BitWrangler wrote on 2026-09-14, 12:54:

I am curious as to why that is a long shot, sounds easy so far. Was the motherboard an oddity or the case hard to identify and find?

It's a few things actually. Can't remember the case model and have no photos of it. The AT standard is a pain nowadays because of prices (socket 7 systems are priced twice as much as slot 1 in my neck of the woods), bound-to-fail PSUs, and don't get me started on DIN-plug keyboards and COM mice!

revolstar wrote on 2026-09-14, 13:40:

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-09-14, 12:54:

I am curious as to why that is a long shot, sounds easy so far. Was the motherboard an oddity or the case hard to identify and find?

It's a few things actually. Can't remember the case model and have no photos of it. The AT standard is a pain nowadays because of prices (socket 7 systems are priced twice as much as slot 1 in my neck of the woods), bound-to-fail PSUs, and don't get me started on DIN-plug keyboards and COM mice!

Even AWE32/AWE64 cards seem horrendously expensive. I'm not sure I'll even be able to get one.

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-09-14, 13:47:

revolstar wrote on 2026-09-14, 13:40:

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-09-14, 12:54:

I am curious as to why that is a long shot, sounds easy so far. Was the motherboard an oddity or the case hard to identify and find?

It's a few things actually. Can't remember the case model and have no photos of it. The AT standard is a pain nowadays because of prices (socket 7 systems are priced twice as much as slot 1 in my neck of the woods), bound-to-fail PSUs, and don't get me started on DIN-plug keyboards and COM mice!

Even AWE32/AWE64 cards seem horrendously expensive. I'm not sure I'll even be able to get one.

Use saved searches if you are not already on Evil Bay, cheap ones do pop up from time to time. I know when I want an AWE64 Gold it took me several months of hits to get one at a price I could live with buying. Took even longer to get a 32Mb memory module for it at a reasonable price.

I will say I didnt actually use it much, I just didn't like CQM that much and preferred OPL3 over it so ended up using a good old Yammy card with OPL and a Roland Midi DB instead.

What I really should have done was get a AWE32 CT3900 with OPL, would have had likely the best setup with such a card but every 3900 I have seen has stupid pricing and will sit on EvilBay for months on end with that stupid pricing.

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-09-14, 13:47:

revolstar wrote on 2026-09-14, 13:40:

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-09-14, 12:54:

I am curious as to why that is a long shot, sounds easy so far. Was the motherboard an oddity or the case hard to identify and find?

It's a few things actually. Can't remember the case model and have no photos of it. The AT standard is a pain nowadays because of prices (socket 7 systems are priced twice as much as slot 1 in my neck of the woods), bound-to-fail PSUs, and don't get me started on DIN-plug keyboards and COM mice!

Even AWE32/AWE64 cards seem horrendously expensive. I'm not sure I'll even be able to get one.

I was lucky that I found my Awe 32 in a computer i picked up from a scrapper and my awe 64 was in a 5 dollar computer i found at the thrift store, but it doesnt work properly and i havent had too much time to troubleshoot it .

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-09-14, 13:47:

Even AWE32/AWE64 cards seem horrendously expensive. I'm not sure I'll even be able to get one.

Seems to depend on the model. AWE64 Gold cards tend to have insane list prices.

Whereas AWE64 Value or SB32 CT3670 (same chip as AWE64) tend to be more reasonable.

If reminiscing about the "good old days" counts as retro activity:

Who remembers these? Oh man there was always this one guy who had one at the lanparty's i frequented back then. Was so jealous to look at the tiny display showing -15°C (yes minus 15)

Asetek Vapochill

Followed closely by people rocking this beauty on top of their case

Koolance Exos

I only got into watercooling at the start of S775 era ... was rocking aircooling on my S939 while a select few fellow clan members were using custom w/c with the well known koolance water blocks on S478 with a custom setup.

There is still one of these (triple fan) available new in holland ... if you are looking to burn €950 on it 😮
https://www.highflow.nl/watercooling/watercoo … k-ex2-1055.html

Thats cool and I would have been envious of that as well.

