Predator99 wrote on Yesterday, 15:59:

I bought this lot today (sellers pictures). Some interesting cards and some harddisks with maybe interesting Drivers/Software. […]
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I bought this lot today (sellers pictures). Some interesting cards and some harddisks with maybe interesting Drivers/Software.

- 2 RAM Cards with daughterboards, one of them the DFI MF-3000:
https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/dfi-mf-3000

- miroCRYSTAL 8S VESA
https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/miro … crystal-8s-vesa

- Commodore "Advanced Monochrome" Card 380053-01. Not much to find about it.

- ET4000 with DB9 EGA-out? Or ET3000?

- Headland 286

- Adaptec AHA-1542CP

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...

Very cool lot!

I see:
Epox EP-7KXA motherboard, which is a Slot A Via KX133 board with an ISA slot... nice!
Gigabyte GA-586ATX2
MSI MS-6723 (very interesting board with tons of audio outputs)

... good stuff! I hope it all survives. It worries me when people ship boards and drives together. I always imagine the drives acting like the little metal ball in a spray paint can that mixes everything up when you shake it. Not good for circuit boards. 😅

Ozzuneoj wrote on Yesterday, 18:07:

Very cool lot! […]
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Very cool lot!

I see:
Epox EP-7KXA motherboard, which is a Slot A Via KX133 board with an ISA slot... nice!
Gigabyte GA-586ATX2
MSI MS-6723 (very interesting board with tons of audio outputs)

... good stuff! I hope it all survives. It worries me when people ship boards and drives together. I always imagine the drives acting like the little metal ball in a spray paint can that mixes everything up when you shake it. Not good for circuit boards. 😅

Thank you!

I ask the seller to wrap everything in paper and he agreed. Therefore hopefully nothing gets damaged during shipment.

Also thanks for the hint about the Slot A board...I am afraid I would have tested this with a P2 otherwise....

Can I join the cool kids' club?

I managed to snag myself a Voodoo 2 from my local recycler for a reasonable price. Sadly it was an isolated model, so no SLI goodness yet. Still, it's in pretty fantastic condition given the age. This also means I have the big 3 in PCI for. 4MB Voodoo 1 in the reference design, this 12MB V2, and a PCI Voodoo 3 3000. Woo. Now to figure out where to actually throw it, since I have either underpowered or overpowered hardware for it. A PMMX233 or 1.0/1.1GHz P3 Coppermine, etc...

I keep talking myself into and out of SLI on the theory that, anything that isn't good on SLI is fine on single V2 or Banshee, where it gets texture thrash Banshee may be better, where it goes good on SLI it may be just as good or better on Voodoo3... so unless someone tells me something I'd actually play that's only fast on V2 SLI and there's more than 15% in it, I think I won't bother.

BitWrangler wrote on Today, 05:01:

I keep talking myself into and out of SLI on the theory that, anything that isn't good on SLI is fine on single V2 or Banshee, where it gets texture thrash Banshee may be better, where it goes good on SLI it may be just as good or better on Voodoo3... so unless someone tells me something I'd actually play that's only fast on V2 SLI and there's more than 15% in it, I think I won't bother.

I haven't also bothered with SLI, although I'd have a chance to do that. First, I find the performance od single 12MB completely adequate for the games that it was actually mean to run. And as I have only two 12MB cards, I can use then in two different builds.

The biggest reason is based on what I've read about SLI. If you have a fast CPU, SLI combo will (over)heat significantly more that using just a single card. Generally it is advised to limit the CPU performance more on the lower side compared to single card, but this again will eat away the performance benefits of SLI over a single card on a faster CPU.

BitWrangler wrote on Today, 05:01:

I keep talking myself into and out of SLI on the theory that, anything that isn't good on SLI is fine on single V2 or Banshee, where it gets texture thrash Banshee may be better, where it goes good on SLI it may be just as good or better on Voodoo3... so unless someone tells me something I'd actually play that's only fast on V2 SLI and there's more than 15% in it, I think I won't bother.

This is a dilemma I used to have until I stopped worrying and decided to use SLI for Slot 1/Slot A and Voodoo 3 for Socket 370/Socket A. Arbitrarily, for no goot reason. I delude myself imaginaing there might be games which were coded for the original Voodoo 1/2, take advantage of SLI and don't run well (or at all) on the Banshee or Voodoo 3. Whether that is true or not, I do not know...

DFI Memo-2000X RAM BANK with 1MB of assorted chips. And two empty sockets witch supposedly battery leakage on them. Gonna replace these.
Matrox G400 MAX Rev B

I bought a Philips sound card to try QSound on the stereo speakers built-into displays. I've not tried before, but apparently QSound can get more out of weaker speakers.

I've been collecting a few cheap consumer PCI cards to run some tests and critique of the pre-AC'97 era to try and reverse engineer why it all went wrong for audio.

I got this NIC a 3COM 3C905C-TXM for a Retro build . However, the motherboard I got it for is no longer in my possession I sent it back as defective. So if anyone has a healthy socket 370 motherboard that accepts DDR memory I buy from eBay only and from Australia.

