Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-04-10, 06:03:

I too would buy one of those Trident boxes empty. I absolutely love that box art. It's like someone had their rather smart 6 yea […]
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Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-10, 05:56:

Oof on the Trident hate ...but no I wouldnt buy that card . .the box though is pretty cool, can I buy one empty ? […]
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Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-04-10, 05:45:

Yes, it is definitely a very market dependent thing. I have actually sold a lot of items internationally in recent years, but I […]
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Yes, it is definitely a very market dependent thing. I have actually sold a lot of items internationally in recent years, but I definitely prefer to keep things domestic (US) simply because of the risk of packages getting lost overseas, tampered with in customs or just plain stolen.

As for your short list of NIB items... Now I'm curious. 😁

Adlib Gold? Cyrix 5x86 133? IBM Music Feature? Unreleased Voodoo5 6000 retail box?

... wait, no. I bet it's this Trident card with the best box art ever!
PXL_20230316_101819163.jpg
🤣

Oof on the Trident hate ...but no I wouldnt buy that card . .the box though is pretty cool, can I buy one empty ?

AMD K5 PR200 comes to mind and a NIB still sealed Ablib Gold 1000 are two items I would pay nicely for but I would also love to get my hands on one of the few working Fury MAXX DDR prototype cards, they are related to the Fury MAXX but use R6 cores instead of Rage128 cores.

I guess I could also include a Xeon X5698 which are 4.4Ghz dual core 1366 CPUs and Intel only made them for HP IIRC, I could buy one now but the prices for them are worth the price of a kitted out gaming PC with a RTX 4080.

I too would buy one of those Trident boxes empty. I absolutely love that box art. It's like someone had their rather smart 6 year old play with 3d modeling software for half an hour and then put the image on the box.

Also, I have had several Fury Maxx cards over the years but never heard of the prototype with R6 cores! That's super interesting! It must not have worked out too well (much like the R128 based Maxx) because ATI didn't do anything with mult-GPU technology for a long time after that. The only ones I can think of between the Maxx and the introduction of Crossfire would be the Dual 9800 Pro prototypes.

If you have an links with information about that R6 Maxx card I'd love to read about it. My quick googling is coming up with nothing.

Name above is wrong its the ATI DDR MAXX

Not sure how there are benchmarks on the card that was never released to the public so I would take any info you see there aside from pictures as ...very suspect.

Its a good looking card though, even if it didn't function just having it mounted on a display stand would be cool as hell.

Behold the MIDI Molehill. The SD-20 Studio Canvas arrived and well, someone better pick up that phone -

BECAUSE I BLOODY CALLED IT!

Exactly as predicted, the moment I hooked it up to the World's Worst Recording Studio, ALSA immediately registered it and I was able to pass midi to it from Rosegarden (to test old XG midi files from FF7), and from some of my controllers. Works perfectly! That's two for two on "sold as seen" midi modules, and 0 for 1 on "working, good" ones. Linux > Windows for retro music production, who knew?

Still patiently waiting for news on Popcorn and Mew.

Is that an MT-32 rackmount thingy I spy there? Interesting 😀

Lately - since it's spring cleaning time - I've been picking up lots of moderately interesting laptops for cheap as people are clearing things out right now. But for the prices I pay I mostly only get broken stuff - this was no exception being a Toshiba Satellite 4200 series for £15 + post. Untested but from a seller that has otherwise sold me good stuff as untested so it's not the "untested" that really means broken.

This one was broken though - just would not POST. That means my odds with this seller are now 50:50, but I can change those odds:

It has Yamaha DS-XG audio and S3 video so I want it to work and parts aren't really available at all anymore.

It was pretty clean inside with minimal corrosion from the RTC battery so I used the head torch and magnification to look around at everything. Honestly repairing a regular problem board compared to a battery bombed board is such a nice change. The type of damage is quite different - for another iteration of this board I've had to basically rebuild the internal speaker amplifier system but this one was clean in that area.
It was giving code 10010001 or maybe 10011001 (90 something in hex) - I should really buy a proper parallel port POST code reader at some point. That code is basically meaningless without a definition and it doesn't match codes from an earlier generation Toshiba, but it's doing a lot more than nothing. The Intel 440BX northbridge was getting really hot, going up to 50C! and with my thermal camera I found a shorted MLCC capacitor which had corrosion all over it. That was just a 100nF capacitor, it shouldn't be breaking things. The NB still got hot after removing that.
The keyboard was sticky suggesting a spill at some point and there were two corroded traces around the memory area underneath a plastic cover that didn't connect from one side to another:

And after I cleared off the big blob of solder that somehow fell into the gap between the SDRAM slots while I was fixing this, it started POSTing! and the video output looked clean, in fact the board is 100% working now. Just those two traces on the memory bus broke the whole thing. Great screen, great speakers, awesome!
Oh and the thermal pad was replaced with a 0.2mm copper shim to aid in cooling, when the fan runs it's hot so it's clearly working. Shame the Celeron CPU is a BGA type and soldered to the board.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-04-11, 02:43:

Is that an MT-32 rackmount thingy I spy there? Interesting 😀

Nope, MT-D47. Or MU-80 (wait no, Yamaha took that one...)

