed to work in DOS 95, 98, 2000, XP. Not sure about burning capability in DOS but wasn't expecting it. 3 way interfaces, USB, parallel AND PCMCIA (A parallel convertor card???)

Edit: good ole minus zero prolly has my ass covered... https://www.minuszerodegrees.net/backpack_cdr … kpack_cdrom.htm
EditII: possibly the model reviewed here.. https://www.cnet.com/reviews/micro-solutions- … 10x-40x-review/

... but look what turned up today, a Backpack Bantam, the older, more slimline backpack.

It came in a box, with most of what it should have I think, 720k DD, 1.44HD floppies and a 5.25! Didn't look all that close yet, think it's a 360k might be a 1.2. It has the 5V PSU and the parallel cable. I guess I didn't need this one per se, but it sure as heck matches my older laptops better stylistically, in particular my "Chandler's Laptop" (RIP M. Perry) Compaq Contura 433 (but mine is mono). Also pictured is a bag of what I took for PSU cables when it was mummified in 2 extra bags over the top, but turned out to be PCIE power splitters, which are also useful, though probably I only have need for one or two in future. I always grab cheap power cables, rewire them for custom stuff.

So wondering if this is gonna be one of those "come along in threes" things now. I am already giving myself a talking to, "Listen buster, you don't need a THIRD backpack, unless it's maybe one of those that have a battery and can also be used as a walkman CD player, those ones are cool, but DEFINITELY do not buy any more now."

(Edit: whoops, brainfarts again, it was actually Ross's computer, just remember Chandler using it, the 4/25cx I think and mine the plain jane 4/25. It's my zlite that's a 433 ... maybe)

Bought these today:

- Creative Labs SBS20 speakers: I got lucky on this one, the price was cheap and they're in great condition. Goes along with the rest of my creative collection. I try to buy the creative branded stuff when possible just for fun, so this is the perfect fit. I also used to have these speakers at one time, but I've had a lot of speakers over the years so that's not really saying much. Still, I'm kinda excited about this purchase specifically, these are the perfect speakers for me.

- ASUS P5A Motherboard: I recently bought an ASUS P2L97 with a Pentium 2 333mhz and 128mb of ram, which I love and just recently got running for the first time. There's only one small problem that's been in the back of my mind this whole time: technically I owned a K6-2 333mhz... So I loved the P2L97 so much, I basically bought the AMD version: the P5A. I'm actually probably just going to end up shoving it in a closet because I'm enjoying the Pentium 2 333mhz so much, but I wanted to have the AMD anyway, just to have it.

- AMD K6-2 333mhz processor

- New in box Logitech First Mouse Plus: I previously bought a used one of these and liked it so much I decided to buy this new in-box version.

Have you guys noticed the massive lots of mixed processors or memory or mother boards being sold for scrap on Ebay? I saw a couple where processors were being listed by the pound, bags of them, AMD, Intel, all going to be melted down for the miniscule amount of gold they contain. I saw a lot of motherboards by the pound, still had processors and ram and everything, being sold for the same purpose. Kinda sad and upsetting, but nothing I can do about it. I don't really need bags full of pounds of processors sitting around my place....... or do I?....

Anyway, aside from bent pins, they looked in good working order, and you can get giant bags of them for under $100. I mention it because I'm kinda vaguely hoping maybe some collectors will scoop some of them up to save them from getting melted.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-10-29, 18:56:

I have such nostalgia for these beautiful amber displays. What a wonderful find.

Thank you, they have a special place in my heart too. I've been trying to find one for ages. Back then the amber tube version was the cheapest option available for $70 and the white tube version cost $120, mostly for industrial use. Some people bought the amber type to save money and used them long after VGA appeared, skipping CGA and EGA entirely. When VGA prices dropped the old amber screens went in the trash and became rare while industrial white tube monitors stayed in use far longer. No point in replacing something that does the job and some manufacturers still use NOS white tube monochrome monitors to avoid replacing the entire computer system that controls the machinery. So now we have an abundance of white tubes and barely any amber ones.