That's an interesting mind set. Why not keeping it for future use?

zapbuzz wrote on Today, 12:02:

I got this NIC a 3COM 3C905C-TXM for a Retro build . However, the motherboard I got it for is no longer in my possession I sent it back as defective. So if anyone has a healthy socket 370 motherboard that accepts DDR memory I buy from eBay only and from Australia.

Why "as defective"? Thanks God, I dont sell on Ebay...

Nexxen wrote on 2026-02-09, 18:01:

Iomega ditto 2gb.
Hoping it works as it's "as is".
Worth 10€ 😀

Capstan rubber band is soft and has become jelly.
Same thing as with the Ditto 800 I tried to repair.
I measured the rubber part:

height: 4mm
diameter (counting spinning metal thing): 10.5mm
rubber part starting from the metal spinning rod: 2mm

I had a hard time taking these, they could be a little short or not 100% correct.
The only critical part is distance from the metal head/rod.

Edit: the head is the rectangular shaped grey object.
The unit came with a warning to clean with isopropyl every 24 hours of use of the unit, with a cotton bud - vertically; absolutely not horizontally to avoid damage.

Ydee wrote on Today, 14:00:

zapbuzz wrote on Today, 12:02:

I got this NIC a 3COM 3C905C-TXM for a Retro build . However, the motherboard I got it for is no longer in my possession I sent it back as defective. So if anyone has a healthy socket 370 motherboard that accepts DDR memory I buy from eBay only and from Australia.

Why "as defective"? Thanks God, I dont sell on Ebay...

it was listed as *never used* but turned out to be *never used but abused*

PD2JK wrote on Today, 13:00:

That's an interesting mind set. Why not keeping it for future use?

i probably will use it one day what I want to use it on is quite rare there are heaps of early Pentium 3 motherboards that use SDRAM but the DDR ones are quite rare

I just ordered the Abit IS7 E ver:1.2 motherboard from Poland.
It is coming with a socket 478 Celeron CPU and 512mb of RAM.
However, I have a Pentium 4 Prescott CPU and 4GB of brand new RAM to put in it.
I know someone with it he says its a very good motherboard.
The price was really good but since its from Poland snail express I have to wait long time to receive it.
As with many things in life good things take time.
There are similar models with firewire but I have a card for that anyhow (and I have to find a use for it too maybe external HDD)
It was advertised as Vintage is that actually true? has it gotten that old???
Here's a link to its specifications
[url][https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/abit-ab-is7/ [url]

Just received this s3 board that I find extremely interesting, Abit PW4 v1.3.

It is pretty damn rare board already, but it also uses Symphony Labs' Wagner chipset, which in itself is rare and only few boards used it, although it should be very well performing chipset. Winbond bought SL in 1995, but very little information seems to exist about the company in the internet. It was located in California and I bet that it was just a fabless engineering company. Chips in this unit carry Winbond logos, so either Winbond licensed chipset already before the purchase or this board and chips are manufactured after the merger. I took a quick look at the chips on the board and most seem to have datecodes from 1994, so maybe Winbond licensed these early on? If anyone has more knowledge about SL, please share. It seems that the company is almost forgotten today, if it ever was that well known to begin with.

This chipset was also reverse engineered couple of years ago by using this board so it has a mod bios available, hardware mod for Am5x86 WB cache settings and they apparently found more CPU voltage options which all potentially make this a nice overclocker and tinkerer's board.

Here's theretroweb page with all the information about modifications etc:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/abit-ab-pw4

I have a DFI board with Symphony Labs Haydn II chipset. As a kid I thought it somehow had sound integrated somewhere, just because of the treble clef haha. I really can't tell you anything about the company however...

Anyway, very nice board you have there. 😀

PD2JK wrote on Today, 19:02:

I have a DFI board with Symphony Labs Haydn II chipset. As a kid I thought it somehow had sound integrated somewhere, just because of the treble clef haha. I really can't tell you anything about the company however...

Anyway, very nice board you have there. 😀

Thanks! Yeah, SL had series of "composer chipsets", but it seems to be one of the more obscure manufacturers overall and nowadays pretty much forgotten at least compared to house hold names like Ali, SiS, VIA, C&T etc. I haven't read anywhere that they would have had bad products and Winbond probably wouldn't have bought them if they produced mostly junk. After all, I think the acquisition was to have a foothold to chipset market.

I bought this card today since it looked quite curious given the mod done to it. https://www.esi-audio.com/products/prodigyhd2/

edit: the metal cans are marked AMPLIMO TM 20 02/08
edit2: loose wires are due to handling :-p

weedeewee wrote on Today, 19:35:

I bought this card today since it looked quite curious given the mod done to it. https://www.esi-audio.com/products/prodigyhd2/

edit: the metal cans are marked AMPLIMO TM 20 02/08
edit2: loose wires are due to handling :-p

Sweet!

Most ENVY24-based cards support a secondary use case such as cinematic movie audio or mixing live instruments, whereas yours focuses on the primary use case - that makes it quite possibly the best PCI card for hearing what stereo CD publishers intended you to hear. Personally, I'd prefer it without the mod because I'd be hooking it up to neutral studio monitors and trying to sound proof the room 😁