Never worked with Circle before so don't know how this will go - but my goal is to make a modernised version. So instead of a DAC I have a DDC hat to output optically, and a Pi 02W to use the USB-Midi gadget mode.

The hard part is that mt32-mini currently uses an old version of Circle from before they implemented USB Gadget, so I need o try and patch that. I also need to get the DDC working because I'm sure it will have it's own i2s quirks that need to be coded for.

But until Popcorn is fixed, I don't have a sound card with SP/DIF in so there's not really anything for me to code with. So, at the moment I'm mostly trying to design a variant of the 3D printed faceplate (and find a source for the rest of the case) that can ACTUALLY fit as a 1U half-rack module, and also be printed on an Ender-2.

But yeah - like Popcorn, my SC-D70 and like the SD-80; (also like my SD-20 above, except I want to have the buttons!) - I want USB in, Optical out. This has kind of become my "quirk" in the MIDI Mountain (or Molehill, while Popcorn has no PSU and Mew is having it's Battpendectomy) - I'm keeping my eye out for a MU-500 or MU-2000. (Though I'm perfectly happy with my MU-50, sound wise).

Just ordered the first 2 part of my future Dos /early win 98system that is going to be based on a a basement find ( a Gigabyte GA-5AA mainboard)
K6-2 500 AFX
Riva TNT 2 card from Creative

Didnt buy today but got recently.

Currently sitting here looking at a pair of tiny 386 boards I got .. both have had previous repairs done due to battery damage and one I had to put jumper caps back on. (Why would anyone harvest jumper caps)

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/qdi-386-4n-d04a Is the better of the two with a DX-40 and 128k of L2 cache, board looks like it could handle a 486 but no socket for it. (Got Version 2.0 of this board)

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/mg-8517-rev-2-2 is the other one, its got less repairs to it but no L2 cache and a AM386SX-40 (Have this exact version in the images)

I'm kinda scared a bit to fire them up and see if they are still alive but its what I will do once I get some ram, IO and video card for them that are "disposable" should anything go boom and short stuff out. I have a ISA test card which should help, not sure if I should remove the 387 FPUs they both have, they both have a Cyrix fasmath 40Mhz in them, so might be worth taking them out for testing.

Not had to do any repairs or diagnostics on anything this old yet so it'll be a learning experience for sure, my hope is the DX-40 is alive as that is the better of the two but I guess it doesn't really matter a lot with 386 machines.

Couple of 800 EBs - mostly for the big heat sinks, which fits great for my P2B-DS 120mm fan adapter.

Also an SL4BR, which will hopefully behave together with an SL4KL on said mainboard. They are same stepping albeit not same sSpec. I guess it would work ...?

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-04-11, 12:38:

Couple of 800 EBs - mostly for the big heat sinks, which fits great for my P2B-DS 120mm fan adapter.

Also an SL4BR, which will hopefully behave together with an SL4KL on said mainboard. They are same stepping albeit not same sSpec. I guess it would work ...?

Nice!

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-04-11, 02:43:

Is that an MT-32 rackmount thingy I spy there? Interesting :) […]
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Is that an MT-32 rackmount thingy I spy there? Interesting 😀

Lately - since it's spring cleaning time - I've been picking up lots of moderately interesting laptops for cheap as people are clearing things out right now. But for the prices I pay I mostly only get broken stuff - this was no exception being a Toshiba Satellite 4200 series for £15 + post. Untested but from a seller that has otherwise sold me good stuff as untested so it's not the "untested" that really means broken.

This one was broken though - just would not POST. That means my odds with this seller are now 50:50, but I can change those odds:
1.jpg
It has Yamaha DS-XG audio and S3 video so I want it to work and parts aren't really available at all anymore.

