Don't tell me that 😳

I suppose that's a possibility. I've bought off this seller before though, without issues... supposedly it was from a computer store that's closing down.

Reapplying the shrinkwrap would be trivial for anyone who had the right equipment, some retailers do it for returned items...

retro games 100 wrote:

DonutKing wrote:

Yeah if I do decide to open it I'll take some pics and post em up 😀

I'm really in 2 minds about it though 😒

I bought a shrink-wrapped boxed AWE64 on ebay. I opened it, and it was full of junk. Someone had just resealed it, having first removed the goods. I wonder if you could open the box, check its contents including a quick hardware test, and find a way to reseal it. I wonder if "box resealing kits" exist, on ebay perhaps?

Wtf?...what was in them?? Some junk old cd's and a GF8800GTX or something?

Hehe, at the time it was a bit of a shock. I wrote about it here. (My last post near the bottom.)

Hmmm. What I might do, is book a flight somewhere and take the sound blaster in carry on luggage. That way I can watch on the x ray screen and see if there really is a card in there without opening it 😀

DonutKing wrote:

Hmmm. What I might do, is book a flight somewhere and take the sound blaster in carry on luggage. That way I can watch on the x ray screen and see if there really is a card in there without opening it 😀

Or maybe you could weigh it? Only thing you'd need to know is how much it's supposed to weigh. 😉

Where would I find tout how much its supposed to weigh?

I always wondered what are the chances of someone buying a Sound Blaster back in the day and never ever opening it for 10+ years?

I seriously believe they just shrink wrap these boxes in order to make them appear as new. So yea I would open it, take a look at the ISA connector and the other bits and see what's going on.

I always wondered what are the chances of someone buying a Sound Blaster back in the day and never ever opening it for 10+ years?

Well supposedly its just old stock that was never sold. If you have a look at their completed listings it seems plausible.

http://completed.shop.ebay.com.au/Computers-/ … .c0.m283&_rdc=1

Well there is only one way to find out 😜

You can reseal it later if you want 🤣

wow, I guess I was real lucky then because my SB16 SCSI (CT1779) is the real deal... bought 10 years ago for $36.40 off ebay (and I thought that was expensive after a bid war then!) and it really was original sealed... the "register today for free HSC Interactive" neon green sticker is still there... I carefully cut only the top of the shrink wrap so that the rest stayed intact... tested/inspected everything inside... all good 😁

card still unused and will be... it's a rare 1995 version (when the SB16 SCSI was largely forgotten by then and still sold for $180 at best buy)

for many 93-95 creative cards, they typically had stickers applied over the shrink wrap to promote some free software included... so it's a good idea to pay attention to those 😉

Well this one dates from 90/91, only stickers on the outside of the shrink wrap were "$28" and "Sale Price $25" and they both flaked off easily, like they had been on there for a while and the adhesive had given up....

I might see if I can get a video camera and record the 'unboxing' 😀

hopefully it won't be full of jelly beans or something... actually that wouldn't be so bad, at least I could eat them 😀

only other way to find out what's inside is to xray the box... how you can get it done is up to you!

DonutKing wrote:

Where would I find tout how much its supposed to weigh?

Ask someone who has it, theres surely someone here who has one...riiight? 😊

Picked up a Diamond Viper II Z200, I had a S3 Savage 2000 driven card missing from my collection. 😁

Got this the other day:

A Radeon 7000. Haven't tested it yet, but apparently it outputs VGA and S-Video simultaneously...

bushwack wrote:

Picked up a Diamond Viper II Z200, I had a S3 Savage 2000 driven card missing from my collection. 😁

Nice!

I'm not sure I have a Viper 2 in my collection yet. They are kinda the failed GF1 counters, so to say.

Got a DTK PEM-0030YS mainboard today, with soldered AMD 386DX-40, 4 x 1MB 30-pin SIMMs and 128KB cache:

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/D/DT … EM-0030Y-S.html
http://i1226.photobucket.com/albums/ee402/rec … hu/IMG_0055.jpg

The BIOS is still holding the correct date and time and there is a BIOS preset for an 1.2GB HDD type - I can't wait to build a system around it... however, there are questions 😀:

- the cache is upgradeable to 256KB, and I have plenty of spare chips for that; will there be any difference (even theoretical) in performance?
- the current cache is 20ns (with 15ns tag); will switching to 15ns chips make any difference?
- would a 387 help DOS games, or just math or CAD apps?
- why is the latest memtest86+ resetting in an endless loop when booted on this board? 😁

1. yes
2. unlikely, unless you overclock it.
3. no, but it cant hurt.
4. might have a loose connection somewhere. re-seat ram, cache, etc and try again. is what I would do first.

1. I didn't notice any difference in games going from 128KB to 256KB in my 386DX40 - check out my thread in system specs. Speedsys graphs looked nicer but thats it, no difference in 3dbench, *very* minor difference in sysinfo, tenths of a point.
2. as said, will allow you to overclock it further, and if you can't set minimum cache timings/wait states with the 20ns chips you might have better luck with the 15ns chips. Setting lower cache wait states gave me more of a boost than doubling the cache.
3. Falcon 3.0 is about the only thing I know of from that era that will use it, apart from CAD etc. You could try and run quake on it I guess but it won't be very enjoyable 😀 I've got one in my 386 and the ONLY time it ever did anything was when I ran intel's chkcop22 utility to test it.
4. as said, reseat your RAM and cache, also get a pencil eraser and clean the contacts on your SIMMs. If that doesn't work try swapping the order of your SIMMs. Does memtest reboot instantly as soon as you try to load it, or is it doing it after running a few tests? Also try the nonplus version of memtest as well.

It reboots instantly as memtest86+ is trying to start testing (after "Loading...", immediately before the blue screen), no exception.

I'll re-seat the RAM and cache anyway (as I'm going to replace/upgrade them), and I'll also try an older version of memtest... all of these later today, after a new episode in the quest for old stuff 😁.

[edit] Two annoying things that I found about this board is that you cannot enter BIOS setup if everything's right (I mean if memory capacity hasn't changed or a drive is missing - in those cases user input is required), and that you cannot manually enter HDD parameters (C/H/S), so that I'll have to find a drive of one of the 49 preset types (the weird one is type 15, with 0s everywhere).