Imperious wrote on 2026-09-14, 13:00:

Awesome. Was my first computer as well. I have already built a Pico Peb. I soldered up the SMD version. For the first time ever I can experience the speech synthesizer as well as
all the other goodies it offers. As You are probably aware there a quite a lot of decent new games for it now, probably more than there were originally.
I also have an F18A in mine, looks great on my LCD monitor.

Oh yeah, I'm looking forward to trying all the new/homebrew stuff. On top of setting up this old TI-99 to do things that 1981 me would have lost his mind over. 😜

In between life and work I get to do some small exercises.. my A7N8X has to wait until the weekend.

So first of all, I got hands on a DELL Vostro 1700 - with a Core2Duo T7500, GeForce 8600M GT and 3GB of memory.
It's honestly an intriguing machine for XP. The CPU + GPU combo just has enough power to run most of the games I'd be interested in. And it's 17 inch .. and weighs a ton. The condition is good.

I guess I'll sell it, as my stock is just too much.

Temps are fine as well. What a neat machine. Too bad I don't have more time or use for it.

And I'm doing a lot of Radeon BIOS work right now.. and tracing the GPU startup behaviors on a hardware level. Fun things for fun things ahead..

The chips say 128 bit -4ns. I expected the output to be more than this..

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-09-14, 13:47:

revolstar wrote on 2026-09-14, 13:40:

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-09-14, 12:54:

I am curious as to why that is a long shot, sounds easy so far. Was the motherboard an oddity or the case hard to identify and find?

It's a few things actually. Can't remember the case model and have no photos of it. The AT standard is a pain nowadays because of prices (socket 7 systems are priced twice as much as slot 1 in my neck of the woods), bound-to-fail PSUs, and don't get me started on DIN-plug keyboards and COM mice!

Even AWE32/AWE64 cards seem horrendously expensive. I'm not sure I'll even be able to get one.

AWE cards are, IMO, comically overrated. The native AWE64 MIDI mode doesn't really sound that good, and the full length AWE32s are comically unreliable.

Get any random SB Pro clone that has a waveblaster header, and a real OPL synth and then get a cheap general MIDI module (LittleDreamer by TexElec for US or Dreamblaster S2 by Serdaco for EU region).

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2026-09-18, 17:16:

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-09-14, 13:47:

revolstar wrote on 2026-09-14, 13:40:

It's a few things actually. Can't remember the case model and have no photos of it. The AT standard is a pain nowadays because of prices (socket 7 systems are priced twice as much as slot 1 in my neck of the woods), bound-to-fail PSUs, and don't get me started on DIN-plug keyboards and COM mice!

Even AWE32/AWE64 cards seem horrendously expensive. I'm not sure I'll even be able to get one.

AWE cards are, IMO, comically overrated. The native AWE64 MIDI mode doesn't really sound that good, and the full length AWE32s are comically unreliable.

Get any random SB Pro clone that has a waveblaster header, and a real OPL synth and then get a cheap general MIDI module (LittleDreamer by TexElec for US or Dreamblaster S2 by Serdaco for EU region).

Would there be a list of SB Pro clones somewhere?

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-09-19, 02:29:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2026-09-18, 17:16:

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-09-14, 13:47:

Even AWE32/AWE64 cards seem horrendously expensive. I'm not sure I'll even be able to get one.

AWE cards are, IMO, comically overrated. The native AWE64 MIDI mode doesn't really sound that good, and the full length AWE32s are comically unreliable.

Get any random SB Pro clone that has a waveblaster header, and a real OPL synth and then get a cheap general MIDI module (LittleDreamer by TexElec for US or Dreamblaster S2 by Serdaco for EU region).

Would there be a list of SB Pro clones somewhere?

My own i430TX came with an ISA ESS Solo.