It was pretty clean inside with minimal corrosion from the RTC battery so I used the head torch and magnification to look around at everything. Honestly repairing a regular problem board compared to a battery bombed board is such a nice change. The type of damage is quite different - for another iteration of this board I've had to basically rebuild the internal speaker amplifier system but this one was clean in that area.
It was giving code 10010001 or maybe 10011001 (90 something in hex) - I should really buy a proper parallel port POST code reader at some point. That code is basically meaningless without a definition and it doesn't match codes from an earlier generation Toshiba, but it's doing a lot more than nothing. The Intel 440BX northbridge was getting really hot, going up to 50C! and with my thermal camera I found a shorted MLCC capacitor which had corrosion all over it. That was just a 100nF capacitor, it shouldn't be breaking things. The NB still got hot after removing that.
The keyboard was sticky suggesting a spill at some point and there were two corroded traces around the memory area underneath a plastic cover that didn't connect from one side to another:
IMG_3145.JPG

IMG_3151 (Custom) (1).JPG
IMG_3150 (Custom) (1).JPG

And after I cleared off the big blob of solder that somehow fell into the gap between the SDRAM slots while I was fixing this, it started POSTing! and the video output looked clean, in fact the board is 100% working now. Just those two traces on the memory bus broke the whole thing. Great screen, great speakers, awesome!
Oh and the thermal pad was replaced with a 0.2mm copper shim to aid in cooling, when the fan runs it's hot so it's clearly working. Shame the Celeron CPU is a BGA type and soldered to the board.

Wow, nice job! Those are some nice laptop specs for retro gaming. If you ever get around to doing some benchmarks on that system I'd love to see how that Savage IX performs. This thread I made about a Savage MX based card kind of transformed into a general "Savage MX\IX" thread, so feel free to put it there.
Re: Appian Graphics Gemini PCI - S3 Savage MX 16MB

There was some discussion about the Savage IX having a variety of RAM speeds, SDR\DDR, and bus widths, so I'd be curious to know what yours has. It's hard to know without running tests (maybe SIV could help?) because the RAM is integrated into the graphics chip itself.

Anyway, glad you took the time to find the problem and were able to get it running! 😀

predator_085 wrote on 2024-04-11, 11:50:

Just ordered the first 2 part of my future Dos /early win 98system that is going to be based on a a basement find ( a Gigabyte GA-5AA mainboard)
K6-2 500 AFX
Riva TNT 2 card from Creative

Great spec 😀

Got this nice set for cool 15€ from local auction site MSI MS-6368 v5 MB , 1.1 Tualaron and 256MB PC133 sdram. Caps were bad, scraped assorted 2200uF caps from bottom of my parts bin for quick test. Seems to be working fine.
I'm amazed that original Nichicons went bad.

I was inspired by this thread. Now I need to get VIA C3 CPU. Never owned cyrix/via CPU before.

I dont normally buy old mice but this Z Nix Bus mouse and card popped up for a whole 30 USD, figured it would fit and old 286/386 machine perfectly, drivers seems to be available via the archive. I kinda like the look of it too, it has that old retro feel. That said them mouse buttons dont look very fun to use, my fat fingers might not be able to sit on them very well.

Not sure if the bottom being this clean and not scuffed at all is a good sign or not.

Also grabbed this Matrox Parhelia 128 AGP for 30 USD which is not a bad price for these cards, I have a PCI-X version already but I hear the AGP version fixed a few things so im hoping this card is still alive and well.

Got a Cooler Master HAF tower containing an ASUS Rampage III Extreme, 12 Gigs of DDR3 and, oh well ... An i7 980x 😎

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-11, 11:57:

Currently sitting here looking at a pair of tiny 386 boards I got .. both have had previous repairs done due to battery damage and one I had to put jumper caps back on. (Why would anyone harvest jumper caps)

Prior to about 2001ish when internet commerce got practical, they were actually kinda hard to get hold of sometimes. There were some computer stores acted like they were gold dust and had like a pack of 5 for $10... Some of the stuff you see today and think "Why did nobody try this in the 90s?".... because we were all too busy looking for jumpers to do the things the manual said it could do 🤣

edit: I think that's how Asus got it's halo really, putting 3 spare jumpers in the box.

I just received this a few days ago. I've read repeatedly that the stock cooler on a 6800 Ultra is marginal, so I to do something about it.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-12, 12:21:

I dont normally buy old mice but this Z Nix Bus mouse and card popped up for a whole 30 USD, figured it would fit and old 286/38 […]
Show full quote

I dont normally buy old mice but this Z Nix Bus mouse and card popped up for a whole 30 USD, figured it would fit and old 286/386 machine perfectly, drivers seems to be available via the archive. I kinda like the look of it too, it has that old retro feel. That said them mouse buttons dont look very fun to use, my fat fingers might not be able to sit on them very well.

Z NIx Bus Mouse.jpgZ Nix Mouse card.jpg

Z NIx Mouse.jpg Not sure if the bottom being this clean and not scuffed at all is a good sign or not.

Also grabbed this Matrox Parhelia 128 AGP for 30 USD which is not a bad price for these cards, I have a PCI-X version already but I hear the AGP version fixed a few things so im hoping this card is still alive and well.

Matrox Parhelia.jpg

Very nice. I wondered who grabbed the mouse and Matrox. Have you got any other parts for a 286/386 build yet?

