Last year I decided it's time to stop hording every old hw a find and pick up only the interesting stuff and only what interests me! And that's why a few months ago I didn't pick up an MSI FX5900 for only 6 euros... I just hate the FX5000 series of cards... and I'm not doing it any more for the "value"...
Anyway, last weekend at the fleamarket I found somethig interesting. At least to me, because I never had any 8 bit system...

Yamaha CX5M MSX Music Computer

Unfortunately it came without the PSU and the Yamaha keyboard, but for 20 Euros it is more then worth it!
As I said, I never had an 8-bit system and I know almost nothing about MSX systems, only what I saw at some Youtubers(Nostalgia Nerd, RMC, etc.). So I'm really glad I found this unit, because it's 8 bit, it's MSX, and it is a Yamaha with an addon FM Synth unit! Ok, it is the first version, but I saw it can be upgraded to fully support MIDI devices. So, I'm really happy about it!
Ok, I still need to find a power supply(I saw @8bitmanshed, that a zx spectrum psu can be adapted), I need to make a video cable(my unit is the French version with RGB output), and I still need to test the machine.

PcBytes wrote on 2025-02-19, 18:18:

My guess is only "MMR" models might have had 1GHz+ cores - I have a 700MHz "MPR" T-Bird and the core is also rated for 700.

(the reason I say 1GHz + is because I just recently saw a 900MHz model with a 1100 core.)

1100Mhz Core!?! Wow. That would be a great find. If i ever get a 1000Mhz T-bird in house I'll definitely check the core.
This is all the motivation I need to crack my T-Bird 950mhz open now and check inside as well!

Cracked my 600MHz Pluto open. They slowed down a 750 core.

Now I'm wondering what's in my 1Ghz Orion.

What's the easiest way to open one of these things up without maiming myself or the processor?

EDIT: If there's a better place to discuss this we can take this to another thread so as not to derail too badly.

I wouldn't open a 1GHz Orion just to see what's lasered on the die. You can really risk to break it. I believe you know how expensive these beauties are. 😀

PD2JK wrote on 2025-02-19, 19:45:

I wouldn't open a 1GHz Orion just to see what's lasered on the die. You can really risk to break it. I believe you know how expensive these beauties are. 😀

I have never even looked into opening them, honestly.

If it's too risky I won't even bother, considering the rarity, like you said.

I have no idea how much of an issue the thermal paste would be either though. It has never even crossed my mind to repaste a Slot 1 processor and those seem to always work totally fine... Slot A chips tend to run at much higher wattages though, so I don't know if it's more of a big deal with those.

Aaand OC'd my 600 to a nice 900MHz.

EDIT: Well, that was kinda shortlived. Had to bump down to 800MHz due to TRAP exceptions, but hey - a 200MHz bump from stock is welcome.

bearking wrote on 2025-02-19, 18:25:

Last year I decided it's time to stop hording every old hw a find and pick up only the interesting stuff and only what interests […]
Show full quote

Last year I decided it's time to stop hording every old hw a find and pick up only the interesting stuff and only what interests me! And that's why a few months ago I didn't pick up an MSI FX5900 for only 6 euros... I just hate the FX5000 series of cards... and I'm not doing it any more for the "value"...
Anyway, last weekend at the fleamarket I found somethig interesting. At least to me, because I never had any 8 bit system...

The attachment IMG_20250215_185734896.jpg is no longer available

Yamaha CX5M MSX Music Computer

Unfortunately it came without the PSU and the Yamaha keyboard, but for 20 Euros it is more then worth it!
As I said, I never had an 8-bit system and I know almost nothing about MSX systems, only what I saw at some Youtubers(Nostalgia Nerd, RMC, etc.). So I'm really glad I found this unit, because it's 8 bit, it's MSX, and it is a Yamaha with an addon FM Synth unit! Ok, it is the first version, but I saw it can be upgraded to fully support MIDI devices. So, I'm really happy about it!
Ok, I still need to find a power supply(I saw @8bitmanshed, that a zx spectrum psu can be adapted), I need to make a video cable(my unit is the French version with RGB output), and I still need to test the machine.

The attachment IMG_20250215_185758216.jpg is no longer available

The attachment IMG_20250215_190109151.jpg is no longer available

The attachment IMG_20250218_143412464.jpg is no longer available

Nice machine!

Looks in pretty good condition too, hopefully it works once you solve the missing PSU issue.

The MSX 1 game library is pretty decent, particularly the Japanese games & some of the crazy Korean unlicensed clones (eg. weird versions of Bubble Bobble & Super Mario Bros among others). But the library also has a lot of poor ZX Spectrum ports originating from Europe that don't really show off the full capabilities of the machine. With a modern SD card solution, you can even play Sega SG-1000 & Colecovision games on there, it really is a very capable computer.