However, i430TX dates from when sound cards moved to PCI. There were many period correct PCI sound cards in 1997 including S3 SonicVibes, Ensoniq AudioPCI ES1370, Aureal Vortex AU8820, Creative AWE64D. The original AudioPCI ES1370 chip is often branded Creative Labs.

You have several considerations though. Is your operating system DOS, Windows, Linux, or something else? And, does your motherboard have the SB-Link header that enabled some PCI cards to behave like an ISA sound card in DOS?

And, are you playing DVD movies on this box? That matters because CD audio and DVD audio have different native frequencies, and picking the wrong sound card can create extra translation work for your CPU. Also, the computers in 1997 were assembled with sound card audio cables that spread the work around hardware DACs instead of making the CPU translate streams.

It was an age of genuine churn and I remember magazines discussing PCI Terratec powered by ICE/ENVY24 and the original PCI Creative SBLive - both as premium Christmas present updates and these might be the most affordable choices now.

When I got this board, some of the caps around the CPU socket were damaged, so I did the most logical thing and recap the whole board 😀.

Also fix the broken pin on this 486-DX4 using a resistor.

MattRocks wrote on 2026-09-19, 04:13:

You have several considerations though. Is your operating system DOS, Windows, Linux, or something else?

I'm thinking a combination of DOS 6.22 and Windows 98.

MattRocks wrote on 2026-09-19, 04:13:

And, does your motherboard have the SB-Link header that enabled some PCI cards to behave like an ISA sound card in DOS?

Sadly, it doesn't. SB_Link boards seem hard to find, let alone buy for a decent price.

MattRocks wrote on 2026-09-19, 04:13:

And, are you playing DVD movies on this box? That matters because CD audio and DVD audio have different native frequencies, and picking the wrong sound card can create extra translation work for your CPU. Also, the computers in 1997 were assembled with sound card audio cables that spread the work around hardware DACs instead of making the CPU translate streams.

I had no plans on watching any movies.

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-09-19, 04:36:

DOS 6.22

Don't know, sorry. IIRC my ISA ESS worked fine in DOS, but my understanding is you're entering a world of specific games expecting specific sound cards. However, IIRC, audio just worked for me and I don't know what the fuss was about.

Picked up an old 1998 IBM USB PC Camera. Showed up in the mail yesterday.

So played around with my DOSBridge stuff and got it so it is working on my PS/2 Model 30 8086 - to interface with it via the CH375 ISA>USB card.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdvwgRLKzXE

Not exciting maybe... but I really enjoyed playing around with it!

MattRocks wrote on 2026-09-19, 04:48:

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-09-19, 04:36:

DOS 6.22

Don't know, sorry. IIRC my ISA ESS worked fine in DOS, but my understanding is you're entering a world of specific games expecting specific sound cards. However, IIRC, audio just worked for me and I don't know what the fuss was about.

I know DOS games don't always work when launched from within Windows, so I'll be doing a second install.

On the plus side, it'll be easy to get 6.22 installed alongside 98 on one partition.

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-09-19, 04:56:

I know DOS games don't always work when launched from within Windows, so I'll be doing a second install.

On the plus side, it'll be easy to get 6.22 installed alongside 98 on one partition.

My experience is exactly the opposite: with DOS games run from a Windows 98 environment with a PCI sound card, both the music and the sound effects worked flawlessly. In pure DOS, usually only the music worked (if), without the sound effects. Of course, there are exceptions.

Ydee wrote on 2026-09-19, 07:41:

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-09-19, 04:56:

I know DOS games don't always work when launched from within Windows, so I'll be doing a second install.

On the plus side, it'll be easy to get 6.22 installed alongside 98 on one partition.

My experience is exactly the opposite: with DOS games run from a Windows 98 environment with a PCI sound card, both the music and the sound effects worked flawlessly. In pure DOS, usually only the music worked (if), without the sound effects. Of course, there are exceptions.

I think that sitch is when Windows PnPs the IRQ or addresses out of the "sweet spot" DOS compatible ones, like IRQ 5,7 A:220, 240 etc.