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-04-12, 14:00:

Got a Cooler Master HAF tower containing an ASUS Rampage III Extreme, 12 Gigs of DDR3 and, oh well ... An i7 980x 😎

Very nice. Would be a fantastic Windows 7 retro build.

zuldan wrote on 2024-04-12, 20:59:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-12, 12:21:

I dont normally buy old mice but this Z Nix Bus mouse and card popped up for a whole 30 USD, figured it would fit and old 286/38 […]
Show full quote

I dont normally buy old mice but this Z Nix Bus mouse and card popped up for a whole 30 USD, figured it would fit and old 286/386 machine perfectly, drivers seems to be available via the archive. I kinda like the look of it too, it has that old retro feel. That said them mouse buttons dont look very fun to use, my fat fingers might not be able to sit on them very well.

Z NIx Bus Mouse.jpgZ Nix Mouse card.jpg

Z NIx Mouse.jpg Not sure if the bottom being this clean and not scuffed at all is a good sign or not.

Also grabbed this Matrox Parhelia 128 AGP for 30 USD which is not a bad price for these cards, I have a PCI-X version already but I hear the AGP version fixed a few things so im hoping this card is still alive and well.

Matrox Parhelia.jpg

Very nice. I wondered who grabbed the mouse and Matrox. Have you got any other parts for a 286/386 build yet?

Yep, got plenty of bits for a nice late model 386 machine, not sure I will even venture into 286 or XT territory unless its a complete working system. I already feel like buying 386 era parts is taking a risk of DOA parts simply due to their age and while I'm ok with a soldering station I dont have anywhere near the experience required to diagnose and repair stuff of that age. Best to leave that to the more knowledgeable out there to deal with so I dont go killing parts that could have been saved.

How is the PAS16 going ? go the parts to repair it ?

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-13, 00:29:

zuldan wrote on 2024-04-12, 20:59:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-12, 12:21:

I dont normally buy old mice but this Z Nix Bus mouse and card popped up for a whole 30 USD, figured it would fit and old 286/38 […]
Show full quote

I dont normally buy old mice but this Z Nix Bus mouse and card popped up for a whole 30 USD, figured it would fit and old 286/386 machine perfectly, drivers seems to be available via the archive. I kinda like the look of it too, it has that old retro feel. That said them mouse buttons dont look very fun to use, my fat fingers might not be able to sit on them very well.

Z NIx Bus Mouse.jpgZ Nix Mouse card.jpg

Z NIx Mouse.jpg Not sure if the bottom being this clean and not scuffed at all is a good sign or not.

Also grabbed this Matrox Parhelia 128 AGP for 30 USD which is not a bad price for these cards, I have a PCI-X version already but I hear the AGP version fixed a few things so im hoping this card is still alive and well.

Matrox Parhelia.jpg

Very nice. I wondered who grabbed the mouse and Matrox. Have you got any other parts for a 286/386 build yet?

Yep, got plenty of bits for a nice late model 386 machine, not sure I will even venture into 286 or XT territory unless its a complete working system. I already feel like buying 386 era parts is taking a risk of DOA parts simply due to their age and while I'm ok with a soldering station I dont have anywhere near the experience required to diagnose and repair stuff of that age. Best to leave that to the more knowledgeable out there to deal with so I dont go killing parts that could have been saved.

How is the PAS16 going ? go the parts to repair it ?

Yeah I don't have any urge to get into 286 stuff. I like to use my machines and I don't think I would use a 286 very much.

Still waiting on parts for the PAS16 and Roland SCB-55. If I at least get the SCB-55 working, I'll be super happy. Seems to be pretty rare waveblaster card.

zuldan wrote on 2024-04-13, 00:41:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-13, 00:29:

zuldan wrote on 2024-04-12, 20:59:

Very nice. I wondered who grabbed the mouse and Matrox. Have you got any other parts for a 286/386 build yet?

Yep, got plenty of bits for a nice late model 386 machine, not sure I will even venture into 286 or XT territory unless its a complete working system. I already feel like buying 386 era parts is taking a risk of DOA parts simply due to their age and while I'm ok with a soldering station I dont have anywhere near the experience required to diagnose and repair stuff of that age. Best to leave that to the more knowledgeable out there to deal with so I dont go killing parts that could have been saved.

How is the PAS16 going ? go the parts to repair it ?

Yeah I don't have any urge to get into 286 stuff. I like to use my machines and I don't think I would use a 286 very much.

Still waiting on parts for the PAS16 and Roland SCB-55. If I at least get the SCB-55 working, I'll be super happy. Seems to be pretty rare waveblaster card.

A 286 is a DOS machine, its fun for early DOS games but I can't think of a reason other than that to own one. I have a 5170 and I love it, but its a period piece, once I get the EGA monitor repaired it will just run EGA stuff.