Something different .. well for me since I dont own a trackball and have never used one.

but I saw this complete boxed one from Radio Shack and think it looks like a nice addition to a retro rig. Radio Shack is a bit odd for Australia too since here it was branded as Tandy so this item must be from the states Canada. (I think the French and English likely makes it Canadian)

It was the right price too, with free postage.

Edit - My spelling ..damn

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-02-21, 06:29:

Something different .. well for me since I dont own a trackball and have never used one. […]
Show full quote

Something different .. well for me since I dont own a trackball and have never used one.

but I saw this complete boxed one from Radio Shack and think it looks like a nice addition to a retro rig. Radio Shack is a bit odd for Australia too since here it was branded as Tandy here so this item must be from the states Canada. (I think the French and English likely makes it Candain)

The attachment Trackball.jpg is no longer available

The attachment Track Ball 2.jpg is no longer available

It was the right price too, with free postage.

That poor seller made maybe $5. You’re a savage 🤣. That’s a nice track ball. If I had seen it sooner, I probably would have grabbed it.

The mobo I ordered to test my 233 MMX showed up:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-02-19, 18:18:

My guess is only "MMR" models might have had 1GHz+ cores - I have a 700MHz "MPR" T-Bird and the core is also rated for 700.

(the reason I say 1GHz + is because I just recently saw a 900MHz model with a 1100 core.)

I wonder why AMD released them at lower speeds, as this is a pretty common occurrence. My 750MHz Thunderbird core CPU is marked "850" on the die, and will happily run at that speed @ stock voltage.

Honestly they probably were on something good if their idea was to mark a 750 core as a 600MHz CPU, and have it clock as high as 800 🤣 (in my case, a Pluto)

Socket3 wrote on 2025-02-21, 18:38:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-02-19, 18:18:

My guess is only "MMR" models might have had 1GHz+ cores - I have a 700MHz "MPR" T-Bird and the core is also rated for 700.

(the reason I say 1GHz + is because I just recently saw a 900MHz model with a 1100 core.)

I wonder why AMD released them at lower speeds, as this is a pretty common occurrence. My 750MHz Thunderbird core CPU is marked "850" on the die, and will happily run at that speed @ stock voltage.

Market segmentation.

today grabbed lovely slot 1 board

ciornyi wrote on 2025-02-22, 17:06:

today grabbed lovely slot 1 board

Nice board! Definitely need to replace all of those caps though. 🙂

I got an SCA80 to SCSI68 adapter.

Thanks to it I can now add two more SCSI HDDs to my small drive collection - a 36GB Compaq BD03664553 (Seagate OEM most likely) and a 146GB Seagate ST3146707LC.

I ordered this Asus Prime H310-Plus mother board from the Bay (seller's photo) for $45 shipped. It isn't retro (yet), but it is for a retro project.

I want to see if I can get 8 physical processing cores working with Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows NT 3.51. The board supports octo-core processors, and the PCI slots will let me use PCI sound cards for both Win2K (Audigy 2ZS) and WinNT (AudioPCI). I need the extra PCI slots in WinNT for accelerated graphics and networking. I haven't had any luck getting UNIATA and WinNT working with AHCI drive controllers, but I'm committing myself to trying again with this board.

The seller posted the board as previously working but untested. They sold the board for less than half the going price from other vendors, so I figured I'd take the risk. The posting was also vague on whether the sale was for just the board or with the accessories (CPU and Heatsink) shown in the photo. It's a mystery for now!

fosterwj03 wrote on 2025-02-22, 19:33:

I ordered this Asus Prime H310-Plus mother board from the Bay (seller's photo) for $45 shipped. It isn't retro (yet), but it is for a retro project.

I want to see if I can get 8 physical processing cores working with Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows NT 3.51. The board supports octo-core processors, and the PCI slots will let me use PCI sound cards for both Win2K (Audigy 2ZS) and WinNT (AudioPCI). I need the extra PCI slots in WinNT for accelerated graphics and networking. I haven't had any luck getting UNIATA and WinNT working with AHCI drive controllers, but I'm committing myself to trying again with this board.

The seller posted the board as previously working but untested. They sold the board for less than half the going price from other vendors, so I figured I'd take the risk. The posting was also vague on whether the sale was for just the board or with the accessories (CPU and Heatsink) shown in the photo. It's a mystery for now!

It could be fun to multiboot NT 3.51, 2K and Windows 11 😀 I don't have an 11 compatible board yet, going to have to bite the bullet with a 9000 series Ryzen and an 870 series board this year (it's got to last at least 10 years, as I won't be able to afford a decent upgrade when I'm on a state pension, even when I sell most of my extensive retro collection of parts).

I was thinking XP and 7 as well, but sure, it could do 11, I guess.

I use 11 on my daily driver, so I don't have much nastalgia for it yet. Whereas, I ran Windows 2000 on my daily driver 20 years ago.